Everything but the Baby

“Maybe,” Allison said slowly. “But is that so wrong?”

“It’s not wrong at all. It’s just that…I’m not that guy.” Mark’s voice had hardened. “I’m just one more selfish bastard who wants something from you.”

She felt her heart tripping against the palm she held to her chest. “What do you want?”

“To touch you. To make love to you. But that’s all. You need to understand that. The only difference between me and Lincoln Gray is that I’m willing to admit it. And that’s not enough for you, is it? You want more than that.”

She could hardly think clearly, standing here with her dress unzipped and a desire like nothing she’d ever experienced pulsing through every vein. But she had to think clearly. This unnamed emptiness, this hunger to connect with another human being, had already made her do one very stupid thing. Somehow she had to master it.

“Yes,” she said finally, though she knew it meant this sizzling, thrilling interlude was over. “I’m sorry, Mark. I want a whole lot more than that.”

Dear Reader,

Growing up, I believed there was something magical about being Irish. Irish tenors, poets, humor, legends…my father made sure we revered them all. The old joke “If you’re lucky enough to be Irish, you’re lucky enough” was solemn truth in our house.

Even annoying things could be made acceptable, by association. When I complained that I had dark shadows under my eyes, my father smiled and said, “Of course you do. God put in Irish eyes with sooty fingers.” He may have made that line up, but it contented me…though when I reached my teens, it didn’t stop me from buying concealer by the bucket!

I later came to understand that all families cherish their heritage just as much as we did ours. But thanks to my father, I’ll always appreciate the Irish in a special way—and I’ll always feel “lucky enough.”

So when it came time to create a family that could laugh, sing, warm and charm Allison Cabot, the heroine of Everything but the Baby, out of her loneliness, I knew what she needed. Enter the O’Haras—a big, emotional Irish clan who, like ours, chases sorrow away with rousing, off-key renditions of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling.”

With the O’Haras by her side, Allison can finally learn to take risks, to live and love without fear. And that’s the wish I wish for all of you.

I hope you enjoy her story.

Warmly,

Kathleen

Everything but the Baby

Kathleen O’Brien

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Four-time finalist for the Romance Writers of America’s RITA® Award, Kathleen is the author of more than twenty novels for Harlequin Books. After a short career as a television critic and feature writer, Kathleen traded in journalism for fiction—and the chance to be a stay-at-home mother. A native Floridian, she lives with her husband just outside Orlando, only a few miles from their grown children.

CONTENTS

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

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER ONE

AT FIRST, when Allison Cabot realized that her bridegroom wasn’t just late, stuck in Boston’s rush-hour traffic or locked in battle with a recalcitrant tuxedo, it felt like a dream. One of those ridiculous over-the-top nightmares, the kind you recognize as fiction even while you’re sleeping, because nothing that bad ever happens to you in real life.

Oddly, she felt no anger, certainly no pain, though someone shoved a tissue into her hand as if they expected her to dissolve into a puddle of tears. Instead, she felt numb. She floated about an inch above the floor, bathed in the sweet scent of altar roses, watching the drama play out while she waited to wake up.

Maybe, she thought, she had finally absorbed a little of her father’s elegant WASP restraint. Public displays of emotion were unacceptable for the Cabots. Play through, play through, that had been Ripley Cabot’s motto, whether Allison was coping with her mother’s death or a broken toe at soccer practice.

Or getting jilted at the altar.

While she was floating peacefully—the lobotomized bride—someone else sent the two hundred wedding guests home. Probably Bitsy Bohannon, her best friend and wedding planner. Bitsy looked like a golden fairy but had the field instincts of a five-star general.

It was Bitsy who had come back into the dressing room afterward and asked Allison what she wanted to do next.

“Actually,” Allison had said, after considering the matter for a minute, “I’m hungry. I’d been looking forward to that filet mignon at the reception.”

Bitsy’s blond, angel-wing eyebrows had risen slightly, but she didn’t seem to find the comment cold-blooded.

“Me, too,” she’d said. “Let’s feast.”

