Baby in a Million. Rebecca Winters

      Excitement permeated the atmosphere Letter to Reader Title Page CHAPTER ONE CHAPTER TWO CHAPTER THREE CHAPTER FOUR CHAPTER FIVE CHAPTER SIX CHAPTER SEVEN CHAPTER EIGHT CHAPTER NINE CHAPTER TEN EPILOGUE Copyright

      Excitement permeated the atmosphere

      “Your son is twenty-three inches long and weighs in at nine pounds, four ounces. Being born three weeks early doesn’t seem to have fazed this big guy at all.”

      

      Ashley had thought she knew what happiness was until her wiggly baby, who made newborn noises, was wrapped in a blanket and placed in the crook of her arm.

      

      Her eyes raced from the curly dark hair to each adorable feature. “Cabe.” She spoke to her little boy. “We’re here. Your mommy and daddy are right here.”

      

      Cord’s masked face was right next to hers. “We are, son.”

      Dear Reader,

      

      Welcome to

      Everyone has special occasions in their life—times of celebration and excitement. Maybe it’s a romantic event, an engagement or a wedding—or perhaps a wonderful family occasion, such as the birth of a baby. Or even a personal milestone—a thirtieth or fortieth birthday!

      

      These are all important times in our lives and in THE BIG EVENT! you can see how different couples react to these events. Whatever the occasion, romance and drama are guaranteed!

      

      We’ll be featuring one book each month from May to August 1998, bringing you terrific stories from some of your favorite authors. And, to make this miniseries extra special, The Big Event! will also appear in the Harlequin Presents^® series.

      

      We kick off this month with Rebecca Winters’s wonderful romance Baby in a Million. Look out next month for Beresford’s Bride by Margaret Way.

      

      Happy Reading!

      P.S. Follow the series into our Presents line in September with Kathryn Ross’s Bride for a Year.

      Baby In A Million

      Rebecca Winters

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      CHAPTER ONE

      WHEN the phone rang, Ashley McKnight got up clumsily from the kitchen table. She’d been folding clothes which had just come out of the dryer and hurried to answer it, afraid it might waken Mrs. Bromwell who had finally fallen asleep, hopefully until morning.

      Though Ashley turned off the elderly woman’s phone every night, the second extension in the kitchen lay on the other side of the wall of the comfortable apartment. Any noise past ten o‘clock could disturb her because she suffered from crippling arthritis and the medicine didn’t always blot out the pain. But she was such a dear soul, she hardly ever complained.

      The only people who would phone her this late would be Mrs. Bromwell’s family to see how their mother was doing, and how Ashley was faring. They had a replacement for Ashley, realizing that if she went into early labor, she’d have to leave their mother on a moment’s notice.

      But her doctor expected her to go full term, which meant she had four more weeks until the baby was due—four weeks to earn a little more money. Besides needing to outfit a layette, she had attorney fees to pay. She’d signed the papers. Now it was Cord’s turn to sign so that their divorce would be final right away.

      Out of habit she lifted a hand to smooth the hair from her ear, still forgetting that she’d had the long, thick, molasses-colored mane cut off last month. Her new short, stylish wedge-cut felt cool and would be much easier to manage with the approach of the baby and the hot summer coming on.

      “Hello?” she said quietly.

      “Ashley—”

      Her sudden intake of breath robbed her of speech. She hadn’t heard that deep voice in eight months, hadn’t seen her husband in all that time.

      Since she’d sworn her attorney to secrecy, the only way Cord could have found out where she was living and working was through Greg Ferris, Cord’s best friend, the owner of an exclusive sporting goods company in Salt Lake where she’d done a lot of the accounting until the time she’d left her husband.

      She’d thought Greg was her best friend, too! He’d promised not to tell Cord where she lived, or that she was pregnant. That kind of news she intended to keep from her husband until after the baby was born and she had settled elsewhere.

      After several years of trying to conceive, they’d gone in for tests and had found out Cord had a problem which made it almost impossible for them to have children.

      When she’d left his house for good, it would never have occurred to her to think she was pregnant. Not only because of the medical reasons, but because the last, disastrous six months of their hurtful marriage had been spent in separate bedrooms.

      From the first moment Ashley had been introduced to Sheila, Cord’s stepmother, the other woman had made subtle remarks out of Cord’s hearing which insinuated that she and Cord had enjoyed a romantic relationship before her marriage to his father—that they still desired each other.

      Confused and appalled by the revelation, Ashley had tried to put the whole thing out of her mind. For the most part she had succeeded.

      She and Cord couldn’t travel down from the Teton Mountains of Wyoming to Salt Lake very often. As a park ranger, he didn’t take that much time off from his work to get away. But when he could arrange it—mostly so they could visit Greg and his wife in Salt Lake—they only stopped off to see Cord’s father and stepmother for short periods of time, whether it be at the office or at the house.

      Somehow Sheila always managed to say something in private to Ashley which alluded to Sheila’s past relationship with Cord. But it wasn’t until the death of Cord’s father that Sheila grew bolder and played on Ashley’s doubts about Cord’s interest in his stepmother.

      As time went on, and Ashley’s marriage to Cord began to disintegrate because of insurmountable problems, the doubts grew until Ashley feared that Sheila was telling the truth.

      Only once, the night before