Elizabeth Harbison: Mission Creek Mother-To-Be

CLUB TIMES

For Members’ Eyes Only

Dr. Sweetheart and flying snail shells…

Nothing makes me giddier than a man who appreciates a good joke. And Dr. Jared Cross certainly made my heart go pitter-pat when he listened to me tell the one about the rabbi, the priest, the go-go dancer and the nun. I got a little lost in my story while staring at his wild green eyes and gleaming smile. I kept thinking that Dr. Cross needed a good woman—someone to ruffle up his hair and give him some roses to smell. And then I forgot the punch line.

Harvey Small wanted me to announce that he’s giving etiquette classes on Tuesday nights. I won’t mention that Harv slammed the door in my face last week. Then again, maybe he didn’t enjoy my exposé on country club managers and hair loss. Make sure to bring an extra plastic fork and your escargot equipment for each class. And please leave the kids at home. The class was reprimanded for beaning Ford Carson with empty snail shells.

Time to run! Gotta go catch famous heiress Melanie Tourbier, who’s just arrived and made a beeline for Dr. Cross’s office. Wonder what that could be about!

Make the Lone Star Country Club your private getaway. The Jacuzzi’s waiting….

ELIZABETH HARBISON

began her love affair with Texas when her sister moved there in the early 1980s. It’s a place she’s revisited, both in fiction and in life, several times, and she always loves to return. Writing Mission Creek Mother-To-Be was a particular pleasure, since it incorporated some of Elizabeth’s favorite themes: a runaway heiress, babies, a tortured hero who needs love and a happy ending.

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Welcome to the

Where Texas society reigns supreme—and appearances are everything.

She didn’t think she wanted a baby the old-fashioned way until she met a doctor who had just the right bedside manner!

Dr. Jared Cross: As a fertility counselor and child psychiatrist, the good doctor makes dreams come true for so many families. But it’s his work with one woman in particular that has him thinking of a future—and a family—of his very own.

Melanie Tourbier: She’s been surrounded by gold-digging men her entire life. Now, with her desire for a baby increasing by the minute, Melanie knows a fertility clinic is her best option. Except there’s a very special doctor in attendance who’s making her rethink her child’s paternity….

Fireworks in Mission Creek: An explosion outside the nursery of Mission Creek Memorial Hospital and the escape of a vengeful criminal lead to a dangerous hostage situation. Whose lives will be spared…and who will suffer to protect others?

To Greg Cunliffe The Godfather

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

Epilogue

“…Branson Hines has escaped from authorities while being transferred from Mission Creek to a high-security prison in Lubbock. The thirty-two-year-old Hines is described as five feet ten inches tall, with dark eyes, dirty-blond hair and an unkempt goatee. Police spokesman Darryl Reilly warns that Hines is volatile and may be armed. Anyone who knows anything about his whereabouts is requested to call the Mission Creek Police hot line at—”

Melanie Tourbier reached out and clicked off the radio of her rented convertible. Then she shuddered and tried to take a deep cleansing breath as her yoga teacher in London had instructed. If things were going to work out the way she wanted them to here in Mission Creek, she needed to relax, to think positive thoughts. She did not need to panic about a dangerous escaped criminal who happened to be on the loose in the very small town she was staying in for the next few weeks. She’d be cautious, of course. But then, she was always cautious about strangers.

A lifetime’s worth of paparazzi and gold diggers had taught her that.

Her cell phone rang on the seat next to her and she punched the “on” button, glad for the distraction. She slipped the hands-free earpiece into her ear. She was nothing if not safety conscious. “Hello?”

“Where are you?”

Melanie smiled at the voice of her friend Jeff. She could picture him in her mind, his wavy brown hair mussed, his thin body draped casually across the Chippendale chair he’d inherited from his wealthy grandfather. “You know where I am,” she said. “I’m in Texas.”

“Melanie Tourbier, you are out of your mind! Come back before it’s too late.”

“It’s already too late. I’ve made up my mind and I’m going through with this.” She readjusted her grip on the steering wheel, symbolically reconfirming her resolution. “Face it, pal, you’re going to be an honorary uncle.”

“Much as I’d love that, I think you’re going about this the wrong way.”

“No, I’m not,” she said lightly. She was certain of that.

“But you’re only thirty!” Jeff argued. “You’ve got plenty of time to meet a man the traditional way, not in a test tube.”

“Oh, Jeff, don’t be silly, they don’t keep men in test tubes here,” she teased.

“They keep the essence of them there, and don’t change the subject. You’ve got plenty of time to go about this in the usual way and you know it.”

“I already tried that.”

“One bad husband doesn’t mean that there’s no one good out there.”

Melanie laughed. “Maybe not, but it certainly opened my eyes to some of the bad that’s out there.”

“Your relationship with Michael wasn’t all bad.”

“Bad enough.” Michael Mason had entered her life as a financial advisor and had left it as a financial liability. The divorce had cost her millions, but it was worth it to get rid of a man who had become more domineering and intimidating with every passing month. The only good thing, if you could call it good, that had come from the relationship was she’d learned early on about medical problems that would make it very difficult for her to conceive a child. One doctor had given her a one-in-a-hundred chance, though to her it felt like one in a million.

Which was a main reason she’d decided upon her current course of action.

“Why not just wait a couple of years?” Jeff implored. “Mr. Right might be just around the corner.”

“Even if he was, and I know he’s not, a couple of years won’t do it.” She tapped her foot on the brakes and glanced right and left as she rolled over some railroad tracks. “Think about it. Say, hypothetically, I meet a guy today. We’d have to date for at least a year before I could trust him enough to even consider sleeping with him—”

“A year?”

“At least. Remember what happened with Roberto?”

“Ah, yes, the pool boy.”

“He wasn’t a pool boy and you know it. He was the landscape artist. And a con artist,” she added miserably. Roberto Loren had been a huge mistake. A flirtation gone out of control. Melanie had met him when he’d come to redesign the grounds of her estate in Maui. They’d spent the summer flirting and dating, and eventually took a trip to his home in Majorca together, where she found out, the hard way, two crucial facts: first, that Roberto was not divorced as he’d said but still quite married with three young children; and second, that he’d set the whole thing up so he could have scandalous-looking pictures taken pool-side, with his children present, which he could sell to the tabloids.