âAll you have to do is say yes to my proposal.â
Sabrina winced. Bad choice of word. âProposition,â she amended.
Jake rubbed his temples. âThis is the kind of idea only you could come up with. Breaking up with you was like breaking out of Fairyland.â
Her eyes smarted, but she said airily, âAnd Iâll bet you miss the magic.â
His head jerked, but he held her gaze, staring her down for several long seconds.
âYouâre overlooking one small fact,â he said. âNamely, youâre the last woman on earth I would marry.â
Available in August 2010from Mills & Boon®Special Momentsâ¢
Daddy on Demand by Helen R Myers & Déjà You by Lynda Sandoval
A Father for Danny by Janice Carter & Baby Be Mine by Eve Gaddy
The Mummy Makeover by Kristi Gold & Mummy for Hire by Cathy Gillen Thacker
The Pregnant Bride Wore White by Susan Crosby
Sophieâs Secret by Tara Taylor Quinn
Her So-Called Fiancé by Abby Gaines
Diagnosis: Daddy by Gina Wilkins
SABRINA MERRITT COUNTED at least a dozen photographers waiting for her to exit the gate area at Atlantaâs Hartsfield-Jackson Airport. They all had their lenses trained on her legs, which two days ago had been labeled âchunkyâ by beauty pageant pundits.
Great. It had been humiliating enough seeing close-ups of her thighs on national television. Now the local media, the papers read by everyone who mattered to her, were about to jump on the bandwagon.
âSabrina, this way,â one of the photographers called.
She ignored him, certain that if she so much as met anyoneâs eyes, the smile sheâd rehearsed in her compact mirror as the plane taxied to the gate would fall off her face. Seven months as Miss Georgia had made her thick-skinned about personal criticism. But to be slammed so publicly, just when she needed people to take her seriously, and over something so meaningless to anyone but herself as her legsâ¦
Glassy-eyed, she scanned the crowd, in search of her good friend Tyler, whoâd said he would meet her. Darn it,heâd promised.
Then she saw the lone man beyond the media group. Not Tyler.
Jake Warrington.
The way he leaned his tall frame against a pillar might appear nonchalant, but the rigidity of his shoulders and the thumbs hooked in the pockets of his jeans proclaimed I know what I want and no oneâs going to stop me.
That was Jake, all right.
Was he here to gloat? Sabrina lifted her chin. She was strong and capable, even if nobody else had figured that out yet. She tapped a finger against her cheek and announced, âIâm up here, folks.â
A sheepish laugh rippled through the photographers. They tilted their cameras higherâbut not before theyâd snapped their shots of her thighs.
Concealing her legs beneath a long, filmy sunshine-yellow sundress didnât seem to have lessened anyoneâs interest in them. Sabrina quashed the urge to spread her hands protectively over the delicate fabric.
Sheâd flown home to Atlanta a day ahead of her official schedule, in the hope of eluding the media. How stupidly naive. If Jake had been the one facing a media meltdown, heâd have anticipated this hoo-ha and prepared a speech.
âSabrina, youâre the first Miss Georgia in two decades to be eliminated from the Miss U.S.A. Pageant in the first round.â A female TV reporter oozed fake sympathy.
âGood grief, is that right?â That fact, along with every other mortifying detail of her failure, had been endlessly recycled in the media over the past few days.
Presumably for the benefit of the one person in some remote corner of Alaska who hadnât yet heard about her chunky thighs.
A couple of the men caught the gleam in Sabrinaâs eyes and laughed. Their reaction disconcerted their female colleague, who snapped, âHow does that make you feel?â Then the woman recovered her TV manners and lowered her voice to radiate puzzled concern. âDo you think your thighs were the real problem, or are the rumors of interpersonal differences between you and another contestant true?â
In other words, was Sabrinaâs body or her personality the bigger loser? Her insides quivered, an outright betrayal of her resolution to get tough on herself. Although sheâd learned to handle snarky comments since sheâd won the Miss Georgia crown, nothing in her existence to dateâ