Kiss and Tell Read Online Free PDF

swim.”
    “What are you doing up?” Leila asked, drying her hands on a towel. “I thought you’d gone to bed hours ago.”
    Marsh frowned slightly. “Didn’t Simon tell you?”
    “Tell me what?”
    “About the baby.”
    Leila stared at Marsh blankly.
    “Kim Kavanaugh went into hard labor shortly before midnight. I had to get over to the clinic quickly. I asked Simon to tell you.”
    Leila shook her head. “He never mentioned it. His mermaid friend got all jealous when he danced with Alice in Wonderland, so he was a little distracted. Was it a girl or a boy?”
    Now it was Marsh’s turn to blink at her. But he caught on quickly enough.
    “Girl. Born about half three this morning. Mother and daughter were doing fine, so I came back a little while ago to get some rest.” He smiled. “I should’ve known you’d still be up.”
    Marsh had been out all night, delivering a baby. That explained his oddness, his nervousness, why he was looking at her so strangely.
    Leila sank down into one of the kitchen chairs. Boy, she was tired. How could Marsh stay out all night delivering a baby and look so refreshed, so
good?
And as long as she was lamenting foolishly, why did he have to be so damned handsome? “Congratulations.”
    “Thanks. But truth be told, Kim did most of the hard work. Good thing she was there to calm Noah and me down.”
    Leila snorted, resting her chin in her hand. “You’re the King of Calm. I’m sure you were fine.”
    Marsh shook his head. “This was my fourteenth baby. I have delivered thirteen others. But each one is as if it’s the first, Leila. I hold that brand new baby in my hands, and it’s…magic. It’s fantastic. It’s impossibly miraculous.”
    He came into the kitchen, took the teapot off the stove, and filled it with water. “Of course, right now everything seems rather impossibly miraculous,” he continued, tossing another smile in her direction as he lit the burner of the gas stove.
    Leila stared at him. He was positively humming with happiness. She’d never seen him like this before. It made him seem charmingly sweet—and amazingly attractive. She had to pull her eyes away from the firm muscles of his back that were stretching the thin cotton of his T-shirt. That was funny. She’d always thought of him as skinny—attractive, but skinny. Where had all those muscles come from? She tried to remember the last time she’d seen him in a T-shirt, but she couldn’t.
    God, what was wrong with her tonight? First she kissed a total stranger and now she was openly ogling Marsh.
    “I
am
sorry that I had to run out of the party,” he said.
    “Simon outdid himself this time.” Leila rested her head on the table. “It was a terrific party. It’s too bad you missed it.”
    Marsh rummaged through the cupboards, searching for the tea tin. “I hope it didn’t get
too
much better after I left.” He glanced at her over his shoulder.
    If he only knew….
    “Can I interest you in a cup of tea?” He took two mugs out of the cabinet, holding one in each hand as he turned to face her.
    He wanted desperately to talk, Leila knew that much from the strange light in his brown eyes. But he wanted to talk about new babies and miracles, and all she could think about was who the heck had kissed her at midnight, and what all these feelings burbling around inside of her meant. And why on
earth
did the mystery man’s failure to return make her ache so badly?
    “I’m sorry,” she said. “I’m not up for it right now.”
    “But Leila—”
    “Marsh, Elliot’s going to be here by dinnertime, and I suddenly feel as if my entire world’s turned upside down.” Yes, that was truly what it felt like. It felt as if someone had come into her life and taken all of her neat and tidy shelves and cabinets and pushed them over, into a big, disorganized pile. She wanted to get it all back into at least some semblance of order before Elliot showed up. But something told her it wasn’t going to be that