At Her Service: His Baby! / Major Attraction

“Bother, huh?” Kelly asked as she headed for the door.

The school principal’s face took on the supremely patient expression she was famous for as she said, “He’s only going to be alone with Emily for four hours today, my dear. What could possibly go wrong in four miserably short hours?”

“What else can go wrong?” Jeff muttered, wiping up the flood of orange juice racing across the kitchen table. He’d never seen a kid spill so much. “Spill proof cups, my ass,” he muttered darkly as he tossed the small plastic cup into the sink. He hadn’t seen this much liquid since the last time he’d been sent overseas on flood relief.

He glanced at his daughter and wondered fleetingly how Kelly kept up with the child. Hell, it must be something God gave women that He didn’t give men. Just trying to ride herd on the little girl made him feel like he’d been on a ten-mile hike with a full pack. He was worn down to the ground. And he didn’t have to worry about doing the laundry. He’d already had to change the baby’s outfit three times in the past two hours.

But that wasn’t the half of it. She’d shoved a half-chewed teething cracker into the VCR, ripped her mother’s credit-card bill in half and chewed on the sports section of the newspaper.

And it wasn’t even noon yet.

Plus, the phone kept ringing off the hook, as if he had time to worry about that. Maybe he wasn’t cut out for this, he thought and found himself thinking fondly of slopping through a swamp with a half-dozen unfriendlies hot on his tail.

Then he glanced at Emily, and his doubts melted under the beam of that smile. She kicked her legs against the slats of her high chair, crowed delightedly and finished tossing banana slices across the room like tiny Frisbees. One of them hit him square in the forehead and while Emily giggled, Jeff sighed and wondered when it was exactly he’d lost control.

The first hour or so had been great. But things had pretty much gone downhill after that. Hell, maybe this hadn’t been such a good idea. He’d never felt so damn useless in his life. Any other kind of situation, Jeff would be the man to jump in and take charge. But apparently, keeping a baby entertained was just a bit out of his reach.

“Recon, huh?” a deep voice from the back door asked.

Jeff swallowed the groan choking him and straightened up. Turning to face Kevin Rogan, he wondered just who in heaven or hell he’d ticked off lately. “Your point?” he asked.

Kevin stepped into the room, taking his Smokey Bear hat off and setting it on a relatively clean spot on the counter. “Thought you Recon guys were hot stuff.” He paused and glanced around the room. Dark brown eyebrows lifted into high arches as he whistled and shook his head. “Man, you should think about calling in air support. You’re outgunned.”

Though he’d been thinking the same thing himself only a moment ago, hearing this guy say it aloud really stuck in his craw. “I suppose you could do it better.”

“Hell,” Kevin said, folding his arms across his chest, “a blind monkey with both arms tied behind its back could do better.”

“Then you’re overqualified, aren’t you?” Jeff asked as he walked across the room to his daughter and lifted her out of the chair. Emily laughed and clapped both banana-mushed hands to his cheeks. He ignored it and walked back toward the drill inspector who was so sure of himself. “You talk a good game. Let’s see what a D.I. can do, huh?” “No problem,” the other man said, and reached out for his niece. Too late, he noticed the bananas now decorating the front of his uniform blouse. Jeff smiled. He felt better already.

Kelly parked the car in the driveway, noted her brother Kevin’s car at the curb out front, then hurried to the front door. Jeff and Kevin? Alone together? With only Emily to referee?

“Big mistake, Kelly,” she muttered as she slid the key into the lock and turned it. “You never should have agreed to this. You were just asking for troub—” Her voice trailed off as she opened the door.

Stunned into silence, she stepped into what looked like the aftereffects of a hurricane. Toys, diapers, jars of baby food were scattered all across the living room. And in the middle of the floor, his head resting on the belly of a teddy bear, was Kevin, in full uniform, sound asleep, still clutching Emily’s ring of plastic keys.

A soft snore caught her attention, and she shifted her gaze to the couch. Jeff lay stretched out atop the cushions, zonked out, with a sleeping Emily tucked against his chest. His arms were wrapped around her sturdy little body and she was sucking her thumb, clearly content in her daddy’s embrace.

Smiling to herself, Kelly leaned against the arched doorjamb and just enjoyed the view. Her daughter and the man she—what? Loved?

Her heart twisted in her chest, and a soft sigh escaped her. Oh man. Lust she could handle. But love? Love was something she hadn’t really counted on.

