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Beauty And The Baby

Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.

Chapter One

Lifting her head, his sister-in-law smiled at him in response. Carson watched the dimples in both cheeks grow deeper. He wasn't a man who ordinarily noticed dimples. Involved in his work, he noticed very little these days.

But, in almost an unconscious way, he had become aware of a great many things about Lori O'Neill ever since fate and his late brother, Kurt, had sent the woman his way.

Ever since Carson could remember, he'd been a caretaker. It wasn't something he just decided to do one day, wasn't even something he admitted wanting to do. It was just something that needed doing, a hard fact of life. Like the way he'd looked after his mother after his father had left. And the way he'd always looked out for his younger brother. Or tried to.

And the way he'd wound up here, the director of St. Augustine's Teen Center, a place that had too many kids and too little money, but was somehow - thanks to his all but superhuman efforts - still beating the odds and staying open.

Carson picked up a basketball that had whacked him against the back of his calves a second ago and tossed it toward a boy whose head barely came up to his chest. The boy flashed a sudden grin and ran off with his retrieved prize. As always, there was a game in progress.

His responsibilities weren't something he'd sought out. They'd just been there, waiting for him to walk in and take over. On his father's departure, his mother had all but become a basket case, so, at fifteen, Carson had become the family's driving force.

It wasn't easy. Kurt had been a screwup, albeit an incredibly charming one, and he'd loved Kurt, so he had done his best to help him out, to set him straight. Done his best to be there with silent support and not so silent money whenever the occasion had called for it. Which, as time progressed, was often.

Despite all Carson's efforts to set his brother on the right road, Kurt had managed to kill himself in his search for speed. "Death by motorcycle," the newspaper had glibly reported on the last page in the section that dealt with local news.

Kurt's death, a year after his mother's, should have freed him from the role of patriarch, but it hadn't. There was Lori to think of. Somehow, it seemed only natural that he should take Kurt's pregnant wife under his wing.

Not that Lori had asked.

She was an independent, spirited woman, which was what he'd liked about her. But she was also pregnant and, after Kurt's untimely death, faced with a mountain of Kurt's debts.

The old adage, "When it rained, it poured," was never truer than in Lori's case. Less than a month after Kurt's death, the company for which Lori worked as a graphic artist declared bankruptcy, leaving her jobless. Carson found himself stepping in with both feet.

He'd stepped in the same way when he'd heard that the youth center, where he and Kurt had spent their adolescent afternoons, was about to close its doors because there was no one to take over as director and precious little financing.

His ex-wife, Jaclyn, had called him a bleeding heart when he'd told her he was leaving his law firm and taking over the helm at St. Augustine's Teen Center. He had discovered that being a lawyer left him cold and gave him no sense of satisfaction. Very quickly it had become just a means to an end. An end that had pleased Jaclyn a great deal, but not him. He'd needed more. He'd needed meaning.

The abrupt change in his life's direction had left her far from pleased. She had screamed at him, calling him a fool. Calling him a great many other things as well. He hadn't realized that she'd known those kinds of words until she'd hurled them at him.

The last label had been a surprise, though. She'd called him a bleeding heart. It showed how little, after five years of marriage, she really knew about him. He was pragmatic, not emotional. Taking over at the center had been something that needed doing, for so many reasons.

Besides, his heart didn't bleed, it didn't feel anything at all. Especially not after Jaclyn had left, taking their two-year-old daughter with them. His heart only functioned. Just as he did.

Just as Lori did, he thought, looking at her now. Except that she did it with verve. He motioned her to his office just down the narrow hall beyond the gym. The girls, whose game Lori had been refereeing, watched her for a moment, then went on without her.

He closed the door behind Lori, then indicated the chair in front of his scarred desk, a desk that was a far cry from the expensive one he'd been sitting behind three years ago.

Ordinarily, Lori seemed tireless to him, almost undaunted by anything that life threw her way. The only time he'd ever seen her be anything other than upbeat was at Kurt's funeral.

But even then, she'd seemed more interested in comforting him. Not that he'd allowed that, of course. He was his own person, his own fortress. It was the way it had always been and the way it would always be. He was who he was. A loner. Carson knew he couldn't be any other way even if he wanted to. Which he didn't.

"What?" Lori finally pressed.

She tried to read her brother-in-law's expression and failed. Nothing new there. Carson had always seemed inscrutable. Not like Kurt. She could always tell what Kurt was thinking if she looked into his eyes for more than a moment. Usually, he was trying to hide something.

"I've been watching you," Carson told her. "You seem tired today," he repeated.

Lori shook her head, denying the observation. She prided herself on being able to soldier on, no matter what. These days, however, the weight of her backpack was steadily increasing. Especially since she was carrying it in front of her.

"No, I'm not tired. Just a wee bit overwhelmed by all that energy out there." She nodded toward the area right outside the closetlike room that served as the youth center's general office. There were a few small rooms around the perimeter, but the center's main focus was the gym. It was there that the kids who frequented the center worked out their aggression and their tension.

Then, with a sigh, she slowly lowered herself into the chair in front of his desk, trying not to think about the daunting task of getting up again. She'd face that in a minute or so. Right now, it felt really good to be able to sit down.

Maybe she was tired at that, Lori thought. But she didn't like the idea that she showed it.

Just beyond the door were the sounds of kids letting off steam, channeling energy into something productive instead of destructive. Kids who, but for Carson's concentrated efforts, would have no place to go except into trouble.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Beauty And The Baby by Marie Ferrarella Copyright © 2003 by Harlequin Enterprises Ltd.
Excerpted by permission. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.

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