Upstairs Downstairs Baby. Cat Schield

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       One

      He needed to fire Claire.

      Lincoln Thurston opened his mouth to do just that as she set his morning smoothie of kale, protein powder and blueberries on the breakfast bar near his gym bag. Then she gave him a smile of such sweetness that he was helpless to do anything but grin back.

      Letting his housekeeper go was a matter of desperation. He was obsessed with the lovely young woman who cooked and cleaned for him. Over the twelve months since he’d hired her, it had become increasingly difficult to avoid thinking about her in a certain way. A certain carnal way. Which was why he absolutely, positively couldn’t have her living in his house another day.

      And yet he felt responsible for her welfare the way he did for his mother and sister. Claire was almost three thousand miles from her family and her husband had been killed in Afghanistan two years earlier. Besides, what excuse could he give? She cooked like a dream and kept his Charleston house in perfect order. And she was more than his housekeeper. She cared about him. Him. Linc Thurston, the regular guy. Not Linc Thurston, the ballplayer or the multimillionaire or the recently single and highly eligible bachelor.

      Linc gave his head a brisk shake. He had to stop thinking about Claire as if she meant something to him. It had already proved detrimental to his love life, causing him to end his engagement.

      Not that it was fair to blame Claire. She was the perfect employee. She never once encouraged him or acted as if she was even aware that he was an attractive, financially stable man who could take her away from the drudgery of her current occupation. It was refreshing that she wasn’t working an angle, and yet part of him wished that seduction was her goal. He wouldn’t have minded being at the heart of her sinister plot to trap him. At least then he could sleep with her and never for a second regret it.

      As a shortstop with the Texas Barons, making fifteen million a year, Linc was accustomed to having women throw themselves at him. Not even his engagement had slowed them down. At twenty-six, when he was at the beginning of his eight-year, nine-figure contract, he’d basked in the attention. Now, at thirty-three, with only one year left to go, he wanted to settle down with a wife and kids. Or that had been the plan, until he’d reevaluated his feelings for London McCaffrey and realized he wasn’t in love with her.

      So, what was it about Claire that preoccupied him?

      “Mama.”

      The reason Linc would be the biggest jerk of all time if he fired Claire ran into the kitchen buck naked.

      “Where are your clothes?” Claire exclaimed as her daughter streaked past.

      With her straight shoulder-length brown hair and a sprinkling of freckles over her nose, Claire had a fresh girl-next-door look that sometimes made her seem too young to be the mother of a toddler.

      Two-year-old Honey Robbins made a beeline for Linc. He scooped her into his arms, whirling her around. She was a bright-eyed, enthusiastic charmer who’d wrapped him around her finger from their first meeting. Honey shrieked with laughter, and he smiled. Mother and daughter had burrowed beneath his skin to such an extent that not having them around would be so much worse than his constant battle with attraction.

      He would just have to endure.

      “I don’t know what it is about this child that she can’t manage to keep her clothes on,” Claire said, her brown eyes fixed on the toddler’s chubby cheeks.

      “Maybe she takes after her mother?” Had he just said that? His careless words put bright spots of color in Claire’s cheeks and inappropriate thoughts in his head. “I don’t mean that you can’t keep your clothes on,” he hastened to add. “It’s just something people say. I mean, about children taking after their parents.”

      “Well, that’s a relief,” Claire said. “I thought maybe the security cameras caught me skinny-dipping last week.”

      In truth, there were no security cameras and there was no way Claire would take her clothes off and slip СКАЧАТЬ