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All-American Baby
Peg Sutherland
HOPE SPRINGSPregnant and on the run…Heiress Melina Somerset needs a new home. Hope Springs, Virginia, looks like an ideal place to make a life for herself and her unborn child. The townspeople are friendly and don't ask too many questions.She's grateful to Ash Thorndyke for getting her to Hope Springs. But his methods–and his motives–have left her wondering about his past. One thing's clear: he's not the same man she fell in love with in London. Of course, she's not exactly the woman she'd pretended to be, either.But it's time for the truth. After all, they're going to be parents now!
“Have you never heard of morning sickness?” (#u8407b4c6-a4b9-54e6-ac90-6e00d74be5b3)Letter to Reader (#ud819531d-5560-559c-acb0-4f4e69a83bbd)Title Page (#u73e2e3c0-26f7-5fab-8a70-02640450ea59)PROLOGUE (#ue6b8fa13-5f12-5ae7-b688-3a5047b8f337)CHAPTER ONE (#u5a86580a-76a5-5710-b3cd-1545982e4707)CHAPTER TWO (#u7b872e59-4d25-5f9a-9392-cbab09659864)CHAPTER THREE (#uae30b6d5-6ab4-566e-bcfe-597e6c729824)CHAPTER FOUR (#u164968b1-cb9b-547f-8a85-1e10eb6ef8d1)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)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)EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
“Have you never heard of morning sickness?”
Ash stared at the teenager. “Emily, what are you talking about?”
The girl rolled her eyes in that expressive way she had. “Like anyone with half a brain couldn’t have figured it out. There’s going to be a baby! Your baby Mel’s baby!”
“Oh my God.” Ash wondered if this was how it felt to be in shock.
“Now I suppose you’re going to hyperventilate?” Emily snatched her milk glass off the table and stalked to the sink. “Get a grip, for cripes’ sake. People have babies all the time. Especially when they fall in love. If you can’t figure out what to do next, well, I give up.”
“Next?” He was supposed to do something. But what? Buy insurance? Baby formula? Cigars?
“Next. As in, go after Mel and make nice.” She rolled her eyes again. “Do I need to write a script here?” She took Ash by the arm and turned him in the direction Mel had run. “Go. Now. And repeat after me, ‘Mel, I love you.’ And work on your delivery while you’re looking for her.”
All Ash could do was follow orders and try to steady his heart.
Melinda and a baby. Could he really be that lucky?
Dear Reader,
Welcome back to Hope Springs, Virginia.
I hope you’re enjoying the people of Hope Springs as much as I am. I love small Southern towns. I love the people and the way they rally around when you need them. I love the sense of tradition. I love the colorful names and the quaint shops and tree-lined streets.
My heroine in All-American Baby doesn’t know much about small-town U.S.A., but she wants to. She wants to find that sense of community, a place where she can feel a family connection with everyone she meets. She hasn’t experienced much of that in her life and she is determined that her baby will grow up with all the things she missed.
Thank you for joining me on another visit to Hope Springs.
Regards,
Peg Sutherland
All-American Baby
Peg Sutherland
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
PROLOGUE
Hope Springs, Virginia
“TOOD GRUNKEMEIER, you’re ornery as an old rattlesnake today.”
That was Whiskey Rowlett, a regular at Fudgie’s Barbershop whenever he wasn’t out for a few weeks pursuing the interests that had earned him his nickname.
Tood eyed Whiskey. Whiskey wasn’t known for his sweet disposition, either, so it was no surprise Tood’s complaints about the heat had struck Whiskey the wrong way. “Rattlesnakes don’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” Tood pointed out.
“Besides, Tood’s right,” said another of the regulars, who liked to keep peace at Fudgie’s because his daughter-in-law and three grandkids had moved in with him and the missus, making peace a scarce commodity in his life at the moment. “It’s too dang hot for May.”
“’Specially if you’ve got a houseful, eh, Eb?”
Eben Monk nodded ruefully and conversation drifted off to kids and approaching summertime. Tood’s attention strayed. He didn’t know much about kids. The last kid he knew anything about was his nephew and he’d had bad news about the boy this very day, from the detective hired by Tood’s attorney. His nephew was dead. Found in an abandoned warehouse in Omaha, dead from an apparent drug overdose. Thirty-four and he’d already beat his old uncle to the promised land. And the capper was that nobody seemed to know what had happened to the boy’s teenage daughter.
“Lookie there!”
Everybody in the barbershop turned in response to Whiskey’s excitement. Whiskey was pointing at the TV mounted in the corner, its sound muted to a low murmur. On the screen, a dark-haired young woman was being scurried from a jet to a limousine waiting across the tarmac.
“That’s Melina Somerset,” Whiskey said.
Eb and Fudgie took two steps closer to the television.
“Naw. Can’t be.”
“The devil it’s not.” Whiskey grabbed the remote and inched up the sound.