That had been an hour ago. Since then, they’d sat together at one of the ten blue-silk-draped tables in the Freedom Ballroom of the prestigious Revere Hotel and shared a tender nine-ounce steak, a bowl of creamy herbed asparagus and two bottles of Bollinger Grand Année.

They weren’t drunk, but Allison was definitely feeling less straitlaced than usual. And less peaceful. Anger was starting to bubble to the surface. There might be other emotions, too, deeper down in the mix, but she hoped she could, for once, be as strong as her father would have wanted. A high-strung child, she’d disappointed her dignified father so often: when she cried for days over her dead gerbil; when she asked for a night-light to banish the monsters she imagined hid in her shoes; when their housekeeper resigned and Allie tearfully chased the woman down the street, begging her to come back.

He’d even tried to break Allison of her habit of wishing on stars, a piece of nonsense he believed she’d inherited from her superstitious Irish mother.

Eileen O’Hara Cabot had died when Allison was only three, so if she was was responsible for her daughter’s emotional lapses, it must have been by way of DNA.

Today’s fiasco would have been the ultimate disappointment for him.

Poor Allison, never quite a beauty, now a shade past her prime, falling for such an obvious cad. So foolish. Though her father had been dead only five months and she missed him every minute, she was almost glad he hadn’t lived to see this humiliation.

Of course, that also meant he hadn’t lived to see his grandchildren.

Assuming she ever got around to providing any. After today, that looked more unlikely than ever.

Twisting one of the blue ribbons from the centerpiece around her finger, she surveyed the sumptuous hotel ballroom. Each chair was covered in blue silk, tied at the back with a knot of white roses. Allison could almost catch the sickly sweet smell of petals wilting, fading. She glanced down at her own hand, as if she might be able to see it aging, too.

“You know what?” She looked at Bitsy. “I think I’ve wasted my life.”

Bitsy had been concentrating on making an effigy of Lincoln Gray out of the fruit from the tables’ centerpieces—Bitsy’s answer to any emotional dilemma was to create something. They hadn’t discussed it, but Allison knew it was Lincoln by the white-grape hair, which did look strangely like Lincoln’s shiny blond curls.

Bitsy frowned, a cluster of grapes dangling from her fingers.

“That’s ridiculous, Allie. Wasted your life? I know you’re hurting right now, but—”

“No.” Allison waved her freshly manicured hand with the pink-diamond polish that exactly matched her brand-new silk bra and panties. It was hard to remember how seriously she had taken all these details about four hours ago. She felt as if she’d been punked.

“Not because I’m hurting. I’m not hurting.”

Bitsy nodded, though she didn’t quite meet Allison’s gaze.

“I’m not,” Allison insisted. “I’m…okay. I’m embarrassed, of course. But mostly I’m mad.”

Suddenly, after an hour of numb near-silence, Allison needed to talk. And anger seemed safe. Anger, the one emotion even her father had indulged in.

“Look at this dress! You know what a Vera Wang costs. And four million roses.”

She scowled toward the music platform, where a graceful gold harp stood silently waiting for the show that would never go on. The string quartet would have to be paid, too.

“Heck, I spent a thousand dollars on that stupid ice sculpture alone. I figure every drip of that swan’s beak costs me about a buck-fifty. If Lincoln didn’t want to marry me, couldn’t he have said so before I blew a fortune on the wedding?”

Bitsy laughed and glanced over at the swan, who did appear to be drooling. She seemed about to say something, but then closed her mouth around a cluster of fancy toothpicks, which she was using to hold fruit-Lincoln together.

Allison knew what Bitsy’s unspoken thought was. Lincoln had wanted to marry her, all the way up until last night, when, succumbing to her lawyer’s pressure, Allison had asked him to sign a prenup. He’d signed it without blinking and he’d even kissed her afterward. That was how good he was.

She’d never guessed that he was also signing the death warrant for their marriage.

Bitsy hitched up her sky-blue gown so that she could kneel and adjust the angle of the watermelon she’d propped on one of the chairs. “Still, even though you may have wasted a small fortune…. Why on earth would you say you’ve wasted your life?”

