Make Room for Baby

by Cathy Gillen Thacker

  Maybe it’s hormones...?

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  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

  Copyright

  Maybe it’s hormones...?

  Tad had no idea what to think when it came to understanding pregnant women. But Doc Harlan had been married and madly in love with his wife for thirty-five years, had six kids and sixteen grandchildren and had handled every moment like a pro.

  “Probably’s hormones causing Abby’s mood swings,” Doc said matter-of-factly. “But I’m going to give you a few pointers that should help out.”

  Tad was willing to try anything.

  “Rule number one—agree with her about everything, no matter what.”

  Tad leaned forward in his chair. “But—”

  “No buts,” Doc said from the other side of the desk. “Just agree with her. You’ll both be a lot happier. Rule number two—give her presents for no reason, frequently.” Doc smiled. “You’ll be surprised how much that’ll help her mood, if she knows you’re thinking of her. And last but not least, rule number three—and this is very important, Tad—you need to let her know you love her.”

  Dear Reader,

  Can anyone forget the excitement that pulsed through the house when you were anticipating the arrival of a new baby? The expectation, the nervousness, the preparations will always be remembered. Two beautiful sons have been brought home to my house—and I know I never will!

  Well, now American Romance captures those unforgettable moments in the NEW ARRIVALS promotion. And to make these books even more irresistible, each soon-to-be “mommy” is about to meet the love of her life—the “daddy” to fulfill her dreams!

  This month, Cathy Gillen Thacker delivers Make Room for Baby. And that’s a topic she knows a lot about—she’s the mother of three. After moving all over the country, Cathy and her family now live in North Carolina.

  In the months ahead we’ll be bringing you some more NEW ARRIVALS books. Just look for those delightful chubby baby feet on the cover!

  Warm regards,

  Debra Matteucci

  Senior Editor & Editorial Coordinator

  Harlequin Books

  300 East 42nd Street

  New York, NY 10017

  Cathy gillen Thacker

  Make Room for Baby

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM •ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST AUCKLAND

  Chapter One

  Moonlight bathed the luxurious hotel room in iridescent light as Tad McFarlane made one last thorough tour of Abby Kildaire’s lips. When finally the kiss came to an end, he lifted his head. Still feeling as if he never wanted to let her go, he shook his head in heartfelt regret. “I can’t believe we both have to leave here tomorrow.”

  “Neither can I.” Abby sighed. As the spring breeze draped them in flower-scented warmth, the last thing Abby wanted was to return to her normal life.

  Tad kissed her brow and traced his fingertip across her lips. His arms encircled her once again. He pulled her closer to his sinewy six-foot frame. “It’s been the best weekend of my entire life,” he whispered huskily in her ear.

  And the most unexpected, Abby thought as she ran her hands across his broad shoulders. Who would’ve thought when she emptied her savings account to splurge on a trip to Paris that she—who never did anything on the spur of the moment—would also meet a handsome globe-trotting reporter and have a weekend fling that would change her life irrevocably? Because Tad had changed her life. He’d taught her that she could feel earth-shattering passion. He’d taught her that she could love a man in the most fundamental romantic way.

  “It’s been the best weekend of mine, too,” Abby admitted wistfully, wishing their impetuous love affair could continue forever.

  Tad framed her face with his hands and met her eyes. “I meant what I said before we made love, Abby. About having you with me—not just now, this weekend—but for the rest of my life.”

  How she wanted that, Abby thought as she inhaled the brisk citrus scent of his cologne. But like it or not, they had to be practical. They had to consider their responsibilities. “I have a job...” A good one. And so did he.

  “We can work around that,” Tad told her with the utter confidence she would’ve expected from one of the most respected reporters on the international beat. “I would never ask you to give up your profession just to be with me, any more than I would give up my life as a journalist.”

  Abby began to relax. Her career as the Home and Garden editor for Trend magazine was very important to her. She’d worked ten hard years to land such a coveted position. More important still, her work had sustained her through many a challenging time. Tad knew that. He accepted that. Just as he accepted that she lived in New York City and had for the past ten years.

  Abby let her gaze drift over the arresting contours of his face and the perpetually rumpled state of his naturally curly black hair. At thirty-six, he was five years older than she was. And undoubtedly the sexiest, most easygoing man she had ever met Everything about him—from his cleft chin, dimpled smile and deep blue bedroom eyes—appealed to her.

  “What about your work?” she asked curiously, aware that at the moment he had no regular home, just a post-office box. Home for Tad was whatever city he happened to be in, whatever hotel he happened to stay in. To him, they were all one and the same. A hotel room was not a home to Abby. Her apartment in New York City was home.

  Tad shrugged. “The constant traveling is beginning to wear on me. I’ve been thinking about moving back to the States for some time. Now that I’ve met you—” he paused, his expression both thoughtful and content “—it seems like the time is right for everything. Like the two of us—this—is preordained somehow.”

