by Susan Meier
The other end of the bargain wasn’ t a total prize either. He might be getting care for Sabrina, but a stranger—no, an employee, someone who could take bits of his personal life into the office—would be living in his home.
Man, he hadn’t really thought this through.
They parked on the street in front of the huge Victorian-style house where Madelyn’s parents lived. White vinyl siding and modern green shutters had replaced the original exterior treatment of the dwelling that he suspected was built in the 1940s. But the actual shape of the structure hadn’t been altered so it managed to retain all of its charm. Flower gardens encircled the front porch. The manicured lawn spoke of a great deal of tender loving care.
If nothing else, Madelyn and her family were neat. Point one in her favor.
Madelyn opened the SUV door and jumped out. “I’ll be right back.”
Ty had assumed he would wait in the car with Sabrina while Madelyn got her things. But when a series of short bursts erupted from the baby as if she couldn’t decide whether or not to cry because Madelyn was gone, Ty punched open his door and leaped out of the SUV. With a potential storm in Sabrina’s whimpers of discontent, he didn’t have to debate his next move. He quickly pulled the baby out of the little plaid car seat, then scurried to catch Madelyn on the sidewalk.
She stopped and gave him a look he couldn’t quite interpret. “Why don’t you and the baby wait for me in the car?”
“No way. You’re not leaving me with two feet of person that cries when it wants something and can’t control its bladder.”
Madelyn rolled her eyes and turned away from him, heading to the porch again. “You’re going to make a terrific dad.”
“Actually, I did make a pretty good dad for my brothers. I think that’s why Scotty chose me as the one to be guardian—”
Ty quit talking when he realized he was on the verge of telling a woman he hardly knew some incredibly personal information about himself. But before Madelyn could demand he continue, a sixtysomething man rounded the corner of the house. His crew cut was gray. So was the five o’clock shadow on his chin and jaw. He was also short. But beneath his T-shirt were broad shoulders and a flat stomach.
“W…ho’s that?”
“My dad.”
Dad?
Oh great! Ty had been on his own for so long he forgot other people had parents. And this guy was a piece of work. He looked like a marine who hadn’t yet gotten the message that he was retired. Someone who, if provoked, didn’t yell or scream or argue, he punched.
Ty realized another bad thing about his arrangement with his PR gal. Porter’s most successful businessman, avowed bachelor and reputed scrooge, had coerced this G.I. dad’s obviously young, probably innocent—if only in her father’s eyes—daughter into living with him. For money.
Great.
“Hey, little Miss Maddy! Who have you got there?”
Ty stole a peek at the reddening face of his temporary nanny. Not only was her dad not going to like their arrangement, but also Ty was just about certain little Miss Maddy probably already knew that. “Little Miss Maddy?”
“Just shut up.” Madelyn mumbled to Ty before she faced her dad. “Ty, this is my dad, Ron Gentry. Dad, this is Ty Bryant.”
“I know who Mr. Bryant is. Everybody in town knows Mr. Bryant.” He walked over and extended his hand. “The question is, why is he here?”
Oh, just here to get some things for your daughter so she can live with me for a while.
Silencing the voice in his head as he balanced Sabrina on one arm, Ty shook hands with Ron Gentry. “It’s nice to meet you.”
“Nice to meet you, too.” Miss Maddy’s dad eyed Ty speculatively. “You here for dinner? Because Maddy’s mom had some big church thing this afternoon. Supper’s not going to be for a while.”
Before Ty could answer, Madelyn did. “That’s okay, Dad. We’re not here for dinner. Ty just got custody of this baby—”
“Cute little thing,” her dad interrupted, glancing at Sabrina, but his gaze quickly jumped back to Ty because he was definitely more interested in Ty than the baby.
Once again Madelyn came to the rescue. “Yes, she is cute. Her name’s Sabrina. But Ty doesn’t have a nanny, so I’m going to help him care for the baby this weekend.”
Score another point for Miss Maddy. She wasn’t one to let anybody intimidate her. Not even her dad.
Liking her direct approach, Ty met Ron’s gaze, as Ron said, “All weekend?”
