by Arlene James
“Amanda Sue, Daddy isn’t going anywhere. You’re my little girl, and I’m going to take care of you from now on.”
Amanda Sue’s snub of a nose was running, and Emily wiped it with a corner of the sheet, finding nothing else close to hand. Amanda Sue tried to take advantage of that to shift herself into Emily’s arms, but Emily folded her hands in her lap. Logan went on talking to the child in a soft, gentle voice, and presently she lifted a small hand to finger the underside of her father’s beard-roughened chin. He smiled down at her, dipped his head and nipped at her fingers, catching them in his mouth. She didn’t giggle as she might have at another time, but she didn’t pull away, either. He kissed her palm and her cheek, whispering, “Amanda Sue is my girl. Yes, she is. Pretty Amanda Sue is Daddy’s girl.”
Amanda Sue caught a huffing breath and solemnly asked, “Wuv Da-dy?” She seemed to be asking whether or not Daddy loved her and if she was expected to love him in return. Emily’s heart turned over, but Logan went as still as a statue. Emily felt a lump in her throat. She swallowed it down and moved closer, reaching around Logan to stroke Amanda Sue’s damp cheek, all too aware of the expanse of bare skin he presented.
“Daddy loves you, Amanda Sue,” she crooned. “You’re his very own little girl.”
She gave Logan a gentle nudge in the ribs. He jerked, then cleared his throat and smiled.
“That’s right, angel. Daddy does love you.” He gathered her into a fierce hug, whispering, “I love you very much.”
Amanda Sue’s fine hair caught in her father’s beard stubble as she pulled back. Fascinated, she lifted a hand to his cheek. Then abruptly she shifted her attention to Emily. Eyes bright, she grinned and declared in a playful tone, “Wuv Mimy!”
Emily felt as if she’d been kicked in the chest. Laughing to keep the threatening tears at bay, she pulled Amanda Sue out of her father’s embrace and laid her on the bed so she could tickle her tummy. “And I love you, too, munchkin,” she managed, telling herself as the child giggled that it was just a game. Amanda Sue would forget her once she had completely bonded with her father, a process that seemed to be proceeding apace.
The growling of Amanda Sue’s stomach stopped her giggles cold. Comically, the baby lifted her head and peered down at her belly, a look of wonder on her face. Emily and Logan laughed. Emily said, “Someone’s hungry.”
Amanda Sue promptly flopped over and sat up, holding out a hand. “Bobble,” she demanded.
Emily smiled. “All right, young lady, a bottle it is.” She gathered the child into her arms and looked at Logan. “If you’ll take her back upstairs and change her diaper, I’ll heat the milk and fill the bottle.”
“I thought she drank cold milk now.”
“She does, but warm milk will help her sleep.”
He lifted both brows, suddenly seeming much too close sitting there on the side of the bed. “You mean that old wive’s tale about warm milk is true?”
“I do.” She tickled Amanda Sue under the chin. “A warm bottle and dry diaper ought to have this little lady snoozing again in no time.” She held Amanda Sue toward her father. “Go with Daddy, sweetheart, and I’ll bring you a bottle. Okay?”
Amanda Sue nodded emphatically and, leaning sideways, looped an arm around her father’s neck. Logan folded her against him and kissed the tip of her nose. She giggled and wrinkled her nose at the prick of his beard. Logan chuckled and stood. “Come on, then, sweetheart. We’ve got one end dry, now let’s try the other.”
“I’ll be up in a minute,” Emily said, watching as they left the room. Logan’s broad back was straight and strong as he carried his daughter through the door. Emily swung her feet over the side of the bed and stood. Moving quickly, she padded barefoot into the kitchen, poured milk into a measuring cup and heated it in the microwave for several seconds. After testing it, she heated it a few seconds more, then poured it into a clean bottle and carried it upstairs.
Logan was still trying to get a dry diaper on Amanda Sue, who was repeatedly lifting both legs and letting them fall again. “Amanda Sue, please stop,” he was pleading. “Stop kicking. Let Daddy fix your diaper.”
Emily stepped to his side. The child spotted the bottle and let out a cry, reaching for it, but Emily shook her head. “Not until you let Daddy fix your diaper.”
