His Pregnant Courthouse Bride

Playing House Or Playing For Keeps?

Motorcycle-riding judge Wyatt Carter runs his life by the book...mostly. But when his old friend Amber Towers calls him in need, he doesn’t hesitate to help her, even though inviting the single and secretly pregnant lawyer to stay in his house has suddenly made him the scandal of Conard County!

Wyatt is the port in Amber’s stormy situation. Even though their friendship sizzles with an underlying attraction, she has to steer clear, because she is pregnant—and he is headed into an important election! But why, this time, does it seem like Wyatt and Amber are willing—no, eager!—to give the town something to talk about?

“Maybe you just need a break from it all. There’s been a lot to deal with.”

“Maybe.”

“No maybe about it,” Wyatt said. “You were awfully clinical when you called me and told me you were in a mess.”

She gazed into his face, reading his concern but more, his kindness. He’d always accepted her just as she was, and he was doing it right now.

He touched her cheek, and a pleasant shiver ran through her. Well, at least she could still feel that. It would have been so easy to just fall into his arms. Because she wanted to know what it would feel like to rest her head on his shoulder. To feel his lips on hers. To feel his skin against hers. To feel him filling the emptiness inside her.

She’d always wanted to know.

* * *

Conard County: The Next Generation

His Pregnant Courthouse Bride

Rachel Lee

www.millsandboon.co.uk

RACHEL LEE was hooked on writing by the age of twelve and practiced her craft as she moved from place to place all over the United States. This New York Times bestselling author now resides in Florida and has the joy of writing full-time.

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Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Title Page

About the Author

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

Extract

Copyright

Prologue

Circuit Judge Wyatt Carter had just finished a pleasant dinner at home, a too-rare occurrence, because he lived alone and was generally too busy to take the time to indulge in cooking. But this was a quiet Sunday evening after a comfortable day of catching up on his reading, and he’d made the effort to cook chicken Alfredo for himself and enjoyed it with a glass of pinot grigio. He felt somewhat self-indulgent, but considering how little time he had for indulgences, he didn’t feel guilty.

When the phone rang, he assumed it was his father. Earl Carter ran the family law practice, although lately it had shrunk because Earl was getting older and didn’t take as many cases. Earl seemed content enough to let the practice contract even though he’d once said it was his legacy to his son. Then Wyatt had become a circuit court judge, and the plans of a father-son practice had melted away.

But it was not his father, much to his surprise. It was a voice out of the past.

“Wyatt?”

He recognized Amber Towers’s voice. They’d kept in touch over the last decade, mostly by email and occasional phone calls. Amber had moved on from law school to a large firm in St. Louis, then recently to a much bigger firm in Chicago, headed for the heights. Wyatt, who had graduated two years ahead of her, had joined the military and spent three years in the judge advocate general’s office. Then he’d come back to out-of-the-way Conard County to fulfill his father’s dream of a shared practice.

He and Amber had once been very close friends, although nothing more than that, and since then they’d maintained a long-distance friendship, except for dinner or lunch at a bar association conference.

Now he heard her voice with astonishment, since she hadn’t called in ages, and concern popped into his mind. “Amber? What’s wrong?”

“You’re never going to believe it. I’m in a mess. Got an hour or so?”

“Of course.”

His mind dived down the byways of memory, recalling Amber as he had first seen her. She was young for a first-year law student, having gone to college two years early and finishing her bachelor’s degree in three years.

She had, in short, been barely nineteen. He’d been twenty-seven, because he’d taken a couple of years after college to try his hand at other things before going to law school. She’d been very pretty, so pretty that every guy who wasn’t already married—and some who were—chased her. He hadn’t chased. It wasn’t that he hadn’t found her attractive, but facing his tour with the military in exchange for them paying his law school expenses, he felt it was the wrong time to get involved, especially since the direction she wanted to take was far from his path. He’d also felt that given the difference in their ages, it might be close to cradle robbing. Amber had seemed so young to him then.

So they’d become friends over textbooks and in oral arguments. He’d mentored her, having already taken the classes she was in, and she’d challenged him with her sharp mind.

A lovely woman barely emerging from adolescence, with dark hair, a pleasant figure and a face that had been pretty but painfully young. Of one thing he had been sure, though: Amber would rise to the top. He wouldn’t have been surprised if she reached the Supreme Court.

But now she was in trouble?

He poured himself another glass of wine, carried it to his easy chair and prepared to listen.

It didn’t take an hour, either. Amber was indeed in a mess.

Chapter One

“I think this is a bad idea,” Earl Carter told his son, not for the first time in the last month.

“Amber needs a place to get her feet under her, Dad,” Wyatt answered. The two men were sharing a beer at the kitchen table as they had so many times over the years.

