by Shirley Jump
Ellie’s mind should have been on the guest sitting across from her. A three-time soccer champ, lauded the world over, not for his skills, but for his ability to woo women and rugged good looks that had propelled him—and his soccer ball—into the realm of teenage girl fantasies, splashing his mug across every under-eighteen-year-old’s wall around the country.
But Ellie couldn’t concentrate on the young athlete. Instead, she kept thinking about a certain irascible dark-haired, blue-eyed writer. She couldn’t imagine him cooing to and spoiling Sabrina the way Mrs. Winterberry did, but she didn’t think he’d neglect her or anything. He’d be efficient. As he called it, matter-of-fact. And for some reason, Sabrina seemed to take to him.
Find him fascinating.
It was something about his eyes.
The deep blue of them, perhaps. The way they tossed and turned, like an uneasy ocean. Sabrina certainly didn’t notice all those details.
But Ellie did.
Noticed them in a visceral way that she hadn’t noticed about a man in a long, long time.
Not since Cameron. Ellie closed her eyes and rubbed her temples. She’d vowed to move on with her life, to put the past where it should be—in the past. To not feel guilty because Cameron had told her to move on, to live her life.
To find someone else. A husband for herself. A father for Sabrina. Because he wouldn’t be here to do the job himself.
“You’re sure the lighting will be on my good side?” Barry Perkins asked. He took a comb out of his pocket, perfected already perfect blond hair, then flashed her a gleaming smile. “Because my fans will expect that, of course.”
“Of course.” Vanity, thy name is Barry Perkins. Ellie glanced down at her notepad, to jot a note about “good side,” then felt her face heat. Instead of finding notes about the soccer player, her pad was covered with doodles of the letter “D.”
She had Dalton on the mind. Not a good thing. Especially because the man annoyed her to the-nth degree. How anyone could be so grumpy, she had no idea. It certainly explained why she’d never seen him before. He defined the word “hermit.”
She glanced at the picture of Sabrina on her desk. Was he holding Sabrina right now? Was her daughter laughing? Or crying? Or sleeping peacefully? Ellie’s gaze darted to the phone, and she had to curl her fist tight around her pen to resist the urge to call Dalton and check up on the baby.
“You’ll have filtered water in my dressing room, right? Along with dark chocolates, with raspberry centers? Make sure there aren’t any strawberry or, God help me—” he pressed a hand to his forehead “—any coconut ones. Raspberry only.”
Ellie forced a patient smile to her face. “Certainly.”
Scheduling bottled waters and personalized chocolates for male divas wasn’t the life she had envisioned when she’d found out she was pregnant, and getting used to it had been a hundred times harder than Ellie had expected. She hadn’t, in fact, expected to be working at all for the first year or two after Sabrina had been born. Cameron was supposed to be the breadwinner. She was supposed to be able to stay home with Bri, put her career on a temporary hold, and then get back into the swing of things.
Then Cameron had died, and Ellie had been thrust into the role of breadwinner, dual parent, homeowner, everything, all at once. The plan had gone horribly awry, and when she was here at her office at Channel 77, she simply couldn’t think about Sabrina, because when she thought about all she was missing, it drove her insane.
And down the road, the thought of not seeing those first teeth, first steps, first words—
Forget it. Ellie was either going to have to hook up full-time video surveillance or find some kind of work-at-home job. The separation would surely kill her otherwise.
“I’ll have my manager fax a list of my other requirements.” The soccer player rose, then straightened his shirt, smoothing out invisible wrinkles. “I look forward to being the featured guest on your show.”
If Ellie told him he was a five-minute segment following a former President, the soccer star would undoubtedly bolt—along with his supply of raspberry chocolates. He’d probably throw a major temper tantrum, which would take time Ellie didn’t have. She wanted to get out of here on time—so she could get back to Sabrina. And if she was lucky, Lincoln would keep his afternoon golf date with the head of the TV station, and Ellie might even be able to sneak out early.
So instead she worked up another smile, shook the soccer player’s hand, and walked him to the door. As soon as he left, and the female buzz in the office had died to manageable decibels, Ellie picked up her office phone and dialed Dalton’s house.
So much for keeping her focus on her job. Maybe that video surveillance thing wasn’t such a far-fetched idea after all.
“Hello?” He answered on the third ring. Barked, really.
“It’s Ellie. Ellie Miller. You’re watching my daughter?”
“You think I have so many kids over here I’d be confused over which one belongs to who?”
“You are watching my daughter, aren’t you?”
“Not really.”
“What?”
“Calm down. She’s sleeping. That does not require me to stare at her, watching each and every breath.”
