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Claiming King's Baby / Wyoming Wedding: Claiming King's Baby
Maureen Child
Sara Orwig
Her life is at stake… He’s sworn to protect her, but will he steal her heart? In the Dark Heather Graham Alexandra’s perfect life is crumbling. There’s a killer on her trail and her mysterious ex-husband David has chosen this moment to reappear. And, when she and gorgeous protector David get trapped together, Alex wonders if her love or her life will be forfeit…Sure Bet Maggie Price Posing as newly weds, new cop Morgan is partnered with renegade Alex to investigate a series of murders. Both Alex and Morgan are reluctant to admit their desire for one another. Yet could their real passion be denied when they were so ‘up close and personal’?Deadly Exposure Linda Turner Beautiful photographer Lily didn’t want to depend on anyone for help – especially not pulse-stopping, jade-eyed cop Tony Giovani. But now her only protection from the man who’s threatening her life is this man who sends her heart racing…
Claiming King’s Baby by Maureen Child
“So who were you with, Maggie?” he asked, his voice a low and dark hum of sound. “Why didn’t he want his kid?”
“I was with you, you big jerk,” she said tightly. “I didn’t tell you about the baby before because I assumed from everything you’d said that you wouldn’t want to know.”
“What’s changed then?” he asked.
“I’m here, Justice. I came here to help you. And I decided that no matter what, you had the right to know about Jonas.”
If it were possible, Maggie would have said that Justice’s features went even harder. But what was harder than stone?
Yes, she knew he’d said he didn’t want children, but she’d been so sure that the moment he saw his son, he’d feel differently. In her little dream world, Justice would take one look at his son, then beg Maggie’s forgiveness and ask her to stay, to let them be a family. She should have known better. “Idiot.”
“I’m not an idiot,” he told her.
“I wasn’t talking to you,” she countered.
Wyoming Wedding by Sara Orwig
“You know common sense tells me to say no to you,” Brianna replied.
“I don’t see that. You stand to gain a lot and lose very little unless you can’t stand to be with me.”
“You know full well there’s no danger of any woman not being able to stand you,” she said.
“Until this moment I was beginning to wonder. This is the coolest reception I’ve ever got.”
He placed his hand on the car door, blocking her from opening it. Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “I’ve asked you to be my wife tonight and we’ve never even kissed. That’s a giant unknown when there’s a marriage proposal between us.”
Her pulse had raced all night, but now her heart thudded and she looked at his mouth. “I can remedy that one,” she said, tingling at the thought of kissing him.
She moved in closer, stood on tiptoe and placed her lips on his.
His kiss might be her undoing.
Available in August 2010 from Mills & Boon® Desire™
Claiming King’s Baby by Maureen Child & Wyoming Wedding by Sara Orwig
Taming the Texas Tycoon by Katherine Garbera & One Night with the Wealthy Rancher by Brenda Jackson
One Night, Two Babies by Kathie DeNosky & Valente’s Baby by Maxine Sullivan
Claiming King’s Baby
by
Maureen Child
Wyoming Wedding
by
Sara Orwig
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Claiming King’s Baby
by
Maureen Child
MAUREEN CHILD is a California native who loves to travel. Every chance they get, she and her husband are taking off on another research trip. The author of more than sixty books, Maureen loves a happy ending and still swears that she has the best job in the world. She lives in Southern California with her husband, two children and a golden retriever with delusions of grandeur. Visit Maureen’s website at www.maureenchild.com.
To the Estrada Family:
Steve, Rose, Alicia, Lettie, Patti and Amanda.
Good friends. Great neighbours.
We love you guys.
Dear Reader,
I can’t tell you how much I enjoy writing about the King family! And I’m delighted that so many of you are enjoying them as much as I do.
Writing about this extended family is always an adventure, because no matter what, the King men always manage to surprise me.
Take Justice King for example: a typical rancher on the surface, but underneath, Justice is a man haunted by the past and tormented by the fact that he allowed the woman he loved to walk out on him.
Maggie Ryan King is the perfect match for Justice. She’s loyal and stubborn and determined to make her soon-to-be-ex-husband pay for letting what they’d had together slip away.
As a physical therapist, Maggie’s temporarily back at King Ranch, helping Justice recover from a riding accident. But while his body heals, his heart is being steamrolled. By the one woman he can never forget.
These two have a lot of things to work through – and secrets to reveal – and I really hope you enjoy their story!
Happy reading,
Maureen
Chapter One
Justice King opened the front door and faced his past.
She stood there staring at him out of pale blue eyes he’d tried desperately to forget. Her long, light red hair whipped around her head in a cold, fierce wind, and her delectable mouth curved into a cynical half smile.
“Hello, Justice,” said a voice that haunted his dreams. “Been a while.”
Eight months and twenty-five days, he thought but didn’t say. His gaze moved over her in a quick but thorough inspection. She was tall, with the same stubborn tilt to her chin that he remembered and the same pale sprinkle of freckles across her nose. Her full breasts rose and fell quickly with each of her rapid breaths, and that more than anything else told him she was nervous.
Well, then, she shouldn’t have come.
