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This Baby Business
Heatherly Bell
Strictly business…or is it?Air force pilot Levi Lambert has seen plenty of danger—but his infant daughter might be the death of him. Fortunately, Levi's found the answer to his sleep-deprived prayers: his next-door neighbor! Carly Gilmore is willing to be his nanny…until a small white lie turns their arrangement from business to very personal. The fake engagement was intended to keep Levi from losing custody of his baby girl, but is causing all sorts of new problems. Not only does Carly attract trouble like bees to honey, but there’s the little matter of Levi’s smokin’-hot attraction to her. The last thing he needs is to fall in love…
Strictly business...or is it?
Air force pilot Levi Lambert has seen plenty of danger—but his infant daughter might be the death of him. Fortunately, Levi’s found the answer to his sleep-deprived prayers: his next-door neighbor! Carly Gilmore is willing to be his nanny...until a small white lie turns their arrangement from business to very personal. The fake engagement was intended to keep Levi from losing custody of his baby girl, but is causing all sorts of new problems. Not only does Carly attract trouble like bees to honey, but there’s the little matter of Levi’s smokin’-hot attraction to her. The last thing he needs is to fall in love...
“You don’t have to worry...”
It occurred to Levi that he stood possibly a little closer than he should. Somehow that didn’t bother him at all as his eyes met Carly’s warm hazel ones. He was close enough to see every tiny speck of green. When his gaze slipped to her lickable lips, he knew he was in trouble.
She was sexy and pretty. Real. And she was one hell of a complication in his already chaotic life.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he wanted her.
With his hand on the nape of her neck, he pulled her close enough that they shared oxygen. Her eyes were warm and fluid, showing him all the things he wanted to see. An invitation. A welcome.
He kissed her, deep, long and lingering. When her tongue met with his, soft and tentative, he tugged her closer still. Took the kiss deeper and wilder.
She pulled back, a bit out of breath. “What was that?”
“I kissed you. And I think you liked it.”
And as if to acknowledge that, yes, she liked it, she kissed him.
Dear Reader (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21),
I confess. There’s something about a father and his baby that makes my heart stir. Given the popularity of male celebrity photos with their babies, I believe many of us feel the same way. A good-looking man plus a baby equals heart tug.
But Levi Lambert is no celebrity. He’s simply an everyday hero who is suddenly charged with the toughest job of his life: raising his child. Levi gives up his first love, the air force, and settles in Fortune, California, to fly for Magnum Aviation along with his two good friends, Stone Mcallister and Matt Conner. I love a good bromance, and Levi happily takes his place as the missing part of this trio of former air force pilots now flying out of a small southern-county airport.
Levi’s neighbor, Carly Gilmore, is struggling to save rockyourbaby.com, her mother’s company, and has put her own dreams on hold. When her new neighbor shows up at her doorstep in a babysitting bind, Carly has no idea she’ll be involved with them on a much deeper level than she’d ever anticipated. But before long, both Levi and Grace worm their way into her heart and home.
In this book, I give you a single dad, a baby, a clueless nanny and a fake engagement. Add two opposites who would have never expected to fall for each other and you’ve got This Baby Business.
I hope you enjoy.
Heatherly Bell
This Baby Business
Heatherly Bell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
HEATHERLY BELL tackled her first book in 2004 and now the characters that occupy her mind refuse to leave until she writes them a book. She loves all music but confines singing to the shower these days. Heatherly lives in Northern California with her family, including two beagles—one who can say hello and the other a princess who can feel a pea through several pillows.
For Aliyah
Contents
Cover (#u4d3e8de6-2d36-5d92-8aa3-35db2a6b9863)
Back Cover Text (#u2b41c795-dc92-5528-926e-761f26896f2c)
Introduction (#uba832bce-a642-5ed2-9c7a-ed319b617291)
Dear Reader (#uc419d202-7d2d-5ee0-a336-d319185a7423)
Title Page (#ued115949-6db4-523b-9edf-ec7293aa80cb)
About the Author (#u73af9a73-51bf-5076-a98e-904dcf8c7e53)
Dedication (#u87a960e8-5c4b-5f6f-b8b1-3977ee2f44ef)
CHAPTER ONE (#u0bd13460-cce6-5978-a1e2-0e8421bf33f8)
CHAPTER TWO (#u56e318c3-014a-5fcb-a382-e37911a3c1cf)
CHAPTER THREE (#u67c79a09-3a9d-5233-810e-39f4a30fc5d0)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u8e31d94e-cddb-54a7-940d-7ec0d68167bb)
CHAPTER FIVE (#uebd11701-6871-541b-88d1-47862d6ed998)
CHAPTER SIX (#uede18c7a-9435-5325-9e40-85672a29977e)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u2b8a7a7a-83e9-594f-9a9c-1e9475daf910)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
LEVI LAMBERT HAD piloted many birds during his service in the United States Air Force. He’d gone on missions he still regretted and some he never would. Made plenty of mistakes in his twenty-nine years. Some of them irreparable.
But this. Well. This might just kill him.
“Please. Please go to sleep.” Levi gently rubbed his six-month-old daughter’s back.
Moonlight spilled through the cracked blinds in Grace’s bedroom. It was two o’clock in the morning, and she wasn’t interested in sleeping. She didn’t need her diaper changed, had just had a bottle of formula—warm...he’d checked—and he’d located her pacifier under the blanket and stuck it in her mouth. She spit it out with a face that said, “Nice try, sucker.”
