Baby Be Mine (Spinsters & Casanovas Series Book 1)
Read Baby Be Mine (Spinsters & Casanovas Series Book 1) Online
Authors: Wanitta Praks
Tags: #contemporaryromance, #romanticcomedy, #babypregnancy, #babyromance, #chicklitromance, #humorromance, #multibillionaireromance, #multimillionaireromance, #playboyspinster, #pregnancyromance
Baby Be Mine
(Spinsters & Casanovas Series Book 1)
Wanitta Praks
Copyright © 2014 by Wanitta Praks
All Rights Reserved
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters,
places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s
imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual
persons, living or dead, business establishments, events, or
locales is entirely coincidental.
All rights reserved. This book was
self-published by the author Wanitta Praks. No part of this book
may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or
electronic form without agreement and written permission of the
author. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of
copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase
only authorized editions.
The author can be reached at:
www.wanittapraks.com
Spinsters & Casanovas Series: Book
1
Contents
For Alexia & Wannasa,
SUPPORTERS, MOTIVATORS, & SISTERS
Thanks guys for your support and motivation,
even when I have an emotional breakdown with my characters.
You guys are the best.
PROLOGUE
It was during the summer of her eighth
birthday when Clarice met her two best friends, Whitney and Elise.
The three little darlings were destined to share the same fate—
spinsters who would ultimately meet their Casanovas in their very
own weird ways.
On this particular day, they were out on the
playground of their elementary school, swinging on the monkey bars.
Clarice, who had never really had any real friends before, asked
this very odd question that had been boggling her mind for a little
while. “Friends. What are they for?”
Pretty Elise, with her sunny blond hair and
bright sky-blue eyes, chimed in eagerly, “Friends are your teddy
bear. He comforts you when you cry. He’s like your cozy pillow or
your favorite blankie. He’s warm, like Mummy and Daddy.”
“They’re your Kleenex tissue,” Whitney said,
nodding her dark head. “For wiping your runny nose and teary eyes.
You get that when you cry. He’s like Mummy and Daddy, all warm and
cozy.”
“Is that all?” Clarice asked in wonder, her
dark-brown eyes large.
“There’s more! There’s more!” Whitney said,
hopping in her spot, eager for her friends to listen to her very
wise words, her braided hair bouncing about. Then she proceeded to
dance and clap her hands like a monkey. “Friends are always there
with you, always around you, like right now. I’m happy. I’m
clapping my hands because I have my friends with me. Clap with me,
Clarice.” She grinned widely at the half-Kiwi, half-Cambodian girl.
“Clap with me, Elise.” She urged them to clap and dance with her.
The clueless two happily followed her lead and began clapping their
hands and dancing silly dances, like clowns in a circus.
“See, friends make each other look like
fools, but they still have fun,” Whitney said wisely.
“So will you promise to be my teddy bear, my
comfort pillow, my favorite blankie, and Kleenex tissue, then?”
Clarice asked her two friends.
“Sure,” Elise said.
“You bet on it,” Whitney replied.
“Promise?” Clarice wanted to make sure they
weren’t going to run out on her. After all, she knew no one else
wanted to be her friend, since she was so different.
“Promise?” Elise and Whitney said in
unison.
“Let’s pinky swear, then,” Clarice
suggested.
“Yes, pinky swear,” Whitney said,
grinning.
Elise nodded in agreement.
Clarice entwined her left pinky with
Whitney’s. On the right side, she entwined with Elise’s left, while
Elise had her right pinky with Whitney’s left. In turn, the three
friends formed a circle, an endless unity of friendship.
“We promise to be great friends. We promise
to pick each other up when the other falls. We promise to be your
teddy bear, your favorite blankie and your Kleenex tissue. We
promise to laugh with you when you laugh. We are sisters as well as
friends. From now on, we are one.” Then they leaned forward until
all three foreheads touched.
“Friends,” they all said in unison. Then
they pulled back and smiled their cheesy, toothy smiles at each
other.
When the door opened, a naked torso faced
Clarice. Not just any old torso, but a hot, muscled, six-pack naked
torso. She blinked and blinked, and then she blinked some more. She
couldn’t understand why a grown man would be wearing a towel, just
a single white, fluffy towel wrapped around his waist, to answer
the door.
He was leaning against the doorframe, one
hand supporting his tall, lean, muscular body that, Clarice noted,
any female would want in her bed, including her. Not that she’d
bedded any male, of course, since she was still a bloody virgin,
for God’s sake.
As her eyes traveled up to his face, her
heart decided to do a disco dance, moving in time to the sound of
the very popular music currently playing in the background
somewhere inside the man’s house.
She felt a little breathless and
lightheaded. Her cheeks flushed the same shade as the bouquet of
scarlet roses in her arms. Not that she was florist or a delivery
person or anything. No, the florist was one of her best friends,
Elise, and the delivery person was too sick with influenza. So
being the great best friend that she was, Clarice offered to
help.
