Father Fever

“The very talented Muriel Jensen has a definite skill for penning heartwarming, humorous tales destined to remain favorites….”

—Romantic Times Magazine

Dear Reader,

Here we are in Dancer’s Beach again with Peg and Charlie, parents of the McKeon brothers from the original WHO’S THE DADDY? series.

Also at the beach are the new residents of Cliffside, a home on the bluff outside of town. They are David Hartford, Trevyn McGinty and Bram Bishop—all recently retired from the CIA. They host a masked ball dressed as the Three Musketeers and cross paths with identical triplet sisters dressed as a Regency miss, a flapper and a southern belle.

Seven months later one of the women is rescued from the Columbia River very pregnant and suffering from amnesia. But which of the three sisters is she? And the question everyone is asking is who’s the daddy?

I hope you enjoy finding the answer!

Best Wishes,

Dear Reader,

November is an exciting month here at Harlequin American Romance. You’ll notice we have a brand-new look—but, of course, you can still count on Harlequin American Romance to bring you four terrific love stories sure to warm your heart.

Back by popular demand, Harlequin American Romance revisits the beloved town of Tyler, Wisconsin, in the RETURN TO TYLER series. Scandals, secrets and romances abound in this small town with fabulous stories written by some of your favorite authors. The always wonderful Jule McBride inaugurates this special four-book series with Secret Baby Spencer.

Bestselling author Muriel Jensen reprises her heartwarming WHO’S THE DADDY? series with Father Fever. Next, a former wallflower finally gets the attention of her high school crush when he returns to town and her friends give her a makeover and some special advice in Catching His Eye, the premiere of Jo Leigh’s THE GIRLFRIENDS’ GUIDE TO…continuing series. Finally, Harlequin American Romance’s theme promotion, HAPPILY WEDDED AFTER, which focuses on marriages of convenience, continues with Pamela Bauer’s The Marriage Portrait.

Enjoy them all—and don’t forget to come back again next month when another installment in the RETURN TO TYLER series from Judy Christenberry is waiting for you.

Wishing you happy reading,

Melissa Jeglinski

Associate Senior Editor

Harlequin American Romance

Father Fever

Muriel Jensen

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To Jeff and Cheryl at Coffee An’.

Thanks for all the fun over breakfast!

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Muriel Jensen and her husband Ron live in Astoria, Oregon, in an old Four-Square Victorian at the mouth of the Columbia River. They share their home with a golden retriever/golden Labrador mix named Amber, and five cats who moved in with them without an invitation (Muriel insists that a plate of Friskies and a bowl of water are not an invitation!)

They also have three children and their families in their lives—a veritable crowd of the most interesting people and children. They also have irreplaceable friends, wonderful neighbors and “a life they know they don’t deserve but love desperately anyway.”

Books by Muriel Jensen

HARLEQUIN AMERICAN ROMANCE

73—WINTERS BOUNTY

119—LOVERS NEVER LOSE

176—THE MALLORY TOUCH

200—FANTASIES & MEMORIES

219—LOVE AND LAVENDER

244—THE DUCK SHACK AGREEMENT

267—STRINGS

283—SIDE BY SIDE

321—A CAROL CHRISTMAS

339—EVERYTHING

392—THE MIRACLE

414—RACING WITH THE MOON

425—VALENTINE HEARTS AND FLOWERS

464—MIDDLE OF THE RAINBOW

478—ONE AND ONE MAKES THREE

507—THE UNEXPECTED GROOM

522—NIGHT PRINCE

534—MAKE-BELIEVE MOM

549—THE WEDDING GAMBLE

569—THE COURTSHIP OF DUSTY’S DADDY

603—MOMMY ON BOARD*

606—MAKE WAY FOR MOMMY*

610—MERRY CHRISTMAS, MOMMY!*

654—THE COMEBACK MOM

669—THE PRINCE, THE LADY & THE TOWER

688—KIDS & CO.*

705—CHRISTMAS IN THE COUNTRY

737—DADDY BY DEFAULT**

742—DADDY BY DESIGN**

746—DADDY BY DESTINY**

756—GIFT-WRAPPED DAD

798—COUNTDOWN TO BABY

813—FOUR REASONS FOR FATHERHOOD

850—FATHER FEVER**

Contents

Prologue

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Epilogue

Prologue

February

“I feel like someone in a crowd of suspects,” Alexis Ames said to her sister Athena, “in the last scene of a murder mystery where the detective gathers everyone into a room and says, ‘I’ve called you all here…”’

