by Tracy Wolff
Re-read Tracy Wolff’s fan-favorite Harlequin Superromance, originally published as From Friend to Father in 2009!!
He’s a single dad trying to find his way…even if that leads him directly into her arms! From New York Times bestselling author Tracy Wolff.
Reece Sandler’s got a ready-made family…except he’s not ready for it! When he and his late wife asked her best friend Sarah Martin to be their surrogate, he never imagined he’d raise that child with the woman. And the situation is complicated by his growing attraction to her. She’s vivacious, captivating and the kind of parent he only hopes to be. How can he resist her?
EMBRACED
Tracy Wolff
CONTENTS
PROLOGUE
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
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
PROLOGUE
SHOCK AND GRIEF mixed with the anger and disbelief that had taken root inside of her four days before until it was all Sarah Martin could do to sit still for the drawn-out service.
Vanessa was dead.
Her best friend was dead.
Killed last week in a car crash that was nobody’s fault.
Somehow the fact that it really had been just an accident made acceptance that much harder. How could the death of a beautiful thirty-three-year-old woman be no one’s fault? The other driver had simply lost control of his SUV on the rain-slicked road, despite going a reasonable thirty miles an hour in the fifty-mile-an-hour zone.
He’d spun out, crossed the center line and collided with the Prius Vanessa had bought six months before to do her part to help the environment. The little car hadn’t stood a chance against the gas-guzzling behemoth that slammed into it. And that quickly, Van was gone.
But how could she be gone, Sarah wondered almost wildly. Why now, when things were finally going so right for her? How could Vanessa be gone when they’d had plans to shop for maternity clothes together?
The baby kicked inside of her—a swift one-two shot to the bladder that had Sarah crossing her legs and praying for the funeral to end. Running a hand over the belly that had recently outgrown her regular clothes, Sarah rubbed it soothingly. The baby responded by kicking again—harder—and she pondered, fleetingly, if she was carrying the next Evander Holyfield. Lord knows, the kid certainly hit like a world champ and his or her birth was still four months away.
At the front of the church, the priest murmured the last few words of his eulogy. Thank God. She couldn’t take much more of this without screaming her fear and confusion at the world.
Yet when it was over, when it was finally time to exit the narrow, wooden pews, Sarah found she had a hard time moving. She’d wanted to leave from the second she’d arrived at the church, had wanted to be as far away from the pretty lavender casket in front of the altar as she could get.
But now, all she could think was that this was the absolute last time she and Vanessa would ever share a space. There would be no more cups of coffee at the local coffeehouse, no more quick trips to the mall. No more pizza-and-movie nights with the boys when Reece was out of town. Nothing but months and years of empty afternoons stretched before her.
But she couldn’t stay here forever. The pallbearers were taking Vanessa’s casket away, preparing to load it into the hearse for the final trip to the cemetery. Sarah should go—was expected to go. But she didn’t think she could take any more goodbyes without cracking.
Sarah walked slowly down the aisle of the church, pain heavy within her. When she got outside, she caught her first glimpse of Reece since that awful day at the hospital. He looked terrible—tired, worn-out and with the same bruised, shell-shocked look she’d seen this morning when she’d glanced in the mirror.
As she looked at him, she realized there was an air of rage about him that she lacked, a fury that went somehow deeper than her own pain and horror.
When that car had lost control in the rain, Sarah had lost her best friend. But Reece—Reece had lost his wife, his best friend and his soul mate, all wrapped up into one vivacious, wonderful package. Was there any doubt, then, why he looked like he wanted to take on what was left of his world?
“Reece.” She stopped in front of him, laid a hand on his arm. “I’m so sorry.”
His confused brown eyes met hers, searching as if he was trying to figure out who she was. “Sarah.” The word sounded forced, almost strangled.
“Call me, if you need anything at all.”
His gaze dropped to her stomach, to the bump that was beginning to show. “The baby—” His voice broke and she reached out to cover his hand with her own.
“Don’t worry about that now. We’ve got plenty of time to figure it all out. The baby’s not due for months yet.”
He nodded jerkily, as if he heard the words she was saying, but couldn’t quite understand them. She couldn’t blame him—getting through the day was hard enough without facing her suddenly uncertain future.
She wrapped her arms around him and hugged him tightly. “We’ll get through this, Reece.” She felt the need to say the words to him, even though she wasn’t sure she believed them herself.
He patted her back almost absently, then turned away when someone called his name. She tried not to feel bereft, tried not to blame him for his lack of response. It wasn’t his fault that he and Vanessa were the last two people she had on earth to rely on. No more than it was his fault that Vanessa’s death had completely shattered her.
It had shattered him, as well.
Blinking back tears, Sarah headed to her car. She was nothing to him, she reminded herself. Just his dead wife’s best friend.
And the mother of his unborn child.
CHAPTER ONE
SHE DIDN’T KNOW whether to laugh or cry. So Sarah did what she always did when she had the choice—threw back her head and laughed herself silly. Then dived for the shut-off valve at the base of the toilet that was currently overflowing onto the crimson tile floor she had laid herself a year ago.
