Lessons in Baby Wrangling
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Stella Bagwell
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Chapter 1
His secretary was crying!
Conall Donovan stared at the woman behind the cherrywood desk. Vanessa Valdez had been in his employ for more than two months and during that time she’d been nothing but cool and professional. He could hardly imagine what had brought about these waterworks. In the past hour, he hadn’t even yelled once! And even if he had, it wouldn’t have been directed at her. She was the epitome of a perfect, professional secretary.
Cautiously, he approached the desk. “Vanessa? Is something wrong?”
With one slender hand dabbing a tissue to her cheek, the petite brunette glanced at him. At thirty-five, she looked more like twenty-five, Conall thought. And though he wouldn’t describe her as gorgeous, she was an attractive woman with honey-brown hair brushing the tops of her shoulders and curling in pretty wisps around her head. Usually, her large brown eyes were soft and luminous but presently her eyes were full of tears.
“I’m sorry,” she said in a strained voice. “It’s... I... Something has happened.”
“Your father? Has he taken ill?” he demanded.
Vanessa paused and he could see her throat working as she tried to swallow. The sight of her discomposure struck him unexpectedly hard. In spite of her being an old family acquaintance, they hardly shared a close bond. For the most part, the woman kept to herself. The only reason he knew she’d lost her mother two years ago, and that her aging father now resided in a nursing home, was because he happened to attend the same small church where her parents had been regular members. Still, these past months, Vanessa had become a quiet and dependable fixture in his life and he’d come to respect her dedication to this job and the subtle finesse she used with clients in order to make his life easier.
“No,” she answered. “It’s not my father.”
When she failed to elaborate, Conall fought back an impatient sigh. He hardly had time to play mind reader.
“Do you need to take the rest of the afternoon off?” he asked bluntly. There was still a hell of a lot of work that he needed finished by the end of the day, but if necessary he’d somehow manage without her. Even if it meant calling on his mother, Fiona, to fill in for the remainder of the afternoon.
Shaking her head, his secretary sniffed and tried to straighten her shoulders. Even so, Conall could see tears sparkling upon her smooth cheeks and he was shocked at the sudden urge he felt to round the desk and wipe them away.
Hell, Conall, you’ve never been good at consoling women. Just ask your ex-wife. Besides, women and tears don’t affect your iron heart. Not anymore.
While he shoved that unbidden thought away, she finally answered in a ragged voice, “I—I’ll be all right, Conall. Just give me a few moments to...get over the shock.”
Shock? As usual, the phone had been ringing all afternoon. The Diamond D Ranch was a huge conglomerate, with business connections all over the world. With it being the middle of summer, they were in the busy height of Thoroughbred racing season. His office was only one of several set in a modern brick building situated north of the ranch yard and west of the main ranch house. His younger brother Liam, the ranch’s horse trainer, also had his own office along with a secretary, and then there was the general accounting for the ranch, which took up several rooms. As for Conall’s job, he rarely saw a quiet moment during working hours and the overflow of correspondence kept his secretary extremely busy. Especially now that he’d also assumed the job of keeping the Golden Spur Mine operations running smoothly.
“Look, Vanessa, I realize I’m asking you to handle an undue amount of work for one human being. But it won’t always be like this. I have plans to hire an assistant for you, just as soon as I have a chance to go over a few résumés.”
Her brown eyes widened even more. “Oh, no, Conall, it’s not the work!” She gestured toward the piles of correspondence lying about on her desk. “I can easily handle this. I just received a call from Las Vegas,” she attempted to explain. “It was...horrible news. A dear friend has passed away. And I...well, I just can’t believe she’s gone. She was—”
Suddenly sobs overtook the remainder of her words and Conall could no longer stop himself from skirting the desk and taking a steadying hold on her trembling shoulders.
“I’m very sorry, Vanessa.”
Averting her face from him, she whispered, “I’m okay. Really, I am.”
