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Overview
Which Karleen Almquist had surely tried to do.But the thrice-married—and thrice-divorced!—personal shopper had sworn off men, and theirinherent complications…aka babies. Until themost gorgeous widower moved in next door—complete with the two most adorable little boysshe'd ever seen.
True, Troy Lindquist had been alone a long time,but the ice cream mogul was looking for a realrelationship, and his next-door neighbor wasclearly not his type. Still, that didn't stop himfrom turning to her one night—which resulted inKarleen being pregnant with Troy's child.
First came the baby carriage. Then came love.And then…marriage?
Product Details
| ISBN-13: | 9781426800306 |
|---|---|
| Publisher: | Silhouette |
| Publication date: | 04/01/2007 |
| Series: | Babies, Inc. , #3 |
| Sold by: | HARLEQUIN |
| Format: | eBook |
| Pages: | 256 |
| File size: | 206 KB |
About the Author
Read an Excerpt
By the time she was thirty, Karleen Almquist had signed three sets of divorce papers, at which point she decided to make things easier on herself and just get a hamster.
After all, hamsters didn't leave their clothes scattered all over kingdom come, watch endless football or stay out till all hours. And their itty-bitty paws were too small to mess with the remote. True, they weren't of much use in the sack, but then the same could be said of most of her husbands.
Unfortunately, also like her husbands, hamsters didn't exactly have a long shelf life. Which was why Karleen was burying yet another of the critters underneath the huge, gnarled cottonwood at the back of the large yard of the aging Corrales adobe she'd kept after her last divorce, seven years ago. Each tiny grave was marked by a miniature cast-stone marker engraved with the rodent's name, ordered from this place online that promised a two-day turnaround, if you were willing to pay extra for FedEx overnight service.
Karleen sank the marker into the soft soil, praying the neighborhood cats wouldn't disturb Mel's rest, although he was probably fairly scavenger-proof in the little metal floral can from Hobby Lobby. Then she stood, making a face as she peeled off her gardening gloves. Fond of Melvin as she'd been, it had taken the better part of an hour to glue on these nails and damned if she was going to ruin them for a dead hamster.
A cool, dry breeze shuddered through the veritable orchard of apple trees lining the far wall, sending a shower of white blossoms drifting across her dusty pool cover. The peaches, apricots and cherries would bloom in a few weeks. By mid-summer, the ground would be a holy mess with rotting fruit. But right now, her heart lifted a little at the sight of all those blossoms glowing against the brilliant New Mexico sky, the twittering of dozens of redheaded finches scouting out the assortment of brightly colored birdhouses suspended from the branches—
What was that?
At the giggling, she swung around in time to see a pair of pale blond heads vanish behind the low wooden fence separating her yard from the one next door.
"Boys!" boomed an off-stage male voice. "Get over here!" Karleen zipped as fast as her beaded slides would carry her back to the house, dumping the gloves on a tempered-glass table on her flagstone patio as she went. Once inside, she scurried across the brick floor through the house, twisting open the slightly warped verticals in her living-room window to get a better view. And indeed, through the assortment of glittery, spinning porch ornaments hanging from the eaves, she saw a great big old U-Haul van backed in the next driveway.
The house was the largest of the four on their little dead-end road, a two-story territorial/adobe mutt centered in a huge pie-shaped lot crammed with a forest's worth of trees— cottonwoods, willows, pines, silver maples. The property hadn't been on the market more than a few weeks (the old owners had gone to live with one of their kids in Oregon or Idaho or someplace), so the new owners must've paid cash for it, for closing to have gone through that quickly.
The little boys—twins, it looked like—raced around the side of the van, roaring in slightly off-sync unison (and loud enough to be heard through a closed window), "Daddy, Daddy! The house next door has a pool!"
Just shoot her now.
Karleen thought maybe they were a little older than her best friend Joanna's youngest, around four or so. Jumping up and down like that, it was hard to tell. God bless their mother, was all she had to say.
Then a Nordic god walked out from behind the truck, sunlight glinting off short golden hair, caressing massive shoulders effortlessly hefting a giant cardboard box, and her brain shorted out.
Not so much, however, that she couldn't paw for the pair of long-neglected binoculars on the bookshelf crammed with paperbacks and doodads behind her. She blew off the dust, then held them up to her eyes, fiddling with the focusing thingy for a second or two before letting out a soft yelp when The God's face suddenly filled up the lens.
Lord, it was like trying to pick a single item off the dessert cart. The jaw—the cheekbones—the heavy-lidded eyes—the mouth.
Oh, dear God, the mouth.
She licked her own, it having been a long, long time since she'd had a close encounter with one of those. Although this mouth was in a class by itself. Not too thin, but not one of those girlie mouths, either. Just right, Goldilocks, she thought with a snort.
Karleen lowered the binoculars, shaking her head and thinking, Well, doesn't this suck toads? only to brighten considerably when she remembered there was, in all likelihood, a Mrs. God. So he was somebody else's problem, praise be.
While she stood there, trying to hang on to her newfound cheer, an SUV rumbled past, parking behind the van and disgorging a pair of dark-haired hunks. Or rather one hunk and one hunk-in-progress, a teenager not yet grown into his long arms and legs. The two men did the buddy-palm-slapping thing, then got to work unloading the van while the little boys concentrated on staying underfoot as much as possible and being cute enough to get away with it.
