Dad By Choice

Dear Diary,

Ellie just walked in on me a few minutes ago and laughed because a woman my age would still be writing in a diary like a teenager. But I must admit there are times when I do feel like a teenager, with things around me whirling out of control. So much to do, so much to keep track of. Especially now that William is gone. Three years and I still miss him.

Despite the ups and downs, the demands on my time, it’s been such a wonderful life so far. William was so good to me, helping me turn this dream of mine into a reality. It’s hard to believe that Maitland Maternity is almost twenty-five years old now, but I’m just about to hold a press conference to announce the gala anniversary party. Pretty good for a poor girl who was once lost and pregnant herself. R.J. just knocked on my door, so I’d better end here. It’s “show time”!

Megan

Dear Reader,

There’s never a dull moment at Maitland Maternity! This unique and now world-renowned clinic was founded twenty-five years ago by Megan Maitland, widow of William Maitland, of the prominent Austin, Texas, Maitlands. Megan is also matriarch of an impressive family of seven children, many of whom are active participants in the everyday miracles that bring children into the world.

As our series begins, the family is stunned by the unexpected arrival of an unidentified baby at the clinic—unidentified, except for the claim that the child is a Maitland. Who are the parents of this child? Is the claim legitimate? Will the media’s tenacious grip on this news damage the clinic’s reputation? Suddenly, rumors and counterclaims abound. Women claiming to be the child’s mother materialize out of the woodwork! How will Megan get at the truth? And how will the media circus affect the lives and loves of the Maitland children—Abby, the head of gynecology, Ellie, the hospital administrator, her twin sister, Beth, who runs the day care center, Mitchell, the fertility specialist, R.J., the vice president of operations—even Anna, who has nothing to do with the clinic, and Jake, the black sheep of the family?

Please join us each month over the next year as the mystery of the Maitland baby unravels, bit by enticing bit, and book by captivating book!

Marsha Zinberg

Senior Editor and Editorial Co-ordinator, Special Projects

Dad by Choice

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Prolific romance author Marie Ferrarella claims, “I was born writing, which must have made the delivery especially difficult for my mother!” Born in West Germany of Polish parents, she came to America when she was four years of age. For an entire year, Marie and her family explored the eastern half of the country before finally settling in New York. It was there, at the age of fourteen, that she met the man she would marry, her first true love, Charles Ferrarella.

During her days at Queens College, acting started to lose its glamour as Marie spent more and more time writing. After receiving her English degree, specializing in Shakespearean comedy, Marie and her family moved to Southern California, where she still resides today. After an interminable seven weeks apart, Charles decided he couldn’t live without her, and came out to California to marry his childhood sweetheart. Marie, who has written over one hundred novels, has one goal: to entertain, to make people laugh and feel good. “That, and a really good romantic evening with my husband.” She keeps her fingers crossed that her many fans enjoy reading her books as much as she enjoys writing them.

To Leslie Wainger, my patron saint of all good things.

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

PROLOGUE

THE SOUND OF HER OWN heavy breathing filled her head. Her heart was racing so hard, it felt as if it were on the verge of vibrating out of her chest.

At the end of the alley she stopped running.

As her breathing steadied, she felt a satisfied smile begin to form on her lips, twisting them upward, until anyone seeing her would have ventured to say she looked positively jubilant.

And downright wicked.

But there was no one to see her. Luck had been with her when her patience and her temper had both snapped.

Luck, so much a part of the world she had originally come from, had not been more than a fleeting visitor. Nice to know it was on her side for a change.

A sense of triumph began to take hold. There’d been no one to witness what she had done to claim what was so rightfully hers.

Not hers by any standards passed down through the courts with its legal mumbo jumbo, but that didn’t really matter. It was hers nonetheless. She deserved it. Had earned it. Earned it through all those months of careful planning and plotting. Of empty smiles and emptier promises, of befriending people she secretly hated. And now, finally, it was almost hers.

So close, so close.

Sucking in a huge gulp of air to banish the last of the tiny white pinpricks of light dancing before her eyes, Janelle Maitland Jones hurried back to where the key to her future had been left unprotected on the steps of Maitland Maternity Clinic.

Her smile deepened, but never reached her eyes. Maitland Maternity. How fitting. How damn, ironically fitting.

She almost laughed out loud.

Suddenly, the sound of voices began to mix with the faint buzzing in her head. Raised voices, laced with excitement, all talking at once. Janelle glanced over her shoulder down the alley.

Had someone seen her drag that insufferable bitch’s body back there, after all? Had they seen what she’d done?

But the voices weren’t coming from the alley. They were coming from the direction of the clinic.

Janelle froze in her tracks, horror spilling over her like black tar, smothering her smugness.

