Page 1 of The Bad Girl and the Baby

Chapter One

“To not doing anything stupid,” Regan said, raising her glass.

Darcy scowled in response but clinked her own glass of white wine against her friend’s.

“To staying out of trouble,” Summer added, clicking hers gently against the other two.

This time Darcy plonked her glass down on the table, spilling wine over her fingers, and eyed her two best friends. “I’m not going to do anything stupid,” she growled. “We’re just here to have a drink and a good time. What’s the big deal?”

Regan snorted. “Hah. The wordstalkercomes to mind.”

“I’mnotstalking him.” She picked up her glass, swallowing the contents in one go as the now familiar sense of frustration tightened around her. “Okay, maybe I am stalking him. A little bit. But it’s his fault. If he’d been reasonable, then I wouldn’t have to do this.” She glanced around the nightclub—it really wasn’t her sort of scene. “Where the hell is he?”

“Just calm down,” Summer said. “Don’t get worked up. You know bad things happen when you get worked up.”

Darcy snarled, and Summer giggled. It was good to see her so happy. Both of them. Regan positively glowed. But then, inconceivable as it seemed, they were both in love.

She was closer to these two women than she’d ever been to anyone in her life. Though she still found it hard to believe. They were all so different. In normal circumstances, they would have never met, and if they had, they would have no doubt just walked away. But it was hard to walk away when you were locked together in a twelve-by-twelve room for most of the day and night.

They’d met while sharing a prison cell in Holloway, and from the start, she’d been wary of them. Regan had seemed too cocky and Summer too shy. Besides, she’d been going through her bitter and twisted “life’s unfair” stage and hadn’t been inclined to be friendly. It was Summer who had brought them together. She clearly didn’t fit in, had seemed way too good for that place, and Darcy had been sure she wouldn’t make it through her whole sentence. Somehow, she and Regan had found themselves in the roles of protectors, only to discover that Summer possessed a core of steel, despite her fragile air.

They’d all made a vow that they were never going back to prison and a promise to one another to provide support. Darcy had offered them both a place to stay when they got out. There was a three-bedroom flat above the gym she owned in central London. Though, while they were officially still sharing, these days Regan and Summer spent more time with their men than at home. But they all made a point to meet at least once a week.

Their lives were going so well.

Hers, on the other hand, was a whole big pile of crap.

Which she would never get out from under unless she found some way to put the guilt behind her. Two months out of prison, she was still no closer to her goal. She wanted to be happy for her friends, but everything was such a mess. And she’d been putting off this confrontation, partly because the couple of times she’d actually gotten her nerve up to confront the man, it was only to find he was off in some foreign land.

How the hell was he looking after her niece, Lulu, if he wasn’t even in the same country?

“Hey,” Summer said, interrupting her bad thoughts. “Things will work out.”

“Yes,” Regan added. “They will. So get that scowl off your face. It doesn’t go with your pretty dress.”

She glanced down at herself and felt her scowl deepen. She was wearing a white sundress printed with blue flowers that she’d borrowed from Regan. It wasn’t her style. And a real honest-to-God cardigan—also borrowed—over the top. She couldn’t remembereverwearing a cardigan in her life before. But it did an excellent job of covering up her tattoos. She needed to make a good impression. And she really hated that. She wasn’t ashamed of who or what she was, but she’d allowed Regan and Summer to persuade her into the disguise. Her normally spiky hair was smoothed back, and she’d taken out her nose stud. She could cope with all those. The real killer was the heels. Why the hell would anyone wear goddamn heels? It made no sense.

“Still scowling,” Regan murmured.

She closed her eyes for a moment and took a few deep, calming breaths, sending the bitterness back down deep inside her and locking it in. She could handle this. All she had to do was let him see she wasn’t some sort of violent monster. Get him to agree to meet her so they could talk like sensible adults.

“Where the hell is he?” she asked for the hundredth time, staring at the door as if she could will him to appear. “Are you sure he’ll be here tonight?”

“Are you questioning my private-eye skills? Or rather, Nate’s private-eye skills?”

Nate was Regan’s fiancé. An ex-detective who’d given up his career to be with Regan. They were in the process of setting up a security company together, and Nate had done a little checking into Captain Mathew Peterson for her.

“No. I’m sure Nate’s the best.”

“Oh, he is,” Regan answered with a smug smile. She raised her hand to a waiter, and a minute later, the man brought a replacement bottle and took away the empty one. Regan poured them all a glass. “Have a drink, and if he doesn’t come, we will just drink some more, and dance, and have a good time. And tomorrow, you’ll go see him like a normal person, and not like a stalker.”

“Dance?” she said. “You’re joking. I’m more likely to trip and break my neck in these heels.”

But what if she went to his house and he still refused to see her. They’d only communicated so far through his lawyer, who had told Darcy that under no circumstances would she be allowed to be part of Lulu’s life.

Not fair.

Lulu was her two-and-a-half-year-old niece, the only family Darcy had left; it certainly wasn’t fair. But what was? And she had to concede that things looked bad. She’d spent nearly three years in prison for supposedly attacking Lulu’s now dead father.

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