A Baby For Mommy

“If I’m The Mother Of The Girls, I Don’t Remember A Husband.” Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Dedication Prologue Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Copyright

“If I’m The Mother Of The Girls, I Don’t Remember A Husband.”

Micah groaned. A flare of attraction passed between them, and he didn’t want any complications with a married woman. So out here in the wild, he would assume he had Raffaela Granillo—married mother of two.

But when he saw tendrils of auburn hair had escaped her braid, he couldn’t stop himself from reaching out and tucking them behind her ear.

Micah’s warm touch quickly brushed her skin, and she looked at him. His dark eyes studied her, and beneath his gaze, she felt her pulse jump. What was there about him that was so disturbing? He was doing nothing more than looking at her. For a moment she thought he was going to lean down and kiss her. And, heaven help her, she wanted him to.

Upset, she struggled to conjure up memories of a home...of a husband....

Dear Reader,

I know you’ve all been anxiously awaiting the next book from Mary Lynn Baxter—so wait no more. Here it is, the MAN OF THE MONTH, Tight-Fittin’ Jeans. Mary Lynn’s books are known for their sexy heroes and sizzling sensuality...and this sure has both! Read and enjoy.

Every little girl dreams of marrying a handsome prince, but most women get to kiss a lot of toads before they find him. Read how three handsome princes find their very own princesses in Leanne Banks’s delightful new miniseries HOW TO CATCH A PRINCESS. The fun begins this month with The Five-Minute Bride.

The other books this month are all so wonderful...you won’t want to miss any of them! If you like humor, don’t miss Maureen Child’s Have Bride, Need Groom. For blazing drama, there’s Sara Orwig’s A Baby for Mommy. Susan Crosby’s Wedding Fever provides a touch of dashing suspense. And Judith McWilliams’s Practice Husband is warmly emotional.

There is something for everyone here at Desire! I hope you enjoy each and every one of these love stories.

Senior Editor

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

US.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Eric, Ont. L2A 5X3

A Baby For Mommy

Sara Orwig

SARA ORWIG

lives with her husband and children in Oklahoma. She has a patient husband who will take her on research trips anywhere from big cities to old forts. She is an avid collector of Western history books. With a master’s degree in English, Sara writes historical romance, mainstream fiction and contemporary romance. Books are beloved treasures that take Sara to magical worlds, and she loves both reading and writing them.

To Maureen Walters, with many thanks

Prologue

Rachel Webster kept a smile in place as she fell through one-hundred feet of space. Then the private jet leveled as it flew between blue storm clouds that rose like mountains on either side of the plane, hiding the canopy of trees below.

A tiny hand squeezed Rachel’s, and she looked down at her one-year-old niece.

“Don’t like shake,” Angelica said.

“It’s the big clouds around us that make the plane jiggle. We’ll be past them soon,” Rachel replied cheerfully, while the child gazed at her with wide, solemn eyes. Rachel was determined to do whatever she could to calm her little niece and offset the nervousness of the child’s mother. When they’d hit the turbulence, Angelica had cried and wanted into Rachel’s lap, and Raffaela had insisted that’s where she should be. Rachel had simply buckled Angelica in with her and held her tightly.

“Dammit, I hate storms,” Raffaela snapped.

Rachel glanced across the aisle at her twin sister. Raffaela’s three-year-old, Sophie, was climbing onto her mother’s lap.

“Raffaela, buckle Sophie into her seat,” Rachel said.

“Sit down, Sophie.” Raffaela reached up to smooth her own glossy auburn hair, looped and pinned on top of her head in an intricate twist. The eight-carat diamond on her hand glinted in the light along with a smaller diamond ring on her little finger. The bloodred ruby pendant gleamed malevolently at her throat.

Sophie tugged at the pendant. “I want Aunt Rachel to wear it,” she begged.

Raffaela unfastened the necklace and handed it to the girl. “Now go sit with your aunt,” she said.

Sophie scampered across the aisle. Rachel caught her up and buckled her into the seat next to her. “You need to stay buckled up.”