Athena smiled at Alexis’s gravelly voiced imitation of a fictional detective. But as she looked around at the austere surroundings in the small law firm’s conference room, she couldn’t make the same connection.

They sat at a long, glass-topped table in a pearl-gray room whose color seemed to bring the gunmetal Oregon winter sky right indoors. Or maybe it was Aunt Sadie’s death that made the world a dull, monochromatic place.

Athena shook her head. “Those things usually take place aboard a glamorous yacht, or in a warm library with a fireplace and antique furniture.” Here there weren’t even draperies on the windows, only chic vertical blinds in the same cold shade.

“And there are only three of us,” Augusta, the third sister, argued in a hushed tone. “Hardly a crowd.”

Alexis sighed. “I know, I know. And there hasn’t even been a murder. Just a…death. Remember how Aunt Sadie always used to say she wanted to die in bed?”

Athena couldn’t hold back a smile at the memory. “Yes,” she replied. “And then she’d add, ‘Mel Gibson’s bed.”’

They laughed together for a moment, the first time they’d laughed since meeting at the airport hotel yesterday afternoon.

“I know it’s small comfort,” Alexis said, “but she died doing what she loved. Hawaii was her favorite place in the world. She loved relaxing in Lahaina and taking a plane to Oahu to go shopping for us.”

“Yeah.” Athena was unable to find comfort in anything. A woman in the prime of her maturity at just over sixty should not be entombed in the wreck of a tiny commuter plane at the bottom of the Pacific Ocean.

Sadie Richmond, long retired from a career as a Broadway dancer, had always provided the love, compassion and understanding that her sister—their mother—was incapable of giving. Athena and her sisters had spent spring breaks and summer vacations at her place on the beach where she encouraged them to explore their feelings, their talents and their hopes for the future.

“I can’t believe we’ll never see her again,” Augusta whispered. She was the sensitive one who taught third grade and was in tune with her students. She wore an ankle-length flowered dress and strappy sandals. Her long red hair was piled into a loose bundle, tendrils spilling from her temples and the nape of her neck.

Alexis patted Augusta’s knee. “I’ll paint her portrait for you,” she promised, then smiled ruefully, “if I ever recover my skills.” Alexis was an artist and, if she was to be believed at the moment, an artist who could no longer paint. But she looked the part in a silky white blouse with billowing sleeves, and black pants and boots. Her hair, the dark-flame shade of red they all shared, fell to the middle of her back in ripples and waves. She wore no bangs and a frown now marred her forehead.

“It’s just a slump and you’ll get over it. No one can be brilliant all the time.” Athena spoke with the same conviction she used in the courtroom. She was the practical one, the one who tried to have the answers.

Alexis gave her a look that said as clearly as words, A lot you know. You don’t have an artistic bone in your body. Her eyes swept over Athena’s blue suit and simple white blouse, over her hair caught in a thick knot at the back of her neck and added silently, Just look at the way you dress.

Athena didn’t bother to argue. Her professional mode of dress helped her hold her own in negotiations and litigations dominated by men. It was an unfortunate truth that women who dressed with any style in the courtroom were often accused of doing so to distract or confuse.

She hadn’t expected the severe suits to invade her private life as well, but now that she’d opened her own office, she had very little time for one anyway. And what private time she did have was spent in the company of other lawyers. However unconsciously, the sexless suit seemed to have become who she was.

As she studied her sisters, beautiful and curvaceous and alight with the gentle qualities of womanhood, she compared their attributes and appearance with her own steely determination to succeed. She felt as though they had acquired the womanliness she’d always admired in Sadie.