“Maybe longer,” Madelyn said, while Ty continued to hold Ron’s gaze, taking his cue from Madelyn to face this head-on. “I’ve helped with Arlene and Jeff’s kids. I can certainly care for one baby.”
Good one! Ty broke his stare-down with Ron to bestow a look of respect on the big guy’s daughter. She had deliberately misinterpreted her dad’s concern to steer him off track. Point three. And confirmation that Ty hadn’t misjudged her. She could handle this. She could probably handle his PR, too. Even though just thinking about having to go out in public and make nice with a bunch of people who hated him made Ty want to sigh with disgust, at least he knew Madelyn could do the job.
Ron sounded like he was growling when he said, “I wasn’t talking about the baby. I was—”
Worried about his daughter sleeping with the town tyrant, Ty thought, just barely holding back a grimace. But Madelyn didn’t let her dad go there.
“You know what, Dad? We’ll discuss this later. Right now, I’ve got to get some things from my room.”
With that she turned and jogged up the steps to the porch. Ty took one look at her dad and decided he wasn’t hanging around. Explaining this situation was Madelyn’s job. And he did mean job. He had hired her to work for him, not…not…
An odd feeling tightened his chest when he tried to think of Madelyn and himself together, and he couldn’t form the words or the images in his mind. Madelyn was younger than he was. Way too young for him to even entertain a casual fling. She was as safe with him as Sabrina was.
Madelyn didn’t feel a qualm of conscience about leaving Ty with her dad. Though she’d staved off her father’s questions long enough that she would have time to gather her things, Ty should have been the one doing the talking. After all, this was his plan. Let him justify it to her dad.
But when she turned to grab a few T-shirts from a drawer, Ty Bryant was right behind her. She gasped and clutched her chest. “What!”
“Your dad thinks we’re going to sleep together tonight.”
She sighed. “Don’t worry. If I tell him we won’t, he’ll believe me.”
“You’re not my type,” Ty continued as if she hadn’t spoken. “Too young.” She saw him look around at the wedding ring quilt on her bed, her white Priscilla tie-back curtains. “And too nice.”
“What? You only date nasty women?”
“Sophisticates,” Ty corrected.
Madelyn tossed two pair of shorts in her duffel bag. Right. She knew that. Just as she knew it was wrong to be attracted to him because holding a baby did not change a man’s personality, she also knew that the CEO of Bryant Development would have absolutely no interest in her. But that was okay. She didn’t want him to be interested in her.
So why the hell did having him in her bedroom make her pulse jump?
Three reasons immediately popped into Madelyn’s head. First, with his shiny black hair and obsidian eyes, the man was absolutely delicious-looking. Second, holding the baby softened the hard edge of his personality. And, third, he was two feet away from her underwear drawer. All he had to do was look down to see her collection of lacy panties. Any one of those accounted for why her pulse was jumping. But the third was the best bet.
“Do you want to wait for me in the car?”
“No. I’m fine,” Ty assured her as if his comfort were the only thing to be considered.
“I’m not. I have to get a toothbrush, underwear and girlie things most guys don’t want to see.” She drew a long-suffering breath. “Could yo
u just leave?”
For a second it appeared that he would tell her it didn’t bother him to see her undies. Not because he wanted a peek at her panties, but because he was trying to prove that sophistication of his. Luckily, he thought the better of it.
He glanced at Sabrina who was happily occupied with a rattle toy, and apparently decided it was safe to be alone with her for a few minutes. “I’ll see you in the car.”
“Wonderful,” Madelyn said, not meaning one syllable of the word.
She packed quickly, and scurried down the steps, but when she rounded the corner to rush to the front door she ran into her mom. A flour-covered apron covered Penney Gentry’s cropped jeans and T-shirt. A streak of flour decorated her graying brown hair.
Yet another great. Her dad thought she was moving in with the man who controlled the town and he wasn’t happy. But he wasn’t a match with Madelyn in a battle of wits because there were certain things he wouldn’t talk about in mixed company. Sex being the big one. Which meant he had called her mom home from baking pies for the upcoming church social to talk some sense into his daughter.
