The Baby Deal

She thought they should try to be friends. Screw that. She’d have to get used to the idea that he wanted her in his arms, naked and shuddering with pleasure.

He grabbed the full bottle and shot her a smile over his shoulder. “Welcome to my world.”

She smiled back, tousled and gorgeous in her just-out-of-bed state. “Can I feed him?”

“Is the dark side of the moon cold?”

One eyebrow crinkled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

He waited until she settled into the rocking chair and positioned the baby against her thighs, his fingertips tingling where he’d brushed her. The kid went after the bottle like an alcoholic with a fifth of Jim Beam.

Shay slumped against the wall and slid to the carpet. Tomorrow he’d order another chair. Should have already done that. It hadn’t registered there’d be two people in the nursery taking care of Mikey at the same time.

In record time, Mikey drained the bottle. She set the empty bottle on the low table beside the rocking chair and lifted Mikey up to burp him. Here came the really fun part.

Mikey cried. And cried. No matter what Juliana did, he cried more. Worry lines popped up around her eyes as she patted and rubbed Mikey’s back.

“Yeah, you might as well settle in and get comfortable,” he advised. “He’ll do that for about another hour.”

“Shay, that’s not normal. How many days has he cried more than a few minutes after eating?”

“All of them. Babies cry a lot, don’t they?” Unease trickled across his shoulders. Was something wrong with Mikey and he’d been too clueless to connect the dots?

Juliana shot off a round of questions, which he did his best to answer. If nothing else, he’d found the right person to help—she was something, asking things he’d never have considered, like if he’d spoken to Donna’s nanny about whether Donna used a different brand of formula or if she’d been breastfeeding. Yeah, that was a conversation he was dying to have. He scrubbed at his jaw, bristling the short hairs sideways. What kind of dad balked at saying breastfeeding out loud?

“He probably has reflux. We’ll get it fixed, won’t we, honey?” she murmured in Mikey’s ear and started humming, rocking the chair simultaneously. When that didn’t work, she laid him across her knees, facedown and rubbed his back.

“How do you know to do all these things? Your grad school professors must have loved you.” His professors had hated him, as they tended to when a student could ace a test without reading the textbook or showing up for lectures. Mind-numbing stuff. He and Grant had dropped out of MIT’s graduate program and started GGS Aerospace while Donna finished her PhD. Best move he’d ever made.

Second best had been hiring Juliana to turn him into a father. She was doing exactly what he’d hoped—making everything all right.

She stood and walked with Mikey, pacing around the nursery with swaying steps. Mikey was slung over her shoulder, head hanging down her back. Finally, he burped and quieted down.

“I didn’t learn about babies in grad school,” she said once she’d wrapped Mikey up in the blankets mummy-style. But when she didn’t elaborate, his curiosity was piqued. They’d split in their senior year at SMU and she’d had eight years’ worth of life since then.

“Watch a lot of baby videos online?” That’s what he’d done. Learned enough to get by and enough to know he needed far more help than five-minute snippets posted by internet wannabe-stars.

“I read a few books.” Mikey was nestled in her arms peacefully and she kept her eyes on the baby, then busied herself with placing him back in the crib.

Shay crossed his fingers. Sometimes the baby went to sleep and sometimes, the second he hit the mattress, he started screaming again. Tonight was a back-to-sleep night. Thank God.

Shay’s already lit-up nerves weren’t faring well with the dual punch of Juliana and screaming baby.

They tiptoed out of the nursery, parting to retreat to their separate bedrooms. And met again inside the nursery at 4:05 a.m., the second hour engrained in Mikey’s stomach.

Bleary-eyed, Juliana shuffled a step closer. “He’s still waking up twice a night?”

“That’s not normal, either?”

Man, was anything about this kid right? Genetically speaking, he should be well ahead of the curve. Maybe it was Shay’s fault—corrupting the baby with his lack of experience.

When he moved toward the crib, she tugged him back with a hand to his elbow. “We’ll let the baby cry it out this time.”

Let the baby cry on purpose? He eyed the bawling lump and then eyed Juliana. She nodded toward the door and left. Mystified, he followed her back into his bedroom, Mikey’s wails grating down his spine.

“We’ll watch him for a while.” Juliana sank onto the bed between his pillow and kicked-away sheets and motioned to the monitor.

Her face glowed in the pale moonlight spilling from the window opposite the bed. Middle of the night, yet in tailored pajamas and robe, she exuded classiness.

If he’d known a woman would be in his bed, he might have requested silk sheets. What a flat-out disgrace it wasn’t that kind of late-night party. He snapped on the bedside light. No point in maintaining ambiance.

As he moved away from the bed, his toes curled against the hardwood floor. It was cold, but the carpet only stuck out about a foot around the bed frame. With all the hands-off Dr. Cane had been throwing around, it seemed like he should keep a respectable distance from the consultant in his bed.

