Free Sweet Surrender, Baby Surprise by Kate Carlisle Page A

saying it to get into her pants. And while that may be true…no, damn it, it wasn’t.
    He liked her. He liked her mind, and her sense of humor, and her integrity. Okay, he liked her pants, too, and everything inside them. Nothing wrong with that.
    And besides, she was the mother of his child, so they’d be seeing each other at least once or twice a week for the foreseeable future. And since he’d be coming by to see Jake all the time anyway, why shouldn’t they have a…a what? A relationship? An understanding? A regularly scheduled booty call?
    Sounded good to him.
    Oh, right, he thought. Even Cameron was smart enough to know she would kick his ass into next week if he suggested that scenario.
    But she wouldn’t keep him from seeing Jake. No way. Cameron would let her know in the morning they would need to work out a custody arrangement.
    And now that he thought about it, he would have to make sure his house was baby-proofed. He made a mental note to call Housekeeping the next day and tell them to take care of it.
    But just baby-proofing the house wouldn’t make it a home for Jake. He would have to transform one of the bedrooms into a room for the little guy. A bed shaped like a race car. A computer. And toys. A football.
    He would put up a fence around the pool immediately,but he would also teach Jake to swim as soon as possible. His son would be a champion swimmer.
    He would build a super-deluxe swing set on the side of the house, with a slide and monkey bars to play on. And Jake would need a dog. A big one.
    Cameron was just beginning to doze off when it occurred to him that the thought of Jake visiting once every few weeks didn’t appeal at all. Maybe Julia and Jake should simply move into his sprawling home on the cliffs overlooking the bay. The place had six bedrooms. There was plenty of room for all of them and the kitchen was big enough for Julia’s baking stuff.
    Whoa. In a flash, Cameron threw off the covers and sat on the edge of the bed. “Am I insane?”
    What was he thinking? He wasn’t fit to be a father. And he had no business inviting Julia to move in with him. Hadn’t he been through this before? Had he forgotten about Martina?
    Years ago, long after the fiasco with his high school girlfriend Wendy, he’d left the marines and gone to work with his brothers to start up their development company. Through business acquaintances he met the very attractive Martina Moran. He thought he’d learned his lesson where love and women were concerned, but once he met Martina, his good sense flew out the window. She came on strong, and almost as a test of his own will he began dating her.
    Their relationship flourished and he thought he might be falling for her. Anxious to prove he’d grown as a man and was no longer subject to his father’s cruel legacy, he proposed, and Martina said yes. Cameron thought he might be able to finally relax and looked forward to many happy years of married life.
    He had been young, stupid and oh, so wrong.
    It turned out that Martina had been using Cameron to make another man jealous. Her scheme worked and that man, trust-fund baby Andrew Gray, had begged Martina to marry him. She walked out on Cameron as fast as her Jimmy Choo shoes could carry her.
    Cameron had taken Martina’s betrayal as a message from the fates. His birthright could no longer be ignored and he had to force himself to accept that he was, indeed, a bad risk, a loser and irretrievably flawed. It was a hard lesson to learn, but it was for the best that he’d vowed never to give in to love again. It could end only in disaster.
    He was older now, but was he any smarter? Could he actually make this work with Jake and Julia? Did he really have any choice in the matter? Jake was his son and Julia was Jake’s mother. He was determined to make it work. Julia would have to understand that it was all for Jake. As long as they both had Jake’s best