She’d wanted to be a lawyer even as a child, but she hadn’t imagined that work would be the only thing in her life.

“Whoa!” Alexis whispered as a balding, mustachioed man pushed open the door. “Heads up! It’s Poirot!”

The man’s mustache was more of a simple brush than Poirot’s elaborate handlebar affair, but he was dark and small and close enough in appearance to the fictional detective for them to appreciate the whimsy. Athena was grateful for the light moment considering their sad purpose in being here.

The man walked into the room with a sheaf of papers and stood across the table from the sisters as he introduced himself.

“Good afternoon,” he said in slightly accented English that only served to heighten the Poirot effect. “Welcome to Portland. I’m…”

Then he seemed to forget who he was as his eyes went from Alexis to Athena, back to Alexis, on to Augusta, widening with every pass. “I’m, ah…”

“Bernard Pineau,” Athena said, taking charge. She’d been born nineteen minutes before Alexis, and thirty-seven minutes before Augusta. She’d always thought of herself as the eldest. “You’re Bernard Pineau. Didn’t Aunt Sadie tell you we’re identical triplets?”

“She did, yes,” he replied with a self-conscious laugh. “But knowing that and seeing it for oneself are two very different things. Please, pardon me for staring.”

Athena nodded. As children, she and her sisters had grown accustomed to the gasps and stares their identical appearances created. But now with careers on opposite coasts and Alexis on another continent, that seldom happened. There were moments when she missed it.

Athena introduced herself, then Lex and Gusty.

Pineau shook hands across the table and took his chair.

“You must be the lawyer from Washington, D.C.,” Pineau guessed, focusing on Athena. She wouldn’t have cared that he’d guessed, except that she knew he’d done it after a glance at her suit jacket—all that was visible above the table. It made her feel morose.

“Sadie was very proud of you,” he added sincerely.

Resentment fell away and she experienced a moment’s comfort. “Thank you.”

He studied the other two women, then smiled at Alexis. “You have the studio in Rome?”

Alexis nodded. “I do.”

“I have your Madonna 4 in my study at home,” he said. “Sadie gave it to me for my birthday. My wife and I treasure it.”

Alexis was surprised. “I’m glad. Aunt Sadie was my self-appointed PR person and one-man sales force.”

“She was.” He turned to Augusta.

“I’m the teacher,” she said. “In Pansy Junction, California. Third grade. I love it.”

He smiled indulgently at her. Augusta always inspired smiles.

Then he folded his hands atop the documents he’d brought with him and asked solicitously, “Would you like coffee before we begin?”

Three heads shook.

“We’ve just had lunch,” Athena explained.

He nodded. “Then, before we begin, let me offer my condolences on the loss of your aunt. I met her just a year ago when we first worked on this will, and I found her to be a most charming and enlightened woman.”

Athena opened her mouth to speak and discovered she had no voice.

“Thank you,” Alexis said. “We did, too.”

Pineau squared the pages on the table and began to read the formal legalese. “I, Sadie Richmond, being of sound mind…”

He read on and Athena and her sisters exchanged grim glances. There was no avarice here, no eagerness to know what Sadie had left to whom. Just a still profound disbelief that she was gone and a willingness to carry out her wishes.

“To Athena,” the lawyer said, turning over a page, “I leave my Tiffany watch with the diamond fleur-de-lis in the hope that looking at it will brighten her tight schedule. I also leave her my aquamarine-and-diamond bar brooch to dress up her serious suits.”

Athena closed her eyes and saw images of her aunt wearing the brooch on the shoulder of a smart black dress, on the lapel of her burgundy wool suit, on the blue blazer she’d worn to the Dancer’s Beach Regatta every summer.

Tears welled in Athena’s throat but she swallowed them.

“To Alexis,” Pineau continued, “I leave my entire collection of berets because she always complimented me on them and has the flair to wear them, herself. And I want her to have the Degas in the upstairs hall because she might have posed for it.”

