Just Because: [Blog Tour] ONE IN A MILLION

World-famous Whitney "Sahara" Richardson is at the top of her game. With four Grammys, an Oscar nod, and a billion-dollar clothing line, her career is skyrocketing. Even her headline-grabbing dating life is looking up. And if everything goes as planned, marriage and children are just a few years away--and they will come in that order.

That is...until a mix-up at the fertility clinic where her eggs are stored puts the cart before the horse. Oops. Whitney suddenly has a daughter...whose biological father is reluctant to share her.

One in a Million is a fun celebrity rom-com with the poignancy of Abby Jimenez and a modern twist on "surprise baby" for fans of Jasmine Guillory.

Author Bio:

BEVERLEY KENDALL has published over ten contemporary and historical romance novels. She also manages the romance review blog, Smitten by Books (smittenbybooks.com). Bev writes full-time while raising her son as a single mother. Both dual citizens of the US and Canada, they currently call Atlanta home.

Excerpt:

Myles Redmond was annoyed.

Scratch that. He was more than annoyed. He was pissed and currently doing his best not to glare at the woman sitting in the chair next to him.

Dear God, he’d never resented anyone more in his life, and the fact that he was married to her made the nightmare they were living through one hundred times worse.

It would be fair to say their three-year marriage hovered on the brink of failure, and the outcome of this meeting might be what sent it plunging to its demise.

Myles clenched his jaw as he regarded Holly, taking in her unsmiling face and rigid posture. His wife’s beauty turned heads everywhere they went but had failed to turn his since she’d demanded the DNA test.

“Would you stop looking at me like that?” Holly huffed, cutting a pair of ice-blue eyes at him. She sniffed and abruptly looked away, her chin notched a fraction higher as she presented him with her profile. “Whether you want to admit it or not, we’re doing the right thing.”

She’d worn a light blue dress for the occasion. As if she hadn’t made her hopes for the outcome of the meeting clear enough. Blue was her lucky color. Her long manicured nails kept up a rhythmic tapping on the wooden arm of her chair.

“And what exactly is that?” he asked, his tone like shards of glass.

Exasperated, she rolled her eyes and flicked a wavy lock of platinum-blond hair over her shoulder. “God, I hate when you’re like this. You know exactly what I’m talking about. I can’t believe you don’t want to know who she belongs to.” She addressed the empty desk in front of them more than she did him.

“She,” he stressed through gritted teeth, “has a name. Her name is Haylee, and she is our daughter.” His voice was low and controlled while he seethed inside. It didn’t matter what the DNA results revealed. Haylee was their child. After all they’d—she’d gone through to have her, how could she say otherwise? That was the thing he couldn’t understand. His part had been easy. Hers had not—as she’d frequently reminded him.

Holly huffed out a sound of deep frustration, her narrowed gaze taking a glancing stab at his face. “She’s not ours, Myles, and for the life of me, I don’t understand why you refuse to accept it. It’s as obvious as the nose on my face that she belongs to another couple.”

“She’s ours.” He was the only father Haylee had ever known, and no test was going to change that.

“I’m sure her biological parents will have something to say about that.” His wife had made up her mind and refused to be swayed.

Recognizing the pointlessness of arguing with her, Myles kept his mouth shut and averted his gaze. These days, it was impossible to look at her without feeling a profound sense of betrayal…and anger—so much anger. Feelings far removed from how he’d felt the day they’d exchanged their wedding vows.

“Myles, they have as much a right to know as we do. Wouldn’t you want to know if you were in their place?” Holly said, her voice cajoling, indicating a switch of tactics. Good cop, bad cop, meet Holly the Bully and Holly the Sweet-Talker, the same woman employing two tried-and-true methods to get her way.

Well, it’s not going to work this time.

The office door behind them opened, and Dr. Kelly Franklin walked in, saving him from more of his wife’s attempts to convince him her motivation was altruism, not selfishness.

Small in stature at barely over five feet and clad in a white lab coat, Dr. Kelly had brown shoulder-length hair and carried herself with the confidence of the framed Harvard MD degree hanging on the wall.

“Good afternoon, Mr. and Mrs. Redmond. Thank you so much for coming in on such short notice.”

The doctor’s greeting was warm and respectful. More importantly, she didn’t sound as if she was about to plunge a knife into his heart. That said, it was clear she hadn’t come bearing tidings of joy either.

Myles made a move to stand, but she stayed the act of male courtesy—ingrained in him by his father—by motioning for him to remain seated.

Quelling his instincts, he subsided back into his chair and watched as she quickly took hers behind the desk.

“Sorry to keep you waiting.”

She was nervous but doing her best not to show it. As a former defense attorney, Myles had learned to pick up on the subtleties of body language. She hadn’t blinked once since she’d greeted them, and the distinct tapping sound that began shortly after she sat down was her nervously tapping her shoe on the floor. Holly’s hands were on her lap.

