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Verdict: Daddy
Charlotte Douglas
Daddy Material?Blake Adams thinks he's dreaming when he wakes up to find a beautiful baby girl on his doorstep. With her curly red hair and sparkling green eyes, "Annie" quickly makes an indelible impression on his hardened heart.Needing advice, Blake turns to the only person he feels he can trust: criminal attorney Marissa Mason. It's been years since he's seen his childhood friend, and it's clear this stunning woman is no longer the tomboy of their youth.Now, with Marissa looking into Annie's mysterious arrival, Blake can't imagine letting either of them go. And when she unearths a shattering twist to Annie's birth, Blake knows his fate is sealed–and that his future is not going to be spent alone.Fatherhood: Dedicated father and darling daughter–what an unbeatable combination!
“I’m desperate, Marissa, and you’re the only one I could think of who can help me.”
“You’re in trouble with the law?” Marissa asked.
Blake shook his head, knowing that, as a criminal attorney, she had to ask. “No—at least not yet.”
Only the slightest flicker of surprise crossed her features before she regained her composure. “You’ve committed a crime?”
He shook his head. “The man who left you was an idiot.”
Her puzzled expression created a tiny line between her eyebrows, and his fingers itched with an unexpected urge to reach over and smooth it away.
“Then what do you want from me?” she asked.
“I want you to help me with a baby.”
Verdict: Daddy
Charlotte Douglas
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The major passions of Charlotte Douglas’s life are her husband—her high school sweetheart to whom she’s been married for over three decades—and writing compelling stories. A national bestselling author, she enjoys filling her books with love of home and family, special places and happy endings. With their two cairn terriers, she and her husband live most of the year on Florida’s central west coast, but spend the warmer months at their North Carolina mountaintop retreat.
No matter what time of year, readers can reach her at charlottedouglas1@juno.com (mailto:charlottedouglas1@juno.com), where she’s always delighted to hear from them.
Books by Charlotte Douglas
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
591—IT’S ABOUT TIME
623—BRINGING UP BABY
868—MONTANA MAIL-ORDER WIFE * (#litres_trial_promo)
961—SURPRISE INHERITANCE
999—DR. WONDERFUL
1027—VERDICT: DADDY
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
380—DREAM MAKER
434—BEN’S WIFE
482—FIRST-CLASS FATHER
515—A WOMAN OF MYSTERY
536—UNDERCOVER DAD
611—STRANGER IN HIS ARMS * (#litres_trial_promo)
638—LICENSED TO MARRY
668—MONTANA SECRETS
691—THE BRIDE’S RESCUER
740—THE CHRISTMAS TARGET
Contents
Chapter One (#u32c404e9-c719-58d7-b183-729b97d5ffc5)
Chapter Two (#u1c4f9ff1-0ca9-54c5-bd9d-1255b208c35b)
Chapter Three (#u2185b3e9-80c3-569b-b845-f93705c42b5e)
Chapter Four (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
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)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter One
“We have a problem.”
Marissa Mason’s receptionist jerked her head toward the law office waiting room behind the closed door at her back.
Eyeing her usually calm employee with concern, Marissa closed the computer file of the legal brief she was preparing. Seldom did anything perturb small and scrappy Kitty Stancel, not even the most hardened criminals who came to Mason and Mason for representation, but something—or someone—had definitely spooked her today. Behind her designer glasses, Kitty’s brown eyes were wide with alarm, and her voice had an uncharacteristic tremor when she spoke.
“What’s going on?” Marissa reached for the phone, ready to dial 911.
“Big guy in the waiting room. I told him you weren’t seeing clients this afternoon, but he insisted. He has this wild, desperate look. Says he isn’t leaving until he’s talked with you, even if he has to spend the whole day and night waiting.”
“What’s his name?”
“Blake Adams. He’s not one of our regulars. I’ve never seen him before.”
Blake Adams.