“Put this on,” the child pleaded as the plane bounced.

“Okay,” Rachel said, wanting to keep Sophie safely buckled. Shifting her straight hair to one side, she took the ruby pendant Sophie held out to her and fastened it around her neck.

Rachel thought of home. Even though she lived at Raffaela’s home in Bolivia a good part of the year now, she still called Houston home, and in three years, when both the girls were in boarding school, she would return to get a doctorate and hopefully a teaching position at the university. Until then, she had agreed to be nanny for her two nieces.

“Dammit, I think we should turn around and go back!” Raffaela cried.

“I’ll talk to Jose.” In the seat in front of Rachel, Burr Brogan unbuckled his seat belt and stood, unfolding his six-foot seven-inch frame carefully as he went forward to talk to the small dark-haired pilot, Jose Escajedo. Raffaela’s Bolivian husband, Hector Granillo, had hired Jose years earlier, and Rachel knew Hector had great confidence in the pilot’s flying ability.

Just as he had confidence in Burr’s ability to serve as a family bodyguard. Rachel felt the man’s blue eyes on her as he returned, and she looked down at one-year-old Angelica and smoothed the toddler’s red hair. Rachel disliked Burr’s brashness. Often when they were alone, he suggested going out together—which she had no inclination to do. Lately, he’d become quite pushy.

Burr paused in the aisle between Rachel and Raffaela.

“Jose thinks it will be better to keep going. The storm is all around us. It won’t help to turn around. We’re already over Central America now. Jose’s altering course and doing the best he can.”

“Are we going to crash?” Sophie asked, her brown eyes wide.

“No, sweetie,” Rachel replied, while the plane bounced violently. “There’s a bit of roughness because of rain clouds.”

Angelica gazed up at Rachel with wide eyes. Sophie had her father’s dark brown eyes while Angelica had inherited her mother’s green eyes.

Burr leaned down to whisper in Raffaela’s ear. “Move over, babe. I’ll hold your hand.”

Rachel clamped her lips together. All their lives Raffaela had been the wild and daring one, and Rachel had accepted it. But after marrying Hector and having the two girls, Raffaela’s flirting was starting to disturb Rachel. She worried about the girls, thankful that they were too young to know the significance of their bodyguard buckling up in the seat beside their mother and taking her hand in his.

The plane bounced, and Raffaela snatched her hand away from Burr. “Dammit, can’t Jose do something!”

Rain began to pour over the plane, closing off the view of the clouds surrounding them. They were wrapped in gray and rocking violently.

“I scared!” Angelica exclaimed, hugging Rachel.

“We’re all right, love. Let’s get one of your books, and I’ll read you a story—”

A bolt of lightning struck with a bang like an explosion. With a blinding flash it rippled along the fuselage. Flames shot out from a wing, and the engine whined loudly.

Raffaela screamed while the nose of the plane tilted. Angelica’s thin arms clung tightly to Rachel. Sophie began to cry. “Aunt Rachel, I’m scared!”

“Get your heads down!” Jose yelled from the front of the plane. “We’re going down.”

With her heart pounding violently, Rachel wound one hand as tightly as possible around Angelica, leaning over the girl, while she put her other arm across Sophie’s shoulders. Praying, she clung to them while the girls sobbed.

The engine began to whine, and Rachel could feel Sophie shaking. Wishing she could protect them completely, she tightened her arms around the girls.

With a jolt and a deafening sound of metal ripping, the plane tore through the trees. As it rocked and bounced, Raffaela’s screams blended with the noise of metal tearing.

Suddenly there was a bang and an enormous jolt and everything went black.

Rachel regained consciousness. The interior of the plane was twisted and smoky; rain hissed over it and lightning flashed. The cockpit and Jose had totally disappeared. There was only thick green vegetation and trees where it had been. Memory returned to her and with it came panic. Rachel knew they had to get out of the plane.

Both girls squirmed, and Sophie sat up. “Thank heavens!” Rachel gasped, relief making her weak when she saw the girls were all right. Sophie had a cut across her forehead, but it looked superficial. Both were sobbing, and Angelica clung to Rachel.

