Surprised by Family: a Contemporary Romance Duet

  Surprised by Family

  A Contemporary Romance Duet

  Noelle Adams

  Stacey Joy Netzel

  Revival

  Noelle Adams

  When she was a girl, Leila had an embarrassing crush on Baron James, her brother's best friend. She's grown up now, divorced with twin daughters and a new job as a college professor, and she needs to make good decisions. No matter how irresistible Baron is when he reenters her life, she won't be a fool over him again.

  Baron James has been a bad boy all his life, chasing women and seeking thrills, but he's forced to take on leadership in his family's company after his father dies. His new role takes everything he has, and he doesn't have room in his heart to start a relationship with Leila and her daughters.

  But his heart doesn't seem to know this...

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Copyright © 2013 by Noelle Adams. All rights reserved, including the right to reproduce, distribute, or transmit in any form or by any means.

  Content Editing: Kristin Anders at The Romantic Editor.

  One

  Seventeen years ago

  Leila’s love for Baron James had grown beyond the bounds of containment.

  She couldn’t hold it back anymore. She had to express it.

  He was sixteen—son of the über-rich founder of James Coffee and good at everything from football to the saxophone. She was just twelve, with glasses and braces and a normal middle-class family. She couldn’t dare tell him her feelings directly.

  So she wrote him a poem.

  She spent weeks working on it, poring over the precise words to describe his smoldering eyes, his breathtaking smile, his laughter that wafted over her soul like a summer breeze.

  Once her masterpiece was perfected, she carefully transcribed it onto a piece of thick stationary.

  She didn’t sign it. The idea of his knowing how she felt was too terrifying. He would have this poem, though. He would know that someone loved him so much.

  Baron was the best friend of Dave, her older brother, so he was over at her house all the time. He was always nice to her, asking her what she was reading and calling her “kid” in a teasing way. She knew his own family wasn’t that nice. His father worked all the time, and his mother had left his dad and now lived in Hawaii. His brother was a jerk. She thought he’d rather be with her family than his own, and that made her love for him even more special.

  When she was all prepared, she waited out the course of an afternoon until Baron and Dave stopped playing video games and went outside to shoot hoops on the driveway.

  Then she slipped into the living room to find his backpack.

  His father might be one of the richest men in New England, but Baron never acted like he was better than everyone else. He’d been carrying this same beat-up canvas backpack for three years.

  She sat on the couch and very carefully unzipped it, her heart pounding so wildly it hurt her chest.

  He had a couple of textbooks and a ragged notebook in his bag. Plus, piles of wrinkled paper he’d obviously just stuffed into the bag instead of throwing away.

  She didn’t want her poem to get mixed up in the trash, so she pulled out his notebook.

  Despite her nerves, she ran a hand over his scrawled handwritten notes on the pages. He evidently doodled a lot at school, if the precise little drawings in the margin were any evidence.

  She found the last page that was written on and placed her poem in between the pages. That way, he would find it when he opened the notebook next time.

  He wouldn’t know who had given it to him, but he would have it—and that was what mattered.

  Leila let out a long sigh as she set her poem free.

  “What are you doing?”

  The voice jarred her out of her romantic reflections. She sucked in a harsh breath and jerked her head up.

  Baron stood in the middle of the living room, glaring at her.

  She had his backpack unzipped and his notebook open on her lap.

  Her face flooded with heat, and she was utterly paralyzed, the room around her and Baron’s face blurring into a surreal stupor.

  “What’s going on, kid?” he asked, approaching her now. He reached down to pull his backpack away from her legs and grab his notebook.

  He looked offended. Of course, he’d be offended. He’d just caught her going through his stuff without permission.

  She opened her mouth to try to explain. She’d made her plans for this mission well, so she had an excuse ready in case she got caught.

  There was a big bug, she would say, that she’d seen crawl into his bag. She was just trying to get it out.

  She opened her mouth several times, but no words came out.

  “What is this?” he asked. The part of her mind that still worked registered he now looked more baffled than annoyed. He stared down at the piece of paper she’d placed in his notebook.

  Baron had found her poem.

  He’d been playing basketball outside, so his face was damp with perspiration and his t-shirt stuck to his chest. He was tall and athletic, with dark hair and eyes. He was the cutest guy she’d ever seen in her life.

  And now he was reading her poem, of which four rhyming stanzas were dedicated to his soulful, mysterious eyes.

  As he read, his eyebrows went higher and higher, and his gaze kept darting over to where she still sat like a frozen, idiotic statue.

  Leila started to hyperventilate.

  Her cheeks blazed so hot they actually hurt. She tried desperately to remember her excuse.

  But there was no excuse. He was reading her poem. He would know.

  He would know everything.

  “Did you write this, kid?” he asked, when he’d obviously reached the end.

  She opened her mouth again to deny the truth. Instead, she made an embarrassing squeak.

