Contract Baby

Contract Baby
LYNNE GRAHAM

Race to the altar—Maxie, Darcy and Polly are The HUSBAND Hunters!The terms of the will: Maxie, Darcy and Polly have each been left a share of their godmother's estate—if they marry within a year and remain married for six months…The hunter: Polly became a surrogate mother to pay for her mother's life-saving operation. Now she's discovered her pregnancy was fathered by handsome Venezuelan businessman Raul Zaforteza…The husband? Raul will do anything to keep his baby—he'll even marry Polly. But will she give in to the desire that burns between them to make this marriage more than in name only?

is one of Mills & Boon’s most popular and

bestselling novelists. Her writing was an instant

success with readers worldwide. Since her first

book, Bittersweet Passion, was published in 1987, she has gone from strength to strength and now has over ninety titles, which have sold more than thirty-five million copies, to her name.

In this special collection, we offer readers a

chance to revisit favourite books or enjoy that rare

treasure—a book by a favourite writer—they may

have missed. In every case, seduction and passion

with a gorgeous, irresistible man are guaranteed!

LYNNE GRAHAM was born in Northern Ireland and has been a keen Mills & Boon

reader since her teens. She is very happily married, with an understanding husband who has learned to cook since she started to write! Her five children keep her on her toes. She has a very large dog, which knocks everything over, a very small terrier, which barks a lot, and two cats. When time allows, Lynne is a keen gardener.

Contract Baby

Lynne Graham

www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)

Title Page (#uc3e05c6b-4203-585a-9753-06a2aef9087e)CHAPTER ONE (#u8c92aa11-cd5b-5c6d-8082-10400cbe9ddb)CHAPTER TWO (#ua23e8f94-4c13-546c-92bd-d31211e6839a)CHAPTER THREE (#ub1634b9c-84bf-587e-8b43-05285b061229)CHAPTER FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SIX (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)

CHAPTER ONE

FROM the slim document case clasped in one strong brown hand, Raul Zaforteza withdrew a large glossy photograph. ‘This is Polly Johnson. In six weeks’ time she will give birth to my child. I must find her before then.’

Somehow primed to expect a gorgeous blonde with a supermodel face and figure, Digby was disconcerted to find himself looking at a small, slim girl with a mane of hair the colour of mahogany, soulful blue eyes and an incredibly sweet smile. She looked so outrageously young and wholesome he just could not imagine her in the role of surrogate mother.

As a lawyer with a highly respected London firm, Digby Carson had dealt with some very difficult cases. But a surrogacy arrangement gone wrong? The surrogate mother on the run and probably determined to keep the baby? He surveyed his most wealthy and influential client with a sinking heart.

Raul Zaforteza’s fabled fortune was founded on gold and diamond mines. He was a brilliant business tycoon, a legendary polo player and, according to the gossip columns, a notorious womaniser. He was already prowling like a black panther ready to spring. Six feet two inches tall, with the sleek, supple build of a born athlete and the volatile temperament of his colourful heritage, he was an intimidating sight, even to a man who had known him from childhood.

Digby...I understood that my lawyer in New York had already briefed you on this situation,’ Raul drawled with barely concealed impatience.

He said the matter was far too confidential to discuss on the phone. And I hadn’t the slightest suspicion that you were planning to become a father through surrogacy,’ the older man admitted. ‘Why on earth did you embark on such a risky venture?’

Por Dios ... you watched me grow up! How can you ask me that?’ Raul countered.

Digby looked uncomfortable. As a former employee of Raul’s late father, he was well aware that Raul had had a pretty ghastly childhood. He might be rich beyond avarice, but he had not been anything like as lucky in the parent lottery.

His bronzed features taut, Raul expelled his breath in a slow hiss. ‘I decided a long time ago that I would never marry. I wouldn’t give any woman that amount of power over me or, even more crucially, over any child we might have!’ Fierce conviction roughened his rich, accented drawl. ‘But I’ve always been very fond of children—’

‘Yes...’ An unspoken but hovered in the tense silence.

