by Susan Meier
The man didn’t even want to be in the same room with her son and she suspected he wasn’t saying anything about Brady right now only because he had more pressing concerns. She couldn’t possibly be attracted to someone who disliked her baby so much that he wouldn’t keep her as his housekeeper. So why had her heart flip-flopped and her chest tightened, just because he looked at her? Hadn’t she already made this mistake with Mick?
“Can you manage without him for a few days?”
She shook her head as if to clear a haze. “I’m sorry. I missed what you said.”
“I asked if you could manage without Slim for a few days.”
She hesitated. Furniture would begin arriving today. Slim had assigned two hands to help her, but she had no idea if two men would be enough. Still, Jeb’s plate was full. She wouldn’t add to his stress.
“Yes. I can manage.”
Jeb shook his head. “That pause you took says you’re not sure you can.”
“I’m not. I don’t know how much of the furniture will get here today. And we’re also on a deadline. Every pair of hands helps.”
“Okay, see how it goes and if you need more men, don’t pussyfoot around, ask.”
She nodded. He snapped the lid on his travel mug and left the kitchen. Sophie let out her breath. She had to get a hold of herself. Not only was her attraction to Jeb so strong it was frightening, but she had to work here for another two weeks. If nothing else, she had to keep her reactions to herself. With Slim gone Jeb didn’t need the added burden of having to tiptoe around her. If anything, she should find a way to pitch in and help.
It didn’t take much thinking to figure out what she could do. Though Jeb had told her dinner was no longer her responsibility, with the change in his workload all bets were off. Nine chances out of ten he wouldn’t have time to get his own supper and if she fixed him something, he’d appreciate it.
The question was could they handle being in the same room for twenty or so minutes while he ate?
Furniture began arriving at noon. The two men Slim had assigned to her, Bob and Monty, assisted the delivery men with unloading trucks and carted the sofas and chairs, boxes and crates to rooms Sophie designated. They didn’t unpack anything, merely got everything to its proper place, knowing they’d have their work cut out for them the following day.
In between deliveries, Sophie put a pan of three-cheese ziti in the oven. She wouldn’t beg Jeb to eat. If he refused dinner, she would simply smile and let him go his own way. But her conscience wouldn’t let her shirk her responsibility in a time when everybody should be pitching in.
At dark, Jeb entered the kitchen, his face drawn and tired. The steps he took were slow. He even closed the door softly, as if he barely had any energy.
Sophie turned to the stove, making her appearance in the kitchen as casual, normal, as possible. They were supposed to be housekeeper and boss, not potential lovers. She’d already proven that when she behaved professionally, he did, too, so maybe if she stuck to that principle, he’d follow suit.
Her back to him as she stirred, she said, “Have you had supper?”
“No.”
“Good. I made three-cheese ziti.” She faced him again and smiled cautiously. “It’s one of my specialties. I could have it on the table in ten minutes, if you’re interested.”
For a few seconds he didn’t reply. Sophie held her breath. She knew he was thinking about that kiss, about their attraction, about whether or not spending this much time alone was a good idea. She couldn’t believe he was so afraid of being alone with her that he’d go hungry rather than let her cook for him but she also didn’t really know him. And that was another thing she had to remember when their attraction began to get the best of her.
Finally he said, “I don’t have to eat in the dining room, do I?”
“It’s easier for me if you eat in the kitchen.”
“Can I clean up first?”
“Sure. That’ll give me time to toss a salad.”
He left the kitchen and Sophie sucked in a breath. Her preparing supper for him was the right thing to do. If they behaved like a normal boss and housekeeper, it might also be a way for them to get beyond the attraction neither one of them wanted.
But just as she grabbed the pot holders to pull the ziti from the oven, Brady’s soft cries issued from the baby monitor and she froze.
Oh, no!
