Pregnant and Incognito Read online

  He shouldn’t be thrown off course by how sweet and softly rounded Dana looked by candlelight. He was entitled to ask questions and have them answered.

  “Dana,” Conn said. Something in his tone must have caught her attention. She shot him a startled look.

  “Conn, before you say anything, please understand that I’m sorry for biting your head off earlier. I wanted to make amends and this—” she gestured at the dinner on the table “—this was the only way I knew how to do it.” Her gaze was beseeching.

  He didn’t know how to deal with this. With her. His relationship skills were rusty, to say the least. “Don’t you understand that I care that something might happen to you? I’ve known you several days, and you don’t seem to have anyone who checks on you regularly.”

  “But I do,” Dana said softly. “I have you.”

  Dear Reader,

  Happy New Year! Harlequin American Romance is starting the year off with an irresistible lineup of four great books, beginning with the latest installment in the MAITLAND MATERNITY: TRIPLETS, QUADS & QUINTS series. In Quadruplets on the Doorstep by Tina Leonard, a handsome bachelor proposes a marriage of convenience to a lovely nurse for the sake of four abandoned babies.

  In Mindy Neff’s Preacher’s In-Name-Only Wife, another wonderful book in her BACHELORS OF SHOTGUN RIDGE series, a woman must marry to secure her inheritance, but she hadn’t counted on being an instant wife and mother when her new husband unexpectedly receives custody of an orphaned baby. Next, a brooding loner captivates a pregnant single mom in Pregnant and Incognito by Pamela Browning. These opposites have nothing in common—except an intense attraction that neither is strong enough to deny. Finally, Krista Thoren makes her Harlequin American Romance debut with High-Society Bachelor, in which a successful businessman and a pretty party planner decide to outsmart their small town’s matchmakers by pretending to date.

  Enjoy them all—and don’t forget to come back again next month when a special three-in-one volume, The McCallum Quintuplets, featuring New York Times bestselling author Kasey Michaels, Mindy Neff and Mary Anne Wilson is waiting for you.

  Wishing you happy reading,

  Melissa Jeglinski

  Associate Senior Editor

  Harlequin American Romance

  PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO

  Pamela Browning

  For newlyweds Neill and Melanie: May you live happily ever after.

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Pamela Browning once captured a wounded baby falcon in her backyard—which wasn’t easy, since it was hopping around in terror and she was eight months pregnant. Three weeks later, her son was born, and he is half of the newlywed couple to whom this book is dedicated.

  The falcon was rehabilitated and released to the wild: another happy ending!

  Books by Pamela Browning

  HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

  101—CHERISHED BEGINNINGS

  116—HANDYMAN SPECIAL

  123—THROUGH EYES OF LOVE

  131—INTERIOR DESIGNS

  140—EVER SINCE EVE

  150—FOREVER IS A LONG TIME

  170—TO TOUCH THE STARS

  181—FLUTTERBY PRINCESS

  194—ICE CRYSTALS

  227—KISSES IN THE RAIN

  237—SIMPLE GIFTS

  241—FLY AWAY

  245—HARVEST HOME

  287—FEATHERS IN THE WIND

  297—UNTIL SPRING

  354—HUMBLE PIE

  384—A MAN WORTH LOVING

  420—FOR AULD LANG SYNE

  439—SUNSHINE AND SHADOWS

  451—MORGAN’S CHILD

  516—MERRY CHRISTMAS, BABY

  565—THE WORLD’S LAST BACHELOR

  600—ANGEL’S BABY

  632—LOVER’S LEAP

  786—RSVP…BABY

  818—THAT’S OUR BABY!

  854—BABY CHRISTMAS

  874—COWBOY WITH A SECRET

  907—PREGNANT AND INCOGNITO

  * * *

  TALK-SHOW HOSTESS A NO-SHOW!

