Baby: MacAllister-Made Read online

  She’d Forgotten To Breathe.

  She just stared at Richard as though she’d never seen him before in her life. She’d been viewing him not as her buddy, but as the father of her child. The whole concept was so strange, new and foreign that she’d failed to inhale, then exhale.

  But she was fine now. She was in control. Richard was the same old Richard. Granted, he looked like a million dollars.

  “Hey, want to hear some trivia from Detroit?” he said. “Brenda, did you know that a shark is the only fish that can blink with both eyes…? So what have you got for me? Lay some new trivia on your buddy here.”

  “Richard, I’m…I’m pregnant…with your baby.”

  Dear Reader,

  Thanks to all who have shared, in letters and at our Web site, eHarlequin.com, how much you love Silhouette Desire! One Web visitor told us, “When I was nineteen, this man broke my heart. So I picked up a Silhouette Desire and…lost myself in other people’s happiness, sorrow, desire…. Guys came and went and the books kept entertaining me.” It is so gratifying to know how our books have touched and even changed your lives—especially with Silhouette celebrating our 20 anniversary in 2000.

  The incomparable Joan Hohl dreamed up October’s MAN OF THE MONTH. The Dakota Man is used to getting his way until he meets his match in a feisty jilted bride. And Anne Marie Winston offers you a Rancher’s Proposition, which is part of the highly sensual Desire promotion BODY & SOUL.

  First Comes Love is another sexy love story by Elizabeth Bevarly. A virgin finds an unexpected champion when she is rumored to be pregnant. The latest installment of the sensational Desire miniseries FORTUNE’S CHILDREN: THE GROOMS is Fortune’s Secret Child by Shawna Delacorte. Maureen Child’s popular BACHELOR BATTALION continues with Marooned with a Marine. And Joan Elliott Pickart returns to Desire with Baby: MacAllister-Made, part of her wonderful miniseries THE BABY BET.

  So take your own emotional journey through our six new powerful, passionate, provocative love stories from Silhouette Desire—and keep sending us those letters and e-mails, sharing your enthusiasm for our books!

  Enjoy!

  Joan Marlow Golan

  Senior Editor, Silhouette Desire

  Baby: MacAllister-Made

  JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART

  For Scooter

  Give lots of hugs to Cricket, Scoo

  Books by Joan Elliott Pickart

  Silhouette Desire

  *Angels and Elves #961

  Apache Dream Bride #999

  †Texas Moon #1051

  †Texas Glory #1088

  Just My Joe #1202

  **Taming Tall, Dark Brandon #1223

  *Baby: MacAllister-Made #1326

  Silhouette Books

  *The Baby Bet: His Secret Son

  Silhouette Special Edition

  *Friends, Lovers…and Babies! #1011

  *The Father of Her Child #1025

  †Texas Dawn #1100

  †Texas Baby #1141

  Wife Most Wanted #1160

  The Rancher and the Amnesiac Bride #1204

  **The Irresistible Mr. Sinclair #1256

  **The Most Eligible M.D. #1262

  Man… Mercenary… Monarch #1303

  *To a MacAllister Born #1329

  Previously published under the pseudonym Robin Elliott

  Silhouette Desire

  Call It Love #213

  To Have It All #237

  Picture of Love #261

  Pennies in the Fountain #275

  Dawn’s Gifts #303

  Brooke’s Chance #323

  Betting Man #344

  Silver Sands #362

  Lost and Found #384

  Out of the Cold #440

  Sophie’s Attic #725

  Not Just Another Perfect Wife #818

  Haven’s Call #859

  Silhouette Special Edition

  Rancher’s Heaven #909

  Mother at Heart #968

  Silhouette Intimate Moments

  Gauntlet Run #206

  JOAN ELLIOTT PICKART

  is the author of over eighty novels. When she isn’t writing, she enjoys watching football, knitting, reading, gardening and attending craft shows on the town square. Joan has three all-grown-up daughters and a fantastic little grandson. In September of 1995 Joan traveled to China to adopt her fourth daughter, Autumn. Joan and Autumn have settled into their cozy cottage in a charming small town in the high pine country of Arizona.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  One

  Richard MacAllister entered his apartment and slammed the door closed behind him. He shrugged out of his sport coat, tossed it onto a chair, then picked it up in the next instant and strode into his bedroom to hang it in the closet in its proper color-coordinated place.