His gaze locked back on hers. “What’re you doing here, Maggie?”
“Aren’t you going to invite me in?”
“Nope,” he said flatly. One thing he didn’t need was to have her close enough to touch again.
“Is that any way to talk to your wife?” she asked and walked past him into the ranch house.
His wife.
Automatically, his left thumb moved to play with the gold wedding band he’d stopped wearing the day he had allowed her to walk away. Memories crashed into his mind, and he closed his eyes against the onslaught.
But nothing could stop the images crowding his brain. Maggie, naked, stretched out on his bed, welcoming him. Maggie, shouting at him through her tears. Maggie, leaving without a backward glance. And last, Justice saw himself, closing the door behind her and just as firmly shuttering away his heart.
Nothing had changed.
They were still the same people they’d been when they married and when they split.
So he pulled himself together, and closed the front door behind them. Then he turned to face her.
Watery winter sunlight poured from the skylight onto the gleaming wood floors and glanced off the mirror hanging on the closest wall. A pedestal table held an empty cobalt vase—there’d been no flowers in this hall since Maggie left—and the silence in the house slammed down on top of them both.
Seconds ticked past, marked only by the tapping of Maggie’s shoe against the floor. Justice waited her out, knowing that she wouldn’t be able to be quiet for long. She never had been comfortable with silence. Maggie was the most talkative woman he’d ever known. Damned if he hadn’t missed that.
Three feet of empty space separated them and still, Justice felt the pull of her. His body was heavy and aching and everything in him clawed at him to reach out for her. To ease the pain of doing without her for far too long.
Yet he called on his own reserves of strength to keep from taking what he’d missed so badly.
“Where’s Mrs. Carey?” Maggie asked suddenly, her voice shattering the quiet.
“She’s on vacation.” Justice cursed inwardly, wishing to hell his housekeeper had picked some other time to take a cruise to Jamaica.
“Good for her,” Maggie said, then tipped her head to one side. “Glad to see me?”
Glad wasn’t the word he’d use. Stunned would be about right. When Maggie had left, she’d sworn that he would never see her again. And he hadn’t, not counting the nights she appeared in his dreams just to torment him.
“What are you doing here, Maggie?”
“Well, now, that’s the question, isn’t it?”
She turned away and walked slowly down the hall, bypassing the more formal living room before stepping into the great room. Justice followed, watching as she looked around the room as if reacquainting herself with the place.
She looked from the floor-to-ceiling bookshelves on two walls to the river stone hearth, tall and wide enough for a man to stand in it upright. The log walls, with the white chinking between them that looked like horizontal striping. The plush chairs and sofas she’d bought for the room, gathered together into conversation areas, and the wide bank of windows that displayed an unimpeded view of the ranch’s expansive front yard. Ancient trees spread shade across most of the lawn, flowers in the neatly tended beds dipped and swayed with the ocean wind and from a distance came the muffled roar of the ranch tractor moving across the feed grain fields.
“You haven’t changed anything,” she whispered.
“Haven’t had time,” he lied.
“Of course.” Maggie spun around to face him and her eyes were flashing.
Justice felt a surge of desire shoot through him with the force of a lightning strike. Her temper had always had that effect on him. They’d been like oil and water, sliding against each other but never really blending into a cohesive whole. And maybe that was part of the attraction, he mused.
Maggie wasn’t the kind of woman to change for a man. She was who she was, take her or leave her. He’d always wanted to take her. And God help him, if she came too close to him right now, he’d take her again.
“Look,” she said, those blue eyes of hers still snapping with sparks of irritation, “I didn’t come here to fight.”
“Why are you here?”
“To bring you this.”
She reached into her oversize, black leather bag and pulled out a legal-size manila envelope. Her fingers traced the silver clasp briefly as if she were hesitating about handing it over. Then a second later, she did.
Justice took it, glanced at it and asked, “What is it?”
“The divorce papers.” She folded her arms across her chest. “You didn’t sign the copy the lawyers sent you, so I thought I’d bring a set in person. Harder to ignore me if I’m standing right in front of you, don’t you think?”
Justice tossed the envelope onto the nearest chair, stuffed his hands into the back pockets of his jeans and stared her down. “I wasn’t ignoring you.”
“Ah,” she said with a sharp nod, “so you were just what? Playing games? Trying to make me furious?”
He couldn’t help the half smile that curved his mouth. “If I was, looks like I managed it.”
“Damn right you did.” She walked toward him and stopped just out of arm’s reach. As if she knew if she came any closer, the heat between them would erupt into an inferno neither of them would survive.
He’d always said she was smart.
“Justice, you told me months ago that our marriage was over. So sign the damn papers already.”
“What’s your hurry?” The question popped out before he could call it back. Gritting his teeth, he just went with it and asked the question he really wanted the answer to. “Got some other guy lined up?”
She jerked her head back as if he’d slapped her.
“This is not about getting another man into my life,” she told him. “This is about getting a man out of my life. You, Justice. We’re not together. We’re not going to be together. You made that plain enough.”
“You leaving wasn’t my idea,” he countered.
“No, it was just your fault,” she snapped.
“You’re the one who packed, Maggie.”
