His Best Friend's Baby by Janice Kay Johnson - His Best Friend's Baby Read Free Book Online Page B

if he could afford to. She knew he’d been a cop until not that long ago, but it just hadn’t occurred to her that he’d borrowed heavily on future success that wasn’t going to happen.
    With a sinking feeling, she admitted if only to herself that some of Quinn’s contempt was justified. She’d been some kind of... trophy wife, something fun and pretty like the Camaro or the boat. Not really the partner she’d imagined, or she would have known.
    The panic she felt as she wrote checks, one after another, wasn’t much different than the panic that bounced in her when the expanse of water opened between the boat that began to feel oh so tiny and the shore, shrinking to a faint smudge like a mirage.
    Dean was dead, and she was pregnant, and unless he had lots of investments, she wasn’t going to have enough money to keep up with these bills.
    She had to start selling things, and soon. Quinn, she thought with a small coal of anger, suspected how things stood, or he wouldn’t have been nagging the way he had. How dared he not say anything and make it sound like it was she who’d been lax!
    And Dean... How dared he keep buying and buying, throwing parties and playing golf and insisting she had to have the little BMW in the driveway, and never tell her he didn’t really have the money!
    After she’d put stamps on the bills, she would mount a search for the safe-deposit key the attorney kept asking about.
    She had to know where she and the small flutter of life inside her stood.

CHAPTER FOUR
    O NCE HE ’ D GOTTEN HER to thinking about money, that’s all she seemed able to think about. When could he find a buyer for the security business? How did she go about selling the boat? Now the Camaro. The cherry-red Camaro Dean had coveted all his life and loved with a passion.
    “What?” Quinn stared across the paper-strewn kitchen table at Dean’s widow. “You’re already planning to sell his car?” When he wasn’t even cold in his grave?
    She heard the unspoken part. Her face took on that closed, stubborn look he was coming to detest even more than the frail, woe-is-me expression she’d worn for the first few weeks.
    “I don’t want to drive it, and I can’t afford the payments.”
    “How much are they?”
    She pushed the bill across the table.
    Quinn picked it up and frowned. She was right. Dean owed a whopping amount, and she really couldn’t keep up the payments.
    Quinn had been spending most of his off hours either making decisions in Dean’s place for Fenton Security, mowing the lawn and doing upkeep on the house, or helping Mindy untangle her husband’s financial affairs.
    Secretly, Quinn was appalled by how recklessly Dean had borrowed. Maybe he shouldn’t be—Dean always had wanted the nice things in life, and had been a bigger risk-taker than Quinn. But come on! He’d been living on the financial edge, Quinn was discovering. Balancing fine, because his business was successful and expanding, but without a lot in the way of reserves. He’d have been in deep trouble if some of his clients had gone out of business or decided they could do without security.
    But Quinn wouldn’t have criticized Dean aloud to anyone, much less to the cute little blonde who’d enjoyed all of Dean’s toys as long as someone else was paying the bills.
    “I’ll buy the Camaro,” he heard himself say.
    “And paint it black?”
    That stung. “Thanks.”
    She flushed. “Are you serious?”
    “Yeah, I’m serious. Dean loved that car.”
    “Then...if you’ll take over the payments, it’s yours.”
    He was blown away by the offer even though there was no way he could take it. He’d started to think of her as greedy, but, okay, maybe she had some conscience.
    “I’ll pay you.” He hesitated, then forced himself to say, “But thanks.”
    Her eyes were wide and luminous. “I meant it. Dean would love to know you’d kept his car.”
    “And I can afford to buy it.” He held up a hand. “No argument.”
    The