“People will talk, a strange woman moving in with you.”

“Dad, it’s the twenty-first century.”

Earl snorted. “Not in a lot of places in this county it isn’t, Wyatt. Dang, you’re a judge! Decorum and all that.”

Wyatt hid a smile behind his beer bottle. Clearly Earl was one of those who hadn’t quite come into the new century. But while he never would have admitted it to his father, he wasn’t so sure about having Amber here, either.

First off, she was a city gal, and Conard City was barely a blip on the map. Secondly, they’d been friends in law school over ten years ago. A bunch of keeping-in-touch emails and an occasional phone call didn’t mean he really knew the woman she had become. Nor could he know how all those years at huge law firms might have changed her.

“Maybe I should move back in,” Earl said. He’d moved out after Wyatt had come back from his years with the judge advocate general’s office, because—as he’d said at the time—he was tired of keeping up the huge old family house, and besides, what woman would want to marry a man who was living with his father?

“I don’t need a chaperone,” Wyatt said now.

“Maybe you need a headshrinker.” Earl leaned back, his comfortable belly stretching his white shirt. He’d come directly from his law office, where he still wore a suit every single day. A Western-cut suit with a bolo tie, to be sure, but still a suit. He often evinced disapproval of his son’s penchant for wearing jeans beneath his judicial robe. Of course, he voiced plenty of disapproval for Wyatt’s motorcycle, too. “Look, son, it hasn’t been that long since you broke it off with Ellie.”

“What does Ellie have to do with it? That was over a year ago, and you know why I broke it off.” Wyatt shifted irritably. “Any woman who expects me to dismiss charges against her cousin is a woman I don’t want in my life.”

“I get it. You were right, not saying you weren’t. But that isn’t the story she put around.”

“So? What does that have to do with now?”

“Ellie’s gonna make trouble, mark my words. Moving a big-city woman in with you?”

“Temporarily, Dad,” Wyatt said with as much patience as he could muster. “It’s nobody’s business.”

“You know better than that. You have an election coming up.”

“Retention only. And if folks around here don’t want me to be the judge anymore, you’ll have a partner in that law practice again.”

Earl sighed. “You never set your sights high enough.”

Wyatt almost laughed. “I remember a time you thought that the practice of Carter and Carter was as high I needed to set my sights.”

“But now you’re a judge! You could become a district judge, maybe even go to the state supreme court.”

Wyatt experienced a jolt of shock. He had never dreamed that his father envisioned that kind of future for him. It had been surprise enough when he’d been nominated to the bench as a circuit judge. Now this comment from a man whose highest ambition had once been to see his son’s name on the shingle beneath his. “What got into you, Dad?”

Earl shrugged and took another swig of beer. “After you were nominated for the bench, I started wondering if I was holding you back.” Then he winked. “Not that I want to see you taking off again. Hard enough when you were at school and in the military.”

Holding the icy bottle in one hand, listening to the autumn wind picking up outside, Wyatt wondered if his dad was serious. He himself cherished no great ambitions that would carry him far away. He’d done that already, seen his share of the world with the JAG, and had decided things were just dandy here at home among people he’d known all his life. If he wanted adventure, that was what vacations were for. As it was, the daily parade of humanity that passed before his bench was entertaining and challenging enough, as was his work with youthful offenders.

“You should be thinking of these things,” Earl said, returning to the whole point of his visit.

“I don’t see a political future for myself, Dad. It’s enough I can get away for a couple of weeks, that I can go hunting for a weekend or two in the fall...”

Earl snorted. “And when was the last time you brought home any meat?”

Wyatt stifled a grin. “Hunting is good for that image you’re worried about. Someone from the city council or county commission asks me every year. I go to the dang lodge, drink with the boys, and I can’t help it if I’m a lousy shot.”

“You weren’t always,” Earl retorted, but a twinkle came to his eyes. Then his expression darkened again. “I know you’re not going to listen to me. When’s that woman arriving?”

“Amber is arriving some time this evening. Hang around and you’ll meet her.”

“And you’re throwing a party for her, too?”

Wyatt smothered a sigh. He knew perfectly well his father wasn’t this dense and that Earl was giving him a hard time. “Not a party, Dad. I’m having a few people over next weekend so she can meet some other women. I’m not around much, and maybe she can find some friends while she’s here.”

“Hmm.” Earl drained the rest of his beer and tossed the bottle in the trash. “I think I’ll head on back to my place. Maybe give Alma a call.”

