Booties And The Beast
She tried to tell herself it was the writer in him, finding story possibilities in everything, but she didn’t like the way his interest threatened to undermine her anger. “I don’t want to talk about me,” she said shortly. She was alarmed at the way the conversation kept coming back to her, when the whole point was to learn as much as she could about him so she could share it with Joel when he was old enough to ask about his father.
Her body had its own ideas, she found to her dismay. Sam sat so close that her senses were assailed by the woody fragrance of his aftershave lotion, coupled with the indefinable man-scent of Sam himself. The combination was relaxed and outdoorsy, not sophisticated like Richard, she thought, unwillingly comparing Richard with the man beside her. Sam’s aura was so overpoweringly alluring it was in danger of throwing her completely off balance. Richard had never affected her so strongly.
She wasn’t planning on dating Sam, she reminded herself hastily. After Richard, she enjoyed being accountable to no one but herself and Joel. So it hardly mattered whether Sam was the indoor or outdoor type, or given to group orgies behind his impressive wrought-iron gates.
Now where had that thought come from? What was it about him that made her thoughts turn in directions they had no business going? She and Richard had only split up a few weeks ago, so it wasn’t as if she were starved for a man’s attention.
The image of Sam’s savagely rumpled bed returned to her mind. She kept a rein on her runaway thoughts by reminding herself that he had slept with her half sister, made her pregnant then denied that the baby could possibly be his.
Sobering as the reminder was, still she had trouble keeping her mind focused. Was this what he had done to Ellen?
It wasn’t hard to see how it could happen, Haley thought. She pulled herself together with an effort. Sam might well be the kind of man who attracted women as effortlessly as a magnet attracted iron filings, but Haley had no intention of falling prey to his allure.
There was probably a good reason for his divorce, she told herself. Being the kind person she was, Ellen had accepted his explanation that he and his wife were simply incompatible, but Haley would have wanted to dig deeper. Was he a workaholic or a womanizer? Insanely jealous? That the fault could have been on his ex-wife’s side, she didn’t want to think. It brought her dangerously close to feeling compassion for him, and look where that had gotten Ellen!
For Joel’s sake Haley knew she had to keep a clear head and the best way to do that was to remind herself that he was The Beast and he wasn’t about to turn into a handsome prince any time soon. Had it been possible, he would surely have done so when Ellen had told him about the baby. Instead, he had rejected both her and their child. Haley made herself remember that part.
“I’d say your child is highly relevant to our discussion, if you’re to be my house sitter while I’m on tour,” he said, breaking into her thoughts.
“You misunderstand,” she said primly. “I’m only interviewing you about your requirements, not taking the job myself.”
“Why not? You’re not Miranda’s regular assistant. What happened to the pretty redhead with the infectious laugh? Donna—isn’t that her name?”
Telling herself she didn’t care that he obviously found Miranda’s assistant attractive, Haley nevertheless found great satisfaction in saying, “I’m only filling in while Donna’s on her honeymoon. She eloped with a client.”
She had surprised him, she saw, when his dark eyebrows arched upward. Serve him right if he had fancied Donna and she had run off with someone else. It was time he got a taste of his own medicine. At the same time, something uncomfortably like jealousy gripped her. What would it be like to be the object of his passion?
“Is she coming back?” he asked.
Didn’t the man ever give up? “She’ll be back in a few days with her new husband.” She gave the relationship extra emphasis to make sure he got the point.
“What will happen to you when she does?”
Had she misread his concern? For a moment she’d thought he was sufficiently interested in Donna not to care whether or not she was married, as long as she was coming back. Now it sounded as if he was anxious about Haley herself. She didn’t want his concern and she certainly didn’t need it, she told herself, but found it more pleasant than she wanted to. “She’ll return to her job and I’ll go back to my own work.”
“And that is?”
She didn’t want to talk about herself but he gave her little option. “I’m a systems planning consultant for small companies who don’t have full-time support staff. I organize their offices and their computer systems for maximum efficiency. Now can we—”
“Give me a minute to think.” He massaged his chin, looking thoughtful. From the aura of aftershave around him, he had evidently shaved this morning but his hair was so black that a hint of shadow already darkened his jaw, giving him a slightly piratical air. “Organizational skills and Miranda’s recommendation. You could be just the person I need. Last month my personal assistant left for Zimbabwe. I’ve been on a deadline so I haven’t had chance to replace him yet.”