  “I don’t think ‘Baron’ really rhymes with ‘caring.’ Unless you’re from the South.” His expression wasn’t mean, but he was obviously trying not to laugh. At the outpouring of her heart.

  Her mortification finally caught up to her.

  She lurched to her feet, stumbling on her first step but righting herself quickly. Then she fled out of the room.

  ***

  Present

  “What do you mean they’re not going to rebuild it?” Leila demanded, making a half-hearted effort to moderate her tone, since she was on the phone with her new boss.

  Dr. Kendra Marshall, the chair of the History Department at Benton College, sounded apologetic. “The hurricane last month caused too much damage, and I guess they can’t afford the expense of rebuilding.”

  “But that church is on National Registry of Historic Places. It was built in the eighteenth century. George Whitefield preached the inaugural sermon from its pulpit. Surely they can find some donor who wants to—”

  “They said no.”

  “So they’re just going to let it go to rot?” Leila took a deep breath, reminding herself she’d just held the position of Assistant Professor at Benton College for three weeks, and it was probably not a good idea to badmouth the college administration. “I know it’s not as impressive as something like the Old North Church, but it still has a really amazing history. Can’t they try to sell that with donors?”

  “Apparently, a Great Awakening era church just isn’t compelling enough to attract donors.”

  Leila swallowed over her instinctive argument. It wasn’t lik
e Kendra could force the college to rebuild West Church, the little Colonial church that sat on the edge of campus.

  “Here’s an idea,” Kendra continued. “I’m supposed to round up a couple of faculty members for a reception with some board members and other donors on Friday evening. Maybe you could attend and convince someone to take an interest in the church.”

  Leila repressed a groan at the idea of attending a cocktail party—even to save her precious church. It was exactly what she didn’t want to do after a long, stressful week. Schmooze with a bunch of entitled strangers.

  Plus, she’d have to get a babysitter for the girls.

  “Sure, I’d love to,” she said. “Thanks for opportunity.”

  “Excellent. I’m sure it’s not at the top of your list of things to do on the weekend. But the food should be good, and the college president is hosting. He’s always very generous with the booze.”

  “Well, that’s something at least.”

  “And you can talk up the church. You used it in your dissertation, didn’t you? That should be a good way to bring it up.”

  After a making a few grateful noises, Leila managed to hang up.

  She’d gone through graduate school while she’d been married, after moving to California because of her husband’s job. Her degrees were in History, and for her dissertation she’d used the social and architectural space of the Colonial church to study the politics of the First Great Awakening in New England.

  Her divorce from Rick had been finalized about the same time she’d earned her PhD, and she’d accepted the tenure-track position at Benton because her dad still lived in Boston and it felt like going home.

  She was excited about the move and the new job. At the fresh start for her life.

  Now, however, she had a dozen emails to answer from students. An unfinished book manuscript to complete. A boring cocktail party to attend on Friday night.

  And a storm-damaged historic church the college refused to rebuild.

  The phone rang again, and she saw it was the work-study student who manned the front desk of the History department. Bradley something.

  “This is Dr. Luther,” Leila said, picking up the phone. She’d published all of her work and gotten her degrees under her married name, Leila Luther. It was very hard to change names once you’d started to build a scholarly reputation. If she’d been smarter, she’d have published under her maiden name from the beginning, but she’d been besotted with Rick back then.

  And stupid.

  “Uh, yeah, Mrs. Luther,” Bradley said. “You have a visitor.”

  “It’s Dr. Luther,” she corrected, as gently as she could. She’d corrected him twenty times about the same thing in the last week. “Who’s the visitor?”

  “I dunno.”

  “Well, can you ask the person who he or she is?”

  “He’s already on his way up.”

  Most of the History offices were on the third floor, but they’d run out of space in that suite, so her office was on the fourth floor. It had previously been a break room, but they’d made it into an office over the summer. She liked it – with sloping ceilings, hardwood floors, and three big windows. But she understood some of the other faculty weren’t happy about losing their break room.

  With a sigh, Leila said, “Next time, please ask for the visitor’s name, and then call up to make sure I’m available.”

  “Okay, Mrs. Luther.” Bradley hung up before Leila could respond, which was probably just as well.

  Leila stood up and turned to look at her office. It was a mess. One wall was lined with boxes she hadn’t finished unpacking yet. The small, round table and two side chairs were covered with piles of books and papers.

  The chair in front of her desk was the neatest – holding only a pile of student advising files she’d just received that afternoon. She hurried around the desk and grabbed the files to clear off the chair.

  Whoever was coming up would probably need a place to sit. Likely another faculty member or graduate student. Many of them had stopped by to greet her and size her up.

  She looked down at her clothes to make sure her buttons were all done and she hadn’t spilled anything on her pants. She was usually too busy to think much about her appearance, but she glanced in the mirror she’d hung on the wall to make sure her hair wasn’t too embarrassing, since she was new here and she didn’t want people to think she was a slob.

