The Baby Bump Read online

  SHE WASN’T LOOKING FOR A HERO...

  Ginger Gautier does not need saving, thank you very much. Okay, she’s alone and pregnant. And, yes, she’s unemployed and less than trusting after her breakup with a big-city doctor, but that doesn’t mean she needs to be saved by a man. Especially not by another doctor!

  BUT HE FOUND HER ANYWAY!

  Ike MacKinnon was enjoying his peaceful, easygoing small-town life—until Ginger changed everything. Tired of Southern belles, the sexy doctor realized that the feisty redhead is the only woman who ever tied him up in knots. Trouble is, she’s determined to stand on her own two feet, no matter what the consequences. She won’t listen to anything. Not even her own heart.

  But Ike’s heart is telling him that he and this fiery redhead belong together. And he’s determined to make a house call that lasts forever!

  “Do you usually flirt with women you think are pregnant?”

  “There’s no guy to stop me from moving in on you.”

  This time she had to chuckle—in spite of herself. “I was just thinking...you might be a card-carrying good guy. If I were ever going to trust a doctor

  again—which I’m not—it might have been you.”

  “I’d ask you out...but I’m afraid if we had a good time, you’d quit disliking me, and then where would we be?”

  She lifted her head and kissed him.

  Her lips. His lips. Like a meeting of whipped cream and chocolate. Not like any kisses, but the “damn it, what the hell is happening here?” kind.

  She pulled back and looked at him.

  When he got his breath back, he said, “Do we have any idea why you did that?”

  “I’ve been known to do some very bad, impulsive things sometimes.”

  “So that was just a bad impulse.” He shook his head. “Sure came across like a great impulse to me.”

  Dear Reader,

  I had enormous fun writing this story!

  For one thing, I rarely take on a heroine with a temper—a real temper—and Ginger gave me a run for my money when she let loose.

  And then there’s Ike, who’s determined to believe he’s a laid-back, easygoing kind of guy...when he so isn’t.

  En route, I had to visit a tea farm for research—this was really tough, sampling all those wonderful teas, seeing the eagles close up and having the chance to meet the owners of this extraordinarily special place.

  There’s also a character named Pansy in the book...I have no idea where she came from, but once she showed up on the page, she refused to be ignored.

  This is Ike’s story—the second book about the MacKinnon family—and I hope you love it as much as I loved writing it. Don’t hesitate to write me through my website, www.jennifergreene.com, anytime you want to pop in!

  All my best,

  Jennifer Greene

  Jennifer Greene

  The Baby Bump

  Books by Jennifer Greene

  Harlequin Special Edition

  The 200% Wife #1111

  The Billionaire’s Handler #2081

  Yours, Mine & Ours #2108

  Little Matchmakers #2202

  The Baby Bump #2236

  Silhouette Romantic Suspense

  Secrets #221

  Devil’s Night #305

  Broken Blossom #345

  Pink Topaz #418

  §Secretive Stranger #1605

  §Mesmerizing Stranger #1626

  §Irresistible Stranger #1637

  Silhouette Desire

  **Prince Charming’s Child #1225

  **Kiss Your Prince Charming #1245

  †Rock Solid #1316

  Millionaire M.D. #1340

  ††Wild in the Field #1545

  ††Wild in the Moonlight #1588

  ††Wild in the Moment #1622

  Hot to the Touch #1670

  The Soon-to-Be-Disinherited Wife #1731

  Silhouette Books

  Birds, Bees and Babies: “Riley’s Baby”

  Santa’s Little Helpers: “Twelfth Night”

  †Body & Soul

  ††The Scent of Lavender

  §New Man in Town

  **Happily Ever After

  Other books by Jennifer Greene available in ebook format.

  JENNIFER GREENE

  lives near Lake Michigan with her husband and an assorted menagerie of pets. Michigan State University has honored her as an outstanding woman graduate for her work with women on campus. Jennifer has written more than seventy love stories, for which she has won numerous awards, including four RITA® Awards from the Romance Writers of America and their Hall of Fame and Lifetime Achievement Awards.

  You’re welcome to contact Jennifer through her website at www.jennifergreene.com.

  To “my” librarians at the Benton Harbor and St. Joseph libraries. From the start, you encouraged me to write and nourished my writing dreams. You’ve always gone out of your way to help everyone in the community

  enrich their worlds through books. You’re the best!

  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

  Excerpt

  Chapter One

  Back when Ginger Gautier was a block-headed, reckless twenty-one-year-old, she’d have taken the mountain curves at ninety miles an hour and not thought twice.

  Now that she was twenty-eight...well, she couldn’t swear to have better judgment.

  Unfortunately she was eight weeks pregnant—by a doctor who’d claimed he deeply loved her just a day before he bought an engagement ring for someone else. So. Her judgment in men clearly sucked.

  She’d lost a job she loved over the jerk. That said even more about her lack of good judgment.

  Some said she had a temper to match her red hair. Friends and coworkers tended to run for cover when she had a good fume on. So possibly her temper might be considered another character flaw.

  But she loved.

