The Family Plan

“I don’t know what I would have done without you today,”

he said as he covered her hand with his.

Something in his voice—and maybe the way he was looking at her, with warmth in his eyes—ignited a spark in her. A spark she fully intended to douse before it blazed out of control.

It wasn’t hard to figure out what was going on here. Nathan was feeling overwhelmed. And Caitlin was the one person who was on his side. They had to be careful about mistaking gratitude and desperation for something more…personal. She did not need a messy relationship with her business partner. Especially now, when his emotions were so precarious, his life so complicated.

“There’s no need to thank me again,” she said lightly, trying to pull her hand away.

His fingers tightened on hers. His hand was as warm as his gaze, and she felt the spark inside her flare dangerously.

She had worked out the reasoning behind his behavior, but how was she supposed to explain her own?

Dear Reader,

Make way for spring—as well as some room on your reading table for six new Special Edition novels! Our selection for this month’s READERS’ RING—Special Edition’s very own book club—is Playing by the Rules by Beverly Bird. In this innovative, edgy romance, a single mom who is sick and tired of the singles scene makes a deal with a handsome divorced hero—that their relationship will not lead to commitment. But both hero and heroine soon find themselves breaking all those pesky rules and falling head over heels for each other!

Gina Wilkins delights her readers with The Family Plan, in which two ambitious lawyers find unexpected love—and a newfound family—with the help of a young orphaned girl. Reader favorite Nikki Benjamin delivers a poignant reunion romance, Loving Leah, about a compassionate nanny who restores hope to an embittered single dad and his fragile young daughter.

In Call of the West, the last in Myrna Temte’s HEARTS OF WYOMING miniseries, a celebrity writer goes to Wyoming and finds the ranch—and the man—with whom she’d like to spend her life. Now she has to convince the cowboy to give up his ranch—and his heart! In her new cross-line miniseries, THE MOM SQUAD, Marie Ferrarella debuts with A Billionaire and a Baby. Here, a scoop-hungry—and pregnant—reporter goes after a reclusive corporate raider, only to go into labor just as she’s about to get the dirt! Ann Roth tickles our fancy with Reforming Cole, a sexy and emotional tale about a willful heroine who starts a “men’s etiquette” school so that the macho opposite sex can learn how best to treat a lady. Against her better judgment, the teacher falls for the gorgeous bad boy of the class!

I hope you enjoy this month’s lineup and come back for another month of moving stories about life, love and family!

Best,

Karen Taylor Richman

Senior Editor

The Family Plan

Gina Wilkins

For my parents, Vernon and Beth Vaughan,

in recognition of your golden wedding anniversary on

April 29, 2003.

I love you both.

GINA WILKINS

is a bestselling and award-winning author who has written more than fifty books for Harlequin and Silhouette. She credits her successful career in romance to her long, happy marriage and her three “extraordinary” children.

A lifelong resident of central Arkansas, Ms. Wilkins sold her first book to Harlequin in 1987 and has been writing full-time ever since. She has appeared on the Waldenbooks, B. Dalton and USA TODAY bestseller lists. She is a three-time recipient of the Maggie Award for Excellence, sponsored by Georgia Romance Writers, and has won several awards from the reviewers of Romantic Times.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter One

N athan McCloud tried to be discreet about checking his watch for the third time in fifteen minutes. It was almost 2:45 p.m. and his tee time was 3:30. If he got away within the next five minutes, he would still just barely have time to change, grab his clubs, and…

A loud sigh of exasperation cut into his mental calculations. “Nathan, would you please pay attention? We need to make this decision today.”

He gave his partner his most engaging smile. Caitlin Briley was always a pleasure to look at, and he usually enjoyed teasing her and spending time with her. But he was impatient to escape on this perfect autumn afternoon. “That last one sounded good. Why don’t we give her a call?”

He knew he’d said the wrong thing when Caitlin’s heart-shaped face darkened with a frown. “You haven’t been listening.”

He cleared his throat. “Of course I was listening. Uh, what was wrong with the last one?”

