Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses

Dylan glanced from her to the baby. Then back at her. That adorable doubt was playing across his normally self-assured features. “I thought I couldn’t even be trusted with a houseplant,” he reminded her.

“Well, you can’t. But help is a phone call away, if you need it.”

“Yeah,” he muttered, “911.” He juggled the baby and picked up the car seat.

“Here. I’ll take one of those as far as your car.”

“Thanks.” He handed her Jake. She was glad. One more small chance to hold his warm little body, to smell the baby shampoo in his hair, to fill her senses with him.

Before she let go.

They crossed the parking lot, and she watched as Dylan struggled to fit the car seat into his nearly nonexistent back seat.

“Okay,” she said, “ready.” Ready to let go. Ready to go back to her old life. Ready to forget the smell of babies and the look in a man’s eyes.

Liar. Out loud she said, “You can call from your sister’s if you need anything else from me.”

There. Didn’t she sound cool and composed, totally collected? She felt she had very successfully disguised the fact that she was a woman who could be wooed into a helpless, spineless jellyfish by a man with a baby in his arms!

Dylan reached for the baby. Jake whimpered.

“Come on, little man, you’re coming with your favorite unkie.” Dylan glared at Katie. “Don’t ever tell a single soul about that.”

“What?”

“Unkie,” he whispered.

She juggled the baby, held up her two fingers, Scout’s honor style.

“Come on, Jake,” Dylan said.

The baby nestled in tight against her, sidled a look at his uncle. “NO!”

She tried to help by detaching him from her, but as Dylan reached around his tummy to take him, she found a chunky hand wrapped in her hair. Dylan’s hand was brushing her breast. She felt the burn of it. Her eyes met his. He jerked his hand away.

“NO YOU,” the baby informed him, taking a tighter wrap on her hair. “SHE.”

“Jake,” he said firmly, CEO of a million-dollar company, “You are coming with me. Let go.”

“NO, NO, NO,” little Jakie shrieked. A passerby gave them a curious look.

“Shhh, little man,” Dylan said. His voice, roughened with tenderness, sent shivers of new appreciation up and down Katie’s spine.

The baby, however, was unimpressed. He wrapped his free arm around her neck. When Dylan reached for him again, he loosed it just long enough to slug his unkie in the ear.

“Hey, Jakie, calm down.” Dylan enveloped the small fist in the strength of his own hand, and she felt another shiver of raw appreciation at how gently he leashed his strength to control the baby.

However, Jake could give her a lesson or two in being immune to the charm of Dylan McKinnon. The baby shrieked and pulled his solid little body in even closer to her. When Dylan tried one more time to pull him away, the baby busted him one in the chops.

“Here,” Katie said, her maternal instincts feeling nothing but sympathy for the poor distraught baby. “Give it up before you get seriously hurt.”

“If he’s going to hurt anyone it’s going to be me,” Dylan said with such furious protectiveness of her that her tummy did the roller-coaster ride down to the bottom of her stomach.

“Just see if he’ll calm down.”

Reluctantly Dylan moved back a step. The baby eyed him warily. Then he went limp, his fight over. Jake gave his uncle a baleful glare and settled himself against Katie’s chest. After a moment, he put one thumb back in his mouth, but kept the chubby fingers of his other hand curled possessively through her hair and closed his eyes. He hiccupped sadly.

“And you’ve never even snuck him chocolate or taken him to the park!” Dylan said wryly. And then with satisfaction, “He’s getting drool on your shirt.”

“A little drool never hurt—”

But Dylan had lifted the hem of his own shirt, reached up with it, giving her a glimpse of a belly so hard and muscled her fingers actually tingled from wanting to touch. He wiped Jake’s face and let the hem of his shirt drop back down.

Dangerous thoughts crowded her mind, at least partially triggered by that glimpse of Dylan’s gorgeous flat belly, the very kind of thoughts she had been trying so desperately to get away from. What if this could be her real life? Her real man? Babies and baby seats, and glimpses of things that made your heart race on an ordinary afternoon. It might even be worth the diaper part.

While she was living dangerously, she stole another look at Dylan’s lips, allowed herself to remember what they tasted like, allowed herself to think of the secret and sacred things that occurred between a man and a woman to make a baby.

“You try and put him in the seat,” Dylan whispered.

She was dreadfully reluctant to give up the baby, but she knew this was a dangerous game she was playing. She untangled his chubby fist from her hair.

The baby’s eyes popped open, he eyed his uncle with grave suspicion.

“Hey, great imitation of Chucky.”

“Who?”

“Chucky. A demented doll that comes to life. Horror movie. It goes without saying that you wouldn’t like it.”

“Did you like it?” she asked. Surely a full-grown man wouldn’t like such nonsense? A feeble excuse to find him flawed, but she was a desperate woman.

“Of course I liked Chucky. It’s a classic!” He noticed the baby was relaxed, and he reached for him.

But when Dylan touched him, Jake screamed. Dylan jerked back his hand as if he’d been burned, Jake became silent. Dylan’s lips twitched. He reached out. This time he didn’t even have to touch the baby. Jake screamed long and loud.

Katie tucked the baby’s head in close. “How do you expect him to behave toward someone who liked Chucky? And just for your information Jane Eyre is a classic.”

“He doesn’t know the difference between Chuck and Jane. He’s not even two!”

