A Baby on His Doorstep, page 1
Rachel’s gaze followed Max...
The shop owner, Sherry, was leading him toward the rear of the store. “Clara emailed me your list for the baby. You need a car seat? Instead, let me show you our newest all-in-one stroller.”
In Barren, someone always seemed to be getting engaged, married or having a baby, which must keep Sherry in business. But having a baby left on the porch was certainly new. Rachel inspected the racks of hanging clothes. Adorable. The merchandise, not Max, she told herself.
She couldn’t deny he was an attractive man. Warm, trustworthy, straightforward. Single. Her awareness of Max surprised her when, because of her losses and the guilt she bore, she still felt mostly frozen inside.
“Actually,” she heard Max say, “I just need the car seat.”
Sherry clucked her tongue. “Don’t be hasty. I sell a lot of these convertible strollers—it’s a car seat and a baby carrier too. You can even go jogging.”
“If I had time,” he said, tilting his head. As he straightened, his eyes met Rachel’s across the room. Almost as if he were similarly aware of her as she was of him...
Dear Reader,
I love newborn babies! I’ve never found one on my doorstep. If I did, after mothering the two boys I love with all my heart, it would have to be the girl I never had. But while writing this latest book in my Kansas Cowboys series, I liked imagining how that unexpected, blessed surprise might feel.
In this story, after a painful breakup with his one and only girlfriend, veterinarian Max Crane isn’t about to get involved again. He has enough to worry about, caring for his busy practice and the baby he never knew he had. Hiring attractive widow Rachel Whittaker isn’t a good idea...yet he desperately needs help. And thus, two hearts risk getting hurt again.
I loved helping these two work their way through a bunch of obstacles and their past heartaches. What do you think their chances are for happily-ever-after and a family together? No fair, peeking at the last page! I hope you enjoy Max and Rachel’s story as much as I liked writing it. I’ll miss them—as I do every past character in this series.
I’m off now to daydream about finding a sweet baby on my doorstep. While I’m at it, I think I’ll imagine a full-time nurse to go with her. No more sleepless nights for me!
Happy reading,
Leigh
A Baby on His Doorstep
Leigh Riker
Leigh Riker, like so many dedicated readers, grew up with her nose in a book, and weekly trips to the local library for a new stack of stories were a favorite thing to do. This award-winning USA TODAY bestselling author still can’t imagine a better way to spend her time than to curl up with a good romance novel—unless it is to write one! She is a member of the Authors Guild, Novelists, Inc., and Romance Writers of America. When not at the computer, she’s out on the patio tending flowers, watching hummingbirds, spending time with family and friends, or, perhaps, traveling (for research purposes, of course). She loves to hear from readers. You can find Leigh on her website, leighriker.com, and on Facebook at leighrikerauthor.
Books by Leigh Riker
Harlequin Heartwarming
Kansas Cowboys
The Reluctant Rancher
Last Chance Cowboy
Cowboy on Call
Her Cowboy Sheriff
The Rancher’s Second Chance
Twins Under the Tree
The Cowboy’s Secret Baby
Mistletoe Cowboy
A Cowboy’s Homecoming
The Runaway Rancher
Visit the Author Profile page at Harlequin.com for more titles.
To Adrienne Macintosh, editor extraordinaire, who always makes each book better
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
CHAPTER FOURTEEN
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
CHAPTER NINETEEN
CHAPTER TWENTY
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
EPILOGUE
EXCERPT FROM HER AMISH COUNTRY VALENTINE BY PATRICIA JOHNS
CHAPTER ONE
ONE MORNING, a week after New Year’s, Maxwell Crane found a surprise on his porch.
He’d been getting ready for work when he heard a pair of resounding thumps from outside before someone rang his bell, then a car drove off. Max had put on his boots and opened the door. He hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon—his go-to retailer—and saw no carton with the company’s signature logo. Max had never been first in line at some big-box store on Black Friday either, fighting over bargains, and in small-town Barren, Kansas, there wasn’t any such place. Besides, he’d been, as he was every season, one of those Christmas Eve shoppers. He was glad to have the holidays behind him.
Puzzled, he stared down at the basket at his feet then scanned the area. On Cattle Track Lane in December many of the houses had sported blow-up snowmen and reindeer on their lawns. Blinking lights had outlined roofs, and even now a few decorated trees still twinkled in windows, but in the steadily falling snow he didn’t see a single car on the quiet side street. White had already blanketed the lone set of tire tracks. He didn’t see any fresh footprints.
Who had left him a present? A late one, at that.
Max stamped his feet to keep warm. Many area ranchers, being land rich but cash poor, sometimes traded in kind for his veterinary services. A smoked ham, or a dozen eggs. They tended to drop off presents at his office, though.
Was it Miss McGillicuddy, who taught English at Barren High, and often supplied him with home-baked cookies? For his thirty-fifth birthday, she’d gone overboard and baked him a massive cake with sparklers on top. It had taken him days to finish it.