  He returned to the living room and slouched onto the sofa, then rose again to pace restlessly around the large room.

  “Women,” he muttered. “Who needs them? They’re all fickle. Weird. Totally unreliable, unpredictable, ununderstandable…except that’s probably not a word. Oh, man, women drive me nuts.”

  Richard halted his trek, shoved both hands through his hair, then strode to the far wall of the living room and pounded on it loudly with three solid thumps.

  “Be home,” he said, staring at the wall. “At a time like this a person needs to talk to his best friend. Come on, come on, let me know that you’re there.”

  Two muffled knocks sounded through the wall, which Richard returned quickly with one thunk.

  Good, he thought. Message sent, received and answered. Three knocks to determine if anyone was home, two knocks acknowledging that fact, then one to communicate the directive to please come over. Primitive, yes, but it worked. And, besides, it was fun, a secret code known only to him and his buddy.

  In a few moments his best friend would arrive to listen to his current tale of woe, provide a shoulder, react with the appropriate sympathy and comforting pat on the back that was called for.

  Granted, Richard thought, he was a grown man, who was perfectly capable of dealing with his own emotions, licking his own wounds, pulling himself up by the bootstraps and carrying on. Yes, of course he was. But why suffer alone when he knew that his best buddy was willing to share his misery?

  A knock on the apartment door was music to Richard’s ears, and he hurried to fling open the door, speaking at the same time.

  “I’m so glad to see you,” he said. “I really am bummed and… Uh-oh. This is not good. You’re wearing your pea-soup robe, which means you must feel very lousy to have dragged that disaster out of the closet. What’s wrong with you, Brenda?”

  Richard narrowed his eyes and scrutinized the woman who was standing before him.

  Brenda was definitely not her usual chipper self, he thought. Her slender figure was covered from neck to toe in the awful, faded chenille robe the color of pea soup, a sure sign that she wasn’t up to par. That robe was her comfort blankie, used only when she was physically ill or emotionally bottomed out.

  From the roll of paper towels tucked under one arm and the way she was dabbing at her red-tipped nose, he surmised that Brenda was physically ill. As well, her pretty, delicate features were pale, and her brown eyes, which usually sparkled, were sort of blurry.

  “May I come in, Richard?” Brenda said, then sighed and patted her nose with the paper towel again.

  “What? Oh, sure. I’m sorry,” he said, stepping
back to allow her room to enter. “I was just checking you over. You look like hell, Bren.”

  Brenda glared at him as she shuffled past him, her feet encased in oversize athletic socks that actually belonged to Richard.

  “Thanks a lot,” she said, flopping onto the sofa. “That’s just what I needed to hear. You’re so great for a woman’s morale.”

  Richard perched on the coffee table in front of Brenda, and she slid her gaze over him, just as he had done to her, wrinkling her nose in the process.

  “You don’t get any awards for appearance, either, Richard,” she said. “Your hair is sticking out, which means you’ve been dragging your hands through it. You have dark circles under your eyes. Your tan went south while you were in Kansas City, too.”

  “Yeah, well…”

  “You’re still handsome as all get-out,” Brenda rambled, “but your hair needs a trim. That’s the hair that one of your sweetie-pies of yesteryear told me was yummy. Thick and yummy. Oh, please, give me a break. Yummy?

  “Granted, it’s nice hair, light brown and sun-streaked in places, but at the moment, as I pointed out, it looks like you stuck your finger in an electrical socket. On a scale of one to ten, you’re a five.”

  Richard smoothed his hair into place with both hands, then leaned close to Brenda.

  “Are you sick?” he said, frowning. “That you’re in a lousy, crabby mood is obvious, but do you have a dread disease?”