Whether she was trying to reassure him or herself, or the both of them, Conall didn’t know. In any case, she was clearly an emotional wreck and he had to do something to help her, even if it was wrong.
“No, you’re hardly okay,” he said gruffly. “You’re shaking. Let me help you over to the couch.”
With firm hands, he drew her up from the rolling desk chair and with an arm at her waist, guided her to a long leather couch positioned along the far wall.
“Just sit and try to relax,” he ordered as he eased her small frame down. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Once she was safely settled, Conall hurriedly crossed the room and stepped into his private office, where he kept an assortment of drinks to offer visiting businessmen. After pouring a mug half-full of coffee, he splashed in a hefty amount of brandy and carried it out to her.
“Here,” he told her. “Drink this. All of it.”
With trembling hands wrapped around the heavy cup, she tilted the contents to her lips. After a few careful sips that made her gasp and cough, she lowered it and cast him an accusing glance.
“That has alcohol in it!”
“Not nearly enough,” he said dryly.
“It’s more than enough for me.” Straightening her shoulders, she offered the cup back to him. “Thank you. I can talk now.”
Relieved to see a faint bit of color returning to her face, Conall took the cup and after placing it on the floor, he eased down beside her. “All right,” he said gently. “Tell me what happened to your friend.”
Closing her eyes, she pressed slender fingers against her forehead. Conall couldn’t help but notice the long sweep of her lashes as they settled against her damp cheeks. Her complexion reminded him of a pink pearl bathed in golden sunlight and not for the first time he thought how her skin was the most fetching thing about her. Smooth and kissable.
Now why the hell was he thinking that sort of thing, especially at a time like this? Kissing a woman’s soft skin was all in his past. And that was where it was going to stay.
With her eyes still closed, she began to speak. “I became friends with Hope Benson not long after I arrived in Las Vegas. We both worked as cocktail waitresses in the Lucky Treasure casino.”
Conall was stunned. He’d not known that Vanessa had ever worked as a cocktail waitress. Not that it mattered. Everyone had to start somewhere. And she’d obviously climbed the ladder. A few months ago, when she’d left Nevada, she’d been a private secretary to a casino executive.
“I didn’t realize you ever worked as a waitress,” he mused, speaking his thoughts out loud.
The guttural sound in her throat was self-deprecating. “What did you expect, Conall? I left Hondo Valley with nothing. It took lots of long, hard hours to put myself through college.”
Of course he’d known that Vanessa was from a poor family. She was the same age as his sister Maura, and the two women had been good friends ever since elementary school. During those years, Vanessa had often visited the ranch. Being two years older, Conall hadn’t paid much attention to her. With the house full of six Donovan kids, there were always plenty of friends hanging around and Vanessa had simply been one more. The main thing he recalled about her was that she’d been very quiet, almost to the point of being a wallflower.
After Conall had gone away to college, he’d heard in passing that Vanessa had moved to Nevada. That had been fifteen years ago and since then he’d not heard anything else about his sister’s old friend. In fact, she’d completely slipped his mind until two months ago, when she’d called him about the secretarial job.
She’d moved back to Hondo Valley to stay, she’d told him, and she was looking for a job. He was secretly ashamed to admit that he’d not expected Vanessa to be qualified. As a teenager, she’d seemed like the shy, homemaker sort, who’d want to devote her life to raising a house full of kids and keeping a husband happy. He couldn’t imagine her as a career woman. But out of courtesy to his sister, he’d invited her to come out to the ranch for an interview. When she’d walked into his office, Conall had been stunned to see a very professional young woman presenting him with an equally impressive résumé. He’d hired her on the spot and since that time had not once regretted his decision.
The soft sigh escaping her lips caught his attention and he watched her eyes open, then level on his face. For the moment her tears had disappeared, but in their place he saw something that amounted to panic. A strange emotion to be experiencing over a friend’s demise, he couldn’t help thinking.