Tapping a red-nailed finger on one of the job applications spread on the desk in front of her, Caitlin replied curtly, “This woman said she would like to work for our firm because it would be nice to be on the right side of the law for a change. She also wanted to know if her compensation could include free legal representation on occasion.”

Nathan winced. “Maybe I wasn’t listening closely enough. I’m not sure she’s what we’re looking for—though she might prove entertaining,” he added thoughtfully.

Rolling her eyes, Caitlin let out what might have been a strangled growl. “We aren’t looking for entertainment. We’re trying to find an efficient, professional, reliable office manager.”

“Couldn’t you just pick someone? You’re good at that sort of thing. I trust your judgment.”

“You aren’t ‘trusting’ me with this responsibility, you’re trying to dump it on me.”

Caitlin always had a knack for cutting right through his BS. Nathan sighed in resignation. “Okay, you’re right. I don’t really care who you hire as long as she’s pleasant to work with and doesn’t interfere with my schedule.”

“Your schedule?” His partner looked at him in disbelief. “You barely have a schedule.”

“Exactly. And I like it that way.”

“We need a good office manager to bring some order to the chaos in this place. And you should have some input into choosing the person we hire.”

“If I promise not to criticize your choice, will you take care of this?” he wheedled. “I’d stay and help you, but I have an appointment this afternoon.”

“With a client or a fishing rod?” she asked suspiciously.

“A client,” he assured her. And then, because he considered himself a fairly honest guy—for a lawyer—he added, “And a set of golf clubs.”

She had looked momentarily mollified, if still skeptical, but now she was frowning again. “Darn it, Nathan.”

He considered reminding her that he was the senior partner here. He had run this firm by himself for two years before he’d impulsively taken on a fresh-out-of-law-school partner just over nine months ago because his workload had gotten heavy enough to interfere with his leisure time.

Caitlin had been the first lawyer he’d interviewed, and he had hired her because she had the most beautiful smoky-gray eyes he’d ever seen—in addition to a thick, shoulder-length curtain of glossy brown hair, an intriguingly dimpled chin, and a petite yet nicely curved figure. Add those attributes to a more than respectable résumé, and he could find no reason at all to send her on her way after that first meeting.

He didn’t know then that he had hired the Attila the Hun of ambitious young lawyers.

She had swept into his lazy little practice with a gung-ho, conquer-the-legal-world attitude that exhausted him. Apparently, she had added him to her list of things about this office that needed to be changed.

But he still thought she had beautiful eyes, he mused, losing himself in their depths for a moment.

She drummed her fingers on his desk. “You really aren’t paying attention to any of this, are you?”

“Did you know you get little sparks in your eyes when you’re annoyed? They just sort of glitter, all silvery in the gray.”

“They must be glittering like crazy right now, then.”

He propped his chin on his fist and gazed at her. “Actually, yes. And a very enticing sight they are, too.”

Her invariable reaction when he flirted with her was to speak gruffly and busy her hands. She did so again this time, shuffling noisily through the applications she was suddenly studying with renewed interest. “I suppose I could narrow these down to two or three and call them in for interviews. I would, of course, expect you to sit in on those interviews with me and help me make the final decision.”

“Why? You know what you’re looking for in an office manager. Hire whoever you like. I have no doubt that whoever you choose will be perfect for the job.”

She was the one who pointed out, “You’re the senior partner. You should have the final say in major decisions like this.”

He shrugged. “My decision is that you should make the decision.”

“A lot of help you are,” she muttered.

He grinned. “Glad to be of assistance. Can I go now?”

She leaned back in her chair with an expression of surrender. “Go. Enjoy your golf game. And if you really are playing with a client, try to talk a little business while you’re out there.”

“If he beats me, I’ll bill him for my time,” Nathan promised, already out of his chair and headed for the door before she could change her mind.

There had been plenty of times during the past nine months when Caitlin had wondered if she’d done the right thing joining Nathan McCloud’s firm in Honesty, a city of 30,000 people in southern Mississippi. At the beginning the offer had seemed almost too good to be true. A partnership right out of law school? In a one-man office that was already making money and was doing so well that Nathan had been turning down cases?

