Baby Before Business. SUSAN MEIER

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      When Madelyn came running down the walk, duffel bag over her shoulder, overnight case bobbing at her side and her face bright with the emotion of her parental confrontations, a weird sensation enveloped Ty. The way the scene was set, they could have been eloping.

      He kicked that thought right out of his mind. But it ran back in and wouldn’t budge. And he knew why. Madelyn Gentry was a very sexy, very attractive woman, and though he might be discriminating he wasn’t dead. He found her as attractive as any man would find her. And now that he’d seen three rows of neatly folded pink, red and black panties, he could form those pictures and images that wouldn’t initially appear in his brain and she wasn’t as safe with him as he’d thought.

      So he reminded himself that he wasn’t interested. First, she was too darned young for him. But, second, most women who pursued him only wanted his money. Madelyn, with dreams of establishing her own business, would be no exception. In fact, now that he thought about it, her financial situation was a lot like his former fiancée Anita’s had been when he met her. Wrestling with a failing business, Anita had impressed him as being tough and determined, so he’d happily lent her money….

      He groaned, his hands forming fists on the steering wheel. That situation had ended abysmally. Anita hadn’t merely made him a laughingstock by taking him to the cleaners financially. She’d cheated on him the whole time they dated. Worse, she’d also cost Ty a brother. When Cooper discovered Anita was cheating, he’d warned Ty, but Ty had accused Cooper of using the information to manipulate him. By the time the truth came out that Anita was the one manipulating him and Cooper had been right about her cheating, Cooper was long gone. He’d packed his bags and moved to parts unknown and they hadn’t seen him since.

      Ty ran his hand down his face. That was a point in his life that he didn’t care to revisit, though he was glad he had. The fact that Madelyn was more than ten years his junior might not cool his libido, but her being totally broke like his former fiancée certainly did. And that knowledge would keep him the hell away from her.

      Madelyn opened the passenger side door of the SUV. “All set.”

      He didn’t say anything. Not a word. He and Madelyn had only gotten chummy out of necessity. He’d had to talk to her to form this alliance and figure out the nuances of the deal. But now that he had accepted the fact he had a baby, and had a solid idea of Madelyn’s personality from her dealings with her dad, he knew how to handle both the baby and the new nanny.

      So the conversation ended here. He had work to do when they got home tonight. Then there were telephone calls to occupy him tomorrow and file folders that would keep him amused on Sunday.

      And Madelyn had a baby to care for. As far as Ty was concerned, they really were “all set.”

      Ty Bryant hadn’t said a word to her during the drive to his house, but when they arrived at his understated Cape Cod and found the entire porch littered with boxes, he was suddenly talkative again.

      “I don’t suppose you know how to assemble a crib?”

      Madelyn gaped at him. “Even if I could, am I supposed to balance Sabrina on my hip while I screw in the bolts?”

      “I’m sure women in primitive cultures do it.”

      “And I’m sure men in primitive cultures build their own cribs. They don’t order them from a department store.”

      “I didn’t order this stuff from a department store. I have a friend whose wife has connections at…”

      “Whatever! Just put the crib together while I go look for something to make for dinner.”

      She left him standing amid the baby things and, with Sabrina on her hip, went in search of supper. Unfortunately, she didn’t even find a box of macaroni in his cupboards. Though she had to admit his house was interesting. Not what she’d expected. The cherrywood cabinets in the kitchen gleamed. The sitting room she stumbled upon as she tried to find her way back to the foyer had a neat yellow contemporary sofa and chair with heavy-wood end tables and a wall-sized entertainment unit that probably cost a bundle. The dining room housed a light oak table and hutch filled with sparkly stemware that looked like it was never used.

      When she returned to the foyer, Ty was nowhere in sight, but she saw he had hauled everything in from the porch. The boxes and bags were scattered atop the sand-colored ceramic tile. But she was more interested in the foyer’s newly painted white walls that were decorated with what appeared to be antique mirrors. She couldn’t deny that Ty Bryant owned a nice house, but it wasn’t as grand as she expected for a guy who ran a multimillion dollar business.

      Because Ty was gone and so was the crib box, she assumed he was in the room he intended to use as a nursery, assembling the baby’s bed. She climbed the stairs and walked toward the only open door. From the hall she could see the room already had a single bed and maple dresser. Thick gray carpeting covered the floor. It made sense to assume he was making a nursery from one of his guest rooms, which was good, but that didn’t put food in the cupboards and she was hungry.

      She entered talking. “Are you on some kind of starvation diet?”

      Seeing him sitting on the floor, with his black jacket and tie removed and the sleeves of his white shirt rolled up to reveal muscular forearms, Madelyn stopped dead in her tracks. His very neat hair had become tousled and he looked so darned sexily rumpled that she lost her breath.

      “No. If you didn’t find any food to cook, it’s because I usually eat out.”

      Juggling Sabrina on her hip, Madelyn considered it very lucky that he didn’t glance up as he spoke because she wasn’t sure she could take her eyes off him. He was just plain yummy-looking.

      When several seconds lapsed without her reply, he peered up at her. “What? No smart remark about my always eating out?”

      She swallowed and quickly looked away, as if inspecting what he had done with the crib. “I’m ordering pizza.”

      He pretended to shudder. “Oh, that was scathing.”

      “I mean it.”

      He shrugged and went back to work, fitting the metal springs into the wooden sides of the crib.

      “And you’re paying.”

      “Fine,” he said, as if he were doing her a huge favor.

      Madelyn stared at him, not understanding how he could think he was doing her a favor, when this entire job was nothing but a favor from her to him. But she wasn’t about to give him the satisfaction of letting him see he annoyed her. Rather than storm out as she might have done, she very casually walked out. Downstairs, she grabbed the wall phone in the kitchen and dialed the number for pizza delivery from memory, ordered what she wanted—to hell with his choice—and then rummaged through Sabrina’s diaper bag so she could feed the baby first.

      If he wanted to aggravate her day and night for the next three days, he had better be ready for the consequences. She had enough experience with her dad that she could take on any chauvinist, and in a perverse way she might even enjoy it. God knew, Ty’s attitude helped her to forget how good-looking he was.

      When the pizza arrived, Madelyn was bathing Sabrina for bed so she let Ty answer the front door. She took her time washing, drying and dressing the baby. Then, because Ty had assembled СКАЧАТЬ