At least until he figured out how to bridge it.

“All these books you read to learn about babies. You read those recently?” he asked.

The whole concept of ignoring a crying baby stuck in his craw. If something needed attention, you handled it. But he was paying for expert advice. How much sense did it make to second-guess the doctor?

“In the last few years,” she said.

“So, not as preparation for this job.”

“I reread some on the plane. You hired me to teach you to be a father. Caring for a baby is part of that but it’s not my primary field of expertise. Child-rearing as a whole is.”

“I know.” Mikey was still sobbing with no signs of stopping. Every muscle in Shay’s body stood tensed, ready to spring toward the door, but she remained calm, grounded. He’d missed having ready access to that strength. “I read your dissertation.”

Juliana jerked her gaze away from the monitor to stare at him. “You did? All of it?”

“You think I called you up for old times’ sake? I did my research.”

“I’m just surprised. It’s dry, pure academics. Most people would fall asleep after two paragraphs.”

“I didn’t. You wrote it. I was always fascinated by your mind.”

She processed that, blank-faced. While he often blurted out exactly what was on his mind without restriction, she spoke very carefully, then and now. “You can’t still find me interesting.”

“Yet I do.” And he grew more interested by the minute.

She’d always turned him on but this grown-up version of Juliana was something else. A challenge and a half. What was it going to take to break through her resolve to keep things professional between them?

The only way to find out was to rattle her some more and see what was what.

They stared at each other for a long time and he realized his muscles had relaxed. Mikey was still crying but intermittently. The restless urge to move had stabilized and for the first time since the explosion, he didn’t want to go climb something or fly something or jump off something to beat back the weight of life.

“Hey, Ju, do you still play the violin?” The question flew from his mouth in hopes of keeping her in his bed for a while longer. He wanted to talk some more. And he liked the view.

“No. I haven’t played since college.”

The forlorn note in her voice tightened his chest. He’d loved listening to her play with the campus chamber group, could still see her in his mind, bow raised, her elation flying through the air with the notes. “You were good. Why did you quit?”

She shrugged. “Busy. It’s hard to take time for something frivolous when you have so much going on.”

Somehow he’d moved toward the bed, knees bumping the mattress. Since he was already here, he might as well sit. “But you loved playing. If you love it, it’s not frivolous.”

No wonder she seemed so unhappy—she’d stopped letting the music feed her soul.

With a wry smile, she lay back against his pillow and a flash of memory overlaid the present—one of her reclined exactly like that, but naked, eyes hot with anticipation as she waited for him.

“Says the man who builds spaceships in his spare time. Not everyone gets to do whatever they want with their life.”

And with that bucket of cold water, the memory extinguished. Yes, he was lucky to get to follow his passion. A passion that had killed the most important people in his life. Juliana had once been on that list and all of a sudden, the list felt really blank.

“What would you be if you could be anything?”

“A mom,” she said softly. “Not in the cards.”

“Your ex didn’t want children?”

He shifted, brushing a hand across her leg accidentally-on-purpose. She jolted as if she’d taken a slug to the torso.

“You knew I’d been married?”

After she’d agreed to help him, a discreet P.I. out of Dallas had done exhaustive research on her and Eric Whittaker, the accountant she’d been married to for three years. “I came across it.”

Her ex was a dweeb with vacant eyes, who’d obviously sucked in bed if Shay’s casual touch caused such a visible reaction. If Mikey took a few days to adjust, this late-night-rendezvous deal might work in his favor. He could do some more rattling. A hot and thick flood drained into his lower half at the thought of the reaction he might get with a few better-placed touches.

She sighed with a heavy lift of her chest. “He wanted children. We tried the natural way, then the artificial way. Science isn’t good enough to overcome the defects of nature.”

“I’m sorry. That’s when you read all those baby books, isn’t it?” Her tight nod said everything she didn’t. “Is it hard to be here, with Mikey?”

Surprise flitted across her face. “I’m a professional. I’ll do my job.”

“Hey.” He leaned forward and took her hand. She’d extended the olive branch of friendship and he’d done nowhere near enough to pick it up. Of course, he didn’t intend to stop there, but it was a good start. “I’m asking because you interest me. Not because I think you’ll shirk your responsibilities.”

Some pretty major stuff had happened in her life. Rattling his way past the professional barrier she’d erected was going to be harder than he’d expected. But he’d find a way.

She looked down at their joined fingers and faked a yawn. “Mikey’s asleep. Good night.”

Then she slipped away.

Three

Mikey’s pediatrician diagnosed him with reflux, as Juliana had suspected he would. Funny how being right did little to boost her energy or her mood. Cry-it-out had only worked the first night. A week later, the reflux medicine and several different kinds of formula hadn’t worked at all. Since Maria worked only during the day and Shay hadn’t specified his nanny requirements, they split nighttime baby duty.