She raced to her crying baby, hoping she could coax him back to sleep before Jeb returned from cleaning up, but from the way he bounced and yelped when she entered the bedroom she knew he was too awake to drift back to sleep with a back rub. And she didn’t have time to rock him.
She glanced from the door to the crib and back again. She had no choice. She had to take Brady to the high chair.
Jeb walked into the kitchen to find Sophie busy at the stove. He pulled a chair away from the table and immediately noticed the baby in the high chair beside it. The kid grinned up at him.
He pulled in a silent breath. This had to have been the worst day of his life. Not only was his foreman gone and his ranch in total confusion, but he’d spent the day thinking about a kiss that had been a whopper of a mistake. Now, he had a baby six inches away from him.
But just like everything else that had happened in the past fifteen hours, even this meal wasn’t part of the agenda. Having the little boy at the table must have been unavoidable, or Sophie wouldn’t have him here. The woman had done nothing but try to please him since she’d arrived at the Silver Saddle. Tonight she’d been ready with supper—even though he hadn’t asked. Surely, he could muster twenty minutes of civility for her baby?
He glanced over.
The kid grinned again.
His lungs felt as if they had filled with cement, but he refused to give into the sorrow, the loss, the self-pity. None of his troubles were this baby’s fault.
“Hey…” He paused. What had Slim called him? Brody? Bradley? Brady. “Hey, Brady.”
The little boy pounded his rattle on the high chair tray.
Sophie brought a salad to the table and this time when Jeb’s heart turned over in his chest it was for an entirely different reason. His blood hadn’t ever boiled in his veins the way it had from a thirty-second kiss meant to dissuade himself and the woman setting a salad in front of him. He’d wanted to show her they shouldn’t play with fire, and all he’d accomplished was to throw gas on the flames.
With the salad in front of him, Sophie headed back to the stove. He squeezed his eyes shut, told himself he was thirty-five years old, owner of a thriving business, too smart to let a little thing like emotion ruin his plans.
“I’m sorry that I had to bring Brady to the kitchen. He was sleeping and I thought he was down for the night, but—”
Jeb stopped her with a wave of his hand. “It’s fine.”
She sucked in a relieved breath. “Thanks. I’m sorry—”
Yet another apology from a woman who really hadn’t done anything wrong. Her fear of him shamed him. Life had treated this woman abysmally. He knew it. Now he was adding to her misery. “Don’t say you’re sorry. This is fine. I’m fine. We’re all fine.”
“Okay.”
A few seconds passed in silence as he grabbed a dinner roll and buttered it. The baby pounded his rattle on the tray. Made soft cooing noises. Laughed at nothing.
From the stove, Sophie called, “Are you having fun back there?”
He giggled.
Jeb put another pat of butter on his roll, desperately trying to ignore them.
But when she came to the table with a bowl of green beans, she looked at Jeb, not the baby.
“Can I ask you a question?”
The loner in him, the man who’d realized five years ago when Laine had left him that he’d always be alone, wanted to say no. But his fair side, the part of him that knew just how wrong it was to make a woman feel embarrassed for her child, wouldn’t let him. He focused on his roll. “Sure. You can ask a question.”
&nb
sp; “What is it about babies that you don’t like?”
His knife stopped. She’d gone straight for the jugular. The moment of truth. The point where he either spilled his guts or gave her just enough of an answer to satisfy her curiosity.
He cleared his throat. No matter how much he wanted to be fair, the bottom line truth she was digging for wasn’t any of her business. So, he simply said, “I don’t dislike babies. I just haven’t been around them much.”
“Oh.”
He dug into his salad.
“Because of your parents’ lifestyle?”
He nodded.
“Not a lot of people with kids on yachts?”
“Not a lot of people who live to party actually have kids. And if they do, they’re typically hidden away with a nanny.”
“Do you ever wish you’d been left with a nanny?”
