Found: One Secret Baby (7 page)

The wistful tone in her voice made him want to comfort her again. The impulse should have scared him silly, but he didn’t have time to think about it. He needed to get the conversation back on track to the next stage of his plan. Still, her reaction gave him a clue on where to start.

“It must have been hard to have so much responsibility all those years.”

The pang of sympathy behind his words was more real than he’d expected.

“My mother was pretty independent, until near the end.”

“You’ve spent so much of your life taking care of people,” he said with genuine admiration. “Your mother, now Joey. A lot of women would resent the kind of sacrifices you’ve made.”

She shook her head. “It’s not a sacrifice if you love someone.”

Not something he’d had the chance to learn one way or the other. “But you didn’t even have time to date.”

“It never seemed important to me.”

“It can’t be that you don’t like men.”

She lifted an eyebrow. “Can’t it?”

“No. We have too much sexual chemistry between us.”

She started to interrupt, but he didn’t give her the chance.

“Don’t try to deny it. Why else would I fly over two thousand miles to ask you out?”

Their eyes met, heating the air between them again to confirm his words.

“Because you have a backhanded plan to take Joey away from me?”

Her distrust stung, the more so because of how close it came to the truth.

“No—a backhanded plan to get to know you better.”

“I told you, I don’t date.”

The words came out harsher, colder than Rosalie intended. Even the word “date” set her nerves on edge. She’d dated enough to learn there wasn’t much point to it. After all, the purpose of dating was to fall in love, and love meant trusting a man. But men always walked, the way her father had. The way her one serious boyfriend in college had once he figured out her mother was more important to Rosalie than fraternity parties or ski weekends.

“If you don’t date, how do you begin a relationship?”

“I don’t want a relationship. I’m happy with my life the way it is.”

Brave words, but his knowing smile reminded her of how good it felt to be in his arms.

She was far too vulnerable to this man. She needed to get him out of her life before she did something stupid, like care about him. Or trust him.

She gave him a long, cool look. “And if I did want a relationship, you’d the last man on my list.”

Which was true. The attraction she felt for him, the deeper feelings he’d begun to arouse in her were far too dangerous. But he did as she’d hoped and took her words with a very different meaning. A sharp light sparked in his eyes.

“Given your attitude, I have to wonder whether, if Lillian wants Joey for a motherhood do-over, you want him because otherwise you’ll never be able to have a child.”

His angry blast hit too close to home. She shot to her feet.

“So this was all about Joey after all! Well, you can go to hell, Morgan Danby.”

Morgan absorbed Rosalie’s attack. He deserved it. But he couldn’t let her leave now. He reached out and caught her hand to stop her.

A jolt of white-hot need arced through him at the contact. Her eyes went wide with surprise, as if it burned her too. She didn’t pull away, but stared down at him, tiny quivers in her fingers the sole clue to how torn she was.

He released her hand. “I’m sorry. That was unforgivable, but please forgive me and stay.”

She hesitated for a moment before she sat again, the familiar wariness back on her face.

He reached for her hand, but she jerked it away and put it under the table.

“I did come here to ask you out on a date,” he began. “I can’t believe you’d say no just because you’ve dated some jerks in the past.”

She paled, opened her mouth, then closed it.

Oh, yes. The problem wasn’t the jerks she’d dated, but the mega-jerk who’d walked out on her and her sick mother.

“We don’t have to call it a date,” he hurried on to fill in the awkward moment. “Call it two people who enjoy each other’s company spending time together. What do you say?”

Rosalie fought to hold herself together. Literally. She felt split in two by her simmering anger and wariness of Morgan on one side, and the way her body still chimed from his touch, the undeniable chemistry, as he’d put it, between them. To go out with him would be to submit herself to an evening of emotional ping pong.

“No,” she repeated, more to herself than to him. “I can’t.”

“What if we made it a three-way date?”

How many glasses of wine did he drink?

“What?”

He laughed. “I mean you, me, and Joey. If we take him to the zoo, say, I’d have chance to get to know him, and you’d have a chance to learn for yourself what a great guy I am.”

“I don’t think …”

“The problem is, you think too much.” The almost-fond look on his face took the sting out of his words. “You need to relax and let go a little now and then. Go to the zoo with me and Joey tomorrow. It’ll do you good. You might even enjoy it.”

How could she enjoy anything with Morgan around? He stirred desires she’d forgotten she had, raised hopes and fears she’d thought she’d long since gotten past.