Allison drummed her fingers on the edge of the table. She gave Bitsy a small smile. “Because, although a situation like this calls for a little justifiable homicide, I don’t know a single hit man. I don’t have one recipe for undetectable poison.”

She narrowed her eyes. “I don’t even know a good voodoo curse.”

“Ahh.” Bitsy chuckled, looking relieved. “That’s the spirit.”

Yes, Allison thought, that was the spirit. To hell with “playing through.” Maybe it was the champagne, but she was ready for a supremely unacceptable public display of emotion.

She slid her chair back noisily and stalked toward the tables set up along the south wall, under the revolutionary war mural for which the Revere was famous. The wedding presents were displayed there, two hundred expensive geegaws and doohickeys that someone was going to have to package up and send back.

“Luckily, though,” she said with a smile, “I do happen to have a great set of Wüsthof hollow-edge German-crafted triple-riveted steak knives.” She held one up, admiring how it gleamed under the crystal chandelier. “With four-point-five-inch blades.”

Bitsy frowned. Then, awareness dawning, she gazed at her effigy. “Oh,” she said. “Poor Lincoln.” She arranged the grapes and stood back. “Very well, captain. The prisoner is ready. Fire away.”

Allison took one last good look at the figure propped on the satin chair. “I almost hate to ruin it,” she said. “He’s prettier than Lincoln.”

That wasn’t true, of course. The man she would have married today, if he’d bothered to show up, was blond, blue-eyed, bronzed and…

And that was just the Bs.

But this effigy of Lincoln was bizarre, voluptuous and oddly beautiful. Honeydew head, watermelon body, white-grape hair and blackberry lips. His face was a sickly green and his kumquat eyes were slightly crossed.

Appropriate for a man who was about to get stabbed in the heart.

Allison squinted, her hand on her hip, the knife’s lethal blade carefully pointed out, so that she wouldn’t rip the lace overlay that draped across the tulle skirt of her gown. This sucker was going to fetch a fortune on eBay.

“Okay, I’ve got only six knives, so let’s decide where the bull’s-eye is,” she said. “Right between the kumquats? Or should I split the strawberry heart?”

Bitsy nudged Lincoln’s body so that he sat up straighter. “Let’s say two points for the kumquats. Four points for the strawberry.” She smiled, her blue eyes catlike and evil as her gaze slid to the very bottom of the watermelon. “Ten points for the banana.”

Allison hadn’t noticed the small banana and the sight of its puny yellow curve made her laugh for the first time today. She was still laughing as she tossed the first knife so, unfortunately, it hit the back of the chair, handle first, and clattered to the ground.

She grimaced toward Bitsy.

“It’s that repressed WASP upbringing,” Bitsy said. “Not a shred of killer instinct left.”

“I told you I’d wasted my life,” Allison agreed sadly.

She took more time with the next tosses.

“You are—” the knife grazed a lump of grape hair, then slid to the floor “—a sleazy bastard—” she missed the effigy entirely “—Lincoln Gray.” That one embedded itself deeply in the chair’s gold satin upholstery.

Oh, heck. Repairing that was going to cost a pretty penny. And she only had two knives left.

“Mind if I try?”

Allison looked up, startled to hear a man’s voice in the big, empty room. She hated to admit it, but for a split second she thought it might be Lincoln, come to explain everything, to apologize for scaring her.

The knife itched in her hand.

But in her heart, she knew that her missing fiancé wouldn’t have the courage to face her now. If he ever apologized, it would be by e-mail.

The man in front of her was a complete stranger. He wasn’t Lincoln and he wasn’t the fretful hotel manager, either, arriving to save the rest of his chairs.

But he was definitely Somebody and he knew it, from the topmost wave of his healthy brown hair to the glossy tip of his expensive loafers.

“May I try?” His fingers came an inch closer, tickling the blade of the knife.

She hesitated. Was it really a smart idea to hand a sharp Wüsthof to a total stranger? She glanced at Bitsy, but that was no help, because Bitsy was staring at the man as if he were a big glass of Nectar of Paradise and she had just crossed the Mojave.

The man’s hand closed around hers. Allison held on to the knife. “Who are you?”