He had. A million times over he’d wished his parents had purchased a home. Anywhere. In the country. In the city. Anywhere. They could have even left him with a nanny. They could have left him with an army of nannies and he wouldn’t have cared because he could have consistently attended school, made friends, known stability. Then he wouldn’t have made his mistake with Laine. He wouldn’t have hurt her or himself. He wouldn’t have the feeling he was tumbling over a waterfall every time he looked at the woman serving him dinner.
But, again, that was his private misery. Not something he’d share with a woman he’d known about a week, a woman who’d be leaving his ranch in another two.
“My parents did what they did. I learned long ago not to wish for things that didn’t or can’t happen.” Before she could ask another question, he quickly said, “What about you? Have you ever wished you’d married Brady’s dad?”
It was a low blow to turn the tables so harshly, but when she paused and licked her lips, Jeb forgot all about Brady’s dad and her possible reply. His gaze fell to her mouth and he remembered every second of kissing her. The fire in his blood. The silkiness of her lips. The way they seemed to fit together so perfectly.
“Like every unmarried pregnant woman, I thought getting married would solve all our problems. So, yeah, at first I did wish I could have married Brady’s dad.” She rolled her eyes. “Boy, would that have been a mistake!”
“What was he like?” Jeb asked, hoping against hope she’d tell him that her ex was just like him so he could easily talk himself out of liking her, wanting her.
“He was very focused.”
“Really?” Apparently he and her ex were alike. “Was he building a business or something?”
“He was building a life. He had a great job, made lots of money and could afford to have absolutely anything he wanted. So what he was doing was creating a lifestyle, a home.”
Jeb frowned. From everything he’d seen, Sophie was exactly the kind of woman a man would want to create a home with. What she planned to do with his house was magazine worthy. So her boyfriend dumping her didn’t make any sense.
“If he was building a life I’m not sure I understand how you didn’t fit.”
“Oh, I fit,” she readily replied. “It was Brady who didn’t.”
Jeb’s heart flopped over in his chest and he glanced at the perfect, happy boy in the high chair. Righteous indignation exploded in him for the child unwanted by his dad and he could have happily found the man and beat him to a pulp. But even as part of him condemned Brady’s dad, the other part reminded him that he wasn’t any better. And that, the truth he avoided more than confronted, was his real avenue to obliterate his longing for a relationship between him and his housekeeper. And maybe it was time he not only faced it, but also he gave her enough of a hint that she’d get the stars out of her eyes, too.
He cleared his throat. “The truth is, Sophie, some people aren’t cut out to be fathers.”
“That’s what Mick said.”
Jeb waited a beat, then another, until she returned to the table with a glass of iced tea. When her gaze found his, he quietly said, “I’m not, either.”
He saw from the way her eyes sharpened, then darkened, that she got his message. Women with babies shouldn’t get too attached to men who weren’t cut out to be fathers. Though he’d been subtly telling her that by his behavior since the moment she pulled Brady from her car, saying the words aloud pounded home the point.
She stiffened and shifted ever so slightly, putting herself between him and her son, as if protecting him, and he got her message. Her baby would always take precedence. Especially over something as fleeting as a potential romance.
Good for her.
He ate the rest of his dinner in near silence, while Sophie puttered behind him, storing leftovers, stacking dishes in the dishwasher. When they did talk it was about Slim’s mother’s upcoming surgery. Sophie volunteered to call her father and get background information about the procedure, but Jeb reminded her that he could look it up on the Internet, closing the door because he didn’t want to get cozy with her. He didn’t want to depend on her for personal things. Hell, he didn’t even want to have personal discussions with her. He just wanted to be left alone.
After the main course, he refused cobbler and walked out of the kitchen as if nothing major had happened between them. But as he strode through the downstairs corridor to the stairway that led to the family room and ultimately the weight room, he knew that was a lie. Something major had happened. She hadn’t merely cooked for him. They’d talked and he’d told her something he hadn’t ever told anyone else.
