Peg Sutherland - All-American Baby

“Have you never heard of morning sickness?” “Have you never heard of morning sickness?” Ash stared at the teenager. “Emily, what are you talking about?” The girl rolled her eyes in that expressive way she had. “Like anyone with half a brain couldn’t have figured it out. There’s going to be a baby! Your baby Mel’s baby!” “Oh my God.” Ash wondered if this was how it felt to be in shock. “Now I suppose you’re going to hyperventilate?” Emily snatched her milk glass off the table and stalked to the sink. “Get a grip, for cripes’ sake. People have babies all the time. Especially when they fall in love. If you can’t figure out what to do next, well, I give up.” “Next?” He was supposed to do something. But what? Buy insurance? Baby formula? Cigars? “Next. As in, go after Mel and make nice.” She rolled her eyes again. “Do I need to write a script here?” She took Ash by the arm and turned him in the direction Mel had run. “Go. Now. And repeat after me, ‘Mel, I love you.’ And work on your delivery while you’re looking for her.” All Ash could do was follow orders and try to steady his heart. Melinda and a baby. Could he really be that lucky? Letter to Reader Dear Reader, Welcome back to Hope Springs, Virginia. I hope you’re enjoying the people of Hope Springs as much as I am. I love small Southern towns. I love the people and the way they rally around when you need them. I love the sense of tradition. I love the colorful names and the quaint shops and tree-lined streets. My heroine in All-American Baby doesn’t know much about small-town U.S.A., but she wants to. She wants to find that sense of community, a place where she can feel a family connection with everyone she meets. She hasn’t experienced much of that in her life and she is determined that her baby will grow up with all the things she missed. Thank you for joining me on another visit to Hope Springs. Regards, Peg Sutherland Title Page All-American Baby Peg Sutherland www.millsandboon.co.uk PROLOGUE 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 CHAPTER SEVENTEEN CHAPTER EIGHTEEN EPILOGUE Copyright

“Have you never heard of morning sickness?”

Ash stared at the teenager. “Emily, what are you talking about?”

The girl rolled her eyes in that expressive way she had. “Like anyone with half a brain couldn’t have figured it out. There’s going to be a baby! Your baby Mel’s baby!”

“Oh my God.” Ash wondered if this was how it felt to be in shock.

“Now I suppose you’re going to hyperventilate?” Emily snatched her milk glass off the table and stalked to the sink. “Get a grip, for cripes’ sake. People have babies all the time. Especially when they fall in love. If you can’t figure out what to do next, well, I give up.”

“Next?” He was supposed to do something. But what? Buy insurance? Baby formula? Cigars?

“Next. As in, go after Mel and make nice.” She rolled her eyes again. “Do I need to write a script here?” She took Ash by the arm and turned him in the direction Mel had run. “Go. Now. And repeat after me, ‘Mel, I love you.’ And work on your delivery while you’re looking for her.”

All Ash could do was follow orders and try to steady his heart.

Melinda and a baby. Could he really be that lucky?

Dear Reader,

Welcome back to Hope Springs, Virginia.

I hope you’re enjoying the people of Hope Springs as much as I am. I love small Southern towns. I love the people and the way they rally around when you need them. I love the sense of tradition. I love the colorful names and the quaint shops and tree-lined streets.

My heroine in All-American Baby doesn’t know much about small-town U.S.A., but she wants to. She wants to find that sense of community, a place where she can feel a family connection with everyone she meets. She hasn’t experienced much of that in her life and she is determined that her baby will grow up with all the things she missed.

Thank you for joining me on another visit to Hope Springs.

Regards,

Peg Sutherland

All-American Baby

Peg Sutherland

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

Hope Springs, Virginia

“TOOD GRUNKEMEIER, you’re ornery as an old rattlesnake today.”

That was Whiskey Rowlett, a regular at Fudgie’s Barbershop whenever he wasn’t out for a few weeks pursuing the interests that had earned him his nickname.

Tood eyed Whiskey. Whiskey wasn’t known for his sweet disposition, either, so it was no surprise Tood’s complaints about the heat had struck Whiskey the wrong way. “Rattlesnakes don’t bother you if you don’t bother them,” Tood pointed out.

“Besides, Tood’s right,” said another of the regulars, who liked to keep peace at Fudgie’s because his daughter-in-law and three grandkids had moved in with him and the missus, making peace a scarce commodity in his life at the moment. “It’s too dang hot for May.”

“’Specially if you’ve got a houseful, eh, Eb?”

Eben Monk nodded ruefully and conversation drifted off to kids and approaching summertime. Tood’s attention strayed. He didn’t know much about kids. The last kid he knew anything about was his nephew and he’d had bad news about the boy this very day, from the detective hired by Tood’s attorney. His nephew was dead. Found in an abandoned warehouse in Omaha, dead from an apparent drug overdose. Thirty-four and he’d already beat his old uncle to the promised land. And the capper was that nobody seemed to know what had happened to the boy’s teenage daughter.

“Lookie there!”

Everybody in the barbershop turned in response to Whiskey’s excitement. Whiskey was pointing at the TV mounted in the corner, its sound muted to a low murmur. On the screen, a dark-haired young woman was being scurried from a jet to a limousine waiting across the tarmac.

“That’s Melina Somerset,” Whiskey said.

Eb and Fudgie took two steps closer to the television.

“Naw. Can’t be.”

“The devil it’s not.” Whiskey grabbed the remote and inched up the sound.

“How do you know?” Eb asked. “Ain’t nobody seen a picture of her for I don’t know how long—fifteen years, maybe.”

“I know ’cause I seen it on the noon news outta Roanoke. Announcer said it was her.”

“Then what’s she doing here?” Fudgie said.

“She ain’t here, you old fool. She’s in San Francisco.”

“What for?”

“Well, now, if I knew that, I reckon I’d be putting up with Jerry Springer’s fool questions instead of yours, wouldn’t I?”

“You’re cross, Whiskey. Just as cross as can be. You ought to go off on another one of your benders. You know that? We’re tired of listening to you.”

Then the barbershop grew quiet as the camera zoomed in for a close-up of the young woman. She was dark and thin, with eyes too large for anyone’s face beneath the brim of a man’s gray felt fedora. The collar of her raincoat was turned up, but neither it nor the hat had managed to hide her delicate beauty.

Someone in the barbershop whistled low as one of the men surrounding the young woman moved in to block her from the camera. She disappeared into the limousine and the camera panned to a female reporter who did not look nearly as elegant in her raincoat.

“Dang! Imagine that,” Fudgie said. “Melina Somerset. How old’s she now? ’Bout twenty?”

“Musta been more than a dozen years since they wiped out her mother,” Eb said. “She was just a little one then.”

“Her mother and her sister,” Whiskey said. “She’s twenty-six now. Said so on the noon news.”