The Baby Maker
Page 1
The Baby Maker
Lili Valente
Self Taught Ninja
Contents
THE BABY MAKER
Also by Lili Valente
About the Book
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
25. EPILOGUE ONE
26. EPILOGUE THE SECOND
Tell Lili your favorite part!
Sneak Peek!
About the Author
Also by Lili Valente
THE BABY MAKER
By Lili Valente
All Rights Reserved
Copyright The Baby Maker © 2017 by Lili Valente
Cover Design by Bootstrap Designs. Photography by Wander Aguiar
All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without the prior written permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book. This contemporary romance is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners. This ebook is licensed for your personal use only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with, especially if you enjoy sexy, hilarious romance novels with alpha males. If you are reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then you should return it and purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the author’s work.
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Also by Lili Valente
Standalones
The Baby Maker
The Troublemaker
The Bad Motherpuckers Series (Standalones)
Hot as Puck
Sexy Motherpucker
Puck-Aholic
Puck me Baby
Sexy Flirty Dirty Romantic Comedies (Standalones)
Magnificent Bastard
Spectacular Rascal
Incredible You
Meant for You
The Master Me Series
(Red HOT erotic Standalone novellas)
Snowbound with the Billionaire
Snowed in with the Boss
Masquerade with the Master
Bought by the Billionaire Series
(HOT novellas, must be read in order)
Dark Domination
Deep Domination
Desperate Domination
Divine Domination
Kidnapped by the Billionaire Series
(HOT novellas, must be read in order)
Filthy Wicked Love
Crazy Beautiful Love
One More Shameless Night
Under His Command Series
(HOT novellas, must be read in order)
Controlling her Pleasure
Commanding her Trust
Claiming her Heart
To the Bone Series
(Sexy Romantic Suspense, must be read in order)
A Love so Dangerous
A Love so Deadly
A Love so Deep
Run with Me Series
(Emotional New Adult Romantic Suspense.
Must be read in order.)
Run with Me
Fight for You
The Bad Boy’s Temptation Series
(Must be read in order)
The Bad Boy’s Temptation
The Bad Boy’s Seduction
The Bad Boy’s Redemption
The Lonesome Point Series
(Sexy Cowboys written with Jessie Evans)
Leather and Lace
Saddles and Sin
Diamonds and Dust
12 Dates of Christmas
Glitter and Grit
Sunny with a Chance of True Love
Chaps and Chance
Ropes and Revenge
8 Second Angel
About the Book
Some men are troublemakers or dealmakers. The men in my family? We’re baby makers.
For six generations, the women of wine country have had a saying: don’t bang a Hunter man unless you want a bun in your oven.
Yeah, well. I’ve got a saying, too: no thanks. The last thing I need is baby makes three. My business is expanding, and the only thing I’m interested in getting knocked up is my bottom line.
But then one night Emma Haverford makes me an offer I can’t refuse—she backs away from the land I have my eye on in exchange for a favor…
A big, fat, baby-making favor…
* * *
When I hear women have gotten pregnant shaking hands with Hunter men, I know I need Dylan Hunter’s…ahem, special skills…way more than I need to expand my vineyard.
I’m ready to give my heart to a child, and I’m tired of waiting for my late-to-the-party Prince Charming to make my dreams come true. So I promise Dylan: three months of hot, heavy, baby-making s-e-x, and then I’m out of his hair forever.
But what if when it comes time to say goodbye, all I want to do is keep bottling up more memories with this big-hearted man?
This sexy stand-alone romance will make you laugh, swoon, and blush baby-makin’ red. Heat level: a risk of getting knocked up during download. Paperback and audio versions are especially dangerous. Handle with care…
Dedicated to Lauren Blakely
for excellence in the field of cover image hunting.
Thank you, mama!
Chapter 1
Dylan
Here’s the thing about days that change your life…
When you wake up, you have no idea you’re on the cusp of a life changer.
Your alarm goes off at five a.m. like any other day. You yawn, curse the cold floor waiting to bite your foot as soon as you swing a leg out from under the covers, and start the usual routine.
You chug a glass of water, trudge through the sleeping house to the back door, and run down the list: feed the dogs, water the chickens, move the mobile coops across the still damp grass, milk the cow your younger brother adopted before he moved just far enough away to make it impossible for him to milk Moo-Donna—a rescue cow with a bad attitude and unusually sharp teeth—and slam a fist on the guest house door to get your nephews out of bed because your older brother wants them doing chores while they’re staying with you, even though it would be easier to gather the eggs yourself.