Athena remembered the gilt-framed painting of a ballerina executing a grand jeté and thought the gift appropriate. Alexis always moved as though in ballet slippers.

A tear fell down Alexis’s cheek and Augusta covered her hand with her own.

“To Augusta, I leave my doll collection and the Steiff bear she cuddled with when her sisters were too much for her.”

Gusty nodded, her lips trembling dangerously. Alexis patted her back.

“I wish the girls to share whatever they would like of my clothes and my jewelry, then donate the rest to a women’s shelter. I apologize to them for the paltry contents of my savings account, but they know how I’ve loved my travels. I wish it and my few stocks to be divided equally among them.”

Pineau paused to take a breath.

Alexis and Augusta leaned back in thought and Athena let her mind drift to her favorite memory of Sadie. She was striding ahead of them up the beach at Cliffside, wearing pedal pushers and a T-shirt, her graying blond hair tied up in a scarf as she led them in the collection of shells and other ocean treasures.

Athena was lost in the moment, unaware that Pineau hadn’t covered everything until he said, a little quickly, she thought, “And to David Hartford, I leave Cliffside and all its furnishings.”

Athena’s eyes flew open. She turned to her sisters and saw the same shocked surprise she felt mirrored in their faces. There was a moment of stunned silence, then a loud and simultaneous “Who?”

“David Hartford,” Pineau repeated, tapping the document with the tips of his fingers. “A friend, apparently.”

The women stared at one another again. Athena, caught completely off balance, struggled to think.

But Alexis didn’t stop to think. “I’ve never heard of him,” she said, leaning forward across the table. “A friend from where? Dancer’s Beach?”

Pineau shook his head. “She didn’t say where she met him.”

“She never mentioned him to us.” Augusta looked from one sister to the other. Heads shook confirmingly. “You have to contact him about the will, Mr. Pineau,” Athena pointed out, an unidentified but unsettling suspicion forming in the pit of her stomach where her grief for Sadie ached. “You must know where he lives. And why isn’t he here?”

“I have contacted him. He lives in Chicago, but he wasn’t able to come to the reading. So, I’ve faxed him everything he has to know, and transferred the house into his name.”

Augusta and Alexis gasped simultaneously.

“When did Aunt Sadie change the will?” Athena asked. “We know that two years ago when we were all together at Christmas, she intended to leave Cliffside to the three of us. Not that we care about possession, but…it was a family home. Who is this guy?”

“This will…” Pineau began.

“What do we know about him?” Augusta interrupted. “I mean, she loved telling us stories about her life in Dancer’s Beach. She lived very quietly, except for hosting some local events because Cliffside was so big. I can’t believe she’d have become that close to someone without telling us. And if we’ve never heard of him…”

Pineau shook his head apologetically. “My job isn’t to investigate the beneficiaries of a will, just to see that the deceased’s wishes are carried out.”

“When did she change it?” Alexis asked again.

“As I said before,” Pineau replied patiently, “we drew up this will a year ago.”

Athena stood in agitation. Alexis got to her feet and began to pace.

“I don’t understand,” Augusta said from her chair. “Where would she have met this Hartford guy?”

“Maybe on one of her trips,” Alexis suggested, stopping in the middle of the carpet. “He’s probably one of those gigolos who preys on older women and gets them to sign over their life savings. Or their house.”

“Ladies, I know you’re disappointed about Cliffside,” Pineau said quietly, “but your aunt was very calm and clearheaded when she made the change. I think she truly wanted Mr. Hartford to have it. And I personally think she was too clever a woman to be fooled by a charlatan.”

Athena frowned at him. “But we don’t know for certain, do we, because you haven’t conducted an investigation of any kind.”

Alexis gasped and snapped her fingers. “Maybe he wants Cliffside for the smugglers’ stairs!” she said to Athena. “I mean, apart from the fact that it’s a wonderful property.”

“That’s right!” Augusta cried.

Pineau looked puzzled. “What stairs?”