Reporters and camera crews had materialized from nowhere, swarming around the back entrance to the clinic. Blocking her view. Blocking off more than her path.

Biting off a vicious curse, she faded into a doorway at the edge of the alley as frustration threatened to overpower her. Caught halfway between heaven and hell, she was completely cut off from her triumph.

Cut off from the money.

So far, so far…

CHAPTER ONE

DR. ABBY MAITLAND was doing her best not to look as impatient as she felt.

Just down the hall in Maitland Maternity Clinic, patients sat in her waiting room on tasteful, blue-cushioned chairs, chosen to afford optimum comfort to women who were for the most part in an uncomfortable condition. She was booked solid without so much as a ten-minute window of breathing space. She’d come into the clinic running slightly behind and praying that no one would see fit to go into labor this morning.

That was when her mother had waylaid her.

Abby had always had difficulty saying no to her mother, not out of a sense of obligation but one of pure affection. It was hard to say no to a woman who had gone out of her way all her life to make sure that her children were happy and well cared for. Today was no different.

Abby supposed that the request to stand by her mother’s side as Megan Kelly Maitland met the press this morning shouldn’t have come as a surprise. Abby had been born into this a goldfish-bowl existence, where almost every detail of her life, and of her family’s, was periodically dissected for newsworthiness. Especially if the media was having a slow week.

These days, with tabloid journalism running rampant on almost every cable channel and lurid headlines leaping out from every supermarket checkout counter, “newsworthy” was usually synonymous with scandalous.

But not in their case, thank God. The Maitlands, with their penchant for charitable donations and the clinic her mother and late father had cofounded all those years ago, were the press’s vanilla ice cream. Comforting, ever-present—but uneventful. The closest they had to a ribbon of contrasting chocolate was her younger brother, Jake, with his mysterious comings and goings and secret life-style.

Lucky Jake, Abby thought as she followed her mother and two of her siblings to the rear entrance. He wasn’t here to go through this with them.

But wealth, Abby knew, brought certain obligations, and she was far too much her mother’s daughter to turn her back on that. Although there were days when she would have loved to be given the opportunity, just to see what it felt like.

Today, for one.

Abby glanced at her watch for the third time in as many minutes. With a bit of luck, this wouldn’t take too long. She absolutely hated being late.

“I don’t see why you need all of us, Mother,” she heard herself murmuring, despite her good intentions.

Megan Maitland smiled as she gently pushed back a strand of Abby’s dark hair that had fallen wantonly into her eyes. The same lock she had been pushing back ever since Abby had had enough hair on her head to run a brush through. A wave of nostalgia whispered through Megan. Her children had gotten so big, so independent.

Her sharp, dark blue eyes swept over her son R.J. and daughter Ellie standing beside her. R.J. was the oldest of the seven, and Ellie and her twin, Beth, were the youngest, with Abby in the middle. Megan wished all her children could be here today when she made the announcement. It was just a silly little press conference, she knew, and they had all promised to come to the party that was being given in honor of the clinic once the plans were finalized. But she missed her children when they weren’t around. Missed the sound of their laughter, their voices.

She was as proud of them as she could be, but there were times when she longed for the old days, when they were young and she could keep them all within the reach of an embrace.

Megan blinked, silently forbidding a tear to emerge. She was becoming a foolish old woman before her time. What would William say if he could have seen her? He would have teased her out of it, she knew, while secretly agreeing with her.

She missed him most of all.

Her smile, soft and gentle, widened as she answered Abby’s question. “For moral support, darling. I need you for moral support.”

R.J. shrugged. Megan knew this was eating into his precious time as president of Maitland Maternity Clinic, but he would never say no to her. Her love for him had been reciprocated from the day she and William had adopted him and his younger sister Anna after their father had deserted them. Although rightfully they could have called her Aunt Megan, she had never felt anything but maternal love for William’s niece and nephew.

“Don’t see why moral support should have to enter into it, Mother,” R.J. muttered, looking more somber than usual. “We’re just announcing that there’s going to be a party celebrating the clinic’s twenty-fifth anniversary. Not much moral support required for that.”

A tinge of pity stirred within Megan. R.J. didn’t smile nearly enough. In this last year he seemed to have become even more work-oriented than ever.

Ellie, her youngest, whom Megan had appointed hospital administrator despite her tender age of twenty-five, grinned at her serious oldest brother.

“Oh, I don’t know,” she cheerfully disagreed. “I think facing the press requires a great deal of moral support.” She exchanged glances with Abby, a bit of her childhood adoration for her older sister still evident. “I always get the feeling they’re waiting for something juicy to bite into.”

