The Baby Plan (Silhouette Special Edition #1900)

Something was up. Julia Martinelli had a funny feeling. She'd developed a sixth sense for these things by now. An uncanny radar for her mother's imminent romantic misadventures. Her mother's invitation for dinner had sounded innocent enough. They lived in the same town, the place where Julia had been raised, and got together at least once a week for dinner or lunch, or just to say hello over coffee. But for some inexplicable reason, Julia's skin went all shivery with goose bumps during this particular call. Something in her mother's tone signaled Watch out. Something's cooking. It's not just Mom's special meat loaf. Julia didn't ask any questions. She didn't want to seem overly suspicious. Her mother had become very sensitive to any inquiries about her love life and Julia had to tiptoe around the subject these days, which wasn't easy. Her mother was a master at avoiding a straight answer. "You're always imagining things, dear," Lucy Martinelli would claim. As if Julia was the one with the problem--or "issues" as folks on TV talk shows liked to say. Julia knew she did have a few "issues" about romance: the greatest one being, she couldn't find much of it. Not the kind she was looking for. Her mother, on the other hand, found more than enough for anyone. Especially a woman her age. Which was often...a problem. As Julia drove over to her mother's after work on Friday night, she was gripped by the same unnerving sensation, and the palms of her hands were clammy on the steering wheel. Was she only imagining things? She dearly hoped so. In the small town of Blue Lake, Vermont, Julia's mother Lucy was known as "The Merry Widow"--though technically speaking, only two of Lucy's four husbands had died. Marriages two and four had ended in divorce. Which did not bode well for husband Number Five, Julia thought, if and when he arrived. The odd-numbered husbands seemed to have a high mortality rate. All things considered, it was more a matter of when than if. Julia just knew Number Five was out there somewhere, hovering on the horizon. A new chapter in her mothers relationship saga, which Julia often thought could provide more than enough material for some thick, juicy novel or a made-for-TV movie. Married first to her high school sweetheart, Lucy became a at the tender age of twenty-one, when her young husband in a boating accident. She next married Julia's father, Tom Martinelli, a local attorney. That union lasted over twenty years, Julia knew now that her parents had stayed together because of her, both feeling out of synch with their spouse, committed to giving their only child a stable family life. It wasn't an unhappy household, though even as a child Julia sensed something was missing between her parents. As a grown woman, she decided she'd never make that same choice--to stay stuck in a loveless relationship. Her parents divorced while Julia was in college. Her father had since retired and moved to Florida with his second wife, Adele, a former elementary school teacher. They played a lot of golf and were ardent fans of the History Channel--pastimes that had never interested Julia's mother. Julia loved her father dearly and knew she took after him more in temperament, but she was still objective enough to see her mom was definitely having more fun. Shortly after the divorce, Lucy took a weekend jaunt to Las Vegas with some girlfriends. There she met and married a retired Texas businessman, fell head over heels and walked up the aisle that very weekend in the tackiest of Vegas wedding chapels. Julia had not been present, but the blurry instant photos told the whole story. Earl T. Walker was a lovely man, but much older than Lucy. He died from a sudden heart attack a few weeks before the couple's third anniversary. Lucy inherited a sizable portion of Earl's estate, but there was nothing left for her in Texas. She'd never taken well to the wide open spaces and LucLittle, Kate is the author of 'The Baby Plan (Silhouette Special Edition #1900)', published 2008 under ISBN 9780373249008 and ISBN 0373249004.