“When we were children,” Athena explained, “we discovered a door in the basement at Cliffside that led to a stairway through the cliff down to the beach. Sadie padlocked it, telling us that during Prohibition in Grandpa Richmond’s day, booze had been smuggled in that way. Maybe Hartford is planning to put the house to a similar use. Drugs, maybe?”

“Ladies—” Pineau pleaded.

“I know, I know.” Athena cut him off. “It’s not your job to check him out, but maybe it’s ours. Think about what’s happened here! Our aunt dies in the crash of a light plane shortly after she wills the family home to a total stranger?”

“It’s been a year since she changed the will,” Pineau pointed out again, reasonably. “We have no reason to believe the plane crash wasn’t a simple accident. And Hartford wasn’t a stranger to her.”

She ignored his attempt at reason and turned to her sisters. “Until the authorities can bring up the plane and prove to me that the crash was an accident, I think this Hartford bears looking into. What do you say?”

Augusta nodded. “Let’s do it. I took a couple of weeks’ leave.”

Athena turned to Alexis. “What about you, Lex?”

Alexis shouldered a large soft leather pouch. “My time’s my own. I’m in. Where do we start?”

“What’s Hartford’s address?” Athena asked Pineau

Pineau tapped the document on the table. “As of the moment I notified him, his address is Cliffside, Dancer’s Beach, Oregon.

Chapter One

David Hartford surveyed the wide living room of his new home and thought it looked comfortable, if not exactly true to a period or a style. He’d put some of the pieces he’d inherited into storage to make room for some of his own things. When he had time to think about it, he’d decide what to do with them.

It had been a week and a half since Aunty’s attorney had called him to let him know he’d inherited a two-acre estate overlooking the Pacific Ocean and he still couldn’t quite believe it. He’d grown up in a house three times this size, but it had never been a home, and he’d never felt as comfortable in it as he did here after barely a week.

His inheritance included this twelve-room Colonial Revival home, a guest house, an apartment over a four-car garage, and a small forest of firs, ash and oak tucked around the back of the property in a half-moon embrace. A shaggy lawn stretched thirty yards in front of the property to the edge of the cliff that rose fifteen feet above the ocean. Shrubbery he couldn’t identify provided protection from the cliff’s edge.

And it was all thanks to the gratitude of a woman he’d never met, a CIA agent code-named Aunty who’d been his phone and radio contact on several jobs for the Company. He’d helped save her life in Africa when she’d been trapped in the path of a rebel advance, but he’d called in mercenaries to bring her out, so technically, they’d saved her life. That detail hadn’t mattered to her, according to Aunty’s attorney, who’d notified him of his windfall.

David was grateful, of course, and aware that the gift couldn’t have come at a more fortuitous time.

Life as a CIA agent had lost its glamour for him and his team after the fiasco in Afghanistan, and now the three of them were starting over as “civilians.”

So the large, comfortable furniture from his Chicago apartment now sat among a little round mahogany table, an old Windsor piano from the turn of the century, a curio shelf that now held his collection of hand-carved decoys. A large armoire removed from the bedroom had become a perfect entertainment center. The attorney had sent him a list of things willed to other beneficiaries and David had those shipped off to him.

He punctuated that observation with a sneeze. He held a folded handkerchief to his nose and thought it ironic that someone who’d survived spring and summer in Illinois as a boy without succumbing to allergies should be felled by the mold and mildew of an Oregon winter. Trevyn McGinty and Bram Bishop walked through the open front door, each with an armload of folding chairs borrowed from city hall’s meeting room.

“Are you going to help us?” Trevyn asked, moving on through to the dining room and shouting back over his shoulder, “or are you just going to stand there and congratulate yourself on making points with the mayor of Dancer’s Beach just two days after moving to town?”

Bram followed Trevyn with a tauntingly disparaging glance in David’s direction. “He’s going to stand there,” he said. “He thinks that just because he’s letting us live with him for a couple of months that indentures us somehow. Tell us again—” his voice rose as he went into the other room “—how we ended up having to host a party for two hundred people when we know absolutely no one here!”