The familiar name threatened to inundate Marissa in a sea of nostalgia, but before she succumbed to a cruise down memory lane, she had to make certain the man in the waiting room was the same Blake Adams she had known so well and not some total stranger.
After shoving from her chair, she circled her desk, motioned Kitty aside and opened her office door the slightest crack. The tiny slit gave her a view of the reception area, where the man sat cooling his heels, dwarfing the Danish-Modern chair with his tall body, one work-booted foot tapping an impatient rhythm on the beige Berber carpet.
Marissa’s heart stuttered at the sight: long, tall and tanned, the man in the waiting room had shaggy black hair, a chiseled jaw, high cheekbones and startling gray eyes. His big hands were clasped between knees bared by cargo shorts that displayed well-muscled calves above the tops of his work boots. A spanking-white, short-sleeved polo shirt revealed his knotted biceps and sported the logo Adams Landscape Designs with a stylized palm tree embroidered above the pocket.
Marissa grabbed the doorknob to support her weakened knees. It was her Blake, all right. Not the lean, lanky insecure boy she’d known and loved, but a mature man, even more attractive than the teenager had been. “Beefcake,” her sister, Suze, would call him, a man with the physique and steamy sex appeal of those featured on calendars of firefighters and police officers.
Marissa gave herself a mental shake and tried to slow her pulse and order her racing thoughts. She doubted anyone produced calendars of hunky landscape designers, and even if they did, Blake’s glowering expression would negate his participation. He looked ready to chew nails and spit.
Marissa eased the door closed and turned to Kitty. “What’s he done?”
Marissa was a defense attorney, and since Blake had demanded to see her, she assumed he was in trouble with the law. All her clients were, in one way or another. Lots of folks in Dolphin Bay had prophesied years ago that Blake, with his checkered background, would probably end up behind bars. But Marissa hadn’t.
Sure, Blake had been impulsive, even reckless at times. She recalled that August night when she was thirteen, when Blake had thrown rocks at her bedroom window to awaken her. He’d talked her into sneaking out of the house at midnight to go down to a darkened stretch of beach. They had lain on their backs and watched the spectacular shower of Perseid meteors until just before dawn. She’d been grounded for a week for that particular trick, but the experience had been worth it.
Then there’d been the time he’d enlisted her help to steal a dog from old Mr. Sellars, who’d kept the poor animal chained in a shadeless yard with no food, water or shelter. They’d taken the pathetic pooch back to her garage, where Blake fed it, bathed it, then dyed it black with Grecian Formula that had cost him a week’s allowance. Once the dye had dried, they’d placed the dog in the basket of her bike and ridden to Clearwater, where they turned the lucky pup over to Doris Fitzgerald, who ran an animal rescue service out of her home. Checking later, they’d learned that Doris had placed the dog in a loving home with a lonely old man who’d needed a canine friend.
Yes, Blake had often bent the rules, but he’d never hurt anyone. Marissa hadn’t paid any attention to the local consensus that the untamable boy was eventually destined for jail. She’d known him too well to believe such nonsense.
Or had she?
Evidently, he had fulfilled the expectations of the small-town gossips or he wouldn’t be sitting in her waiting room now, demanding to see a defense attorney and effectively terrorizing her usually unflappable receptionist.
“He wouldn’t tell me what his problem is,” Kitty answered. “Refused to speak with anyone but you. Not even your father.”
Marissa raised her eyebrows in surprise. Morgan Mason, her father and senior partner of the firm, had a reputation as one of the foremost defense attorneys in the nation, right up there with Alan Berkowitz and Johnny Cochran. Morgan had appeared on Court TV as a commentator and special guest and had taken part in many of the country’s highest profile cases. If Blake Adams had broken the law, he was an idiot not to demand to see her father. Marissa couldn’t figure why he wanted her instead, or how he’d even known she was here. She’d only been back in town a few weeks, joining her father’s practice after her divorce was final.