He smiled. “I’m someone who would take just as much pleasure from skewering Lincoln Gray as you would.” He nodded toward the pile of fruit on the satin chair. “That is Lincoln, I assume?”

“It’s the closest thing to Lincoln we’ve seen today, anyhow.” She eyed him curiously. He wanted to knife Lincoln, too? What could his quarrel with her fiancé be? Was Lincoln secretly an escaped convict or something?

But this guy didn’t look like a policeman, either.

“Okay.” She let go of the knife. “He’s all yours.”

While the man was gauging his aim, Allison had a few seconds to study him unobserved. He wasn’t as pretty as Lincoln. He wasn’t, in fact, pretty at all. His face had none of Lincoln’s smooth choirboy charm. This man was all angles and power, from his hawk-straight nose—if he’d ever had been in a fight, he’d won it—to his square jaw, which extended just one power millimeter beyond his cheek.

He was broad shouldered and tall, with milk-chocolate eyes, dark-chocolate hair and a caramel tan that said he liked to be outdoors. He reminded her of a comic book she’d read as a child in which the hero had been drawn in bold, black lines and intense shadings of extra ink.

Next to this guy, Lincoln would look about as sexy as Little Lord Fauntleroy.

Suddenly, the stranger flicked his wrist and let the knife fly. It zipped through the air and buried itself with a thunk into Lincoln’s ripe watermelon body, just above the cute raisin belly button. A drizzle of pale pink juice seeped out around the blade.

“Got him!” Bitsy applauded. “Well done!”

He bowed sardonically. “Thanks, but I was actually aiming for the heart. Guess I’d better not quit my day job.”

Allison tilted her head and felt her pearl tiara slip sideways. Though she’d taken off her veil an hour ago, the silly crown was embedded under an inch of teased hair, so she’d left it on.

She reached up to straighten it, aware that she looked ridiculous. A wannabe princess who couldn’t find anyone to play happily-ever-after with. “And what exactly is your day job? There can’t be enough money in hating Lincoln Gray to make it a full-time career.”

“Probably not.” He smiled, and the sharply carved bow of his upper lip softened, hinting that he might have interesting layers beneath the comic-hero facade. “There are too many people who’d be willing to hate Lincoln Gray for free.”

“There are? Who?”

Bitsy, who was rocking the knife blade out of the watermelon, smiled over her shoulder and raised her hand. “Me!”

“Other than my best friends,” Allison said. “Look, maybe you’d better get straight to the point Mr….? I don’t think you told us your name. Why are you here? Did you know this was going to happen?” A horrible thought presented itself. “Are you trying to tell me that Lincoln has done this before?”

“I’m Mark Travers. I’m here because my private detective told me that Lincoln Gray would be here. I did not know this was going to happen. But, yes, he’s done this before. Sort of.”

She felt a little woozy. She put her hand on one of the empty tables and tried to focus on Mark Travers’s face, which seemed to be fading in and out. “Sort of?”

“Yeah. He’s done the disappearing thing. But the last time he vanished, it was after the wedding. One month after, to be exact.”

She sank onto one of the chairs. “Lincoln has been married before?”

“Not has been,” Mark Travers corrected. “Is.”

“Is…”

“Is. Present tense. Is currently, legally married. To my sister.”

CHAPTER TWO

FOUR HOURS LATER, Mark Travers entered the downtown Boston Lullabies with a grim lack of enthusiasm, cursing the chivalrous impulse that had made him agree to any rendezvous poor, jilted Allison Cabot suggested.

He understood completely her need to get out of that fairy-tale wedding dress before she discussed the details of her fiancé’s treachery. It even made sense that she’d wanted to meet here, at the flagship store of her successful string of baby boutiques, because this was obviously where she felt most powerful.

However, Lullabies was every bit the estrogen explosion he’d expected. Hundreds of ornate, overpriced cribs, tinkling mobiles and sickeningly cute booties being stroked moronically by pregnant women. Even the walls frothed with sweetness, as if the floor had thrown off stuffed ducks and bunnies the way a cotton-candy machine throws off pink sugar.