Alma was his father’s latest interest, a woman in her midfifties with a warm smile and a nicely plump figure. Wyatt often thought that Earl hadn’t moved out of the family house so that his son could date, but rather so Wyatt wouldn’t cramp his father’s style. Wyatt’s mother had been gone for nearly thirty years, but Earl had never remarried. He had, however, enjoyed a series of relationships.

Apparently, he wasn’t worried about appearances for himself. Wyatt just shook his head as his father grabbed his coat and left. Earl was no fool, obviously, but the way he’d been talking tonight? Wyatt wondered what was really behind it.

A short while later he stood at the front window, the large living room behind him, the lights out so he could see. Wind was ripping the last autumn leaves from the trees and sweeping them down the street.

No, Earl was no fool. So maybe he was right that having Amber here was a mistake. The thing was, Wyatt had never been one to turn away someone in need. Far from it. He always had an overwhelming desire to help.

Mistake or no mistake, Amber was going to have a place to stay while she sorted out her life and where she wanted to go from here. Because she was right: she was in a mess.

* * *

Amber Towers pulled into Conard City and wondered if she was about to drop off the map. It wasn’t that the town was clearly small—she’d been in a lot of small towns in her life—but after driving so many miles with nothing on either side of the road except rangeland and mountains, it felt like the ends of the earth.

The streetlamps had come on, casting sharp shadows beyond the pools of light. From inside most of the houses came a golden glow that somehow seemed to beckon, promising warmth, shelter and friendliness.

Just an illusion, she told herself. Her GPS audibly guided her to Front Street and right up to Wyatt’s door. She pulled up against the curb, not wanting to block him in his narrow driveway. Other cars scattered along the street told her that on-street parking wasn’t forbidden here.

Then she sat, her engine running, wondering what exactly she was doing. But she’d been wondering that for a while now. The whole situation stank, starting with her own naive stupidity and ending with her here, at an old friend’s house, unemployed and scared.

Yeah, she’d admitted she was scared. She’d never imagined that her rising boat and bright future could run aground. Certainly not this way. Not when everything had been going so well.

With both hands gripping the steering wheel, she continued to hesitate. Yes, she’d called someone who was totally outside her current circle, looking for objectivity and a true friend. Wyatt had sprung quickly to mind when she’d wanted a sounding board. Even back in law school, all those years ago, he’d been imbued with common sense, with a way of distancing himself that was excellent for a lawyer and something she’d had to learn. He could put feelings aside and see clearly.

So she had asked him to see clearly.

He had. He hadn’t told her what to do, not even indirectly, but he’d managed to draw the situation for her in sharp lines and propose several options for dealing with it.

She had chosen this one, and as soon as she had he’d said, “Well, then, you’ll need a place to stay while you make up your mind about what you want to do. I’ve got plenty of room.”

That was Wyatt. Always ready to help, a quality she had always admired in him, a quality she’d seen him display repeatedly during that year they’d been in law school at the same time. She’d accepted, but now she wondered if she was taking advantage of him. Even as she had qualms, she knew why Wyatt had been the only person she had told about her situation. She could count on him. Always. Other friends in her life had been nowhere near as steadfast.

It remained, however, this was her problem, her mess, and moving in on him and his life, even by invitation, had probably been a selfish thing to do.

Finally she quit arguing with herself and switched off her ignition. If she felt she was disrupting his life, that she was in the way somehow, she could leave tomorrow or the next day. After all, she was traveling light, most of her belongings packed away in storage for some better future day.

At last she climbed out of the car. The wind felt a little like Chicago, although considerably drier. It nipped through her jacket and gray slacks like a familiar bite. Not that she’d had that long to get used to it.

She watched the leaves blowing down the street and wondered if her life were blowing away with them. Big mistake, big consequences, and in an instant everything was different. She’d been a fool. Maybe that was the thing hardest to forgive in herself.

The porch light flipped on. Wyatt had seen her. The house itself was mostly dark, but he must have caught sight of her from somewhere. A fan window over the front door spilled warm light, and stained-glass insets on the front door glowed with color. His home. Inviting her.

The front door opened. She recognized his figure immediately, tall and straight with broad shoulders and narrow hips.

“Amber?”

“Coming,” she answered promptly, settling her purse over her shoulder. Her bags could wait. For later, for never—the next few hours would tell.

She strode up the walk, climbed three steps, crossed the wide covered porch and walked straight into his waiting arms.

She hadn’t expected this hug, but it felt so good she simply accepted it and fought down unwanted tears of relief. He’d never hugged her like this before, warm and tight, and reality proved to be far better than her youthful imaginings. She wished she could stay there forever. All too soon, he let her go.

“Come inside,” he said kindly. “It’s getting cold out here.”

