Bringing Up Babies. SUSAN MEIER

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      Lily felt as if time had come to a screeching halt. Looking confused and shocked, he peered at her hair, her face, and the bear-covered pajama leg that peeked out from beneath the hem of her pink chenille robe. A noise sounding like a groan or a laugh erupted from the back of his throat, but before Lily could be sure, he brought his hand to his mouth and pretended to cough.

      “You can manage the kids alone, can’t you?” he asked slowly, his voice shaking as if he were desperately trying to control it.

      She suspected he was laughing at her, and her chin lifted. “Why don’t you just go and get ready for your meeting…or change clothes or brief yourself on your notes. I’ll take care of the kids.”

      “No,” he said, then coughed to clear his throat again. “That’s fine. I’m fine. Why don’t you go shower or whatever and I’ll finish up here?”

      “Because we’re supposed to be working together,” Lily insisted, determined to make her point. She didn’t care if he didn’t like her hair, her lack of makeup or her pajamas. She wasn’t losing this job without a fight. “What do the kids usually do now?” she asked, walking to Taylor’s high chair. Seeing that Chas had dressed all three babies in little sweatpants, T-shirts and tiny tennis shoes, she said, “If they’re going outside, I can take them outside. If they usually watch ‘Sesame Street,’ I can take them to the family room. I’m perfectly qualified.”

      “You’re also in your pajamas,” Chas said, sounding exasperated. “You can’t go outside.”

      Lily glanced down at her robe. “I could still take them into the family room to watch TV,” she mumbled indignantly.

      “Or you could take your shower and really be ready to care for them when I leave.”

      Lily saw she was being foolish and combed her fingers through her unruly hair. “Sorry.”

      “That’s okay,” Chas said patiently. “Working with the triplets takes a while to get used to.”

      “That’s not it,” Lily said, deciding she had to get this out in the open or she’d make herself crazy. It was hard enough to deal privately with her attraction to him. She couldn’t handle worrying about being fired, too. “I’m afraid you’re going to fire me, and I can’t afford to lose this job.”

      Chas busied himself with Annie again. “I’m not going to fire you.”

      Though it wasn’t a sweeping declaration of competency, Lily recognized that it had to be enough. She was justifiably insecure, because her ego had taken a real beating when Everett had left her at the altar. But more than that, she knew if she didn’t soon trust someone about something, she’d never reenter the real world. Chas might not be promising her a job forever, but he was backhandedly telling her he felt she was qualified to care for his three children, and that was a big, important deal. Knowing how much he and his brother Grant adored these kids, she understood they wouldn’t trust them to just anyone.

      She nodded. “Okay. Then I’ll stop driving you nuts. I’ll shower and get dressed, and everything will go back to normal.”

      Long after she was gone, Chas continued to stare at the alcove. He stared so long that it took two squeals from Annie before he came back to the present. He wasn’t an idiot. He knew that Lily would have some self-doubt from being left at the altar. Anybody would. But he still found her last statement incomprehensible. How could anyone as absolutely stunning as she was—a woman who brought him to groaning despair even without makeup, with sleep-tousled hair, and wearing pajamas covered with bears—ever think any house in which she lived would be normal?

      Chas left the house about two hours later but not without making a big production about saying goodbye, leaving telephone numbers and giving Lily so many instructions she knew there was no way she could remember them all.

      Particularly when she was having such a hard time concentrating on what he was saying.

      It hadn’t occurred to her that he would have to dress for a business meeting, and when he walked down the spiral staircase, looking like someone off the cover of GQ she almost fainted. But it was the way he kissed each child goodbye, giving them individualized words of affection to make each one feel special, that really snagged her heart.

      Before it was all over she could have hugged him for being so charmingly sweet to those babies. But thinking about hugging him tumbled into thinking about kissing him, and the mere thought of his lips touching hers sent a bubble of excitement through her, and she couldn’t get him out of the house fast enough.

      When the sound of his car finally faded into silence, she breathed a sigh of relief.

      “What is the matter with me? How could I get flustered so easily?” she asked the three eight-month-old babies who sat in the play yard staring up at her. “You’d swear I’d never seen a man in a suit before,” she added, bending to pick up a spongy ball, that had been tossed over the net railing by one of the kids, though none of them had cried or squealed for it.

      She was glad they were happily settled, because she needed a minute to deliberate on this. In spite of what she’d told the kids, she understood that the problem wasn’t merely that Chas was physically attractive—though that masked the real culprit. The truth was, in a matter of two days Chas Brewster had begun to endear himself to her because he was so loving with the children.

      She confirmed that conclusion when Chas returned home that afternoon and barely put down his briefcase before he reached into the play yard, stroking Cody’s hair, as he scooped Annie out and cooed to Taylor.

      Leaning against the den door, Lily smiled, confident that she would be able to keep herself in line, now that she had deduced she was losing control because he was a sweetheart with the triplets. Any woman would be charmed by a man who could be so genuinely good to kids.

      Grateful that her attraction wasn’t unusual, she gladly deemed this particular dilemma to be manageable. But when Chas turned and pierced her with a look, one of those uniquely masculine expressions that turns most women’s knees to jelly, Lily felt as if her stomach had fallen to the floor. She decided that for every bit as adorable as he was around the kids, and for every bit as much as she believed that was the bottom line to her attraction, she couldn’t discount the fact that he was a virile, sexy man.

      “You didn’t have any problems while I was gone, did you?”

      “No. Everything was fine.”

      He couldn’t have hidden his relief if he’d tried. “Good. Thank God.”

      Lily ventured into the room. “Mr. Brewster, I’m actually very competent with children.”

      “Please don’t call me, Mr. Brewster,” Chas said, walking away from her, Annie on his arm. “You make me feel like my father.”

      “I’m sorry,” Lily said. He was doing it again. Avoiding her at all costs. He didn’t want her help at breakfast, now it appeared he didn’t even want to talk with her. She wondered if it was because she was obvious in her attraction for him, and felt the heat of embarrassment rising to her cheeks. “I’ll try to remember to call you Chas, but to be honest, I’m a little awkward with that.”

      He turned, faced her. “Why?” he asked curiously.

      “Well, you’re my boss, and I’ve always suspected that when a person СКАЧАТЬ