‘Many marriages end in divorce, and usually the wife gets to keep the children,’ Raul reminded the lawyer with biting cynicism.

Surrogacy impressed me as the most practical way in which to father a child outside marriage. This wasn’t an impulsive decision, Digby. When I decided to go ahead, I went to a lot of trouble to ensure that I would choose a suitable mother for my child.’

‘Suitable?’ Digby was keen to hear what Raul, with his famed love of fast, glitzy society blondes, had considered ‘suitable’ in the maternal stakes.

‘When my New York legal team advertised for a surrogate mother, they received a flood of applications. I employed a doctor and a psychologist to put a shortlist of the more promising candidates through a battery of tests, but the responsibility for the final choice was naturally mine.’

The older man frowned down at the photograph of Polly Johnson. ‘What age is she?’

Twenty-one.’

Digby’s frown remained. ‘She was the only suitable candidate? ’

Raul tautened.

The psychologist did have some reservations but I decided to overlook them.’

Digby looked shaken.

‘Everything that the psychologist saw in Polly I wanted in the mother of my child,’ Raul stressed without a shade of regret.

It was a gut feeling and I acted on it. Yes, she was young and idealistic, but she had the right moral values. She wasn’t motivated by greed but by a desperate need to try and finance surgery which she hoped might extend her mother’s life.’

I wonder how that desperation affected her ability to make a rational decision about what she was getting involved in,’ Digby remarked.

‘Wondering is a pointless exercise now that she is pregnant with my child,’ Raul countered very drily. ‘But I will find her soon. Her background was exhaustively investigated. I now know that, just two months ago, she was at her godmother’s home in Surrey. I don’t yet know where she went from there. But before I do find her I need to know what my rights are in this country.’

Digby was in no hurry to break bad news before he had all the facts. British law frowned on surrogacy. If the mother wanted to keep the baby instead of handing it over, no contract was likely to persuade a British judge that taking that child from its mother was in the child’s best interests.

‘Tell me the rest of the story,’ he advised.

While running through the bare facts for the older man’s benefit, Raul stared unseeingly out of the window, grimly recalling his first sight of Polly Johnson through a two-way mirror in the New York legal office. She had reminded him of a tiny porcelain doll. Fragile, unusual and astonishingly pretty.

She had been brave and honest. And so impressively nice—not something Raul had ever sought in a woman before, but a trait he had found very appealing when he had considered all the positive qualities a mother might hand down to her child. Certainly Polly had been younger and less worldly wise than was desirable, but he had recognised her quiet inner strength as well as her essentially tranquil nature.

And the more Raul had watched Polly, the more he had learnt about Polly, the more he had wanted to meet Polly face to face, in the flesh, so that some day in the future he could comfortably answer his child’s curious questions about her. But his New York lawyer had said absolutely not. Strict anonymity would be his only defence against any form of harassment in later years. But Raul had always been a ruthless rule-breaker, with immense faith in his own natural instincts, nor had he ever hesitated to satisfy his own wishes...

And acting on that essential arrogance, he conceded grudgingly now, was how everything had begun to fall apart. Worst of all, he who prided himself on his intelligence and his shrewd perceptive powers had somehow failed to notice the warning signs of trouble on the horizon.

‘So once you knew that the girl had successfully conceived, you installed her in a house in Vermont with a trusted family servant to look after her,’ Digby recapped, because Raul had fallen silent again. ‘Where was her mother while all this was going on?’

‘As soon as Polly signed the contract her mother went into a convalescent home to build up her strength for surgery. She was very ill. The woman knew nothing about the surrogacy agreement. When Polly was only a couple of weeks pregnant, her mother had the operation. Polly had been warned that her mother’s chances of survival were at best only even. She died two days after surgery,’ Raul revealed heavily.