My One and Only (Ardent Springs Book 3) Read Online Free PDF

have learned a lesson.
    She’d been so scared that summer, but just as he’d done for Jessi, Cooper had stepped up to take another man’s place. David should have been the one shelling out money and holding her hand in the clinic waiting room. Gah! She really could pick them. Well, no more. Men were off-limits until Haleigh’s judgment improved. With her luck, that would be never, but better to be alone than married to a man like Marcus Appleton.
    Haleigh shivered at the thought.

Chapter 4
    Cooper spent his Tuesday lunch break filling the back of his truck with cargo he never thought he’d be hauling. After Haleigh made her exit, he’d returned to Abby and Jessi to find them building a sizable list of baby items. To his dismay, they’d expected him to fill the order as if he knew anything about drool cloths or suction bulbs.
    He didn’t even want to know what they planned to do with a suction bulb.
    “I couldn’t find the name-brand powder, so I grabbed the generic,” Lorelei said, tossing several white plastic bags into the bed of the truck.
    Lorelei Pratchett, another former schoolmate, spent twelve years chasing a Hollywood dream before returning to her senses and coming back to Ardent Springs. To hear Cooper’s best friend, Spencer, tell it, she came back for him, but then Spencer liked to make his fiancée laugh. She’d guffawed at this version of the story on more than one occasion.
    To Cooper’s great relief, when Lorelei learned of his mission, she’d volunteered to come along.
    The plastic bags joined a bassinet, rocker, changing table, and car seat—all used but for the car seat, as no one was willing to compromise on safety in that area—in the back of the truck. Blankets and clothes had been donated by Carrie Farmer, his best friend Spencer’s ex-wife, who had a four-month-old girl of her own.
    Carrie’s husband had been killed in a bar fight while she was still pregnant, so the entire gang had stepped up to make sure the munchkin wanted for nothing, especially not attention. Baby Molly had stolen Cooper’s heart the first second he saw her, and she loved nothing more than to bend him to her will. Which most of the time meant holding court atop his shoulders while drooling into his hair.
    “I think that’s everything,” Cooper said, checking the last items off the list. “Now we have to set it all up.”
    Glancing to the back of the truck, Lorelei said, “Didn’t you say this is a temporary situation? We’ve collected a lot of stuff for this girl to stay with your sister only a week or two.”
    “That’s why it’s all used or borrowed,” he answered, ignoring the niggling concern in the back of his mind. He’d called his mother first thing that morning about the J.T. person, but she’d never heard of him. His mother then called several friends, who’d reported the same.
    This mystery was not going to be solved as quickly as he’d hoped.
    “Okay, then. I’m ready if you are.” Lorelei drummed the seat like a two-year-old on a sugar high. “Let’s go.”
    Cooper had noted Lorelei’s higher-than-usual level of enthusiasm as she’d flitted around Snow’s Curiosity Shop, the secondhand store that had served as his baby furniture supplier and happened to be where Lorelei sold her homemade desserts.
    As he climbed behind the wheel, Cooper said, “You’re in a good mood today.”
    Lorelei gave a noncommittal shrug. “It’s a good day.”
    Cooper narrowed his eyes. “Spill,” he said.
    Biting her lip, she looked torn. “If I tell you, Spencer might get mad.”
    “Now I’m really curious. What’s so important that Spencer wouldn’t want me to know?”
    “Oh, he wouldn’t be mad that you know ,” she said. “He’d be mad that I told you instead of letting him tell you.”
    The woman was talking in circles.
    “Well then you’d better not—”
    “We set a date!” she gushed, bouncing up and down in her seat. “We’re getting married in October. I’ve got a