It explained the chaos in the office, she thought. “Miranda understood you needed a house sitter.”
“I do, while I’m on tour with the new book. But it would be a great help if the same person could sort out the office for me while I’m gone.”
This wasn’t going according to Miranda’s script at all. In desperation, Haley pulled a clipboard out of her briefcase and consulted the points listed on it. “All the same, the decision isn’t up to me.”
“But it is up to me and if I decide you’re right for this job, Miranda won’t argue. She knows I pay well.” He named a fee that Haley knew was in excess of Miranda’s usual rates. Even taking out Miranda’s commission, the amount left would solve a lot of Haley’s problems.
It wouldn’t solve the main one, that he was Joel’s father, she told herself. All the same she couldn’t help thinking that working for him would give her a heaven-sent chance to find out more about him so she could tell her child when the time came. Knowing his father and having regular contact with him would have been preferable, but that wasn’t going to happen as long as Sam denied fathering Joel.
Haley knew only too well how it felt to grow up without really knowing your father. She still couldn’t fathom how her mother, the most scatterbrained woman on earth, had managed to marry a straitlaced history professor and have his child. They had parted when Haley was six, and her mother had re-married an entomologist who was as eccentric as his wife. Currently the two of them were somewhere in the Amazon jungle collecting butterflies for his work. She had last seen Greg and her mother when they’d come back to Australia to attend their daughter’s funeral.
Afterward her mother had stayed behind to help Haley, but within a couple of weeks she had created such chaos that Haley had decided she would cope better alone. Lovingly but firmly, she’d encouraged her mother to return to Greg in the jungle. She had suspected her mother was only too happy to comply. They loved each other but they had completely different ways of managing their lives.
Haley knew she took after her real father, who was the organized one in the family. Ellen had teased Haley about being able to put her hand on whatever she needed, while Ellen had inherited Greg’s talent for creating disorder. Haley had tried to help her sister get organized, but it had never worked for long. “Let’s face it, I take after my Dad and you take after yours,” Ellen had conceded, throwing up her hands.
Haley had to agree. She’d seen little of her father while she was growing up but she had seen enough to know how finicky he was. In her teens, she had attempted to get to know him, but even she found his fussiness daunting. Arriving so much as five minutes late earned her his disapproval. She could only imagine his reaction if she had, say, spilled her food or used the wrong cutlery. She had been careful to do neither, but it hadn’t exactly made for relaxing parent-child interactions.
To be fair, her father had tried to live up to her expectations, but their meetings always felt stilted and uncomfortable. It hurt to think her father knew more about Bess Tudor than Haley Glen and that he wasn’t going to change. It seemed their orderliness was about all they had in common.
After one such outing, he had said, “I’m truly sorry I can’t give you what you want, or know what to say to you. I don’t know the first thing about being a good father. You’re better off without me.”
She had cried for two days afterward, then decided to accept the situation and get on with her life. She was proud of what she’d achieved, putting a down-payment on a her own apartment and setting herself up as her own boss. But it didn’t stop the black moments, when she wondered what it was about her that her father had found so difficult to love, from coming. She wanted better for Joel, she thought fiercely. He wasn’t going to have the same black moments in his life if she could do something about it. Even if it meant taking Sam’s assignment herself.
She had seen enough of him already to be fairly sure that his mind wasn’t easily changed once he had made it up. It sounded as if he wasn’t about to budge about having her as his house sitter. Since she couldn’t do much about it without letting Miranda down, she decided she might as well make the most of the chance to fulfill her mission. But first she needed to be sure that he wouldn’t consider any other option.
“Can we at least go through the formalities?” she asked.
He looked pleased with himself. “Go ahead, as long as the name at the foot of that impressive checklist turns out to be yours.”
She started to ask questions and tick boxes, uncomfortably aware that she was as interested in him as much for herself as for her baby.
When she closed the file, he grinned at her and she crumbled inside. It was easier to remember him as The Beast when he scowled at her. Then she didn’t have this strange sensation of being swept out of her depth by a king tide.