  “Yep. I’m going to be dead by midnight. Goodbye, Richard. I just want you to know that you’ve been a wonderful best friend for the past fourteen months, and I—”

  “Would you cut it out?” he said. “What disease do you have?”

  “A roaring sinus infection,” Brenda said, then sighed as she dabbed at her nose. “I felt so terrible yesterday that I actually went to the doctor and he gave me an antibiotic to take. But plucky little thing that I am, I went out on my blind date last night, anyway.”

  “I thought you swore you’d never again go on a blind date.”

  “I was desperate,” she said, sighing again. “This guy was the friend of the cousin of one of the clients of the travel agency. A dentist. He’s a dentist. He spent the entire evening staring at my teeth.”

  Richard laughed, then sobered in the next instant as Brenda glowered at him.

  “I kid you not, Richard,” she said. “Every time I smiled he just zeroed in on my front teeth. He spoke to my teeth, you know what I mean? When he brought me home, he put his arms around me, told me I had the nicest teeth he’d seen in a very long while, then kissed me on the forehead.

  “I’d dragged myself out of my sick bed to go out with that weird biscuit. Never again. No more blind dates for me. Not ever. In fact, I just might give up on men.”

  “Join the club,” Richard said, nodding.

  “Oh? You’re giving up on men?” she said, then laughed.

  “Cute.” Richard got to his feet and placed the edge of one hand against his throat. “I’ve had it up to here with the female species.” He paused. “Why are you using paper towels on your poor red nose?”

  “I didn’t have any tissues,” Brenda said. “I wrote tissues on my shopping list but—”

  “Yeah, I know, you lost the list. What happened to the penguin magnet I brought you from Alaska? That was supposed to hold your shopping list on your refrigerator.”

  “I can’t find it,” Brenda said. “The magnet. I don’t know where the magnet is. The refrigerator is still in its designated spot, though.”

  “Stay put. I can’t stand the punishment you’re dishing out to your pert little nose.”

  Richard started across the room.

  “Pert little nose?” Brenda yelled. “Want to meet the dentist? He flipped out over my teeth. Now if I can find some yo-yo who is bonkers for my eyes, I’ll have my entire face being worshipped by wackos.”

  “Put a cork in it,” Richard said, as he disappeared from the living room.

  He returned moments later with a freshly laundered, neatly folded cotton handkerchief. He pulled the roll of paper towels from beneath Brenda’s arm, set it on the coffee table, then smacked the handkerchief into her hand.

  “There. Use that,” he said, then slouched onto the sofa next to her.

  “Thank you.” Brenda dotted her nose with the hankie. “Oh, this so nice and soft. It smells like lemons, too. I’ll wash it and return it to you later.”

  “No, you won’t,” Richard said, resting his head on the top of the sofa and staring at the ceiling. “You’ll lose it somewhere between the washing machine and the dryer.”

  “That’s not fair,” Brenda said with an indignant sniff. “You refuse to believe me when I tell you that the washing machines in the laundry room in this building eat my stuff. They really do. Of course, you wouldn’t know that because you send everything out to your fancy-dancy place and have it all professionally laundered. Big la-di-da deal.”

  “Whatever,” Richard said. “Okay, the washing machines gobble up your stuff.”

  Brenda frowned and shifted on the sofa so she could get a better look at Richard.

  “You’re giving in on the washing machines?” she said. “Just like that? No argument? Goodness, you really are in a lower-than-low mood. What happened? Even more, when did whatever it is happen? I didn’t even know that you were back from Kansas City.”

  “I flew in late this afternoon,” he said, still focusing on the ceiling. “Exhausted to the bone. I’d called Beverly from Kansas City last night and made a date with her. I was really looking forward to it, to seeing her, having a great time and—ha! What a joke.”

  “What went wrong?”

  Richard turned his head to look at Brenda. “She broke up with me, Bren. She found somebody else while I was away. The jerk is a stockbroker. Beverly said that being in a relationship with a computer troubleshooter was like being a nun in a convent, because all she did was stay in her apartment while I was out of town.”

