Jacqueline Diamond - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

Duets Vol. #43

“If you seek escapist fare, sensuality, romance and a good story, look no further…” than talented Temptation author Jamie Denton, says Under the Covers. Joining her this month is new writer Holly Jacobs with the delightfully funny I Waxed My Legs For This? Enjoy!

Duets Vol. #44

Popular Jacqueline Diamond returns to Duets this month. Romantic Times notes she always “delivers a wonderful romance…and combines it with a quirky cast of characters.” Paired with Jacqui is Isabel Sharpe, “a name to watch in the romance genre for her excellent characterizations and smooth plotting,” says Affaire de Coeur.

Be sure to pick up both Duets volumes today!

Excuse Me? Whose Baby?

Jacqueline Diamond

Follow That Baby!

Isabel Sharpe

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Excuse Me? Whose Baby? Excuse Me? Whose Baby? Jacqueline Diamond

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

Follow That Baby!

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Chapter 9

Excuse Me? Whose Baby?

Jacqueline Diamond

Jim asked, leaning back in his chair.

Dex wished she were anywhere but here. The law office was decorated in such intense black and white that humanity seemed like an intrusion. Then, from a back office, she heard a baby cry. If it went with the decor, it must be a baby penguin.

“Well,” Burt Page said, folding his hands atop his desk, “this is an odd situation. I have Dr. Saldivar’s will here. You’re both named.”

“But why?” Dex couldn’t imagine that Dr. Saldivar would leave her so much as a test tube.

Jim shook his head. “I don’t understand, either.”

“It has to do with Ayoka,” said the attorney.

“Who?” Dex asked.

Burt cleared his throat. “She’s the, er, baby.”

“What baby?” Jim glanced at Dex. “If Dr. Saldivar adopted a child, what could that possibly have to do with either of us?”

“Ayoka isn’t adopted. She’s yours. Uh…both of yours.”

Dear Reader,

Small colleges are delightfully offbeat places where eccentric personalities can bloom. Perpetual students like my heroine, Dex, live in a world apart from the rest of us, so for her I dreamed up Clair De Lune, California, and De Lune University for Excuse Me? Whose Baby?

I practically grew up on a college campus. My school in Nashville, Tennessee, was affiliated with Peabody College for Teachers, where my mother was an art professor. I later attended Brandeis University in Waltham, Massachusetts.

My hero, Jim Bonderoff, needed a different brand of individuality from Dex, so I created a household of ex-marines with literally no holds barred! I enjoyed seeing how these two different realms meshed in my new book and I hope you will, too.

Please write me at P.O. Box 1315, Brea, CA 92822!

Sincerely,

Books by Jacqueline Diamond

HARLEQUIN DUETS

2—KIDNAPPED?

8—THE BRIDE WORE GYM SHOES

37—DESIGNER GENES

HARLEQUIN LOVE & LAUGHTER

11—PUNCHLINE

32—SANDRA AND THE SCOUNDREL

In loving memory of Ambrose “Joe” Mercier and his wonderful sense of humor.

“YOUR LAWYER CALLED.”

Dex Fenton was trotting down the creaky wooden steps of the English building, carrying a pile of essays she’d just collected from a Shakespeare class, when she heard Professor Hugh Bemling’s remark.

Lawyer? Whose lawyer was he talking about?

The thin, bearded professor stood in his office doorway, cleaning his glasses with his shirttail. Shaking back a mass of flyaway brown hair that threatened to block her vision, Dex looked around the hall, but she didn’t see anyone else he could have been addressing.

“I don’t have a lawyer,” she ventured.

“Well, a lawyer called and asked for you,” he said.

Dex tried to ignore the sinking sensation in her stomach. She didn’t know any lawyers and she preferred to keep it that way. Nevertheless, she refused to let herself be intimidated by anyone, ever. “Did you catch his name?”

“I wrote it down.” Hugh, who regularly got lost in the library stacks and had addressed Dex as Dixie for her first three months as his teaching assistant, fished through his pockets. He dragged out a laundry receipt and his campus health card before handing her a crumpled note.

Dex squinted at the ink-smeared letters. “‘O wavy hair, O beauteous maiden,”’ she read, and stopped. Obviously, this was not a telephone message but a poem of an embarrassingly personal nature.

Hugh’s cheeks, or what was visible of them beneath his gray-flecked facial hair, flushed bright red as he snatched back the paper. “That’s…some random thoughts I jotted down. I can’t think where I put your message.”

Dex adjusted her stack of essays. “I’m sure it was for someone else.” And so was the poem, she hoped. “I’d better get going. I’ll have these graded by Monday.”

“Have what graded? Oh, the papers, yes.” Hugh patted his shirt pockets. “I know that note’s here somewhere. Let me check in my office.”

“Thanks, Hugh, but you don’t need to…” She didn’t bother to finish. He was already gone.

There was no point in waiting. Once inside, he would get so busy pawing through piles of journals that he’d forget what he was looking for.

Anyway, Dex had another job to do. In addition to assisting the professor, she made ends meet by working as a campus courier.

She’d earned a B.A. and a master’s degree in English, but her parents, both college professors, weren’t impressed. Dex had completed the coursework for her Ph.D., but found herself stuck on writing her dissertation.

She just couldn’t seem to work up much enthusiasm for it. Or, maybe, for becoming Dr. Dex Fenton and having to leave the friendly environs of Clair De Lune, California, to take whatever college teaching post she could scrape up.

So she worked two part-time jobs and rode a bicycle and lived in an efficiency apartment over a garage. Most of the time, she rather enjoyed things the way they were.

Out in the sunshine, she hurried around the brick building to the bike rack, where she stuck the essays into her bike’s side compartments and put on her helmet. She hoped she had enough room left to carry today’s campus deliveries. Fortunately, today was Friday, usually a light mail day.

As she mounted her bike and set off, a few jacaranda blossoms drifted onto Dex’s arm. Some of the lavender petals, which appeared every spring as sure as the swallows came back to Capistrano, clung to her pink sweater and blue jeans.

“O wavy hair, O beauteous maiden.” Spring was certainly getting to Professor Bemling, Dex thought. He was a cute guy, if you liked absentminded forty-year-olds. At twenty-six, though, she considered him too old for her.

The kind of guy she wanted was in his early thirties, with sun-streaked dark hair and alert brown eyes. He gave the impression of being tall, although he wasn’t quite six feet, and he had slim hips that moved with a sensuous rhythm.