Verdict: Daddy
Daddy Material?Blake Adams thinks he's dreaming when he wakes up to find a beautiful baby girl on his doorstep. With her curly red hair and sparkling green eyes, "Annie" quickly makes an indelible impression on his hardened heart.Needing advice, Blake turns to the only person he feels he can trust: criminal attorney Marissa Mason. It's been years since he's seen his childhood friend, and it's clear this stunning woman is no longer the tomboy of their youth.Now, with Marissa looking into Annie's mysterious arrival, Blake can't imagine letting either of them go. And when she unearths a shattering twist to Annie's birth, Blake knows his fate is sealed–and that his future is not going to be spent alone.Fatherhood: Dedicated father and darling daughter–what an unbeatable combination!
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“I’m desperate, Marissa, and you’re the only one I could think of who can help me.”
“You’re in trouble with the law?” Marissa asked.
Blake shook his head, knowing that, as a criminal attorney, she had to ask. “No—at least not yet.”
Only the slightest flicker of surprise crossed her features before she regained her composure. “You’ve committed a crime?”
He shook his head. “The man who left you was an idiot.”
Her puzzled expression created a tiny line between her eyebrows, and his fingers itched with an unexpected urge to reach over and smooth it away.
“Then what do you want from me?” she asked.
“I want you to help me with a baby.”
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
The major passions of Charlotte Douglas’s life are her husband—her high school sweetheart to whom she’s been married for over three decades—and writing compelling stories. A national bestselling author, she enjoys filling her books with love of home and family, special places and happy endings. With their two cairn terriers, she and her husband live most of the year on Florida’s central west coast, but spend the warmer months at their North Carolina mountaintop retreat.
No matter what time of year, readers can reach her at [email protected], where she’s always delighted to hear from them.
Books by Charlotte Douglas
HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE
591—IT’S ABOUT TIME
623—BRINGING UP BABY
868—MONTANA MAIL-ORDER WIFE *
961—SURPRISE INHERITANCE
999—DR. WONDERFUL
1027—VERDICT: DADDY
HARLEQUIN INTRIGUE
380—DREAM MAKER
434—BEN’S WIFE
482—FIRST-CLASS FATHER
515—A WOMAN OF MYSTERY
536—UNDERCOVER DAD
611—STRANGER IN HIS ARMS *
638—LICENSED TO MARRY
668—MONTANA SECRETS
691—THE BRIDE’S RESCUER
740—THE CHRISTMAS TARGET
Contents
Chapter One
“We have a problem.”
Marissa Mason’s receptionist jerked her head toward the law office waiting room behind the closed door at her back.
Eyeing her usually calm employee with concern, Marissa closed the computer file of the legal brief she was preparing. Seldom did anything perturb small and scrappy Kitty Stancel, not even the most hardened criminals who came to Mason and Mason for representation, but something—or someone—had definitely spooked her today. Behind her designer glasses, Kitty’s brown eyes were wide with alarm, and her voice had an uncharacteristic tremor when she spoke.
“What’s going on?” Marissa reached for the phone, ready to dial 911.
“Big guy in the waiting room. I told him you weren’t seeing clients this afternoon, but he insisted. He has this wild, desperate look. Says he isn’t leaving until he’s talked with you, even if he has to spend the whole day and night waiting.”
“What’s his name?”
“Blake Adams. He’s not one of our regulars. I’ve never seen him before.”
Blake Adams.
The familiar name threatened to inundate Marissa in a sea of nostalgia, but before she succumbed to a cruise down memory lane, she had to make certain the man in the waiting room was the same Blake Adams she had known so well and not some total stranger.
After shoving from her chair, she circled her desk, motioned Kitty aside and opened her office door the slightest crack. The tiny slit gave her a view of the reception area, where the man sat cooling his heels, dwarfing the Danish-Modern chair with his tall body, one work-booted foot tapping an impatient rhythm on the beige Berber carpet.
Marissa’s heart stuttered at the sight: long, tall and tanned, the man in the waiting room had shaggy black hair, a chiseled jaw, high cheekbones and startling gray eyes. His big hands were clasped between knees bared by cargo shorts that displayed well-muscled calves above the tops of his work boots. A spanking-white, short-sleeved polo shirt revealed his knotted biceps and sported the logo Adams Landscape Designs with a stylized palm tree embroidered above the pocket.
Marissa grabbed the doorknob to support her weakened knees. It was her Blake, all right. Not the lean, lanky insecure boy she’d known and loved, but a mature man, even more attractive than the teenager had been. “Beefcake,” her sister, Suze, would call him, a man with the physique and steamy sex appeal of those featured on calendars of firefighters and police officers.
Marissa gave herself a mental shake and tried to slow her pulse and order her racing thoughts. She doubted anyone produced calendars of hunky landscape designers, and even if they did, Blake’s glowering expression would negate his participation. He looked ready to chew nails and spit.
Marissa eased the door closed and turned to Kitty. “What’s he done?”
Marissa was a defense attorney, and since Blake had demanded to see her, she assumed he was in trouble with the law. All her clients were, in one way or another. Lots of folks in Dolphin Bay had prophesied years ago that Blake, with his checkered background, would probably end up behind bars. But Marissa hadn’t.
Sure, Blake had been impulsive, even reckless at times. She recalled that August night when she was thirteen, when Blake had thrown rocks at her bedroom window to awaken her. He’d talked her into sneaking out of the house at midnight to go down to a darkened stretch of beach. They had lain on their backs and watched the spectacular shower of Perseid meteors until just before dawn. She’d been grounded for a week for that particular trick, but the experience had been worth it.