“We have to get out,” Rachel exclaimed. Terrified that the plane might catch fire, she fumbled with Sophie’s seat belt and then her own. As she stood, she glanced at Burr who was leaning over an inert Raffaela.

“Get her out, Burr. Hurry! I’ll get the girls.”

Leaving her own purse behind, Rachel grabbed the bag with the girls’ clothing, Angelica’s bottles and cans of formula. Realizing they might have to wait to be found, Rachel yanked down her own carry-on.

Picking up Angelica and the bags, Rachel tugged Sophie behind her, going toward the gaping hole in the side of the plane. “Wait, love,” she said to Sophie and tossed out the bags. Then she climbed down onto a smashed tree and set Angelica beside her.

In spite of the rain, flames had begun to burn beneath the wing and belly of the plane. “Burr, the plane’s on fire. Get out!” she shouted again, grabbing Sophie out of the wreckage. Tumbling down over branches, ignoring scrapes, Rachel reached the ground.

She lifted the girls down one at a time. Slinging the bags over her shoulder, she picked up Angelica and grasped Sophie’s hand. Smoke burned her eyes, and terror gripped her, because she knew the plane could explode.

Rachel tried to run, but she found the bags cumbersome, so she tossed away her carryon. She scooped up Sophie instead. As she ran, vines, ferns and palmetto fronds tore at her. She glanced back to see Burr carrying Raffaela over his shoulder as he climbed out of the plane.

Rachel was fifty yards from the plane when it exploded. The deafening blast knocked her off her feet and sent a fireball rolling skyward. Heat seared her, and the flash of light was like a bolt of lightning.

She fell, the breath knocked from her momentarily as she scrambled to get the girls, who were sobbing wildly.

“Aunt Rachel! Help!”

She tried to cover both of them, holding them close against her body while parts of the plane rained down over them. Something struck the back of her thigh, and she cried out. Hot metal stung her shoulder.

And then quiet descended, broken by the crackle of the burning plane and the girls’ sobbing. The rain had suddenly stopped, now just lightly dripping from the trees. A shard of glass stuck out of Rachel’s arm and she pulled it free. She brushed bits of glass and metal from Sophie’s curly black hair.

Moving carefully, she tried to stand, biting back a cry as pain shot up the back of her leg. The smaller cuts stung, and she ached where metal had struck her, but nothing seemed broken. “Sophie—”

Something slammed against the back of her head. Dimly, Rachel heard Sophie screaming. Pain enveloped her, and then blackness closed in as she pitched forward.

One

Micah Drake gave a thumbs up sign to the pilot and slid open the door of the plane. Wind whipped against him as he looked below at the brilliant green canopy of treetops in the tiny country of Cruz in Central America. It was a bad place for a plane to go down. It was a damned bad place for him. He didn’t like this job or want it, but he needed the money. And he owed an old buddy from the military—Luke Webster had saved Micah’s life once in a clandestine operation in Saudi Arabia, and Micah was going to repay the favor now in a jungle in Central America.

Luke’s father, Atlee Webster, had put up the money for the search for his two daughters and his grandchildren. Luke had wheedled, bribed and finally reminded Micah that he owed him one. But the convincing offer had come when Luke had promised Micah double his usual fee plus paying Micah’s future medical bills for his mom.

Luke had come to his office, blond, cocky as ever, leaning against the desk as Micah had stood in front of the window. “Think of the money, Micah. You can take some time off to be with your mother.”

“I’m thinking about all the times you said your one sister was a bitch,” Micah said.

“Raffaela is. Wild, bitchy, impossible. She cheats on Hector. He cheats on her. But she’s my sister and she’s got two little girls. Look at their picture, Micah.”

Micah had looked, and they were beautiful smiling little faces. “You know I don’t have any resistance when it comes to kids,” he had grumbled.

“And Rachel’s shy and nice. As sweet as the girls. She won’t give you a minute’s trouble.”

“Yeah, sure.”

“Think of the money. Your bills will be paid, and you won’t have to worry about the care for your mother. Think about it.”

