by Arlene James
“You should check it first,” Emily advised as the child snatched it out of his hand. “The milk could be spoiled.”
“Mother filled it before we left the ranch,” Logan muttered, “and with the outside temperature in the fifties, it isn’t likely to have spoiled yet. I just didn’t know where Mother had put it.”
The baby had already guided the nipple to her mouth and now put her head back, nursing strenuously. “Let’s get your sweater off, little lady,” Emily crooned, carefully slipping free one arm and then another while the child nursed industriously, passing the bottle back and forth from hand to hand.
Logan leaned a hip against the desk, folding his arms. “She’s been screaming for the last half hour,” he said. “I tried the pacifier, but she spit it at me.”
“Wouldn’t you spit out rubber if you wanted milk?” Emily mused, lifting her chin as the baby reached for her glasses with one hand while holding the bottle with the other.
Logan sighed resignedly. “I just don’t know how to read her. She’s like an alien life-form! How am I supposed to deal with that?”
Emily tossed the sweater onto the desk and shifted the little one in her arms, sweeping a well-practiced censorious glance over curious faces beyond the glass. People quickly shifted away, moving back into their offices. Emily looked at the man whose executive assistant she had been for the past two years. “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”
He straightened and took a deep breath. “Emily Applegate,” he said wearily, making it a formal introduction, “I’d like you to meet Amanda Sue Fortune. My daughter.”
Emily nearly dropped the child on her head. “Your what?”
Logan nodded grimly. “Yeah, how’s that for a kick in the pants?”
Emily could only stare, first at him, then at the child quickly emptying her bottle. Almost as long as she’d known him, Emily had harbored a secret crush on her philandering boss, knowing perfectly well that she had no chance with him and was better off for it. The thought, however, that someone else had borne him a child made her voice unusually raw. “Who’s her mother?”
Logan winced as the child jerked the bottle from her mouth and cried, “Ma-ma-a-a!”
“Now you’ve done it,” he grumbled, reaching for Amanda Sue.
She jerked back, clinging to Emily and crying, “Mammm-mmma!”
Trying to hide his hurt at her rejection, Logan patted her back ineffectually. “It’s all right, baby. She didn’t mean it. It’s all right. Drink your bottle. Okay? Drink your bottle.” He glowered at Emily. “Watch your mouth, okay?”
“All I said was—”
“She’s dead, all right? It just happened, but Amanda Sue can’t possibly understand that. All she knows is that her ma-m-a is gone and I’m here. She doesn’t understand that I’m her father. She doesn’t know where she is. And believe me, she’s not happy about it. She’s made that much perfectly clear.”
Emily was still struggling with the concept of Logan Fortune as a father. Amanda Sue shifted in her arms, and a suspicious warmth spread across the front of her diaper. Emily turned her around, holding the child’s small back to her chest in an effort to spare the jacket of her tan wool suit. Amanda Sue laid her head on Emily’s shoulder and whimpered, then stuck the bottle nipple in her mouth and went to work on it again.
“I—I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Emily finally managed to say.
“Neither did I,” he replied dryly, “not until the authorities contacted me after the accident.”
Emily let that sink in. “My goodness.”
“To put it lightly.”
The implications were astounding. She shook her head. “What are you going to do?”
He straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair. “Right now, I’m going to go into my office, sit down at my desk and look over your notes on this morning’s meetings. After that, well, I’ll take it as comes.”
She stared at him. “And Amanda Sue?”
He smiled. “She’ll be with you, of course, getting settled into her new home.”
“Me?”
“Who else?” he asked. “You’re the only executive assistant I’ve got.”
Emily wanted to do some screaming herself. Considering how she felt about this man, she was looking at a prescription for disaster. Her light brown eyes narrowed. “Now, wait just a minute. I’ve gone way above and beyond the job description for you in the past. I’ve lied to your many women, juggled your affairs, ordered gifts to salve wounded pride and snatched your cookies out of the fire more than once in the process, but baby-sitting your unexpected daughter is taking the term ‘executive assistant’ just a little too far!”
