Jessie's Expecting

Jessica looked at the floor, which had begun to spin beneath her feet. “Even if I don’t want you?”

“Even if you think you don’t want me. We shared something special that night, Jessica. Rare, fleeting, almost surreal. Don’t you want to know why it happened?”

“I know why it happened,” Jessica shot back at him. “It happened because Maddy called off the wedding, and you stayed. It happened because I felt…I felt sorry for you and came outside to…to comfort you, and we got…got carried away in a moment. It was all one great big mistake.”

“A mistake. I see,” Matt said, sighing. “And when you can say all that while looking at me—well, then I’ll go away. Until then, however, I’m here. For the duration. Here, or wherever you might run to next.”

Marrying Maddy (SR#1469)

Jessie’s Expecting (SR#1475)

Raffling Ryan (SR#1481)

Dear Reader,

As Silhouette’s yearlong anniversary celebration continues, Romance again delivers six unique stories about the poignant journey from courtship to commitment.

Teresa Southwick invites you back to STORKVILLE, USA, where a wealthy playboy has the gossips stumped with his latest transaction: The Acquired Bride…and her triplet kids! New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels contributes the second title in THE CHANDLERS REQUEST… miniseries, Jessie’s Expecting. Judy Christenberry spins off her popular THE CIRCLE K SISTERS with a story involving a blizzard, a roadside motel with one bed left, a gorgeous, honor-bound rancher…and his Snowbound Sweetheart.

New from Donna Clayton is SINGLE DOCTOR DADS! In the premiere story of this wonderful series, a first-time father strikes The Nanny Proposal with a woman whose timely hiring quickly proves less serendipitous and more carefully, lovingly, staged…. Lilian Darcy pens yet another edgy, uplifting story with Raising Baby Jane. And debut author Jackie Braun delivers pure romantic fantasy as a down-on-her-luck waitress receives an intriguing order from the man of her dreams: One Fiancée To Go, Please.

Next month, look for the exciting finales of STORKVILLE, USA and THE CHANDLERS REQUEST… And the wait is over as Carolyn Zane’s BRUBAKER BRIDES make their grand reappearance!

Happy Reading!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor

Jessie’s Expecting

Kasey Michaels

To Ron Hausman,

one of the world’s nicest guys!

KASEY MICHAELS,

the author of more than two dozen books, divides her creative time between writing contemporary romance and Regency novels. Married and the mother of four, Kasey’s writing has garnered the Romance Writers of America’s Golden Medallion Award and the Romantic Times Magazine’s Best Regency Trophy.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Epilogue

Chapter One

W alking the beach at dawn.

A time for lovers still dressed in tuxedo and gown, carrying their shoes as they walked barefoot in the sand. Held hands, danced to their own music, laughed and dreamed and kissed as the sun came up over the horizon.

A time for seniors and their metal detectors, cloth bags tied around their waists to hold the treasures of coins and small pieces of jewelry left behind by tourists on this Ocean City, New Jersey, beach. They’d stop, watch the young lovers, smile in reminiscence, then get back to business. The business of occupying their time, settling for smaller dreams, just happy to see another sunrise.

A time for muscle-shirted men and their large dogs: big, playful dogs with names like Fletcher, or Bruno; fierce-looking but bighearted babies who wore kerchiefs around their necks as they challenged the waves, running at them, barking furiously and then wisely retreating when the waves answered back. All while their owners did a few stretches, struck a few poses, admired the way their “pecs” looked: oiled, shining slightly in the light of the rising sun.

A time for a solitary woman to sit on the sand, her knees drawn up to her chin, and watch the mist rise and the sun come up, just as it came up every morning, even when her own personal world had very definitely gone on hold.

Jessica Chandler was twenty-eight years old, nearly twenty-nine. She was tall, with light brown, almost blond hair, for once not secured in a French twist or otherwise tamed by brush and comb and pins—and propriety. Her hair blew against her face in the breeze, hiding her even, patrician features, her tear-wet blue eyes.

