Ruth Dale - Fiance Wanted

“But I can’t just kiss you.”

“Why not? It’s easy.” Dylan put his hands loosely on her shoulders.

Katy shivered. “B-because I’m not in the habit of kissing just anybody.”

“I’m not just anybody. I’m supposed to be your soon-to-be fiancé.”

“Nevertheless, I can’t put my heart into it without some emotional content.”

“Emotional what? Look, Katy, we’re just talking about a kiss here. A very simple kiss between…between friends….”

He drew her a tiny fraction closer.

“We’re not friends,” she managed to say. “We’re…we’re…”

He bent toward her. “What are we, Katy? Can’t wait to see what word you come up with.”

“We’re—” Doomed, she thought, lifting her hands to touch the wide shoulders while his hands drifted to her waist. “We’re going to put people’s suspicions to rest once and for all.”

Ruth Jean Dale lives in a Colorado pine forest within shouting distance of Pikes Peak. She is surrounded by two dogs, two cats, one husband and a passel of grown children and growing grandchildren. A former newspaper reporter and editor, she is living her dream: writing romance novels for Harlequin. As she says with typical understatement, “It doesn’t get any better than this! Everyone should be so lucky.”

Books by Ruth Jean Dale

HARLEQUIN ROMANCE®

3413—RUNAWAY WEDDING

3424—A SIMPLE TEXAS WEDDING

3441—RUNAWAY HONEYMOON

3465—BREAKFAST IN BED

3491—DASH TO THE ALTAR

3539—BACHELOR AVAILABLE!

3557—PARENTS WANTED!

www.millsandboon.co.uk

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

EPILOGUE

BABY SHOWERS always depressed Katy Andrews.

So did wedding showers, April showers and, if she’d been able to think of any other kind of showers, they would no doubt depress her, too.

The fact was, at the advanced age of thirty, Katy had neither husband, child, nor prospects of obtaining either in the foreseeable future.

Which was the reason that sitting in the middle of pink and blue crepe-paper streamers in a corner of the Rawhide Café in Rawhide, Colorado, didn’t exactly leave her brimming with enthusiasm.

That is, until her best friend Laura Reynolds waddled into the café, let out a little shriek of surprise and was immediately obscured by a horde of hugging females.

Katy sighed. Laura’s baby was due in another month—late September. The glowing mother-to-be had left her job as lifestyles editor of the Rawhide Review newspaper six weeks ago to await the birth of this, her second child. Katy, city reporter for the Review, thought the place hadn’t been the same without her best friend.

But she had to admit that married life agreed with Laura, who had never looked lovelier. Even minus her customary grace, she was a joy to behold as she waddled up to Katy with a big smile on her face.

Katy’s answering smile was completely sincere. She might be envious of her friend’s happiness, but she wouldn’t be mean-spirited about it. “Long time, no see,” she said.

“Too long.” Laura eased herself into a chair across the table. “There just seems so much to do to get ready for the baby.”

“But you’ve got such good help,” Katy teased.

“Oh, yes,” Laura agreed airily. “Just what I need—a ten-year-old girl and a seven-year-old boy ‘helping.’ This poor little baby will be lucky to have a bed when it arrives, with all that help.”

Katy figured that “poor little baby” would be just about the luckiest baby around. It would arrive to find a loving blended family waiting, complete with father Matt, mother Laura, sister Jessica and brother Zach. The importance of a bed paled by comparison.

“Is Matt getting excited?” Katy wanted to know.

Laura rolled her eyes. “Deliriously. Even when I informed him that I expect him to go into the delivery room and hold my hand the entire time, he didn’t run screaming from the house.”

“Brave guy,” Katy agreed. That her old school friend Matt would turn out to be such a rock impressed her. He was certainly nothing like his friend and Katy’s long-time nemesis, Dylan Cole. Katy would have bet that you couldn’t melt Dylan and pour him into a delivery room.

Laura beamed. “The kids say I owe it all to you and that magic wand they gave to you,” she said with a mischievous gleam in her eyes. “They’re probably right. After all, who else would have forked out hard cash for those magnificent glass slippers? They made it impossible for me to turn down the pleas of my Prince Charming.”

The two women laughed together, reliving the trials and tribulations leading up to the happy melding last year of Matt and his daughter with Laura and her son into one big happy family.

Katy had been a willing participant with the children in bringing about the union of two people obviously meant to spend their lives together. Yielding to the children’s pleas, she’d bought the ugliest and biggest plastic shoes in the world for Prince Charming to slip upon the dainty feet of his Cinderella. To avoid any last-minute complications, Jessica and Zach had also made and decorated a “magic wand” out of a paper plate and a dowel, presenting it to Katy as their own special Fairy Godmother. Getting into the spirit of the occasion, Katy had waved that wand around with more enthusiasm than verve.

“And,” Laura added, “I see you’ve brought your wand with you today. Are we going to need a little magic?”

“Laura, I need a lot of magic. My family is driving me nuts about—”

“Laura, Laura, we need you at the head table.” Rawhide’s Mayor Marilyn Rogers appeared to whisk Laura away to the place of honor. Throughout the luncheon, throughout the opening of baby gifts, Katy remained uncharacteristically quiet, in the background, with a half-sad smile pasted on her face.

All this hoop-de-doo couldn’t help but remind her of her own failings. Thirty and single, her entire family was on her back to marry and reproduce—as if it were that simple. She couldn’t exactly wave her magic wand—as successful as it had been in the past—and conjure up a Romeo of her own.

If she could, she certainly would. A movement near the door caught her eye and she saw Dylan Cole enter. He hesitated, looking around for a table. She could only hope he didn’t notice the empty one directly behind where she sat.

She and Dylan couldn’t be in the same room for five minutes without launching into battle. It had been that way all their lives, even back in grammar school when he and his buddy Matt Reynolds had made her life miserable.

She turned her back on him just in time to see Laura pull a beautiful hand-made baby quilt from a brightly wrapped box. Good thing mother isn’t here to see this, Katy thought darkly. Lovely and feminine, Laura was the daughter her mother should have had, she thought gloomily even as she applauded enthusiastically. Instead, her mother had got a daughter who grew up a wild tomboy ready to take on the world.

On her thirtieth birthday last October 25, Katy had thought her mother and grandmother were going to hold a wake. And this year, she realized, would be even worse. Her grandmother’s health had deteriorated, her mother reported weekly, and Grandma’s only wish was “to see Katy settled before I die.”

“Settled,” to the Andrews family, meant married, preferably with children.

Throughout lunch and the opening of gifts, Katy mentally reviewed every man she knew in or near the town of Rawhide and came up short. There wasn’t a single suitable husband for her in all the land—and she knew them all. Born and raised here, now in her seventh year as a reporter at the local paper, it was no exaggeration to say she knew everyone.