Fuzzily, she peered at the hands of the elephant clock on the nursery wall. 5:00 a.m. or 5:00 p.m.? A glance at the dark window answered the question. Did it matter? Time ceased to have any meaning when on call every day. She patted the screaming bundle of baby propped up on her shoulder. He’d been crying for nearly an hour.

How had Donna done this, over and over, and still functioned?

Regardless of whose turn it was, Mikey never smiled, or gurgled or did any cute baby things. Regardless of who claimed to be an expert, the result was the same. Failure.

Wiggling baby woke her. She blinked hair out of her eyes and sucked in a breath at the stab of pain through her neck and shoulders. Daylight poured through the nursery window, washing over the cartoon giraffes, lions, hippos and zebras painted on the walls. Mikey peered up at her from a nest of blankets across her thighs, uncharacteristically quiet.

She’d fallen asleep in the rocking chair with an unsecured five-month-old baby on her lap. He could have rolled off or she might have flipped him off accidentally. His head could have gotten stuck between the cushions.

His mother would never have been so irresponsible.

Of course, no matter how much she’d come to care about Mikey, Juliana was just a consultant. One who couldn’t get her brain jump-started when around the baby’s father.

The connecting door between Shay’s room and the nursery opened. Shay buzzed through and in the split second before he shut it, the door frame outlined Shay’s bed.

His mattress was soft and fluffy, with warm, inviting sheets, and she’d been very careful not to think about it. That first night, they’d been talking and it had been so familiar she hadn’t thought twice about sitting on his bed. Until he started looking at her with those Shay eyes, as if her respectable tailored pajamas and robe were transparent and he liked what they revealed.

There went that hot flush in a place that had no business flushing. Knowing his way around a woman’s body didn’t begin to compensate for lack of maturity and addiction to danger. Her well-educated brain shouldn’t have so much trouble remembering.

“Hey, Ju,” he said. “Did you get some sleep?”

“A little.” She clutched Mikey against her chest. He needed her, and it was her job to keep him safe. “I dozed off in the rocker.”

What a waste of a degree. What did she know about child rearing? A bunch of rhetoric from textbooks. The real thing kept kicking her in the teeth, minute by minute. How many parents had she sanctimoniously lectured about their mistakes, as they nervously perched on their seats in her office? How had not one of them denounced her as a fraud?

Yet she arrogantly presumed to write a book about this.

He nodded. “Been there many a time, my friend.”

“Well, it’s not advisable. We can’t keep up this middle-of-the-night marathon. Today, we need to figure out the nanny plan.”

With a nanny in place, Juliana would have distance from day-to-day care and regain her professional perspective. Then maybe she’d figure out how best to care for him. He was depending on her.

“I have a better idea. You need a break. I have a few things to take care of in Fort Worth this morning. Come with me. You can go shopping and I’ll take you to lunch. Maria will watch Mikey and we’ll be back by two or three at the latest.”

A break? If he’d said Godiva chocolate dipped in twenty-four-karat gold it couldn’t have sounded better. “Really?”

In response, he scooped Mikey from her lap with one hand and pulled her to her feet with the other. “Really. Go get ready and meet me downstairs in an hour.”

She showered in record time and slipped into a halter dress. A break was precisely what she needed to get on terra firma again. Then things with Mikey would start clicking.

Poor baby. He probably couldn’t figure out why he suddenly lived in a new place with new people. Everything familiar had been ripped away from Mikey and all she wanted to do was provide stability. Give him a sense of connection and of being cared for.

Maybe she should cancel Fort Worth.

No, she needed time away to recharge and it was the perfect opportunity to move forward with giving Shay parenting lessons.

She’d taken a seat in the sunroom when Shay strolled in and set off a new round of hot flushes.

She was tired. If she could get some decent sleep, Shay walking into a room wouldn’t affect her at all. She’d never noticed when Eric came into a room. When she was absorbed in research or a case study, he’d shake her shoulder to get her attention. Eric possessed a fine list of qualities—he was unassuming, quiet and easy to ignore when she needed to concentrate. Everything she wanted in a man, and not a frustrating, stubborn, vibrating-with-masculinity boy wonder.

Eric and Shay were barely from the same planet and comparing them had grown into an unproductive habit. The two men she’d once cared for were nothing alike. Intentionally.

“Ready?” he asked.

She nodded and it wasn’t until they arrived at Shay’s airport that she thought to ask a really, really late question. “How are we getting there?”

“Helicopter. It’s only a couple hours there and back, depending on the wind.”

And how many hours if the pilot didn’t fly like a kamikaze bat out of hell? She bit her lip. He understood the importance of Mikey’s welfare and wouldn’t take unnecessary risks. Not anymore.

