Trish Wylie - Her Unexpected Baby

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Trish Wylie worked through a lot of careers to get to the one she’d wanted in her late teens. She has flicked her blond hair over her shoulder while playing the promotions game, patted her manicured hands on the backs of musicians in the music business, smiled sweetly at awkward customers during the retail nightmare known as the run-up to Christmas, and got completely lost in her car in every single town in Ireland while working as a sales rep. It took all that character building and a healthy sense of humour to get her dream job. She spends her days in reindeer slippers, with her hair in whatever band she can find to keep it out of the way—makeup as vague and distant a memory as manicured nails—while creating the kind of dream man she’d still like to believe is out there somewhere. If it turns out he is, she promises she’ll let you know…after she’s been out for a new wardrobe, a manicure and a makeover…

For the “Newbies.”

My special friends: Ally, Hannah, Nic and Ola.

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

EPILOGUE

THERE was something about a wedding that made families pick on the unattached members of their clan. When Dana Taylor’s brother Jack finally met his match and tied the knot, the entire Lewis family, at least the female members, seemed to descend on Dana like flies round—well, honey.

Dana refused point-blank to liken herself to anything else that flies might hover around.

‘You need to get back out there.’

‘Out there where, exactly?’ She kept a smile on her face, despite the fact she knew exactly what her eldest sister was referring to. Oh, yeah, she knew rightly. And so did not want to talk about it.

Tess sighed. ‘Dating.’

‘Oh, that out there.’

The next sibling in order of birth nodded as she took a sip of champagne. ‘Honey, it’s long since due. You can’t just sit in that run-down house of yours and wait for the menopause to arrive.’

She couldn’t? Why was she paying a mortgage, then, if it wasn’t so she could have her own space to do whatever the hell she liked in? Dana blinked slowly, then narrowed her eyes as she thought.

Tess nodded in agreement with Rachel. ‘Just because things didn’t work the first time it doesn’t mean there isn’t someone else out there who’d be great for you.’

‘You make it sound as if I live like some kind of hermit.’

‘Don’t you?’ Rachel raised an elegant eyebrow. ‘When’s the last time you went out and had fun?’

‘I took Jess to the beach last month.’

‘That’s mother-daughter fun. I mean…’ She leaned her head in closer and winked. ’Fun.’

‘She means sex.’ Her sister Lauren stated the obvious with a small nod.

Dana took a deep breath and leaned back in her chair. ‘Why can’t I just live alone and be happy?’

Tess snorted. ‘Because you’re not happy.’

‘Who says I’m not?’ she demanded.

‘It’s obvious you’re not.’

‘How the hell is it obvious?’

‘See? If you were happy you wouldn’t need to be defensive.’

Dana shook her head. ‘Sometimes I really wish you wouldn’t take the mothering role so seriously with us all. I’m fine.’

Tess, who had taken on the job of parent when their real mother had left them early on, simply shrugged her shoulders. ‘You can say that to yourself as many times as you like, but you’re lacking something in your life and we all know it. You do too, deep down. And I’m just saying that living every single day without ever taking any chances makes for a pretty empty life.’

‘My life isn’t empty. I have a daughter.’ She glanced around the room until her blue eyes fell on the figure of her ten-year-old, currently attired as a flower girl. Her baby. The reason she got up in the mornings and worked until night. She was a mother, and there was simply no more rewarding job on the planet. ‘I don’t need another failed marriage to my name. We do just fine on our own.’

Rachel reached across to pat her hand, where it lay on the table. ‘Hon, nobody is saying you should go looking for another husband. But maybe it wouldn’t do any harm to find someone to spend some—’ she smiled ‘—quality time with, every now and again.’

Dana blinked at her words. It wasn’t that she didn’t still believe in love or romance or passion. She just believed in them for other people, that was all. The Dana who had wanted those things for herself had long since received too many kicks in the teeth from reality.

‘Are you suggesting I should just go out there and sleep with someone?’ She tilted her head at her sisters. ‘Just for the sake of it?’

There was a murmur of conflicting answers from around the small table. It was Tess who eventually gave the official viewpoint, just as she had in debates of old. ‘A fling might do you good. You need to feel something again. You’ve switched yourself off, and that worries us all. It’s just such a waste.’

Rachel nodded in agreement. ‘It is. Dana, you’re a beautiful, smart, determined, funny woman—but right now you’re not letting yourself be any of those things. You shouldn’t shut yourself away. Try having a little fun time for you. Have an affair, if that’s all you want, but feel again. Feel what it’s like to be a woman.’

Dana ignored the list of her attributes. After all, anything coming from a family member was bound to be biased, right? She opened her mouth to speak, then closed it for a moment to mull over the words.

