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Adding to the Family
GINA WILKINS
MIRANDA MARTIN–MOMMY?Beautiful and popular, Miranda Martin had the type of exciting, whirlwind existence that any single woman would envy. But when her two young nephews were unceremoniously deposited on her doorstep, her life took a turn toward the domestic–and fast!Fortunately, Miranda had a reliable friend to turn to: her accountant, Mark Wallace, himself the doting single dad of two little girls. After Mark opened his home to her new brood, Miranda began to feel differently about him…an emotion far deeper than friendship. As she came to terms with raising two young boys, could she also forge a new family–with Mark at her side?
“Miss Martin? Miranda Martin?”
Both Mark and Miranda froze.
“My name is Jack Parsons. I’m an acquaintance of your sister’s.”
“Lisa?” Miranda felt her heart jump. “Has something happened to her?”
“No, she’s okay. She wanted me to give you this.” The man held out an envelope. “And I have a delivery for you in my car.”
She was looking down at the envelope in her hand, when she heard Mark say in a rather odd voice, “Um, Miranda? I think I know what the delivery is.”
She looked up at him, then turned to see what he was staring at so intently. Her own jaw dropped. “Oh, no.”
Jack Parsons was on his way back to her, dragging two large, wheeled suitcases behind him. And tagging behind those suitcases like little ducklings were a couple of sandy-haired boys with rumpled clothes and identical faces….
Dear Reader,
Most of us look forward to October for the end-of-the-month treats, but we here at Silhouette Special Edition want you to experience those treats all month long—beginning, this time around, with the next book in our MOST LIKELY TO…series. In The Pregnancy Project by Victoria Pade, a woman who’s used to getting what she wants, wants a baby. And the man she’s earmarked to help her is her arrogant ex-classmate, now a brilliant, if brash, fertility expert.
Popular author Gina Wilkins brings back her acclaimed FAMILY FOUND series with Adding to the Family, in which a party girl turned single mother of twins needs help—and her handsome accountant (accountant?), a single father himself, is just the one to give it. In She’s Having a Baby, bestselling author Marie Ferrarella continues her miniseries, THE CAMEO, with this story of a vivacious, single, pregnant woman and her devastatingly handsome—if reserved—next-door neighbor. Special Edition welcomes author Brenda Harlen and her poignant novel Once and Again, a heartwarming story of homecoming and second chances. About the Boy by Sharon DeVita is the story of a beautiful single mother, a widowed chief of police…and a matchmaking little boy. And Silhouette is thrilled to have Blindsided by talented author Leslie LaFoy in our lineup. When a woman who’s inherited a hockey team decides that they need the best coach in the business, she applies to a man who thought he’d put his hockey days behind him. But he’s been…blindsided!
So enjoy, be safe and come back in November for more. This is my favorite time of year (well, the beginning of it, anyway).
Regards,
Gail Chasan
Senior Editor
Adding to the Family
Gina Wilkins
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
As always, to my own loving and supportive family—
John, Courtney, Kerry and David.
Love you all.
GINA WILKINS
is a bestselling and award-winning author who has written more than seventy books for Harlequin and Silhouette. She credits her successful career in romance to her long, happy marriage and her three “extraordinary” children.
A lifelong resident of central Arkansas, Ms. Wilkins sold her first book to Harlequin in 1987 and has been writing full-time since. She has appeared on the Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and USA TODAY bestseller lists. She is a three-time recipient of the Maggie Award for Excellence, sponsored by Georgia Romance Writers, and has won several awards from the reviewers of Romantic Times.
It’s Jared and Cassie Walker’s twenty-fifth
wedding anniversary and you are cordially
invited to the biggest bash in Texas!
After decades of caring and support
for their friends and family,
we want to honor these two lovebirds.
So, come one, come all to celebrate on the
Walker Ranch, Saturday, October 15
!
RSVP with Molly and Shane Walker
Contents
Prologue
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Epilogue
Prologue
Molly Walker appeared in the barn door with the early April afternoon sunlight behind her, making her long, red-streaked hair shine almost as brightly as her smile. “I have the most spectacular idea!”
Her half brother, Shane, and the horse he had been grooming looked around with almost identically wary expressions. “It always gives me a headache when you say that,” Shane muttered.
Undaunted, Molly came all the way inside the barn to stand in front of him. “Trust me, this is a really good plan, and you barely have to do anything. I can take care of most of it myself.”
The lanky cowboy dropped the curry brush on a shelf and seemed to brace himself before asking, “Just what is it I barely have to do?”
Molly’s dark green eyes held an expression of reproof when she shook a finger at him. “Stop overdramatizing. It isn’t as if I’ve ever asked you to do anything that complicated.”
Shane shared a comical look of disbelief with his beloved mare. “Riiight.”
Molly slapped his arm playfully. “Anyway, you know Mom and Dad’s twenty-fifth wedding anniversary is coming up in October.”
“I remember their wedding. I was a teenager, after all. Just as I remember you being born a year and a couple of weeks later.”
Shane and his father, Jared Walker, had been a couple of footloose bachelors before they’d encountered Cassie Browning and had both fallen head over heels in love with her. Nearly twenty-five years later, they were still a close and happy family, even though Shane had been married for almost ten years now and had two daughters of his own.
It was that loving family relationship that Molly wanted to commemorate in a big way. “We should plan a surprise anniversary party for them.”
“Okay—that sounds normal enough. What’s the catch?”
“No catch. They’re planning that trip to Europe in early October, right? So while they’re gone, we can get everything in place and we’ll welcome them back with a big silver anniversary barbecue.”