His expression turned pleading. “Come on, Em. She likes you, and she’s had all she wants of me right now, and vice versa, frankly. Who else am I going to count on to help me out here?”
Emily held Amanda Sue out to him. “Obviously, you’ve tried your mo—”
“Don’t say it!” he warned frantically.
Emily grimaced. “All right, fine. If your you-know-what can’t help you, why not try one of your many conquests? There’s got to be one willing to make points with you by baby-sitting your child.”
“Have you got any idea what a can of worms that would be opening?” he retorted.
“That’s not my problem,” Emily said. Apparently entertained by the exchange, Amanda Sue sat atop Emily’s arm and swung one little foot absently, slowly drinking her milk. Emily stubbornly stuck to her guns, despite the fact that she was weakening.
“Emily, I need someone I can trust,” he argued smoothly. “This is my daughter we’re talking about. I can’t leave her to some scheming female more concerned with dropping a marriage noose around my neck to get at my money than Amanda Sue’s welfare.”
Emily sighed inwardly. Without committing herself, she asked. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen months.”
With that uncanny ability of all children, Amanda Sue knew she was now the topic of conversation. She laid her head back against Emily’s chest and grinned up at Emily around the bottle nipple. Emily found herself reluctantly in love. “She is a little doll.”
“Don’t let the looks fool you,” Logan warned dryly. “That little doll has put me through sheer hell today. She can get out of a seat belt faster than—”
“A seat belt!” Emily echoed. “You had her in a seat belt, not a car seat but your standard, adult-type seat belt?”
He blinked at her. “Every car seat has its own seat belt, Emily. You know that.”
She couldn’t believe he was that uninformed. “Every infant safety seat has a belt, too, and it’s designed to keep the child safely in place. Riding a child in a car without one is so dangerous that the State of Texas, and nearly every other, has made it illegal to do so. You’re lucky you weren’t pulled over—or worse!”
He put his hands to his hips. “See? See! That’s what I’m talking about! I don’t know this stuff. Why would I? I’ve never had to think about what kids need!”
Emily found her chair with her foot and pulled it over to sit down, Amanda Sue’s weight beginning to wear on her. Amanda Sue immediately tossed her bottle aside and bucked out of Emily’s grasp, sliding to the floor, where she momentarily crouched, looking around her. “Where’s her stuff?” Emily asked resignedly.
“Right here,” Logan said, indicating the diaper bag.
“That’s it?”
“The social worker couldn’t bring more on the airplane.”
Emily rolled her eyes. “Well, we have a lot of shopping to do, then.”
“You have a lot of shopping to do,” he said pointedly.
“And who’s going to watch the baby?”
“You’ll take her with you, naturally,” he said brightly, edging toward the office door. “Just take my house key from the lockbox. I’ll meet you both there when I’m through here.”
Emily frowned. “You’re going to owe me big-time for this, Fortune.”
&n
bsp; “Absolutely,” he said convincingly.
The lower drawer of Emily’s desk suddenly rolled out, Amanda Sue at the handle. Recognizing nothing of interest there, she toddled around the end of the desk and out of sight, ignoring Emily as she called to her. Emily jumped up and went after her. Sensing pursuit, Amanda Sue began to run as fast as her little legs would carry her. Before Emily reached her, she’d knocked over the trash can and a potted plant. The sound of Logan’s office door clicking shut came just as Emily reached Amanda Sue, who giggled as she was scooped up, then immediately howled to be let down again.
Emily laughed. “Okay, kiddo, first order of business is a dry diaper. Then we’ll order you an infant safety seat. Thank God for department stores that take telephone orders. Meanwhile, we’ll get acquainted. How does that sound?” For reply, Amanda Sue stuck her fist in her mouth and kicked both feet. Emily couldn’t help herself. She hugged the baby tight and kissed her chubby cheek, laughing at the idea of the great Logan Fortune cowering behind his office door in fear of his toddler daughter. Poor guy. Poor kid!