The next week slid past, with the three of them settling into a routine that was both comforting and a little scary for Kelly. One part of her loved the normalcy of it all. Of having Jeff there to help care for Emily. Of knowing that her daughter and Jeff were forming bonds that would last a lifetime. But on the other hand …

She was beginning to depend on Jeff and she didn’t want to. Every once in a while, she caught a thoughtful gleam in his eye and Kelly knew he was still thinking about the proposal he’d made. They hadn’t talked about it again and for that, she was grateful. But sooner or later, the subject would come up. He would want this settled between them before he left in three short weeks.

And Jeff wasn’t the kind of man to take no as an answer without a battle.

“There’s just no easy way out of this,” she complained aloud as she folded yet another of Emily’s freshly washed T-shirts.

From her walker, the baby gurgled something that Kelly was sure was meant as supportive. Then Emily went up on her toes, waved both arms and scooted forward half an inch on the carpeted floor.

“You’ll be walking soon, won’t you?” Kelly asked, and clutching the T-shirt in both hands, leaned back against the sofa cushions to watch her daughter. “Then it’ll be school and your first date and then before I know it, you’ll be getting married and leaving poor ol’ Mom behind.”

Emily leaned forward and gnawed on a bright pink plastic knob attached to the front of her walker.

“Yep,” Kelly went on. “Your daddy will walk you down the aisle and when the ceremony’s over, he’ll go his way and I’ll go mine.” In her mind’s eye, she saw it all. Emily, radiant in white, Jeff, still handsome and herself, alone.

“Now why do you suppose ‘alone’ suddenly feels so … lonely?” Kelly asked, and Emily continued to chew, uninterested in the conversation. “I never wanted to get married, you know. It’s not that I don’t want to marry your daddy. I just don’t want another male in my life.” Emily blew a spit bubble. “Your uncles have always been so darn bossy, and who needs that from one more guy?” Kelly scowled to herself, folded the now crumpled T-shirt and idly smoothed out the wrinkles. “Of course, Jeff really isn’t the bossy type, is he?” she mused, remembering that he hadn’t once given her grief over Emily’s day care as her brothers did on a regular basis. And after that first day of caring for Emily, hadn’t he gotten the hang of things? Hadn’t he even cooked dinner for them twice in the past week?

This was a man used to doing for himself. He wasn’t one to sit on a recliner and shout, “Bring me a beer.” She smiled to herself at the thought. Jeff wasn’t like any other man she’d ever known, and maybe that’s what had her so worried. Because of him, she was even starting to rethink her “never marry” theory. And she wasn’t at all sure she wanted that.

“First off,” Travis drawled lazily as he reached for his bottle of beer, “you’ve got to figure out just what you want.”

“That’s easy,” Jeff told him, “I want Kelly. And Emily. Haven’t I just spent the last hour telling you that?”

Travis, Deke and J.T. sprawled on the couch, chairs and floor of the hotel suite. Jeff looked at them all, each in turn and smiled to himself. Four more unlikely friends you’d never meet. But they had become more than friends over the past few years. They’d become family.

Travis, one of six kids, hailed from a small town in Texas. Deke came from old-line Boston money. J.T. was the only child of a three-star General. and Jeff, hell, the only family he’d ever had was here in this room.

The three of them looked at each other before looking back at Jeff. But Travis was the one who spoke up. “All right, then. What you’ve got to do is think of Kelly like you would any other target.” “Target?” he repeated.

“Hell, yes,” Deke broke in. “Scope the situation out, plan your assault, then go in under cover of darkness.”

“Sneak up on the enemy, er, Kelly,” J.T. added, “until you’ve got her right where you want her.” Of course, he thought. Go with your strengths. And he’d had plenty of practice for this kind of thing. After all, trying to talk Kelly into marrying him would be every bit as dangerous as slipping undetected into enemy territory.

“You’ve got three weeks left, Jeff,” Travis said in that slow-moving speech of his, “make ‘em count, boy.”

“Ooh-rah,” Deke muttered. J.T. lifted his beer in silent salute, and Jeff reached for the phone.

The telephone rang, interrupting her thoughts, and Kelly reached for it like a drowning woman grabbing at a life preserver.

“Hello?” “Hi.”

Even if she hadn’t recognized his voice, the reaction of her body to that deep, rumbling sound would have told her that it was Jeff. Good heavens. He could do this to her even over the phone lines?

“Kelly,” he was saying, and she drew her hormones back from the brink far enough to concentrate. “You think you could get one of your brothers to baby-sit tonight?”

“I suppose so,” she said. “Why? What’d you have in mind?”

“I was thinking about taking you out on a date.”