“Sorry,” she said. “I didn’t mean to sound defensive. God knows how He’s blessed me. And now...I just don’t know what to think, Conall. You see, Hope was pregnant. Something happened after she went into labor—I’m not exactly sure what. The lawyer didn’t go into details. Except that she had to have an emergency C-section. Shortly afterward, she died from some sort of complications. I assume it had something to do with her heart condition—a genetic childhood thing. But she always appeared healthy and I thought the doctors were keeping everything under control. In fact, each time I’d talked with her, she’d assured me that she and the babies were doing fine.”
Conall’s attention latched on to one word. “Babies? Are you talking plural?”
Vanessa nodded. “Twins. A boy and a girl. They were born three days ago and Hope’s lawyer has just now had a chance to go over the legalities of her will and wishes.”
“And what does this have to do with you?” Conall asked.
Across the room the telephone on Vanessa’s desk began to ring. She started to rise to answer it, but Conall caught her shoulder with a firm hand. “Forget the phone,” he ordered. “Whoever it is will call back or leave a message. I want to hear the rest of this.”
Groaning, Vanessa dropped her head and shook it back and forth as though she was in a dream. “It’s unbelievable, Conall! Hope wanted me to have custody of her babies. I—I’m to be their mother.”
“Mother?” The word burst from Conall’s mouth before he could stop it. “Are you...serious?”
Her head shot up and for a brief moment she scowled at him. “Very serious. Why? Do you think I’m incapable of being a mother?”
A grimace tightened his lips. Leave it to a woman to misread his words, he thought. “I don’t doubt your abilities, Vanessa. I’m sure you have...great motherly instincts. I was questioning the validity of your friend’s wishes. Isn’t the father around?”
Her shoulders slumped as she thrust a shaky hand through her hair. “The father was only in Hope’s life for a brief period before they went their separate ways. When she learned that she was pregnant, she contacted him with the news, but he wanted nothing to do with her or the babies. Seems as though he was already paying a hefty amount of child support to his ex-wife and he wasn’t keen on adding more to his responsibilities. By then Hope had already come to the conclusion that he wasn’t the sort of man she’d ever want back in her life. And she certainly didn’t want him to have any claims to the babies. When she confronted him with legal documents, he was only too glad to sign away his parental rights.”
“What a bastard,” Conall muttered.
Vanessa sighed. “I knew she was making a mistake when she first got involved with the creep. But she really fell hard for him. Poor thing, she believed he loved her and she desperately wanted a big family. You see, she was adopted and didn’t have many relatives.”
“What about her parents?”
“If you mean her real parents, she never looked for them. She considered the Bensons to be her true parents. But when Hope was still very young, they were killed in the Loma Prieta earthquake in California,” she said ruefully. “Luckily, Hope escaped being physically injured, but I don’t think she ever got over the emotional loss of her parents.”
“Damn. Sounds like your friend didn’t have an easy life.”
“No. Life is never easy for some,” she sadly agreed. “Hope was forty-two. She figured this would be her last and only chance to have children. That’s why she risked carrying the babies. Even though doctors had warned her about being pregnant with her type of heart condition, she wanted them desperately.”
“Had you discussed any of this with your friend?” Conall asked. “I mean, about you becoming their mother if something happened to her?”
Vanessa nodded glumly. “At the very beginning of her pregnancy Hope asked me to be their godmother. I agreed. How could I not? The two of us had been good friends for a long time. We...went through some tough times together. And I wanted to reassure her that no matter what, I’d see that the babies would be well cared for. But I also kept telling her that she was going to be okay—that everything with her and the babies would be fine. I wanted her to concentrate on the future she was going to have with her children.” Tears once again filled her eyes. “Oh, Conall, I didn’t think... I refused to believe that Hope might die.”
Conall hated himself for not knowing the right words to ease the grief that was clearly ripping her apart. But he’d learned with Nancy that he wasn’t good at dealing with women’s problems.