After looking over the books and the day-to-day operations—Nathan had given her unrestricted access to his business records—she had seen the potential for turning this small office into a thriving law firm. At the very least, a few years of practice here would be a great springboard to the partnership track in an established, big-city firm.

Caitlin had lofty career ambitions. Unfortunately, her partner was what she termed “motivationally challenged.”

A month after their confrontation, on the first Thursday afternoon in October, Caitlin was sitting in her office leafing through a thick file and admiring the practical color-coding system the new office manager had instituted when Nathan burst into the room without knocking. “You have to do something about that woman.”

She took a moment to study the frown that creased his attractive face and darkened his blue eyes to near navy. “Which woman is that?”

“That…that dictator you hired as an office manager. She’s out of control.”

“I hired her because you were conveniently unavailable the day of the interviews,” she reminded him. “And you promised not to criticize my choice.”

“How could I have known you were going to hire Irene the Terrible?”

“You might want to shut the door to continue this conversation,” she suggested mildly. Waiting only until he’d kicked the door closed, she added, “Irene is a very nice woman and an extremely efficient office manager. I don’t know what you have against her.”

“She’s a tyrant. She has my files so organized I can’t find anything. When I mess them up, she gives me a look over those little glasses of hers that makes chills go down my spine. I feel like she’s taking mental notes of all my shortcomings and she’s going to bring them up when she gives me my annual employer evaluation.”

“She works for you.”

“Right. Has anyone mentioned that to her?”

Shaking her head, Caitlin closed the file and watched as Nathan plopped into a chair, lanky limbs sprawled, sandy hair tousled. He looked like a sulky teenager, she thought ruefully. An extremely attractive teenager, but a handful, none the less. She was almost five years younger than Nathan, so why did she feel like the older one at that moment?

“Irene has only worked for us for three weeks and already she has our office running like clockwork,” she said. “She’s gotten the clerical staff—all three of them—into shape, so that stacks of overdue filing have been cleared away. Our bills have all been paid. On time, I might add. She’s switched to a new phone service that’s saving us 20 percent a month. Our appointment process has been streamlined so that we’ve significantly cut down on the number of clients sitting impatiently in the waiting room.”

“Exactly.” Nathan nodded forcefully. “She’s scary. It isn’t normal to get that much accomplished in such a short time.”

Caitlin couldn’t help laughing. “You’re being ridiculous.”

A sharp tap on the door interrupted their conversation. It was followed almost immediately by the entrance of the woman they had been discussing. The brown and beige jacket Irene Mitchell wore over a straight brown dress did little to enhance her tall, angular figure. Plastic-framed reading glasses dangled from a gold chain around her neck, neat pearl stud earrings completely hid her almost nonexistent earlobes, and a functional watch was strapped around her bony left wrist. Her long, narrow feet were encased in sensible brown pumps. The only signs of frivolity in the woman’s appearance were the color of her heavily sprayed, meticulously curled, red hair and the crimson lipstick that coated her thin lips.

Caitlin noted that Nathan automatically straightened in his chair when Irene entered. He reminded her of a student who had been goofing off while the teacher was out of the room and hoped to hide that fact upon her return. Smothering a smile, she turned her attention back to the office manager. “What can I do for you, Irene?”

The older woman set a stack of correspondence in front of her. “I need your signature on these. The mail runs in an hour, so you’ll need to sign them promptly. Mr. McCloud, your letters are on your desk awaiting your attention. Would you prefer that I bring them in here?”

“No, that’s okay. I’ll get to them in a few minutes.”

Irene glanced at her watch. “Your next appointment should be arriving in fifteen minutes. You’ll want to sign your letters before then, of course.”

Nathan cleared his throat. “Of course.”

Irene continued to look at him.

“I’ll sign them,” he repeated, holding up his right hand as a pledge. “As soon as Caitlin and I are finished here.”

