Her Unexpected Baby. Trish Wylie
to the balloon-strewn ceiling for intervention of some kind. They meant well. But it just wasn’t in her to be some lust-ruled female who could jump into a short-lived affair. Maybe once upon a time, when she’d been young and wild and free. But that had got her married and pregnant and divorced.
When she looked back, the three familiar, similar faces were smiling encouragingly at her. She sighed as she shook her head. ‘I’ll try being more open to the idea of seeing someone if the opportunity presents itself, but I can’t say that I’m ready to jump into some torrid affair—no matter how long it lasts or where it may take me.’
‘One step at a time is fine.’
‘We can live with that.’
‘We just worry, you know.’
She knew they did. They were all happily settled now. Even their brother Jack had managed to get past his hang-ups and had opened himself to the woman who’d turned out to be his perfect mate. It made a cynic like Dana harbour the tiniest flicker of hope inside that all that happily-ever-after stuff could still exist somewhere.
And probably it did. It just really hadn’t turned out to be for her. She’d had her chance and it hadn’t worked. Now she had to just get on with it and live the life she had. But she was making changes in her career, and working towards a better home for her daughter and herself. She had hopes and dreams for her daughter’s life. She hadn’t managed the wife part, but she could be the kind of mother her own hadn’t managed to be.
Yes, indeed. Dana thought she was doing okay. Just okay, maybe, but that was enough for her. No matter what her sisters might think.
Mind you, that wasn’t to say that it wouldn’t be nice to be made to feel like a woman again for a while. That deep-down sensual woman who was hidden inside every female. Mmm.
Dana unconsciously ran her tongue across her mouth. It was just a shame that the kind of men who could bring that out in a female weren’t hanging around all over the place. Though maybe that was just as well for the sake of survival.
Unconsciously her eyes moved across the room to the tall man who stood beside her brother. Adam, his best man. He was exactly the type she’d have looked at once upon a time. Tall, handsome, charm by the bucket. But she’d married one of those, and look where that had got her.
She sighed. When it came to passionate affairs Dana was in the middle of a huge desert—and it was a long, long way to the next drink of water. No matter what her most basic needs might be.
No, passionate affairs just didn’t land in her lap every day. But if one did? She smiled. Maybe just once wouldn’t be so awful. After all, what harm could it do to feel again?
CHAPTER ONE
Six months later
ADAM DONOVAN had the most amazing effect on women.
It was a gift, really, and probably had more to do with the way he looked than anything else. Though he could be charming when he really wanted to.
Dana watched as he managed to charm the pants off yet another customer.
It was truly disgusting.
She shook her head the tiniest amount. What on earth did all those women see in him? She decided to make an inventory of all things good about him. Though that did mean putting to the back of her mind the list she’d already formed of all things bad.
She’d worked with him for months now, and that latter list was getting long…
Okay, so there was his height. That was good. A woman always found it distracting if the man was so short that every conversation was directed at her breasts.
He was fairly broad too, indicating—incorrectly—that he spent a lot of time doing physical exercise to keep in shape. Dana, however, knew better. His idea of physical activity was probably limited to one particular room of the house, and that room wasn’t the kitchen.
Oops. That was from the All Things Bad list, wasn’t it?
He was a fairly good judge of clothes too. All the right clothes for all the right occasions. What he spent on a shirt would keep Dana and her daughter in groceries for a week. On this occasion he was wearing a rather nice green one, which managed to highlight the colour of his eyes. Clever guy.
His face was fit for the pages of a glossy magazine on any newsagent’s stand worldwide, complete with dimples, unbelievably white even teeth, that Dana was convinced in her own mind he had polished regularly, and a smile that could charm Eskimos into buying snow. Which, granted, was a terrific asset when it came to selling houses to people. Especially houses that didn’t exist yet beyond a great big muddy hole in the ground.
Boyish dark blond hair, cut to just above his collar, with a side parting that managed to allow thick locks to fall across his forehead when he leaned forward to talk to a woman. As if by accident? Dana smiled slightly to herself. Like hell.
He really did tick a lot of boxes on the All Things Good list. He was a partner in a thriving company, came from a good family, and was generally an all-round eligible bachelor. Very eligible. Women really, really liked Adam.
Dana, meanwhile, found him a right royal pain in the ass. But then, after all, she worked with him.
He glanced up at her from beneath thick lashes. When he found her looking at him, with just a faint smile on her lips, his eyes narrowed slightly before he glanced away. Dana knew that he wasn’t used to her smiling at him that often.
They were just very different people, that was all. Nobody had ever said they had to like each other. Which was just as well, really. Dana had managed to avoid him for years, but, since she’d bought a half-share of the company he owned and ran with her brother Jack, she had seemed to spend every single day arguing with him about something. Or about nothing. Or about pretty much anything, for that matter. When it came to Adam Donovan, it seemed that Dana was the only woman in the country who didn’t see him as God’s gift.
And she liked it that way.
Adam really wished that she’d stop smiling at him. It was disconcerting. Dana didn’t smile without reason. She wasn’t a natural-born smiler. Well, not so he’d noticed since she’d started working with him.
There he was, switching on the patented Donovan charm to seal them another contract, and she was smiling at him. How was a man supposed to work under these conditions?
Even as he was smoothly convincing Mr and Mrs Lamont of the benefits of under-floor heating in their modern interior, Dana Taylor was plotting something. He could feel it.
His partner’s sister, now his partner herself, was a devious woman.
Adam had met devious women in his time. Dated a few, avoided a few, run away very fast from a few. But this one…well, suffice it to say she was devious on a whole new level.
Dana just had a knack of getting people to do things when they really didn’t want to. They’d walk in with an attitude of ‘no way, uh-uh, not doing that’, and leave blinking and wondering how’d they managed to change their minds without knowing that they were doing it. It was a gift when it came to awkward customers or building crews, but it was annoying as all hell for someone who shared an office with her.
He glanced across at her again. Still smiling right at him. He felt his palms begin to sweat. Any minute now she’d have him wearing a skirt, and he probably wouldn’t notice until there was a draught.
He let the Lamonts look at the sketches of their dream home and excused himself for a moment.
In two long strides he was stood in front of her.
‘Okay, what?’ His low tone dictated a voice level for a private conversation. She just stared at him, a blank expression on her face. He hated it when she did that.
‘Is something wrong?’
He frowned. ‘You tell me.’
The