Micah had thought about it for a moment and had agreed to try to find the Webster women and children and bring them back to Texas.

He still had mixed emotions about the task as he looked down at the solid canopy of green below him. The small government of Cruz had made no search of their own because revolutionaries took all the official attention and resources. The Granillo pilot had lost radio contact shortly before going down. He had been fifteen miles off course, and Micah had a general idea where to search.

That morning Micah had found the downed plane. As he sped over the treetops, he had looked at the smashed trees where the plane had crashed. He circled to fly over the site several times, thinking that if there were survivors, they would try to signal. But as the trees swayed in the slipstream of his plane, no one had appeared.

He had been hoping to find them, rescue them and then get right back to Texas. It wasn’t going to be that simple.

Returning to Agapito, the coastal capital, he had phoned Luke to say he had located the crash site and promised to go back. Within the hour he made arrangements to be flown to the site again.

Now wind beat against him as he braced himself in the open door of the plane and double-checked his parachute harness. Eduardo circled the plane above the wreckage. As Micah looked down at the burned rubble, he thought about the passengers. Even though he hadn’t known any of them, he felt a wave of sickness at the loss. What hurt most was the thought of the little girls, Sophie and Angelica. He didn’t want to have to go back to Texas and tell Luke the little girls wouldn’t be coming home.

They approached the crash site the second time. Micah waved to Eduardo and received a salute in return. He saw the slash in the trees coming up. He jumped, dropping through the air, green treetops that looked as solid as the ground rushing up to meet him.

When he pulled the rip cord, the chute ballooned up behind him, yanking him up, and then he began to float toward the trees. Pulling the steering toggles on the risers, he guided his descent, watching the gash in the trees as it grew larger. The scorched ground and burned bits of plane loomed into view, and he couldn’t imagine survivors. Unless they had gotten out before the plane went up in flames or had been thrown clear.

For just an instant his stomach knotted as he thought of Shawna and the car wreck. He blanked out his thoughts, clamping his jaw closed grimly as he tried to angle down to where the plane had cut through the trees. He landed on his feet only yards from the wreckage and in seconds was out of the chute. He turned to look around him, listening as the sounds of the forest brought back memories of his years in the U.S. Army Special Forces. He hoped he hadn’t forgotten his survival skills, because he was on his own in a corner of the world that was swarming with rebel insurgents and gun smugglers. Tomorrow at noon Eduardo would return. If Micah found survivors before then, they could all get out by chopper. If he discovered all had been killed, he would have to get the bodies out. But if he couldn’t account for everyone on the plane, he was going to have to hunt for them on foot and get them back to civilization the best way he could.

Steamy heat made his body damp with sweat within minutes after dropping to earth. He could smell the earthy, rotting vegetation on the forest floor. Judging from the looks of the plane, there were no survivors. Micah poked through the wreckage, and five minutes later he changed his assessment. He couldn’t find any bodies in the burned metal.

He moved away from the charred rubble and circled it. Something caught his attention. Frowning, he crossed the clearing. A mound was covered with brush and branches and a couple of smaller tree trunks had been dragged over it. He knew he was looking at a hasty burial site before he began to clear away the brush.

He had seen many dead bodies on military assignments in hot spots in different places of the world. Some had been civilians, most had been soldiers. None had been a beautiful woman from Texas and he drew a deep breath, his stomach knotting as he finished clearing away the makeshift grave. He fished out the pictures Luke had given him.

Raffaela was a married socialite. He could remember Luke’s deep voice listing her jewelry with as much certainty as if he had presented her with each piece: an eight-carat engagement ring, a six-carat ring their father had given her, a diamond-studded gold wedding band, a ruby pendant with gold filigree, diamond stud earrings. This body bore none of the above. Rachel, the twin, seldom wore jewelry. She owned a diamond ring their father had given her upon her graduation from college, but she wore it only on special occasions.

So, Micah decided, he was looking at the body of Rachel Webster.

