The Baby Came C.O.D.

Cover Page

Excerpt

Dear Reader

Title Page

Dedication

About the Author

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

Copyright

Dear Reader,

The holiday season is a time for family, love…and miracles! We have all this—and more!—for you this month in Silhouette Romance. So in the gift-giving spirit, we offer you these wonderful books by some of the genre’s finest:

A workaholic executive finds a baby in his in-box and enlists the help of the sexy single mom next door in this month’s BUNDLES OF JOY, The Baby Came C.O.D., by RITA Award-winner Marie Ferrarella. Both hero and heroine are twins, and Marie tells their identical siblings’ stories in Desperately Seeking Twin, out this month in our Yours Truly line.

Favorite author Elizabeth August continues our MEN! promotion with Paternal Instincts. This latest installment in her SMYTHESHIRE, MASSACHUSETTS series features an irresistible lone wolf turned doting dad! As a special treat, Carolyn Zane’s sizzling family drama, THE BRUBAKER BRIDES, continues with His Brother’s Intended Bride—the title says it all!

Completing the month are three classic holiday romances. A world-weary hunk becomes The Dad Who Saved Christmas in this magical tale by Karen Rose Smith. Discover The Drifter’s Gift in RITA Award-winning author Lauryn Chandler’s emotional story. Finally, debut author Zena Valentine weaves a tale of transformation—and miracles—in From Humbug to Holiday Bride.

So treat yourself this month—and every month!—to Silhouette Romance!

Happy holidays,

Joan Marlow Golan

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to: Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269 Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Baby Came C.O.D.

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Marcia Book Adirim,

pure joy

in the form of

an editor

MARIE FERRARELLA

lives in Southern California. She describes herself as the tired mother of two overenergetic children and the contented wife of one wonderful man. This RITA Award-winning author is thrilled to be following her dream of writing full-time.

Chapter One

“Mr. Quartermain, a lady just dropped off something she said you would know what to do with better than she does.”

Evan Quartermain barely glanced up from the monthly status report he was reading. It was an unsatisfactorily written monthly status report, and he meant to chew out the person responsible at the earliest opportunity. He had no time for any games initiated by mysterious women uttering coded messages. Time was something that was in increasingly shorter supply these days.

Why Alma thought the message warranted an appearance from her rather than the usual buzz on the intercom was beyond Evan. He waved a hand in vague dismissal as he circled a particularly daunting and most likely unsubstantiated figure on the spreadsheet that was included with the report. He knew for a fact the statement was incorrect. Didn’t people take pride in their work anymore?

“Just leave it on your desk,” he instructed. “I’ll get to it eventually, time permitting.”

Alma had been his secretary for the past four years; Evan had taken her with him as he received each new promotion at what others saw as breathtaking speed. They both knew that time permitted very little for him, other than more work.

She glanced back toward her desk to make sure that what she had left there was secure. “I’m afraid I can’t do that.”

He sighed, annoyed at being disturbed over what was probably nothing. Keeping a neat desk was an obsession of Alma’s. She undoubtedly thought an extra sheet or two left out of place would upset the delicate balance of things. While it was an asset to have such an organized employee, at times he had to admit that it was also a royal pain.

Evan frowned as he circled another figure, pressing progressively harder on his pencil as he went further and further into the report. “Then file it”

“I really can’t do that.”

Her tone had him looking in her direction. His unflappable secretary looked extremely fidgety, and it prodded his curiosity. He never remembered her being difficult.

“And why is that?”

In her own fashion, Alma was very protective of her boss. She went out of her way to spare him any unnecessary annoyances during the course of the day. But there was absolutely no way to shield him from this.

“Because it’s a baby.”

The pages of the report went fanning through his fingers, settling back down on the desk like so many colored leaves. He had to have heard wrong. “You’re joking.”

Her thin shoulderblades straightened so far back, they appeared to be touching. “I never joke, sir.” With that, she turned on her heel and walked out, leaving the door to his inner office standing open.

But she had gotten his full attention with her announcement. Evan was still staring at the doorway, mystified.

“Then I don’t—”

Alma reentered, carrying a baby seat, complete with baby, in her arms.

“—understand…”

Evan’s voice trailed off. He didn’t remember getting up or rounding the desk, but he must have, because he found himself looking down into the baby’s face in utter disbelief. The child was gurgling, and there was a series of interconnecting bubbles going down its chin.