For the next, um, twenty minutes or so, she watched as plaid Early American wing chairs and sofas and brass lamps and sections of a dark wood four-poster bed and one of those bland landscape paintings people hung over their sofas marched from van to house. Occasionally she caught snatches of flat, midwestern speech and thought, Yeah, that figures. And as the minutes passed, she wondered—so where was this wife, already? Shouldn't she be flitting about, directing the men where to put everything?
About this time Karleen noticed the mail truck shudder to a stop in front of her mailbox at the edge of her yard. The carrier got out, took stuff out of the box, slammed down the painted gecko flag, stuffed stuff into the box, then walked around to the back of the truck and retrieved a package. Which, instead of carrying up the walk to Karleen's front door, she tucked into a nest of weeds at the base of the post. Oh, for pity's sake.
Karleen yanked open her front door and headed toward her mailbox, blinking at the dozen or so jewel-toned pinwheels bordering her walk, happily spinning in the breeze. Halfway down, however, she realized that all movement had ceased next door. While she had to admit she felt a little spurt of pride that, at thirty-seven, she still had what it took to render men immobile, there was also a ping of annoyance that she couldn't go to her damn mailbox without being gawked at. However, if she didn't say anything, she would be forever branded as The Stuck-Up Bitch Who Lived Next Door.
And that would just be wrong.
So she fished her mail out of the box and the box out of the weeds, then wound her way over to the fence through her ever-growing collection of lawn ornamentation.
"Hey," she said, smiling. "I'm Karleen. You guys my new neighbors?"
She might even have pulled it off, too, if it hadn't been for the eyes.
Bimbo.
The word smacked Troy between the eyes like a kamikaze bee. Followed in quick succession by blonde, stacked and oh, crap.
It wasn't just the eighties retro hair. Or the Vegas makeup. Or even that she was dressed provocatively, because she wasn't. Exactly. The stretchy pants rode low and the top rode high (and the belly button sparkled like the North Star), but the essentials were more than ade-very polite, very glistening smile on the onto the scene, huffing and have one of two reactions either went all squealy faces like they'd stumbled did neither. Instead,
you can dish out, I can
KAREN TEMPLETON 13
take and give back ten times over, which Troy found disturbingly attractive and scary as hell at the same time.
"Hey, guys," she said in a perfectly normal voice, with a perfectly normal smile, which was when he realized she was around his age and that she hadn't had any work done that he could tell. Not on her face, at least. "Let me guess— y'all are twins, right?"
Scotty, slightly smaller than his brother, stuck close to Troy's leg while the more outgoing Grady clung like a curious little monkey to the post-and-rail fence separating the yards. Still, clearly awestruck—and dumbstruck—they both nodded so hard Troy was surprised their heads didn't fall off. Out of the corner of his eye, he caught Blake elbowing Shaun. "Breathe," he said, and the sixteen-year-old turned the color of cranberry juice.
"How old are you guys?, Karleen asked, not looking at Shaun.
"Four!" they chorused. Then Grady leaned closer and asked, " You got any kids?"
Karleen shook her head, tugging a straw-colored hair out of her lipstick. "No, sugar, I sure don't."
"Then how come you gots all that stuff?, Grady said, jabbing one finger toward her yard. Which looked like an annex for Wal-Mart's lawn-and-garden department. And no, he did not mean that in a good way. Surely all those whirligigs and stone raccoons and such hadn't been there before? Was that a gnome over in the far corner?
"'Cause it's fun," Karleen said with a shrug. "I like sparkly stuff, don't you?"
More nodding. Then Scotty piped up. "You got a pool, huh?"
"Yeah," she said, wrinkling her nose. Disconcertingly cute, that. "But I haven't used it in years."
"How come?"
"Okay," Troy said, slipping a warning hand on the boy's shoulders. "Too many questions, bud."
"It's all right," Karleen said, meeting his gaze, apparently forgetting to switch from kid-smile to I'm-only-doing-this-because-that's-how-I-was-raised smile, and his lungs stopped working, painfully reminding him how long it had been since he'd done the hokeypokey with anyone. Then, thankfully, she returned her attention to the child.
"It just got to be too much of a bother, that's all."
"Oh. Daddy said we couldn't have a pool -cause we're too little an" he didn't wanna hafta to worry 'bout us. But if we learned to swim, then he wouldn't hafta worry 'bout us."
"Yeah," Grady put in with another enthusiastic head nod, after which, as one, both blond heads swiveled to Troy with the attendant you-have-ruined-my-life-forever glare. But then Troy pulled his head out of his butt long enough to realize that that was the most Scotty had ever said to anyone, ever, at one time.
Karleen laughed. A low, from-the-gut laugh. Not a ditzy, tinkly, bimbo laugh. Definitely not a laugh Troy needed to hear right now, not with this many neglected hormones standing at the ready to do what hormones do. He glanced over to see Blake looking at him with a funny, irritating smirk, and he shot back a What? look. Chuckling, Blake poked Shaun—twice, this time—to help him unload the leather sofa for the family room, as Karleen said, " Your mama must sure have her hands full with you two," and Troy thought, Oh, hell.
"We don't got a mama, either," Scotty said, but with less regret than about the pool. "She died."
Karleen's eyes shot to Troy's, even as her cheeks pinked way beyond the makeup. "I am so sorry—"
"It's okay," he mumbled. "They've never known her."
"But you did," she said, then seemed to catch herself, the flush deepening.