She was a competent businesswoman, the middle child of three grown children, wealthy through both inheritance and in her own right. She was unattached, currently on a leave of absence from the company business she and her older brother, Ryan, ran in Allentown, Pennsylvania, and she had come to the Jersey shore to think and to walk the beach.

She was just one more person on the beach at dawn, watching the gulls without really seeing them, digging bare toes in the still-cool sand, sighing sighs the slight breeze snatched away but could not halt.

One of the muscle types spotted Jessica and deliberately tossed a Frisbee in her direction, so that he could shout out, “No, Buster, don’t chase it. Be careful of the lady,” and then came jogging across the sand to smile down at Jessica, to apologize if his charging dog had frightened her.

The guy was cute, in an overgrown-puppy way. All he needed was a friendly, waving tail and a Frisbee between his too-white teeth. He was tall, with muscles he obviously worked on daily, and had a broad, confident smile. The kind of guy who considered a beautiful woman a required accessory, just like the dog.

Boy, had he ever picked the wrong beach and the wrong girl.

“That’s all right,” Jessica said, barely looking at him, his handsomeness really not registering in her brain; not considering his attention the compliment he’d believed it to be. Then she stood up, brushed sand from her green shorts and walked away. She headed toward the waves without a backward look as the hopeful hunk shrugged and jogged off in the opposite direction. Buster followed her for a few paces, then grabbed the Frisbee between his teeth, turned, tagged off after his master.

Jessica Chandler was alone on this late-July morning, but she didn’t want company, be it male or canine. The very last thing she wanted was company.

Hello, everybody! Bet you didn’t know I was here, did you? But I am. Nobody’s talking about me yet, so I thought I’d introduce myself. I’ve been here for a little while now, feeling pretty good, making myself at home.

That lady you just met? Jessica? That’s my mom.

You still don’t know what’s going on, do you? I do. There’s a real mess going on, that’s what. But don’t worry. Where I come from, there’s no such thing as an unhappy ending. I promise.

Stick around. This should be fun.

The Chandler mansion—the mellow brick building was much too large to call it a house—sat in the western suburbs of Allentown, Pennsylvania, one state and a few hours northwest of Ocean City, New Jersey.

Jessica lived there, along with her brother, Ryan, their grandmother, assorted staff and, until almost two months ago, her baby sister, Maddy.

Now Jessica’s sister was married. Married to Joe O’Malley, the man she’d left outside a Las Vegas wedding chapel nearly two years earlier, a man who had come back nearly on the eve of Maddy’s marriage to Matthew Garvey.

Maddy and Joe had purchased the sprawling house next door to the Chandler mansion. They had just returned from a ridiculously long honeymoon, and they were just as happy as they could be—because the only thing that would make them happier would be if Jessica had been there to welcome them home.

“I don’t get it,” Maddy Chandler O’Malley said, hooking her legs around a kitchen stool as she watched her grandmother spoon butter-brickle ice cream into three bowls.

“I don’t think that’s a requirement, my dear,” Almira Chandler purred, licking the metal scoop as she handed the tub of ice cream to Joe O’Malley and pointed toward the double-door freezer on the opposite side of the room. “I really do adore Mrs. Hadley’s day off. Ice cream for lunch. Could anything be more decadent? At least at my age,” she said, winking one expertly resculpted eyelid—just one example of the several cosmetic surgeries that had Almira Chandler looking twenty or more years younger than nature and the passing of the years had ever intended.

She might be a grandmother, Almira had decided years ago, but that didn’t mean she had to look like one!

Almira had been in charge of the three Chandler children for more than a dozen years, since their parents had died. And she took her responsibilities seriously, when she remembered raising children was supposed to be a serious venture.

Mostly she enjoyed life and enjoyed her grandchildren, believing that they were intelligent beings and were probably smart enough to raise themselves. They just needed her around to point them in the correct directions.

She’d pointed Maddy in Joe’s direction. Oh, goodness, hadn’t she ever! She did not consider her actions to be meddling, however. She considered them to be more in the way of nudging.

Of course, Almira Chandler’s nudges could end up sending the nudgees reeling….