He turned sideways to avoid a woman who was so pregnant she definitely needed a wider aisle and just might, if he bumped her too hard, need an ambulance. Unfortunately, that caused him to knock into a three-foot-high plush lamb that immediately began to make weird whooshing noises. Emits Womblike Sounds, the tag on the lamb’s tail said. Mark dug around for the off button, but apparently the damn thing was motion activated.

Hell. He set his jaw and strode toward the staircase that led to the second-floor loft, where Allison had said her offices were located. The stairs were carpeted in pink frogs; butterflies dangled from the banister rails. The public-relations professional in him admired the imaginative decor, but he’d still rather have met her at the city dump.

He didn’t do babies and he didn’t do women who wanted to do babies.

He saw Allison even before he reached the top. The front wall of her office was all glass, so that she could survey her sugarplum kingdom and monitor her subjects, the sweet-faced salesgirls who hovered around the pregnant women like handmaidens.

She was watching him now as he ascended. She wore a severely tailored suit and her hair no longer floated in an auburn cloud around her shoulders. He couldn’t read her expression—the glass was mottled with reflections of rainbows with happy hands and moons wearing nightcaps. He was struck, though, by how completely still her stance was, rigid and cold, the antithesis of the warm fuzzy chaos below her. She looked like a mannequin that had wandered away from the Armani store across the street.

When he hit the last step, she met him at the door.

“Thank you for coming,” she said. She extended her hand and when he took it he could tell it was stiff, too. He glanced at her left hand and saw that she’d substituted a small ruby ring for the diamonds that should have been there.

“I needed to be at the office,” she went on, clearly just talking to fill the space. “I had a lot of things to catch up on. Preparations for the wedding ate up a lot of my time for the past several weeks.”

Thank goodness the pink frothing had stopped at the door of the office, replaced by calming beige and brown with blue accents. He felt his guts relax.

“No problem.”

She made her way to the chair behind her desk while he took the seat she offered him, its back to the window. He crossed his legs and waited for her to begin the questions she must be burning to ask.

He decided not to mention how absurd her opening statement had been. A lot to catch up on? If Lincoln Gray had shown up today, she would still have been over at the Revere, dancing and eating cake. And then, according to his P.I., she would have spent the next two weeks in Dublin making love and buying extravagant presents for her insatiable new husband.

But why rub it in? Let her save a little face.

“You were going to tell me about your sister.” She put a hand up to her hair, checking the braid that dove straight as an arrow down her back. It was so tight he wondered if it made her temples ache.

“Yes. My sister, Tracy. Well, the story is sad but simple. She’s five years older than I am. Last year, while I was out of the country, she met Lincoln Gray at a local fund-raiser. Apparently he swept her off her feet, because she married him two weeks later, without a prenup. A month after that, he disappeared. So did a lot of her money.”

Her lips parted and her brows tightened. She met his gaze for a few seconds, but as she took in the full implications of his speech, her eyes darkened.

She squared off some papers on her desk. Finally, she looked up, and her eyes were less revealing.

“Look, Mr. Travers. It’s not that I think you’re lying—”

“Call me Mark. After all, we were nearly in-laws.” He smiled. “Or something.”

She clearly didn’t like the joke. But too bad. This whole thing was a classic bedroom farce, and she now had a leading role. So did he. And Tracy. They all just had to get used to it.

“Mark,” she amended politely but without warmth. “I do have to tell you that I find it…difficult to believe that Lincoln—that he would really—”

“I thought you might.” He opened his jacket and pulled a sheaf of legal papers from his breast pocket. “I brought these, to help make it more concrete.”

She took the papers and read them carefully, her lips pursed as if she needed to double-check every word for some kind of trick. She kept her back ramrod straight and he could see under the desk that her knees were locked, her brown pumps lined up, toes and heels touching in military precision.

This tailored look didn’t suit her. She wasn’t the Armani type, however much she might wish she were. Her features were too rounded and girlish, and she needed her clouds of hair to keep from looking like a lost kitten. The brown suit washed out her cheeks and dimmed her green eyes to an uninteresting hazel.