Nicola Marsh - Wife and Mother Wanted

She shouldn’t flirt with him.

She really shouldn’t. But a little demon was prodding her with its pitchfork. “I don’t have much to do. Maybe you still want to play?” Carissa asked, leaning against the wrought-iron table in a provocative pose.

“Uh, no, thanks,” Brody muttered, looking delightfully flustered, and she bit back a grin, enjoying this more than she should. He had loosened up a lot over the past month. However, that didn’t mean she couldn’t have a little fun at his expense.

“You’re running scared,” she said, taking a step toward him.

“Scared of what?” He backed away.

“This.” She took another step and poked him in the chest, expecting him to make a run for the house at the brief physical contact.

However, he didn’t move a muscle, his dark gaze unreadable, and her pulse accelerated madly.

“And this.” She ran a finger down his cheek, enjoying the rasp of stubble against her fingertip.

He grabbed her hand and lowered it, regret mixed with desire in his eyes.

“I’m not scared. I’m just wary,” he said.

Nicola Marsh has always had a passion for writing and reading. As a youngster, she devoured books when she should have been sleeping, and later kept a diary, which could be an epic in itself! These days, when she’s not enjoying life with her husband and son in her home city of Melbourne, she’s at her computer, creating the romances she loves in her dream job. Visit Nicola’s Web site at www.nicolamarsh.comfor the latest news of her books.

Found: His Family #1836

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To the Sirens, for their friendship, support and cyber hugs

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

EPILOGUE

‘I DON’T believe this!’

Carissa Lewis collapsed into a garden chair and resisted the urge to throw her mobile phone into the nearby pond. Though she wouldn’t risk it. The way her luck was running today she’d probably decapitate Fred, her favourite ceramic frog.

Instead, she took a deep breath, gritted her teeth and lowered her voice. ‘Peter, how could you do this to me? To the children? We were counting on you.’

Her boyfriend of eight months—eight far too long months—said, ‘Yeah, well, you shouldn’t ask so much of people. Personally, I’ve had a gutful.’

She shook her head, wondering if the late nights she’d been keeping in preparation for the annual Easter pageant had melted her brain. How could asking Peter to play the Easter Bunny for the local kids in town be asking too much? The guy didn’t have a heart—a fact she’d slowly realised over the course of their lukewarm relationship but hadn’t got around to doing anything about.

So she had a thing for ‘comfortable’ boyfriends—guys who didn’t challenge her, or demand anything of her, or set off any fireworks in her vicinity. So what? She liked it that way. Comfortable was good, and the antithesis of her totally uncomfortable childhood, when she would have given anything for someone to depend on.

She tried a different tack. ‘Peter, this is important to me. Please, won’t you reconsider?’

‘Sorry, Carissa. I want out. Of everything.’

Her heart stilled for all of two seconds before the adrenaline kicked in again. ‘Are you dumping me? Why, you weak, spineless, no-good—’

The dial tone hummed in her ear and she let out a frustrated yell, leapt to her feet and jumped up and down on the spot, like a two-year-old having a doozy of a tantrum.

‘What are you staring at?’ she said to Fred, finding his wide froggy grin smug rather than endearing at that moment. ‘Where am I going to find an Easter Bunny now?’

It had to be the time of year.

Things always went wrong at Easter.

Her parents had died at Easter when she was three, she’d been adopted out a year later to the family from hell, and she always seemed to hang onto some loser like Peter to avoid being alone with her memories around this time.

Yep, Easter stank—and it looked as if this year was no exception.

‘My daddy says to look under the nearest bush,’ a small, high-pitched voice said from somewhere over her new neighbour’s fence. ‘Though everyone knows it’s way too early for the Easter Bunny to arrive. He’s practising his hopping ready for next week.’

Carissa looked up and spied a splash of red in the towering eucalypt’s lower branches, the bright material ending above a set of scraped knees covered in a patchwork of Mickey Mouse sticking plasters.

‘Mmm, you could be right,’ Carissa said, hoping the pint-sized person to whom those legs belonged knew her way around trees. She’d hate for the little girl to take a tumble.

She’d heard about her new neighbours, who had barely moved in a week ago. A single father with a girl of about six. Though she’d been meaning to welcome them to the neighborhood, she hadn’t got around to it yet.

Or maybe it had something to do with the brief glimpse she’d caught of the father as he’d unloaded his car. Long, lean legs and a firm, cute butt in faded denim as he’d bent over his car boot had had her taking a second look—a long second look, which had almost culminated in her steering her car onto the lawn rather than up her driveway.

And, though she’d barely caught a glimpse of his face when he’d looked up to see what the commotion was about as she’d grazed a rubbish bin while over-correcting, that one illicit ogle at his posterior had sent her welcome committee plans up in smoke. She’d been way too embarrassed to face him after he’d witnessed her parking skills.

‘What’s your name, sweetheart?’ Carissa asked, hoping to talk the little girl out of the tree and put a face to the stubby legs. ‘Mine’s Carissa.’

‘Molly Jane Elliott.’ The little voice pronounced it like a title bestowed by the Queen. ‘But you can call me Molly.’

Smiling, Carissa wandered over to the fence and peered into the tree’s lower branches, still unable to catch sight of the friendly little girl. ‘Pleased to meet you, Molly. Would you like to come down and meet Fred? He’s my favourite frog, but I have loads of others.’

Molly hesitated for all of two seconds before scrambling down in a flash of legs and arms, landing in a none-too-gracious heap at the bottom of the tree.

‘You okay, sweetie?’

Molly nodded and raised her head. ‘Yeah, that’s how I always land. I get a Mickey Mouse every time.’ She pointed to her knees and grinned, displaying a darling gap where a front tooth should be.

However, Carissa didn’t glance at Molly’s knees. Instead, she stared at the girl’s face in shock, seeing a startling resemblance to herself at that age: messy blonde curls, wary blue eyes and a defiant expression that warned Don’t mess with me. I may look little, but I’ve seen plenty.

‘You look kinda funny, Carissa.’ Molly had an adorable lisp, courtesy of the missing front tooth, and combined with her attitude, it had Carissa almost scrambling over the fence in her haste to pick up the pint-sized dynamo and cradle her in her arms.

‘That’s because I can’t find the Easter Bunny, remember?’

Nice save, Lewis.

That was all she needed—for Molly to go running to her dad and tell him about their nutcase neighbour, who stared at his daughter as if she wanted one of her very own. Which was totally true, of course. She’d give anything to have a family of her own: loving husband, delightful kids, white picket fence, the works.