LITMIR.BIZ

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he knew what baby formula, fresh or spoiled, smelled like.

      With the crying baby in his arms, he headed over to Farley’s rectangular cell, just visible from the main room. The skinny, disheveled sixtysomething was sprawled out on the cot, his hands pressed over his ears.

      “Hey, Farley, did you hear anyone come in a little while ago?”

      “Yeah, you and that screaming kid,” was Farley’s helpful response.

      “No, I mean like fifteen minutes ago. Did you see anyone come in and leave something on my desk?”

      “I was sleeping until that wailing started. Now let me get back to it,” he snapped, and was snoring before Nick could turn around.

      Nick rolled his eyes, reached into his pocket and pulled out the note. Please take care of Timmy until I can come back for him in a week. I am not abandoning him.

      A week. Good Lord.

      But the underlined please in red assured him the mother would be back when she could because of some kind of trouble or another. He glanced at the clock—1:18. Time sure moved slowly.

      As Timmy sucked on the bottle, he glanced outside, hoping the secretary would come back. Michelle was great with babies.

      Yes! Someone was coming up the walk. Maybe it was Timmy’s mother, realizing she’d done a nutty thing and was returning for her baby. Although he wouldn’t hand over Timmy so fast—not until he was sure the mother was stable.

      He rushed to the window to get a good look at her in case the woman changed her mind and bolted.

      He did a double take.

      Georgia Hurley was coming up the walk. And considering that her stomach—which he’d kissed every inch of—had been flat as a surfboard just four months ago when he met her in Houston, she certainly wasn’t the mother of baby Timmy.

      Well, well, so Georgia had finally come home to Blue Gulch.

      The woman was so self-absorbed that when her grandmother had gotten sick a few months ago, and the family business, Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen, was in financial jeopardy, Georgia ignored her sisters’ pleas to come home and stayed in Houston with her rich boyfriend.

      Nick knew all this because four months ago, before he even knew Georgia Hurley existed, her sister Annabel had been worried sick about Georgia and thought she might be in some kind of trouble. Nothing would keep Georgia from coming home when her family needed her unless something was very wrong, Annabel had told him. Nick had barely known Annabel, but since he’d been headed to Houston for a police academy reunion, he’d assured Annabel he’d check on Georgia that weekend. Make sure she was okay.

      Boy, had she been okay. Checking on Georgia had started with a knock on her condo door in Houston and ended with the two of them wrapped naked in each other’s arms, talking for hours about things he never talked about. He’d lost himself in Georgia Hurley that night.

      Then, wham, bucket of cold water on his head in the morning. He’d never forget how she acted as if she didn’t know him, as if they hadn’t just spent the night together, when her slick boyfriend unexpectedly showed up the next morning in his Italian suit and thousand-dollar shoes. The man’s sunglasses probably cost more than a year’s room and board at Nick’s sister’s college.

      “Oh, him?” Georgia had said to the boyfriend, tossing a glance at Nick in the bright April sunshine in front of her Houston condo. She and Nick were standing on the sidewalk, making a plan for where to have breakfast, when the boyfriend had shown up. The boyfriend Nick hadn’t known about. “Just an acquaintance I ran into. Ready, darling?” she’d added, linking her arm with the Suit and heading down the street. She hadn’t looked back.

      It took a lot to shock Nick. He’s been through hell and back as a kid. He’d gotten through raising his teenage sister, the two of them both in one piece. He’d seen the worst of humanity in his first five years as a cop on the force in Houston. Nothing surprised him. Nothing got to him.

      But Georgia did. His head, his heart, everything in him exploded like an earthquake in those minutes on that Houston sidewalk, and trying to make sense of it as he drove back home to Blue Gulch had given him a bigger headache.

      She’d used him for the night—why, he didn’t know. He hadn’t been able to figure that out either. What was the point for her? What had she gotten out of it? Hot sex? When she had some six-foot, four-inch, rich boyfriend? Whatever her reason, whatever motivated her, she’d discarded Nick with a lie and walked away. He’d never heard from her again. He’d gone back to Blue Gulch, let her sister Annabel know that Georgia was absolutely fine—without adding that Georgia was a selfish, lying, cheating witch—and gotten back to his life.

      Now here she was, walking into his police station. And this wasn’t exactly a good time, he thought, glancing down at Timmy in his arms.

      He braced himself for her to walk through the door. But no one came in. He glanced out the window and saw her standing in front of the weeping willow and taking a deep breath. Then another.

      And from this angle it was pretty clear her stomach wasn’t flat, after all. In fact, Nick would say Georgia Hurley was four or five months pregnant.

       Chapter Two

      For a moment, Georgia Hurley was so dumbstruck with joy at the sight of Nick Slater, even a hundred feet away through a police station window, that she almost missed that there was a baby in his arms. The infant was nestled against his forearm as he held a small bottle to the tiny mouth.

      Confused, she stopped in her tracks, eyed him through the leaves of the weeping willow and sat down on the bench by the steps. Based on everything Nick had told her the night they spent together, he wasn’t a father. He’d made it crystal clear that he had no interest in marriage or parenthood. That the bachelor life was for him. Clearly, this baby wasn’t his. She didn’t believe for one second that he’d lied to her, that he was someone’s husband, someone’s father. Georgia might get people wrong sometimes—oh boy, did she—but what had drawn her to Nick was the integrity, the honesty that had enveloped him the night they met. She’d felt it in her bones, seen it in his face, in his eyes as he’d held her, as he’d made love to her.

      As she’d betrayed him the next morning.

      Despite the warm August air, a chill snaked up her spine at the memory. Georgia closed her eyes, her heart clenching as she remembered the look of utter disbelief on his handsome face, her own powerlessness. He probably hates me, she thought—for the hundredth time. How could he not?

      She sucked in a breath and glanced at him again, but his back was to the window.

      Go on in, she ordered herself. It was time to right a wrong. Best she could, anyway.

      He shifted to the side and she could see he was still holding the baby, a half-finished bottle in his hand. He was very likely watching the baby for someone, a coworker, probably. That he was holding a baby, feeding a baby, was a good sign, she reminded herself, given what she was about to tell him.

      A bit more confident, Georgia started toward the steps, but her belly fluttered, and she sat back down on the bench.

      That was only the second time she’d felt the baby move and she brought her hand to her stomach, a feeling of utter wonder spreading through her. The first time happened during the long drive from Houston to Blue Gulch, as if the baby were reminding her of what she had to do upon arrival: tell Nick Slater that he was going to be a father.

      Just a few minutes ago, the three-hour drive finally over, she’d stopped for a red light on Blue Gulch Street and had been able to see the steeply pitched roof of the apricot Victorian that housed Hurley’s Homestyle Kitchen. Home. She hadn’t seen her grandmother, her sisters, since Christmas. Tears had stung the backs of her eyes. More than anything she’d wanted to speed over and tell them everything, finally explain herself. But instead of turning left for

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