  Beautiful Day Quinlan fled the scene of her popular talk show, and the rumor mill has been working around the clock over the cause of her disappearance. Could it be a serious illness (note: she has been looking a little green around the gills lately)? Did extraterrestrials swoop down to use her for experiments? Or has she gone on safari? If you have any information on the whereabouts of Day Quinlan, contact us immediately!

  * * *

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  The studio lamps were bright, too bright. Worse, the tears in Day’s eyes fractured the light into piercing shards, sharp enough to stab her through the heart.

  Day feared that she was losing it. And she knew she mustn’t lose it. Not here, not now. She could cry later.

  The theme music came up, and Camille peered myopically into her face. “You all right, Miss Quinlan?” her assistant asked on a note of anxiety.

  “I’m fine,” Day said. Her voice quavered, then steadied. She wondered if Camille noticed.

  No time to care. She had to get on with this. Day Time was live today, which was why she planned to make her announcement on the air. If this had been a taped show, as it sometimes was, the show wouldn’t air for two weeks, and her fans would have read her remarks first in the tabloid newspapers. Day thought she owed them better than that.

  A fanfare, highlighted by a drumroll, and then the sonorous voice of Patrick Rourke, the show’s announcer. “And now, here’s the star of Day Time, Da-a-y Quinlan!”

  It was the same introduction Day heard at the beginning of five shows a week, forty weeks a year, and it prepared her for action. Camille shoved a hand mike at her, and she clutched at it as if it were a lifeline. She tensed briefly, blinked the tears from her eyes, and curved her lips into her trademark Day Quinlan smile, the same smile that had been dazzling talk show audiences for eight years.

  And then she was bounding across the floor, high-fiving her stage manager on the way up the stairs, acknowledging the audience’s applause with a graceful incline of her head as she always did.

  But this time she didn’t proceed to the dais with its two comfortable chairs, which were awaiting her and her scheduled guest. Instead she lowered herself to the edge of the stage, something she did occasionally to increase rapport and a feeling of intimacy with the audience.

  This sitting-on-the-stage bit wasn’t in the script. Off to one side, her stage manager narrowed his eyes, then appeared nonplussed. Day ignored him. She shook a gleam of pale-blond hair back from her face, drew a deep breath and plunged ahead.

  “Today,” she said, but she felt her throat catch. She stopped, swallowed hard, tried to smile and began again. “Today I have something important to tell all of you. It will come as a surprise, I know, but I hope you will all wish me well. Certainly, I wish the best for all of you.” She paused, gauged the reaction, saw a mixture of puzzlement and confusion on audience faces. She drew another deep breath. “What I have to tell you is, it’s time for me to decide whether or not to renew my contract with the General Broadcasting Network. I’ve made up my mind in the past few days. I’m quitting my show.”

  There. She’d said it. After a horrendous climb up the tortuous ratings heap, after surmounting all sorts of obstacles and taking on Oprah and Sally Jessy and Leeza, after all of it, she was throug
h.

  A stout woman in the front row gasped and clapped her hand over her mouth. A shocked silence gave way to a buzzing in the audience, or was it in Day’s ears?

  Day felt foggy, and dots swam before her eyes. She thought she might faint. But all she did was reach for the glass of water that was always placed within arm’s reach outside camera range. When her trembling hand lowered the glass, she saw her stage manager climbing over a welter of cables and frantically waving his clipboard. Camille was staring stunned and openmouthed from the sidelines.

  Day regarded all of this as if from a great distance. Miraculously, inside her, she thought she felt the baby move for the first time. Or was it only wishful thinking? At least it reminded her why she’d made her little speech.

  She slid her hand inside her jacket and rounded it protectively over her abdomen.

  I won’t let anyone hurt you, she told the baby. Not now, not ever.

  And then she lurched to her feet and, without speaking to anyone, whisked herself offstage and directly into a waiting limo that sped her to the airport.

  As she had planned, she dropped out of sight. She became Dana Cantrell, which was her real given name. The tabloids could speculate about why she had not renewed her contract, her so-called friends could give interviews, Philip could rant. But Day Quinlan would be impossible to locate because she had ceased to exist.