“Nice try, Allie,” Maddy said, giving her grandmother a jaunty salute. “Now, ice cream to one side—and I mean that figuratively only, so pass over my dish, if you please—why has Jessica gone to Ocean City? She never goes until August, when all that fiscal-year stuff is over and she says she can’t look at another figure unless it’s wearing a bathing suit.”

“Besides,” Joe said, leaning down to kiss the top of his wife’s head, “Maddy expected Jessica to be here to hear all about our honeymoon. Isn’t that right, honey?”

Maddy, the baby of the family, with eyes as green as her sister’s were blue, and with hair as black as Jessica’s was light, leaned back against her husband’s strength and stuck her tongue out at him. “You love it when you’re right, don’t you?” she said, then pulled him down for a kiss.

They made a perfect couple: two gorgeous physical specimens who complemented each other in every way. They looked young and in love and happier than might seem humanly possible. Handsome Joe, with his shaggy, sandy hair and cobalt-blue eyes; Maddy, with her wonderfully rounded figure that was such a perfect foil for Joe’s planes and angles.

She’d done well, Almira told herself, not for the first time or even the tenth. But that didn’t mean she couldn’t poke a little fun at the lovestruck pair.

“There goes the appetite,” Almira teased, taking another bite of butter-brickle, closing her eyes as the confection melted on her tongue.

Joe laughed as he disengaged himself from his bride and sat down on the stool beside her, then looked across the bar at the matchmaking woman to whom he owed much of his current happiness. “Ah, you love it and you know it, Allie,” he said, reaching for his own dish of ice cream. “Mostly because you love being right. Otherwise, Maddy and I would still be pretending we didn’t love each other, and Maddy would be married to—”

“No,” Maddy interrupted, shaking her head. “No, I wouldn’t. Remember, darling, Matt was going to call off the wedding even before I told him I was still hopelessly in love with you, just as I was working up my courage to tell him I couldn’t marry him. We never would have gotten to the altar.”

“True enough,” Almira seconded. “And now, since I arranged all this newfound happiness you two seem determined to shove under my nose, I think it’s a good time to remind you that I’ll be old and doddering someday and expect you two to take care of me.”

“A villa in Spain, high in the mountains of Spain. Are there mountains in Spain? Ones with nearly inaccessible roads?” Maddy asked quickly, looking at Joe.

“Is that far enough away from here?” Joe just as quickly responded. “With full-time keepers, of course, to make sure she doesn’t find her way back.”

“And with Mrs. Ballantine installed as head warden, most definitely,” Maddy finished on a giggle, referring to the Chandler housekeeper, a woman Almira swore she detested—when the two weren’t plotting together to run all three of the Chandler grandchildren’s lives, that is. The fact that, so far, they’d been outstandingly successful was probably enough to make Jessica and Ryan more than a little nervous. Because if Almira’s schemes had worked once…well, what was to keep her from trying to improve upon her own perfection?

Not the Chandler grandchildren, that was for certain.

“Not far enough?” Maddy repeated, frowning. “All right. I guess we’ll just have to do it, then. The South Pole it is!”

“You wouldn’t dare,” Almira said, glaring at the two of them, happy children that they were, friends as well as lovers, and all because she, Almira Chandler, had poked her finger square in the center of their prideful lives and given it a less-than-gentle shake. “Well, isn’t it wonderful, then,” she said in satisfaction, “that I don’t ever plan on growing old.”

“Or doddering?” Joe asked, grinning. “You’re really going to have to take back that doddering bit, Allie. Especially when you can still beat Maddy at tennis.”

“Mrs. Ballantine could beat Maddy at tennis, darling. Blindfolded. But all right. Especially not doddering,” Almira said, finishing off her butter-brickle and letting the spoon drop into the bone-china dish with a sharp clink. “Now, if we’re all done sparring, maybe you’ll tell me how the honeymoon really was—and not just a recap of those totally uninformative postcards you sent us for the seven weeks. Let’s see, which was my favorite? Oh, yes. ‘Having a wonderful time. So glad you’re not here.’ Hardly inventive, but I suppose you were otherwise involved and couldn’t strain yourselves enough to be original. Let’s adjourn to the morning room, and you can tell me everything.”