She started to shake her head, then remembered how he’d lured her to lunch. Lillian had decided to file for custody of Joey. Much more was at stake than Rosalie’s battered heart.

She took another bite of her pasta to buy time.

Nothing sexual was about to happen between them with Joey in tow. While Morgan tried, for some inexplicable reason, to charm her into a real date, she’d be able to use the time to do what he’d suggested she do, win him over to her side, get him to talk his stepmother into dropping the custody suit.

She drained the last of her wine. “The zoo might work. We haven’t been there recently.”

“Should I pick you up?”

“No.” She’d need a way to escape if he stepped the least little bit over the line. “We’ll meet you there. What time?”

“Eleven?”

“Ten would give us more time before lunch and nap.”

“Sure.”

“I’ll see you then.” She pushed her chair back and reached for her purse.

He stood when she did. For a moment she was afraid he might touch her or volunteer to walk her back to her office. She needed to get away from him and regroup. She needed to get away from him, period.

Maybe he could read the urge to flee on her face, because he took a step back and gave a casual wave. “Bye.”

Joey was not in a good mood the next morning. Only the promise of a car ride prevented a full-scale tantrum while Rosalie tried to get him dressed. She didn’t tell him about the zoo until he got fussy after the drive there stretched out beyond his willingness to sit in his car seat.

“Nals!” he burbled. “Now!”

She turned off the freeway, well aware of the traffic around Griffith Park on a Saturday and how long it might be before they actually saw any “nals.”

A cloudy sky had kept enough people away that the parking lot wasn’t full. She pulled into a space near the entrance and began the laborious process of unloading Joey’s gear, keeping up a one-sided conversation with him through the open car window so he didn’t fuss.

“Giraffes and hippos and elephants and …” she recited as she wrestled with the stroller.

Strong hands took the unwieldy mass of metal and plastic from her and effortlessly flipped it open.

“And monkeys,” Morgan picked up her litany, “and tigers.”

Rosalie gasped and put one hand to her chest, where her heart beat wildly, then realized she must look like an old-fashioned heroine with the vapors.

“You startled me.” She reached into the trunk for the diaper bag.

Morgan reached for the cooler at the same moment. Their shoulders bumped. Her heart beat went from wild to frenzied, but she managed to pull away without letting on how much his presence affected her.

“How did you spot us?” she asked as they stowed the various bags and bundles in the stroller’s compartments.

“This old Saab is like a billboard that flashes ‘frugal parent of a small child’ in neon lights. Hard to miss.”

She went to get Joey out of his car seat, glad for the chance to take a few full breaths.

“You need a SUV with all this stuff,” Morgan went on.

She settled Joey in the stroller and strapped him in.

“They use too much gas. Not good for the environment, or the pocket book.”

“They make hybrid SUVs these days.”

He took the handle of the stroller and pushed it toward the entrance to the zoo while she slammed the trunk shut.

“Not in my budget. Especially now I have a custody battle to fight.”

The reminder made her hurry to follow them, uneasy with leaving Joey in his step-uncle’s care even for a moment. What if he was still on his stepmother’s side after all?

Morgan must have sensed her reaction, because he let go when she grabbed the stroller and gave her a wry smile that made her pulse jump back to double time.

Rosalie was dismayed to discover that, despite the partly empty parking lot, there was a substantial line to buy tickets at the zoo entrance.

Joey was in no mood to sit and wait. Once they were in a crowd, where all he could see were legs and feet, he started to fuss.

“I’ll walk him around,” Rosalie told Morgan, who nodded.

The plaza around the entrance was dotted with other parents pushing other fussy toddlers in strollers. Older children lingered around the souvenir and snack shops. Joey took it all in, wide-eyed but blessedly quiet.

Until he saw the balloon man.

“Me! Me!” He bounced up and down in the stroller.

“I don’t think so.” Rosalie swallowed a wistful sigh. She’d always loved balloons. “Balloons break and make a big noise.”

“Balloons are so sad,” she’d heard her mother say again and again over the years. “They waste away to ugly little lumps of rubber. Not like flowers.”

Flowers are alive and die, Rosalie had always wanted to protest. She hadn’t, of course, but a little part of her still wanted the balloon she never got.

“Me! Me!” Joey continued, well on the way to a tantrum.

Morgan came up with their tickets. “Me what?”

“He wants a balloon.” This time she did sigh.

“What color?”

He reached for his wallet, but she stopped him.

“It’ll just break.”