Shoving away the pain that always surfaced at the memory of her disastrous marriage and its bitter ending, she nodded to Kitty. “Let me finish this brief. Then I’ll buzz you to send him in.”
Kitty looked skeptical. “If he doesn’t eat me alive first.”
Marissa shook her head. “Not Blake.”
“You know him?”
“We grew up together. He’s a good guy.”
Kitty frowned. “That’s what they all say.”
“This one really is.”
“Then what’s he doing in your office?”
“That,” Marissa said, her curiosity piqued, “is what I’ll have to find out.”
BLAKE GAZED at the closed door of Marissa Mason’s private office where the skittish receptionist had disappeared. Now would be a good time to escape. Coming here had been a mistake.
He glanced at his watch. If he broke a few speed limits, he could still make his appointment with the developer and cinch the deal on landscaping three new malls scheduled for construction in the Tampa Bay area. Those projects would triple his income for the year, not to mention cement his reputation as one of the premier landscape designers on Florida’s central Gulf Coast. Remaining in Marissa’s office and following his present course would bring him nothing but trouble.
So why was he still sitting here and not making tracks?
He raked his fingers through his hair and resisted the urge to stand and pace. The events of the morning had blown his mind, and he struggled to get his thoughts in order. Staying might lose him the deal of a lifetime, and what would it get him?
A meeting with Marissa, for one thing.
That fact alone had its appeal. He hadn’t seen her since Christmas vacation of their freshman year in college. Since then she had graduated from law school, married and moved away, divorced—according to the local gossip—and finally returned to Dolphin Bay to join her father’s law practice. A lot had happened in eighteen years. He hoped she’d agree to see him, that the fact that they’d been good pals from elementary through high school would offset his not answering her letters in college.
Marissa had been one of the few kids on her side of the tracks who’d had anything to do with a boy who’d been moved continually from one foster home to another. She and Blake had spent weekends during the school year and entire summer vacations sailing Marissa’s small boat to the barrier islands. There they’d searched for shells on the white sand beaches, counted osprey nests in the tall pines, and routed sting rays by shuffling their feet through the clear shallow waters. She’d been more fun than any of the guys he’d known. And more accepting of him.
They’d also studied together. Marissa had helped him with English composition and French, and he’d explained to her the mysteries of calculus and trigonometry. They’d made a good team. Nothing romantic, just good buddies, and they’d lost touch when Marissa went to the University of Florida and Blake was awarded a scholarship to North Carolina State.
He looked forward to seeing Marissa again, but meeting with her about the problem at hand would open a whole can of worms that would take time and energy away from his increasingly successful career.
Better for him just to forget the whole scheme. He’d been crazy to think of it in the first place. He pushed to his feet to leave.
At the same moment Marissa’s office door opened, and the receptionist approached, looking as if she were afraid he’d snap her in two.
“Ms. Mason will see you in a few minutes.” Kitty Stancel, according to the nameplate beside her computer, scurried behind her L-shaped desk, as far from Blake as the room’s arrangement allowed.
Imagining the criminal element that frequented this particular waiting area, Blake didn’t take her skittish attitude personally. She’d probably learned to be leery in order to survive such an environment.
He nodded. “I have to make a phone call—”
With obvious reluctance, Kitty indicated a phone on her desk. “You can use that one.”
Blake shook his head. “Thanks, but I have my cell phone. I’ll just step outside.”
On the sidewalk in front of the law office, just a block from Dolphin Bay’s picturesque main street with its attractive brick sidewalks, trendy restaurants and antique shops, Blake punched the developer’s number into his cell phone. After canceling this morning’s appointment and rescheduling for the next day, he cut the connection and glanced around.
Blake loved Dolphin Bay, close enough to Tampa and St. Petersburg for the convenience of shopping and sports and cultural events, yet maintaining all the attributes of small-town America. When he’d received his degree, he hadn’t hesitated to return here, even though he had no family or special friends to welcome him. The place had always been home, the only one he’d ever really had.
