Free A Camden's Baby Secret by Victoria Pade Page B

Livi to get in.
    â€œTravel safe tomorrow,” he said.
    â€œYou, too.”
    â€œAnd we’ll take this show to Denver,” he announced, sounding daunted, and making her laugh at him.
    She started the engine and, taking his cue, Callan closed her door and turned back to the house.
    Livi put her car into gear, but her eyes followed him, guiltily appreciating the sight.
    There was just no denying that he was one of the finest-looking men she’d ever seen. Even from the back, where her gaze rode along for a while on that derriere-to-die-for.
    But as he climbed the porch steps she reminded herself of all that was waiting for him inside that farmhouse. All that he had on his own plate.
    A lot.
    Too much.
    That wildly hot man who had grown up dealing with more than any child should have had to, and was now determined to pay back what little help he’d been given.
    What if she had to add to that burden? she asked herself as she tore her eyes off him and finally made the U-turn to drive away.
    What if she told him he was going to be a father—how would he take it?
    And why, even in the midst of all that she was fretting about, was a completely separate portion of her brain thinking once more about that Hawaiian kiss?
    And yearning ever so slightly for him to do it again...

Chapter Five
    H ere we go , Callan thought as his private plane left the runway at a Montana airport, headed for Denver.
    It was after four on Wednesday afternoon before they took off. Callan had been hoping to leave earlier, but it was tough to get the Tellers away. And hard on them to leave their home.
    The last—and closest—of their friends and neighbors had begun to stream in to say goodbye at dawn, and the visits had gone on from there. Callan hadn’t wanted to cut any of those goodbyes short. There was no love lost between himself and Northbridge or anyone in it, but for the Tellers it was a different story. They’d planned to live and die in the small town, surrounded by the people they’d shared the best and worst with for their entire lives.
    So not until that stream had stopped had he texted his pilot with a departure time, and finally loaded Maeve, John Sr. and Greta into the truck of the neighbor driving them to the airport.
    It had been a long, silent drive during which Maeve—sitting across the truck’s backseat with her leg braced on her husband’s lap—had quietly cried. John Sr. had held her hand and patted her knee comfortingly, but his own jaw was clenched so tight that it seemed as if it might lock.
    In the front seat, sitting between Callan and the driver, not even the chatty Greta had said a word. She’d just clutched her favorite doll and stared pensively ahead at the dashboard, not crying like her grandmother, but looking so sad it nearly broke Callan’s heart.
    He couldn’t have felt worse for tearing three people from the only place any of them had ever called home. But he didn’t know what comfort to give for a cut as deep as they were suffering, and he didn’t know what else he could have done besides moving them all to Denver with him.
    He’d assured them that he would get them back to Northbridge and the farm to visit often. But his business was in Denver and that’s where he had to be. That’s where he had to raise Greta. And while he’d offered to pay for continuous care and help for the Tellers to stay in Northbridge, they’d agreed that they wanted to be close to their granddaughter, and so had opted to go wherever she would be.
    But it wasn’t a good day for any of them, and as the flight got under way, Callan suggested a movie and started it for them.
    Then he settled back and, for some reason, found himself instantly thinking that at the end of the dark tunnel that was today, at least there would be Livi Camden.
    Kinsey would be there, too, he reminded himself. And that was good. He appreciated that—especially after