“So what? He’ll enjoy it while he has it, and if it breaks, he’ll learn something about brightly colored objects.”

The balloon man had noticed them.

“I love to see a happy family,” he called with a grin. “For you, two balloons for the price of one.”

Rosalie couldn’t resist a smile at the thought of two balloons bouncing around her house.

Morgan must have read more into the smile than she meant him to, because he strode over to the man and handed him a bill.

“What colors?” the man asked.

Morgan looked down to where Joey watched him from the stroller, hand in his mouth.

“Blue for Joey.” He turned to Rosalie. “What color do you want yours to be?”

“Mine? I don’t …”

“You know you want one. What color?”

At the very top of the bunch of balloons sat a single golden-yellow one, the color of a summer sun. Afraid to trust her voice, she pointed at it.

The balloon man pulled out the right two strings and gave them to Morgan.

Joey chuckled and clapped his hands. Rosalie couldn’t stop herself from beaming as Morgan ceremoniously handed her the string to the golden balloon.

“Give your hubby a kiss to thank him.” The balloon man’s grin grew wider.

Rosalie felt her face go red. “He’s not my hub—husband.”

“Even more reason to give him a good one, lady.”

Morgan joined in the man’s laughter while Rosalie pretended to be absorbed in the tricky task of tying the balloons to the stroller—Joey’s to the front, where he could see it, hers to the handle.

Once that was done they joined the flow of parents and children, and an occasional young couple with stars in their eyes, through the gate to the zoo.

Joey was as entranced by the crowds of people and other toddlers in strollers as he was by the animals. Morgan used the map to guide them to the larger, easily seen, species Joey was most likely to recognize.

The crowd around the elephants proved too dense to move through, so Morgan unclicked Joey from the stroller before Rosalie realized what he was doing, and swung the child up to his shoulders. Joey giggled and bounced up and down on his perch, more thrilled to be way up high than at the sight of the huge, gray beasts.

They moved on to the lion exhibit with him still on Morgan’s shoulders. Joey loved the ride, but when one of the lions gave a huge roar for the audience, he screeched and reached for Rosalie. She took the familiar weight from Morgan and swung Joey a few times side to side like a baby to calm him before she put him back in the stroller.

Morgan glanced at his watch. He had on a red designer polo shirt today with sharply creased chinos that put Rosalie’s unironed black trousers and flowered blouse to shame.

“Lunchtime?” he asked her with a nod toward Joey, who looked as if he was deciding whether to fuss or not.

“Good plan.”

“Shall we try the Children’s Zoo after lunch?” Morgan asked while they waited in line.

Rosalie shook her head. “He’ll need a nap after all the excitement.”

“We’ll do the Children’s Zoo next time.”

She started to protest that there wouldn’t be a next time, but they’d reached the front of the line and Morgan had turned his attention to ordering their meal.

She told him what she wanted and guided Joey’s stroller to a table near the windows.

When Morgan joined them a few minutes later, she was shocked to see what he’d bought for Joey.

“A hot dog! He might choke.”

“I thought you could take it out of the bun and he’d be able to hold it and chew on it.”

“They used to think it was okay, but not anymore. Bites of hot dog are just the right size to get caught in a toddler’s throat. Besides they’re full of fat and …”

“If a guy’s uncle can’t spoil him, who can?” Morgan gave her a heart-stopping grin.

“Step-uncle,” she corrected, to deflect it.

Instead of handing her the hot dog, he unwrapped it, took the meat out of the bun, and carefully cut the sausage into small pieces with the white plastic knife that came with the food.

Once he had a few pieces cut, he set them on a napkin in front of Joey, who sniffed the unfamiliar food for a moment before he took an experimental bite. Pure pleasure lit his face as he chewed the salty, fatty meat.

“I’ll never get him to eat puréed liver again.”

Morgan laughed. “You owe me, kid,” he told Joey, who giggled back at him.

As Morgan continued to cut up the hot dog and put the pieces on the napkin for Joey, Rosalie’s breath caught at the realization that Morgan cared about her little boy.

Her heart broke into a crazy, almost painful, dance at the twin realization that she cared about Morgan, too. How could she not when he fed Joey, helped her scare off Paul Thompson, and made her laugh?

No. She didn’t dare feel anything for this man. The lust he inspired in her was bad enough. She mentally added alarm bells to the red lights she tried to see every time she looked at Morgan.

In fact, it was worse if he liked Joey. If he’d hated “the kid,” he wouldn’t want him around in the stepmother’s life.