“We’re not going to the morning room, Allie. We’re not taking so much as a single step until you tell us why Jessica is at the New Jersey house,” Maddy said stubbornly. “You’re much too happy she’s there and not here, and I want to know why.”

Almira smiled secretly. “You don’t have to know, darling. And the one who does have to know anything at all already knows, and the information is probably burning a hole in his brain, straight through his forehead, so that he’ll have to tell the other single person who has to know. You two are neither of those two people, but I assume you’ve guessed that by now. There, now that I have you both thoroughly confused, my work here is done. If you don’t want to talk about your honeymoon, I do think Julie could fit me in for a manicure. Toodle-oo, children.”

“But—”

“Give it up, Maddy,” Joe said, taking all three bowls to the sink and running water in them. “She’s obviously up to her old tricks again. Aren’t you, Allie?”

“Me?” Almira exclaimed, pausing on her way out of the kitchen and looking about as honest as a card player with the ace of spades hanging out of her sleeve. “Of course I am, darlings. I’m only surprised you had to ask.”

Matthew Garvey laid the last signed paper down on the conference table, leaned back in his chair and sighed. “Congratulations, Ryan, old friend. By paying off this loan two years early and floating that new floor plan account, you’ve just made the bank’s shareholders very happy. Not to mention making yours truly look pretty damn smart in the bargain.”

Ryan grinned at his friend, although he couldn’t bring himself to quite meet Matt’s eyes. Doing that gave him the damnedest, most unexplainable headache. “So, then, I guess you wouldn’t want me to diversify. You know, not keep all my eggs in your bank’s basket? Divvy up a few of the accounts among the other banks that keep wining and dining me, trying to steal me away from you?”

“Give me their names,” Matt growled halfheartedly. “I’ll call them myself with your regrets.”

Ryan got up from his chair, put his hands flat against either side of his spine, stretched. “Man, one more all-nighter and I’ll feel like I’m back in grad school. Jessie sure did pick a rotten time to go find herself.”

As soon as the words were out of his mouth, Ryan winced, and not because his back muscles put up a stink at being cramped in a chair for the past few hours. He counted to three, feeling that flash of headache again, hoping to be able to get to at least five before Matt picked up on his stupid, revealing statement. What were such things called? Something close to Freudian slips, he was sure.

And it was all Allie’s fault, taking him aside, telling him things he wished he didn’t know and then leaving him to do battle with his conscience, wondering if it would be wrong to tell or the greater wrong to keep silent.

The slip of his tongue sort of settled that for him, he decided, still counting silently.

He only got to four before Matt said, “Find herself? That doesn’t sound like Jessica, Ryan. She’s just about the most complete, controlled person I’ve ever met.”

“Yeah,” Ryan agreed quickly. “Yeah, she sure is. Competent…a workaholic here at the plant. She’s smarter than I am, in case you haven’t noticed. I don’t know what we’d do without her.”

“But she’s gone off to find herself,” Matt said, knowing Ryan wanted to change the subject, but holding on to this one small bone of information with all the tenacity of a bulldog.

Jessica had been avoiding him ever since Maddy’s wedding—ever since Maddy and he had called off their own wedding, that is, and eloped with J. P. O’Malley, newest king of the computer software world.

He’d called. He’d e-mailed—the communication of choice in his set these days, it seemed. He’d stopped over at the house without notice, on the pretext of seeing Ryan, hoping to find her at home.

Nearly two months now, and she had never once let him close to her. If he came to the Chandler offices, she was in conference; if he arrived at the Chandler home, she was on her way out. She wouldn’t acknowledge him; she wouldn’t talk to him.

He hadn’t even seen her since the morning after they’d— Wincing, he tried to rethink the words morning after, but they wouldn’t go away, couldn’t be denied. Just as he couldn’t deny that Jessica was avoiding him.

Hell, as far as he was concerned, Jessica Chandler had walked out of his arms and straight into oblivion.

