Catherine Mann - Playboys' Christmas Surprises - A Christmas Baby Surprise

About the Authors

USA TODAY bestselling author CATHERINE MANNlives on a sunny Florida beach with her flyboy husband and their four children. With more than forty books in print in over twenty countries, she has also celebrated wins for both a RITA® Award and a Booksellers’ Best Award. Catherine enjoys chatting with readers online—thanks to the wonders of the internet, which allows her to network with her laptop by the water! Contact Catherine through her website, catherinemann.com, find her on Facebook and Twitter ( @CatherineMann1), or reach her by snail mail at PO Box 6065, Navarre, FL 32566.

KAT CANTRELLread her first Mills & Boon novel in third grade and has been scribbling in notebooks since she learned to spell. What else would she write but romance? She majored in literature, officially with the intent to teach, but somehow ended up buried in middle management in corporate America, until she became a stay-at-home mum and full-time writer.

Kat, her husband and their two boys live in north Texas. Kat was the 2011 So You Think You Can Write winner and a 2012 RWA Golden Heart® Award finalist for best unpublished series contemporary manuscript.

Bestselling author JULES BENNETThas penned nearly forty romance novels. She lives in the Midwest with her high-school-sweetheart husband and their two daughters. Sign up for her newsletter to stay up-todate on releases and monthly contests for subscribers only. Find Jules on Facebook, Twitter or her website, julesbennett.com.

Playboys’ Christmas Surprises

A Christmas Baby Surprise

Catherine Mann

Triplets Under the Tree

Kat Cantrell

Holiday Baby Scandal

Jules Bennett

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ISBN: 978-1-474-08616-5

PLAYBOYS’ CHRISTMAS SURPRISES

A Christmas Baby Surprise © 2015 Catherine Mann Triplets Under the Tree © 2015 Kat Cantrell Holiday Baby Scandal © 2016 Jules Bennett

Published in Great Britain 2018

by Mills & Boon, an imprint of HarperCollins Publishers 1 London Bridge Street, London, SE1 9GF

All rights reserved including the right of reproduction in whole or in part in any form. This edition is published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, locations and incidents are purely fictional and bear no relationship to any real life individuals, living or dead, or to any actual places, business establishments, locations, events or incidents. Any resemblance is entirely coincidental.

By payment of the required fees, you are granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right and licence to download and install this e-book on your personal computer, tablet computer, smart phone or other electronic reading device only (each a “Licensed Device”) and to access, display and read the text of this e-book on-screen on your Licensed Device. Except to the extent any of these acts shall be permitted pursuant to any mandatory provision of applicable law but no further, no part of this e-book or its text or images may be reproduced, transmitted, distributed, translated, converted or adapted for use on another file format, communicated to the public, downloaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of publisher.

® and ™ are trademarks owned and used by the trademark owner and/or its licensee. Trademarks marked with ® are registered with the United Kingdom Patent Office and/or the Office for Harmonisation in the Internal Market and in other countries.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Table of Contents

Cover

About the Authors

Title Page

Copyright

A Christmas Baby Surprise

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Epilogue

Triplets Under the Tree

Dedication

Prologue

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Epilogue

Holiday Baby Scandal

Back Cover Text

Dedication

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

Twelve

Thirteen

Fourteen

Fifteen

Sixteen

Seventeen

Epilogue

About the Publisher

A Christmas Baby Surprise

Catherine Mann

To my awesome editor Stacy Boyd!

One

Alaina Rutger was living her childhood dream—a family of her own. Her charismatic husband was driving her home from the hospital with their infant son strapped into a car seat. She had the perfect life.

If only she could remember the man who’d put the four-carat diamond wedding ring on her finger.

A man who called himself Porter Rutger. Husband. Father of her child. And a man who’d been wiped from her memory along with the past five years of her life.

She tore her eyes away from his broad shoulders and coal-dark hair as she sat in back with their baby. Her baby. Alaina tucked the monogrammed red blanket over the infant as he slept, one foot in a booty, the other in a cast that had begun the repair on his clubfoot.

Another person she didn’t remember. Another heartbreak in her upside-down world. A week ago, she’d woken in the hospital with no memory of the man sitting by her bedside or of the blue bundle in the bassinet.

Waking up from a coma had felt a lot like coming to after the worst hangover ever, her head throbbing so badly she could barely move. But a quick look around showed her a hospital room rather than a bedroom.

And a hot man sleeping in the chair, his dark hair rumpled. His black pants and white button-down wrinkled.

Her own Doctor McDreamy?

“Hello,” she’d croaked out, her throat raw for a sip of water.

McDreamy bolted awake quickly. “Alaina?” He blinked, scrubbed his hand across his eyes in disbelief, then shot to his feet. “Oh, God, you’re awake. I need to get the nurse.”

“Water,” she rasped out. “Please, a drink.”

He thumbed the nurses’ call button. “I don’t know what the doctors will want. Maybe ice chips. Your IV has been feeding you. Soon, though, I promise, whatever you want, soon.”

The nurses? Doctors? He wasn’t Doc McDreamy? Then... “Who are you?”

He looked up from the control panel of buttons slowly, his eyes wide with disbelief. “Who am I?”

She pressed her fingertips to her monster headache. “I’m sorry, but I feel like hell. What happened?”

“Alaina...” He sank slowly into the chair, his voice measured, guarded. “We were in a car accident.”

“We?” She knew him?

“Yes,” he said, leaning closer to cover her hand carefully. “Alaina, my name’s Porter and I’m your husband.”