Much too late it hit her. She’d messed up big time. Instead of winning Morgan over to her side in the custody dispute with the zoo trip, she’d pushed him in the other direction. Joey’s adorableness had undermined her plan.

Morgan hid a smug smile. The plan was right on course.

Joey fell asleep as soon as Rosalie changed his diaper after lunch so they walked back to the car in silence. Once there, Morgan held the stroller steady to make it easier for her to undo the straps and lift Joey into his car seat without waking him.

Morgan collapsed the stroller while she buckled Joey in, then waited for her to unlock the trunk to stow all the paraphernalia inside.

The two balloons bobbing out of the open trunk reminded him of the expression on her face earlier. He didn’t know what was behind her reluctance to let him buy her a balloon, or her delight when he did, but it reinforced his sense that staying at home to take care of her mother all those years had deprived Rosalie of more than experience with men. No matter how much her mother tried to prevent it, between her needs and the grades required to keep those scholarships, Rosalie couldn’t have much time to find her own way in life.

Valuable information. Still, he had to be careful. She didn’t need, and wouldn’t want, him to feel sorry for her, any more than she needed, or wanted, him to lust after her, but both reactions felt more and more inevitable to him.

Even now, with her hair loose around her face and her clothes disheveled from moving Joey from stroller to car, he had to fight to keep erotic images of other reasons her hair and clothing might be in disarray out of his mind.

The slam of the car door shook him back to reality. Now for the next phase of the plan.

“Do you have to rush home?” he asked her.

She shook her head, a puzzled look on her face.

“I thought maybe we could talk.”

Puzzled became suspicious. “About what?”

He leaned back against the side of the car parked next to hers and crossed his arms, unwilling to contemplate why this conversation had his gut twisted in a tight knot around the over-cooked hamburger he’d had for lunch.

“About how, now you know I’m a nice guy, we should go out on a date, the two of us.”

She leaned back against her car, her arms crossed in unconscious imitation of his.

“Why should we?”

“Because it might be fun?” He let his smile fade a bit. “How often in your life have you done anything just for fun?”

“I have fun all the time.” She glanced into the car at Joey, her face wistful. “Joey has brought so much joy to my life.”

“I’m sure, but doing something simply for fun is different from when you have fun doing what you have to do anyway or doing what makes someone else happy.”

“So I should have fun going out with you because it will make you happy?”

The knot in his gut tightened another notch. The woman was too damn smart. Usually he found that attractive, but right now he’d settle for a less sharp edge on her brain.

“You don’t have to make me happy.”

Seeing you happy would be enough
.

Where the hell did that come from? He pushed the question away to focus on his main goal.

“Have dinner with me Tuesday night and …”

She shook her head. “I have to be in court Wednesday morning.”

He hid a smile at the telltale sign she took his invitation more seriously than she let on.

“Wednesday night, then. We can celebrate your victory in court.”

“Highly unlikely. My client cheated on his wife with his secretary and now wants full custody of the kids.”

The word “custody” hung in the air between them.

“So why did you agree to represent him?” he asked to distract her.

“I do all the legal work for the chain of dry cleaners he owns, so I didn’t feel like I could turn him down when he asked me to represent him in the divorce. I think they’ll reconcile before it’s over, anyway. The wife is nuts about him, and he knows he made a terrible mistake. He’s broken it off with the secretary and transferred her to another location.”

“What if I buy you dinner Wednesday night to console you for your loss in court?”

“You like to win, don’t you?”

He raised an eyebrow. “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

“Maybe not in business, but I’m not sure it bodes well for a dinner date.”

“Why not give it a try and see?”

They were back in court, Rosalie realized, with Morgan making a case, or trying to. She was the one who had to decide on a verdict, but how?

An exercise from her legal writing class floated into her mind. “Visualize your argument as a flow chart,” the instructor had told them. It helped her write successful briefs. Maybe it’d help her decide now.

Her goal was clear—end the custody battle. Her immediate choice was to go to dinner with Morgan or not. What she needed were the links to take her from here to there.

If she said no, and if Morgan didn’t hold a grudge, things would stay more or less how they were now. He’d stay neutral, and she was on her own with the lawsuit. If he did hold a grudge, she’d be slightly worse off with regard to the legal battle, but his allegiance was worth a lot more to her than it was to his stepmother.

If she said yes, she had a chance to win big. The mistake she’d made with the zoo trip was to ignore the possibility of Morgan getting attached to Joey. But without her adorable boy around, that risk was eliminated. She’d have the perfect opportunity to win Morgan over to her side, the way she’d planned to do in the first place. Problem solved.