He stood up, walked around the wide conference table. Both he and his friend were a few inches over six feet. Ryan’s hair was as black as Maddy’s, his eyes the same bright green. And looking as evasive as hers had looked for too many weeks before the now-canceled wedding.

Something was up. Matt knew it. And if the prickle at the back of his neck meant anything, he was smack in the middle of the “why” of the reason behind Jessica’s flight from Allentown. “Where is she, Ryan? Where did she go?”

Ryan turned away, peered out the window overlooking the parking lot of the clothing manufacturing plant that had borne the Chandler name for three generations. Almira had been right. Ryan didn’t know how she’d known, he didn’t know all that she knew—and didn’t want to!—but the woman had been right-on in saying that sooner or later Matt was going to come to him, demand to see Jessica.

And now, on orders from his grandmother, Ryan was supposed to tell him. He was supposed to break his solemn promise to his sister and tell Matthew Garvey that Jessica was hiding out—was there another way to say that?—at the house in Ocean City. He had been further ordered to make her disappearance sound as mysterious as possible, then stand back and watch Matt’s reaction; tell him more if the guy seemed upset.

Okay. Matt had reacted. And upset was probably too mild a word. So how had his grandmother known all this? He hadn’t even asked Allie why he had to make the revelation of his burning secret so dramatic. It was one of those things he was certain he was better off not knowing. But he had his suspicions.

Hence his headache…

“I’d be breaking a confidence, Matt,” he said, stalling for time, trying to analyze the look in his friend’s eyes, trying to tell himself what he saw there was not pain, couldn’t be pain. Real, physical pain.

“You’re not allowed to tell anyone, Ryan?” Matt asked. “Or just me?”

Ryan winced, not really playacting anymore, because this was his friend, and his friend was hurting. “If you ever decide to sell the family bank, you might want to take up law. You cross-examine real well for a banker. You’re right, Matt. I’m not supposed to tell you. She didn’t want me broadcasting her whereabouts to anyone, but you were the only one she mentioned by name.”

“She mentioned me by name.” Matt’s eyes flashed blue fire as he felt his hands clenching into fists at his sides. Tension, strain—they’d been his companions for long weeks, and he was almost afraid he was going to lose it entirely and shake the answers out of Ryan if he wasn’t forthcoming soon. “And you not only kept your word, you didn’t come to me, ask me what the hell was going on?”

“I thought about it,” Ryan confessed, rubbing at the back of his neck. “Then I thought about how you haven’t beaten down the door demanding to see Jessica whether she wanted to see you or not. She might be wondering that, too. I know Allie wanted me to wait until—never mind. Let’s just say I was waiting for the proper moment? God, that’s lame. I’m sorry, buddy.”

Matt let out his breath on a sigh, feeling his anger drain away to be replaced by something just as uncomfortable. Sometimes he wished Jessica wasn’t Ryan’s sister. Ryan was a good friend; the kind of guy other guys confided in, told their troubles to, be they financial or female or anything in between.

But the “troubles” with Jessica weren’t the sort Matt wanted to discuss with Ryan. Not by a long shot.

“We…um…” he began slowly, searching for the right words. “We, um, Jessica and I spoke together the night of…well, the night Maddy and I decided to break off our engagement. After dinner, when I went out back to the gazebo, feeling pretty much like a fifth wheel at the dinner table. Jessica followed me. Trying to comfort me, I suppose.”

“You spoke together? Out back, in the gazebo, in the dark? Just the two of you? You were gone for a couple of hours, if I remember correctly,” Ryan said, nodding.

And then he winced, one of his many suppositions reforming into more of a certainty. “Boy, now that explains it. I see it all now. You spoke together, and eight weeks later my sister picks up and takes off for parts unknown—at least to you—after spending those weeks avoiding you like the plague. Must have been some conversation.”

“Yeah. Yeah, it was,” Matt said, going back over to the papers on the table, gathering them up, stacking them neatly. “So was the talk we had the morning after the first one, right before she told me to go to hell. Since I figure I’ve been there ever since, maybe she’ll think I’ve done enough penance and will talk to me again. Now, are you going to tell me where she is, or am I going to have to tell you things you damn well don’t want to know?”