Getting teenagers out of bed is usually akin to hauling large boulders up a mountain against a gale force wind while birds peck out your eyeballs, and this morning is no different.
“Jacob! Blake!” I shout, pounding on the door again. “The eggs need to be sorted for the restaurant orders and the extras on the stand before seven.”
Mumbles and groans seep through the thin door, followed by a plaintive, “Five more minutes. It’s Saturday,
Uncle Dylan.”
“Which means people will be out walking the trail behind the house, looking for eggs to take home for breakfast,” I counter. “Up. Now. Go.”
I thump the door three more times for good measure and head back to the house, thinking grumbly thoughts about the list of chores I had as a seventeen-year-old and the way things were done back in my day.
I’m thirty-one, way too young for old-fart belly-aching, but that doesn’t stop me from growling at Rafe as I duck into the kitchen, “I should make the boys milk the cow. Let them get chewed a few times and they’ll be grateful for egg duty.”
Rafe, who’s tying on his work boots for the first time in longer than I can remember, laughs. “You sound like Dad.”
“I don’t sound like Dad.” I scowl harder as I grab the truck keys off the hook. “You going to be around today?”
“Where else would I be? If I’m staying here, I’m working here.” Rafe arches a dark brow as he stands. My half-brother has his Italian mother’s dark hair and olive skin, but people still mistook us for twins when we were kids.
But then, we are only two months apart in age. That kind of thing happens when your father has a habit of spreading the love around.
And around…
And around…
Before a prostate cancer fight finally slowed him down, Dad managed to have four sons by three different women. My mom was the one he didn’t marry, the hippie he met at a music festival in Mendocino, knocked up, and saw a few times a year until she got tired of the single-mother gig, dropped me off at Dad’s, and never came back.
I’ve been here ever since. This land has its claws in me deep, and most days I’m okay with that. Grouchy thoughts aside, I love what I do, especially this time of year, when the hops harvest is in and all I’ve got on my plate is managing the organic egg arm of our operation. Though, I am looking forward to the day when I get to keep the hops for myself, start my own brewery, and make a name for the Hunters with beer the way my great-granddad did with wine.
I’m so close to having our debts paid, my well-oiled growing machine in prime working order, and the reins ready to hand over to Dad.
Or, better yet, a manager I will pay to make sure Dad’s stress levels stay low and my well-oiled machine doesn’t break down. The farm was struggling when I took over three years ago, and I don’t want any backsliding.
“Thanks for taking my ass in,” Rafe continues, crossing the faded brown tile. “I appreciate it.”
I shake my head and scoff at his crazy. “Get out. Your house burned down, man. Like we’re going to let you stay in a hotel for months while you wrestle with the insurance company. Besides, this is your home. You’re always welcome.”
“I know. But I also know you’ve got a lot on your plate,” he says, gaze lifting pointedly toward the ceiling. “He still giving you shit?”
“Daily,” I say dryly. “A fresh load every afternoon, like clockwork.”
Rafe rolls his eyes. “Yeah, well, fuck that. You’re killing it, Dylan. This ship was headed for the rocks, and you turned it around. Just let Dad’s bitching go in one ear and out the other.”
I grunt as we swing out of the back door and load into my truck for the drive into town. I know he’s right, but my father’s complaining still gets to me. Pop doesn’t care that growing hops to sell to local breweries and producing sustainably farmed eggs is making us just as much money as growing grapes ever did. He doesn’t care that diseased vines nearly cost us our land, the house, the farm, and everything our family has worked hundreds of years to build. He loves wine as much as he loves women, and I’m the bad guy who took the grapes away from him.
The only way to get him off my back and on board with the path I’ve chosen is to get him what he wants.
Vines.
Vines close enough he can glimpse them out his bedroom window before he goes to sleep at night, the way it used to be when our land was acres of pinot noir as far as the eye could see. And there’s only one way I’m going to be able to deliver that. I need the three acres on the other side of the multi-use trail that runs along the back of our property.
I need that fucking pumpkin patch.
By rights, it should be mine. Farmer Stroker and I are tight. I’ve personally picked at least half the pumpkins on that land for years, for God’s sake. There should be no “considering other offers.”
And there wouldn’t be if she hadn’t shown up.