  Abby knew exactly what he meant. She had never believed in love at first sight, either, but the moment she’d encountered Tad in the Paris airport, she’d known he was someone very special. “You’d do that for me?” she asked softly, realizing she had never met a man more generous or tender. Her heart filling with happiness, she studied him. “You’d give up the international beat?”

  Tad nodded, his lips taking on a serious slant. “And so much more,” he confirmed with a sincerity that went soul-deep, “if it means I could be with you.” Abruptly his eyes darkened with a combination of affection and mischief. “Not that I don’t have dreams of my own. I do. The difference is that now I know I want you with me when they all come true.” He paused before adding, “I want to share my life with you, Abby. I want to share everything.”

  Hope for the future filled her. “Oh, Tad...”

  “Say you want that, too, Abby,” Tad demanded gruffly, drawing her close.

  “I do,” Abby said on a halting breath. So much.

  “Then marry me, Abby.” Tad sifted his hands through her hair. “As soon as we get back to the States.”

  Abby shut her eyes, the desire she felt for Tad warring with her common sense. How she wished they could keep the problems of their real lives at bay and stay locked in this moment in time until she’d had her fill of him and he of her. But she knew better. Didn’t she? “It’s not that easy,” she murmured, distraught. She looked deep into his beautiful eyes. “I have to be at work on Monday m
orning.” So do you.

  “Then we’ll do it Sunday night. In Tennessee,” Tad told her confidently. “There’s no waiting period there.”

  Abby grinned. Somehow she wasn’t surprised Tad had gone to the trouble to find that out. He was a very thorough determined man. Never more so than when he wanted something. “You have done your homework,” she teased.

  Tad grinned. “I always do my homework.” Many kisses and a long bout of leisurely lovemaking later, he asked her again.

  Abby knew he deserved an answer. She also knew she shouldn’t be naked, her heart pounding at his nearness, when she gave it. She knew what she wanted, but she had to think about this.

  “I don’t know. It’s so impulsive.” Abby threw off the covers and sprang from the bed. Her body still tingling from their lovemaking, she snatched up the satin-and-lace robe she’d left on the chaise. Pushing her trembling arms into the sleeves, she turned and walked toward the window. Outside the moonlight blanketed the city in sparkling silver. April in Paris. Was there anyplace more beautiful or more romantic in spring? she wondered as she belted the robe around her.

  “I’m not impulsive, Tad,” she told him as he moved to stand beside her. And yet she was here, with him. Didn’t that tell her something? About the magic of the situation and the special something they shared?

  Tad put both hands on her shoulders. He turned her to face him and flashed her a sexy grin. “I know you’re not impulsive. Neither am I.”

  “Tad...” The breath soughed from her lips as he unbelted her robe, slipped his hands inside the silky fabric and tucked them around her waist.

  “What?” he said, caressing her gently.

  “I can’t think when you do that,” Abby protested as his hands moved lower toward her thighs, then swept upward across her ribs.

  “I don’t want you to think,” Tad told her gruffly, dipping his head to hers. “I want you to kiss me.”

  And heaven help her, she did.

  By Sunday morning he had her on a jet to Memphis. By noon Eastern time they’d located a justice of the peace who had everything they needed right down to the witnesses, bouquet and wedding rings. An hour later they were in their hotel, making love again.

  If only things could always stay this simple, Abby thought as she melted in his arms.

  But of course, as luck would have it, they didn’t.

  Three weeks later

  TAD MCFARLANE strode into the offices of Trend magazine, knowing the moment of reckoning had finally come. He found his runaway wife right where he expected to find her—seated behind her desk, her silky golden-brown hair spilling to her shoulders, her long-lashed golden-brown eyes focused on the magazine layout in front of her.

  She turned as he approached her desk.

  Tad resisted the urge to take her into his arms and kiss some sense into her. Succumbing to passion, in lieu of talking, was what had gotten them into this mess.

  “What’s the meaning of this?” Making no effort to hide his unhappiness with her actions, Tad handed Abby the sheaf of legal papers that had finally reached him via registered mail.

  Abby arched a delicately shaped brow at him and handed the documents right back. “I would think that would be glaringly apparent.”

  Tad refused to take them. He cleared a space and sat down on the corner of her desk. “Well, it’s not.”

  Abby let the papers drop. She kept her pretty oval face level with his. “I want an annulment.”

  No, Tad thought, you don’t. You’re just angry with me right now. And considering the giant misunderstanding we had, that’s understandable.

  Determined to take whatever time they needed to work this out and salvage the marriage that had lasted barely a day, Tad folded his arms in front of him. “On what grounds?” he demanded, searching her wide-set eyes. “As I recall we consummated the marriage quite thoroughly.”

  Abby flushed, unable to argue that, and with good reason, Tad thought. They had made love repeatedly that entire weekend, both before and after the ceremony.

  “That’s just it, Tad,” Abby snapped irritably as she stood and began to pace. Her willowy body was accentuated by a buttercup yellow jersey dress. Bone-colored stockings and matching shoes showed off her spectacular legs. Just watching her made Tad’s blood run hot and quick. “We were driven by hormones. We weren’t thinking clearly.”