“That’s because they are.” Abby could see the trucks from the various cable channels in and around Austin, Texas, through the window that faced the rear of the clinic. “Though I am surprised that so many of them have turned out. After all, this is just a human-interest story to be buried on page twelve.”

R.J. tucked his tie neatly beneath his vest. A glint of humor crossed his lips. “Page twelve? If I have to stand on the back steps of the clinic and grin at those hyenas, it better get us lines on at least page four.”

Abby patted his arm affectionately. “Don’t grin too hard, R.J. Your face might crack.”

Though Abby had always known that R.J. and Anna were really her cousins, there had never been a dividing line between any of the Maitland children. They had all been raised with the same amount of affection, shouldering the same amount of responsibility and parental expectation. As a sister, Abby loved R.J., and as a doctor she worried about him at times.

He pretended to shrug off her arm. “Let’s get this over with.”

Abby cocked her head. The noise outside the back doors had grown from a dull din to something of a roar. “Is it my imagination, or are the natives getting more restless?”

Ellie frowned. “They do sound louder than usual.” She looked at her older sister with a silent question.

Abby in turn glanced at her mother. Whatever it was, they’d find out soon enough. “Ready?”

The tall, regal woman beside Abby squared her shoulders. Wearing a navy-blue suit with white trim at the collar and cuffs, her soft white hair drawn into a French twist, Megan Maitland looked more like their older sister than a woman in her sixty-second year.

“As I’ll ever be,” Megan acknowledged.

“Then let’s get this show on the road,” Abby declared.

R.J. pushed open the doors before Abby had a chance to do so. But instead of the forward thrust of raised mikes, invasive cameras and intrusive reporters, they found themselves staring at the backs of heads. To a person, the reporters and camera crews were focusing their attention on something off to the side of the clinic’s rear entrance.

Abby glanced at her brother, who seemed as much in the dark as any of them. “What the—?”

She edged forward. Had someone decided to stage a publicity stunt and dramatically go into labor on the clinic’s back steps instead of coming inside? Maitland Maternity, established by her parents so that no woman would be forced to have her child without medical help, had somehow turned into the darling of the rich and famous as well as that of the emotionally and financially needy. And among those celebrities were some who had what Abby could only term as a bizarre sense of humor.

Because it wasn’t in her nature to hang back where either her family or her professional life was concerned, Abby didn’t wait for her brother to take charge. Instead, she pushed her way farther through the tight throng, determined to find out what had so firmly captured the media’s attention.

The next moment, Abby knew. And it was all she could do to keep her mouth from dropping open.

There was a baby on the back steps. A baby, covered with a blanket and lying in a wicker basket. Looking closer, she saw that there was actually a piece of paper pinned to the blanket.

Abby looked around, half expecting someone to come forward and announce that this was all a stunt of some sort. Or a thoughtless prank. It had to be one or the other. This was where women came to have their babies, not leave them.

From where she stood, Megan was unable to see for herself what all the commotion was about. “Abby, what’s going on?”

“It’s a baby.” Abby tossed the words over her shoulder to her mother.

It was as if the sound of her voice were the flag coming down at the starting gate at the Indianapolis 500. The single sentence unleashed a deafening roar as all the reporters hurled their questions toward her at once.

Abby recognized Chelsea Markum, the fast-rising reporter of Tattle Today TV, a new explore-all news program. The woman was obviously determined to reach the top of her profession and stay there. That meant being first whenever humanly possible.

Pushing her microphone into her cameraman’s hand, she elbowed another reporter out of the way and reached for the baby. Slipping her hands within the basket, she triumphantly picked the baby up.

The mewling sound the infant made was all but swallowed up by the noise surrounding them. But Abby could hear it. It shot straight through to her heart and galvanized her. Her eyes narrowed as she pushed her way closer.

“And there’s a note,” Chelsea declared to the crowd, ripping it from the blanket.

“What’s it say?” someone behind her demanded.

Excitedly, Chelsea read, “‘Dear Megan Maitland. This baby is a Maitland. Please take care of him until I can again.’”

Armed with anger and indignation, Abby physically pushed a cameraman aside to reach the innocent infant, who had been turned into a sideshow attraction.

Without a single word, she took the baby from the reporter and turned away.

Like a hailstorm, questions continued to fly at her from all sides—fast, furious and callous. Abby gave no indication that she heard any of them. All she wanted to do was reach the back doors and walk through them.

Suddenly, R.J. was on one side of her and Ellie on the other, buffering her from the crowd and allowing her to retreat with the baby in her arms. Abby’s stony expression dissolved and she smiled her relief. She saw R.J. hang back a second to pick up the basket. He looked decidedly paler to her than he had when they had walked outside.

He saw it, too, she thought. The ghostly whisper of a scandal had finally found its way to the Maitland door.

