Free Calamity Mom by Diana Palmer

banish your only child.”
    “But you’re not!” she cried.
    “How do you know?” He looked very serious. “I mean, you could have had me and forgotten about it. You might have advanced amnesia.”
    “I couldn’t have become a mother when I was twelve,” she muttered. “And besides that, I’d remember having had a child. It isn’t something anybody forgets.”
    Ben didn’t say a word, but he could add. His father thought Shelly was in her teens, but she’d just subtracted his age from hers and come up with twelve. That made her twenty-four. He pursed his lips.
    “How old are you?” he persisted.
    “How old do you think I am?” she asked foxily.
    “Twenty-four.”
    She glared at him. “How in the world…”
    He told her how in the world, and she let out a long, slow breath.
    “I won’t tell Dad. But why don’t you want him to know?” he asked.
    She couldn’t explain that without giving herself away. “I have my reasons,” she said. “So it’s our secret. Okay?”
    “Okay. After all, a boy can’t afford to argue with his own little mother.”
    She opened her mouth to protest, groaned and closed it again. Arguing did no good.
    The night before they were to leave for home, Ben maneuvered Nan and Shelly into a leisurely supper with him and his father. It was a less than sparkling evening, with Shelly and Faulkner trying to ignore each other and act normally. They failed miserably. Finally Nan and Ben went in search of souvenirs at the shop next door to the motel office, leaving them alone.
    “This wasn’t my idea,” he said gruffly.
    “I know.” She stared into her coffee cup with eyes that barely saw it. She was leaving and so was he. They’d never see each other again.
    “Damn it, you know it’s for the best,” he said through his teeth. “Will you look at me?”
    She lifted her eyes and winced at the temper in his. “Yes, I know it’s for the best!” she muttered.
    His lips parted on a rough breath. His silver eyes searched hers until she flushed. “I want you,” he said unsteadily.
    She glared at him. “That’s it, reduce it to the most common terms you can!”
    “What else is there besides lust?” he demanded. “That’s all we really have in common. And we wouldn’t have that if you hadn’t spent your entire holiday here coming on to me!”
    “That’s right, blame it on me,” she raged. “Tell the world I tried to seduce you!”
    “Tell me you didn’t,” he shot right back. His hand curled around his wineglass and tightened until the stem threatened to snap. “Every time I turned around you were making eyes at me.”
    “I told you why…”
    “You lied,” he said flatly, his smile world-weary and full of cynicism. “Don’t you think I know when a woman finds me attractive? I’m rich. I’ve spent my adult life fending off willing women.”
    “Including Marie?” she asked sweetly, with blazing pale eyes.
    “I don’t need to fend off Marie,” he returned. “She has status of her own.”
    “You mean, her parents do,” she shot back.
    “It’s the same thing.”
    “No, it isn’t,” she replied seriously. “Life is about making choices on your own, taking your own chances, making your own way. A life-style should be earned, not inherited.”
    “Ahhh,” he murmured sarcastically. “A budding socialist.”
    “Hardly.” She glared at him. “Haven’t you been listening? I think people should earn what they get.”
    “Marie earns it,” he said, his tone faintly suggestive.
    She remembered how it felt to be in his arms, and she flushed, averting her eyes.
    “I keep forgetting how young you are when you bait me,” he said angrily. He drained his wineglass.
    “I’m not so young that I don’t know what you were insinuating about your relationship with Marie,” she said shortly. “If she’s what you really want, why were you kissing me on the beach?”
    He searched her eyes. The memories were darkening his. “Maybe I wanted to see how far