Seemingly appeased, Irene nodded and moved toward the door. “I’ll buzz you when your appointment arrives, Mr. McCloud. And, Ms. Briley, don’t forget about your meeting at two this afternoon.”

“I won’t forget. Thank you, Irene.” Caitlin had invited the office manager to drop the formality of surnames, but she persisted in using them, even though she preferred being addressed by her first name. Caitlin had figured out it was a waste of breath to argue with the woman’s eccentricities.

“I’ll be back to collect the signed correspondence—from both of you—shortly,” Irene added as she let herself out of Caitlin’s office.

Nathan released a gusty breath as soon as the door closed behind Irene. “See what I mean? She’s impossible. You’ve got to fire her.”

Caitlin reached for the stack of correspondence and a pen. “I’m not going to fire her. She’s much too good. And she’s actually very nice—as you would find out for yourself if you would give her half a chance.”

“I’ve given her plenty of chances. I smile every time I speak to her.”

“Ah, yes, the patented Nathan McCloud grin,” she murmured without looking up from her signatures, not surprised that Irene hadn’t fallen for such a practiced tactic.

Ignoring her, Nathan continued, “I’ve tried complimenting her appearance.”

“Plan B—fulsome flattery. That didn’t work, either, I’m sure.”

“I even brought her flowers on her first day of work. She thanked me, then put them in my office because she said they made her sneeze.”

“So none of your usual tricks worked. Have you tried just talking to her? One professional to another?”

“You think that would work?” Nathan asked doubtfully.

“It’s certainly worth a shot.”

“I still think you should fire her.”

Caitlin folded her hands on top of the now-signed correspondence and shook her head. “I hired her—on my own—because you didn’t want to be involved. If you aren’t happy with her performance, it’s up to you to fire her.”

She would have sworn his face paled at the very suggestion. “Me? No way.”

“That’s what I thought. So I suppose you’d better find a way to get along with her,” Caitlin advised sweetly.

He glared at her in return.

The speaker on Caitlin’s desk suddenly buzzed. “Mr. McCloud?”

Nathan jumped out of his chair as if the woman could see through walls. “I’m on my way to sign those letters right now.”

“Actually, you have a call on line two. It’s Mr. Alan Curtis from San Diego, California.”

Nathan looked surprised. “The attorney who handled my father’s estate,” he murmured. He motioned toward Caitlin’s phone. “Mind if I take the call in here?”

“Of course not.” She gathered her letters. “I’ll take these out to Irene.”

“Kiss-up,” Nathan murmured, reaching for the receiver.

She only smiled at him as she left him to his call.

Nathan watched Caitlin leave her office, wondering if he’d ever mentioned to her that he liked the way she walked. Smooth strides, soft sway of hips, head up and shoulders squared—very appealing. Of course, if he did tell her, she would get all gruff and flustered the way she always did when he complimented her, which was actually something else he found intriguing about her.

Did she react that way when any man flirted with her or just with him? And what would she do if he cranked it up a notch and suggested they actually go out sometime? It was a suggestion he’d been contemplating for several weeks, waiting until the time seemed right to approach her about it.

Only mildly curious about the call from his late father’s attorney, he lifted the telephone receiver to his ear. “Nathan McCloud.”

“Mr. McCloud, it’s Alan Curtis. I’m glad you were available to take my call.”

Nathan’s eyebrows rose. “You make it sound important. Is something wrong?”

Nathan’s father, along with his much younger wife, had died six months earlier in a tourist helicopter accident in Mexico, leaving a three-year-old daughter behind. The estate had been settled weeks ago, and Nathan couldn’t imagine any problems that might have arisen since. The child had been left in the custody of her maternal great-aunt in California and had inherited all her parent’s assets, since Nathan and his two adult siblings had refused any claim.

For reasons Nathan still didn’t fully understand, his father’s will had named him executor of the child’s inheritance. He’d retained Mr. Curtis’s services for the monitoring of those details. He had expected to be contacted only in cases of emergency. What sort of crisis could have arisen already?