“How do you know?” Eb asked. “Ain’t nobody seen a picture of her for I don’t know how long—fifteen years, maybe.”
“I know ’cause I seen it on the noon news outta Roanoke. Announcer said it was her.”
“Then what’s she doing here?” Fudgie said.
“She ain’t here, you old fool. She’s in San Francisco.”
“What for?”
“Well, now, if I knew that, I reckon I’d be putting up with Jerry Springer’s fool questions instead of yours, wouldn’t I?”
“You’re cross, Whiskey. Just as cross as can be. You ought to go off on another one of your benders. You know that? We’re tired of listening to you.”
Then the barbershop grew quiet as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the young woman. She was dark and thin, with eyes too large for anyone’s face beneath the brim of a man’s gray felt fedora. The collar of her raincoat was turned up, but neither it nor the hat had managed to hide her delicate beauty.
Someone in the barbershop whistled low as one of the men surrounding the young woman moved in to block her from the camera. She disappeared into the limousine and the camera panned to a female reporter who did not look nearly as elegant in her raincoat.
“Dang! Imagine that,” Fudgie said. “Melina Somerset. How old’s she now? ’Bout twenty?”
“Musta been more than a dozen years since they wiped out her mother,” Eb said. “She was just a little one then.”
“Her mother and her sister,” Whiskey said. “She’s twenty-six now. Said so on the noon news.”
“Low-life scum.” Fudgie sat in the empty barber chair and linked his fingers behind his head. “Never did catch ’em, did they?”
The debate raged about whether justice had been done for the people who had killed Melina Somerset’s mother and sister, but Tood didn’t much care. Oh, he knew how the country felt about the mysterious young woman who had apparently arrived in San Francisco the evening before. Melina Somerset, daughter of computer magnate Tom Somerset, was like America’s royalty. And all the more intriguing because she’d lived in seclusion, her whereabouts shrouded in mystery, ever since the tragedy had struck her family. Tom Somerset had paid a big price for his enormous wealth.
At least, Tood thought, Somerset had his daughter. Whereas Tood had nobody.
Seventy-one and a bad ticker marking his days and not a soul in the world to care. The only one on God’s green earth who even shared his blood was a runaway fourteen-year-old. He supposed he could send the detective off on her trail now. But he had about as much chance of ever seeing her again as he had of seeing Melina Somerset walking through the door at Fudgie’s, that’s what Tood reckoned.
Yep, he was going to die alone. That was about the size of it.
CHAPTER ONE
San Francisco, California
ASH THORNDYKE FELT the first stirring of lust as his gaze lingered on the diamond-and-emerald pendant pointing the way to the perfect breasts of the Hollywood agent’s young bride.
The breasts were clearly faux and interested Ash not in the least.
But the diamonds and emeralds were the real thing. Magnificent specimens. Ash could almost feel them in the palm of his hand, their cool ice, their weighty heft. His breath grew a little quicker and he forced himself to look away.
“A lifetime of training doesn’t vanish overnight,” he muttered to himself.
“Beg pardon, sir?”
The black-tied waiter balancing the silver tray of champagne flutes paused, a questioning expression on his young face.
“Oh. I... Nothing.”
The young man gave Ash a quizzical smile, then seemed to remember that it wasn’t his job to analyze this mob of well-dressed, well-heeled, well-known revelers. “Champagne, sir?”
Training. “Not for the moment, thank you.” Not while working. Ash had learned that at his father’s knee. Never drink on the job.
Ash scanned the crowd. He no longer even had to school himself to look as if his perusal of the gala gathering was casual. It wasn’t, no matter how blasé he managed to look. As always at this kind of bash, Ash Thorndyke was working.
Tonight, however, he wasn’t on a mission for the kind of expensive baubles worn by the agent’s trophy wife. Tonight, Ash Thorndyke had been hired to kidnap Melina Somerset.
Ash’s stomach cramped. Maybe he should have that champagne after all. Maybe he should get the heck out of Dodge. Kidnapping beautiful young heiresses wasn’t his cup of tea, as Grandfather Thorndyke would say. Cat-burglary—safecracking, pulling off heists that always made the papers but never made the court dockets—was Ash’s specialty. It was all a part of the family business. Each member had a specialty. Counterfeiting was what his dad, Bram Thorndyke, did—a skill he’d passed on to Ash’s brother, Forbes. Confidence games targeting the sinfully rich, that was Grandfather Thorndyke’s forte. For four generations, the Thorndykes had been running their circumspect little family business.
Kidnapping, however, didn’t sit right with Ash. The very idea violated his moral code. In this instance, however, family was more important than anybody’s moral code.
“Anything for family,” he said quietly to the canapé he snagged from a passing silver tray. His payoff for tonight’s distasteful little caper was his father’s freedom. And Ash was prepared to do anything to ensure that his dying father didn’t spend his final days in prison.