  Speak for yourself, Tad thought irascibly. He’d been thinking very clearly, then and now. He’d known the minute he’d laid eyes on her that he had to have her. And that desire—to make her his and his alone—had only increased over the past two weeks.

  “You’re still ticked off at me for buying the newspaper,” Tad guessed as he tried not to think how good and right her soft mobile lips had felt beneath his.

  Abby tossed her head, her hot-tempered movement filling the small elegant office with the intoxicating vanilla scent of her perfume. “You could have told me your plans before we married!”

  “I did!” Tad replied, aware they’d covered this ground the morning after they’d gotten married—the morning she’d walked out on him and their new marriage.

  “Funny, I don’t recall you saying one darn word about the two of us moving to North Carolina.”

  Tad scowled. “I told you I spent summers there as a kid.”

  “Visiting your aunt Sadie, yes, I know,” Abby said impatiently, obviously exasperated at having to go through this again.

  “I also told you I wanted to own my own newspaper,” Tad continued patiently.

  “Right!” Abby aimed an accusing finger at him. “Someday!”

  Tad cocked a brow, the hint of a smile playing around his mouth, even as he noticed Abby was still wearing the fourteen-carat-gold-and-jade ring that she’d selected to serve as both her wedding and engagement ring. That could only mean one thing—their impetuous union wasn’t nearly as over as she wanted him to believe it was. “You didn’t believe I was serious?” he chided, refusing to let her off the hook even for a second.

  Abby rolled her eyes. “Of course I did. Your plan to buy and revamp an ailing small-town paper sounded exactly like one of those irrational cockeyed retirement dreams that every man I know has. I figured you’d get around to it when you were sixty or something. And I’d happily go along with you at that point, twenty-five years from now, when I was ready to retire from the business, too!”

  Abby’d never dreamed a journalist of Tad’s caliber and fame would attempt to drop out of the mainstream at age thirty-six! Never mind literally the day after he’d married her. But that was exactly what had happened.

  Unable to talk him out of it, unable to put the brakes on her formerly sedate but work-laden life that was fast spinning out of control, she’d promptly put a hold on everything and curtailed any plans to actually move in together, saying they needed time—at least three weeks!—to cool off and rethink what they’d done.

  At first Tad had been adamantly opposed to such an arrangement. When she hadn’t backed down, he’d eventually agreed to her request, but only because she’d given him no choice. Besides, he had some stories to finish and loose ends of his own to tie up before concentrating once again on her and their marriage.

  Abby tried hard not to think what his nearness was doing to her or notice how fast her heart beat whenever he was near her. “Look, I’m sure what you are doing in Blossom is laudable,” she said politely.

  “But?” Tad said, sensing there was more.

  Abby swallowed around the unaccustomed dryness in her throat. “If you’d told me you had already put a bid in on the Blossom Weekly News beforehand and were planning to move to North Carolina as soon as said bid was accepted—”

  “If said bid was accepted,” Tad corrected, letting her know that at that point it had been far from a done deal.

  “—then I never would’ve married you,” Abby concluded. Because that would have meant giving up her job at Trend, and she never would have done that.

  Tad lounged against her desk. “So
now it’s over—just like that?”

  “It has to be.”

  “No,” Tad said heavily, looking very sexy in jeans that clung like a second skin, a white oxford shirt worn open at the throat, tweed sport coat and hand-tooled leather boots. “It doesn’t.”

  Damn it all, anyway, Abby thought as she returned to her desk. She should have known a man like Tad, who was used to getting damn near anything and everything he wanted in life, would be difficult about this! She sat back in her chair, her forearms lying flat against the armrests. Hiking the skirt of her dress slightly, she crossed her legs at the knee.

  “You’re saying...what—that you’re going to fight the annulment?” she asked tensely, wishing she wasn’t still so attracted to him. Wishing she didn’t recall in such exquisite detail what it had been like to make slow wonderful love with him.

  He leaned across her desk. “I’m saying I want you to see what you’re giving up before you actually give it up.” He took two airline tickets out of his pocket and placed them in front of her.

  “I can’t go to North Carolina!” Abby exclaimed.

  “Why not?” Abby’s best friend, Yvonne Kirschner prodded, walking in unannounced. “Tomorrow’s Saturday.”

  A weekend with Tad is what had gotten her into trouble in the first place, Abby thought darkly.

  Sensing something out of the ordinary was up, Yvonne looked Tad over before returning her glance to Abby. “Who’s the hunk?” she asked with a curious smile.

  Unsure how to answer that, Abby looked at the forty-one-year-old Features editor for Trend. In her power suit and heels, her short red hair impeccably coiffed, Yvonne was not just the epitome of the New York City career woman, she was Abby’s role model and mentor in the publishing world. The person Abby most frequently turned to for advice. But what could she say to Yvonne about this? Yvonne was—and always would be—married to her career. Yvonne would never have eloped on a whim the way Abby had.