“We were early,” Myles said. Fifteen minutes, to be precise. Because this was important. The rest of his life hinged on what she was about to tell them. Despite vowing to himself that he’d remain calm, he felt tenser than ever.

For a beat, her brown eyes bounced between them. Then she blinked and said, “The DNA test confirmed that—”

“She isn’t ours, is she?” Holly asked, cutting the doctor off midsentence.

Myles turned and narrowed his eyes at his wife. Why not put up a billboard? I don’t want her. Give her to someone else.

As far as he was concerned, Holly had checked out of motherhood and their marriage before she packed her bags and took off to San Diego to stay with her mother after telling him she needed space.

What kind of parent needed “space” three weeks after the birth of her daughter?

His wife, that was who.

Look, he got it. They had hired a surrogate, so Holly didn’t get to bond with Haylee the way mothers usually did, but she’d known that from the outset. They’d both gone into this with their eyes wide open…and then some. Furthermore, parents didn’t walk away just because their child didn’t turn out the way they wanted or expected. That wasn’t the way parenting worked.

At the end of the day, though, he had to face some hard truths. He was just as much to blame for what was happening. While he might be successful in other parts of his life—he was a loving father, son, brother, and uncle and a loyal friend, and had been elected president of the California Bar Association two terms in a row—he sucked when it came to romantic relationships.

How did he know?

Because he already had one failed marriage under his belt, and it looked like he was coasting for divorce number two. In sports terms, he’d soon be 0-2.

Dr. Franklin tentatively cleared her throat before continuing. “Unfortunately, your case is a little more complicated.”

“Complicated? What does that mean? Either she’s ours or she’s not.” She turned and looked at him as if expecting him to echo her demand for clarity. “Although I think it’s obvious she can’t be.” The latter she muttered as an aside meant to be heard—just in case the good doctor didn’t know where she stood on the matter.

Myles’s jaw locked. According to his wife—who’d gone from being the top-producing female real estate agent in Southern California to self-ascribed geneticist—Haylee couldn’t be the product of two white, blue-eyed parents. If she has a drop of Nordic ancestry in her, I’m the Queen of England, Holly had said in reference to her parents’ Swedish heritage and Haylee’s slightly darker complexion, dark brown curly hair, and brown eyes.

Never mind that he was a quarter Sicilian on his mother’s side, and his hair was dark and wavy. In her summation of their daughter’s parentage, it was clear Holly hadn’t factored his genes into the equation.

“Would you mind elaborating?” he said, his brow furrowed in concentration.

Dr. Franklin inhaled and treated them to another unblinking stare. “It means that you’re right. There was a problem, but not what I assumed. The error occurred during the egg selection portion of the fertilization stage, not the implantation stage.”

For the first time since they walked into the office, Holly appeared genuinely confused. “Are you saying that—” She broke off, as if unable or unwilling to give voice to whatever conclusion she’d drawn in her mind. Unusual for her.

The doctor met Holly’s puzzled stare. “I’m sorry to have to tell you this, but you aren’t your daughter’s biological mother.” Her gaze then shifted to him. “However, you are her biological father.”

Holly’s gasp cracked the air like a thunderclap. The deafening silence that followed was just as loud.

Myles was too stunned to speak, his heart pounding so loud in his ears that, for a few moments, it drowned out all possible thought or comprehension.

“No, no. That can’t be right.” Holly turned to him, her eyes wide with shock and disbelief.

If he could speak, he didn’t know what he would say, given the state of his mind. Completely blown.

The doctor’s composure—which had remained relatively calm thus far—began to show cracks. Based partly on the dates on her diploma, he guessed Dr. Franklin was in her early forties, but the depth of the lines now bracketing her mouth and fanning out from her eyes spoke of the toll this must be taking on her and made her look years older.

Swallowing visibly, she continued. “We had the test run by two different labs. The results are the same.”

Accompanying his wife’s cry of dismay came the realization that his claim to his daughter was as solid as any father’s could be. Haylee was his. Relief began to seep into every part of his being. Seconds later, it washed over him in a flood. He could breathe again.

Dr. Franklin regarded them, self-reproach stamped all over her face. “I’m sorry. I’m so very sorry. I don’t know how this happened. It’s never happened to us before. But I promise to get to the bottom of it and do whatever it takes to make this right.”

Coming into the meeting, Myles had prepared himself for only two possibilities. Either Haylee was biologically theirs, or she wasn’t. And in the latter’s case, he’d been fully prepared to fight to keep her even if his marriage would be one of the casualties of any battle he’d have to wage.

The one thing he never imagined was discovering he had a baby…with a woman he’d never laid eyes on.

Just Because

March 19, 2025

[Blog Tour] ONE IN A MILLION

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