Summer Kisses

SUMMER KISSES

TEN GOLDEN HEART AUTHORS BOXED SET

HAVING MY BABY
by New York Times and USA Today Bestselling Author, THERESA RAGAN

After being left at the altar, Jill Garrison realizes she may never have the wedding or the husband, but nothing is going to stop her from having a baby. With the help of donor sperm, she’s finally pregnant. The baby she’s carrying is hers and hers alone. Nobody can take that away from her. Or can they?

GETTING LUCKY
by Golden Heart® Finalist KATIE GRAYKOWSKI

Will Brody fell in love with Lucky Strickland the moment he saw her. Unfortunately, she married his brother. Now that her husband is out of the picture can Will get Lucky to open her heart to him so he can finally give her the family she’s always wanted?

THE MEMORY OF YOU
by 2X Golden Heart® Winner LAURIE KELLOGG

POW Matt Foster returns home with no memory. He plans to send a note to his wife, Abby, to wish her well but then learns she’s the beautiful woman in his X-rated dreams and he’s a daddy! Matt could still walk away from the sexy stranger, but he can never abandon his sons. Can he and Abby reclaim the love the war stole?

JOCKEYS AND JEWELS
by BEV PETTERSEN, three-time National Reader’s Choice nominee, Golden Heart® Finalist,and NEC-RWA Reader’s Choice Winner

An undercover cop investigates the shocking murder of his ex-partner but falls in love with the beautiful jockey he’s forced to deceive.

OPERATION: DATE ESCAPE
by LINDSEY BROOKES, Finalist in the American Title III competition and 4X Golden Heart® Finalist

Kelsie Collins’ past has taught her there is no such thing as a perfect man, but those beliefs are tested when hunky firefighter Cole Maxwell comes to her rescue, not once but twice, and then sets out to prove he’s the perfect man for her!

THE GOOD DAUGHTER
by DIANA LAYNE 4½ Stars Top pick RT Book Reviews

Most good daughters would say they owe their fathers everything. Marisa Peruzzo, Mafia princess, would. She owed him for killing her fiancé. She owed him for destroying her mother. She owed him for chaining her to the ‘family business’. And she owed him for taking away her lifelong friend. Payback’s a bitch.

SEIZED BY DARKNESS
Best-selling author AUTUMN JORDON shares a timeless, potent tale fused with tender romance.

When kidnapped victim Nicole Carson and her son escape with secrets, she is marked by a mafia lord offering an epic reward. Desperate for her family’s safety, she sides with U.S. Marshal Will Haus and realizes to obtain her heart’s desire she must again face death.

MEET YOUR MATE
by 2X Golden Heart® Winner JACIE FLOYD

Opposites attract and love trumps professional rivalry when a bad-boy biker and an uptight young widow are fixed-up on a reality TV show. The fireworks they create together are more powerful than the differences that keep them apart.

LOVE & OREOS
by ELIZABETH BEMIS

Katherine Mendoza is a curvy PR exec whose passion for Oreos is tempered only by her workaholic lifestyle. When her newest client, fitness-master Quinn Mitchell, offers to help her slim down, is it a sign from the gods, or a recipe for disaster? Love & Oreos is perfect for lovers of small-town romance, wisecracking humor-and, of course, Oreos.

MARRYING MISTER PERFECT
by Golden Heart® Winner LIZZIE SHANE

Heart surgeon & single father Jack Doyle may be looking for love on national television, but every lovely Suitorette he meets only makes him miss his best friend and live-in nanny, Louisa. Was the love of his life right in front of him all along? And can he win her heart when the cameras are always rolling?

Table of Contents

Summer Kisses

Having My Baby by Theresa Ragan

Getting Lucky by Katie Graykowski

The Memory of You by Laurie Kellogg

Jockeys and Jewels by Bev Petersen

Operation: Date Escape by Lindsey Brookes

The Good Daughter by Diana Layne

Seized By Darkness by Autumn Jordon

Meet Your Mate by Jacie Floyd

Love & Oreos by Elizabeth Bemis

Marrying Mr. Perfect by Lizzie Shane

Copyright © 2015

Summer Kisses: Ten Golden Heart Authors Boxed Set by Theresa Ragan, Katie Graykowski, Laurie Kellogg, Bev Pettersen, Lindsey Brookes, Diane Layne, Autumn Jordon, Jacie Floyd, Elizabeth Bemis and Lizzie Shane.

All rights reserved. No part of this e-Book may be reproduced in whole or in part, scanned, photocopied, recorded, distributed in any printed or electronic form, or reproduced in any manner whatsoever, or by any information storage and retrieval system now known or hereafter invented, without express written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons living or dead is entirely coincidental.

BY

THERESA RAGAN

Growing up, Jill Garrison never daydreamed about having the perfect wedding. Instead, she dreamt about having a baby. Boy or girl, it didn’t matter. Unfortunately, her fiancé, the man she falls in love with, can’t have children. Determined to realize her lifelong dream of having a baby, Jill spends years searching for a company (CryoCorp) that provides high quality donor sperm. Everything is right in Jill’s world until her wedding day when her fiancé leaves her at the altar to be humiliated before friends and family. She doesn’t waste any time moving from New York City to California to start over. And she keeps her appointment with Cryocorp. She may never have the wedding or the husband, but nothing is going to stop her from having a baby. She’s tired of everyone telling her what to do. The baby she’s carrying is hers and hers alone. Nobody can take that away from her.