“I was right, wasn’t I?” he asked.
Her confusion was genuine. “About what?”
“After filling in all those little boxes, you’re still perfect for the job.”
“How can you possibly know? You know nothing about me.” And he wouldn’t, if she had anything to do with it. Her blood ran cold at the prospect of him linking her with Ellen and treating her—and her sister’s baby—as cruelly.
“I don’t need to know any more. By the time you move in, I’ll be heading off on the tour. So we’ll only be together long enough for me to brief you on what needs doing, then you’ll have the place to yourself.”
She could swear he sounded disappointed, but told herself the strain of the meeting was making her imagine things. “You don’t have a problem with a baby staying in your house.”
His expression darkened. “My sister, Jessie, has two small children so the house is equipped for a baby. And in my line of work, I’m unlikely to have a problem with children.”
Only with Joel, she thought, quelling her reaction. “I could refuse to take the assignment.”
“But you won’t.”
She met his penetrating blue gaze with an equally direct one of her own. “What makes you so sure?”
“Because you don’t want to lose Miranda one of her best clients.”
With sinking heart, Haley knew that he had won.
Chapter Two
As she drove between the gates to Sam’s house, a curious feeling of homecoming overcame Haley. She told herself it was because this was her second visit, but knew it had more to do with the suitcases packed around the baby seat. They made her feel as if she was staying longer than the couple of weeks Sam required.
This time she didn’t get out of the car right away, but waited until Sam emerged and spoke to Dougal, although the dog was wagging its tail furiously, rather than barking a warning.
“Good morning,” she said, annoyed at the heat she felt surge into her face at the sight of Sam. Dressed in dark blue pants and a white summer-weight sweater, he looked less like The Beast of her sister’s experience and more like the kind of man Haley herself could be attracted to if she was crazy enough to let it happen.
He looked as uncomfortable as she felt. Maybe he just didn’t like babies, she thought as she unstrapped Joel from his baby seat. If so, he should have thought about that before getting Ellen pregnant.
“You’re late,” he said.
Haley frowned at him, stung by his tone. “I understood from Miranda that you don’t have to leave until this afternoon, so there’s plenty of time for you to brief me.” She was late because Joel had burbled strained turkey all over her best blouse, forcing her to change into a T-shirt before she could set off, but she didn’t say so. She felt unprofessional enough, arriving for a job with a baby and a mountain of possessions in tow, most of them to do with Joel’s care. “If you’ll show me my room, I’ll settle the baby down for a nap, then you can give me my instructions.”
He bounded down the front steps and picked up her largest suitcase as if it weighed nothing at all, then loaded his other arm with an assortment of possessions. His eyebrows rose. “What do you pack when you’re going away for a month?”
“Babies need a lot of things.”
His smile vanished as if a lightbulb had been switched off. “I wouldn’t know,” he said shortly, and started back up the steps.
She stared after his rigid back in consternation. What had she said? He couldn’t be upset because she’d arrived with the baby. He’d known from the beginning that they were a package, but he obviously didn’t want to have anything to do with Joel. He hadn’t even acknowledged the baby’s presence, she thought furiously. “He is a person, you know,” she snapped.
Sam froze on the top step, regarding her with an expression like thunder. “Excuse me?”
It was too late to close her fool mouth now, so she said, “Sam, this is Joel. Joel, this is Sam. Say hello to Joel, Sam.”
He looked as if he would rather strip naked on the step, an image that startled her because of the vivid way it sprang into her mind. Not somewhere she had any business going, she told herself as he said through clenched teeth, “Hello, Joel.”
“See? That wasn’t so hard, was it?”
Harder than she knew, Sam thought. Everything in him protested at the sight of the baby waving chubby arms at him, a living reminder of Sam’s own inadequacy. When he’d hired Haley, he’d been sure he could cope with her child living under his roof. He hadn’t expected the baby’s arrival to trigger a rush of paternal longing so strong it was like a physical pain.
Suddenly Haley thrust the child at him. “Now you’ve been introduced, would you mind holding Joel while I fetch his favorite toy? I just remembered I left it in the car.”