Amanda Sue promptly collapsed her legs. After a second or so, she reached for the bottle again, and Emily handed it over. Immediately, Amanda Sue lifted her legs, much to her father’s irritation. Emily took the bottle back.
“That’s not fair, Amanda Sue,” she admonished gently but firmly. “Let Daddy finish the diaper, and I’ll give you the bottle.”
Amanda Sue’s bottom lip protruded in a pout, but she lay still long enough for Logan to fix the diaper and snap closed the legs of her knit sleeper. Emily handed over the bottle and picked up the baby, moving to the rocking chair. “It isn’t good to let them fall asleep with a bottle in their mouths,” she explained. “Leads to tooth decay.”
“Ah.”
She sat down and helped Amanda Sue get comfortable. “Will you wind the music box and lower the lights?”
Logan nodded, then said, “Let me wash my hands.”
“Good idea.”
He left them for a time, then returned to do as Emily had requested. “You can go on to bed, if you want,” she said, looking up at him.
He nodded, but instead of leaving the room, he began straightening the covers in the crib, then brought Amanda Sue her Sugar Bear. She grinned her thanks around the nipple in her mouth and got her customary headlock on the stuffed toy. Within minutes, the bottle was drained and Amanda Sue was rubbing her eyes. Emily looked around to find that Logan had left the room quietly. She rocked a little while longer, then gently moved Amanda Sue to her bed, tucked her in with her Sugar Bear and kissed her forehead. Amanda Sue closed her eyes and sighed deeply, well on her way to a sound sleep.
Emily slipped out into the hall and gently closed the door behind her, the empty bottle in hand. To her surprise, Logan pushed away from the wall and came to her side, whispering, “Is she asleep?”
“Almost. I think we ought to let her get herself to sleep this time,” Emily replied as they moved on down the hall. “If she cries again, go back in but don’t take her out of bed. Instead, reassure her in whispers and try to settle her into sleep that way, so she’ll learn that she can’t expect to get picked up whenever she demands.”
Logan nodded, a hand on the back of his neck. “It wasn’t my imagination, though, was it? She really was crying for her mother, wasn’t she?”
“I think so,” Emily told him. “I think she did dream about Donna and wake up missing her. It’s only natural, you know, and it may happen again, but you know how to handle it now, just keep assuring her that you love her.”
Logan sighed and slid an arm around her shoulders, saying, “I owe you so much. You’ve taught me things I couldn’t have learned anywhere else. I didn’t even realize how important it was to say the words until you prodded me.”
“It’s always important to say the words,” she said, “but you’d figure out most of this stuff on your own in time.”
Logan shook his head. “I don’t know. There’s still so much to think about. For instance, shouldn’t she be giving up that bottle pretty soon?”
They had reached the head of the stairs, and Emily turned to face him, intentionally dislodging his arm. It was proving difficult to think clearly with that arm wrapped around her. At the same time, it felt oddly natural. She pushed her hair over her shoulder, saying, “Your instincts are better than you think. Yes, I’d say that it was time to think about giving up that bottle, but if it was me, I’d wait a few weeks, be sure she’s settled in well with the new nanny and all.”
He nodded thoughtfully. “Right. She has enough to deal with just now. What about potty training, though? When do we start that?”
Emily chuckled. The middle of the night was a strange time to be discussing such subjec
ts, but she answered him anyway as she descended the stairs. “It’s too early for that, in my opinion, but it won’t be long. I’d say that in a few months you ought to buy a potty chair and put it in her bathroom. Talk about it and what it’s for, then later you put her in pull-ups, disposable diapers made like panties. After that, you buy some talking books, the ones with the little recorders built into them, and when you sit her on the chair, you let her entertain herself with one of those books so she’ll stay there long enough to get her business done. But even then you’ll have to clean her up, praise her, and reward her, remembering that she’s going to have accidents from time to time, and this is all moot because the nanny is going to handle it anyway. Not that you won’t have a hand in it. You’re her father, after all.”