  None of the people who thought they knew Day Quinlan would have been familiar with the name Cougar Creek, Arizona. Nor, she was sure, would the tabloids know or care about that small speck on the map. Philip, certainly, wouldn’t have a clue. The cabin at Cougar Creek was the one place that Day, like her father before her, held sacrosanct. It was there that she would go to lick her wounds in private.

  At Cougar Creek, she would settle in, look after herself and take care of the new little life growing inside her. She would wrap herself in a protective veil of self-pity.

  And then she would decide what to do with herself, now that she wasn’t anybody anymore.

  Chapter One

  Cougar Creek, Arizona,

  October, Three Months Later

  Dana came upon the kestrel as she rounded a red sandstone boulder near Libya Mesa, stirring up a cloud of dust that almost obscured it. The kestrel, which she recognized instantly because she had once written a school paper about birds of prey, was in trouble, no doubt about that. It didn’t take flight when it saw her clambering awkwardly over the rocks but merely hunkered down into the landscape. When she drew closer, it blinked once.

  She couldn’t tell if it had a broken wing or was perhaps more seriously injured. She’d been in a hurry to get home because the sky was covered over with billowy gray clouds that heralded, she was sure, a rainstorm. But she stopped anyway and studied the situation.

  The bird didn’t move. It looked as if it were in shock. It was a pretty little thing, the top of its head slate blue with a reddish spot on the crown. Black patches were on the sides of its head and the nape, while its back was a rusty brown. It had a white-tipped reddish tail and a bit of ashy blue on its wings.

  There was something wrong, she knew it. The bird should have been fleeing from her, but instead it stared at her, a terrified gleam in its eye. And was it keeling over to the left, or was that her imagination?

  She acted out of instinct, though perhaps not wisely. She bent and tried to pick it up, receiving a sharp nip on the tender, fleshy part of her hand between thumb and forefinger for her trouble.

  “Ouch!” she exclaimed as she leaped backward, which was no easy feat now that she was six months pregnant. The kestrel glowered at her, and she glowered back. She’d only been trying to help.

  “Stay away from that hawk!”

  The harsh command startled her, and she swiveled around. Out from behind a thicket strode a tall, broad-shouldered man wearing a leather jerkin and boots that laced halfway up his calves. At the exact moment that he appeared, the clouds parted and admitted a beam of light that caught the blue highlights in his unruly black hair, a lock of which fell engagingly across his forehead. The forehead was wrinkled into a fierce scowl.

  “I was only trying to help it, and it pecked me.” She pulled a tissue from her pocket and wrapped it around her hand. The pressure stanched the blood but didn’t do anything to stop the pain.

  “Demelza is a trained bird of prey. What do you expect her to do when you’re threatening her?” He bent to look at the bird, crooning to it in a surprisingly soft voice. Belatedly Dana saw the leather thongs attached to the bird’s legs.

  “I had no idea it was a trained bird. How was I to know?” Dana returned hotly.

  The man spared her an exasperated eye roll and pulled something from his pocket. It was a small leather hood embossed with a design of some sort, and he slid it gently over the kestrel’s head before picking up the bird. His hands were large—big powerful hands, sinewy and with long fingers. While Dana watched, the kestrel sidled along his arm to the heavy glove he wore. It perched there on his wrist, calm and quiet, while he slid the leather strap on his glove through a metal ring joining the thongs on the bird’s legs. He didn’t smooth the bird’s feathers or touch it again.

  “Is it hurt?”

  “She seems all right. Probably tangled with a feisty sparrow instead of chasing grasshoppers like she’s supposed to do.”

  “You shouldn’t—”

  “I don’t need advice. I’m a master falconer, experienced at this sort of thing. I take care of my hawks. My name’s Connor McTavish. And who are you?” She’d heard of the falconer; a loner, they said in town.