Levi was no stranger to zero dark thirty, but this was plain cruel. No sooner had he calmed her down and gently set her in her crib than she screamed bloody murder again. A few nights of that would have been fine, but after six straight weeks of it, he was beginning to feel the strain. Strange, but the only thing that kept her quiet was being held. Held and walked around the house, as if it were the middle of the day.
Weren’t babies supposed to sleep 24/7? What was wrong with his baby? She didn’t seem to like him very much. Still, he’d known she was his the minute he’d seen her blue eyes, so much like his own. Just for kicks he’d asked for a DNA test. Yep. His. No doubt, even if he’d had the pleasure of being with Grace’s mother, Sandy, only once. Only one night of mutual, temporary pleasure during a two-week leave in Atlanta, Georgia, he’d now officially never forget.
When he’d received the news of Sandy’s accidental death, it had taken Levi a minute to remember her. Talk about life changing and rearranging. He’d assumed he would die in the air force. His plan was to stay until he retired or was killed in action. It wasn’t like he didn’t have friends who’d left earlier than planned, among them his two best friends in the world, Stone and Matt. But Levi was a lifer. Supposed to be, anyway. He’d been raised for service. Until Grace had come along and changed all that. It would have been too much of a hardship as a single father piloting long missions. At the time he’d been located and informed of Grace, he’d been flying the U-2 spy plane and gone for months at a stretch.
She’d quieted down again with his swaying and rocking, so Levi tried to lay her down in her crib. Grace scrunched up her little pixie face and wailed, as if the very idea that she would go to sleep was an insult to her intelligence. He picked her up again. Definitely not suited for this, although some people had thought it would happen to him eventually if he didn’t settle down and stop sowing his wild oats.
The first thing his mother, Gemma Lambert, had said upon hearing that Levi had become a father was “Bless your heart. I told you so.” His father, retired General Lambert, had decided to address the situation in his usual way: he ignored it. Easy to do, since both of his parents were on their latest mission trip to save the children of the world. Didn’t matter, though, because Levi could do this on his own. Like he’d done so much else in his life.
Grace was now his responsibility, and he never shirked his duty. He’d followed the work, and one of his friends, Stone Mcallister, had a charter flight business and aviation school in Fortune, California. So he’d wound up in this little Podunk, bedroom community deep in the bowels of Silicon Valley. Everyone here gave him a patient look the minute he opened his mouth and out came the Texan drawl he’d grown up with.
Levi took a seat on the rocking chair he’d purchased from Buy, Baby, Buy—bye, wallet, bye, it should be called—and tried again. He’d been given most of Grace’s baby stuff by Sandy’s father, Frank, and stepmother, Irene, in a tearful exchange at the airport in Atlanta. It had helped, since he didn’t actually know a stroller from a wheelbarrow. A rookie, he’d basically had a crash course in all things baby related for the past few weeks. He realized he’d never be father-of-the-year material, but still, this shouldn’t be so hard.
“Is this personal?” he now asked Grace.
She had no response other than to blink twice and gurgle. Yeah, just his luck. She was wide-awake. At least it was better than all the screaming. Levi rocked because he didn’t know what else to do. He’d never thought of himself as a daddy. When he’d first told Stone and Matt about his situation, you would have thought he’d dropped a missile on them for the absolute silence in the room.
Levi was grateful that Sandy had trusted him. Or maybe she’d just done the right thing. Either way, he’d been named the father on the birth certificate. He had a daughter, and he couldn’t regret it. At least, not since the moment the social worker placed Grace in his arms, and she focused her wide, blue eyes on him. He was determined to raise her as a single father, even if Sandy’s parents had other ideas.
He stifled a yawn. The rocking chair was damned well about to put him to sleep. He’d have to get up in a few hours and Grace looked no closer to closing her eyes than she had an hour ago.
“I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute.” He snuggled Grace closer to his chest and leaned his head back.
* * *
LEVI WOKE WITH a start. It was morning, the first rays of early autumn sunlight flooding throughout Grace’s bedroom. She was fast asleep. He’d fallen asleep with her in his arms and by some miracle she hadn’t slipped out and landed on the floor.
“Are you a vampire?” he whispered, laying her in the crib. “Please don’t be a baby vampire.”
This time, of course, she stayed asleep. But Levi would still be late if he didn’t kick it into high gear. He took an enlisted man’s shower and dressed in the Mcallister Charters uniform of a white button-up and black cargoes within minutes. He hurried through his usual morning routine, prepping formula bottles like a pro and swallowing a Pop-Tart practically whole. He inhaled his morning coffee and glanced at the digital kitchen clock. Oh seven hundred and Annie wasn’t here. He hated being late and people who were late. And Annie was perpetually late.
She was his third babysitter since he’d landed in Fortune a month ago. Bobbie Ann had left when Levi had turned her down, explaining he didn’t date anyone under twenty. Ellen had left because of all the screaming, and Annie’s only fault so far was her unreliability. Which, given the situation, was huge.
He looked out the window. Nothing. Dialed Annie’s cell phone, hoping she’d be driving over and unable to answer it.
She answered. “Hey, Levi. I can’t make it today.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He should have never hired one of the former baristas from the Drip. Even if she’d come highly recommended by Emily Parker as being a generally kind woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“I had a little trouble with the reception out here in Lake Tahoe.”
“What the hell are you doing in Lake Tahoe?”
Levi heard a distinctly male voice in the background.
“Oh, sorry. I meant Reno. I’m all turned around.” She giggled. “I’m getting married.”