He didn’t need this today. Evan raised incredulous eyes to Alma’s face. “Whose is this?”

Alma’s face was a blank slate as she looked at him. If she had an opinion regarding the matter, it was hers alone and not for sharing.

“Yours, apparently. The note was open.” She pointed at the piece of paper that was pinned to the baby’s shirt.

It was to Evan’s credit that his mouth didn’t drop open. There was a note, an actual note pinned to the baby’s shirt. This was like something out of one of those B movies from the forties that his brother loved so much. Worse than that, it was surreal.

“I don’t have any children,” Evan protested.

And he didn’t intend to have any. Despite the fact that he came from a fairly large family by present-day standards, the thought of having tiny miniatures of himself and some future wife milling about the house held absolutely no appeal for him. Children were a breed apart, and he didn’t begin to flatter himself that he understood anything about that mysterious world. He was a man who knew his strengths and his limitations. Children were part of the latter.

This had to be someone’s poor idea of a practical joke, and he couldn’t begin to describe his annoyance.

“You do now,” Alma said, bringing him back to the present.

The hint of an actual smile on Alma’s face testified to the fact that she had always felt Evan Quartermain, latest, as well as youngest, CEO of Donovan Digital Incorporated, couldn’t possibly be as completely work oriented as he had led everyone to believe.

Evan didn’t care for this breach of loyalty on Alma’s part. She above all people should know that if he said something, it was true. Lies and pretenses had no place in his world.

The baby squealed, and Evan’s eyes darted back to the round, messy face.

“There’s no way,” he whispered.

And then, for the first time in Alma’s recollection, Evan Quartermain faltered.

“I mean, there’s a way, but…” He looked both annoyed and in shock.

Collecting himself, Evan tried to approach the problem logically, as if it were merely another project to be conquered at work and not something with far more devastating consequences. “The woman who brought the baby, what did she look like?”

Like a typical mystery woman, Alma thought. She recited what little there was. “Tall, thin, sunglasses and a scarf.” Pointy shoulders rose and fell. “She was in and out before I could stop her.”

Evan sighed, running his hand through his dark hair. For whatever reason it was happening, it still had to be a mistake, a gross, ridiculously annoying mistake. There was just no possible way he could be responsible for this gurgling bit of humanity.

Her arms were beginning to ache. Since Evan was making no effort to take the child from her, Alma rested the baby seat on his desk.

“Maybe the note might give you a hint,” she suggested. Then, when he didn’t remove the paper from the baby’s shirt, Alma opened the large safety pin and took it off herself. She handed the note to Evan.

Like someone trapped within a bad dream that refused to end no matter how hard he tried to wake himself up, Evan looked down at the note.

It was addressed to him, all right.

Evan, it took me a long time to find you—otherwise, I would have brought your daughter to you sooner. I’ve given this six months, but it’s just not working out for either of us. You can give Rachel a much better life than I can.

He turned the note over, but there was nothing on the back. No signature, no name, no indication whom the note had come from.

“That’s it?” he asked incredulously. He looked at Alma, waiting. There had to be more. “She didn’t say anything?”

Alma shook her head. “Just what I said. She wanted me to give you the baby.”

There had to be something Alma was forgetting, some minute clue that she didn’t realize she had. It was something his brother had told him once. People were always giving away clues about themselves; you just had to listen. Up until this moment, Evan had thought Devin was pontificating from some old Agatha Christie novel, but now he fervently hoped his brother was right.

“Her words,” he prodded, “her exact words, Alma.”

Since it had happened less than five minutes ago, recalling wasn’t a challenge. “‘Tell Mr. Quartermain that he’ll know what to do with this better than I do,’” Alma recited.

From the frozen, horrified expression on his face, Alma figured that the woman had seriously overestimated Evan’s capabilities.

“But I don’t know what to do with a baby,” he protested.

Evan circled his desk slowly, as if searching for some infinitesimal escape route hidden to the naked eye. And then, slowly, he looked up at Alma, making a last-ditch attempt to reroute the problem, at least temporarily.

“Alma, you’re a woman—”

Alma raised her hands. “Stop right there. That fact doesn’t necessarily qualify me for anything more than you.”

He refused to believe that. “But you must have some sort of maternal instincts—”

“No, I don’t. George and I didn’t have kids for a reason.”