“Babies are sensitive to vibes,” she said, and as if to confirm it the baby blew some indignant spit bubbles his uncle’s way and regarded him with silent challenge.

“The little devil,” Dylan muttered. “He’s playing a game with me. What’s worse, he’s winning!”

It was a rather funny thing to see one of the world’s most competitive men losing a battle of will with a baby!

Finally Dylan shoved his hands in his pockets and glared at his nephew. “I’ve never done anything to him, honest!”

He regarded Katie and the baby thoughtfully, then grinned. “Oh, I get it. Vibes aside, you’re nice and soft in all the right places.”

As if to confirm, the baby snuggled deeper against her breast.

It occurred to her that Dylan was now studying her chest with grave interest. She began to blush, and then was astounded when he did, too!

Dylan backed away from her hurriedly. Katie managed to get the baby’s uncooperative limbs into his car seat. Jake contemplated this development suspiciously, and Katie wondered how well Dylan was going to drive when his nephew figured out they were leaving SHE behind.

“Katie, hop in. Just for a few minutes. I know how the male mind works. Easily distracted. Our first stop will be Bill’s Wild Toy Store. I’ll get Jakie one of those windup buffalos they advertise on TV, and then, Katie, we can release you to your flower store.”

Step into the car, or let him handle it himself? This was not her life, not her man, not her baby. This was not a man she would ever be making babies with. This was a man who had just given her fair warning how his mind worked.

How the male mind worked. They were a breed easily distracted. Everyone could be replaced with something or someone more entertaining, more interesting.

Even knowing that, she got in the car. She told herself it was just for Jakie’s sake, not because she was reluctant to say goodbye to the little adventure life had dropped in her lap.

At Bill’s Wild Toy Store, the funniest thing happened. Once inside the building, arguably every child’s fantasy, Jake clung to her more tenaciously than ever. He was not trading up: he could not be wooed away from her with a three-foot-tall ride-on buffalo, foam footballs, red wagons or beach balls. Jake’s lack of enthusiasm did not prevent Dylan from loading two shopping carts full of toys, one which he shoved ahead of him, and one which he dragged behind to the checkout.

How could you spend an hour shopping for toys with Dylan and keep your guard up? How could you watch him put on a passable juggling act with beanie babies and not come a whole lot closer to being in love with him? How could you watch him crashing remote control cars into the doll display with fiendish enthusiasm and not forgive him his easily distracted male mind?

The 50-per-cent-off, spring-fling sale was in full swing, and the famous toy store was full of women. Young women, old women, mom women, single women, pretty women, plain women.

To Katie, every single one of them seemed to slide Dylan the most appreciative of glances, and he seemed way more distracted by the toys than by any of those glances. He didn’t even seem to notice that he was on the receiving end of rapt gazes, some that were shy, some that were openly inviting.

Some of those women looked at him as if he were a piece of art, to be admired but not touched, others let the heat of their thoughts right into their eyes, the sudden sway of their hips. It reminded her that he was the playboy and she was the plain Jane. That she was allowing herself to be sucked into a fantasy, to entertain the illusion that she and Dylan and Jake were just an ordinary little family, out shopping for toys.

For a man who had claimed to be easily distracted, he didn’t even seem notice the female kafuffle he was generating. He seemed seriously and sincerely engrossed in trying out the remote-control helicopter, punching the bounce-back rubber clown, tossing the foam basketballs through the hoop that had been set up. At the basketball hoops, she was almost certain he was showing off for her.

She was overtaken by a feeling of wanting to let her guard down and just give in to liking him, enjoying him, feeling compatible with him. Within moments he had her laughing, and feeling light inside. She had seen his most secret side. She had seen the side of him that tempered his phenomenal strength with equally phenomenal tenderness, she had seen the part of him that was patient, she had seen the part that was laughter filled and joyous.

Back in the car now stuffed with their purchases, Dylan contemplated his nephew’s indifference to the toys, and the new sumo wrestler hold he had on Katie.

“SHE,” Jake announced, as she strapped him into the car seat. He watched the two adults on the curb.

“He’s getting ready to throw himself into a prizewinning tantrum if you leave,” Dylan deduced.

“You’re going to have to deal with that sooner or later,” she said firmly, though she didn’t think in his car, dealing with the steadily building rush hour traffic, would be a good place for him to do it.

“A puppy!” Dylan announced with a snap of his fingers. “I’ll get him a puppy. And then drive you back to work.”

“Dylan, we have already established the fact that you cannot even be trusted with a plant. A puppy?”

“I’ll bet once he has a puppy he won’t even notice you’re gone.”

And would Dylan notice she was gone once he had a puppy to engage himself? Probably not.

She slid him a look. Was he trying to get rid of her? Did he sense, as she did, something deepening around them, a force gathering, beckoning, whispering?

Follow me. Come.

Her heart was calling. It was an ancient calling, not so much words as feeling, instinct, drive. But following the voice of the heart was no matter to be taken lightly. Some choices were momentous, they had the potential to change everything, forever. Was he feeling that, too? Could he feel that they were standing on the precipice of choosing heart over logic, over mind? Was he trying to get away from that choice?

As if to answer her, Dylan began fishing through one of his shopping bags. He found and unwrapped a pingpong ball attached to a paddle, and began to play with it, trying to distract Jake. He appeared to be the man least likely to be listening for the ancient language of the heart.

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