A warm flush swept over her, and her fingers curled tightly around the receiver. “A date?”

“Yeah,” Jeff said, and his voice came soft and intimate in her ear. “A date.”

“Uh …” she said, stalling for some unknown reason because she knew as well as he did that she would say yes. “Okay. What time?” “I’ll pick you up at seven.” “I’ll be ready.”

Jeff hung up the phone, then picked up his beer. Lifting it high, he waited for his friends to do likewise before saying, “Target acquired.”

Nine

She should have known he’d play dirty.

Kelly steeled herself against being swayed by his tactics, but it wasn’t easy to stand firm against a man like Jeff—especially when he was determined to be romantic. Especially a man you were already halfway in love with.

And he’d pulled out all the stops for their “date.”

Moonlight poured down from a star-filled sky and danced across the surface of the ocean. A soft wind ruffled the sand and lifted her hair from the collar of her turquoise cowl-necked sweater. As Jeff refilled her champagne glass, she glanced around the tiny cove and told herself he’d chosen his spot well.

This was their beach. The spot where he’d saved her life eighteen months ago. The place where this had all started.

In a couple of months, the beach would be crowded, even at night, with scores of teenagers. But now, this early in the season, it was deserted. The rock walls of the cove surrounded them on three sides, and high above, perched on a cliff, was a five-star restaurant. The soft strains of piano music drifted down to them and seemed to melt into the sigh of the outgoing tide.

“More champagne?” Jeff asked, ending her thoughts and bringing her back to the moment at hand.

“Sure,” she said, though an inner voice was warning her to stay alert. He already had everything going for him here. The romantic setting was perfect. A tablecloth spread out on the sand, candles set in hurricane globes, their flames bobbing and shifting in the breeze, iced champagne and a caterer’s tray of snacks. Moonlight glinted in his blue eyes and a shaft of pure, unadulterated lust shot through her, and Kelly knew she was in big trouble.

She had to keep her wits about her. He was using the big guns on her tonight, and if she wasn’t careful, she’d find herself pillaged and captured. And right now, that didn’t even sound like a bad idea.

Oh, boy.

She lifted her glass and took a sip, letting the icy bubbles slide down her throat. When she was sure her voice would work without quavering, she spoke up. “You really went to a lot of trouble tonight, Jeff.”

“No trouble,” he insisted, pouring himself more of the expensive wine.

She laughed and shook her head. “You set all this up, and even posted a guard on it while you came to get me.” She hadn’t gotten a good look at the man Jeff had waved off as they’d arrived, but he’d had the bearing of a Marine.

“That was Travis,” he said, taking a drink of champagne. “Travis Hawks. He’s a member of my team.”

Safe territory, she thought and snatched at the subject. “Tell me about them,” she said. “Your team.”

He looked at her for a long minute, and Kelly knew that he knew what she was up to. But it didn’t seem to matter. He shrugged and started talking. “There are three of them. Travis, Deke and J.T. We’ve been together for a long time. Long enough that we can each tell what the others are thinking.”

“You’re good friends,” she said, judging more from the warmth in his tone than his words.

“The best,” he agreed, giving her a soft smile. “But it’s more than that. We’re family.”

Family. He said the single word as if it was sacred, and she knew how much that meant to him. The last time they were together, he hadn’t talked much about his childhood, but he’d said enough for her to know it hadn’t been an easy one. She knew he’d grown up mostly in an orphanage before being placed in a foster home when he was in his late teens. But by then, it was too late for him to forge any kind of a bond with a family situation.

He was too much his own man. Even then. Kelly had no trouble at all imagining what he’d been like at sixteeen. Tall, good-looking, with shadows in his eyes and a way of holding himself apart from everyone around him.

Which pretty much described him as he was now. Except with her. And Emily.

And the realization of that hit her hard. Family was all-important to Kelly, and she’d grown up in the loving arms of four overbearing brothers.

Though their parents were gone now, killed in a traffic accident five years ago, the five of them remained close. If family meant so much to her, what would it mean to a man who’d never really known it before?

“We’ve been in some hairy situations,” he was saying, and Kelly forced herself to pay attention. To keep her mind from wandering down dangerous paths. “But each of us knows the others are there to watch his back.”

“Tell me,” she said, wanting him to keep talking, loving the sound of his voice and knowing that as long as he was talking about work, the conversation wouldn’t go places she wasn’t ready for. “Tell me about a typical mission.”

He choked out a laugh. “There’s no such thing as a typical mission. Every one is different.” His gaze shuttered. “And I can’t really talk about what I do, anyway.”

