Lee Mckenzie - Daddy, Unexpectedly

From Friends To Lovers To...Parents?

Claire DeAngelo’s fantasy was the white picket fence and a husband and babies. She thought she’d found it, but now she’s getting a divorce. Her ex’s behavior is bordering on harassment, so it’s lucky Claire runs into her college buddy—now undercover cop—Luke Devlin.

Luke can’t believe his luck. He’s investigating a smuggling ring, and Claire lives in the building he has under surveillance. What better way to keep an eye on the criminals than to move in! When Claire’s ex becomes hostile, Luke’s protective instincts take over and the attraction between old friends heats up.

Back in college, Luke was a carefree playboy. So when Claire discovers she’s pregnant, she knows better than to expect Luke to be family material. She’s finally getting that white picket fence and a baby…even if there’s a piece missing!

“We were both drinking,” Luke said about his ex. “A lot.”

Claire gave him an anxious look.

“One night she went out, with a blood-alcohol reading that was something like three times the legal limit, and plowed into a tree.”

“Oh, Luke. Was she hurt? Was anyone else?”

Aside from that night at the ER, he’d never talked about the baby. Not with anyone.

“She wasn’t wearing a seatbelt, so she was pretty badly banged up. And...she was pregnant, and she lost the baby.”

“Oh, my God. Luke, I’m so sorry.”

“I accused her of being careless and irresponsible, trying to trap me into marrying her, forcing me to have a baby I didn’t want.”

Claire snatched her hand away, averting her eyes.

He hated that she pulled away, mostly because he had no clue what it meant. Had he said too much? Sounded too harsh?

“She knew I didn’t want a family. There’s no way I’ll bring another Devlin child into the world and have it grow up the way I did.”

“But you’re not your father, Luke!”

Dear Reader,

There’s something about a reformed bad boy that grabs our interest, don’t you agree? Give him a badge and a gun, and he’s really got our attention! Luke Devlin, the hero of this book, is one of those men, and I have to confess to being a tiny bit jealous of the heroine, Claire DeAngelo. These two have both suffered some major disappointments since they were study buddies back in college, so when they run into each other years later, they both have trust issues to overcome.

Readers who’ve been following my Ready Set Sold series—the stories of three entrepreneurial young women who run a real-estate business in Seattle—have told me they’re looking forward to Claire’s story, and I hope all of you will have as much fun reading it as I had writing it. To be honest, it never really felt as though I was writing this story; it was more like Luke and Claire were telling it to me, and all I had to do was get it on paper. That doesn’t always happen with a book, but I love it when it does!

Samantha from The Christmas Secret and Kristi, who you met in the The Daddy Project, are both back, offering their friend Claire a shoulder to lean on in Daddy, Unexpectedly. Since we have a bad boy cop, there has to be a villain; and as always for the animal lovers among us, there’s a dog, and this time I’ve added a cat for good measure. And because this is the third and final book in the series, it was especially fun for me to bring all these characters together one last time and share their happy-ever-afters with you.

I always enjoy hearing from readers, so I invite you to visit my website at www.LeeMcKenzie.comand drop me a line.

Happy reading!

Lee McKenzie

Daddy, Unexpectedly

Lee McKenzie

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From the time she was ten years old and read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, Lee McKenzie knew she wanted to be a writer, just like Anne and Jo. In the intervening years, she has written everything from advertising copy to an honors thesis in paleontology, but becoming a four-time Golden Heart finalist and a Harlequin author are among her proudest accomplishments. Lee and her artist/teacher husband live on an island along Canada’s west coast, and she loves to spend time with two of her best friends—her grown-up children.

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For my two proudest accomplishments,

Joe and Michaela

Contents

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

Epilogue

Excerpt

Chapter One

Claire DeAngelo stabbed her fork into the last piece of lettuce on her plate. Two hours ago it was barely appetizing. Now warm and wilted, it was just plain gross. She dumped it into the trash can under the sink and put her lunch dishes in the dishwasher.

“Forget about food. You have more important things to think about.” She walked purposefully back to the dining table, sat and opened the calendar on her laptop.

This had been a busy week. She had closed the sale of a home in Seattle’s Victory Heights neighborhood and listed two others. She’d lined up three showings tomorrow morning for some prospective home buyers—newlyweds in search of their dream home. She would be tempted to tell them it was all downhill once the honeymoon was over, but she was a real estate agent, not a marriage counsellor.

The company she’d launched several years ago was really taking off and her two business partners were as busy as she was. Busier, given their family commitments. Claire was happy for Samantha and Kristi, she really was, but more than a little envious, too. Since she’d been a little girl, crisscrossing the country from one military base to another, she’d dreamed of a real home with a white picket fence and a big backyard, where she and the man of her dreams could watch their children chase the dog and play with their friends. Technically neither Sam nor Kristi had a white picket fence, but they had everything else Claire wanted.

She stood and walked to the floor-to-ceiling wall of glass that overlooked Puget Sound. She had a pricey penthouse with a million-dollar view, an imperialistic cat who slept most of the time, no children and a soon-to-be-ex husband. She checked her watch. It was two-thirty and it was Friday afternoon and all her work was done, so why was she feeling so out of sorts?

“Because I’m starving.” The salad she’d eaten for lunch had worn off, as had the sense of virtuousness for eating something healthy and almost calorie-free. She went back into the kitchen and looked in the fridge. The makings of another salad, four eggs, a tub of fat-free yogurt and a quart of skim milk. She took out a Tupperware container filled with carrots and celery sticks, then opened a cupboard. A box of breakfast cereal with a measly hundred calories per serving and a package of rice cakes.

What were you thinking? she asked herself.

That you’re supposed to be on a diet.

She set the rodent food on the polished granite countertop. Ugh.