Pregnancy Proposals: The Duke's Baby
THE DUKE'S BABYLance Malbois, Duc du Lac, may be a hardened military man, but all he wants is to be a dad. So when Andrea Fallon, a pregnant widow, is looking for a father for her unborn baby, he has the perfect solution: a marriage of convenience. The Boss’s Pregnancy Proposal Fighting her attraction for her heart-stoppingly handsome boss shouldn’t have been so hard, until Grant Carver asks Callie to have his baby! Of course, love wouldn’t enter into the arrangement…THE MARRIAGE SOLUTIONTess Lucas had carefully planned every detail of her life, until a broken engagement led to a one-night stand with her best friend. Now she’s pregnant and Craig is demanding marriage, but Tess isn’t ready to give up on the fairy tale!
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Pregnancy Proposals
The Duke’s Baby
Rebecca Winters
The Boss’s Pregnancy Proposal
Raye Morgan
The Marriage Solution
Brenda Harlen
Table of Contents
The Duke’s Baby
The Boss’s Pregnancy Proposal
The Marriage Solution
REBECCA WINTERS, whose family of four children has now swelled to include five beautiful grandchildren, lives in Salt Lake City, Utah, in the land of the Rocky Mountains. With canyons and high alpine meadows full of wildflowers nearby, she never runs out of places to explore. These spaces, plus her favourite vacation spots in Europe, often end up as backgrounds for her romance novels. Writing is her passion, along with her family and church. Rebecca loves to hear from readers. If you wish to email her, please visit her website, www.cleanromances.com.
… LANCELOT possesses all he wants, when the queen voluntarily seeks his company and love, and when he holds her in his arms, and she holds him in hers. Their sport is so agreeable and sweet, as they kiss and fondle each other, that in truth such a marvelous joy comes over them as was never heard or known.
With an aching groan, Andrea Fallon closed the book she was reading, unable to see any more words in the fading light. It was just as well since she couldn’t bear to go on reading the hauntingly beautiful story.
Maybe never again.
Though the French poet Chrétien de Troyes might have written the story of Lancelot in 1171, his description of the famous knight’s love for Guinevere was as stirring now as then.
What woman wasn’t envious of the queen who inspired such love in the first Knight of the Round Table?
Wouldn’t any woman wish to be loved with a love so all-consuming and powerful.
Cross at herself over her preoccupation with the greatest Knight in Christendom, Andrea’s thoughts returned to Richard, the husband she’d buried three months ago.
“Would you have loved me more if I’d been able to give you a child?” her heart cried.
Since the funeral she’d gone over and over their troubled marriage in her mind, wondering if her unexpected barren condition had been so painful for him, some of his feelings for her had simply turned off.
Only twenty-one to his thirty-one when they’d exchanged vows, who would have dreamed she would develop a childbearing problem so early in their married life?
Her aunt’s cousin hadn’t been able to have children, but that didn’t seem to have affected the love between her and her husband. They went on to adopt two children. But Richard refused to talk about adoption. He wanted a child from his own body, not someone else’s.
Knowing he felt that way, Andrea hadn’t pressed him about it. But from then on their relationship underwent subtle changes. He grew more distant and threw himself into his work, either unaware of Andrea’s pain, or unwilling to deal with it because his own was too great.
Their lovemaking seemed to have become an afterthought for him. In the last year he’d behaved more like a friend than a lover with only an occasional coming together she’d been forced to initiate.
She’d hoped they would get past their sorrow, that it was temporary. Surely in time he would ache for a child and be willing to consider adoption.
Andrea was convinced that if they’d taken the steps to start adoption proceedings right away, the anticipation of becoming parents would have brought joy and helped the physical side of their marriage get back on track. But that time never came. Now it was too late.
Oh, Richard …
Hot tears formed rivulets down her cheeks.
Her aunt had promised her this period of mourning would pass. “One day you’ll meet that special someone who will want to marry you and adopt children.”
Andrea didn’t believe it, not when she remembered the other things in their marriage that hadn’t happened. With ten years difference between them, she suffered over the possibility that she simply hadn’t measured up.
Richard’s academic world had been filled with brilliant men and women. What had she been able to offer if she couldn’t give him a child they both wanted?
Why had he even married her?
The second she asked the question she realized grief was causing her to lose her perspective. She’d lost her appetite weeks ago.
Thirty-seven years of age was too young for him to die. Devastated by his early passing, which cut off all hope of their making a family, Andrea got up wearily from her resting place against a tree trunk.
A good night’s sleep was what she needed to restore her long enough to finish her husband’s latest project on Arthurian legend. Another couple of days to capture a stag or a wild boar on film—the kind you saw woven in tapestries—and her collection of pictures would be complete. Unfortunately she would have to return to New Haven without any sightings of the damsel of the lake.