Once the water flow was cut off—and the floor mopped up—she turned to Johnny, the oldest of her five-year-old twins. “Does someone want to explain to me what happened this time?”
“Pirate Jack was a bad, bad pirate, Mommy,” Johnny said in his earnest little boy voice, his blue eyes wide with sincerity. “He had to walk the plank.”
“Yeah,” Justin said. “He’s a criminal, Mommy. He deserves a terrible pun-pun-pu—”
“Punishment.” Johnny rolled his eyes with all the annoyance of a big brother—as if far more than five minutes separated the two of them.
“Walked the plank?” Sarah shook her head in amazement. “Into the toilet? Again? I thought we talked about this.” Over and over and over again, they had talked until she felt like a broken record. Or worse, a useless one.
“That’s where Jasper went when he died, Mommy. Remember? We gave him a hero’s funeral.”
Of course she remembered. Her brother—her wonderful, irresponsible, fun-loving brother—had been babysitting the twins when the fish had died and, for whatever reason, had decided to give the goldfish a “proper” funeral. Complete with a burial at sea, accomplished by flushing him down the guest bathroom toilet.
Too bad Tad hadn’t thought to warn the twins that not everything that went into the toilet actually made it down the pipes and out to sea. It might have sav
ed her budget—not to mention what little sanity she had left.
For the past three months, she—and her trusty plumber—had rescued everything from superheroes and toy soldiers to the baby’s rattle and hair bows from the toilet and the pipes below it. But Pirate Jack, he was a new one. It was definitely his first trip down the flusher.
Turning back to the toilet, she tried to locate some part of the toy still sticking into the bowl—an arm, a leg, a head, she wasn’t picky. But alas, Jack had made it all the way into the pipes before getting stuck.
“Which Pirate Jack was it?” she asked, feeling the need to clarify as the boys had about twenty variations on the pirate theme. Please don’t let it be the big one her brother—
“The one Uncle Tad got us.”
Of course it had to be that one. That one was larger than her fist and had hard plastic arms and legs shooting off in all directions. She was shocked the thing had actually made it out of the bowl.
With a sigh, Sarah headed downstairs to get the plunger out of the garage. Not that she had a hope of getting the stupid toy out—as big as it was, she was almost positive it was well and truly lodged in the pipe. Which meant calling Vince the plumber. She sighed. Which meant at least two hundred dollars she couldn’t afford to spend this month, not with the two visits Vince had already paid to their house on top of the unexpected car repairs she’d had to deal with last week. The new transmission had eaten up most of her discretionary income for the month. She really hated to dip into her savings, but it wasn’t like she had a choice. Unless, by some miracle, the plunger actually worked.
After wrestling with the plunger for fifteen minutes, Sarah gave up. It was time to call Vince. She reached for the phone—what did it say about her life that he was number two on her speed dial?
“Boys,” she said softly as she checked on them. They were playing in their room, building blocks into huge towers then knocking them down with their trucks. “I’m going to be on the phone for a few minutes. Keep it down, okay? The baby’s sleeping.”
“Okay, Mommy,” Justin said sweetly, even as his brother rolled his eyes.
“She’s always asleep,” complained Johnny.
“That’s what two-month-old babies do, sweetie. They sleep a—” She cut off in midsentence as Angie, Vince’s full-time receptionist, answered the phone. And how sick was it that she knew the other woman’s name?
“Hi, Angie. It’s Sarah Martin. My toilet’s clogged again.”
“What’d the boys flush this time?” Angie asked, laughter evident in her voice.
“Their favorite pirate toy had to walk the plank.” Despite the drain on her finances, she had a hard time keeping the amusement out of her voice, as well. Really, who on earth—besides five-year-old boys—would ever think to do such a thing?
“Nice one. Give me a second and I’ll see if Vince can get over there this morning.”
“No problem. I’ll be home all—”
The smoke alarm in the kitchen went off. “Oh, no! The cookies!”
Sarah ran down the stairs, her first thought to stop the screeching before it woke the baby. But as soon as she hit the first floor, she realized that was easier said than done. The entire downstairs was thick with smoke as she’d left the cookies in—she glanced at the clock—nearly twenty minutes longer than she should have.
Opening the back door and various windows on her way to the kitchen, she waved frantically at the smoke detector in the hallway, trying to clear the smoke from beneath it.
“The cookies are burnded?” asked Justin, lower lip quivering, as she rushed into the kitchen and pulled the blackened treats from the oven.
“Burnded doesn’t quite cover it,” she muttered to herself. They were so blackened she feared they’d burst into flames any second. With a sigh she dumped them—tray and all—into the sink and ran water over them. It was the second batch she’d massacred that week.
“Not again,” wailed Johnny over the scream of the smoke detector. “Mommy, you promised we’d have cookies today.”
“And we will. I—”
“Sarah?” Angie came back on the line.