The whole city was in for a shock when the news got around, but maybe, just maybe, this little bolt of greased lightning would put a kink in her clueless daddy’s nocturnal activities. God knew it was time that Logan Fortune learned there was more to life than business and willing women. Much more, for those lucky enough to understand it.
Two
It was after seven o’clock when Logan let himself into the three-bedroom town house that was his private residence. As part of one of the most exclusive planned communities in San Antonio, it afforded him privacy, luxury, and a number of useful amenities such as indoor pools, gym, game rooms and sauna, all with twenty-four-hour staff. He hadn’t seen Emily’s sensible compact car in the drive, but it was not beyond possibility that she was here.
“Emily?”
Silence. He was unconcerned, however. Emily Applegate was nothing if not efficient and dependable. In the two years that she had been his executive assistant, his life had been sublimely simple—until now. Until Amanda Sue. Desperately, he put his young daughter out of mind, as he had done all afternoon.
Taking the mail out of his jacket pocket, he flipped on the overhead light in the entry and began to thumb through it as he moved down the cool hallway. Bill. Bill. Solicitation. Advertisement. Advertisement. Bill. He stepped into the living room and looked up, more to get his bearings than for any other reason. What he saw there, however, brought him to an immediate halt. It looked like a baby store warehouse!
Mouth ajar, he surveyed the bounty. He identified a crib, a high chair, a stroller and a playpen before turning to the rocking chair heaped with colorful fabrics in the center of the floor. His gold, butter-soft leather couch was piled with toys. Tiny articles of clothing covered the matching chair. The ottoman held stacks of books. Bottles, tubes and jars littered the end tables. Setting aside the mail, he picked up an unfamiliar object and examined it. The labeling proclaimed it the latest in digital fever thermometers.
Before he could take in the rest, the door opened at the end of the foyer and a series of bangs and grunts alerted him that even more was coming. He moved in the direction of the noise. Emily was struggling to get Amanda Sue, her diaper bag and a couple of plastic sackfulls of groceries into the foyer.
“Here, let me help,” he said, taking both bags. No sooner had he set them down in the living room than she informed him that more waited in the car.
He hauled in jars and jars of toddler food, boxes of dry cereal, milk and diapers. “Where do you want it?”
Emily had collapsed onto the sofa among the toys, Amanda Sue in her lap. A long lock of sandy-brown hair had pulled loose from Emily’s ubiquitous bun to lay across her shoulder and chest. He hadn’t realized that her hair was so long or shiny. As he watched, Amanda Sue reached up and absently coiled the silky lock around one little hand, rubbing her eyes with the other fist even as she wriggled in an attempt to get down. Though bedraggled and exhausted, Emily, nevertheless, held on. She stared at him for a moment, sans glasses, then sighed.
“I assume you know where your own kitchen is.”
“What about the diapers?”
“Upstairs with the rest of this stuff,” she said, waving a hand wearily.
He wondered where upstairs he was supposed to find room for a department store but wisely kept the thought to himself. After carrying the bags into the kitchen, he stowed the milk in the refrigerator and left everything else on the counter.
When he returned to the living room, he found that Emily had kicked off her shoes and closed her eyes. The look on her face as she flexed her toes might have been pain or pleasure. He noted with unexpected interest that she wasn’t wearing stockings. Her straight, knee-length skirt had hiked slightly, giving him an excellent view of her long, slender legs. Funny, but now that she wasn’t groomed to within an inch of her life, she was surprisingly appealing. Rumpled suited her. Usually, it was the other way around with the women he knew. She seemed to sense his presence and opened her eyes.
“You’ve certainly been busy,” he began, only to find himself being shushed.
“Don’t wake the baby,” she whispered, tucking the escaped lock of hair behind her ear and nodding down at her lap. Amanda Sue lay sprawled across her, eyes closed, bottom lip protruding in a perpetual pout. “She can’t sleep long or she won’t sleep tonight,” Emily went on, “but if she doesn’t get a short nap she’s going to be too wound up to sleep at all. And God knows I could use a few minutes peace.”
He lowered his voice to say, “Why don’t we put her down in another room?”
