Kristine Rolofson - The Baby And The Bachelor

There. Kim had said it. Now they could sleep. Even if they were sharing the same king-size bed.

“Sweetheart, forget about sex. I’d be happy if you would just share some of the sheet,” Stuart teased.

Kim knew that if she turned to look at him she would see a most excellent male body wearing nothing but silk boxer shorts.

“I usually sleep naked,” he had explained earlier. “I bought these to impress you.”

She gazed into his dark chocolate eyes. “It will take more than that.”

“I can take them off,” he murmured.

At her pointed look, he said, “Okay, I shouldn’t be lusting after the baby-sitter.”

Kim smiled in the darkness. “Do not call me the baby-sitter, as if I’m some teen earning money to spend at the mall.”

“All right. You’re the sexy photographer accompanying the heart surgeon to Maine. We’re about to have a sexual encounter in a romantic, historic inn while the baby sleeps like a log and doesn’t wake up till nine the next morning.”

Maybe I am going to have sex with you….

Dear Reader,

Welcome to the Cooper family! Vicki Lewis Thompson, Jill Shalvis and I have the good fortune to introduce a new Harlequin continuity series by bringing you stories about Kim, Kate and Nick Cooper—the Rhode Island branch of the Cooper’s Corner family. Charles Cooper sired twin sons, John and Justin, before dying in World War II. John grew up with a camera in his hand and talent for photography that led to a newspaper job and his own studio in Rhode Island.

Kim and Kate, John’s twins, run the family’s photography business after their parents retire to Florida. When shy Kim meets Stuart Thorpe, little does she know she’s about to hit the road with a baby and the man of her dreams. So, of course, sister Kate will have a wedding to plan, while trying to stay out of bed with the best man. And then there’s older brother Nick, an adventurer looking for peace and quiet only to discover he’s hiding a mysterious woman and her large dog.

The day after I finished this book, my husband and I took off for Plymouth to visit the “rock” and enjoy a gorgeous autumn day. We followed Kim and Stuart’s trail and, like this story’s characters, promptly became lost outside Boston. We’ve also been lost in Salem, Providence, Concord and New Haven, so there’s a pattern here!

I hope you enjoy our branch of the Cooper clan. And please visit New England. Order a lobster roll. Spend a romantic night at a bed-and-breakfast—maybe in the town of Cooper’s Corner. But please don’t forget to buy a map.

Happy reading!

Kristine Rolofson

The Baby and the Bachelor

Kristine Rolofson

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Chapter 10

Chapter 11

Chapter 12

“I GOT YOU OUT OF BED? That figures.”

“Payne, I worked until five-thirty this morning.” Stuart Thorpe, dressed in his oldest T-shirt and khaki shorts, took the baby from his sister’s arms and watched Payne dump an armload of baby paraphernalia on his marble-tiled floor. “I’m relaxing. What do you think I’m doing on my day off?”

“Having orgies, wild parties, and other sorts of things I won’t mention,” she answered, giving him that disapproving older sister look he was very familiar with, having experienced it for all of his thirty-five years.

“My college memories are very important to me,” he teased, since Payne knew full well that he had worked too many hours studying to spend time on parties of any kind.

“You don’t have a woman asleep in there, do you?”

“No.” His sisters tended to exaggerate the extent of his social life, only because he hadn’t settled down yet, something that seemed to worry both of them. “Bambi left early to go to work at the Foxy Lady.”

Payne glared at him. “I never know if you’re joking or not. Isn’t the Foxy Lady that place where exotic dancers serve breakfast?”

“Yes, it is and yes, I’m joking. I swear. I haven’t been to the Foxy Lady since my twenty-first birthday.”

“You don’t need to,” she muttered, moving past him to deposit a fistful of bottles in his refrigerator. “Women throw themselves at you all the time. It’s ridiculous.”

“I think it’s nice.” He grinned at his niece, whose chubby fingers patted his cheek. “Uncle Stuart has lots of very pretty friends.”

“Well,” Payne said. “Keep your pretty friends away while Bree is here. I don’t want you distracted from baby-sitting.”

“Sure.” Stuart would have laughed, but he didn’t dare. He kept his family and his social life separate, so whatever lovely lady he was dating wouldn’t get the wrong idea and think there was going to be anything permanent in the future. Payne didn’t look the least bit relieved, but she couldn’t take the baby to Maine with her either, not right now.

“Do you really think you can handle this until Temple gets home?” she asked. Temple was their younger sister.

“No problem,” Stuart uttered, but he knew and his sister knew that taking care of a six-month-old baby was one hell of a job and not under the “no problem” category at all. But Stuart figured he and Bree could muddle through. “What’s an uncle for?”

“Are you sure?” Payne looked worried, but his older sister almost always looked worried. Stuart moved her toward the door.

“We’ll get along just fine.” His niece was in his arms, tugging on his earlobe as if she wanted to remove it from his head and fling it across the polished wood floor. Brianne Nicole Johnson liked to throw all sorts of things. “You brought her playpen, right?”

“It’s outside, by the door.” She paused and looked around his black-and-white living room. “This ultramodern furniture looks dangerous.”

He looked at his glass and chrome coffee table, his leather sofa and an entertainment center that had cost more than a semester at college. “It costs too much to be dangerous and besides, Bree is going to be too busy to have time to hurt herself, Payne. The activities list you gave me is two pages long.”

His oldest sister frowned again, but this time she walked toward the door. “Temple will be back in town by dinnertime. She said she’d call you from the airport and then come right over and get Bree.”

“Fine. Give me a call tonight and let me know how Phil’s mother is.”

“I will.” Now Payne looked as if she was about to cry. She loved her in-laws, and the thought of her mother-in-law in the hospital was almost more than Payne could bear, especially now, with her husband in Australia on a business trip. The three Thorpe siblings shared the same dark hair, athletic builds and dark brown eyes, but Payne was the emotional one of the family. And, as the oldest, the bossiest. “Make sure she eats on time.”

“Mummm,” the baby hummed, one chubby hand reaching out to her mother. Payne kissed her three more times and then hurried toward the door. She turned around once more and gave her brother another order. “You will make sure she takes a nap? And that her car seat is fastened correctly? And if she gets sick or anything, you can call her pediatrician. The number’s in the bag.”