“Shh.” She turned a stern look on her boys, who ignored it and continued to whine about the lack of chocolate-chip cookies in their lives. “Yes, Angie?” she said, straining to hear the receptionist.
“Vince can be there around two o’clock. Is that okay?”
“Sure. Why not?”
“It sounds like you’ve got your hands full there.”
“What?”
“It sounds like—never mind.” Angie laughed. “I’ll talk to you later, Sarah.”
“What?”
The phone went dead in her hand as Sarah realized that not all of the noise lambasting her ears was from the boys and the smoke alarm. Some of the screams were coming from her baby girl who was now wide-awake, despite the fact that she should have slept for at least another hour.
“Coming, Rose,” she called as she headed up the stairs, the boys trailing behind her. Their tears had turned to shouts of delight the second they heard their sister’s cries. The rule was that as soon as Rose woke up from her nap, quiet time was over. Silence was definitely not their natural state.
Sarah burst into her daughter’s room, and scooped Rose from the crib, holding the small, trembling body to her chest. “It’s okay, baby. Nothing to be scared of. Mama’s here.”
The baby continued to wail despite Sarah’s presence, her cries getting louder with each high-pitched scream from the smoke detector. Would the stupid alarm never go off? To protect Rose’s delicate hearing, Sarah covered the ear not pressed to her chest with her hand.
Murmuring to the baby, she went downstairs. She wasn’t sure if Rose was hungry yet, but the comfort of a pacifier would do a lot to calm her.
Sarah barely cleared the bottom step when the doorbell rang. Vince must have been able to get away earlier than expected. Before she reached the door the boys rushed past her, their voices raised in war whoops of celebration. They loved watching Vince work, and she was beginning to suspect that they were breaking the toilet on purpose—a sneaky ploy to see the plumber again and again. Sarah had just enough time to register that Justin’s face was streaked with red lines while Johnny’s was covered with black ones, before they swung open the door.
Her boys paused in mid-war whoop. Vince wasn’t standing on the other side of the threshold.
Reece Sandler was.
She’d never seen her best friend’s husband look more uncomfortable, despite his carelessly styled brown hair and the designer clothes that showed off his six-foot-four-inch frame to its best advantage.
On the bright side, the sudden influx of hot September air must have been just what the smoke detector needed as it finally stopped shrieking.
Blessed silence filled the room and Sarah took a moment to compose herself. But a moment wasn’t long enough to combat the six and a half months’ worth of fury seething inside her.
A better woman might have bitten her tongue before making a comment. A good woman would certainly have made things easier on the man. But Sarah had never claimed to be trying for sainthood, and she had a lifetime of anger and hurt stored up inside of her.
* * *
AW, SHIT, was all Reece could think as his gaze collided with the baby he’d spent the past few months pretending didn’t exist. First, he’d abandoned Sarah for the last half of her pregnancy. Then he hadn’t made it to the hospital when the baby was born. And now, over two months had passed and, despite Sarah’s insistent phone calls, he’d yet to visit it.
Her, he reminded himself. Not it. The baby was a girl.
His baby was a girl.
Shame ate at him, warring with the anger and guilt and sorrow that had taken up residence in his soul two hundred and nine days ago. This baby was his responsibility—his alone—yet he’d abandoned Sarah to deal with Rose. The fact that he hadn’t wanted her to begin with—and still didn’t have a clue what to do with her—was no excus
e.
“To what do we owe this honor?” Sarah’s hostile tone—so at odds with her normally sunny disposition—wasn’t totally unexpected. Yet it still hurt in a way he was completely unprepared for. This was Van’s best friend and what she thought of him mattered. That she had every right to think of him as a total rat didn’t make her disgust any easier to bear.
“Well, are you going to answer me?”
“You haven’t—” His voice gave out and Reece had to clear his throat several times before he was able to continue. “You haven’t cashed the checks I sent.”
“That’s why you’re here? Because of the money?”
He pulled his gaze away from the pink-and-purple-clad baby in her arms and met Sarah’s. Her blue eyes were filled with rage, brimming with the stuff until he couldn’t help thinking it was a miracle he hadn’t been struck dead on her doorstep.
“Look, can I come in?” he asked, discomfort giving way to annoyance. He knew he had a lot to apologize for and he was man enough to do it. But he’d be damned if he’d do it in front of the entire neighborhood.
Those indigo eyes darkened even as they narrowed, and he was sure she would slam the door in his face. But finally, when he was really starting to sweat, she shrugged and opened the door wider. Then turned and walked away without so much as a backward glance.
“Uncle Reece, Uncle Reece!” Justin grabbed his hand and yanked—at least he thought it was Justin. It had been a long time since he’d seen the twins and with all that paint on their faces, it was difficult to tell them apart. “We missed you.”
Guilt hit him again, hard. Before Van’s death, he’d spent a lot of time with the boys. Their father—Sarah’s husband—had walked out when they were babies and Reece had been the closest thing to a father figure they had. When Van had died, he hadn’t just cut himself off from Sarah and his baby, but also from the boys he’d considered his nephews.