  Her daughters liked her hair long, so she’d grown it out almost to her waist. She noticed now that long strands had slipped messily out of the one long braid.

  “Good afternoon,” a pleasant male voice said from the open doorway of her office. “Dr. Luther?”

  Leila had been trying to fix her hair, and she twirled around too quickly, hating the thought of being caught primping. One of the files in her hand slipped open and several sheets of paper fell out. With a gurgle of frustration, she leaned over to pick them up, dropping the file in the process.

  She picked up the papers but unfortunately left the file on the floor. She stepped on it as she stood back up. There was no friction between the file folder and the hardwood floor, and her foot slipped on it.

  She lost her balance completely. The pile of files tucked under her arm ended up littering the floor, and Leila ended up on her ass.

  She closed her eyes and tried to catch her breath, feeling her cheeks flame red and praying desperately that it wasn’t the dean at the door.

  “Are you all right?” the man said, his voice rich with something she knew to be laughter.

  “Yes.” She opened her eyes and took the hand the man had extended to her. She didn’t look up at his face, though. She’d pull herself together before she checked to see who’d witnessed her clumsy display.

  She dusted herself off while the man bent over to pick up some of her scattered files.

  When he straightened up to hand them to her, they recognized each other at exactly the same moment.

  “Leila? Leila Johnson?” he asked.

  “Baron?” she breathed, almost in unison. Now she wasn’t just flustered and embarrassed. She was completely disoriented.

  She hadn’t seen Baron since she’d graduated from high school. He and Dave had gone to different colleges, and they’d drifted apart as Baron’s lifestyle had gotten wilder and wilder. Dave hadn’t heard from Baron in years.

  She thought he lived in New York now, working in the James Coffee offices there.

  Yet here he was in her office in Boston, watching her make a fool of herself.

  She felt like she was twelve years old again.

  To her relief, Baron looked just as disoriented as she felt. A frown transformed his handsome face as his dark eyes scanned her from head to toe. “It’s Leila Luther now? I remembering hearing somewhere that you got married.” His gaze tried to follow her left hand.

  She showed him her empty ring finger. “Divorced.”

  “Ah.” He smiled and arched his eyebrows. “Sorry?”

  In spite of herself, Leila choked on a bubble of laughter, the irony in his voice hitting her without warning. “I’m not, so I don’t know why you should be.”

  She wasn’t sorry about the divorce. Her academic career had taken its toll on her marriage. After she’d had the girls six years ago, Rick had expected her to drop out of school and take care of them.

  She hadn’t. She loved the girls more than anything, but she also loved her academic career, and there was no reason not to have both. Rick hadn’t been happy, though.

  He’d shown his unhappiness by having an affair with a new associate at his law firm.

  “Sorry about all that,” Leila added, gesturing to the floor and the files he still held. “I seem to be kind of a mess today.”

  “No problem.” He stacked the files neatly and placed them on the one clean corner of her desk. “Sorry if I took you by surprise. I’d assumed the student who, er, greeted me would let you know I was on my way up.”

  She wondered if he thought she’d
known he was coming up and that was why she’d been primping. She’d dressed professionally rather than attractively today in a brown pants suit, but she suddenly wished she’d worn something different.

  She’d never be a beauty queen, but she could look decent if she made an effort.

  She wasn’t the plain, geeky girl she’d been before.

  “He said someone was coming up, but the message came a bit garbled.”

  The corner of Baron’s mouth quirked up, and Leila was shocked speechless by how attractive he was.

  No one was as handsome as Baron, with his lean strength, dark hair, and gorgeous brown eyes. He was still incredibly fit, but he looked more solid than he had as a teenager—the boyish slimness transforming into masculine power.

  He wore a dark suit and looked professional, authoritative. Not like the boy with the basketball she remembered.

  Realizing that Baron had said something while she was staring at him like a starry-eyed teenager, Leila felt her cheeks burning again. “I’m sorry?”

  “I asked if you were settled in yet,” he repeated, his brows arching with what looked like bewildered amusement.

  Surely—surely—he wouldn’t know what she was thinking just now. Surely he wouldn’t think she was that same ridiculous girl with the poem he’d laughed at all those years ago.

  Reminding herself she was a mature adult with a career and two six-year-old daughters, she said, “Well, as you can see, I’m not quite settled yet. I’m getting there. Unfortunately, the semester doesn’t hold off just so I can get unpacked. So you didn’t come to see me?”

  “Actually, I did. I just didn’t know it was you. I dropped by to introduce myself to Dr. Luther and ask about her research.”

  “You know my work?” She was genuinely surprised. She’d published several articles, but an academic reputation rarely spread beyond university offices.

  He gave her a wry smile that left her momentarily breathless. “I’m not actually in the habit of reading academic journals, but I’m interested in the West Church and did some investigating about who would know its history.