But it had been unavoidable. They had to deal with their attraction once and for all. They’d hit the point where he had to come right out and say he wasn’t cut out to be a dad, so there’d be no more guessing. No more confusion. No more wondering. She’d simply stay away.
It was exactly what he wanted.
So, why did he feel so awful?
As he passed the hall closet on his way to change into sweats to exercise, he noticed the door was ajar. With an absent movement, he raised his arm to close it, but as he did he saw a swatch of pink and he stopped.
Seeing the box of things Laine had left behind, his entire body hummed with emotion. Anger. Sadness. Anticipation. Wishing. Hoping.
Not wanting to go down that road again, he tried to close the door, but the corner of the box hung out, over the thin metal runner for the sliding panel. That’s why the door wouldn’t close. Somebody had been in here.
Sophie.
She knew there had been a woman in his life. One of the men might even have mentioned that Jeb had been married before.
He stifled a groan. No wonder she’d been so quiet when he’d told her he wasn’t cut out to be a dad. She’d probably been jumping to all kinds of conclusions. She might have even envisioned a sad wife, longing for children, leaving because Jeb refused to have any.
Damn Laine for leaving these things.
Steeled for a rush of pain, Jeb stooped beside the box. He looked down at the pink weights, pink towels, pink everything. He pictured Laine working out, using the weights, laughing as they ran side by side on the treadmills, drying off with one of the hideous pink towels.
He picked up the weight, forced himself to feel it, to remember the sound of it crashing through the mirrored wall across from the weight bench.
Pain strong enough that she’d lost her temper, lost control and done something she never would have done in a million years. Just as she’d said things that she never would have even contemplated had their situation not been so heartrending.
That’s why he wouldn’t even consider exploring his feelings for Sophie. He wouldn’t put Sophie through the kind of emotional pain that arose when a woman got involved with him.
After dressing herself and Brady the next morning, Sophie made her way to the kitchen, where she found Jeb leaning against the counter, waiting for the coffee to brew.
She paused in the doorway, not sure if she should pretend she forgot something and leave before he made an issue of Brady being in the same room, or push the
envelope. The night before he hadn’t minded Brady being at the table. After a bit of hemming and hawing around, he had admitted he wasn’t cut out to be a father, but, oddly, that had actually made sense of many things. A man who supported an orphanage couldn’t possibly be opposed to a baby, but he might worry that with a fatherless kid underfoot he’d be forced into the role of surrogate dad. A role he didn’t want.
“I started the coffee.”
She took a cautious step into the room. “So I see.”
He turned to the counter, reached for something on the other side of the coffeepot and faced her again, displaying the pink weight she’d found in the box of junk in the gym.
“There’s a box of this stuff in the closet in front of the weight room shower. It belonged to my ex-wife. Have one of the boys put it out in the trash barrel.”
She said, “Okay,” but her mind was going a million miles a second. Not because he’d admitted he’d been married before, but because he still wasn’t reacting to Brady. Did this mean that with his objection to being cast in the role of father out in the open, he now didn’t mind being around Brady—as long as she didn’t try to get him to play daddy?
She took a few careful steps into the kitchen, walking to the cabinet where she stored Brady’s cereal. Unfazed, Jeb turned to open the cupboard door above the coffeemaker. He pulled down his travel mug and poured in cream, as if it were any other morning. Nothing wrong. Nothing amiss.
He didn’t mind having her baby in the room!
The coffeemaker groaned and he picked up the coffeepot to fill his travel mug.
With her baby on her hip, she walked to the refrigerator to grab the milk to make Brady’s cereal, still watching Jeb out of her peripheral vision, checking for any sign that he wanted her baby gone. But as she opened the refrigerator door, she caught him staring at Brady with a look of longing so intense it nearly stole her breath.
She ducked into the refrigerator before he realized she’d seen it, but that expression totally confused her. That was the look of a man who loved kids. Yearned for kids. Not a guy who didn’t want to be a dad. How could he believe he wasn’t cut out to be a father?
