“Baby by Chance” by Elda Minger

She hadn’t expected to be expecting …

Hav­ing a fam­i­ly was­n’t part of Cin­na­mon Robert’s five-year plan, but when she acci­den­tal­ly fell under the spell of a hyp­no­tist who’d been hired by her baby-crazed twin sis­ter, she sud­den­ly became a warm, will­ing woman ripe to con­ceive. Which is exact­ly what hap­pened … by Chance.

Ramblin’ man turned family man?

Chance Dev­ereux had to won­der if he was­n’t the one under a spell .. ’cause ever since sweet-and-spicy Cin­na­mon had come into his life — mak­ing him a dad­dy-to-be — he’d start­ed hear­ing wed­ding bells.

Chance want­ed to make the moth­er of his child an hon­est woman … but could he hope for mar­i­tal bliss after Cin­na­mon came to?

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All Cin­na­mon Roberts thought was that she was going to accom­pa­ny her twin sis­ter Pep­per to a hyp­no­tist, who was going to help the frus­trat­ed Pep­per become more accus­tomed to hav­ing sex so she could final­ly be preg­nant. The trou­ble began with the care­less­ness of the hyp­no­tist, start­ing with not rec­og­niz­ing the signs that Cin­na­mon was under the same trance as her twin Pep­per and end­ing with the poor selec­tion of a post-hyp­not­ic trig­ger, the word “cayenne”.

When Cin­na­mon met Chance Dev­ereux lat­er, when he men­tioned the word “cayenne”, Cin­na­mon imme­di­ate­ly went into a pas­sion­ate state, aston­ish­ing Chance, who, unknow­ing the actu­al state she was in, decid­ed to take ‘advan­tage’ of the sit­u­a­tion. Only after­ward does the trance wear off does Cin­na­mon final­ly real­ize that she was preg­nant, much to their mutu­al aston­ish­ment. That’s when the estab­lished tropes of the romance nov­el begin to appear, and as expect­ed, it all works out in the end.

Com­men­tary: Three clas­sic fails in media hyp­no­sis: first off, the unin­ten­tion­al wit­ness trance, and, sec­ond­ly, the inad­ver­tent post-hyp­not­ic trig­ger­ing, all lead­ing up to the third, that being the inabil­i­ty of the per­son unin­ten­tion­al­ly hyp­no­tized to ignore or resist the suggestions.