Shane looked almost relieved. “Yeah, we can do something like that. Kelly and I will help you plan it. I’m sure Aunt Layla and Aunt Michelle would be thrilled to help with the arrangements. Not to mention the assorted other aunts, uncles and cousins who jump at any chance to get together for a party.”
Since Jared had five siblings, all married with offspring, any party the Walker clan put together was a big one. But Molly didn’t intend to limit this bash merely to family. “We’ll invite the D’Alessandros, of course.”
Jared’s sister, Michelle, had married private investigator Tony D’Alessandro not long before Jared and Cassie had married. Tony’s large and boisterous family had been a part of Molly’s life from the beginning. Her cousin Brynn, the daughter of Jared’s deceased younger brother, Miles, had married another D’Alessandro, drawing the bond between the two families even tighter.
“And I want to invite the foster sons Mom and Dad took in during the earlier years—back before the ranch became a youth facility. Won’t they love seeing them all together again for this special occasion?”
“We can definitely invite the ones we’ve kept in touch with. There’s no way we can assume they’ll all be here, of course.”
“No, I want as many as possible here,” she insisted. “Even the ones we haven’t heard from in a while. I’m hoping to have at least a dozen of them.”
“There are several we haven’t heard from in years—Mark and Daniel and Kyle, for example. They were special to Dad and Cassie, but we don’t even know where they are now.”
“We’ll find them.” She flashed another confident smile. “We have uncles who own a private investigation agency, remember? With Uncle Tony, Uncle Joe, and Uncle Ryan helping us, I bet we’ll have all the guys located within a few weeks.”
“Maybe,” Shane agreed, as confident as she was in their uncle’s abilities, “but finding them doesn’t guarantee they’ll want to return here. Not everyone has fond memories of the past, you know, especially when that past includes a stint in foster care—as you could ask Dad or most of his siblings.”
Molly tossed her head, making her mane of red-and-gold streaked hair swirl around her determined face. “Once the uncles find them, I’ll talk them into being here.”
“If anyone can, I suppose it would be you.”
“Absolutely. Trust me, Shane, this is going to be the best anniversary party ever. Mom and Dad are going to be so surprised.”
“I hope you aren’t too disappointed if everything isn’t perfect, Molly. You just might be in for a few surprises yourself, trying to plan something this big.”
Waving a dismissive hand, Molly turned to head toward the main house on the sprawling Walker ranch not far from Dallas, Texas. She had lists to make, and a million things to do to pull off the perfect twenty-fifth anniversary party by October.
Chapter One
There was something about a man with a calculator that Miranda Martin found oddly sexy. A man whose fingers flew over a number pad, adding up columns of dollar amounts as he talked about bonds and investments and tax-deferred annuities—just the mental image could make her shiver with exhilaration.
Other women were attracted to cowboys or cops or bikers or baseball players; Miranda was a sucker for accountants. One accountant, in particular. Her own.
Her chin cupped in both hands, she rested her elbows on his desk and gazed across the glossy surface at him. It didn’t hurt that he was so very nice to look at. Mark Wallace had clear gray eyes, disheveled brown hair with a tendency to curl into loose waves, and the most perfect teeth she’d ever seen. Had he not chosen to work with numbers, he could probably have made a living as a model.
“What’s this deduction you’re claiming for comfortable shoes?” he asked, frowning at the paperwork in front of him.
“I had to buy them on a business trip last month. The shoes I took with me were killing me, and you know you can’t really concentrate on business when your feet hurt. I was much more effective after I bought those nice, comfy shoes—which, I might add, were obscenely expensive.”
He had been her accountant for just over a year, and he always gave her exactly the same look when she said something he considered outrageous. He was giving her that look now, and she enjoyed it immensely. She had anticipated that expression when she had listed the deduction she had known very well his sharp eyes would not overlook.
He stared at her with his head cocked slightly to one side, as if he weren’t quite sure if she was joking, and then he shook his head and marked through the item with a decisive stroke of his mechanical pencil.
She just loved it when he did that.
“Other than the shoes, everything looks to be in order,” he remarked, closing the file folder. “I’ll have the tax forms ready for your signature by the end of the week. Next time, though, you might not want to wait until the last minute to bring your information to me. You didn’t allow either of us much room for error.”
“As if you ever make any errors,” she teased.
He shrugged, a smile playing at one corner of his firm mouth. “It’s been known to happen—on very rare occasions.”
Sometimes she couldn’t resist touching him. She reached out to stroke a fingertip across the top of his right hand—the one that had just been calculating her money. “I find it hard to believe you aren’t completely perfect.”
Maybe after a year of working with her, he was finally getting accustomed to her flirting. He had been amusingly disconcerted the first couple of times, but during their meetings since, he’d seemed to accept it as part of the package. Especially since she had teasingly informed him that talking about money always gave her goose bumps.
In response to her stroking his hand, he shot her a look that was so direct, so male—and so uncharacteristically predatory—that her mouth suddenly went dry. “Someday I might just take you up on one of those come-hither looks,” he murmured. “And then what are you going to do?”
For just a moment, Miranda Martin—who always had a witty put-down in response to even the most insistent advance—couldn’t think of anything to say. She found herself lost in Mark Wallace’s gleaming gray eyes, her mind filled with unsummoned and decidedly erotic images rather than cleverly cutting retorts.
Fine, take me up on it, she would have liked to say. Heck, just take me.
But she didn’t say it, and the primary reason for her reticence burst into Mark’s home-based office only a moment later.
“Daddy, I’m home from preschool and guess what? We’re going on a field trip to the Museum of Discovery and I—”
