Her Secret, His Child: A Little Secret by Tara Quinn (rosie project .txt) 📕

"I mean it, Kyle." There was no laughter in her tone now. "If I help you, it has to be on strictly a friendship basis."

"Fine." If she needed time, he'd give it to her. He was too damn relieved that she was willing to see him at all to worry about the small stuff.

"Okay, then."

"Okay."

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' 'Well, maybe we should meet one day this week to decide on a theme?"

"How about dinner?" he asked, both his planners in front of him. "Tonight?"

"I can't."

"Lunch tomorrow?"

"Ashley's only at preschool in the morning."

"A late breakfast on Wednesday?"

"Do you ever think about anything but eating?"

Yeah. He thought about her. A lot. Way more than he thought about food. All the time. "Nope. That's about it."

"Okay." She was laughing again. "I'll see you Wednesday morning."

Kyle set a time, writing it down in both his personal and school planners, just to be sure he didn't miss it, and rang off.

But not before he'd heard the sleepy little voice in the background calling for Mommy. The jolt that shot through him just before he put the phone back in its cradle shocked him. Until that second, Jamie's daughter had been little more than a picture, a fact from her past. Suddenly the child was real—a living, breathing part of Jamie. Kyle felt a strong desire to meet her. And to know what had happened to her father.

"So, how'd Dennis take the news of his impending fatherhood?'' Jamie asked her friend later that morning. Dennis had just left for Lake Tahoe, where he'd be making calls for the next couple of days.

Because she jumped up from the kitchen table to

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take the coffee grounds from the filter of her automatic coffeemaker and throw them away, Karen's reply was muffled. "I didn't tell him."

"You didn't?" Jamie frowned. She'd been envisioning the scene all weekend. Had played it out in a variety of different ways—all ending with an ecstatic Dennis taking Karen in his arms. "Why not?"

Karen shrugged, wiping off not only the coffee-maker but the kitchen counters. "I lost a baby before Kay la—did I tell you that?"

"No!"

"Well, I did." Karen topped their cups of coffee. "It was hard."

"I can imagine." Jamie bit her lip. "What happened?"

"Doctor said it was just one of those things."

Jamie couldn't even imagine how she would've felt if she'd lost Ashley. In spite of the circumstances surrounding Ashley's conception, she'd been elated the second she'd known she was pregnant. She'd been completely in love with her baby.

"Did you have problems with Kayla?"

Shaking her head, Karen stood by the table, sipping her coffee.

"Should you be having that?" Suddenly Jamie was afraid for Karen, for the baby she carried.

"It's decaf," Karen said. "Anyway, I just want to be a little further along before I tell Dennis about this new baby."

Jamie didn't agree with her friend. In her view, it made sense for Karen to share her burden, her fears, with the man who had as much at stake as she did;

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that was what love, marriage and family were all about. But she was the last person who could call herself an expert on any of those subjects.

As Karen busied herself with early lunch preparations, Jamie couldn't help wondering if there was more on her friend's mind than a miscarriage that had happened five or six years ago. If maybe there was some other reason Karen wasn't telling Dennis about the baby. Could there be trouble in paradise? Were her friends having problems with their marriage?

The thought discomfited her. Karen and Dennis were perfect together; they complemented each other. When one was discouraged, the other was uplifting; when one had a thought, the other completed it. Jamie lived every dream she'd ever had of love and marriage vicariously through her friends. She couldn't bear it if they weren't happy together.

"You know that new client from the university I was working for last week?"

"The great-looking guy who came by your house?" Karen turned around and grinned, more her old self.

Flushed, Jamie looked away. "His name's Kyle Radcliff. He's the new head of the English department."

"Yeah. So, do I detect interest here?"

"No!" Jamie made sure Karen got that picture loud and clear. It was precisely because she hated the idea of her friend jumping to conclusions that she was saying anything at all. "But he's new in

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town and has to host some honor society gathering. I said I'd help him."

Karen stared at her. "You are interested in him."

Shaking her head, Jamie joined her at the counter, took up a knife and started chopping vegetables for the soup Karen had started. "Not in the way you mean, I'm not," she said. Absolutely certain on that count. Even if she were interested, there was no point. "But he's kind of endearing, in a friends sort of way, and seems to be completely hopeless when it comes to ordinary, everyday things." Jamie smiled, thinking of his cardboard-box furniture. "He asked if I'd help, since I'm about the only person he knows except for his students and Dean Patterson. I didn't have the heart to refuse."

In actuality, Jamie had seen the party as just the opportunity she needed to get to know Kyle, to determine her next course of action. The right course of action. Whatever that might be.

"Is he interested in you?" Karen dumped a bowl of sliced potatoes into a dutch oven.

"It doesn't matter if he is. I'm not going out with him." Jamie was adamant.

Karen stopped, a cup of diced onions suspended over the pan. "I don't see why not," she said, her tone exasperated. "In all the years I've known you, you've never had a date." She continued to pin Jamie with her gaze. "You're young, beautiful, a great person. It's not natural for you to be alone."

The knife in Jamie's hand slipped, slicing the tip of her finger instead of the carrot she'd been aiming

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for. "I'm not alone," she said, her injured