Emily rolled her eyes. “We can’t do that. She could fall off a regular bed or wake up and climb down, in which case the room will be wrecked before we even know it, providing she doesn’t break her neck first, of course. You have to put together the crib.”
Logan knew she was right. He’d never seen a kid who moved as fast or was as determined as this one. He took off his coat, stripped away his tie and rolled up his sleeves before reaching for the big, flat box containing the crib parts. “Where should I put it?”
“Upstairs, the bedroom farthest from the landing.”
Grimacing, he began dragging the unwieldy box up the stairs. Putting the crib together took hours and every tool in the house, or it seemed so, anyway. When Emily came upstairs with Amanda Sue on her hip and a stack of linens tucked under one arm, she took one look at the as yet lopsided crib and the pieces still littering the floor and quipped, “Want me to call a rocket scientist?”
“Yeah, would you?” he retorted. “I’m thinking of exploring outer space.”
She laughed. “It’s not as daunting as it seems.”
“I know. I’ve almost got it. Won’t take a minute more.”
She dumped the linens on the dresser. “I was talking about parenthood.”
Unconvinced, he said nothing to that.
“I took the liberty of making us some dinner,” she said.
That was good news. “Great! I’ll be right down.”
She nodded. “I’ll start feeding the baby.”
He quickly finished up, put away the tools and carried them back downstairs. Emily had set the table in the kitchen. He’d had it made to match the planked fronts of the cabinets and countertops which were accented with black wrought iron.
“It isn’t much,” she said, “just sandwiches and salad.”
“Sounds good to me,” he assured her, eyeing his baby daughter. “What on earth has she got all over her?”
“Squished carrots and beef weiners,” Emily answered offhandedly.
A fat plastic spoon with a short, curved handle lay on one corner of the high chair tray. He was about to ask why Amanda Sue wasn’t using it when she picked it up, banged it loudly against the tray and threw it to the floor. Emily calmly picked it up and carried it to the sink, washing it while Amanda Sue dug into the food on her plate with both hands and crammed it into her mouth.
“Why is she doing that?” Logan asked, disgusted.
“Amanda Sue prefers to feed herself,” Emily explained mildly, pulling out a chair and sitting down. “It’s typical behavior for children her age.”
He walked around the table and took his own place, eyeing his messy daughter warily. As he devoured his meal, he marveled as Emily ate her own dinner and still managed to get some of Amanda Sue’s inside her with the clean spoon, all without relinquishing the utensil to Amanda Sue’s stubborn grasp or getting covered in mush herself. Moreover, her sandwiches were tasty and the salad crisp. Best of all, though, was Emily’s iced tea.
“You’ll have to show me how you make your tea,” he said, sated and content.
She shook her head. “My mama wouldn’t like that. It’s a—”
“Ma-ma!” Amanda exclaimed, suddenly struggling to get out of her chair. “Mammma!”
“Secret,” Emily finished, grimacing sheepishly. “Sorry.” She worked with Amanda Sue for several minutes, offering her first the spoon and then the cup before the cries subsided. Logan sighed. How was he going to raise this little girl without her mother? There was so much he didn’t know or understand.
“Kitchen or baby?” Emily asked, interrupting his thoughts.
“Huh?”
“Do you want to clean up the kitchen or the baby?”
A no-brainer. He was clearing the table before Emily could get to her feet. She stripped the baby, wiped her face and hands with her filthy shirt and helped her out of the high chair, carrying her away. A few minutes later, Logan had loaded the dishwasher—a relatively new experience for him as he usually left his dishes in the sink for the housekeeper—stowed the leftover salad in the refrigerator and tackled Amanda Sue’s high chair with a roll of paper towels. When he was done, he wandered out into the living room and looked around him in dismay. Resigned, he started moving everything upstairs.
He made the last trip, then wandered down the hall to the bathroom. The door was open, and Emily’s patient murmur, overlaid with sounds of splashing and squeals of glee, was clearly audible. Logan leaned a hip against the frame, his hands sliding into his pants’ pockets and observed.