“Can’t or won’t?” she asked. “Both, I guess,” he said, trying to be as honest as possible. “I wouldn’t want to, even if I could. But most of what we do is secret. You know the old joke, ‘I could tell you, but then I’d have to kill you.”’

“Charming,” she said, and took another sip of wine.

“It’s not an easy job,” he continued, locking his gaze with hers. “But it’s an important one. And I’m good at it.”

“I believe you are,” she murmured, watching him. Even at rest, his body was tight, as if some inner core of him were coiled, ready to spring loose into action. She had no trouble at all imagining him stealing covertly into danger and Kelly knew one thing for sure. If she were ever in trouble, hoping for rescue, she’d want a man like Jeff Hunter to be sent in after her.

“But I don’t want to talk about the job tonight,” he said. “You talk for a while.”

“About what?” She didn’t have anything exciting to say. No great adventures to share. She lived an ordinary life.

“About you. Emily. Your brothers.” She laughed at the tightness in his voice there at the end. “Believe it or not, they’re pretty great, for brothers,” she added as a caveat. “We were always a close family, but since our folks died a few years ago, we’ve gotten even tighter. Except for those occasions when I have to fight tooth and nail to remind them that I’m all grown up and can take care of myself.” He gave her a slow smile. “It’s nice, though,” she said thoughtfully, “having them there to count on. Our mom always told us, ‘Family comes first,’ and she was right. Come hell or high water, even when they irritate me beyond belief—” she paused and shook her head gently “—they’re there when I need them. Just as I am for them. And that’s a gift.”

“Yeah,” he said, his voice even tighter now. “It is.”

There was something else here. Something beyond wanting to listen to her talk about her family. She just wasn’t sure what exactly it was. So, trying to lighten the moment, she said, “Boy, you must be desperate for me to talk if you’re even willing to talk about them.”

He gave her a half smile and lifted one shoulder in a quick shrug. “We didn’t exactly get off to a great start, your brothers and me. But I understand where they’re coming from.” “You do, huh?”

“You bet,” he said, sitting up again and resting one forearm on his upraised knee. “If some clown comes dancing around Emily and leaves her alone and pregnant—” he shook his head at the thought, and the grim set of his mouth told Kelly how he’d finish that statement before he spoke and confirmed it “—I’ll hunt him down like a dog.”

Though a part of her warmed to hear him speak so protectively of Emily, another part—the independent heart of her, had to say something. “Jeff, you didn’t leave me alone and pregnant.”

“Yeah, I did.”

“Neither of us knew when you left.”

“Doesn’t change the facts, does it?” He tossed the last of his champagne down his throat, set the glass down and stood up. Feet braced wide apart, arms folded across his chest, he stood staring out at the black ocean, and his gaze locked on the silvery trail of moonlight that stretched out into eternity.

Kelly set her own glass down and stood up to join him. Standing directly in front of him, she placed both hands on the corded muscles of his forearms and looked up into his face. She kept staring at him until he lowered his gaze to hers.

In the glow of the moonlight, she saw the shadows in his eyes darken and gather and she wasn’t sure if it was anger or pain. All she knew was that she wanted to ease those shadows back.

“You didn’t know,” she repeated, her voice firm.

His jaw worked and she could almost hear his teeth grinding. “Like I said, that doesn’t change the facts, does it?”

“And I wasn’t alone,” she pointed out. “I wouldn’t think I’d have to remind you of that. The guys have been ‘dropping by’ on you all week while you’ve been watching Emily.”

In fact, the Rogan brothers had made a point of checking up on Jeff. Not a day went by that one of her brothers hadn’t been at her house when she got home from work. And though the week had started out rough, by Friday, even Kevin had warmed up some toward Jeff.

And Kelly wasn’t sure which was better—them liking Jeff or not liking him? Either way, her brothers had plenty to say to her about him.

“No, you weren’t alone,” he admitted, and unfolded those arms to pull her in close. “But I wasn’t there. And I should have been.”

Exasperation kicked in. Talk about a hard head. “Are you going to beat yourself up over this for the next twenty or thirty years?” “What do you expect?” “I expect you to get over it. Emily’s here. My pregnancy is long done and everyone’s fine.”

He moved one hand to cup her cheek. “Yeah, and that’s something else.”

She blew out a breath, and the curls on her forehead danced. “What?”

“I missed seeing you pregnant.”

Kelly laughed shortly. Frankly, she was more than grateful that he hadn’t seen her at her biggest. Call it vanity, but she knew darn well she’d been as big as a house.

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