He thumbed through the six pictures, holding Rachel’s picture next to Raffaela’s picture. With makeup and different hairstyles, it was easy to tell one from the other. But if they had the same hair arrangement and no makeup, he knew he wouldn’t be able to tell them apart. Now—because of the wreck, the heat, and time that had passed—the quickest way to identify which twin had died was jewelry or lack of it.

“Just great,” he mumbled cynically. “If the other one is still alive, I get to save the bitch.... Focus on the little girls,” he reminded himself aloud.

Pocketing the pictures, he tossed the branches back over the body. In a few more minutes he found the pilot’s partially decomposed body.

For the next hour Micah went over every inch of the crash site, walking in ever-widening circles until he was in thick brush and trees. Lianas draped over branches and hung to the ground. Where an occasional patch of sunlight broke through the forest canopy, the vines were covered with green leaves. Butterflies looped and circled lazily, and scarlet macaws perched high in trees like bright red blossoms.

It took Micah another hour before he found a hair ribbon caught on a fern. He could detect where someone had moved through the brush, and he followed their tracks. He swore softly because they were headed deeper inland. If they had gone west, they would have had a better chance of reaching a town. Any direction they had taken, they could easily be caught in the middle of guerrilla warfare.

He prayed he could keep on their trail until he found them. He could detect where leaves were disturbed, palmetto pushed aside. In minutes he spotted a red thread caught on a frond.

An hour later he discovered where they had stopped to rest beside a murky stream. Once he realized they’d followed the stream, he could track faster. Unfortunately they were headed up the stream and by late afternoon the stream ended and their tracks moved away in the bush.

In the lush forest, night would come all at once. Keeping an eye on his watch, Micah stopped his search. After the quiet during the steamy midday heat, the trees came alive with the sounds of animals and birds. He slid off his pack, taking a long drink from his canteen. In the last light of day, he fished out the pictures again and looked at the two women, pulling up the picture of the socialite. The Bolivian industrialist had a beautiful Texan wife. Judging from the the tracks, which were growing fresher, he figured he would catch up with her tomorrow.

“I’m hungry,” the smallest girl cried.

A thick auburn braid of hair fell forward as the woman bent over and retrieved bananas to hand to each child. Two days ago they had come upon banana trees. Starving, they had picked bananas and eaten them. After they had rested, she had picked all the bananas she could carry, making a pack out of the large leaves from one of the trees. They were living on the bananas and the last of the baby formula that had survived the explosion. The carry-on had burned, but cans of formula and bottles had been salvageable and she had placed what she could in the children’s large bag.

At the sound of voices, she whirled around, her gaze searching through strangler figs, bromeliads and palms while her heart pounded in fear.

Two men appeared, their gaze raking over her boldly. Terrified, she stared at them. There was no mistaking the lust that gleamed in their dark eyes. Each man wore a holster with a pistol on his hip.

“Buenos dias,” she said, worrying about the girls. “Girls, get behind me.”

“Buenos dias, señorita,” the shortest one said. Their clothes were almost as unkempt as hers. Both wore rumpled black uniforms with boots. Muscles bulged in their arms, and she knew her strength would be no match for either of them.

“My husband will return shortly,” she said. “He is searching for game. Our plane went down,” she said in fluent Spanish.

When they grinned at her, she knew they didn’t believe her, and she wasn’t surprised.

“We have food and a house where you and your husband and children can stay,” one replied as both of them edged toward her.

There was nowhere to run, and she was terrified for the girls. If she told the girls to run and they got away, they couldn’t survive on their own in this wild land. Her mind raced for a way to get the children to safety.

The men grinned at her as they approached. She watched the stocky one who looked the stronger. She slipped the bag off her shoulder, gathering the strap in her hand. All she could think of to use for a weapon was the bag that still held cans of formula.

“I no want the pretty lady’s money,” he said, his eyes filled with lust while he watched her and moved closer. As he reached for her, she swung the bag with all her strength, holding the straps with both hands.

“Run!” she yelled to the girls.

The bag smashed against his head, sent him staggering into the other man and toppled them both to the ground.

“What the devil is going on?” came a deep voice, speaking very clear English.