Dad by Default. Jacqueline Diamond

      If she wasn’t careful, she might fall in love

      Had already fallen.

      Oh, damn.

      Until now she hadn’t dared picture a future with Connor, but now her imagination drifted there. Morning after morning, awakening in his arms…the small rituals of eating breakfast, going to work, reading to the children as a couple…

      Was she a complete fool? That kind of security didn’t come to women like her. Not in a world full of Harmon Hardisons and Luther Allens—righteous, judgmental people who mattered to Connor.

      There wasn’t going to be a happy ending. No Just Married sign on the back of his cool red sedan. No baby with Connor’s thick hair and her violet eyes.

      Abruptly Yvonne sat up.

      What had she done?

      Dear Reader,

      When I first met Yvonne while telling the story of Jenni and Ethan, I knew that someday she’d insist on taking center stage. But I had no idea she was going to do so with such spirit.

      As for Connor, I didn’t realize that the seemingly staid physician guarded a secret, and had a big surprise in store, as well. Writing this book was as much a voyage of discovery for me as for him.

      Even after more than seventy novels, I still don’t know how characters spring to life. I’m just grateful that they do. Take Biker Mike. Until I met the little guy in a motel room, I was clueless about the strength of his personality.

      Characters change, too. If you’ve read the previous DOWNHOME DOCTORS books, you’ll recall Beau as a real pain in the neck. When it came to dealing with his own family, however, he revealed unexpected facets.

      If this is your first visit to Downhome, the book stands by itself, so don’t worry. And I hope you’re intrigued enough to want to find out what happens to Sonja Vega, the ob-gyn who’s going to arrive next. In fact, she’s already had a prickly encounter with the man who’s going to be her hero, but she doesn’t know it yet.

      I’d better get back to work. I can hear my characters demanding attention.

      Happy reading!

      P.S. Please e-mail me at [email protected] and visit my Web site at www.jacquelinediamond.com.

      Dad by Default

      Jacqueline Diamond

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For my cousin Suzanne, who shares my memories of Granny

      Books by Jacqueline Diamond

      HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

      913—THE IMPROPERLY PREGNANT PRINCESS

      962—DIAGNOSIS: EXPECTING BOSS’S BABY

      971—PRESCRIPTION: MARRY HER IMMEDIATELY

      978—PROGNOSIS: A BABY? MAYBE

      1046—THE BABY’S BODYGUARD

      1075—THE BABY SCHEME

      1094—THE POLICE CHIEF’S LADY *

      1101—NINE-MONTH SURPRISE *

      1109—A FAMILY AT LAST *

      Contents

       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

       Chapter Nineteen

      Chapter One

      Yvonne Johnson hated Connor Hardison, M.D., on sight. No, she hated him before she saw him, before she met him, before the Monday morning in August when he walked into the Home Boulevard Medical Clinic, stretching his broad shoulders and flashing his precision-cut dimple.

      Glowing reports from his earlier visit merely intensified Yvonne’s wrath. She hated him all the more when her fellow nurse, Winifred Waters, an outspoken black woman who practically worshipped the clinic’s obstetrician, declared the newcomer “Ninety-nine percent as handsome as Dr. Rankin.”

      She hated him when Dr. Jenni Forrest, the family practitioner whom Yvonne assisted and who was about to go on a year’s maternity leave, remarked, “If I weren’t eight months pregnant and didn’t have the most fabulous husband in the world, I’d be tempted.”

      Yvonne had good reason to hate Connor Hardison. According to what she’d heard, he probably didn’t hold a high opinion of her, either. However, he’d had no choice about which nurse he inherited when he accepted the position in Downhome, Tennessee, and neither did she.

      On the morning of his arrival, Yvonne lingered in the nurses’ lounge, listening to the cheerful voices of her fellow workers greeting him in the hallway. They all sounded thrilled that their community, which struggled to find enough doctors for its growing population, had snagged a respected family practitioner to fill in for Jenni and possibly stay on after she returned.

      There was no point in trying to switch assignments with Winifred. When Yvonne suggested doing so, Estelle Fellows, the clinic’s nurse practitioner and business manager, had insisted that Dr. Hardison required someone familiar with Jenni’s patients.

      Yvonne was weighing her remaining options—which amounted to none, since she was a single mom with a two-year-old daughter—when Winifred found