“None of us ever wants to consider losing someone we’re close to, Vanessa. But we can’t go around thinking the worst. Where would that get us?”
Where indeed, Vanessa wondered dazedly. Swallowing at the painful lump in her throat, she rose to her feet and wandered aimlessly across the room.
For years now, she’d desperately wanted children. But as she’d struggled to obtain a degree in business management, she’d set aside having a family. Then when she’d finally achieved that goal, she’d slowly begun to work her way off the casino floor and into the business offices. First as a simple file clerk, then on to secretarial assistant, then a jump to office manager, and finally a great leap to personal secretary to the CEO of Lucky Treasures. During that climb, she’d met her now ex-husband, and she’d believed her dreams of having a family of her own were finally going to become a reality. But Jeff had turned out to be nothing but a hanger-on, a man only too happy to let his wife support him while he went his free and fancy way.
Vanessa supposed it was a good thing that children had never come from their short marriage. But since the divorce, she’d grieved long and hard for what hadn’t been and prayed that someday her fate would change. Still, she’d never expected to become a mother in this shocking fashion and the news was almost too much for her to absorb.
“I suppose you’re right, Conall. We can’t dwell on what might go wrong. But I—” She stopped in front of the huge picture window that framed a view of the mountain ridge that ran along the north edge of the massive horse ranch. “Right now I’m...stunned. In the next few days, the lawyer expects me to be in Vegas to pick up the babies! There’s so much I’m going to have to do! I live in my parents’ house. Do you remember it?”
Vaguely, Conall thought. It had been a long time since he’d driven through that mountainous area northeast of the Diamond D, but he did recall the tiny stucco home where the Valdez family had resided for so many years. The place had always needed work. And to give him credit, Mr. Valdez had done the best he could on a carpenter’s salary. But his four sons had been the worthless sort, never lifting a hand to help their parents or themselves. As far as Conall knew, Vanessa’s brothers were all gone from the area now and all he could think was good riddance. She didn’t need any of them trying to mooch her hard-earned money.
“Yes, I remember,” Conall told her. “Are you living there by yourself? I mean, do you have enough extra room to accommodate the babies?”
“It’s just me living there,” she replied, “so there’s enough room. But the place isn’t equipped to handle two infants! You see, I came back to Hondo Valley, so that I’d be around to see after my father’s needs. I know he has great medical care in the nursing home, but he needs my emotional support—especially now that Mama is gone. And since I’m divorced now I never dreamed about raising a family there! Dear heaven, there are so many things I’ll have to change—buy—to make a nursery for the babies!”
She jerked with surprise when she felt his hands fold over the back of her shoulders. She’d not heard him walk up behind her, but even if she’d been warned of his approach, his touch would have been just as jolting to her senses. Conall Donovan was like no man she’d ever known. For a time, when she’d been a sophomore in high school and he a senior, she’d had an enormous crush on him. He’d been one of those rare guys who’d possessed brains and brawn. He’d also been a perfect gentleman, who’d been nothing but nice and polite to his sister’s poor friend. Now after all these years, he was her employer, and she’d done her best to forget about the crush. Until a few minutes ago, when he’d touched her for the very first time.
“Tell me, Vanessa, do you want these babies in your life?”
The question caused her to whirl around to face him and just as quickly she wished she’d kept her back to him. The man’s presence was always overwhelming, but up close like this, it was downright rattling her already ragged senses.
Nearly black hair lay in undisciplined waves about his head, while one errant hank teased a cool gray eye that peered at her beneath a heavy black brow. His features were large, rough and edged with a haggardness that could only come from working long, hard hours without enough rest. His clothes, which ranged from faded jeans to designer suits, always fit his tall, well-honed body as though they’d been tailored for him. And probably had been, she thought wryly. He was certainly rich enough to afford such an extravagance.
As far as Vanessa was concerned, she always thought of Conall Donovan as dark, dangerous and delicious. And something totally beyond her reach. And standing only inches away from him like this only reinforced those descriptions of the man.