Except it wasn’t. Life wasn’t a courtroom, or a logic problem. Last time she didn’t pay enough attention to Morgan’s emotions. This time she needed to be careful to pay enough attention to her own.

He lounged against the car, his dark hair wind-tossed, no longer the powerful businessman who’d bought her lunch the day before, although the pure masculinity that had made her afraid he’d pound Paul Thompson to a pulp in her office still shimmered around him. How he’d acted with Joey today added allure to the complex person she’d begun to see under his win-at-all-costs façade. He’d turned out to be a good guy after all.

The alarm bells went off in her head. In this case, “good guy” was not good. She was far too attracted to him. If she ignored the attraction, however, and shifted the balance so his power worked in her favor and against his stepmother, she would be that much closer to permanent custody of Joey. And Joey was what mattered most.

She was an intelligent adult. She’d done harder things than resist Morgan Danby’s undeniable sex appeal for a few hours. If her heart got a little bruised in the process, she could handle it. With a little luck, maybe she’d find a way to turn the situation into a game of wits. It might even be fun.

She looked up into his eyes and her throat went dry. Some wild spark deep inside told her it might also be the most exciting night of her life.

Morgan watched the wheels go around in Rosalie’s head and hid his impatience with the woman-whisperer smile he’d perfected at an early age.

When a beep from the car he’d been leaning against signaled the approach of the people who owned it, he straightened and moved into Rosalie’s personal space. Her eyes widened and her gaze dropped to her toes.

Which were painted a sexy poppy-red. Why the hell had he noticed that?

“Well?” he asked.

“Yes.”

It came out more a sigh than a word, so it took a moment to register in Morgan’s mind. Now he’d won, he stepped back to give her more space. “Seven o’clock, Wednesday?”

“Will you still be in town?”

“I own the company. I can be where I want to be when I want to be there, and I want to be in L.A. on Wednesday to take you to dinner.”

“I can’t stay out too late. Joey’s an early riser.”

“I’ll have you home at a reasonable hour. I promise.”

“Um, okay. I—I have to get going before Joey wakes up.”

He stepped toward her and kissed her on the forehead.

“I’ll see you Wednesday.”

She looked up at him, a mixture of surprise, pleasure, and panic written on her face.

“Okay,” she breathed again.

He walked away before she pulled herself together enough to change her mind.

Rosalie felt like a raw amateur who’d gone ten rounds with the heavyweight champ. She gave herself a little shake and got in the car. Luckily, Joey slept the whole way home, then played in his playpen while she did chores and tried to shut what she’d done out of her mind.

After Joey was in bed for the night, she allowed herself the luxury of calling Vanessa to tell her about the dinner with Morgan. She took a sip of mint tea and pushed the button on her cell next to Vanessa’s perfect face.

“What do you plan to wear on your first date in years?” was her friend’s predictable first question. “Not one of your flowery dresses, I hope.”

“It’s not a date! And what’s wrong with flowers?”

“Haven’t you figured out yet that flowers are so not you? Flowers are all ‘I’m bright and pretty’, and you’re all ‘I’m quiet and deep.’ Do you have anything blue you could wear?”

“I have a pale-blue chambray sundress with the buttons up the front.”

“Perfect. Men go crazy over all those little buttons.”

Something hot and sweet blossomed low in Rosalie’s belly. She closed her eyes against the images that flooded her mind. “I won’t let him unbutton them.”

She could almost hear Vanessa roll her eyes.

“Of course not. But the possibility you might will still drive him crazy.”

“How do you know?”

“Who’s married to the greatest guy in the world?”

Normally Rosalie would have responded “You are” without a moment’s hesitation. But although Aaron was a great guy, he wasn’t as good with Joey as Morgan was. Aaron didn’t understand her well enough to get under her skin, the way Morgan did. Aaron’s smile didn’t make her knees go weak, the way Morgan’s did.

“What have I gotten myself into?” she said, more to herself than to Vanessa.

“Hey, don’t overthink this. Relax and have a little fun. You deserve it.”

“Do you realize how long it’s been since I was on a date?”

“I thought it wasn’t a date, just dinner with a friend.”

“Morgan isn’t my friend,” Rosalie responded automatically.

“So why did you agree to go out with him?”

“I thought it’d give me a chance to get him to talk his stepmother into dropping the custody suit.”