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      Damn, she was in trouble.

      Lying in the dark with him, side by side in separate beds, while their child slept nearby, her desire intensified, becoming so strong she couldn’t sleep. Her entire body burned with need.

      In the bed next to her, Tucker’s ragged breathing told her that he had the same problem. “Tucker?” she said, then mentally kicked herself for speaking. “Are you…?”

      “Yes, I’m thinking about you,” he said, his voice harsh. “Fantasizing about you. And yes, Lucy, I want you. More than you could ever believe.”

      She gasped as need and desire blossomed through her. So much for careful resolutions and planning. She could no more resist this man than she could stop breathing.

      If that made her a fool, then so be it.

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      Dear Reader,

      As often is the case with writers, The CEO’s Secret Baby stemmed from my thinking “what if?” What if a man had been held prisoner for a year and when set free, returned home to find that he might as well have become a ghost? Believing him dead, his girlfriend had gone on without him, forging a new relationship with his best friend. Even more shockingly, she’d been pregnant and he has a three-month-old son!

      And then I had to wonder what it would be like to be her, having lost the man you loved, carried and birthed his baby and, after a year, forged a tentative alliance with his best friend. Only to have all this blow up in her face when her first love shows up, not dead after all. Throw in a Mexican drug cartel and ten million missing dollars, and things start to heat up even more.

      A fascinating concept, yes? I hope I’ve done it justice. For this book, we return to my beloved Boulder, Colorado, in the summer, normally a carefree time, but not for them. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I enjoyed writing it.

      Karen Whiddon

      The CEO’s Secret Baby

      Karen Whiddon

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      KAREN WHIDDON

      started weaving fanciful tales for her younger brothers at the age of eleven. Amidst the Catskill Mountains of New York, then the Rocky Mountains of Colorado, she fueled her imagination with the natural beauty of the rugged peaks and spun stories of love that captivated her family’s attention.

      Karen now lives in north Texas, where she shares her life with her very own hero of a husband and three doting dogs. Also an entrepreneur, she divides her time between the business she started and writing the contemporary romantic suspense and paranormal romances that readers enjoy. You can email Karen at [email protected] or write to her at P.O. Box 820807, Fort Worth, TX 76182. Fans of her writing can also check out her website, www.karenwhiddon.com.

      To my husband’s family,

       who have also become mine. Floyd, Sarah,

       and Lavenia. Know that I love you dearly.

      Contents

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 1

      The Fourth of July began like any other summer morning. Lucy Knowlton woke up, well-rested after a dreamless night, and showered. Then, with sunlight streaming lemon yellow through her open kitchen window, she ate her normal breakfast—multigrain Cheerios with sliced strawberries and almond milk.

      The early morning air was still cool, though she knew the temperature would continue to rise. All in all, she felt…good. Surprisingly upbeat. Maybe because she’d actually slept well. She supposed she should feel grateful that she’d finally stopped having nightmares about Tucker and how he must have felt when the plane went down.

      Rinsing her dishes in the sink and stacking them in the dishwasher, she’d just finished when her three-month-old baby, Eli, cried to let her know he was awake and wanted to be fed. The obvious delight in his bright blue eyes as he latched on to her breast made her happy and she smiled. Vaguely amazed at the soft happiness she felt, she thought her smiles came a little bit more frequently these days. Or at least she hoped so.

      After all, she had so much to be thankful for. Though Tucker’s absence had left her with a gaping hole in her life, over time she’d tried to pull the tattered edges closer together. A week, a month, a day, a minute at a time.

      Still, at any given moment she could calculate exactly how long it had been since Tucker had died. Today marked one year, two weeks and one day. Ignoring the ever-present ache of missing him, she spent the rest of the morning puttering around the house doing myriad daily chores.

      Humming nursery rhymes to entertain Eli in his playpen, she washed two loads of laundry, cleaned her bathroom and mopped the kitchen floor. In between she changed Eli’s diaper, sang to him, rocked him and cuddled him. She found if she kept busy, she didn’t think so much. All in all, life kept getting better.

      Come early afternoon, she put Eli down for a nap. At three months old, he slept a lot still, for which she was guiltily grateful, as she couldn’t seem to find enough hours in the day to get everything done.

      Especially today. Glad her energy was high, because she still had a lot to do before the holiday celebration later. And it was very important to her that she attend the fireworks display, even though she wouldn’t take the baby inside the stadium because of the noise. She’d watch from a distance and try to stay until the very end. She planned to do this in honor of Tucker—the Fourth of July had been his favorite holiday. Last year, she’d been too devastated to even consider attending any kind of celebration.

      This year, she’d do it up right.

      So, on this day of all days, she pushed aside her grief at his untimely death and tried to feel lighthearted. At least she could count on Sean Morey, Tucker’s best friend and her brand-new fiancé, to help her as they watched the fireworks display explode in vibrant colors in the velvet sky above them.

      When the doorbell rang, the muted sound of the clear, mellow chimes made her smile again. A gift from Sean, he’d installed them only a few days ago. She loved the way they sounded, too quiet to wake Eli, but loud enough to let her know someone was at the door. Her obvious delight in the chimes had to be the reason why Sean rang them now instead of just walking inside as he usually did.

      Keeping her smile firmly in place so Sean wouldn’t worry because she always looked so sad, she hurried to the front door and pulled it open.

      “Hey, you!” As she took in the sight of the tall, broad-shouldered man standing on her front step, her less than genuine smile froze in place.

      A ghost looked back at her from sapphire blue eyes exactly like her son’s. Her heart skipped a beat and she struggled to breathe. Not Sean, as she’d supposed. But Tucker, instead. Tucker Drover, the man who, for all intents and purposes, had died a little over one year ago in a fiery

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