The Billionaire Daddy. Renee Roszel

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      She spied the flat surface and assumed this was where she was to change the baby, mainly because Mr. Delacourte had moved to stand beside it. She scanned the plastic covered countertop. To her horror, she spied beneath it a shelf heaped with cloth diapers, folded in squares. Cloth? She’d never seen a commercial where anybody folded a cloth diaper! She didn’t even know cloth diapers were sold anymore.

      “Cloth?” she asked, her voice quivering slightly.

      “The environment needs all the help it can get.”

      She peered at him, forcing herself not to shout, So you torture me instead! Pressing her lips between her teeth, she nodded as anger flared. He supposedly cared about the environment, but he didn’t care about the women he impregnated on his overnight dalliances! “It’s nice to know you have a conscience about some things,” she muttered.

      “Excuse me?”

      She cringed. Had she said that out loud? “I said—” she stalled “—it’s nice to know you have a conscience about these things.”

      His low laughter was rich. “Thank you, Quinn. I’ll try not to be too wounded by your astonishment.”

      With clamped jaws, she gingerly lay Tina on the changing surface. “I’m sure you’ll heal, sir.” She busied herself unsnapping Tina’s pink romper, trying to look as though she knew what she was doing. Considering the fact that she was frightened to death, she was amazed and gratified to notice her fingers hardly shook.

      Tina seemed so fragile. She didn’t want to break any tiny arms or legs or fingers or toes. As she meticulously worked her way toward diaper removal, Mr. Delacourte hovered at her elbow. Though he’d vowed not to touch, as she maneuvered, she brushed his belly and chest with her arm. He didn’t shift away. She supposed he felt he needed to get a good, close look so he wouldn’t miss a thing, and her elbow would just have to deal with grazing his body.

      She wished she were across the room, or even better, in another state! “Uh, did you make such a close inspection when your other nanny did this?”

      “I was busy with work. You’re my teacher, Quinn.”

      This was a break. At least he wouldn’t be able to tell when she fouled up royally. She prayed she had enough innate intelligence and maternal instinct so she wouldn’t harm the child in her fumbling efforts.

      She grasped the baby by one foot and lifted, but that didn’t work very well. Tina tipped funny. Still, with this lopsided glimpse, Lauren knew she had a mess on her hands. Trying to hide a grimace, she made a quick survey of the tabletop and spotted some Tot-Mops. She plucked one from its pop-up box. Swallowing hard, she began to clean Tina’s tainted little backside. She worked carefully and slowly, grimly determined. When she’d seen these little damp squares of tissue used on TV, it hadn’t taken seven of them to do the job! Luckily a covered wastebasket sat nearby. She could open it with her foot, so she quickly disposed of the yucky things.

      “A diaper, please?” she said through gritted teeth. The last thing she wanted was a cloth diaper.

      He held one out.

      “Just—put it down.”

      When he obliged, she closed her eyes and counted to ten. Let me be able to do this! She released Tina to squirm on the plastic surface and eyed the diaper with hostility. The dreaded thing was more oblong than square. That was a stupid shape for a diaper! A shawl, maybe.

      She sucked in a breath, then blew it out. It was now or never! She made a snap decision and folded it, creating a triangle—more or less. Mainly less. Not happy with the weird shape, she made another fold. This time, it was no less weird, but smaller. It might work, though it looked like it had been in a head-on collision with a bigger, stronger triangle.

      Holding onto her bravado, she raised both of Tina’s legs in one hand and scooted the diaper under her. Quickly she lifted the middle point up between Tina’s legs and folded the other points around her middle to meet the anchoring point. There was a fairly huge overlap. A pessimistic person might even say the thing was a complete failure. However, not having the luxury of pessimism, Lauren boldly retrieved the fasteners from the place she’d pinned them on her sleeve, and affixed the ends in place. Tina’s diaper looked like it had wings.

      “That’s interesting,” Mr. Delacourte murmured. “I don’t remember seeing her in anything like that before.”

      Lauren’s bluster was a painfully thin subterfuge, but she had no choice but to forge on. “It’s a new fold.”

      “What’s it called, the Boeing 747?”

      Her lips twitched with wayward humor, but she refused to allow him to see. Instead she concentrated on getting Tina into her plastic pants and romper. “Where shall I put the soiled diaper, sir?”

      “There’s a pail in the bathroom, on your right.”

      She peered in that direction and nodded, then presented him with his daughter. “Please hold her for a moment, while I dispose of it and wash my hands.”

      His expression was priceless, though irritating. He seemed as startled by being offered his child as he might be if she’d asked him to hold her spleen. “Haven’t you ever held her?”

      He frowned slightly. “Not—often. I’ve been busy.”

      He’d been busy! All the time and money she’d spent these past six months trying to find Tina, longing to be near Tina, and he’d been busy! She imploded with rage and suffering so acute she could hardly contain herself. This man had housed, fed and clothed her precious niece for nearly half a year, but he had scarcely held her? Lauren redoubled her vow to get the child out of his indifferent clutches. The selfish playboy was merely warehousing her, not raising her!

      Maintaining her poised masquerade was nearly impossible, but she struggled to appear professional. She handed the child to him as gently as her mood would allow. “I don’t understand why you want to learn to diaper her, when you—”

      “As I said before, Miss Quinn,” he cut in, “it’s not your place to understand why I choose to do anything. Is that clear?”

      “Crystal clear, sir,” she murmured, stiffly.

      He was the master and she the servant. Period. If the great and powerful Dade Delacourte had an urge to learn to diaper Tina, the reason was not Lauren’s business. She had a sinking feeling that, whatever the reason, the urge would be fleeting—just like any culpability he might feel. Ultimately Tina would be relegated to the care of a series of nannies and nurses, while receiving a very unsavory moral education.

      The innocent baby had to be rescued—and quickly.

      Dade left the nanny and her charge to their privacy and went upstairs to unpack. Alone in his room, he berated himself for snapping at the woman. It wasn’t her fault he’d been saddled with a child his brother fathered. It wasn’t Quinn’s fault Dade felt like a damned failure.

      Dade caught sight of himself in a wall mirror and his gut clenched. For a moment he stared at the grim facade, then lurched away. The vision held too much pain. Even his own reflection reminded him of his identical twin, and how badly Dade had unknowingly neglected him.

      It didn’t seem like eleven years since he’d СКАЧАТЬ