Everything but the Baby (Harlequin Superromance) by Kathleen O`Brien Page B

more thing?”
    His face tensed, immediately guarded. “What?”
    â€œThere isn’t… I mean, when you didn’t show up at the church, I had to wonder. There’s no one else, is there? No other woman?”
    Mark’s table must have been close enough for him to hear their conversation. Though he was reading his menu, his body was unnaturally still, his head tilted toward them. She wondered if he was waiting for the answer as eagerly as she was.
    â€œI’m going to be completely honest with you, Allison,” Lincoln said. “I have been dating someone. But not while you and I were engaged. I met her a couple of weeks ago, after I came back to Sole Grande.”
    She tried to look shocked. “You did? So soon after…after me?”
    â€œYou hurt me, Allie. I was feeling pretty low. Company helped.”
    Mark’s menu twitched and Allison could see that his grip on the cardboard was tense. She felt the same indignation tightening her own muscles. Man, that took a lot of nerve, blaming his seduction of Janelle Greenwood on Allison.
    She dragged her gaze away from Mark, though frankly it was comforting to know he was there. It made the whole experience more like a Mission: Impossible escapade and less like a groveling humiliation.
    She swallowed her annoyance, hoping Lincolnwould interpret her tension as jealousy, or perhaps just fear of losing him.
    â€œI guess that’s fair enough. But this woman. Do you…do you love her?”
    He shook his head and his blue eyes narrowed, shining slightly, as if from too much repressed pain. He started to speak twice before he managed to do so.
    â€œOf course not,” he said. “How can you ask me that, Allie? How could I fall in love with anyone when I’m still in love with you?”
    Behind them, Mark shook his head helplessly. He caught her eye. Wow, he mouthed. He shook his head again. Wow.
    She had to agree.
    Much as she hated to admit it, Lincoln Gray was good .
    Â 
    M OSTLY , when Daniel was at The Mangrove, he would do anything they asked. Someday he planned to have his own hotel and he needed to learn as much as he could.
    Sure, he’d grown up at his family’s place, but O’Hara’s Hideaway was small potatoes. Not small as in cheap or trashy, more like what was called a boutique hotel. But still, you had to know how the big boys did it. You had to think like a major-league player if you ever expected to climb out of the farm team.
    So it didn’t matter what the bosses wanted—a substitute coach for the kiddy tennis clinic, a pilot to glide the electric boat around for a moonlight cruise, a cabana boy, a rush room-service delivery or even just somepoor schmuck to empty trash cans in the bar—Daniel was there.
    He got a reputation as the go-to guy, because he always said yes. He was pretty proud of that—especially since, at the Hideaway, his grandfather’s nickname for him was “milk dud,” and his dad called him “slacker Dan.”
    The plan had backfired on him today, though. Today Mr. Marley needed someone ASAP to pick up shards of glass in the first-floor ladies’ lounge, where a giant mirror had inexplicably decided to jump off the wall.
    He still said yes, of course, but damn it . He hated bathroom duty. Especially the ladies’ bathroom. No matter how many signs he set up announcing it was out of service, some gorgeous chick inevitably came barreling in, squealing in shock when she saw him there looking totally geekville with his mop or his plunger or whatever.
    Today was no exception. He’d just managed to sweep up the last of the glistening slivers—which had a tendency to hide in the grout between floor tiles—when, just like clockwork, a woman came busting in. Couldn’t possibly read the sign, of course not. Having a lipstick emergency, no doubt. Or else in some white-hot heat to brush her hair.
    But for once he was wrong. This one