“Can’t we fly in a plane?”

“Sure, but then I have to land at a municipal airport. I can put the bird down on the roof of GGS. Saves me a lot of time and trouble. I fly planes to relax, not for work.”

Relax. Really?

The helicopter sat on the runway like a giant black-and-glass insect. Its blades threw huge shadows on the ground and she swallowed. People rode in helicopters all the time. Nothing to worry about. Helicopter crashes were rare. Except in combat, but those crashes were due to being shot down. Weren’t they?

This one had doors. Thankfully. She sat in the passenger seat and shut her eyes as Shay did whatever pilot checks were necessary and talked to people through the radio in his headset. His voice settled her and she peeked out from under her lashes.

She could do this. He’d had a license to fly everything under the sun since before she’d met him ten years ago. Surely he was even more practiced now.

Thwack, thwack, thwack.

The blades spun and, as if by magic, the helicopter lifted into the air, guided expertly by the magician at the controls. Shay’s fingers wrapped firmly around the lever between their seats and he performed innumerable other sleight-of-hand tricks in rapid succession. The ground rushed away and the sky opened in a burst of blue.

The ground was so far below the flimsy metal cage between her and a free fall. The ground was completely unreachable, except through Shay’s wizardry.

Her stomach did the tango and her eyes slammed shut again. Had he said two hours?

Miraculously, they did not crash, her eyelids eventually opened and about a kajillion white-knuckle deep breaths later, Shay touched down with a light bounce on a giant X. He helped her down from the high seat and she sucked oxygen into her lungs in a cleansing sigh as her shoes flattened against the roof of GGS.

“Not so bad, right?” Shay’s hand settled into the small of her back and she leaned into the support gratefully. Illogically so, since it was his fault she needed steadying.

“Not so bad in comparison to jumping out of it with a parachute, perhaps.”

Shay laughed and no, it wasn’t so bad. Downtown Fort Worth spread out beyond the lip of the roof, twinkling in the morning light, and a much-needed break was in her future. She’d try to forget about the looming second helicopter ride, sure to come right after lunch.

Juliana took her time exploring the shops in Sundance Square and tried to enjoy a couple of hours without responsibilities, but Mikey wasn’t far from her thoughts. She sent a cowboy hat to her dad and a pair of lovely turquoise earrings to her assistant. Her mom hated everything so Juliana had given up buying her gifts a long time ago.

A push-button toy decorated with music notes caught her eye. She pressed one of the squares and smiled as Mozart floated from the hidden speaker. Mozart had been her favorite to play and she suddenly missed feeling the music flow through her. Shay’s casual mention of the violin the other night had shaken loose forgotten memories and since then, with greater and greater frequency, she recalled how much she’d loved to play.

She purchased the toy. Her throat tightened with a twinge of sadness because it would probably be the only gift she’d ever give Mikey. If she did her job, Mikey would have an amazing parent in Shay. She had no business dissolving into melancholy over the end of her consulting job.

Near noon, she walked the four or five blocks to the steak house Shay had suggested for lunch. Before the words “reservation for Michael Shaylen” completely left her mouth, the maître d’ whisked her to a cozy corner table with multiple apologies for the apparent crime of being forced to seat her alone. Poor man. She’d adjusted to Shay-Standard-Time long ago.

He blew in fifteen minutes later and she experienced yet another difficult-to-reconcile change. Oh, he was still Shay in his T-shirt sporting a graphic of the Milky Way galaxy and an arrow pointing to the center, with the words You Are Here printed above it.

But he was also Michael Shaylen, the billionaire entrepreneur.

Every waiter in the place snapped to attention. Other diners whispered behind their hands or stared at him as he sauntered across the room. He’d always turned heads but this was different, as if the balance of his bank account also bestowed a particular mystique.

To her, he was Shay and always would be. At least his fortune would ensure Mikey would never have to make new friends in a town where his parents’ creditors hadn’t located them yet. Mikey would have the stability so critical for his well-being, and by the time Juliana finished with Shay’s lessons, Mikey would have a good father, too.

Shay followed the maître d’, oblivious to everything in the room except Juliana.

The flush hit higher in her chest this time. He could be doing a lot of other things with his day but he wasn’t. His intense gaze could be fixated on a million issues surely competing for his attention. But it wasn’t.

His gaze was on her.

How had a quiet, violin-playing psychology major caught the attention of such a man? He deserved someone who could match him, crazy step for crazy step.

Every nerve in her body ruffled. She didn’t want to be the center of so much concentration, so much focus, so much Shay. Already she could feel it sucking at her, drawing her into the whirlpool. Speeding up her pulse, causing the ground to rush away.

Like in college, but worse—it was somehow more powerful now.

Shay slid into the opposite seat and smiled. “Did you have a good day?”

Breath rushed out of her lungs.

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