Another magic moment in the scrapbook of her life.
“You’re spending the weekend with a man?”
“In Atlanta, I could have spent hundreds of weekends with men and you wouldn’t have had a clue. But you knew I didn’t because you trusted me. Don’t spaz on me now, Mom.”
“I trusted you because we taught you better.”
“So, if you trusted me not to lie to you about Atlanta, that’s got to mean I’m not lying now. I really am spending the weekend with Ty Bryant to help him with his baby.”
Her mother smiled, making her green eyes twinkle. “You’re bad.”
“No, I’m good. And if it makes you feel any better, Mr. Bryant assured me he’s not interested. I’m too nice for him.”
Preoccupied with brushing the flour out of her hair, Penney absently said, “He only dates nasty women?”
“I asked him the very same question.” She kissed her mom’s cheek. “Go back to church and finish the pies. I’ll be home Monday or Tuesday night. I promised I would stay until he found a nanny, but I figured out in the car on the way over that he can probably hire someone from a reputable agency temporarily. We may not be able to get someone over a weekend, but Monday or Tuesday isn’t unrealistic. As soon as we get to his house I’ll have him call a service.”
“Okay,” her mom said with a smile. “I’ll handle your dad.”
“I’d appreciate it.”
When Madelyn came running down the walk, duffel bag over her shoulder, overnight case bobbing at her side and her face bright with the emotion of her parental confrontations, a weird sensation enveloped Ty. The way the scene was set, they could have been eloping.
He kicked that thought right out of his mind. But it ran back in and wouldn’t budge. And he knew why. Madelyn Gentry was a very sexy, very attractive woman, and though he might be discriminating he wasn’t dead. He found her as attractive as any man would find her. And now that he’d seen three rows of neatly folded pink, red and black panties, he could form those pictures and images that wouldn’t initially appear in his brain and she wasn’t as safe with him as he’d thought.
So he reminded himself that he wasn’t interested. First, she was too darned young for him. But, second, most women who pursued him only wanted his money. Madelyn, with dreams of establishing her own business, would be no exception. In fact, now that he thought about it, her financial situation was a lot like his former fiancée Anita’s had been when he met her. Wrestling with a failing business, Anita had impressed him as being tough and determined, so he’d happily lent her money….
He groaned, his hands forming fists on the steering wheel. That situation had ended abysmally. Anita hadn’t merely made him a laughingstock by taking him to the cleaners financially. She’d cheated on him the whole time they dated. Worse, she’d also cost Ty a brother. When Cooper discovered Anita was cheating, he’d warned Ty, but Ty had accused Cooper of using the information to manipulate him. By the time the truth came out that Anita was the one manipulating him and Cooper had been right about her cheating, Cooper was long gone. He’d packed his bags and moved to parts unknown and they hadn’t seen him since.
Ty ran his hand down his face. That was a point in his life that he didn’t care to revisit, though he was glad he had. The fact that Madelyn was more than ten years his junior might not cool his libido, but her being totally broke like his former fiancée certainly did. And that knowledge would keep him the hell away from her.
Madelyn opened the passenger side door of the SUV. “All set.”
He didn’t say anything. Not a word. He and Madelyn had only gotten chummy out of necessity. He’d had to talk to her to form this alliance and figure out the nuances of the deal. But now that he had accepted the fact he had a baby, and had a solid idea of Madelyn’s personality from her dealings with her dad, he knew how to handle both the baby and the new nanny.
So the conversation ended here. He had work to do when they got home tonight. Then there were telephone calls to occupy him tomorrow and file folders that would keep him amused on Sunday.
And Madelyn had a baby to care for. As far as Ty was concerned, they really were “all set.”
Ty Bryant hadn’t said a word to her during the drive to his house, but when they arrived at his understated Cape Cod and found the entire porch littered with boxes, he was suddenly talkative again.
“I don’t suppose you know how to assemble a crib?”
Madelyn gaped at him. “Even if I could, am I supposed to balance Sabrina on my hip while I screw in the bolts?”