They had reached the bottom of the stairs, and Logan took her hand in his. “This is exactly what I mean, though. I wouldn’t know if the nanny was going about it right or not if you weren’t here to tell me.” To her heart-thumping chagrin, he lifted her hand to his lips, brushing a kiss across her fingers between the knuckles. “I’ll never be able to thank you enough,” he added in a hair-raisingly silky voice.
“D-don’t be silly,” she stuttered. “A-anyone w-with a little experience could—”
“But you are here,” he interrupted, lifting his free hand to stroke her hair.
Emily swallowed, her heart beating a mile a minute. He was flirting with her! She should have known that Logan Fortune would not let a convenient flirtation pass him by. She put on a smile, saying, “It’s late. We have a busy day tomorrow.”
“Oh, right.” He dropped her hand, and she turned toward the bedroom. He fell in beside her. She quickened her pace a bit, but he was still at her elbow when she reached the door. Eyes widening, she turned and lifted a hand to his chest. For a moment he seemed puzzled, but then he chuckled. “Good grief, I forgot I wasn’t sleeping in my own bed.”
Emily relaxed. Of course, he forgot. Why shouldn’t he? It was his bedroom, after all. Perfectly natural. So why was her heart beating so hard it was choking her? “Everything will settle down soon,” she told him, appalled at her breathlessness.
A slow, lazy grin spread across his face. His gaze lowered pointedly to her mouth. He lifted an arm and braced a hand against the door frame, leaning close. “We could always share,” he said huskily. “It would save me the effort of going all the way back up those stairs, effort that could be better used in more enjoyable ways.”
Stunned, Emily stared up at him, completely at a loss for words. Before she recovered herself, he bent his head and covered her mouth with his. All the breath left Emily’s lungs. He sucked it up greedily, widening his lips to fit them more perfectly to hers. The room spun, up and then down again. Her arms floated away from her sides, her hands looking for an anchor and finding it in his upper arms. She clamped her fingers tightly to his bunched muscles, reassured somehow by the hardness beneath the smooth, warm skin.
He dropped his arms around her, his hands rubbing up and down her back as he pressed her against him. Emily was shocked, first by the thinness of pajamas that had seemed perfectly acceptable only moments earlier, then by the weightiness of her own breasts as they encountered his chest and, finally, by the hard ridge that pressed against her quivering belly.
He really was trying to seduce her—and succeeding unless she took control this very instant. Almost reflexively, she did just that, simultaneously pushing away and telling herself that it was the situation more than herself spurring his actions.
“Emily,” he protested softly, and the heat in those blue eyes nearly melted her where she stood.
She slipped through the doorway, one hand seeking the edge of the door itself as her brain searched frantically for some word, some quip to put an end to the insanity. Her wits, thankfully, were in better working order than she suspected, the words slipping out almost before she thought them.
“It isn’t that far to the other bedroom.”
With that, she stepped back and shut the door in his face, collapsing against it as her knees threatened to buckle. She heard him chuckle on the other side, and after a while, he said a silky good-night and seemed to go on his way. She knew he’d sensed her waiting there, but she couldn’t think about that now. It was enough to have escaped the desire that had threatened to swamp her good sense and was even now turning her legs to water.
She stumbled over to the bed and dropped down onto it. Long minutes passed before her heart rate slowed and she began to wonder how she was going to face him in the morning. She felt alive with his touch, awash with his kiss, and some part of her marveled that such a man as Logan Fortune might actually want her, Emily Applegate. It seemed that hours passed before she could stop reliving the moment and surrender to desperate sleep.
Logan strolled into the kitchen the next morning as if that kiss the night before had never happened.
“Good morning!” he sang, all smiles.
Amanda Sue sat in the crook of his arm, her shining, auburn hair sticking out at odd angles. “Num, num, num,” she said, “hunky,” pointing toward the refrigerator.
Logan chuckled and smoothed her hair with his hand. “I think that means she’s hungry.”
“Egg,” she said clearly, nodding.
Logan laughed indulgently. “If I’m not mistaken, she’s just ordered the breakfast special.”
“I think I can manage an egg and toast,” Emily said, keeping her gaze carefully averted. She felt oddly stung by his sunny composure, which was absurd, of course.
Amanda Sue nodded, happily amending her order, “Tose un grink. Grink!”