Elise had begged because this was her VIP
client. Elise herself was too busy preparing for the many orders
for Valentine’s Day, which was tomorrow, so the job was thrust upon
her with little room for argument. And Clarice herself had
succumbed to Elise’s bribery of free roses, which she really
loved.
Now here she was, knocking on the door of 99
Summerson Street in
Herne Bay,
one of the
wealthiest suburbs in Auckland. At the moment, her eyes were busy
blinking rapidly at the half-naked male specimen standing before
her. But my oh my, did she almost forget she was holding on to the
bunch of roses because, heaven help her, this man was
G-O-R-G-E-O-U-S. That slightly wet, dusted-corn hair had a
sparkling golden sheen beneath the afternoon sunlight. The man
looked so hot she couldn’t help ogling at him.
Putting all the symptoms together, which
included the pronounced asthma-induced breaths, the
after-the-marathon heart rate, and the light-as-a-feather feeling
inside her head and stomach, Clarice concluded this condition was
due to the fact that she had never seen a naked man in the flesh in
her whole twenty-nine years of life. If she had counted the time
she had seen her young nephews during their bath time, however,
then yes, maybe she had seen the male species displaying their
valued male anatomies. But for the likes of men like this one, so
well toned, so well made, and with so much testosterone, then the
answer would be a definite no. Those arms looked so strong, so
muscular, so—
“Can I help you?” he asked, drawing her
senses back to reality, breaking the spell, and making her blink a
few more times before she became aware of the mission she came to
accomplish.
“Umm.” Suddenly, she realized she’d lost her
voice. Her throat was dry as dust. She tried to speak, but the only
sound that came out was, “Umm…” again. Knowing any attempt to speak
again would only make her sound like more of a complete idiot, she
resorted to using hand gestures.
Clarice practically shoved the bouquet right
in his gorgeous face. That took him by surprise and he moved
backward.
“So… sorry,” she croaked. There, finally,
she’d found her voice. Even though it didn’t sound anything like
her natural voice, at least she could pass her message across
verbally.
“No, that’s fine. Just a little startled,
that’s all.”
Gosh, this man has such a nice voice
,
she couldn’t help thinking.
“Darling, what’s taking so long?” A singsong
voice traveled from somewhere inside the house. “Come back to
bed.”
The hottie turned to smile at whoever it
was, then said softly, “Be back soon.”
He has such soft eyes,
Clarice
thought when he turned to smile at the woman she assumed to be his
wife. They were azure blue, like a clear, cloudless summer sky.
Dear heaven! Why are all good and
handsome men taken?
They were like car parks. All the good and
available ones were taken, whereas the ones that were available
were the ones you had to parallel park to get.
Damn my parallel
parking.
His attention suddenly shifted back to
Clarice, and what she saw written on his face she did not like. His
once soft and subtle azure eyes that had spoken of gentleman breed
had now completely vanished. In its place shone a glittering spark,
those pupils exuding a strong, wicked gleam, like the devil about
to play with his toy. His once broad and friendly smile had also
been completely wiped away. Instead, the corners of those lips
quirked up to form a devilish grin.
Danger! Danger! Playboy alert!
Clarice’s radar screamed at her when those wicked eyes started
undressing her, causing her scarlet cheeks to burn even more. But
before she could take a step back to assess her situation, the man
caught hold of the bouquet, capturing her hands in the process.
“Hey, let… let go.” She struggled, trying to
remove his tight grasp.
“Naaaoooohhh.” He shook his head, that
devilish grin still plastered on his face, his eyes still sparkling
with mischief.
Clarice tried harder to release his viselike
grip, but it was no use. His fingers were like dental clamps,
wrapped around her hands so securely one would require pliers to
release them.
“I said… ” Clarice couldn’t finish her
sentence, as she almost stumbled backward when the man suddenly
released her.
“Why—” She was about to give him a piece of
her mind when he interrupted her yet again, and she was struck
speechless.
“You like what you see?” he asked, posing
even more seductively on the threshold of the doorframe, contorting
his body as if he were a model out of
Vogue
magazine.
“Huh? Excuse me?” Clarice asked,
puzzled.
“Obviously you came here to give me these
roses,” his voice drawled out huskily. “You must like me; otherwise
you wouldn’t be here. And Valentine’s Day isn’t until
tomorrow.”
“I…” Once again her speech was interrupted
when she saw a blonde entering her field of vision, striking a pose
as fashionable as the man before her.
The woman leaned onto the man and gave him a
peck on the cheek, oblivious to Clarice’s presence. The woman
proceeded to move down to the man’s lips, making a sucking sound
like a fish out of water, then to his Adam’s apple, until the man
cleared his throat, drawing her attention to the fact that they had
a guest.
Clarice’s eyeballs almost dropped to the
floor when the blonde turned to face her. She too was only dressed
in a loose towel, covering just enough for her breasts not to spill
out.
The woman eyed her briefly. Then sensing
Clarice had the same significance as the potted plant displayed on
the front porch, she turned back to her man.
“Hunter, honey,” she whined and then kissed
Hunter right in front of her again. “You took way too long, so I
had to come and get you.”