She didn’t think that she’d shut herself off. Okay, maybe at first, after the divorce, when everything had still smarted. When she’d had to sit down and admit she’d got married for all the wrong reasons. Maybe then she’d taken some time to re-evaluate her life and decided she was better alone for a while.

But, yes, perhaps it had been a long while.

‘You lot aren’t going to produce a queue of supposedly eligible men for me to test out, are you?’ The thought made her skin crawl. The words ‘charity dates’ jumped unbidden into her head.

‘No.’ Lauren smiled at the thought, knowing fine well that her smile probably gave away the fact that it had been discussed at some point. ‘We just think you should be more open to the idea of being Dana—you, not just the working mum—for a night or two here and there. When there’s an opportunity to get lost for a moment, and it feels right, we think you should go with the flow.’

Tess interjected. ‘We’re not saying cruise the bars for men.’

‘No, we’re not saying that.’ Rachel laughed at the very idea. ‘As if you would. Just open yourself to the possibilities again, is all.’

‘Let someone into your life.’

Dana sighed and looked to the balloon-strewn ceiling for intervention of some kind. They meant well. But it just wasn’t in her to be some lust-ruled female who could jump into a short-lived affair. Maybe once upon a time, when she’d been young and wild and free. But that had got her married and pregnant and divorced.

When she looked back, the three familiar, similar faces were smiling encouragingly at her. She sighed as she shook her head. ‘I’ll try being more open to the idea of seeing someone if the opportunity presents itself, but I can’t say that I’m ready to jump into some torrid affair—no matter how long it lasts or where it may take me.’

‘One step at a time is fine.’

‘We can live with that.’

‘We just worry, you know.’

She knew they did. They were all happily settled now. Even their brother Jack had managed to get past his hang-ups and had opened himself to the woman who’d turned out to be his perfect mate. It made a cynic like Dana harbour the tiniest flicker of hope inside that all that happily-ever-after stuff could still exist somewhere.

And probably it did. It just really hadn’t turned out to be for her. She’d had her chance and it hadn’t worked. Now she had to just get on with it and live the life she had. But she was making changes in her career, and working towards a better home for her daughter and herself. She had hopes and dreams for her daughter’s life. She hadn’t managed the wife part, but she could be the kind of mother her own hadn’t managed to be.

Yes, indeed. Dana thought she was doing okay. Just okay, maybe, but that was enough for her. No matter what her sisters might think.

Mind you, that wasn’t to say that it wouldn’t be nice to be made to feel like a woman again for a while. That deep-down sensual woman who was hidden inside every female. Mmm.

Dana unconsciously ran her tongue across her mouth. It was just a shame that the kind of men who could bring that out in a female weren’t hanging around all over the place. Though maybe that was just as well for the sake of survival.

Unconsciously her eyes moved across the room to the tall man who stood beside her brother. Adam, his best man. He was exactly the type she’d have looked at once upon a time. Tall, handsome, charm by the bucket. But she’d married one of those, and look where that had got her.

She sighed. When it came to passionate affairs Dana was in the middle of a huge desert—and it was a long, long way to the next drink of water. No matter what her most basic needs might be.

No, passionate affairs just didn’t land in her lap every day. But if one did? She smiled. Maybe just once wouldn’t be so awful. After all, what harm could it do to feel again?

Six months later

ADAM DONOVAN had the most amazing effect on women.

It was a gift, really, and probably had more to do with the way he looked than anything else. Though he could be charming when he really wanted to.

Dana watched as he managed to charm the pants off yet another customer.

It was truly disgusting.

She shook her head the tiniest amount. What on earth did all those women see in him? She decided to make an inventory of all things good about him. Though that did mean putting to the back of her mind the list she’d already formed of all things bad.

She’d worked with him for months now, and that latter list was getting long…

Okay, so there was his height. That was good. A woman always found it distracting if the man was so short that every conversation was directed at her breasts.

He was fairly broad too, indicating—incorrectly—that he spent a lot of time doing physical exercise to keep in shape. Dana, however, knew better. His idea of physical activity was probably limited to one particular room of the house, and that room wasn’t the kitchen.

Oops. That was from the All Things Bad list, wasn’t it?

He was a fairly good judge of clothes too. All the right clothes for all the right occasions. What he spent on a shirt would keep Dana and her daughter in groceries for a week. On this occasion he was wearing a rather nice green one, which managed to highlight the colour of his eyes. Clever guy.

His face was fit for the pages of a glossy magazine on any newsagent’s stand worldwide, complete with dimples, unbelievably white even teeth, that Dana was convinced in her own mind he had polished regularly, and a smile that could charm Eskimos into buying snow. Which, granted, was a terrific asset when it came to selling houses to people. Especially houses that didn’t exist yet beyond a great big muddy hole in the ground.