My shoulders tense and my grip tightens on the steering wheel as thoughts of her further the grouch-ification of my morning. It’s almost enough to make me turn right at the first stop sign in town. Almost enough to make me choose bitter drive-in coffee instead of Barn Roasters’ Sonoma County brew.
Almost, but not quite.
Even the risk of running into She Who Will Not Be Named can’t convince me to knock back third-rate coffee-flavored swill. I appreciate coffee the way Pop appreciates wine, and I will not subject my mouth to a caffeinated atrocity when there is hot, steamy, black gold waiting at the end of Main Street.
Besides, last night I promised Rafe one of Sophie’s cinnamon rolls as a “sorry your house and shop burned down” present, and I’m a man who keeps his promises.
At the end of Main, I roll into the rocky parking lot in front of Barn Roasters, which is already filled with mud-splattered pickups, a smattering of shiny rental cars from the wine-tasting tourists who have done their homework, and a gaggle of bicycles leaning against the faded gray planks of the old barn turned coffee house, testimony to the shop’s location just off the scenic bike trail that winds through Mercyville and into the city of Santa Rosa.
Of course, at least half of those city-dwelling cyclists are going to be pissed that they can’t check their email while they’re slugging back a local brew.
Cell reception is shitty in town, and Barn Roasters is rustic all the way—no wifi, no tables, no bells and whistles, just a bar twenty-five feet long where people can pull up a stool and enjoy an extraordinary cup of joe and the view across the hills through the windows.
It’s one of my favorite places on earth. Has been for years. A cup of Sophie’s coffee is my favorite way to start the day, and I’m not going to change that, not even to avoid another unpleasant interaction with the Blonde Terror.
“Think of the devil,” I mutter as Rafe and I open the door, releasing a puff of cinnamon, sugar, and dark-roast scented air and granting me a perfect view of a perky ponytail sidled up to the bar on my left.
Emma Haverford, thorn in my side, salt in my wound, paper cut in my eye, has beaten me to coffee yet again.
She’s wearing overalls today—faded blue-jean overalls with mud stains on the cuffs over a tight red T-shirt—with a crisp red bandana tied in her hair.
“Playing farmer dress-up again, are we?” I ask as I pass behind her on the way to two empty stools at the far end of the bar.
She turns, smiling pleasantly, her big blue eyes wide behind her wire-rimmed glasses.
Damn it, why couldn’t she have taken two minutes to slip in contacts? I hate those glasses. They make her look like a sexy librarian you secretly want to shush you for talking too loud…
“Still supercilious this morning, I see,” she coos in response, lifting her espresso in a one-sided toast.
I scrunch my brow into an exaggerated scowl. “Ease up with the big words, little lady. We’re simple folks around here. We don’t traffic in more than three syllables.”
“Yeah, right,” she says, still grinning. “You don’t fool me Dylan Hunter. You’re smarter than you look. I bet you know at least two synonyms for patronizing.”
My scowl falls away as my under-caffeinated synapses struggle to whip up a snappy comeback. After a few seconds—never leave smartassery unaddressed for more than five, six tops—I shrug and shoot her my “oh-hell, honey” grin, the one that’s been getting me out of trouble and successfully rounding third base since I was sixteen. “All right. Your point this time, Blondie. You’re lu
cky I haven’t had coffee yet.”
She tips her head smugly, clearly enjoying her victory. “Take your time. I’ll be here tomorrow. Not going anywhere.”
The seemingly innocent words set my teeth on edge again. Because I hear them for what they are—a threat, a promise that she’s not going to sell out like most of the Silicon Valley refugees, people who come seeking romance and adventure in wine country only to go running back to their cushy tech jobs when they realize how much hard work and risk-taking is involved in farming for a living.
Because growing grapes to make wine is, at its heart, farmer’s work. Not billionaire’s work. Not movie star’s work. Not something glamorous you do in your spare time in between sipping chardonnay on your patio. Running a successful vineyard takes stamina and grit combined with intimate knowledge of the land.
There’s no doubt in my mind that Blondie is missing at least two of the three. She’s clearly stubborn as hell, but junior college agriculture classes are only going to take her so far. Sooner or later, she’s going to run into a wall too high for her petite self to climb, and I’ll be there, ready to make the most of her moment of weakness.
“Damn,” Rafe murmurs as we settle onto our stools and I signal Sophie for two coffees. “That the new neighbor? The one who bought the Parker place?”