Nervously licking her lips, she attempted to answer his question. “Of course I want the babies! There’s nothing I want more.” She didn’t tell him that during her short marriage she’d wanted children, but her husband had insisted he loved her too much to want to share her with a child. Now Vanessa very nearly gagged when she thought of how phony those words had been. Jeff hadn’t loved her. He’d only loved himself. But Conall didn’t want to hear about the personal mistakes she’d made. Besides, they were far too humiliating to share with a man like him.
“I’ve always wanted children. And I want Hope’s twins to be loved. I’m positive that I can give them that love and raise them as if I gave birth to them myself. But I’m not sure how I can handle all the changes I need to make right now. I have very little time and—”
“Whoa! Slow down, Vanessa. Let’s take one thing at a time,” he said. “What do you need to do first?”
Behind her, the phone began to ring again, but the subtle change in his expression was telling her to, once again, forget the telephone.
Turning her palms upward, she tried to breathe normally and assure herself that this man’s sexual aura wasn’t going to suffocate her. “I suppose the first thing is to go to Vegas and collect the babies. They’ve already been released from the hospital and placed in temporary care at a Catholic orphanage.”
With a dour frown, he turned away from her and began to pace back and forth in front of her desk. Momentarily relieved by the space between them, Vanessa drew in a much-needed breath.
“I’m sure they’re being well cared for,” he said suddenly. “But I’m certain you’ll feel better once we fetch the children back here as soon as possible.”
We? Where had that come from? This was her problem. Not his. But that wasn’t entirely true, she reminded herself. Conall was depending on her to keep his office running smoothly. Bringing two infants all the way from Vegas and getting them settled was going to chop into her work time. Naturally, this whole thing was going to affect him, too, she thought sickly. And what was that going to do to her job? A job that she’d quickly come to love, and now, more than ever, desperately needed.
“I’m sorry, Conall. I suppose I’ll have to ask for time off while I make arrangements to fly out and collect the twins. If you feel you need to let me go permanently,” she added ruefully, “then I’ll understand.”
Stopping in his tracks, he scowled at her. “Let you go? What the hell, Vanessa? Do you think Donovans fire our employees whenever they need help?”
Seeing she’d offended him, she drew in a deep breath and blew it out. “I didn’t mean it like that. You obviously have tons of work to deal with. You can’t do it alone and you put your trust in me to be here every day. I can’t expect you to suffer just because I have a problem.”
He waved a dismissive hand through the air. “This isn’t like you’re asking for time off to go on a shopping binge or some other frivolous excursion,” he barked, then resumed pacing. “I’ll deal with the problems here in the office. Mother will step in your place for the time being. As for me, I suppose I could ask Dad to deal with my most pressing obligations. He doesn’t know anything about the mining business. But he can always call me with questions,” he went on, more to himself than to her. “I’ll discuss this with my parents tonight. In the meantime, you get on the phone and buy plane tickets for tomorrow. You can be ready by then, can’t you?”
Vanessa was accustomed to his rapid-fire orders. Some days he rattled them off as though she were a tape recorder. But this afternoon, she’d been knocked off-kilter and the sudden personal attention Conall was giving her wasn’t helping her brain snap into action. She stared at him with confusion.
“Tickets? Pardon me, Conall, but I only need one round-trip ticket.”
Walking back to her, he held up two fingers. “You need to purchase two tickets. I’m going with you.”
She gasped and he smiled.
“What’s wrong?” he asked. “Afraid you’ll fall asleep on the plane and I’ll see you with your mouth open?”
Was he saying something about her mouth? she wondered fuzzily. And had something gone wrong with the room’s thermostat? Sweat was popping out on her forehead and upper lip. Her legs felt oddly weak and there was a loud rushing noise in her ears.
“Conall—I—”
The remainder of her words were never uttered as she slumped forward and straight into his arms.