  “She has a valid point there,” Brenda said thoughtfully.

  “Oh, thanks a bunch,” he said, none too quietly. “Whose side are you on here? I just got dumped, Bren. I’d like a bit of sympathy if it isn’t too much trouble on your part, buddy.”

  “Well, cripe, Richard, what do you want me to say? Let’s take an honest look at this situation. You left for Alaska right after the new year, once you knew that your uncle Robert was going to recover from his heart attack and the surgery that followed.”

  “So?”

  “So, you were gone for almost two months,” she said, holding up the appropriate number of fingers. “You came home, met Beverly at a party and saw her nearly every night for what…three or four weeks?”

  “And what dynamite weeks those were,” he said, a wistful tone to his voice. “Whew.”

  “Spare me the details.” Brenda wiped her nose with the soft handkerchief. “Then you left for Kansas City and you’ve been gone for a month.” She paused. “What did you expect Beverly to do? You’d only been seeing each other for a few weeks and then…poof…you disappear, unable even to tell her when you’d be back in Ventura.”

  “I never know how long I’ll be gone. You know that,” Richard said. “It depends on what I discover when I get to the job site, what the problem is with the company’s computer system.”

  “I realize that, Richard, but I miss you when you’re gone. Imagine how someone who has romantic feelings feels. Beverly obviously cared for you, but your relationship was too new for that kind of a separation. She bailed out before she got hurt. I’m sorry, sweet friend, but I really see where she was coming from.”

  “You’re not doing one damn thing to lift me out of my state of total depression, Brenda,” Richard said, frowning at her.

  “Sorry, bub, but I calls ’em as I sees ’em,” Brenda said, shrugging. “Face it, Richard. You’re going to have a tough, if not impossible, time finding a woman to marry and have the children you want so badly if you insist on keeping the job that you have.r />
  “All the traveling you do is killing off your budding romances, due to the lack of appropriate nurturing…. Gracious, I’m certainly profound when I have a sinus infection.”

  “I am now officially beyond depressed,” Richard said, staring at the ceiling again. “Some best friend you are, Brenda Henderson. You’ve pushed me right over the edge of my misery into a bleak, dark void of nothingness.”

  “I think that’s redundant, Richard.”

  “Oh. Well, you get the drift. I don’t want to talk about this anymore.” Richard got to his feet. “We’re going to celebrate.”

  “What on earth do we have to celebrate?” Brenda said, as Richard headed toward the kitchen.

  “I don’t have a clue,” he said. “We’ll think of something. Got any new trivia for me?”

  “I’ve got a beaut,” Brenda said, sitting up straighter on the sofa.

  Richard returned with a bottle of wine and two crystal glasses. He filled the glasses, handed one to Brenda, then raised his high in the air.

  “Here’s to us,” he said. “Best friends…in good times and bad…the present Saturday night we are now experiencing being just about as lousy as it gets.” He suddenly paused. “Whoa. Wait. I don’t think you’re supposed to drink alcohol while you’re taking antibiotics.”

  “There’s a sticker on the prescription bottle that says something about that, but this isn’t exactly one hundred proof whiskey. A little bit of wine shouldn’t do any harm. It might even make me relax and feel better because I’m so-o-o stressed.”

  “Well, okay,” Richard said slowly, “but I’m limiting your intake of the grape, Miss.”

  They clinked their glasses, took sips of the delicious wine, then Richard sat back down next to Brenda.

  “Lay some trivia on me. It’ll cheer me up,” he said, then drained his glass.

  “This is a lovely wine,” Brenda said. “These antibiotics I’m taking make me so thirsty. That went down as smoothly as velvet stroking my parched throat.”

  Richard refilled his glass. “Trivia, please, my dear Ms. Henderson?”

  “Certainly, Mr. MacAllister. Try this on for size. Did you know that rubber bands last longer if you store them in the refrigerator?” She raised her eyebrows. “How’s that?”