The Would-Be Daddy. Jacqueline Diamond

      

       She was leaving?

      “Let’s not part this way,” Marshall protested. “We should talk.”

      “About what?”

      “You’re supposed to be the expert.”

      “On pregnancy?” she asked.

      “On relationships.”

      “Well, here’s my opinion,” Franca said. “We’re not compatible, Marshall. I wish we were, and sometimes … No. I refuse to delude myself. Let’s just leave it at that.”

      Her footsteps rapped across the tile floor toward the hall. Then he heard the door latch behind her with a loud click.

      He sat at the counter, bewildered. How could she deny the intimacy they’d shared last night? Yet judging from her words, she regretted the whole night with a man she could never love. What had seemed a transformative experience to him had been entirely one-sided.

      He and Franca had always been opposites. Why expect things to be different now?

      Because, in a few weeks, they’d learn whether they were going to be parents …

       The Would-Be Daddy

       Jacqueline Diamond

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      Medical themes play a prominent role in many of JACQUELINE DIAMOND’s one hundred published novels, including her Safe Harbor Medical series for Mills & Boon Cherish. Her father was a small-town doctor before becoming a psychiatrist, and Jackie developed an interest in fertility issues after successfully undergoing treatment to have her two sons. A former Associated Press reporter and TV columnist, Jackie lives with her husband of thirty-seven years in Orange County, California, where she’s active in Romance Writers of America. You can sign up for her free newsletter at www.jacquelinediamond.com and say hello to Jackie on her Facebook page, JacquelineDiamondAuthor. On Twitter, she’s @jacquediamond.

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      To Hunter and Brooke

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

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 Twenty

       Chapter Twenty-One

       Extract

       Copyright

Chapter One

      It was unfair, dangerous and cruel. That poor little girl. If Franca Brightman didn’t figure out a way to rescue four-year-old Jazz, she’d burst into a fireball that would bring down the Safe Harbor Medical Center parking structure on top of her.

      She’d tried to work off her fury by staying late on a Friday night at her office. She’d spent hours reviewing the patient files that had come with her new job as staff psychologist. Plunging into the records and assessing patients’ need for additional treatments should have blunted her pain and outrage.

      Instead, the click of her medium-high heels on the concrete floor rang in a fierce staccato as she tore through the nearly empty lower level of the garage toward her aging white station wagon. At least at this hour she didn’t have to feel embarrassed by her car, which was dented and old compared with the others, particularly the sleek silver sedan parked a short distance up the ramp.

      Franca’s last glimpse of Jazz had been riding off in a junkmobile far worse than this. The decrepit state of the car had intensified her fear about where and how the child would be living now that she’d gone back to her biological mother.

      Where was Jazz right now? Had her mom bothered to fix dinner, or were they eating out of a can? Crammed into a rent-by-the-week motel unit, the four-year-old must miss her beautiful princess bedroom. Did she believe Franca had relinquished her by choice?

      White-hot rage swirled inside Franca as she unlocked her station wagon and dropped into the driver’s seat. It was a wonder that, despite the chilly March air, she hadn’t already set the building ablaze.

      Franca wished she could figure out a safe way to vent her anger, which had been simmering all day. With a PhD in psychology and years of counseling experience here in Southern California, she ought to be