Emily shook her head. “What’s a grink, darling?”
“Grink! Grink!” She stuck out her tongue as if to show Emily that she had a bad taste in her mouth, and everything clicked. Emily took her into her own arms and moved toward the sink.
“She wants a drink.” Opening a cabinet, she took down a plastic cup, filled it from the tap and lifted it to Amanda Sue’s mouth. For once, the child did not fight her for possession. Instead, she gulped and gulped and gulped.
“She communicates really well, doesn’t she?” Logan asked proudly.
“She certainly does.” Emily smiled as she dried Amanda Sue’s mouth and carried her to the high chair. He stood there a moment longer, beaming like an idiot, until Emily indicated the coffeepot on the counter. “I made some coffee.”
“Oh! Excellent!” Hurrying to the cabinet, he took down a mug and filled it. “If, um, you two are all right here, I’ll just take this with me and slug some of it back before I climb into the shower.”
“No problem,” Emily said evenly. “I’ll get Amanda Sue’s breakfast.”
“Great.” He sipped his coffee and looked up. If anything, his smile brightened. “Good coffee. Thanks.”
Something struck her as odd about the way he kept smiling, but she put it aside as he hurried from the room, concentrating instead on getting Amanda Sue into her high chair. It was then that she noticed Amanda Sue’s diaper had come loose and was bunched up in one leg of her sleeper. She couldn’t help laughing. Poor Logan. He wasn’t quite the model father—yet.
Despite vociferous protest, Emily managed to fix Amanda Sue’s diaper, then gave the child a sipper cup of juice and some dry cereal to eat with her fingers while Emily prepared her breakfast. It was a busy enterprise, constantly righting the cup with one hand and scrambling the egg with the other and somehow catching the toast as the stainless steel monstrosity on the counter literally launched it.
Yet, during it all, Emily found her mind wandering to last night’s kiss and this morning’s seeming indifference. Had it really affected him so little? Perhaps she ought to be glad about that, but somehow she couldn’t be. She was, in fact, a little disappointed. Apparently she wasn’t even worth pursuing when doing so wasn’t imminently convenient. Maybe he really had attempted that lackadaisical seduction just to keep from walking back upstairs! The idea was extremely lowering, and as determi
nedly as she tried to tell herself that it didn’t—shouldn’t—matter, somehow it did. It very much did.
“No wub!”
“I have to rub your face, Amanda Sue,” Emily’s voice explained patiently. “Otherwise, it will stay dirty.”
Amanda Sue h-h-hubbed a phony sob, but Logan could tell that she was getting her face cleaned, the little faker. No doubt about it, the kid had a strong streak of theatricality, but it still tore him to see or hear her crying. He wondered if he’d ever be strong enough to really stand up to her the way Emily did. Emily, as it turned out, was far stronger than he’d ever realized, strong enough to close the door in his face after curling his toes with that kiss last night.
He was still smarting from her easy rejection, but he’d be hanged if he’d let her know it. That kind of thing had never bothered him before, and he wasn’t going to let it do so now. Like every other man in the world, he occasionally struck out, but it had never before bothered him. Why should it? The world was full of women. If one was unwilling, another would not be. He’d even learned to laugh about it, but with Emily that had been more mechanical than actual. It was different with her somehow. It smarted more. Maybe that was because she’d been right there under his nose all this time and he hadn’t even realized what he had within his grasp. And maybe it was just the situation, finding himself so completely out of his depth for the first time. He couldn’t deny that she was the only thing keeping his head above water just now. All he really knew, though, was that having that door closed in his face still hurt somehow, and he didn’t like the feeling. He didn’t like it at all.
Taking a deep, fortifying breath, he put on a smile and stepped into the kitchen. Emily had Amanda Sue sitting on the counter next to the sink and was scrubbing her down with a washcloth. As usual, Amanda Sue had smeared at least as much of her breakfast on the outside as she’d managed to get on the inside. Having cleaned her face and between her chubby fingers, Emily then rinsed the cloth and scrubbed Amanda Sue’s head with it, despite the child’s attempts to fight her off. Once Emily was finished, however, Amanda Sue grinned and went happily into Emily’s arms.