  For the first time he looked directly at her. His eyes were umber, varnished with gold, and they pierced into her, through her. For a moment she had the impression that the two of them might have been the only two people on earth.

  She broke the spell by stepping away slightly. As always, she was wary about introducing herself. She never forgot that someone, despite the changes in her shape and hair color, might recognize her.

  “I’m Dana Cantrell,” she said. “I live on the other side of the mesa.” She held her breath, but he showed no flash of recognition.

  “You must be talking about Homer Cantrell’s cabin.”

  “He was my father.”

  “You’ve wandered a little far from home, haven’t you?”

  She didn’t like his challenging manner. “I like to take walks,” she retorted.

  His gaze traveled down, paused at the bloom of her belly under her shirt front, continued downward. She felt an urge to turn and flee, which was ridiculous. She had every right to be here.

  “Isn’t rambling around the countryside a little dangerous in your condition?” he asked bluntly.

  “Walking is a completely natural form of exercise. My doctor recommends it.”

  “I didn’t mean the walking itself. I meant the things you’re likely to encounter out here. Snakes, critters—” he cast an eye overhead to the clouds, which were now building again “—and thunderstorms. Come on, you’d better go home with me.”

  “I have plenty of time to get back to the cabin.” She turned away, but he grabbed her arm with his free hand. The kestrel still sat quietly on his left wrist.

  “Wait just a minute,” he said. He threw his head back and pointed his chin toward the west. “Look over that way.”

  She did. Lightning zigged across the sky, followed by a muffled snarl of thunder. The storm was thrashing its way closer by the minute.

  “If you’re living in that tumbledown old place by the stream, you won’t make it back before the storm hits. Could be some hail in this one, too. Look at the height of those clouds.”

  It was alarming to see them rolling in this direction. She stood indecisively, the freshening wind whipping at the hem of her shirt, not wanting to go with this man but not sure she had much of a choice. If she’d had only herself to consider, she wouldn’t have minded sheltering under an overhang of rock somewhere along the path, but she couldn’t take chances w
ith the baby.

  “My hawk wagon’s right around the bend. I’ll take you back to my place, doctor that hand of yours. I feel responsible, I admit.”

  Dana wrapped the tissue more tightly around her hand. She wondered if this man had any idea who she was. Probably not; she had let her hair revert to its natural reddish gold, and she’d had it cut into a short sleek bob. She’d also gained more weight than she liked to think about.

  She sighed, wavering.

  He pursed his lips—nice lips, full and expressive. “If it will set your mind at ease, I was an Eagle Scout and a member of my church choir when I was growing up.”

  What else could she do? “Okay,” she said, still not sure she should trust him.

  Nevertheless, she fell in beside him. For a moment she thought he might take her arm to help her over the rough spots in the path, so she remained a fair distance from him as they walked. A glance at the hooded kestrel—Demelza—reassured her that the bird wasn’t in pain, or at least it wasn’t obvious if she was. She, Dana, was in more pain, probably. Surreptitiously she refolded the tissue, clamped it tightly with her thumb and stuck her hand deep down into her pocket.

  “Don’t worry, I’ll take care of that when we get to my place.” He didn’t miss much, this man.

  Ahead of them was parked a dusty white pickup truck with a camper shell over the truck bed. Connor moved ahead of her and wrenched the back open. Two pipes covered with artificial plastic turf ran lengthwise in the vehicle’s interior, and he set Demelza on one of them. The kestrel settled down on the perch with a brief flurry of feathers.

  “And now you,” he said to Dana, moving around to the cab’s passenger side, opening it and all but boosting her in. He went around and got in the driver’s side, boots striking on solid rock, while she self-consciously adjusted the seat belt to accommodate her girth. After an anxious look back at Demelza through the window of the cab, Dana spared a glance out of the corners of her eyes as her companion threw the vehicle into gear and backed and maneuvered on the narrow road until they were bumping their way around the mesa.