Ellie wanted to argue back that it darn well did, but she knew better. Even she didn’t watch every one of Sabrina’s breaths, though there had been many times when Sabrina had been first born, especially in those last few precious days of maternity leave, that she had noted every blink, every movement, wanting to commit every second to memory. Even now, she felt as if she was missing so many millions of moments, ones she’d never be able to recoup. The familiar ache deepened. The walls closed in around her. The room had never felt more like a cage. “Then what are you doing?”
“Do you want all the details? Including any bathroom breaks? Or just the overall minute-by-minute?”
“Just the overall.”
“She ate. I changed her diaper. She fell asleep. After she crawled all over my house. You should have warned me.”
“Warned you?”
“Yeah, that the kid moves. I didn’t know she was mobile. It was like following the Road Runner.”
“I missed the first time she crawled,” Ellie said softly. “Mrs. Winterberry called me and described every second of it. But it wasn’t the same.”
“Oh.” Dalton paused a second. “Sorry to hear that. Well, she crawled around a lot. Got her knees all dirty. Guess I need to get my cleaning lady in here more.”
“Then what?”
He thought a second. “Then she fell asleep. So I went to work. You called. Interrupted my work. Now, can I get back to—”
“Did you burp her? Rock her? Make sure she has her pacifier? And her special blanket? If she wakes up and doesn’t have those things, she’ll get upset.” Worry crowded Ellie’s shoulders. She should never have left Sabrina with Dalton. He didn’t know her daughter. Sabrina’s likes and dislikes. How she preferred to sleep, with her blanket tucked under one arm, her pacifier nearby, but not in her mouth. Her favorite toy always around when she was on the floor—a vinyl mouse that squeaked when Sabrina squeezed it.
What if the baby got upset? Missed her mother? There were a million details to watch, and if Dalton missed one, Sabrina would cry, and the guilt would just kill Ellie.
Ellie should be there. “When was the last time you checked on her? Made sure she was okay?”
“Boy, you are tense, aren’t you? I’ve been around kids before. She’ll be fine.”
But something wavered in his voice, and doubt rocketed through Ellie’s gut. Mrs. Winterberry had assured her Dalton had plenty of experience with children.
Then why did he sound unsure? As if he doubted he’d know what to do, should his stare-into-her-eyes technique fail?
Had Ellie asked enough questions? Had she interviewed him thoroughly? Or left too fast this afternoon?
“Are you positive you don’t want me to—”
“Ellie,”
Lincoln said, popping his head into her office, “meeting in three minutes.”
“Dalton, can I call you back in a second?” When he agreed, she hung up and turned her attention to her boss. “I’ll be there, Lincoln.”
“Good. And bring your notes about the soccer diva-dude. We have to re-hash this morning’s meetings. Seems no one got a clear picture of what I wanted. We need another run-through of the whole show.” He ran a hand through his thick shock of white hair. A tall man given to loud suits, Lincoln had this perpetual look of stress about him, no matter what he did or what time of day it was. “Maybe you can get through to everyone. And translate my gobbledy-gook into something the rest of those morons will understand. I tell you, it’s like working with a bunch of monkeys around here.”
Ellie was tempted to tell Lincoln it was less about morons, and more about his insistence on keeping his staff caged in the conference room for one unproductive hour after another. “Lincoln, maybe if you didn’t have so many meetings…”
“Ellie, meetings are essential. They’re where all the best ideas are born. Or they would be, if I actually employed people who possessed the brain cells to foster ideas. That’s why I need you, Ellie. You’re my right-hand woman. I swear, I couldn’t function around here without you.”
“You don’t need seven hundred meetings a week to function, Linc.”
He shook his head, refusing to have this argument. He started to walk away, then returned. “Oh, and Ellie, before I leave today, I wanted to tell you, I need you to create a script this afternoon. I need it on my desk first thing tomorrow.”
“Create a script? Today?”
“Yeah. You know that celebrity chef, the one with the new book? Apparently he can’t do anything but cook and read. So I need you to write him up something that makes him look and sound intelligent and entertaining.” Lincoln smiled. “I know you can do it, Ellie. You’re my can-do person. Let’s have this meeting, then.”
Ellie laid her head on her desk. So much for her plan to knock off early. Even if Lincoln wasn’t here to oversee her, she had enough work to fill the entire rest of the day.
Every time she thought she’d get some time for herself…
It evaporated like rainwater on hot summer pavement. How she hated this job. But if she quit, how would she support Bri? Where else would she work? Any other job in television would be just as demanding. Ellie sighed, then reached for the phone and called Dalton back.
