Nobody's Baby But Mine

Author: Susan Elizabeth Phillips
Published: February 1997 (Avon)
Category: Romance
Series: Chicago Stars #3
Rating: 9/10

This is my favorite of the Chicago Stars series so far!

Dr. Jane Darlington is freakishly smart, and regrets the abnormal childhood she had due to that freakish intelligence. On her birthday, she's alone and wants a baby, but doesn't want her child to suffer as she did. She figures that her baby daddy has to be dumb as a rock so the baby's intelligence will average out.

With her neighbor's help, Jane gets into Cal's birthday party, where she's presumed to be a stripper/escort, and they sleep together, but she doesn't get prenant. Cal doesn't understand his attraction to the mystery woman, but shrugs it off because he'll never see her again. Jane shows up at his away-game hotel where they have another awkward sexual encounter (she refuses to take her clothes off), and she gets what she wants. However, she doesn't figure Cal will find out.

Cal Bonner, despite being a football player, is not dumb. He's actually really smart, graduating at the top of his class in college with a biology major, not the usual underwater basket weaving type of major serious athletes graduate with. He finds out about the baby and he's pissed that he was used for his man seed, and marries Jane, taking her back to his Southern hometown. While sharing the house, they fall in love, and their charade to his teammates and his family is so great to read. Kevin Tucker, hero of This Heart of Mine, is Cal's backup at this point in the Stars timeline, and he acts like a jerk for the beginning, but Jane gets to him and helps the two men become friends in that mentor-mentee (or manatee, if you're Tracey Jordan) way.

This series is too much fun :)