  No one ever said that Ginger Gautier didn’t give two hundred percent for anyone she loved.

  When she passed the welcome sign for South Carolina, she pushed the gas pedal a wee bit harder. Just to eighty miles an hour.

  Gramps was in trouble. And she was almost home.

  The eastern sky turned glossy gray, then hemmed the horizon in pink. By the time the sun was full up, Ginger had shed her sweater and hurled it in the backseat on top of her down jacket. When she left Chicago, it had been cold enough to snow. In South Carolina, the air was sweeter, cleaner, warmer...and so familiar that her eyes stung with embarrassingly sentimental tears.

  She should have gone home more often—way more often—after her grandmother died four years ago. But it never seemed that simple, not once she’d gotten the job in hospital administration. Her boss had been a crabby old tyrant, but she’d loved the work, and never minded the unpredictable extra hours. They’d just added up. She’d come for holidays, called Gramps every week, sometimes more often.

  Not enough. The guilt in her stomach churned like acid. Calling was fine, but if she’d visited more in person, she’d have known that Gramps needed her.

  The miles kept zipping by. Another hour passed, th
en two. Maybe if she liked driving, the trip would have been easier, but nine hundred miles in her packed-to-the-gills Civic had been tough. She’d stopped a zillion times, for food and gas and naps and to stretch her legs, but this last stretch was downright grueling.

  When she spotted the swinging sign for Gautier Tea Plantation, though, her exhaustion disappeared. She couldn’t grow a weed, was never engrossed in the agricultural side of the tea business—but she’d worked in the shop as a teenager, knew all the smells and tastes of their teas, could bake a great scone in her sleep, could give lessons on the seeping and steeping of tea. No place on the planet was remotely like this one, especially the scents.

  Past the eastern fields was a curve in the road, then a private drive shaded by giant old oaks and then finally, finally...the house. The Gautiers—being of French-Scottish origin—inherited more ornery stubbornness than they usually knew what to do with. The word “plantation” implied a graceful old mansion with gardens and pillars and maybe an ostentatious fountain or two. Not for Ginger’s family.

  The house was a massive sprawler, white, with no claim to fanciness. A generous veranda wrapped around the main floor, shading practical rockers and porch swings with fat cushions. Ginger opened the door to her Civic and sprang out, leaving everything inside, just wanting to see Gramps.

  She’d vaulted two steps up before she spotted the body draped in front of the double-screen doors. It was a dog’s body. A huge bloodhound’s body.

  She took another cautious step. Its fur was red-gray, his ears longer than her face, and he had enough wrinkles to star in a commercial for aging cream. He certainly didn’t appear vicious...but she wasn’t positive he was alive, either.

  She said, “Hey, boy” in her gentlest voice. He didn’t budge. She cleared her throat and tried, “Hey, girl.” One eye opened, for all of three seconds. The dog let out an asthmatic snort and immediately returned to her coma.

  For years, her grandparents had dogs—always Yorkie mixes—Gramps invariably carried her and Grandma usually had her groomed and fitted up with a pink bow. The possibility that Gramps had taken on this hound was as likely as his voting Republican. Still, the dog certainly looked content.

  “Okay,” Ginger said briskly, “I can’t open the door until you move. I can see you’re tired. But it doesn’t take that much energy to just move about a foot, does it? Come on. Just budge a little for me.”

  No response. Nothing. Nada. If the dog didn’t make occasionally snuffling noises, Ginger might have worried it was dead. As it was, she figured the big hound for a solid hundred pounds...which meant she had only a twenty-pound advantage. It took some tussling, but eventually she got a wedge of screen door open, stepped over the hound and turned herself into a pretzel. She made it inside with just a skinned elbow and an extra strip off her already frayed temper.

  “Gramps! Cornelius! It’s me!”

  No one answered. Cornelius was...well, Ginger had never known exactly what Cornelius was. He worked for Gramps, but she’d never known his job title. He was the guy she’d gone to when a doll’s shoe went down to the toilet, when she needed a ride to a party and Grandma couldn’t take her. He got plumbers and painters in

  the house, supervised the lawn people, got prescriptions and picked up people from the airport. Cornelius didn’t answer her, though, any more than her grandfather did.

  She charged through, only taking seconds to glance around. The house had been built years ago, back when the first room was called a parlor. It faced east, caught all the morning sun, and was bowling alley size, stuffed to the gills with stuff. Gram’s piano, the maze of furniture and paintings and rugs, were all the same, yet Ginger felt her anxiety antenna raised high. The room was dusty. Nothing new there, but she saw crumbs on tables, half-filled glasses from heaven knows when, enough dust to write her name on surfaces.

  A little dirt never hurt anyone, her grandmother had always said. Gram felt a woman who had a perfect house should have been doing things that mattered. Still.

  A little disarray was normal. Beyond dusty was another.

  She hustled past the wild cherrywood staircase, past the dining room—one glass cabinet there had a museum-quality collection of teapots. A second glass cabinet held the whole historic history of Gautier tea tins, some older than a century. Past the dining “salon,” which was what Gramps called the sun room—meaning that he’d puttered in there as long as she’d known him, trying samples of tea plants, mixing and mating and seeing what new offspring he could come up with.

