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

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      “Hey,” she said, looking up at him, wrinkling her nose. “Don’t look so worried.”

      He had that sensation, watching her play building blocks with his nephew, that Katie could know him in ways he had never allowed people to know him. No one in the world ever guessed when he was feeling pressure, when he was rattled, when he was scared. Not even when he’d been posed at the door of that airplane waiting to jump had he betrayed how truly frightened he was. He’d made some wisecrack remark that had made everyone laugh.

      But if she had been there he had the uneasy feeling she would have known, just as she had known to take those car keys from his hand a half an hour ago.

      And Dylan McKinnon wasn’t quite sure if it felt good or bad to be quite so transparent to another human being.

      “So, what’s the battle plan?” she asked him, brushing off her skirt/short fashion disaster and getting to her feet.

      “The same as any battle plan,” he told her. “Survival.” And he was not sure he was referring to looking after a baby, either!

      She looked askance at him. “Battle plans aren’t about survival,” she pointed out. “They’re about victory. Winning.”

      Now, if anyone should know that, it should be him. He did know that. He’d had a battle plan all along, prove a decent girl would go out with him, give her the gift of hope in return and then, mission accomplished, withdraw. Now his battle plan was wavering before him like a mirage of an oasis on a blistering desert afternoon.

      But now he saw it differently. Survival. His.

      “I can take it from here,” he said bravely. “I’ll take him over to my sister’s. I have her key. The place is babyproofed and supplied.”

      Something flitted across her face. Relief? But it was quickly replaced by another look. Determination. “You don’t think I’m leaving you alone with this baby, do you?”

      “I can manage a baby.”

      She rolled her eyes. “No, you can’t.”

      He should have felt insulted, but he didn’t. He felt relieved. And, oddly enough, not relieved at the very same time. As confused as he had ever felt. Before, even if she had been saying no, he’d felt as if he was in control. Now he didn’t. And he was pretty sure Dylan McKinnon out of control was not going to be a good thing.

      “Really,” he said, a bit more forcefully, “I can manage it. I make million-dollar decisions every day. Forty-two people work for me. I’m the honorary spokesperson for three different charitable organizations. What is one twenty-pound baby in comparison to all that?”

      She looked entirely unimpressed. “Dylan McKinnon, have you ever kept a plant alive for more than three weeks?”

      “What kind of plant?” he hedged.

      “Any kind. A garden flower? A houseplant?”

      Mental pictures of a sordid history that included many dead, dead plants formed in his mind’s eye.

      “Anything green?” she asked, as if she was relaxing her standards to give him a chance.

      “Bath towels?”

      She shook her head. “Living green.”

      He lived in a condo. He didn’t even have to remember to water the lawn! “The fact that plants, er, fail to thrive around me is irrelevant.”

      “Hmm. How about a puppy? Or a kitten?” She looked at him, shook her head. “A goldfish? Guppies?”

      He scowled at her. “My lifestyle has never allowed for pets.”

      “Precisely my point. You don’t know how to care for things.”

      “I travel! I know how to care for things! My car is cared for! That’s diamond finish on the wax job in case you didn’t notice.”

      “Living things,” she amended.

      Her chin was getting a stubborn set to it. A smart man would have been running. But he was in charge of a baby now, and it was hard to run with twenty pounds of squirming baby under your arm, and plus, he was thinking he kind of liked her chin pointed at him like that.

      “Speaking of cars,” she said, “do you have a car seat?”

      And that clinched it. Dylan McKinnon knew, that whether he wanted to or not, he needed Katie Pritchard right now. Only a girl like her could be trusted to think of something as all important to his nephew’s wellbeing as a car seat.

      The baby did that wrinkly thing with his forehead, held his breath and started to turn a very unbecoming shade of red.

      How humiliating. Dylan didn’t just need Katie. He needed her desperately.

      CHAPTER SIX

      KATIE stared at Dylan with absolute astonishment. Here was a man who had jumped out of airplanes, bungee jumped, raced motorcycles. Here was a man who, as he had just pointed out, made million-dollar decisions, was responsible for employees, ran a company.

      And yet there was an unmistakable bead of sweat on his forehead as he gazed at his nephew. His gorgeous blue eyes had a glint of pure fear in them. He was drumming his fingers nervously against the muscle of his thigh.

      And all because his adorable nephew had stopped all activity—building block suddenly frozen in midair—a look of fierce concentration on his now reddening chubby face.

      “Is he,” Katie asked, uncertainly, “you know?”

      But Dylan didn’t have to answer. They were enveloped in a stench that seemed as if it could not possibly have been produced by the adorable little cherub in front of them. The look of concentration evaporated from Jake’s face, he gurgled with what would seem to be self-satisfaction and returned to his blocks.

      “Now what?” the president and CEO of Daredevils asked her in an undertone.

      “I don’t have a clue,” she said.

      She recognized how absurd this was. It was a baby. And it had two full-grown adults almost completely tied up in knots.

      She couldn’t help it. She started to laugh. When Dylan glared at her, mistakenly thinking she was laughing at his weakness instead of her own, she laughed harder. Finally, her howls of laughter petered down to sputters. She hoped she wouldn’t snort. Of course she snorted.

      Dylan was looking at her intently, as if he had never seen her before. More absurdity: she might have dreamed such a look over wine and dinner, with her hair upswept, diamonds sparkling at her ears, lips painted a beguiling shade of red. Such a look should be reserved for a woman wearing the perfect little black dress. But over baby poop? In hideous daisy-printed culottes? Right after she had snorted? Welcome to your life, Katie Pritchard. She licked her lips uncomfortably.

      “You should do that more often,” he decided, then looked away, as if he had said too much, revealed too much.

      “What СКАЧАТЬ