The men who had hired Ash promised him that much. They worked for the government, at least that’s what their identification said. And Ash had surely been around enough phony papers in his day to recognize a fake when he saw it. Of course, there was always the chance that he was being fooled, but it was a chance he was willing to take. Anything for family.
His quarry had not yet made her appearance. When she did, Ash was certain, she would be hard to miss, even though he couldn’t recall having seen a picture of her since a family funeral more than a decade earlier. The family was reclusive, everybody knew that, which made their sudden appearance in California all the more intriguing. Somerset was apparently developing some new technology for the film industry and was here to network and to research the project. Of course, the national media vultures had managed to catch the Somersets’ arrival in San Francisco, but Ash made it a policy never to watch television. Now, he just needed to be patient. The rich, headstrong heiress was waiting until a fashionably late hour to make her grand appearance at the gala in her father’s honor. Ash would know her from the stir she would create in the crowd.
“Rich women,” he said. “A pain in the backside.”
Another young waiter was at his elbow. “Champagne, sir?”
Ash’s mouth felt a little dry. His nerves were beginning to get the better of him. Bubbles rose lazily to the top of the elegant crystal flute. He could taste them, a sweet, tart explosion against his tongue.
He could also imagine those delightful little bubbles fuzzing his brain and slowing him down just as the time came to execute his plan.
He shook his head.
At midnight, when he turned over Melina Somerset to the government agents who had hired him to confiscate her, he would find a bottle of the finest bubbly in the city by the bay and relax in style. Then, tomorrow, he would be on his way East, to retrieve his father. At last. It had been a long four years since his father’s incarceration, far too long.
Ash sidled through the crowd, engaging in only the briefest of conversations with the people he passed, making sure he didn’t stand out from the crowd. In fact, his appearance was one of Ash Thorndyke’s greatest assets in his line of work. He was nondescript. Average-looking. Tall but not too tall. Average build, with a slight tendency to be too lean. Light-colored hair a shade past blond but not quite brown, worn too long to be called short and too short to be called long. Eyes that might be described as gray. Or green. Or hazel. Depended on who you talked to. Ash looked like the young attorney who drew up your will or a representative of the investment company that managed your finances. He looked like your daughter’s best friend’s husband, whose name you never can remember.
There was no doubt that Ash Thorndyke’s ability to blend in with the crowd was one of the things that had made him so successful.
That, and a sharp wit, unflappable nerves and fingertips that could feel the tumblers working in a safe lock. Ash Thorndyke could romance a safe the way some men could romance a woman. He was the best.
Had been the best, he reminded himself. After tonight, it was all over. That was the deal. His deal with himself.
He kept moving. Kept listening. Kept watching. He saw Tom Somerset, who looked as anxious as Ash felt. Ash overheard the excited chatter as the cream of California society anticipated Melina’s appearance. No one knew quite what Tom Somerset had in mind, finally bringing his cloistered daughter out into society. But they were greedily excited to be a part of it. Ash could smell their agitation.
He backed against a wall near the corridor leading to the kitchen and continued to survey the room. He registered every detail. Bits and snatches of conversation floated in and out of his mind.
“... to marry her off, and I personally am convinced that the only man in Hollywood worthy of her...”
“...career as a model. Have you seen that bone structure? Darling, she’s a natural.”
“... get our hands on her and get her out of the country, half our problems will be over.”
“...say she runs away about twice a year. Can you imagine? Everything one could ever want and all she can think to do is behave like a spoiled...”
Ash frowned. What was that? A snippet of conversation about getting our hands on her? Getting her out of the country? He began to cast about in the din of gossip for that particular conversation. He located it and realized it was coming from the corridor behind him.
“...a plane is waiting.”
“And then?”
“Then she disappears for a while.”
The voices goaded Ash’s memory. He strained to place them, but he’d heard too little. More disturbing, however, than their faint but unidentifiable familiarity, was what they were saying.
“For a while?” the second man said. “But not for good?”
There was a silence. Ash could almost see the first man shrugging and it was then he pinpointed their voices.
He was listening to the two men who had hired him. And the scheme they were discussing sounded alarmingly unlike the innocuous plan they’d outlined for him. A headstrong young woman, a worried father who wanted nothing more than to keep her safe during her stay in the U.S., and government officials with orders from way up the food chain to do anything to keep Tom Somerset happy. That’s the way it had been explained to Ash, by the two men claiming to be government operatives.
Something wasn’t adding up and Ash couldn’t decide exactly what it was. Was the government pulling a fast one on Tom Somerset? Was Somerset the one with the extra card up his sleeve? Was the government playing Ash Thorndyke for a fool?
“Hard to say,” the first man replied. “We can’t anticipate every eventuality.”
“Can we trust this Thorndyke character?”
“To get the job done? Sure. We’ve got what he wants, tight?”
The two men laughed. There was little humor in the sound.