  The house had always been fragrant with the smell of tea, comforting with the familiar whir of big ceiling fans, a little dust, open books, blue—her grandma had had some shade of blue in every room in the house; it was her favorite color and always had been. Longing for Gram almost made her eyes well with tears again. She’d even loved Gram’s flaws. Even when they had a little feud—invariably over Ginger getting into some kind of impulsive trouble—their fights invariably led to some tears, some cookies and a big hug before long—because no one in the Gautier family believed in going to bed mad.

  The good memories were all there. The things she remembered were all there. But the whole downstairs had never had a look of neglect before. She called her grandfather’s name again, moving down the hall, past the dining room and the butler’s keep. Just outside the kitchen she heard—finally!—voices.

  The kitchen was warehouse size, with windows facing north and west—which meant in the heat of a summer afternoon sun poured in, hotter than lava, on the old tile table. A kettle sat directly on the table, infusing the room with the scents of Darjeeling and peppermint. A fat, orange cat snoozed on the windowsill. Dishes and glasses and what all crowded the tile counter. The sink faucet was dripping. Dust and crumbs and various spills had long dried on the fancy parquet floor.

  Ginger noticed it all in a blink. She took in the stranger, as well—but for that first second, all her attention focused on her grandfather.

  He spotted her, pushed away from the table. A smile wreathed his face, bigger than sunshine. “What a sight for sore eyes, you. You’re so late. I was getting worried. But you look beautiful, you do. The drive must have done you wonders. Come here and get your hug.”

  The comment about being late startled her—she’d made amazing time, he couldn’t possibly have expected her earlier. But whatever. What mattered was swooping her arms around him, feeling the love, seeing the shine in his eyes that matched her own.

  “What is this? Aren’t you eating? You’re skinny!” she accused him.

  “Am not. Eating all the time. Broke the scales this morning, I’m getting so fat.”

  “Well, if that isn’t the biggest whopper I’ve heard since I left home.”

  “You’re accusing your grandfather of fibbing?”

  “I am.” The bantering was precious, how they’d always talked, teasing and laughing until they’d inevitably catch a scold from her grandmother. But something was wrong. Gramps had never been heavy, never tall, but she could feel his bones under his shirt, and his pants were hanging. His eyes, a gorgeous blue, seemed oddly vague. His smile was real. The hug wonderfully real. But his face seemed wizened, wrinkled and cracked like an old walnut shell, white whiskers on his chin as if he hadn’t shaved—when Cashner Gautier took pride in shaving every day of his life before the sun came up.

  She cast another glance at the stranger...and felt her nerves bristle sharper than a porcupine’s. The man was certainly no crony of her gramps, couldn’t be more than a few years older than she was.

  The guy was sprawled at the head of the old tile table, had scruffy dirty-blond hair, wore sandals and chinos with frayed cuffs and a clay-colored shirt-shirt. Either he was too lazy to shave or was growing a halfhearted beard. And yeah, there was more to the picture. The intruder had tough, wide shoulders—as if he could lift a couple of tree logs in his spare time. The tan w
as stunning, especially for a guy with eyes that certain blue—wicked blue, light blue, blue like you couldn’t forget, not if you were a woman. The height, the breadth, the way he stood up slow, showing off his quiet, lanky frame—oh, yeah, he was a looker.

  Men that cute were destined to break a woman’s heart.

  That wasn’t a problem for her, of course. Her heart was already in Humpty Dumpty shape. There wasn’t a man in the universe who could wrestle a pinch of sexual interest from her. She was just judiciously assessing and recognizing trouble.

  “You have to be Ginger,” he said in a voice that made her think of dark sugar and bourbon.

  “Aw, darlin’, I should have said right off...this is Ike. Come to see me this afternoon. He’s—”

  “I saw right off who he was, Gramps.” He had to be the man her grandfather told her about on the phone. The one who was trying to get Gramps to “sign papers.” The one who was trying to “take the land away from him.” Gramps had implied that his doctor had started it all, was behind the whole conspiracy, to take away “everything that ever mattered to him.”

  Ginger drew herself up to her full five-four. “You’re the man who’s been advising my grandfather, aren’t you, bless your heart. And that has to be your dog on the front porch, isn’t it?”

  “Pansy. Yes.”

  “Pansy.” For a moment she almost laughed, the name was so darned silly for that huge lummox of a dog. But she was in no laughing mood. She was in more of a killing mood. “Well, I’d appreciate it if you’d get your dog and yourself and take off, preferably in the next thirty seconds.”

  “Honey!” Her grandfather pulled out of her arms and shot her a shocked expression.

  She squeezed his hand, but she was still facing down the intruder. “It’s all right, Gramps. I’m here. And I’m going to be here from now on.” Her voice was as cordial as Southern sweet tea, but that was only because she was raised with Southern manners. “I’ll be taking care of my grandfather from now on, and we won’t need any interference from anyone. Bless your heart, I’m sure you know your way to the front door.”