“I’m afraid something is wrong, Mr. McCloud. Barbara Houston has been diagnosed with colon cancer.”

Barbara Houston was the woman who had taken in Nathan’s orphaned half sister. He’d met her only once, at the joint funeral service for Stuart and Kimberly McCloud in California six months ago, but she’d made a very good impression on him. He’d felt comfortable that little Isabelle would be raised in a loving, supportive home. “I’m sorry to hear that. Is it bad?”

“Very bad, I’m afraid. Her chances of survival are slim.”

Nathan sank into Caitlin’s desk chair. “Damn.”

“Exactly. You see why it was imperative that I contact you immediately.”

His head was starting to hurt. He raised his free hand to massage his temples. “What’s going to happen to Isabelle?”

“Mrs. Houston and I spoke at length this morning. She sees only two options. Her preference would be for you to come get the child and have yourself named guardian.”

Nathan spoke without hesitation. “That isn’t possible.”

“There’s really no one else to take her, Mr. McCloud. Your stepmother’s parents are both dead and her only sibling is an unmarried brother who is on active military duty, stationed overseas. Mrs. Houston is widowed and has only one daughter, who is divorced and raising four young children of her own. There simply is no one else. Unless one of your other siblings…?”

“Mr. Curtis, I’m not sure how much you know about my father’s history here.”

When Nathan paused, the other man spoke with audible caution. “I’m aware that your father was a prominent business leader there in Mississippi and had considered a run for the governor’s office.”

“He was a gubernatorial candidate,” Nathan clarified. “The campaign was in full swing, he was backed by some very influential people in his party, and he had a solid standing in the polls. He could very well have won the office. He was quite a hero here in his hometown, the first native son to run for such a high position in our state. And then, six months before the election, he announced that he was dropping out to marry one of his campaign volunteers—Barbara Houston’s niece, Kimberly Leighton.”

“Um—”

Nathan continued in a deliberately nonemotional tone. “It was a bit messy at the time because Kimberly was thirty years his junior, and pregnant. Oh, and my father was still married then—to my mother.”

Nathan could almost hear the other man wince. “Mr. McCloud, I—”

“I’m trying to explain why it wouldn’t be a good idea for me to bring my father’s child here. My father tore his family apart four years ago. He humiliated my mother and broke my younger sister’s heart. My brother hasn’t been quite the same since Dad bailed out on us. We’re still trying to rebuild our relationships with each other. Even if I were prepared to raise a toddler, which, believe me, I’m not, my family would never be able to accept her.”

“I’m sorry. I—well, I wasn’t aware that you were so estranged from your father. He told me you visited him here in California a few times, and he named you your sister’s executor.”

“I was the only one to maintain a relationship with my father,” Nathan admitted, “much to my family’s dissatisfaction. I didn’t approve of his actions, but I didn’t want to completely sever all ties with him. I hoped my brother and sister would be able to make some sort of peace with him, but his death put an end to that. I hold nothing against little Isabelle, so I didn’t mind agreeing to be available in the event of an emergency, but bringing her here, trying to raise her—well, I’m afraid that’s simply out of the question.”

The older man sighed heavily. “Mrs. Houston suspected that would be your answer. It seems we have no choice but to resort to the only other option.”

Nathan didn’t like the sound of that, nor the tone in which the attorney had spoken. “What’s the other option?”

“The child will have to be put up for adoption.”

Grimacing, Nathan cleared his throat. “That seems rather…drastic.”

“The circumstances are drastic, Mr. McCloud. Mrs. Houston is very ill. She isn’t able to care for an active toddler any longer.”

“I could help with the expense of a full-time nanny.”

“I’m afraid that would only be a short-term solution. I’m not sure you understand the gravity of Mrs. Houston’s condition. Her cancer was already at an advanced stage when she was diagnosed, and this particular type of cancer is very aggressive. She’s only expected to live for another few months. The child must be placed soon. Mrs. Houston is ready to relinquish her to the California Department of Child Services. She’s very fond of Isabelle, but she’s simply too ill to concentrate on anyone’s well-being except her own.”