Before Sam could say a word she bounded back down the steps, leaving him with the baby. As the child’s scents engulfed him and the small hands clutched at him, Sam felt his stomach muscles twist. Joel looked exactly how Sam had imagined his own son would look before he discovered that it would never happen, and his heart felt as if it was being crushed in a giant hand.
Joel opened his mouth to protest. Instinctively Sam jiggled the baby up and down in his arms, and the child’s cry dropped to a whimper. “Hey now, she’ll be back in a minute,” Sam assured Joel. “We men can cope on our own for a short time, can’t we?”
Sam’s serious tone caught Joel’s attention. The whimpers faded altogether and the baby fixed Sam with huge, luminous eyes. Then he reached for the top button of Sam’s shirt and tugged on it.
Immediately Sam felt an answering tug deep inside, and his hold on the baby tightened as regret speared through him. He’d held babies before. His sister, Jessie, had two. But when they were born, Sam had still believed he would father children of his own someday. Now he knew it was impossible, and holding Joel heightened the aching sense of loss that was never far from Sam’s mind.
“Not your fault, cute stuff,” Sam said, hearing his voice sound husky with emotion. “You’re just the sort of kid I always hoped I’d have.”
Sam had Joel’s full attention. The baby hung onto Sam’s shirt and gave every sign of listening intently. “Yep, I wanted one just like you and one just like…” Sam caught himself about to say “your mother” and substituted, “…well, a little girl.”
At the word “girl,” Joel made muttering noises. Sam felt a smile start. “Don’t like girls, huh? You’ll change your tune one day, when you meet that special lady you can’t live without. I thought I’d found her in my ex-wife, Christine,” he explained to the baby. Joel’s head bobbed as if he understood every word, although Sam knew he couldn’t possibly. “Not that we’re the best example. She was a cover model I met at my publishers’ Christmas party. ‘Course it doesn’t have to turn out the way it did for us,” Sam went on, wondering if he’d gone completely crazy. Why was he telling this to a baby, for goodness sake? But Joel made a good listener, and Sam’s monologue was keeping the baby calm, so he decided it didn’t matter what he said, as long as he used a soothing tone.
“She said she didn’t mind that I couldn’t father children,” he went on in a monotone. “Even had her big shot doctor brother do the tests so we could keep the news in the family. Never did like me, her brother. Thought a writer wasn’t good enough for his sister. Medically speaking, he was right.”
Joel smacked him in the chest. “Bab-bab.”
“Yeah, pretty bad,” Sam agreed. “But then I can’t stand my ex’s brother either, so we’re even. But you don’t want to hear this. Heck, I don’t want to hear this.”
“Hear what?” Haley asked, bounding up the steps. Under her arm she carried a woolly lamb toy. Joel’s eyes lit up at the sight of his plaything and he reached out.
As she took the baby from him, Sam felt a twinge of remorse. “Men’s business,” he said gruffly, annoyed with himself for letting the baby get to him.
He hadn’t been prepared for the way Haley made him feel, either. Watching her settle the child on one hip, Sam felt flames leap inside him.
His sister, Jessie, claimed that the only good thing about being pregnant was the way her breasts filled out. Despite her recent motherhood, Haley’s breasts were still small, but they were in scale with the rest of her trim figure, Sam decided. She wore a wraparound skirt of Oriental-looking material in black and gold, with a black T-shirt that clung to her curves as if poured on. In her arms, the baby fisted a handful of the T-shirt and held on. Sam almost groaned aloud.
Joining them on the steps, Dougal barked and the baby’s eyes widened. Haley bent down, allowing the dog to sniff the infant. “Friend, Dougal,” she said firmly. The dog’s tail bannered and he gave the baby’s hand a gentle lick. Joel gurgled with delight, a smile breaking out on his chubby face. He caught a handful of the dog’s fur and pulled, but Dougal seemed to sense that he wasn’t to respond and stood like a statue. Carefully, Haley untangled the baby’s hand and straightened. Dougal glued himself to her side as if he had every intention of staying there for the next two weeks.
“Much more of that and he won’t want to know me,” Sam said, telling himself he wasn’t bothered by the dog’s apparent defection. Sure, he wasn’t. Any more than he was bothered by the Madonna-and-child image in front of him. Or the empty way his arms felt when Haley took the baby from him.