There were more bubbles flowing from the baby’s mouth, and she was cooing. Alma reached for a tissue, but rather than wipe the tiny mouth, she handed the tissue to Evan, who took it reluctantly. He dabbed at Rachel’s mouth as if it were a stain on the carpet.

Alma frowned at the baby. Her presence was obviously upsetting her boss, and he had work to do.

“Under the circumstances, Mr. Quartermain,” she said, already edging her way to the door, “I think your best bet here is family services. Would you like me to get them on the line for you?”

It was a rhetorical question, one Alma was certain her boss would jump at. He didn’t disappoint her.

“Yes.”

Evan looked down at the baby. Rachel. He rolled the name over in his mind, but it meant nothing to him, nudged no memories to the surface.

That was because she wasn’t his, he told himself.

Rachel smiled at him, waving her hands excitedly as she made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Probably at his expense. Her eyes were green, a deep, seawater green.

Like his were.

What if…?

“No,” Evan said suddenly, looking up toward Alma.

The secretary stopped in the doorway, looking at him with a mixture of surprise and expectation. But she made no further move to her telephone.

Evan tried to think, although for the first time in his life, it was difficult. If he called a government agency into this, there was no telling how much red tape he was going to find himself in. And if, by some strange whimsy of fate, the child did turn out to be his, it would take him forever before he could reclaim her again.

Besides, there was his reputation to think of. He wanted to keep this as quiet as possible.

“Hold off on that,” he told her.

“I think you’re making a mistake, Mr. Quartermain,” she warned.

“Maybe.”

Evan tried to put together the scattered pieces in his head into something that made sense. He had a major meeting scheduled for three with Donovan, the president of the company, and several representatives from a Japanesebased firm. That gave him almost four hours to try to get his life into some kind of order.

Like an Olympic lifter psyching himself up to hoist a record-breaking weight, Evan drew in a long breath before picking up the baby’s seat The baby screeched and laughed. He looked, he thought, catching his reflection in the window, like a man attempting to carry a bomb without having it go off.

In a way, he supposed that the comparison was not without merit.

“Alma,” he began as he passed her, “I’ll be out of the office for a while.”

Alma moved farther back, giving him all the room he needed and more. “Are you going to be back in time for your meeting?”

He raised an eyebrow as he spared her a look. “Have I ever missed one yet?”

When she pressed her lips, they disappeared altogether. Her eyes never left the baby. Everything in her body language fairly shouted, Better you than me. “No, but you’ve never had one of those dropped off in the office, either.”

“Not a word of this, Alma,” he warned sternly. “To anyone. If there’s even so much as a hint, I’ll know where it came from.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. “Understood. What should I say if someone comes looking for you?” she called after him.

He didn’t have time to come up with a plausible excuse. There was too much else on his mind. “Make something up. As long as it’s not as bizarre as this.”

Her small, dry laugh followed him all the way to the elevator. “I’m not that creative.”

Neither was he, he thought, looking down into the child’s face. Neither was he. Rachel just couldn’t be his.

He refused to believe it. He didn’t want children, but if he were to have a child, it would be conceived in love, not in error. And he’d never been in love, not even once. He’d wanted to, tried to, but the magic that his brother Devin always talked about had never happened for him.

But then, during their teen years, his twin had fallen in and out of love enough for both of them.

And he didn’t have one of these, Evan thought sarcastically as he looked down at the child in his arms.

There was just no way she was his.

* * *

His head in a fog, his thoughts refusing to form any rational, coherent ideas, Evan really wasn’t sure just how he managed to arrive home in one piece. The only thing he did remember clearly was getting behind the wheel and taking off, then stopping abruptly when he realized that he hadn’t strapped the baby seat in properly.

Or at all.

Pulling over to the curb, he fixed that as best he could, fumbling with straps in his blazing red sports car that were never meant to restrain a female small enough to ride in a car seat.

The rest of the drive through the streets of San Francisco was an emotional blur, a rare thing for a man who did not consider himself to be the least bit emotional to begin with. He barely registered the sound of the child wailing beside him.

Over and over again, he kept telling himself that the baby couldn’t possibly be his. The number of times he’d been intimate with a woman in the past—what, year and a half?—could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And the number of women he’d been involved with was even less than that. That narrowed down the possible candidates for motherhood, and none of them had had jet-black hair.

He glanced at Rachel. Most babies had little or no hair. She had a mop of it, and it was black as coal.

Like his. Good heavens, like his. Her sudden appearance had rattled him so much, he’d actually forgotten that he had black hair.

