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

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      This was precisely why she had immersed herself in her business. This was why she had made a simple life for herself: reading, her cats, taking her mother on outings. This was precisely why she had done a voluntary exit from the whole man/woman game. She wasn’t strong enough to play again, to run the race again. Not yet, and maybe not ever. She reminded herself she liked her safe, predictable world.

      Or had liked it. But maybe a small dissatisfaction had been stirring from the very moment she had given in to the temptation to watch a glorious man run.

      She made the mistake of looking at the baby and his uncle.

      Jake was nestled into Dylan’s chest, sucking sleepily on his thumb. The picture they made caused her heart to ache. Dylan’s strength and self-assurance in stark contrast to the baby’s helplessness and need. Dylan was all hard lines and taut muscle, a warrior, the baby was like a little puddle of warmth and softness, the one the warrior was sworn to protect.

      And yet the tenderness that glowed in Dylan’s eyes when he looked at his nephew, that softened the masculine assuredness of his face, made him seem more attractive to Katie than he ever had.

      And he had always seemed plenty attractive!

      All her weeks of successfully resisting Dylan McKinnon were going straight down the tubes. Worse, at the moment she was feeling raw and vulnerable after the strange intimacy of the encounter in the bathroom, her confessions, his reassurances.

      Katie recognized she was doing exactly what Dylan expected every single woman to do around him. She was capitulating to his charms!

      It had to stop. There had to be one woman in the world who would not throw herself at his feet, and it had to be her!

      And yet here she was, so taken with him she felt weak-kneed and dry-mouthed, and like she wanted to spend the rest of her life contemplating the sensual fullness of his bottom lip! Here she was, practically floating, feeling a strange and glorious little fire in her bosom because of the way Dylan’s eyes rested on her, for just a touch too long, when he looked over his nephew’s head.

      Katie needed to remember that charm came as naturally to him as hunting came to the lion. And his charm probably fell in the same category—self-serving and predatory.

      The thing to do before she was any more helplessly overwhelmed by his attractiveness, his playfulness, his allure, would be, obviously, to remove herself from this situation.

      She knew she had to do it without it seeming as if she had to get away from him. There was nothing that would trigger a predator’s instincts like prey in full flight!

      A nurse came and set down a car seat beside them.

      “Dylan,” Katie said firmly “you take the baby home. I’ll grab a cab.”

      Dylan glanced from her to the baby. Then back at her. That adorable doubt was playing across his normally self-assured features. “I thought I couldn’t even be trusted with a houseplant,” he reminded her.

      “Well, you can’t. But help is a phone call away, if you need it.”

      “Yeah,” he muttered, “911.” He juggled the baby and picked up the car seat.

      “Here. I’ll take one of those as far as your car.”

      “Thanks.” He handed her Jake. She was glad. One more small chance to hold his warm little body, to smell the baby shampoo in his hair, to fill her senses with him.

      Before she let go.

      They crossed the parking lot, and she watched as Dylan struggled to fit the car seat into his nearly nonexistent back seat.

      “Okay,” she said, “ready.” Ready to let go. Ready to go back to her old life. Ready to forget the smell of babies and the look in a man’s eyes.

      Liar. Out loud she said, “You can call from your sister’s if you need anything else from me.”

      There. Didn’t she sound cool and composed, totally collected? She felt she had very successfully disguised the fact that she was a woman who could be wooed into a helpless, spineless jellyfish by a man with a baby in his arms!

      Dylan reached for the baby. Jake whimpered.

      “Come on, little man, you’re coming with your favorite unkie.” Dylan glared at Katie. “Don’t ever tell a single soul about that.”

      “What?”

      “Unkie,” he whispered.

      She juggled the baby, held up her two fingers, Scout’s honor style.

      “Come on, Jake,” Dylan said.

      The baby nestled in tight against her, sidled a look at his uncle. “NO!”

      She tried to help by detaching him from her, but as Dylan reached around his tummy to take him, she found a chunky hand wrapped in her hair. Dylan’s hand was brushing her breast. She felt the burn of it. Her eyes met his. He jerked his hand away.

      “NO YOU,” the baby informed him, taking a tighter wrap on her hair. “SHE.”

      “Jake,” he said firmly, CEO of a million-dollar company, “You are coming with me. Let go.”

      “NO, NO, NO,” little Jakie shrieked. A passerby gave them a curious look.

      “Shhh, little man,” Dylan said. His voice, roughened with tenderness, sent shivers of new appreciation up and down Katie’s spine.

      The baby, however, was unimpressed. He wrapped his free arm around her neck. When Dylan reached for him again, he loosed it just long enough to slug his unkie in the ear.

      “Hey, Jakie, calm down.” Dylan enveloped the small fist in the strength of his own hand, and she felt another shiver of raw appreciation at how gently he leashed his strength to control the baby.

      However, Jake could give her a lesson or two in being immune to the charm of Dylan McKinnon. The baby shrieked and pulled his solid little body in even closer to her. When Dylan tried one more time to pull him away, the baby busted him one in the chops.

      “Here,” Katie said, her maternal instincts feeling nothing but sympathy for the poor distraught baby. “Give it up before you get seriously hurt.”

      “If he’s going to hurt anyone it’s going to be me,” Dylan said with such furious protectiveness of her that her tummy did the roller-coaster ride down to the bottom of her stomach.

      “Just see if he’ll calm down.”

      Reluctantly Dylan moved back a step. The baby eyed him warily. Then he went limp, his fight over. Jake gave his uncle a baleful glare and settled himself against Katie’s chest. After a moment, he put one thumb back in his mouth, but kept the chubby fingers of his other hand curled possessively through her hair and closed his eyes. He hiccupped sadly.

      “And you’ve never even snuck him chocolate or taken him to the park!” Dylan said wryly. And then with satisfaction, “He’s getting drool on your shirt.”

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