She looked up and smiled, and the sun came out. “Dogs have plenty of affection to go around. I’m just glad that Joel isn’t scared of him.”
Sam had promised himself he wouldn’t get involved with either Haley or her child, but would settle them in their quarters, brief her on what she was to do while he was away, then get the dickens out of here. Suddenly he felt a powerful urge to stick around. “Joel doesn’t look as if he’s scared of anything,” he said.
“Thunderstorms,” she admitted, jiggling the baby on her hip. “You don’t like bad old storms, do you, pumpkin?”
“He’s scared of storms?”
She nodded. A thunderstorm had been raging the night Ellen passed away and Haley couldn’t help wondering if the baby associated storms with the loss of his mother. She told herself he was far too young and, anyway, most babies disliked loud noises, but she found the connection curious.
Sam used the heavy case to wedge the front door open so she could carry the baby inside. As she passed him in the narrow opening, her hip brushed his. It was the slightest contact, nothing really, but awareness of him vibrated through her, leaving her breathless. This would have to stop. He was The Beast, remember? The baby in her arms ought to remind her, if she needed it.
Sam followed her inside and put her possessions down on the polished parquet floor while he closed the door. “Joel isn’t the only one. I was scared of thunderstorms when I was a boy.”
She knew her expression betrayed her surprise. He looked too overwhelmingly masculine and sure of himself to be scared of anything. “You were?”
He nodded. “When I was four, lightning struck a tree outside my bedroom window, severing a branch that crashed into my room, missing my bed by inches. I hated storms for years afterwards.”
The image of a terrified little boy lying in his bed while a storm raged around him filled her mind. Much as she hated to feel compassion for him, it was impossible not to. “Anyone would feel the same after that.”
“I outgrew it. Joel probably will, too.”
Suddenly she became aware of how close they were standing, almost within kissing distance, she thought, astonishing herself. How would it feel to have his generously proportioned mouth covering hers? Feathers of sensation whispered along her spine and she closed her eyes, the feel of his lips so palpable that her own parted in response.
She opened her eyes in amazement. What was going on here? She was suddenly glad that the baby in her arms provided a tangible barrier between them. Sam was the last man in the world she should fantasize about kissing.
She became aware that he was speaking to her. “I’ve put you in my room.”
“You’ve what?”
“Your room while I’m away,” he said, heading off her objection. “It has a separate dressing room large enough to make a nursery for Joel.”
“Oh, thanks.” How much more foolish could one woman feel? For a minute she’d thought…She drove the idea away by reminding herself that she was here to do a job. Perhaps not the one that Sam had hired her to do, but a job nonetheless.
If Sam suspected her real agenda, he wouldn’t offer her any hospitality, far less the use of his own room for herself and Joel, she knew. Reminding herself that Sam had left her no alternative if she was to obtain justice for Joel didn’t entirely appease her conscience. The sight of the baby’s angelic features helped Haley to harden her heart. Sam had not only rejected his son, but in profiting from Ellen’s idea for the Cosmic Panda character, Sam had robbed Joel of his birthright as well. All Haley needed was proof, and she meant to find it while Sam was away.
Her sister had told Haley the bare bones of the story. As a book illustrator, Ellen had met Sam at a publishing dinner three years before, and she had ended up sketching ideas on the back of a menu. According to Ellen, that was when Cosmic Panda was born.
Haley didn’t know what would have happened if Ellen hadn’t become ill six months after giving Sam the idea for the character. Ellen hadn’t wanted anyone to know how ill she was, and Sam had promised to let her work with him on future Panda books as soon as she recovered. Being Ellen, she had put the work before her own welfare, and had urged Sam to hire another artist in the meantime. The first book had been published to great acclaim. The only name on it was Sam’s.
He had kept his word about hiring Ellen to illustrate the second Panda book when she let him know she was working again. But Haley had read all the publicity, looking in vain for him to give her sister any of the credit. Although plainly disappointed, Ellen had insisted she didn’t want a fuss made. While Ellen lived, Haley had felt bound to abide by her sister’s wishes. Now she was free of that obligation.