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

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      Dylan focused on Tara. Sheesh. She had been given something to control pain until her surgery. “What are you talking about?” he asked her.

      She sighed elaborately. “Earth calling Dylan. I’m trying to tell you how to take care of a baby.”

      “Me?” he said. Katie’s face faded from his mind and he focused on his sister. “I’m not looking after Jake. Where’s Sam?”

      “San Francisco. Fogged in. So unless you want your favorite nephew to go to foster care, time to step up to the plate.” She giggled helplessly. “Step up to the plate. Get it? That’s priceless, given your old career.”

      “Ha, ha,” he said without an ounce of humor. “When’s Sam going to get in?”

      “Dylan, I have no gift for predicting the weather even when I’m not on drugs.”

      After getting a ton more of unhelpful advice from his sister, Dylan went back down the hall to the emergency waiting room. Katie had found a box of toys, and was now sitting on the floor with his nephew, unmindful of getting her outfit dirty; though of course that was, one would assume, why you wore an outfit like that. You wouldn’t worry about wrecking it, you’d hope you could! Thank goodness, she had lost the babushka somewhere.

      Or maybe not. Because without it, her hair fell like a shining wave to the slenderness of her shoulder.

      As always happened, it felt as if it was not the outfit he saw at all. It was the look on her face, the sweet curve of her smile.

      He realized why he had been so anxious to focus on the killing of her ex-husband. Because to focus on her was to threaten what remained of his tattered control after he had seen her do her spontaneous little dance over the Tac Revol tickets, after he had tasted the clear-brook sweetness of her kiss.

      There was a look on her face as she studied Jake that was rapt, even more beautiful than when she had danced. She looked serene, almost like a Madonna.

      A decent girl. A wholesome girl. A smart girl. A girl absolutely born to be a mother.

      He was well aware that there on the cold hospital floor sat a woman he’d offered everything to: he’d offered to wine and dine her, escort her to the most-sought-after functions, take her on his motorcycle, give her dreams carved in ice.

      She’d said no to each of his invitations without even a moment’s hesitation. And then when he’d finally done something genuinely nice—as accidental as it may have been that she thought those tickets were for her mother—then it had been her turn to issue the invitation.

      That was what Katie was doing even now, sitting on the floor, playing with the baby, shining with an inner light that was nearly blinding. She was issuing him an invitation to a life he had turned his back on when his mother had gotten ill. A life that he had decided was too full of foibles, too unpredictable, that extracted too great a cost.

      That’s why he had avoided her ever since she had ever so tentatively extended her invitation for coffee.

      He was not unaware of a feeling of the universe conspiring against him. He’d decided, after seeing her dance with the Tac Revol tickets, after her kissing him, that the game was up. Over. The stakes had become a little too high for his tastes. And yet here he was, tangled with her again.

      “Thanks, Katie,” he said, coming up to her.

      “Is your sister okay?”

      “Whacked out on drugs. She seems to think I’d be a good candidate to look after Jake.”

      “Aren’t you?”

      What had he ever done to deserve the look of trust on her face?

      “No.”

      “Haven’t you ever looked after Jake before?”

      “I’ve taken him out a couple of times by myself. To the mall. And the park. The little devil is a chick magnet. And the man-with-baby thing is unbelievable. The women are all over me when I have Jake.” He knew exactly what he was trying to do. Put back the barrier that had been so conveniently provided by names of women she didn’t know. Tara. Sarah. Janet. Margot.

      “Trust you to see a baby as useful for that reason!”

      “His usefulness is limited,” Dylan said. It was working. She looked justifiably horrified. Part of him was thinking, Katie, my lady, please see me in a bad light. You make the decision to not have anything to do with me. Because I can’t seem to follow through when I make that decision about you.

      “The baby’s usefulness is limited?” she asked, indignant.

      “Oh, sure, he’s cute, but he’s basically a poop machine. Just when things have the potential to get interesting, he fills his pants. He actually leaked on me once. I thought I was going to hurl.”

      “Daredevil Dylan McKinnon was going to throw up over a little baby leak?” She started to laugh.

      “Don’t be so damned sanctimonious. You weren’t there. The horror was unimaginable, even for someone like you, who probably has a fairly good imagination. Have you ever had to deal with a situation like that?”

      “I used to babysit in high school. I wouldn’t let a baby leak scare me!”

      He snorted. “That’s like a soldier who has never been in a combat zone saying bullets don’t scare him.”

      “It’s not quite the same thing,” she said dryly.

      “Yeah, well, baby leaks scare me, and I’m man enough to admit it.”

      “I appreciate your vulnerability,” she said, tongue-in-cheek.

      “Don’t tell anybody. I’d be ruined. And don’t you start smiling!”

      Really, her smile was becoming the hardest thing to handle. It lit something in her. Had he known, right from the beginning, in some place he’d been afraid to go within himself, that her smile would be like this? Worth it. Worth everything. Even the uncertainty of his own soul. Even coming face-to-face with all his own fears.

      “Why does everyone think me being tortured is funny?” he asked. He was asking the universe as much as her!

      “Oh, Dylan, it’s not exactly you being tortured that’s funny. It’s you being terrified of something so darling as a little baby.”

      That showed what she knew! “You won’t think he’s such a little darling when his forehead wrinkles up, he holds his breath and starts turning red.”

      He could see way too clearly that he was playing with something far too big now, something he might not be able to control. He’d never be able to forget the beauty he discovered, all her hopes and dreams in her face.

      Wasn’t that at the heart of this whole thing? Some instinct had told him she was beautiful, and he had wanted her to look beautiful again, had wanted to see those hopes and dreams shining in her face, had needed to know that some precious part of her had not been destroyed by whatever she had been through.

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