Look What The Stork Brought In?. Dixie Browning

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      “Honey, Wake Up And Feed The Baby” Joe Said. Letter to Reader Title Page About the Author Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Epilogue Copyright

      “Honey, Wake Up And Feed The Baby” Joe Said.

      It struck him that for a single man who intended to stay that way, he was beginning to sound dangerously domestic. Downright paternal, in fact.

      

      And then he heard something that slammed him in the belly like a fist.

      

      Sophie whimpered in her sleep, and Joe groaned. He touched her lightly on the arm, just enough to rouse her.

      

      In the second before she awakened, she was totally vulnerable.

      

      In that moment, Joe knew that he could no more walk out and leave her—leave her and her baby—than he could fly to the moon. It was even worse admitting he could be turned on by a woman who had just given birth to another man’s baby. Either he was totally depraved, or the human instinct for survival and reproduction was a hell of a lot stronger than he’d suspected.

      Dear Reader,

      

      Happy Holidays to all of you from the staff of Silhouette Desire! Our celebration of Desire’s fifteenth anniversary continues, and to kick off this holiday season, we have a wonderful new book from Dixie Browning called Look What the Stork Brought. Dixie, who is truly a Desire star, has written over sixty titles for Silhouette.

      

      Next up, The Surprise Christmas Bride by Maureen Child. If you like stories chock-full of love and laughter, this is the book for you. And Anne Eames continues her MONTANA MALONES mimseries with The Best Little Joeville Christmas.

      

      The month is completed with more Christmas treats:

      A Husband in Her Stocking by Christine Pacheco;

      I Married a Prince by Kathryn Jensen and Santa Cowboy by Barbara McMahon.

      

      I hope you all enjoy your holidays, and hope that Silhouette Desire will add to the warmth of the season. So enjoy the very best in romance from Desire!

      Senior Editor

      Please address questions and book requests to:

      Silhouette Reader Service

      U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

      Canadian: P.O. Box 609. Fort Ene, Ont. L2A 5X3

      Look What the Stork Brought In?

      Dixie Browning

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      DIXIE BROWNING

      

      celebrated her sixtieth book for Silhouette with the publication of Stryker’s Wife in 1996. She has also written a number of historical romances with her sister under the name Bronwyn Williams. A charter member of Romance Writers of America and a member of Novelists, Inc., Browning has won numerous awards for her work. She divides her time between Winston-Salem and the Outer Banks of North Carolina.

      One

      He was closing in. So close he could almost smell blood. Lifting one hand from the steering wheel, Joe Dana pinched the place between his eyes where it throbbed. It was just past ten on a steamy July morning, and he’d pulled over onto the side of the road. Briefly, he’d considered checking into a hotel, catching a shower and a few hours’ sleep first, but he was too close. After going flat out for the past five weeks—the last twenty-two hours of it without sleep—he wanted only to wind things up and go home.

      Wherever home was. At the moment, it was a storage unit in Fort Worth. That and some unfinished plans.

      For the time being, he’d seen enough sheriffs and small-town cops to last him a while. As for women hanging all over him, soaking his shirt with their tears, he could do without those, too.

      He yawned again, inhaling the stale aroma of his own sweat and too many fast-food containers. Once this gig was finished, he was going to the best hotel in town to soak his carcass in hot water for a few hours, send his boots out to be polished, his laundry out to be finished, order in a slab of beef, cooked just the way he liked it, with a basket of fries, a gallon of milk and half-a-gallon of ice cream....

      And then he was going to sleep for a week.

      The slip of paper with instructions to the Bayard woman’s house said turn right off Highway 158 onto the first dirt road past Frenchman’s Creek; pass a mobile home on the left, a log tobacco barn on the right, go a mile farther and look for a mailbox mounted on a busted hay-rake.

      “Can’t miss it,” the deputy had said. “Last place on the road. County don’t gravel past there. She wanted for something? Heard she worked in a bank in town till she moved to Davie County a few months back. I went and got a raccoon out of her attic, first week she moved in. Seemed like a real nice woman, but these days you never know, do you?”

      No, thought Joe, you never know. He didn’t know if she was the brains of the organization—if there even was an organization, instead of just a one-man scam—or one more in a long line of tearful victims.

      He did know that the eighteenth-century jade vase she’d described in The Antique and Artifact Trader was a part of the collection he’d been tracking all the way from Dallas. He’d picked up the trail in Amarillo, lost it in Guymon, found it again in Tulsa and chased it all the way to North Carolina. Along the way, he’d checked out every pawn shop, every law enforcement office and heard more sob stories than any broken-down ex-cop needed to hear when he was officially retired.

      He had a hunch about this one, though. A strong feeling that he was finally closing in.

      Then again, the feeling could be just the result of too many chili dogs. As for his headache, that was a result of too many hours behind the wheel. His knee was killing him—also the result of driving too long without a break.

      On the other hand, it was usually at a time like this, when he was scraping the bottom of the barrel, that his luck suddenly took a turn for the