“I’m sure women in primitive cultures do it.”
“And I’m sure men in primitive cultures build their own cribs. They don’t order them from a department store.”
“I didn’t order this stuff from a department store. I have a friend whose wife has connections at…”
“Whatever! Just put the crib together while I go look for something to make for dinner.”
She left him standing amid the baby things and, with Sabrina on her hip, went in search of supper. Unfortunately, she didn’t even find a box of macaroni in his cupboards. Though she had to admit his house was interesting. Not what she’d expected. The cherrywood cabinets in the kitchen gleamed. The sitting room she stumbled upon as she tried to find her way back to the foyer had a neat yellow contemporary sofa and chair with heavy-wood end tables and a wall-sized entertainment unit that probably cost a bundle. The dining room housed a light oak table and hutch filled with sparkly stemware that looked like it was never used.
When she returned to the foyer, Ty was nowhere in sight, but she saw he had hauled everything in from the porch. The boxes and bags were scattered atop the sand-colored ceramic tile. But she was more interested in the foyer’s newly painted white walls that were decorated with what appeared to be antique mirrors. She couldn’t deny that Ty Bryant owned a nice house, but it wasn’t as grand as she expected for a guy who ran a multimillion dollar business.
Because Ty was gone and so was the crib box, she assumed he was in the room he intended to use as a nursery, assembling the baby’s bed. She climbed the stairs and walked toward the only open door. From the hall she could see the room already had a single bed and maple dresser. Thick gray carpeting covered the floor. It made sense to assume he was making a nursery from one of his guest rooms, which was good, but that didn’t put food in the cupboards and she was hungry.
She entered talking. “Are you on some kind of starvation diet?”
Seeing him sitting on the floor, with his black jacket and tie removed and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, Madelyn stopped dead in her tracks. His very neat hair had become tousled and he looked so darned sexily rumpled that she lost her breath.
“No. If you didn’t find any food to cook, it’s because I usually eat out.”
Juggling Sabrina on her hip, Madelyn conside
red it very lucky that he didn’t glance up as he spoke because she wasn’t sure she could take her eyes off him. He was just plain yummy-looking.
When several seconds lapsed without her reply, he peered up at her. “What? No smart remark about my always eating out?”
She swallowed and quickly looked away, as if inspecting what he had done with the crib. “I’m ordering pizza.”
He pretended to shudder. “Oh, that was scathing.”
“I mean it.”
He shrugged and went back to work, fitting the metal springs into the wooden sides of the crib.
“And you’re paying.”
“Fine,” he said, as if he were doing her a huge favor.
Madelyn stared at him, not understanding how he could think he was doing her a favor, when this entire job was nothing but a favor from her to him. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of letting him see he annoyed her. Rather than storm out as she might have done, she very casually walked out. Downstairs, she grabbed the wall phone in the kitchen and dialed the number for pizza delivery from memory, ordered what she wanted—to hell with his choice—and then rummaged through Sabrina’s diaper bag so she could feed the baby first.
If he wanted to aggravate her day and night for the next three days, he had better be ready for the consequences. She had enough experience with her dad that she could take on any chauvinist, and in a perverse way she might even enjoy it. God knew, Ty’s attitude helped her to forget how good-looking he was.
When the pizza arrived, Madelyn was bathing Sabrina for bed so she let Ty answer the front door. She took her time washing, drying and dressing the baby. Then, because Ty had assembled the crib, she set Sabrina in a safety seat while she snapped new sheets on the mattress, wondering how Ty knew what to get his friend’s wife to order for the baby. But she stopped that thought. She’d bet her bottom dollar he called his friend and simply told him to tell his wife to order everything needed for a baby.
It must be nice.
By the time she had Sabrina tucked into bed, Madelyn had herself worked into a sufficient low-level anger from the day’s events. She was sure her mood would keep her on her toes with her sarcastic boss so she would stop noticing he was too damned sexy for a grouch. But when she entered the kitchen and found him eating pizza at the round wooden table while he skimmed the newspaper, the whole scene felt so “normal” and so “right” that she was bombarded by images of them as a happy couple.