Or can they?

For Jesse, Joey, Morgan and Brittany.

I am the luckiest Mom in the world.

Derrick Baylor left his mom, dad, and siblings in the backyard and headed inside his parents’ house. All he wanted was a couple of ibuprofen and a few minutes to himself, but the moment he walked through the side door, what he got instead was a high-pitched shrill that pierced his skull and made him forget all about the pain in his right knee.

Bypassing the kitchen, he made his way toward the noise, favoring his bad leg now that no one could see him. He’d been tackled by the best in the NFL: Hawk, Sims, and Lawson. A little knee injury wasn’t going to take him out of the upcoming season.

The awful sound was coming from his old bedroom. He opened the door, frowning when he saw a portable crib in the middle of the room, the room he planned to sleep in tonight. He leaned over the crib. The baby looked fine: No horrible smells. Nobody bothering it.

He’d been thinking about babies a lot lately, he realized, as he watched the squirming infant. And when he thought about babies he also thought about love and marriage and Maggie. He would be thirty soon. Women weren’t the only ones with a biological clock ticking away like a time bomb.

As he watched the baby, he found himself hoping his tiny niece would stop crying. Not because the sound bothered him, but because it scared him.
Was she in pain
?

At closer view, he realized babies were, indeed, sort of scary. They were fragile and wiggly. Hopefully somebody would come to the rescue. If he picked the kid up, he might accidentally hurt her. Footballs he could handle—babies, not so much.

“Wahhhhhhhhhh.”

Damn.

Besides wanting the ibuprofen, he’d come inside to get away from his adopted brother and supposed friend, Aaron, and Aaron’s new fiancée, Maggie: the girl Derrick was supposed to marry someday—not Aaron. Maggie had lived across the street when he was growing up. Maggie was his neighbor, his girl, his future wife—not Aaron’s.

He had learned recently that Aaron and Maggie were planning to be married before a Justice of the Peace, sooner rather than later. Apparently, they had recently moved in together too.

Derrick thought he could handle this little party his mother threw together in celebration of Aaron and Maggie’s engagement, but he was wrong. Seeing them together made him tense, made him feel things he didn’t want to feel.

“Wahhh. Wahhhhhhhh.”

Garrett, his second brother to marry so far, was the first to have a baby. Garrett was making them all look bad, making it appear as if finding a soul mate was easy. Finding a soul mate was like looking for a lost diamond on a twenty-mile stretch of crowded beach. Impossible.

Many of his friends thought they had found “their other half” and now they were divorced.

The baby continued to cry. Her name was Bailey. It could have been worse. His brother and sister-in-law could have named her Apple or Saturn. Bailey was lying on her stomach but that didn’t seem to affect her vocal cords. “There, there,” Derrick said as he reached inside the crib and lamely patted her back.

She cried harder.

“A screecher, huh?” he said as he leaned forward and looked her over, trying to figure out how he was going to pick her up. He was number five of ten kids. He’d held his share of babies before, but mostly when he was younger. He was out of practice, that’s all.

The baby’s head was the size of a large peach or maybe a really small melon. It even had light fuzz on the top of its skull. He touched the top of Bailey’s head, felt a divot, and yanked his hand back.

Her screaming increased an octave.

“I was only trying to make you feel better.” He sighed. “But don’t worry, I get it…you’re a girl and that’s what girls do best…they make lots of noise.”

“Very funny,” a female voice said from the doorway.

He looked over his shoulder, surprised to see Maggie standing there watching him with those big blue eyes of hers. Her arms were crossed in front of her, her blonde hair all shiny and soft around the top of her shoulders. He’d been avoiding her all day. And now he knew why. Looking at her made his gut twist and his heart ache.

“She won’t stop crying,” he said to get his mind on other things. “What’s wrong with her?”

Maggie’s smile made it all the way to her eyes.

“Did you try changing her diaper?” she asked.

“Now who’s the funny one?”

Maggie moved to his side, leaned over the side of the crib and picked Bailey up as if she wasn’t as fragile as she looked.

“Kris asked me to check on her. Do you want to hold her?”

He took a step back. “Do bears like to dance?”

“I’m sure they do,” she said with a smile.

“Bears do not like to dance,” he informed her. “They like to eat people.”

“Fine,” she said as she took the baby to the changing table. “Bears like to eat people. Are you going to help me change her, or are you going to go back to sulking instead of celebrating like everybody else?”

“I think I’ll go back to sulking, thanks.” He watched Maggie for a moment, remembering the good times they shared when they were kids. He and his brothers used to play flag football in the street with Maggie. She was one of the boys back then. It was hard to wrap his mind around the idea that Aaron had gone and proposed to her after they had all vowed to keep away.

Vows did not have an expiration date. Nobody could have Maggie—it was only fair.

Back then, every male within a five-mile radius had a crush on Maggie.

Derrick knew he should let it go. He was an adult, all grown up. He should be happy for his friend and adopted brother, but he wasn’t. He felt betrayed. Derrick headed for the door, but he wasn’t quick enough. Mom showed up and stopped him before he could escape.

“There you are,” Mom said. Her gaze swept past him and zeroed in on the baby. “Oh, there’s my precious itty bitty baby girl. How is she?”