A Baby Changes Everything by Marie Ferrarella Read Free Book Online

appearance. She glanced at the clock. It was a little after seven.
    She’d already called him on the cell phone she’d insisted he carry with him when he was on the range. It had taken eight rings before he’d finally answered. The second he came on, she’d launched her assault.
    â€œCruz, I need you to come home.”
    The preoccupied note immediately left his voice, replaced by concern. “Why? What’s wrong? Did something happen to Luke?”
    â€œNo, nothing happened to Luke—”
    â€œYou? Did something happen to you? Is it the baby?”
    â€œNo, honey,” she interjected before his imagination took him to terrible places. “It’s not the baby, or me. Luke and I are fine.”
    â€œThen why are you calling?”
    She never used the telephone to get in touch with him. They had agreed that it was strictly for emergencies. As far as she was concerned, saving a marriage that was about to break apart came under that heading.
    â€œBecause I do have kind of an emergency here and I need you to come home.”
    Suspicion and concern vied in his voice. “What kind of an emergency?”
    â€œIt’s too hard to explain, Cruz. You’ll understand when you get here. Please just hurry.”
    She’d heard him sigh. “Okay, I’m on my way.”
    That had been over half an hour ago.
    Obviously the man was a lot farther away that she’d thought. Savannah reached for the cell phone again, then stopped. She heard the sound of the Mustang pulling up to the front of the house.
    He was here.
    Butterflies launched another attack as she took a deep breath and waited.
    Within a moment, Cruz was opening the front door. “Okay, so what’s the big emergency?”
    The question faded into the air as Savannah moved out of the shadows to greet him. She was wearing the same drop-dead gorgeous dress she’d had on the night he’d met her at the party at the Double Crown.
    The night he’d lost his heart to her.

Four
    F eeling a little like a man who had just stepped through some kind of time warp, Cruz closed the door slowly behind him. There was music wafting from somewhere on the first floor. Something soft and romantic, setting the mood.
    Nodding a greeting, he continued staring at the deep green clingy dress. Memories came crowding back, bringing with them feelings he hadn’t entertained in a long time.
    Fear that she was ill melted into anger at being taken away from his work under false pretenses, then finally ebbed into confusion. “What’s this all about?”
    She couldn’t gauge his reaction by his tone. It gave nothing away.
    Savannah forced herself to erase five years of marriage from her conscious behavior. Tonight she was not the frustrated wife and harried mother she’d been for so long shecouldn’t easily remember what it was like otherwise. Tonight she was attending a party at her friend Vanessa’s house and had just seen the most beautiful man she’d ever laid eyes on.
    A man who radiated sheer animal magnetism with every move he made, every smoldering look he sent her way. From the first moment she’d seen him, Cruz Perez had made her blood rush through her veins just by being near. She desperately needed to recapture that sensation.
    Needed to recapture, too, that essence within herself that had made him want her so much he was willing to forsake all the others who had come before her. And those who wanted to come after her.
    With slow, measured steps, taken in strappy high heels that were, if she wore them at all, usually shed the second she walked in the front door, Savannah moved toward him. She looked every bit the huntress who had staked out her next prey and was confident of its capture.
    Never mind that she was nervous, that she was afraid he’d laugh at her efforts, that she feared that what they’d had was now behind them. She masked those worries and did her best to look