The nervous feeling taking hold jumped up several notches on the scale.

In classic denial, he shut away the obvious. She wasn’t his.

So what was he doing, acting like a high-school kid who’d been caught trying to blow up the chem lab and was now looking for a way to avoid being expelled? He was a respected member of the business world. This wasn’t a matter to be handled by an established bachelor—this was for people who knew what they were doing. Who were accustomed to dealing with abandoned babies.

As he stopped at the red light, Evan entertained the thought of pulling over to the curb and calling directory assistance for the location of the nearest family services office. That would certainly take the matter out of his hands.

Or would it?

There would be questions to answer, questions he didn’t have the answers to. And he hated looking like a fool. He’d done enough of that when he was growing up.

And what if word about this got out somehow? The corporation he’d worked his way up in was on the cutting edge of technology, but it was comprised of people whose personal ethics were as old-fashioned as his. There was a new wave of strict morality overtaking the bastions of the corporate world, one that, up until this moment, he had fully appreciated.

It wouldn’t look good for him if this was brought to anyone’s attention. The members of the board prided themselves on their company’s down-to-earth, homespun image, as did Adam Donovan, who had taken a liking to him and a personal interest in his career.

Nothing more homespun than a baby. Unless it was one people were playing hot potato with, he thought cynically.

And despite everything, there was still that tiny, nagging uncertainty in the back of his mind that refused to be completely erased.

What if…?

Well, “what if” or not, first and foremost he had to find someone to take care of this wailing child. Then he would find out who the mother was.

The latter, he forced himself to acknowledge, was right up Devin’s alley. As a private investigator specializing in missing persons, his brother would know how to go about locating this “mystery woman” who was making these false accusations.

But he didn’t like having to ask Devin for anything. It wasn’t that Devin would refuse him, or even act as if he were being put out—it was just that Evan prided himself on being able to handle anything that came his way, no matter what.

“No matter what” had lusty lungs and was in the process of sucking out every bit of oxygen within the car and turning it into noise. Evan rolled down the window, hoping the street traffic would cut into the wailing and neutralize it.

All his adult life, Evan had gone out of his way to prove how much more responsible he was than Devin. Devin had always been the reckless one, the one who seemed to be without a serious thought. The one his parents had despaired would never amount to anything, not because he wasn’t smart enough, but because he didn’t apply himself.

Evan’s mouth curved in a self-deprecating smile. So why was he the one who was being accused of fathering an unwanted child?

Sometimes, the world made no sense.

The open window didn’t help. Rachel’s cries just rose to the challenge, increasing Evan’s feeling of helplessness. The entrance to his development had never looked so good. Not that there were any ready solutions there, but at least he would be out of the crammed confines of the car. His ears were beginning to ring.

“We’re here, we’re here,” he told Rachel, trying to calm her down.

The wailing continued a minute longer, then, as if intrigued by the sound of his voice, Rachel stopped as abruptly as she had started. He felt like rejoicing at the temporary reprieve. It was funny how so little could suddenly mean so much.

“Opera,” he murmured, “you should definitely consider a career in opera.”

Evan turned into his driveway, not even bothering to use the automatic garage-door opener.

He’d no sooner pulled up his hand brake and turned off the engine than he was laid siege to. Not by the child inside the car, but by the child outside. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw her approaching at ten o’clock. A bouncy four-year-old who was bound and determined, since he’d moved in next door to her and her mother three months ago, to learn everything there was to know about him. He’d already discovered that short, one-word replies did not discourage her. They just led her to ask more questions.

Please, not now, he thought

“Hi!”

Standing on her toes, Elizabeth Jean Walker hooked her fingers on his open window, all ten of them. Since she was forever eating some candy or other, Evan could just envision what her sticky prints were doing to the highly polished shine on his car.

“You have a baby!” Libby’s eyes were huge as she looked past him to the wiggling baby in the car seat. “I didn’t know you had a baby!”

“I don’t It’s not mine.” He put his hand on the latch, then looked at Libby expectantly. “Would you mind stepping back? I need to get out of the car.”

Libby danced backward on the points of her toes, her eyes still riveted to the baby. She was pirouetting this week. It went along with her current choice of career—ballerina. Last week, when she had wanted to be a cowhand, she had galloped everywhere she went. “If it’s not yours, did you steal it?” There was breathless excitement in each word.