Armed with her reclaimed microphone, Chelsea shoved it into R.J.’s face. “Is the baby yours?” she demanded.

Abby bit back the urge to tell the woman what she could do with her question and where she could next put her microphone.

“Whose is it?” The question echoed over and over again from all sides. “Which one of the Maitlands is the father?”

A tall, redheaded man with a trace of mustard on his shirt front pushed a mike at Megan. “C’mon, Mrs. Maitland, we’ve all got a living to make. Which of your sons is responsible for this baby?”

Megan Maitland lifted her chin regally and faced the crowd that had been, only minutes earlier, awaiting her arrival with polite smiles and banal good wishes.

“None of them, to the best of my knowledge.”

Queen Victoria couldn’t have defended the realm better, Abby thought, making eye contact with her mother. But she knew the answer wouldn’t satisfy anyone.

“…Who are you covering for?”

“…Hey, give us a break. We’re not all well-off like you.”

“…You might as well come clean now. It’ll all come out eventually.”

Megan looked sharply in the direction the last question had come from, but she focused on no one, talking to the crowd in general.

“The truth usually does, if we’re lucky,” she agreed. “This press conference is at an end.”

Turning on her heel, Megan waved Abby and Ellie in before her, then followed, leaving R.J. to cover the retreat.

He did, then ushered the women into his office quickly. Caught off guard, his secretary looked startled as they entered. She raised a quizzical eyebrow at Abby before turning toward R.J.

“Don’t let anyone in, Dana,” he ordered. Dana began to open her mouth. “And I mean anyone.” With that, he closed the door to his inner office. Only then did he turn to the others. Avoiding the infant, he looked directly at his mother. “Is this someone’s idea of a joke?”

There was sweat on his brow, Abby realized. Her glance went from the baby to R.J. But the baby was hardly more than an infant, perhaps a month or so old, and no outstanding feature seemed to link them.

Nothing but the slight nervousness her brother was attempting to hide.

Abby dismissed the thought, annoyed with herself that she’d allowed the media circus outside to get to her and dignify the unthinkable with even a silent question. The baby couldn’t be his. He would have admitted it long before now, if it were. R.J. was far too upstanding to shirk his responsibilities. That was one of the reasons he was so perfect to head up the clinic.

But he was human, for all that, a small voice whispered in her head, and humans had weaknesses.

There had to be another explanation. Besides, he wasn’t the only brother she had, she reminded herself. R.J.’s pale color was probably due to nothing more than the shock of a scandal finally touching the family.

“A dribble glass is a joke,” Megan replied quietly, struggling to make sense of the situation. The infant suddenly voiced his displeasure, and her eyes, as well as her heart, were drawn to him. “A baby isn’t a joke.”

Megan experienced the maternal pull she always felt at the sight of a baby. Forgetting for a moment the note, the accusations and the implications that went along with them, she took the infant from her daughter.

A soft warmth pervaded her chest, then flooded through her. She smiled down at the small, scrunched-up face. “Hello, little stranger. Where’s your mommy?”

Holding the child, feeling the small life wriggle against her breast took her back. Back to the times she’d given birth. To the first time she’d held each of her children in her arms.

No, she reminded herself, not each. Not the first one. She hadn’t been allowed to hold that baby. Her father had had the stillborn infant whisked away before she could even see him. Or touch him.

He’d done it for her own good, he had said. To save her heartache. To help her to move on. She had been seventeen at the time, and there had been so much more of life ahead of her. He’d been afraid she’d cling to the memory of a dead baby if she’d held it to her.

But there were times, even now, so very many years later, that Megan wished she’d had just that one opportunity to make a bond. And say goodbye.

She realized that her children were looking at her, concern in their eyes. Waiting.

Forcing a smile to her lips, she returned the infant to Abby. “Take him to Ford and have him checked out. I want to be sure that this baby is all right.”

“And then?” Ellie asked.

Megan pressed her lips together as she passed her hand over the tiny head. She looked down at the infant. And noticed a small bracelet encircling the child’s flailing wrist. “And then we’ll see.”

“Ellie’s just uptight because he doesn’t have any insurance cards for her to photocopy.” Abby was being deliberately flippant, hoping to distract her mother.

Ellie caught on quickly. “Careful, before I photocopy you,” she countered.

Though he kept to himself a good deal, this time R.J. was on the same wavelength as his sisters. “You can’t photocopy something that doesn’t leave a shadow,” he interjected.

Megan knew why they were doing this, why they were bantering carelessly at a time when they should have been shoring up their defenses. To distract her. Even though she had fought so many battles on her own, even though she had managed to rise above her poor beginnings and the tragedy that haunted her to become the respected matriarch of a wealthy socially prominent family, her children still felt they had to protect her.