Michele Dunaway - Nine Months' Notice

And Tori, well, she had Jeff. He didn’t love her. She was going to have his baby and he didn’t know. The situation was all messed up.

“You’ll be late,” she told him, impatient to get him out of the office. “And I have phone calls to make.”

“Oh. Okay.” He moved toward the door, as if reluctant to believe that she would really send him away. After all, how many times had she caved over the years?

“Call me if you change your mind about us.” And with that he was gone, the door clicking shut behind him.

Tori put her head in her hands. She’d made it.

She’d seen him…and survived.

Dear Reader,

Two of my best friends are single mothers. One was in her twenties, engaged at the time she got the news. My other friend was in her early thirties, and she found out she was expecting after she’d already broken off the relationship. Both knew the road ahead would be difficult, and they have done a phenomenal job raising their respective boys.

You may remember Tori, Jeff’s girlfriend from Unwrapping Mr. Wright. Tori’s just received nine months’ notice that her life is about to change in a major way. Not only is she starting a new career in a new city, but she’s also going to be a single mother. She’s ready to do this alone, but Jeff has other, better ideas. Long ago Tori vowed to have it all upon graduation (career, husband and family), and Jeff’s determined to make her dreams come true, even if not quite in the order she’d planned.

I hope you enjoy Nine Months’ Notice, the final book in my AMERICAN BEAUTIES miniseries. I had a great time writing Tori’s story. (Lisa’s was The Marriage Campaign; Cecile’s The Wedding Secret.) This book marks my fourteenth for Harlequin Books and I can’t state enough times how grateful I am that you, the reader, have been with me all the way.

As always, enjoy the romance and feel free to drop me an e-mail at michele@micheledunaway.com. Happy reading,

Nine Months’ Notice

Michele Dunaway

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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In first grade Michele Dunaway wanted to be a teacher when she grew up, and by second grade she wanted to be an author. By third grade she was determined to be both, and before her high school class reunion, she’d succeeded. In addition to writing romance, Michele is a nationally recognized high school English and journalism educator. Born and raised in a west county suburb of St. Louis, Michele has traveled extensively, with the cities and places she’s visited often becoming settings for her stories. Described as a woman who does too much but doesn’t know how to stop, Michele gardens five acres in her spare time and shares her life with two young daughters, six lazy house cats, one dwarf rabbit and two tankfuls of fish.

Michele loves to hear from readers. You can reach her via her Web site, www.micheledunaway.com.

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

988—THE PLAYBOY’S PROTÉGÉE

1008—ABOUT LAST NIGHT…

1044—UNWRAPPING MR. WRIGHT

1056—EMERGENCY ENGAGEMENT

1100—LEGALLY TENDER

1127—THE MARRIAGE CAMPAIGN *

1144—THE WEDDING SECRET *

For Lisa & Jenni. You go, girls.

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

Tori Adams was nobody’s fool, except maybe when it came to Jeff Wright. She might have an excuse once a year for letting her boss be her pied piper, but that didn’t excuse the other 364 days. Eight years ago, when she’d started her new job at Wright Solutions, you could rationalize her infatuation by calling her young. Just out of college. Naive.

They’d worked together for six years before she’d given in to her desires and mixed business with pleasure. The relationship had a rocky start, but, like baked Alaska after the fast flare, everything had calmed down.

They’d settled into a monotonous, dead-end rut.

Not that each time they were together wasn’t delicious. Take last night. All he’d had to do was touch her, something as simple as running a fingertip along the top of her arm, and she was molten and ready. Bottle his magnetism and she could make a fortune and retire twenty-two years early.

Of course, love was like that. Unfortunately, their love was strictly one-sided. Hers. Jeff had made it perfectly clear time and time again that this was as far as the relationship was going to go.

But that didn’t alleviate the fact that she’d fallen hard and held every man she’d met since against the impossible Jeff-standard. Even if George Clooney and Matthew McConaughey showed up on her doorstep, they, too, would fall woefully short.

As for Jeff, he was a man content with the status quo, oblivious to her growing frustration. He was satisfied with their current situation, which was to get together every Saturday night, so long as neither was traveling. They were monogamous. Committed.

In a very twisted sense, Tori thought wryly, for unlike those hot and spicy romance novels that ended with the hero and heroine finding happily-ever-after, Tori knew that, in her case, the reality was that her relationship wasn’t going anywhere. Ever.

She loved him, which is why she saw him at every opportunity, no matter how much her heart shredded slightly each time she did. He did care for her—she had no doubt of that—but his feelings would never reach that death-do-us-part, you’re-my-forever level that she craved. Their love was physical. Surface. And after two years, Tori wasn’t even sure Jeff had deep emotions beyond the ones everyone has for his immediate family. The man simply didn’t get angry. He played life loose and took things as they came. He shed stress the way a roof sheds water—easily.

She’d learned the hard way that you should never go into a relationship expecting to change a man. You were only going to leave disappointed.

She’d settled for less than body and soul, something she swore long ago she’d never do. Why had she given up hope of finding something or someone better? When had the tiny part of her that believed she could have it all died? She loved Jeff, but not everything you loved was good for you. Just look at cheesecake. She’d eat that daily if it wouldn’t pack pounds on her hips. She’d never been afraid of the unknown, but something about Jeff had paralyzed her into complacency and made her lose sight of her dreams.

She’d lost her backbone. She’d even agreed to spend the weekend with him when she knew she should have stayed home and concentrated on getting well. She’d been on antibiotics the past seven days for a spring sinus infection. She had three more days of medication remaining, and still went from being totally stuffed up one moment to nonstop sneezing the next.