LITMIR.BIZ

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To

       Terry and Joe Unger,

       for being the perfect hosts.

      MARIE FERRARELLA

      earned a master’s degree in Shakespearean comedy, and, perhaps as a result, her writing is distinguished by humor and natural dialogue. This RITA^® Award-winning author’s goal is to entertain and to make people laugh and feel good. She has written over one hundred books for Silhouette, some under the name Marie Nicole. Her romances are beloved by fans worldwide and have been translated into Spanish, Italian, German, Russian, Polish, Japanese and Korean.

      MANHATTAN MULTIPLES

      So much excitement happening at once!

      The doors of Manhattan Multiples might close. The mayor and Eloise Vale once had a thing. Someone on the staff is pregnant and is keeping it a secret. Romance and drama—and so many babies in the big city!

      Jason Mallory—Ruthless businessman with city savvy. Not even a dancing clown could make him smile, but his iron facade vanishes when he sees his old flame sitting at his administrative assistant’s desk. For once, he’s tongue-tied!

      Mindy Richards—She’s pregnant with twins, but no one has to know just yet, except for her good friends at Manhattan Multiples. If only Jason didn’t still make her heart fly out of her chest—after all these years.

      Eloise Vale—This director of Manhattan Multiples, the city’s leading multiple-birth clinic, is stewing over recent threats to cut funding. And she blames Mayor Harper—Bill—who seems hell-bent on revenge against her. Lucky for her, she has a card or two left to play.

      Bill Harper—As Manhattan’s mayor, he wants nothing more than to make everyone happy—especially Eloise, the only one who’s ever meant anything to him.

      Medical Mystery—Why are Nurse Lara Mancini and Dr. Derek Cross making eyes at each other across the examining table? Find out in next month’s The Fertility Factor, by Jennifer Mikels (SE #1559).

      Contents

      Prologue

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Chapter Ten

      Chapter Eleven

      Chapter Twelve

      Chapter Thirteen

      Chapter Fourteen

      Chapter Fifteen

      Epilogue

      Prologue

      “Why that no-good so-and-so.”

      Grabbing up the newspaper from her desk, Eloise Vale narrowly avoided tipping over her coffee cup and sending a creamy, off-brown river pooling over the exact article she wanted to read. The one that announced that the ever-dapper, much-sought-after mayor of New York, Bill Harper, once her Bill Harper until she’d come to her senses, was debating overwhelming budget cuts in order to balance the city’s budget. Budget cuts that would, in addition to other things, cripple a great many much-needed charitable programs. Her program was on the list of possibilities.

      Ignoring her newly rescued coffee, Eloise sat staring at the article, the words bouncing off her eyes like so many misfired photon torpedoes, her stomach cramping up as it wound itself into one huge knot.

      There it was, Manhattan Multiples, smack in the middle. The mayor might as well have placed a gun to her head. Or her heart.

      “How could he?” she demanded out loud of the cool pastel-blue walls that surrounded her Madison Avenue office.

      Her office was the very hub that was Manhattan Multiples, an organization that had begun as a support group championed by one lone woman. Manhattan Multiples had grown like the proverbial weed until it had mushroomed into a foundation occupying three floors of the ten-story building. Rather than just a single small group of people, it now encompassed services that ranged from support groups—including career counseling, Lamaze, yoga and meditation classes—not to mention a thriving day-care center, all for women faced with the frightening and overwhelming reality of giving birth to not just one life-changing child, but two or more.

      Eloise knew what that was all about. She’d had to face up to it herself when she’d given birth to her three boys, now all entering their adolescence together, a state guaranteed to turn her ash-blond hair as gray as her eyes. She hadn’t had a clue how to handle the situation, not then. And she wouldn’t have had much more than a hint now if it wasn’t for the organization she’d started and now oversaw, an organization blessed with knowledgeable people who came to share their experiences, their advice and their acquired wisdom with women who were scared out of their minds.

      “And he wants to pull the plug on us?” Eloise drew the newspaper closer as she looked at the face of the man she had almost married instead of Walter. “Think again, Billy-boy. If you think I’m capitulating without one hell of a fight, boy have you got the wrong woman.”

      With a pronounced sigh, Eloise threw the paper aside and picked up her coffee.

      Chapter One

      That Monday morning Jason Mallory had a great many things on his mind as he hurried into the spacious suite that comprised the securities investment offices of Mallory and Dixon. From the ridiculous—as in where he’d stashed his dry cleaning ticket for a jacket he needed—to the sublime, which meant going over the net-quarterly returns of a very successful firm season.

      Being instantly and unceremoniously catapulted into the past, however, was not one of them.

      But, scheduled or not, that was exactly where he found himself. In the past. More than eleven years in the past to be exact, at a time when he had been the loner in a local high school where everyone else seemed to know one another.

      At that time, all he’d had were his thoughts, his books and an overwhelming ambition to become someone. A powerful “someone.” Someone a person like Mindy Conway would notice. She’d been, as much as anything, the reason why he’d been so driven, so compelled to scale those corporate mountains, so dedicated to accumulating not only money but respect for who and what he was.

      She had been his catalyst, his focus.

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