Laura Abbot - You're My Baby

Dear Reader,

I’m very excited about this book, which revisits Class Act’s Keystone School. When I finished Class Act (Harlequin Superromance #803) I hated to walk away and leave Pam Carver, the attractive head of the English department, without her own happily-ever-after romance.

Bless her heart, she’d been looking in all the wrong places. Sometimes, you know, love is right under our noses, and if we’re very, very lucky, we get to marry our best friends. So it is for Pam.

And so it was for me. Larry was my CPA, my fellow church member and my sounding board at a difficult time in my life. In short, he was my friend. I can pinpoint the exact moment in our relationship when I looked at him and something went “zap.” My “friend” had morphed into something more—much more. And nothing was ever the same. Only better!

Like Grant Gilbert, the hero of this story, Larry welcomed my family without reservations—including my three children. I don’t want to spoil the ending of the book for you, but Andy, Grant’s teenage son, has truths to tell about the meaning of family—truths Larry and I learned through living them.

With best wishes,

Laura Abbot

P.S. Readers’ comments are important to me. Write to me at P.O. Box 2105, Eureka Springs, AR 72632 or e-mail me at LauraAbbot@msn.com. And don’t forget to check out these Web sites: www.eHarlequin.com and www.superauthors.com.

A Kansas City native, Laura graduated from Kansas State University with a bachelor’s degree in English literature, later studying at the graduate level at the University of Central Oklahoma. She spent twenty-five years as a high school English teacher in Kansas and Oklahoma, finishing her career as the advanced placement senior English teacher and dean of Faculty at an independent college preparatory school in Oklahoma City. Along the way, she and husband Larry reared five children—her two daughters and one son, his daughter, and his orphaned nephew. In the mid-seventies, Larry and Laura discovered Beaver Lake in northwest Arkansas and began working on a plan to move there permanently. Their dream was realized in 1992 when Laura took early retirement and the couple built a home overlooking the lake near Eureka Springs, Arkansas. It was then that Laura began pursuing her own dream—nurtured since grade school—of writing fiction. She sold her first novel to Harlequin Superromance ®in 1994 and has been happily writing for the line ever since. Between entertaining the couple’s children and thirteen grandchildren, curling up in the hammock with a good book, and spinning stories that always end happily, Laura says life doesn’t get any better.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

With respect, affection and appreciation,

this book is dedicated to my editor, Laura Shin,

whose discerning eye, steady editorial hand

and understanding heart have challenged me to

reach beyond my self-imposed limitations.

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

YOU THOUGHT you were so careful? So smart? That things like this only happen to other people?

Pam Carver slumped against the bathroom counter. With effort, she swallowed an onslaught of nausea, then studied the white-faced, big-eyed image staring back at her from the mirror. A stranger.

She could maybe have found comfort in the familiar reflection of a thirty-plus, rosy-skinned redhead, with hazel-green eyes and laugh lines. She knew that woman. Good old Ms. Carver, popular spinster English teacher. Spinster. She’d grown to hate the prudish, spitlike quality of the word. It sounded like a woman who didn’t want a man and had never known one. Certainly not in the Biblical sense.

A ragged snort escaped the stranger’s mouth. Pam leaned closer, mocking the shocked reflection in the glass. “Well, think again, sweetie. Condoms aren’t foolproof.” Her voice, unnaturally loud, reverberated off the ceramic-tile walls. “I wonder, is ‘pregnant spinster’ an oxymoron?”

A fat tear oozed out of the left eye of the figure in the mirror. Pam swiveled, grabbing the cardboard remnants of the EPT kit, and in slow motion sank onto the plush bath mat.

A baby. Oh, God, a baby. Just when she’d about given up hope of ever being a mother. This was not at all the way it was supposed to happen. She was supposed to be married to a man who adored her, who wanted children as much as she did, who would cherish this new life growing within her.

But that could never be. Not with Steven. Nor, in fairness, could she blame him. From the beginning, he’d been totally honest with her, and they’d both agreed there could be no follow-up to their summer together. She had accepted her responsibility in the matter, just as he had. He was a fine man. He would’ve been a fine father. A happily-ever-after love. In another time. Another place.

Yet every nerve in her body urged her to pick up the phone. To tell him. But that was not an option. All he had ever asked of her was that she respect his situation.

No, she couldn’t betray his trust. His right to know about her pregnancy was far outweighed by the devastation the truth would cause.

Even if it meant her child would be fatherless.

Even if that reality left her heart in tatters.

Fumbling in the pocket of her robe, she located a crumpled tissue, wiped her nose, sniffled a few times, then shakily got to her feet.

Now the woman in the mirror cradled her abdomen, the regret and fear in her face turning to resolve. Child support wasn’t the issue. She was capable of taking care of the baby, and she would. “I didn’t mean for it to be this way, my sweet little one. I’m all you’ve got. And that’ll have to do. Somehow.”