The house was large, and the foyer bigger than she expected, designed in a very different age. A dark wooden staircase led to the upstairs, dark wood wainscoting lined the walls beneath walls painted Wedgwood blue and the floor itself was highly polished wood decorated with a few large oriental rugs.

But she was more interested in Wyatt himself. Time had changed him some. His face had sharper lines and seemed squarer than she remembered from four years ago at that convention. She thought she saw flecks of silver in his nearly black hair. Age had filled him out a bit, but in all the right places. He wore a dark gray sweater and jeans and was walking around in his stocking feet.

He smiled. “Come get comfortable,” he suggested, his dark eyes friendly. “You must be tired after all that driving.”

He helped her out of her jacket and hung it and her purse on the wooden coat tree beside the door. Glancing around again, she felt as if she’d wandered into a museum.

“Somehow,” she said, “I didn’t imagine you living in a place like this.”

“It’s been in the family for nearly a hundred years. A white elephant, but one I can’t let go of. Or should I say can’t get rid of.”

She laughed, feeling some of her tension ease. “I need to move around, if that’s okay. I haven’t been out from behind the wheel in five hours.”

“Pushed it, huh?”

“Very definitely.”

“Well, feel free to wander. Something to drink? Coffee, tea, cocoa or stronger?”

Stronger was out of the question now, although she would have loved a glass of wine. “Cocoa sounds great. Can I follow you around?”

“Be my guest.”

How awkward, she thought. For both of them. All those years between, and a bunch of emails, a few phone calls and a couple of meetings didn’t make up for it. And for all she’d recently bared her soul to him on the phone, being here still felt...like she didn’t belong?

The kitchen had been modernized, a shock after the foyer. The appliances were all new, stainless steel, and there was even a dishwasher. What she guessed were the original wood cabinets had glass-paned doors outlined in fresh white. Countertops had been covered in light gray granite that matched a tile floor.

“This is beautiful,” she said, taking it in. “Big.” Big enough for a nice-size island and a matching table.

“I have a secret chef somewhere inside,” Wyatt replied lightly. “He rarely gets the chance to come out and play, though. Too busy.”

“I love to cook, too, but I hear you. Ninety-hour weeks and I usually wind up at some restaurant.”

“Same here. Say, did anyone in law school ever warn you this profession wouldn’t leave time for a life?”

She had to laugh because it was so true. “Powder room?”

“Under the staircase in the foyer. Can’t miss it.”

She walked back into that amazing area and found the half bath without any problem. It, too, had been modernized with pleasant wallpaper and fixtures of recent vintage. She paused in front of the mirror, however, and stared at her reflection, realizing she appeared gaunt.

God. This had taken a lot out of her, maybe more than she had realized. She finger combed her short dark hair and tucked the bob behind her ears, but of course that didn’t hide the circles under her eyes, and she must have lost a few pounds. Desperate to look less like a corpse, she pinched her cheeks to bring some color into them. This couldn’t be good for the child she carried.

It was not the first time she’d thought about that, but mostly she had skimmed over it. Now she faced it, and felt her knees weakening. It was real, all of it was real, and the cloak of numbness she’d been wearing much of the time since everything had blown up simply vanished.

No longer an intellectual exercise, no longer a problem of humiliation, no longer a situation to be solved. It was her and the child growing inside her and nobody else. The reality was stark, the road ahead invisible.

A mess? It was more than a mess. She’d exploded her entire life into little pieces.

Chapter Two

Amber had headed to bed right after the cocoa. Wyatt had brought her suitcases in and showed her to the best guest room, then returned to his work before going to bed himself.

Last night had been uncomfortable, he thought as he made coffee in the morning and scrambled some eggs. They hadn’t talked at all, except superficially and briefly about her trip, about the room that was to be hers. Strangers. It felt like two strangers. He hadn’t really anticipated that. In his mind their friendship had remained as fresh as yesterday. Emails and other contacts didn’t quite bridge the years. Nor did it help his sense of awkwardness to discover that he still found her every bit as attractive as he ever had.

But he was worried about her, too. The stress of the past weeks had clearly worked on her. He’d expected her to look a bit older than she had when he’d run into her at that conference four years ago, but not this pinched and drained. Worn. Her situation was awful, so maybe he shouldn’t have been surprised.

He paused, looking out the window over the sink, noting that the wind was still blowing and leaves were still flying. By now, he thought with mild amusement, all the leaves in town should have been gone. But as he watched some of them eddy between the houses, he guessed they would hang around to be raked.

He heard steps behind him and turned to greet Amber. She looked a bit better this morning and was already dressed as if she were going to work in a navy blue pantsuit and white blouse. A bit much for hanging around the house.

“Well, good morning,” he said with a smile.