The Soldier's Baby Bargain

“It’s a blessing to me. I’ve always wanted children. But the baby doesn’t make it right for us to…reconnect, does it?”

He touched her jaw, the gesture in combination with his determined stare setting her off balance. His fingers felt warm and slightly calloused against her skin.

“I think what’s required is for us to spend more time together.”

“Because of the baby?” she asked weakly.

His stare bored straight down into the core of her.

“No. Because I haven’t been able to stop thinking about you since that night.”

BETH KERY holds a doctorate in the behavioral sciences and enjoys incorporating into her stories what she’s learned about human nature. To date, she has published more than a dozen novels and short stories, and she writes in multiple genres, always with the overarching theme of passionate, emotional romance. To find out more, visit Beth at her website, www.BethKery.com, or join her for a chat at her reader group, www.groups.yahoo.com/group/BethKery.

Beth Kery

www.millsandboon.co.uk

My thanks to my editor, Susan Litman,

for guiding me through this series with a sure hand, and to Laura Bradford, my agent. As always, huge appreciation and a big hug to my husband for surviving yet another book with typical grace and patience.

Ryan Itani set down the magazine that he hadn’t really been reading and glanced around the waiting room of the veterinarian’s office. He wondered for the hundredth time if he shouldn’t have tried to call Faith Holmes before surprising her while she was at work. If he were honest with himself, he’d have to admit he was worried that if he had called, she would have made an excuse not to see him.

Not that he blamed her. After what had happened last Christmas Eve, he technically couldn’t hold it against Faith if she avoided him like the plague for the rest of her life. It would have been one thing if he’d stuck to his original mission that night three months ago—drive the twenty miles from Harbor Town to Faith’s country house and pay his respects to his friend Jesse’s widow. He’d been on three tours of duty with Jesse, both of them having served as pilots in the Air Force 28th Fighter Wing. He’d always respected Jesse’s wife, Faith, always liked her openness and kind heart, appreciated her funny, warm letters to Jesse while they’d both been stationed in Afghanistan.

If he’d also thought Faith was one of the most stunning women he’d ever met, and that Jesse didn’t deserve her, given his tendency for womanizing and infidelity, Ryan had kept that to himself.

Or at least he had until Christmas Eve.

Behind a partition, a dog barked loudly and a woman let out a shriek of alarm, bringing Ryan’s straying thoughts back to the present moment. Another dog joined in the fracas. He heard a calm but authoritative woman’s voice and went still. Faith had somehow passed him in the partitioned-off area of the waiting room where he sat. There must be another door leading from the exam rooms to the waiting area.

“Please put Knuckles’s leash in the shortest, locked position, Mrs. Biddle.” Faith’s voice floated above the two dogs’ loud barking. “You really shouldn’t bring Sheba into the office without her container, Mr. Tanner. You can’t blame Ivy and Knuckles for getting excited, seeing a cat unprotected like that. Jane, can you show Mr. Tanner and Sheba back to the examination room right away?”

“Sheba hates that container,” a man grumbled. “Sheba, come back—”

“Wait, Knuckles! Oh, dear!” a woman moaned.

Ryan heard a sound like omff and sprung up from his chair. Rushing around the partition wall, he saw a gray, short-haired cat zooming across the room toward him. He bent and scooped it up into his arms without thinking before it had a chance to tear behind the receptionist’s desk. When he straightened, he saw Faith in profile wearing a white lab coat, a skirt and pumps, her long, curling, dark hair rippling around her shoulders as she tried to restrain a scrambling Dalmatian puppy.

“Oh, no, Faith!” a short, blond-haired woman cried as she raced around the receptionist’s desk. “Put him down. You shouldn’t be holding a big dog like that in your condition.”

“It’s okay, I’m fine,” Faith managed to get out as she soothed the squirming puppy.

“Here, I have the leash. Stupid of me, I somehow disconnected him when I was trying to restrain him by the collar,” a frazzled-sounding, gray-haired woman in her fifties said as she grabbed Knuckles’s collar. She reaffixed the leash, and Faith bent to deposit Knuckles on the floor.

Someone tapped on his forearm and Ryan pulled his glued gaze off the vision of Faith. What had the receptionist meant when she’d said in your condition? Was Faith ill? he wondered anxiously. He handed Sheba-the-cat to a husky black man in his twenties, nodding once distractedly when the man offered his thanks.