Mary Mcbride - Baby, Baby, Baby

Melanie’s To-Do List

1 Buy the perfect house.

2 Make appointment with sperm bank at perfect time of the month.

3 Paint nursery the perfect baby-duck yellow.

4 Bring newest neighbor perfect housewarming gift.

5 Admire new neighbor’s perfect rear view.

6 Flee in horror. New neighbor is perfectly disastrous ex-husband!

7 DO NOT GIVE IN TO DANGEROUS ATTRACTION!

8 Give in to dangerous attraction.

9 Panic!

Sonny’s To-Do List

1 Forget list. Launch perfect, take-no-prisoners siege on wife and show her I’m the perfect daddy for the baby she’s always wanted!

Dear Reader,

Happy (almost) New Year! The year is indeed ending, but here at Intimate Moments it’s going out with just the kind of bang you’d expect from a line where excitement is the order of the day. Maggie Shayne continues her newest miniseries, THE OKLAHOMA ALL-GIRL BRANDS, with Brand-New Heartache. This is prodigal daughter Edie’s story. She’s home from L.A. with a stalker on her trail, and only local one-time bad boy Wade Armstrong can keep her safe. Except for her heart, which is definitely at risk in his presence.

Our wonderful FIRSTBORN SONS continuity concludes with Born Royal. This is a sheik story from Alexandra Sellers, who’s made quite a name for herself writing about desert heroes, and this book will show you why. It’s a terrific marriage-of-convenience story, and it’s also a springboard for our twelve-book ROMANCING THE CROWN continuity, which starts next month. Kylie Brant’s Hard To Resist is the next in her CHARMED AND DANGEROUS miniseries, and this steamy writer never disappoints with her tales of irresistible attraction. Honky-Tonk Cinderella is the second in Karen Templeton’s HOW TO MARRY A MONARCH miniseries, and it’s enough to make any woman want to run away and be a waitress, seeing as this waitress gets to serve a real live prince. Finish the month with Mary McBride’s newest, Baby, Baby, Baby, a “No way am I letting my ex-wife go to a sperm bank” book, and reader favorite Lorna Michaels’s first Intimate Moments novel, The Truth About Elyssa.

See you again next year!

Leslie J. Wainger

Executive Senior Editor

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When it comes to writing romance, historical or contemporary, Mary McBride is a natural. What else would anyone expect from someone whose parents met on a blind date on Valentine’s Day, and who met her own husband—whose middle name just happens to be Valentine!—on February 14, as well?

She lives in St. Louis, Missouri, with her husband and two sons. Mary loves to hear from readers. You can write to her c/o P.O. Box 411202, Saint Louis, MO 63141, or contact her online at McBride101@aol.com.

For Pete and Mary Pancella,

who make such lovely music together

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

Epilogue

Melanie Sears couldn’t help but grin. Not only was it her last day at work, but her boss, the mayor, an elegant if not arrogant man who was addicted to hundred-dollar haircuts and thousand-dollar suits, was down on his pin-striped Armani knees, begging her to stay.

“I’ll be back in eighteen months, Sam.”

“Things are falling apart already.” While he whined, His Honor gestured through his office door toward the reception area. “Look how badly your surprise party turned out.”

Melanie didn’t disagree, but then, even with her own amazing organizational skills, she would have been hard-pressed to bring off the perfect celebratory combination of congratulations on a job well done, happy semi-retirement and baby shower. She knew for a fact, however, that if she had been in charge of her own party, the paper plates and napkins wouldn’t have said Bon Voyage, that she wouldn’t in a million years have served a punch whose main ingredient was Tang, and that she would never, ever, even at gun-point, have hired a mime.

“What the devil was in that punch?” Mayor Venneman stood and began to pick carpet lint from his trousers. “Motor oil?”

She told him about the powdered orange drink and then laughed as she watched his pinstripes shiver. “I’m sure it won’t happen again with Cleo in charge. I gave her a list of preferred caterers, but maybe I should make another copy, just in case.”

“Maybe you should stay.” He slumped into the big leather chair behind his desk, looking more like a petulant two-year-old than the savvy and suave politician he was. “Why do you need to take eighteen months off to have a baby? Why can’t you do what everybody else does? Work until the bitter end, then come back thin and frazzled after a three-month maternity leave with all those nasty pumps and jars and pictures of the kid? Why do you want to have a baby anyway?”

“Actually I want two,” Melanie said with a laugh. “You’re going to have to go through this again in a few more years, Sam. Better get used to it. I’ve got it all planned out.”

Planning was what Melanie did best. When she was ten years old, her mother died, entrusting her only daughter with the care and feeding of Dr. Henry Von Briggle Sears, Ph.D., poet, painter, and perfect specimen of the absentminded professor. Far from considering it a burden, Melanie thrived on making lists, scheduling appointments and seeing they were kept, even making sure that Pop turned in grades to the art history department on time each semester.

While most young girls were learning makeup tricks and fantasizing about their teen idols, Melanie was learning how to balance a checkbook and pay bills and compile lists of dependable plumbers and repairmen. Instead of developing a fondness for lipstick and costume jewelry, she grew enamored of calendars with large spaces, Rolodexes, and Post-It notes.

They’d lived in a huge, century-old, redbrick monstrosity just a few blocks from the university. Pop’s studio on the third floor was the only room where a person had to pick his way through a maze of easels and battered boxes and waist-high piles of books, where every chair was occupied whether or not someone was sitting in it, where the slightest movement might send canvasses toppling like dominoes or set off an explosion of dust motes in the air. The rest of the house was dustless and serene, thanks to Melanie, with a place for everything and everything in its proper place. Always.

“Life isn’t solely about order,” her father had told her more than once. But Melanie wasn’t so sure.

Not back then. Not now, either.

“Lighten up,” people told her.

But the one time in her thirty-one years that she’d lightened up and let go of her beloved lists had been a disaster. Love or lust, or whatever it was she felt for Sonny Randle the minute she’d laid eyes on him two years ago, had rendered her temporarily insane. She must’ve been certifiably nuts to marry him after knowing him only a few weeks. But since the divorce a year ago she was sane again, and fiercely determined to stay that way.