Read Online The Baby Track by Barbara Boswell - Free Book Online Page B

The little spitfire was a living, breathing danger zone. No woman had ever affected him so profoundly, and he was damned if he would let this one get to him. Especially not this one! She was everything he didn’t like, he reminded himself, an uptight, quarrelsome, stuck-up intellectual who considered a twit like Emery Harcourt to be the man of her dreams!
    “I opened every bird cage I saw,” Kieran confessed blithely. “I don’t think anybody’s noticed yet. When I saw that bird heading directly at you, I thought I better warn you. Sorry if I interrupted anything.”
    Courtney finally found her voice. “You didn’t,” she said quickly.
    “No,” Connor agreed, just as swiftly. “You didn’t interrupt a thing.”
    A shout sounded from beyond the trees, followed by a shriek. “Uh-oh, I think the party guests just realized that their decorations are on the loose,” said Kieran. “Definitely time to split. Hey, Connor, old pal, I know I drove us here, but can you find a ride home? I’m leaving with my hot new babe.” He smiled wolfishly. “We’re heading to my place now.” He turned and dashed through the trees.
    “I—I’d better get back to Emery,” Courtney murmured. She kept her eyes carefully averted from Connor, not daring to look at him. She simply couldn’t, not after what had just happened between them. A hot blush suffused her whole body. After the way she’d protested and threatened, to have finally succumbed to him...
    For it was no use kidding herself. She’d been lost at the end, savoring the hard feel of his body against her, hungering to feel his mouth on hers. A mortified moan escaped from her throat as she rushed blindly back to the table.
    There, to her utter incredulity, she saw Kieran Kaufman slipping his arm around the elegant, austere and forbidding Jarrell Harcourt—who was suddenly looking neither austere nor forbidding. Courtney blinked. Jarrell’s cheeks were flushed, her eyes bright; she looked nervous and excited and much younger than her twenty-four years.
    Courtney met Emery’s curious gaze, then they both watched Kaufman’s hand curve audaciously around the young woman’s buttocks as he led her away. Jarrell’s girlish giggle seemed to hang in the air. Jarrell Harcourt, the woman who never smiled, had actually giggled! Courtney decided her mind was truly blown.
    • “Who is that man?” Emery asked. “It was rather phenomenal watching him turn on the charm. Jarrell melted like a crayon in the sun. I’ve never seen her react like that to anyone.”
    “Charm?” Courtney echoed in disbelief. He had to be joking! She debated sharing Kaufman’s identity with Emery and decided against it. Hadn’t the poor man suffered enough tonight without having to hear that his sister had taken off with one of the sleaziest reporters in the business?
    “Emery Harcourt!” The sound of Connor’s voice, in a hearty hail-fellow-well-met tone, abruptly erased the astonishing alliance of Kaufman and Jarrell from Courtney’s thoughts. She whirled around to see Connor extending his hand to Emery to shake.
    “I’ll give you ten-to-one odds you don’t remember me,” said Connor as he pumped the hand Emery offered to him.
    Emery smiled vaguely. “I’m not a gambling man, but I’m terribly sorry, I can’t quite place you.”
    Courtney tensed. What was Connor McKay up to now? She glared at him, but he ignored her, smiling a broad smile that she knew was phony.
    “We prepped together, Emery,” Connor said easily. “But I was one of those quiet, nondescript guys who nobody ever remembers.”
    Courtney smoldered. After that pseudo-humble remark, what else could sweet, sensitive Emery say but, “Of course I remember you. But you know me, I’ve always been terrible with names.”
    “Connor McKay,” Connor supplied smoothly.
    Emery smiled and nodded. “McKay, of course! How have you been?”
    “McKay hasn’t been well at all,” Courtney inserted frostily. “In fact, he just