But she’d left town a month ago to spend the holidays with her family. Her elderly Brittany spaniel had been boarded at Max’s clinic and she would pick him up tomorrow after she reached home.
The basket, covered with a blanket, made a sudden mewling sound.
Max startled. Kittens?
But again, why be surprised? He was always getting live gifts from people who thought surely, as a veterinarian, he had room in his heart for a pet of his own.
Max had learned the hard way that matters of the heart were not for him, and that included animals living in his home. After sharing the house with his sister and her dog, he was now, blessedly, alone again—or soon would be. From inside, he heard Rembrandt whine. Max had agreed to pet sit today while Sophie and her husband, Gabe—Max’s best friend—moved into their new home at last. He hoped the old border collie, a rescue that had spent most of his life outdoors, didn’t leave another treat for Max on the living room carpet. Remi was mostly house-trained by now but...
The noise repeated then a third time.
Max shivered. He’d only been outside a minute or two without his coat, but it was freezing. Who else, then, had left him a gift? After her cat had kittens, Mrs. Higley had tried to leave an adorable pair at the clinic, but Max had caught her sneaking back to her car. He’d placed the kittens instead with another of his clients.
This time the noise was more of a snuffle, then a whimper. The basket began to wriggle.
Max spent his days taking care of animals, large and small, and only last night he’d helped to deliver a dozen goldendoodle puppies that would soon need homes. Hadn’t he made himself clear that he wasn’t looking for a pet? His love for animals stopped at his clinic’s door. He’d even resorted to putting up a sign in his waiting room. No, I do not want a companion. Thanks, the doc.
Because pets weren’t the only thing. Half the women in town were trying to fix him up with someone.
“Not going to happen,” he muttered. Before last March any gift might have come from Averill, yet their relationship, after much back-and-forth, had finally ended then. He’d been knitting himself together like an old sweater full of holes ever since. And—the most important part—the rest of his heart. The townspeople were wasting their time. Max would never fall for another—any—woman.
If he’d briefly thought about marriage once, a family of his own...
But his lone New Year’s resolution had been to avoid any further entanglement, a promise to himself that he meant to keep.
The basket moved again. Max stuck out a foot to stop it from tipping over and the blanket slipped to expose—
What seemed to be a newborn baby! Unable to believe what he was seeing, he reeled back. This was no sweet kitten or puppy from a well-intentioned yet misguided client. Someone had made a serious blunder.
Wearing a tiny snowsuit, he/she blinked up at him with milky-blue eyes. Probably all it could see this soon were light or blurry shapes. Despite his vow not to get involved, even briefly, Max hunkered down to pluck a note from the folds of the pink blanket.
Obviously, this “gift” had been left at the wrong address. Okay, read the message, genius. Then call...whom? He could phone Travis Blake, the town’s latest sheriff. But who would leave a baby on his snowy front porch—anyone’s porch—then run? His truck was still in the drive and whoever it was had rung the bell, but he didn’t want to think what could have happened if he hadn’t been home. What if he’d left early for work?
The callousness on someone’s part made his blood boil.
Then suddenly, without reading a word of the note, he knew. The calculations, the months, flipped through his head like the calendar pages in an old movie, and his stomach dropped. This was far more personal, the handwriting all too familiar, and Max’s battered heart turned over. He didn’t need the missing signature now.
Dear Max. I can’t take care of her. Too much going on right now. She’s yours.
CHAPTER TWO
“SHE’S MINE,” Max told Sophie, who’d answered the door at her new house. He was still shaken, after reading the note, by the undeniable fact that he was suddenly a father.
Sophie gaped at him. “You found her on your porch?”
“Yep.”
“Wow. Unbelievable. I need a minute to digest that news.”
“Me too,” he said.
“Come in—if you dare.” She ushered him inside, weaving her way through dozens of boxes that filled the entryway of the sprawling house and spilled into the kitchen where shiny new stainless-steel appliances flashed in the morning sun. A moving van sat in the iced-up driveway, which was, he’d discovered while his truck slipped and slid toward the house, probably half a mile long.
“Moving day,” she said with an eye roll. Her blond hair was in its messy trademark bun, and she was wearing her oldest gray sweats with a shapeless top. Only last year Sophie, the town librarian, had worn tailored suits with high-heeled pumps to work like a uniform. Max hid a smile, though he wasn’t feeling humorous, more like panicked.
He cradled the baby as he might a football. He was better acquainted with the sport than he was holding a child, but thankfully she’d fallen asleep after he’d given her a bottle. His ex-girlfriend Averill, the baby’s mother, had also left a tote bag at his house—the second thump he’d heard—containing a package of diapers, some clothes and half a dozen prepared bottles plus a box of dry formula. Could he figure out how to mix it properly with the right amount of water?
As Sophie often told him—he had to admit this was true—Max was known to be clueless in every aspect of his life except for his work. Sometimes she called him the “absent-minded professor.”