Pam splashed cold water on her burning cheeks. Right now, she had no idea how she would manage, but there was no question of choices. She was keeping this child. However, she couldn’t continue teaching. The parents and administrators at the private school where she taught would hardly consider an unwed mother an appropriate role model.

She wiped her face, then wandered into her bedroom, where she flopped on the bed, a forearm shielding her eyes. School was starting in less than two weeks. Was there a way she could carry on, at least for a while? Before anyone knew? She needed the time to rearrange her life. How long did it take before you could no longer conceal a pregnancy? At that point, she would resign. She had no intention of embarrassing herself or the school by forcing the issue of her employment and possibly getting involved in a discrimination suit. But what about her health insurance if she quit?

She felt a slight bounce and, looking up, welcomed Viola, her velvet-gray cat, who studied her with knowing green eyes. “Am I in a fix or what, Vee?” As if intuiting her anxiety, the cat stretched, then settled in the crook of Pam’s arm, her steady purr a calming influence. Drawing a ragged breath, Pam stroked Viola, willing away panic. The problems, which at first had seemed insurmountable, could surely be handled. One by one.

Lulled by Viola’s reassuring presence, Pam concentrated on the child within her. Wonderingly she caressed the flat of her stomach, imagining the microscopic being growing and developing there even now. Boy or girl? Would the baby have her red curls? Or Steven’s black hair? So many questions. So many surprises to come.

And then she felt it—the smile softening her mouth, relaxing her features. And with it, a humbling rush of gratitude.

A baby. My baby.

FORTY-NINE, FIFTY. Grant Gilbert replaced the weights in the rack and, using the tail of his T-shirt, wiped the sheen of perspiration from his face. At least he was in the school’s air-conditioned weight room, not on the football field with the kids, broiling under the Texas sun, enduring the afternoon segment of their two-a-day preseason practices. At times like this, it paid to be the basketball coach.

This year, though, he had bigger problems than a winning season. No amount of sit-ups, curls or leg work had driven away the worry settling in his gut. His ex-wife Shelley demanded an answer, and to do the best by his son, Andy, Grant had to find a solution. Immediately.

In the coaches’ locker room, he undressed, then stepped into the shower. Steamy water eased tension in his shoulders he knew wouldn’t disappear until he figured out what he was going to do.

Although he and Shelley had been divorced for thirteen years, she still manipulated him and Andy to suit her own selfish needs. This latest caper was no exception. Already divorced from husbands two and three, she was currently in hot pursuit of number four, a wealthy businessman—read “Sugar Daddy,” Grant thought bitterly—who, she had just learned, was spending the upcoming year on assignment in the United Arab Emirates. Of course, didn’t Grant understand, she had to go along. And, “of course,” it would be impractical to take Andy.

Damn right!

Emerging from the shower and toweling down, he couldn’t rub away the memory of her patronizing voice. “He’s fifteen. The ideal time to go to boarding school where he can begin making those all-important contacts. I’ve found the perfect place in New England. I suppose maybe he could come visit you out there in Texas for vacations.”

For vacations? After intense, sometimes acrimonious negotiations, he’d finally convinced her that maybe, just maybe, it made better sense for Andy to come live with him while she was gone. But “sense” wasn’t a concept customarily part of Shelley’s modus operandi.

Heck, it had made “sense” for him to be involved all along with Andy. But Shelley was the master of excuses and evasions, moving whenever she had a new love interest, shifting Andy from school to school. Though she talked a good game about “roots,” Shelley interpreted that to mean Andy should rarely have to make further moves simply to visit his father. With few exceptions, whatever contact they had resulted from Grant’s traveling to Florida. During the school year, that was difficult, and even summers were restricted by coaching summer leagues, running basketball camps and taking college courses.

He’d been nuts not to appeal the custody arrangement. But who could’ve foreseen how difficult Shelley would be? There was a time early in their marriage when she’d seemed sweet, gentle. Even accommodating. But that was before she fixed her sights on what she chose to call “more promising opportunities.”

Disgusted, he threw the towel into the laundry bin, then sauntered to his locker. Dressing slowly, he tried to analyze why being separated from Andy hurt more with every passing year. Obviously part of it was regret for what he’d missed. Firsts. Fun father-son times. A bonding that had never happened. In fact, he often thought Andy resented him, and Grant suspected Shelley preferred it that way.

Now, after weeks of wrangling, she was handing him a golden opportunity. He could have Andy for one year. At least this was a stage on the growth and development charts he ought to know something about. His son would live with him here in Fort Worth, attend Keystone School, maybe even try out for the basketball team.

If.

Grant buttoned his shirt, feeling in his pocket the weight of the letter that had arrived today. He grimaced, recalling the dispassionate legalese. Count on Shelley to require an attorney instead of handling communication about Andy like a civilized adult.