Having My Baby by Theresa Ragan Read Free Book Online

business—or so she thought.
    Getting pregnant and giving birth to Ryan had nothing to do with payback, revenge, or even biological clocks. After Thomas abandoned her, she decided to continue with her plans to have a baby. Having Ryan was a well-thought-out choice, a dream come true. She would not apologize to anyone for her decision to become a single mother.
    Jill straightened her shoulders and headed for the door just as a knock sounded on the other side.
    “Don’t answer it,” Sandy said.
    “I have to.” Jill reached for the door handle. Derrick Baylor, she realized, might be just what the doctor ordered. If her parents thought, even for a minute, that she was interested in a football player of all things, they would turn around and head back for home in a New York minute. According to her father, football players were arrogant and overpaid, all ego and no substance, a disgrace to humanity.
    Wonderful .
    Jill could not have planned this scenario any better had she tried. Derrick Baylor would be the perfect man to get her parents off her back once and for all.
    “We don’t even know the guy,” Sandy said. “He could be dangerous.”
    “He’s not dangerous,” Jill said as she opened the door.
    “Who’s not dangerous?” Derrick asked.
    “You,” she said matter-of-factly before she waved at her ninety-year-old neighbor, Mrs. Bixby, when the woman peeked out through her apartment door.
    Jill gave Derrick a once over. The first day she’d met Derrick Baylor he’d been wearing a nice pair of slacks and a button-down shirt. Today he had on a white T-shirt that showed off well-worked biceps; pre-washed jeans; a pair of sporty-style slip-on shoes; dark sunglasses; and three days’ worth of stubble. One hand was tucked in his front pants pocket. His hair was thick, dark, and wavy. Unruly strands hit his handsome forehead from all directions.
    If only her parents could see him now.
    Her mother would faint.
    Derrick was everything her father wasn’t: tall, sexy, and from what little she’d heard on the news the other day, Hollywood was a bad boy. A womanizer who had tall, big-busted women lined up outside his door, no doubt.
    Looking past him, over the railing, Jill saw his BMW parked at the curb across the street, which explained the flyaway hair. His BMW was a convertible. The same car she’d been in when her water broke. She couldn’t help but wonder if he’d had time to take it to a car wash.
    Jill stepped outside and shut the door behind her.
    Derrick slid his Ray-Bans to the top of his head. His left eye was shaded in pinks and purples.
    “What happened to you?”
    “Just a little misunderstanding.”
    “You ruffled somebody’s feathers, didn’t you?”
    “Ruffled feathers?”
    Jill rolled her eyes. “I don’t have to be Hermann Oberth to see that you have a knack for pushing one’s buttons.”
    “Hermann Oberth?”
    “A rocket scientist,” she explained. “One of three founding fathers of rocketry and modern astronautics.”
    Derrick frowned. “You could have just said you didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to see that I have a knack for pushing people’s buttons.”
    “So, I was right.”
    “About what?”
    “About you having a knack for pushing people’s buttons.”
    He sighed. “You look different,” he said, obviously in an attempt to change the subject.
    “I just had a baby.”
    He cocked his head for a better look. “No, really. Your hair…everything…you don’t look like the same woman.”
    She crossed her arms in front of her chest. “Are you saying I looked fat before?”
    “No, of course not, I-I thought you looked great then…you just look different, that’s all.”
    She rolled her eyes because she’d been kidding. “Why are you here?” she asked, giving up on humor since she couldn’t even get the man to smile.
    “I was hoping we could talk,” he said. “I met with a judge and I thought you might want to hear what she had to say.”
    Jill gave him the