Jule Mcbride - Secret Baby Spencer

Banking, he understood. Slowly and steadily, he’d worked for years, garnering the experience needed to run the S&L, a business in which his brothers Quinn and Brady had no personal interest. Seth had followed their father’s every step, going from Columbia to Wharton, then to Goldman Sachs—all so that now, at the age of thirty-seven, he could run this bank.

He’d never imagined that only six weeks after taking the job he’d be fighting the urge to turn his back on everything he’d ever worked for, just so he could return to New York and Jenna. Jenna, who doesn’t even want you.

The Cadillac started moving again.

His heart missed a beat.

But no, it really couldn’t be Jenna. She was from a Podunk North Carolina town she’d professed to hate, and once she’d left for the big city, she’d never looked back. Jenna would never venture into a place that lacked a cappuccino bar, a foreign film theater or inch-thick tabloids dripping with juicy celebrity gossip. Not that Tyler lacked gossip, Seth thought with remembered anger, his broad, powerful back stiffening to ward off buried emotions left over from adolescence. After his mother ran off with Ray, Seth had endured more than his share of pitying glances and hushed whispers. It hurt having the whole town know the Spencers hadn’t been man enough to hang on to the woman they loved.

It was why, if Seth was honest, he’d rather be anywhere in the world than Tyler, Wisconsin, this time of year. October was nearly gone, and Canadian air—cold, crisp and thin—was sweeping south into the region and chilling him to the bone.

Twenty years, he thought. Hard to believe, but it had been twenty years since he’d lived in Tyler. A lifetime. He’d been sure that when he came back home, the old feelings of loss and longing would be gone, but this was cold, hard, wintry country, with glassy lakes and too much empty space, the kind of country that always left a man with too much time on his hands to think about his past.

One too many nights Seth had needed Jenna to keep him warm. Now he cursed the stranger in the car for making him remember how her soft, smooth skin had burned under his greedy hands, and how easily her damp, wanting mouth had slackened for his, memories that made his groin tighten.

Memories, Seth thought, were damn powerful things.

Outside, the car swerved. Silently, he watched the headlights sweeping the pavement as the car rounded a corner, then disappeared. Only then did he rise. He kept staring into the dark, his eyes inadvertently searching, his heart aching with familiar loss and the firmly held conviction that once a woman was gone from a man’s life, she never returned.

“WHERE’S THE Kelsey Boarding House?” Jenna Robinson groaned, twisting the sparkling engagement ring on her finger and glancing into the rearview mirror, to where Gretchen was strapped in a car seat. “Hey there, sweetie,” she added. “You holding up okay?”

The two-year-old yawned.

Jenna chuckled. Gretchen looked adorable, dressed in black corduroy overalls and a pint-size black leather jacket. “We’re almost there,” Jenna assured, freeing a hand and flattening Molly Blake’s directions against the cracked vinyl of the ample dashboard. Staring through the windshield, Jenna tried to ignore her hammering heart. “What was I thinking?” she murmured, knowing she shouldn’t have stopped outside the S&L. Was Seth working? Or had he left the office for the day?

“Jenna, you’re pathetic.” She had only one piece of business to take care of in Tyler, Wisconsin—informing Seth she was getting married next week. And who could blame her for wanting to deliver the news as soon as possible? After she’d endured a painful year and a half of Seth’s noncommittal behavior, somebody else had fallen desperately in love with her and wanted to help her raise the baby she was carrying. Just thinking of the life growing inside her made her eyes soften.

Seth’s baby.

Pushing aside the thought, she decided that she had to get some rest and change clothes before she told him the news. She was covered with road grime. Besides, one look around the Madison airport had made perfectly clear that Jenna was all wrong for Wisconsin, not that her fishnet stockings, feathered sweater and miniskirt were that strange. Nor did she think she’d packed anything much more conservative. Nevertheless, she was tired of people staring at her as if she were wearing a Halloween costume. “This place could sure use some action,” she muttered, glancing around the dark, tree-lined street. With Halloween upcoming, maybe she’d dress as a bank robber and target the Spencer family’s bank.

Meantime, every horse, wire fence and mile on the odometer of the Cadillac reminded her of why she’d fled Bear Creek, North Carolina, for the Fashion Institute of New York the second she turned eighteen. Her hands tightened on the wheel as she thought of North Carolina and her parents, not that she exactly wanted to dwell on Nancy and Ralph, who were so close they’d scarcely ever seemed to notice their daughter existed. It was probably why Jenna had so foolishly pursued Seth, willing to take the crumbs he called affection.

“Face it, Jenna, it’s your cross to bear.” She glanced at the faded paperback cover of Women Who Love Too Much, which was beside her on the seat. She’d brought it to reread on the plane. When it came to attracting unavailable men, she was like the magnet inside an MRI.

Or she had been.

But now she was loved. Cherished. Cared for in the exact way she deserved. Her throat tightening, she thought of the Soho art gallery owned by her friend, Sue Ellis, who was Gretchen’s mom, and then she thought of the gallery’s co-owner, Dom Milano.

Even now, she could barely believe Dom had proposed. Buoyed up by the passion he’d expressed, Jenna felt her heart ache. She’d met the two gallery owners only a week after moving to New York, and over the past sixteen years, they’d become her substitute family. It was why Jenna had agreed, at the eleventh hour, to watch Gretchen while Sue went on an impromptu art buying trip to Paris.

Fortunately, Gretchen had handled the airplane like a pro. Jenna had felt antsy about bringing the baby to Tyler, but Dom had his hands full with running the gallery right now, and he insisted Jenna talk to Seth before she responded to the marriage proposal.

Jenna simply couldn’t wait. She was going to marry Dom as soon as she returned to New York. He was such a sweetheart. He’d said he wouldn’t start their physical relationship—not so much as a kiss, he’d vowed—until she went to Tyler, until he knew she would definitely be his. She smiled weakly. Who would have known Dom could be so romantic? In all the years of their friendship, she never would have guessed.

And he was so sexy. Tall and slender, he was Italian-born and raised on Mott Street in Little Italy. He had straight black hair, devastating dark eyes, and after sixteen years of knowing him, Jenna knew she’d never find a better man. He was so accommodating, too, guessing Jenna’s needs before she even knew she had them. What she’d shared with Seth, she assured herself, was nothing more than overrated chemistry.

She frowned. Since Sue’s divorce, Jenna had felt so sure Dom was falling for Sue, though. He’d doted on Gretchen, too. Mistakenly, Jenna had assumed that the time Dom spent with Jenna wasn’t significant, especially since they usually went over strategies for strengthening her relationship with Seth. After Seth left for Tyler, Dom had overheard her speaking on the phone with an obstetrician, and he’d proposed.

He’d been so eloquent, too. He said he wanted her, loved her. He offered her everything she secretly wanted—marriage and a name for the baby. But Dom had one condition: that she come to Tyler and tell Seth about the pregnancy, just to ensure there wouldn’t be trouble later. Which, of course, there wouldn’t be. Seth couldn’t care less.