Nobody's Baby But Mine by Susan Elizabeth Phillips

Dr. Jane Bonner grew up a freak (in her words.) She was beyond intelligent and it disgusted her father and gave her (more a less) a complex. For her children, she wants something different. She wants them to be normal. At 34, she is ready to have a baby with somebody stupid so that her children have a chance to be "normal." When a chance to sleep with Cal Bonner, quarterback for the Stars football team, comes up, she grabs it with both hands.
Cal only dates women in their early 20s. So when his friends hire a 28-year-old (he is told) prostitute for his 36th birthday, he doesn't expect to be intrigued. And he really doesn't expect to find out that she only slept with him for his sperm. He decides that his child won't be a "stray," forces her into marriage, and whisks her off to a tiny mountain town in North Carolina.
This book holds up surprisingly well and I think a lot of it is due to the humor that SEP injects into her stories but also the relationships she builds with her characters. Most of the story is Janie and Cal figuring each other out but there is a big chunk of Jane interacting with her mother- and grandmother-in-law and the relationships that these women build. Add in a B plot of Cal's parents rekindling their own romance and you have a story that even new readers will enjoy.

Four stars

This book came out February 1, 1997

Follows Heaven, Texas

Followed by Dream a Little Dream

Hard copy of mine

Opinions are my own