Confidential: Expecting!. Jackie Braun

      

       Dear Reader

      The pre-writing phase of a book is always interesting for me. Usually I come up with my characters first, figure out what their issues and conflicts are, and then I build a plot around them. Sometimes doing so is easy. Sometimes it’s not. The plot for this book fell into the latter category.

      Indeed, Logan and Mallory’s story went through so many incarnations before I ever began writing the first chapter that I finally gave up numbering my outlines. What eventually became the synopsis for CONFIDENTIAL: EXPECTING! actually bore the moniker ‘Logan and Mallory Newest Version’.

      Thankfully, writing Logan and Mallory’s story proved to be much easier than writing that synopsis.

      I hope you enjoy CONFIDENTIAL: EXPECTING! As always, I’d love to hear what you think. You can reach me through my website at www.jackiebraun.com

      Best wishes

       Jackie Braun

      Jackie Braun is a three-time RITA^® finalist, three-time National Readers’ Choice Award finalist, and a past winner of the Rising Star award. She lives in Michigan, with her husband and two sons, and can be reached through her website at www.jackiebraun.com

      ‘Unlike my heroine, I’d never be able to keep the news of a baby confidential. I think half the free world knew my husband and I were adopting a second child before the agency received our application.’

      —Jackie Braun

       “I’d like to see you again.”

      That stopped her. “You would?” The line deepened between her brows even though she grinned. “To keep an enemy close?”

      Logan didn’t smile. “No.”

      “Then why?” Her head angled in challenge.

      The ball was in his court. He was grimly serious when he said, “Because of this.”

      He closed the distance between them as he spoke, and pulled her into his arms before he could think better of it. His mouth found hers before she could mount a protest. Instead, she rose on tiptoe and boldly kissed him back. When he would have ended it she was just getting started, tilting her head in the opposite direction and deepening the contact.

       Zip. Zap. Zing.

      He wanted her.

      Confidential: Expecting!

      BY

      Jackie Braun

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      For Don and Jean Fridline, who lived a love story. I miss you both.

      Chapter One

      “IS THIS seat taken?”

      Mallory Stevens knew that deep, seductive voice. As best she could, she braced herself before looking up into a pair of smiling gray-green eyes and a face that would have made Adonis seem homely by comparison. It was no use.

       Zip, zap, zing!

      Just that fast, her hormones snapped to attention and her limbs turned liquid. It was a bizarre reaction, though she’d be lying if she labeled it unpleasant. Nor was it unprecedented. She’d experienced its twin a week earlier when she’d met Logan Bartholomew for the first time.

      They’d been in his office, and she’d written it off then as a fluke. She’d been working too many hours. She’d barely slept the night before. She’d gone without the company of a man for way, way too long.

      But a fluke didn’t happen twice. When it did, and it involved a member of the opposite sex, it was called something else: attraction.

      Mallory sucked in a breath before letting it out slowly between her teeth. She certainly had nothing against mingling with members of the opposite sex. She liked men, but she had a rule about mixing business with pleasure. It was a no-no. Logan Batholomew was business, even if everything about him made her body hum with pleasure.

      “You’re welcome to join me, Doctor,” she told him. Though it took an effort, her tone was blessedly nonchalant. She hoped the smile she sent him was the same.

      He folded his athletic frame into the chair, managing to look both elegant and masculine. For the umpteenth time in their short acquaintance, she found herself thinking his gorgeous looks were wasted on the radio. He hosted a call-in program that had all of Chicago talking.

      “I thought we’d agreed it was just Logan,” he said.

      Mallory knew he was wrong. Even though, now that he was here, sitting through the Windy City Women of Action luncheon she’d been assigned to cover held far more appeal, a qualifier such as just didn’t apply when it came to Logan. Everything about the guy was off the charts, from his leading-man looks and tri-athlete physique to the way his show had burned its way to the top of the ratings in a little over a year. It was no wonder he’d been voted Chicago’s most eligible bachelor in a recent poll sponsored by her newspaper.

      As a reporter, Mallory reminded herself that she was interested in more than his heart-palpitating appeal and sigh-worthy exterior. She was interested in a story and she smelled one here. Not necessarily the sort that went with his sophisticated cologne and designer tie, and certainly not the trivial one that had landed her in his office the week before.

      In her experience, no one was ever as perfect as this guy appeared to be with his Harvard degree and penchant for supporting worthwhile causes. She intended to unearth the skeletons in his closet and then expose each and every one of them. Maybe then her editor would forgive her for the embarrassing faux pas that had the newspaper’s lawyers fending off a libel suit and Mallory writing the kind of general assignment fluff that usually went to the college interns.

      “I should thank you for the article you did on my commencement address to the students and faculty at Chesterfield Alternative High School,” he said.

      Fluff, definitely. So much so that the airy advance had wound up buried in the bowels of the Chicago Herald’s Lifestyles section.

      “You read it?” she asked, equally surprised that he’d found it.

      “All four paragraphs,” came his dry reply.

      Truth be told, Mallory had had to pad it with his background to make it that long. God, she missed her city hall beat. Two months of writing nonsense had her feeling like a carnivore at a vegetarians’ convention. She needed meat, the rarer the better, and unless her instincts were wrong, Logan was prime rib.

      Angling her head to one side, she said, “So, any truth to the rumor I heard that Doctor in the Know might go national? Or that a certain cable television network has made you an offer for a prime-time program?”

      If he was surprised by her questions, it didn’t show. He didn’t so much as blink. Rather, in a bland voice, he inquired, “On the record or off?”

      “On, of course,” she replied.

      “Well then, no.”

      She lifted one brow. “And off the record?”

      Logan leaned toward her, close enough that she could feel the heat radiating from his skin. She pictured his mouth, lips barely an inch from making contact with her earlobe when he whispered, “No comment.”

      In spite of herself, Mallory shivered. The man was downright lethal, a straight shot of sex outfitted in a suit that probably cost the equivalent of a month’s worth of her take-home pay. She’d splurged on the black pencil skirt and tan fitted jacket she was wearing, but they were hardly designer label. Clearly, she was