He had been trying to become more “present” in the real world, but his job came first. Especially after his disastrous relationship with Averill McCafferty. The clinic had to be his life now. What was he going to do with a baby? Even one that was his. Perhaps temporarily, because from her note, he had no reason to believe Averill wasn’t coming back.
Sophie led him through the kitchen, dodging cartons, to the family room that adjoined it. Open floor plan, tons of light, enough space to have as many kids as she wanted. He could easily see, though, that moving, this monumental event in her life and now Gabe’s, was a bit overwhelming. Not to mention her pregnancy.
But then, so was the surprise infant Max carried in his arms.
“How do you feel?” he asked his sister, not ready to discuss his own dilemma.
“Queasy. It’s my new default mode.” Which didn’t seem to trouble her. “My doctor—Sawyer—tells me I have a few more weeks before the nausea should subside.”
“Remi’s doing okay at my house.”
“Did you leave him in his crate?”
“After a brief scuffle, yeah. I thought you were getting that dog obedience lessons.”
“We are. Remi starts next week.” She gestured at the mess around them. “Gabe and I have been kind of busy, Max.” Sophie dropped onto a cushioned chair, waving him toward its mate in the center of the room. “We’re basically camping out. At least most of the furniture’s in, though. The crew is taking a break.” Finally, Sophie seemed to come to terms with Max’s new situation. “You really have a baby? Talk fast before I have to tell them where the rest of the stuff goes.”
“You already heard the important part.”
Sophie leaned toward him. “You’re sure? She’s yours and Averill’s?” It had to be a rhetorical question. He hadn’t dated anyone else, before or after Averill. “All right,” Sophie said. “I’m ready. Let me see her.”
Max gently pulled the blanket away from the baby’s face and Sophie’s eyes met his. Hers were like puddles of blue with tears welling in them.
“Oh, Max, I’m an aunt. She’s beautiful. So little. How old, do you think?”
He gazed down at the baby. “I’d say a few days, a week maybe. But what do I know?” He touched her downy cheek. She had Averill’s blue eyes, at least for now, and his dark hair. “Why would Averill do this, Sophie? The only reason that makes sense to me is that this is about Lucie.” Averill’s much-younger sister had disappeared from a local mall ten years ago when she was only five and Averill was in college. She’d never been found. “What if Averill got a fresh lead to follow?”
“Isn’t that unlikely after so much time has passed? Didn’t she tell you beforehand she was expecting?”
“Not a word. She didn’t even sign the note she left. But I know her handwriting.”
“What if you’d already gone to the clinic?”
“I know.”
“Max, it’s hard to imagine any mother abandoning her child without a very good reason. Even if you’re right about Lucie...” Sophie touched her own still-flat stomach. A single tear rolled down her cheek. “What are you going to do?”
“No clue,” he muttered. His days and nights were filled with animal emergencies, essentially keeping him on call all the time. He knew nothing about babies.
“What’s going on?” The back door had slammed, and Gabe walked in. He shook his shoulders and snowflakes flew everywhere, some sticking in his mink-dark hair. It always amused Max to see Gabe in his rancher garb, a shearling-lined coat, dark jeans and boots, when he was also a very rich man, heir to an oil fortune in Texas. His dad lived in a mansion there while Gabe had chosen to run cattle near Barren.
“Gabe,” Sophie said. “You’re wet. Please leave your boots and coat in the mudroom.”
“Soph, rules don’t apply today. I’ll mop up after the movers are gone. They’ve already tracked through this house. Their break’s almost over. They’ll be ready to start upstairs soon. You able to direct them?” He glanced at the bundle Max held, his amber gaze amused. “Not another puppy? We’re full here, man.” Meaning Remi.
“It’s not a puppy,” Sophie murmured. “Come see.”
Gabe hunkered down to inspect the infant in Max’s arms. “Whoa.”
“Averill left her on my porch,” Max said.
Gabe straightened. “You’re kidding.”
“Nope. And I have no idea why. I tried to call her, but her landline account is inactive. Her cell went straight to voice mail. Half a dozen times.”
“You think she left town—that new place outside of Farrier where she’s been living?”
“I don’t know anything except that this baby’s mine. Ours.”
Gabe trailed a tentative finger along the baby’s cheek, as if he was no more familiar with infants than Max was. “Cute. What’s her name?”
“Averill didn’t tell me in her note.”
Neither Gabe nor Sophie seemed as rattled as Max felt, which gave him a possible solution. Maybe the two of them could... It was on the tip of his tongue to ask, even on moving day and with Sophie pregnant, if they could help him out when she made a sudden strangled sound, then bolted from her chair and ran for the bathroom.
“Morning sickness,” Gabe said.
The two men looked at each other, then at the baby.
“Some surprise, huh?”
“The biggest,” Max agreed.
* * *
RACHEL WHITTAKER HATED SURPRISES. Even more, she hated being the surprise.
Still, there was no other way to do this except to open the door to the Barren library the next morning as she’d done every weekday in this job, then walk right in before she lost her nerve.