When he answered, the first thing she heard was Sabrina’s loud wails, cutting through the phone lines like razors. Ellie’s pulse quickened, mother’s instinct beating inside her, telling her to go to her child—
“Is everything okay?”
“It’s fine. She’s crying. I gotta go.”
“No, wait. Is she wet? Does she need to eat?”
Dalton let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m trying to get off the phone and find out. Now are you going to let me go do that or not?”
Let Dalton hold Sabrina, let Dalton calm her down. The jobs she, as Sabrina’s mother, should be doing—instead of heading in for yet another stupid, aimless meeting.
Did she have a choice? Lincoln trusted her to come up with something fabulous in the next three minutes. And right now, on her legal pad, her idea of fabulous looked a lot like letter D’s.
“Wait,” she said before Dalton could hang up.
Another exasperated gust. “What? Kid crying here, you know.”
The knot of growing tension in her gut told her this arrangement with Dalton couldn’t work. Her, sitting here, miles away from Sabrina. Missing her baby more and more every day, missing the scent of her, the feel of her in her arms, a pain that refused to stop. Her mind concocting ten thousand different possible scenarios of Dalton falling asleep, leaving the stove on, forgetting Sabrina at the park—
“I have an idea,” Ellie said, knowing even as she said the words that there was no way she could make this work—and no way she could afford not to make it work, at least, for her heart. Money-wise, it was another story. “And I promise, you’re going to love it.”
“That’s what my mother told me when she signed me up for ballroom dancing lessons when I was ten,” Dalton said. “And I can tell you from personal experience that ‘I have an idea’ and ‘you’ll love it’ doesn’t always go together in my book.”
CHAPTER THREE
BY THE time Ellie showed up on his doorstep, Dalton had thrown in the towel, raised the white flag, and tossed up his hands in surrender. The kid—who had originally been calmed with a stare—now wanted him to do the one thing he’d vowed not to do.
To be held.
He would feed her, change her diaper. Lay her down for a nap. Pick her up momentarily, basically just long enough to unload her again on the floor or into the car seat.
But walk around with the kid on his shoulder? No. Not part of the job description. And not something he, of all people, should be doing. For one, he had a childhood history of butterfingers with babies. His mother hadn’t nicknamed him Dropsy Dalton for nothing. For another, he and babies didn’t…bond well.
But there was more to it than that. Much more. A history Dalton didn’t like to think about—
And wouldn’t.
This was a temporary gig, one he’d taken on in a moment of clear emotional weakness, which meant he wasn’t about to try to change that pattern. And he didn’t have to. Before he knew it, he’d be done with the whole thing.
He was sitting in his armchair, pushing at Sabrina’s car seat with his toe, rocking her back and forth. She had the plug in her mouth, but she was still managing to cry around it. Dalton was praying in his head for Sabrina to just give up the battle and go back to sleep.
Then his doorbell rang, and he heard knocking. “Dalton? It’s Ellie.”
Salvation had arrived.
He pulled open the door and let her in. “Finally. You’re here. She’s missed you.” Actually, he’d probably missed Ellie more—strictly in a take-back-this-kid sense, of course.
A smile took over Ellie’s face. The kind that socked Dalton in the gut and hit him with an almost envious feeling. Had anyone ever looked at him like that? Ever been that happy to see him at the end of the day? “I can hear that.” She brushed past Dalton, beelined for the car seat, unsnapped the kid, and picked her up. A second later, she had the kid against her chest, working the circles again, and had quieted her down. Somewhat.
“You all set? If so, I’ll go back to work.” He handed Ellie the diaper bag, practically throwing it onto her shoulder.
“Wait. You haven’t even heard my idea. Remember? I mentioned it to you on the phone?”
“Tell me later.” He started toward his office. “You’re here. My shift is over.” Okay, so it was only three in the afternoon, probably too early for his shift—if that’s what he could call it—to be anywhere near over, but Ellie was here, and that was good enough for him.
He was done. D-O-N-E. And not a moment too soon. What had he been thinking? Trying to take on a baby, of all things? He couldn’t do this. Shouldn’t do this.
All day, he’d tried to tell himself he could keep his distance. Not be taken in by those baby blue eyes and that gummy smile. That being with this kid wouldn’t open up those doors he’d worked so hard to shut. Or disrupt his life.
He’d been wrong.
Now he wanted out. Away. And as fast as possible.
Dalton stalked off, heading straight upstairs, but Ellie followed behind, heck, acting as if she lived here. Right into his office. Again.
“Technically, you’re not done yet. I still need a sitter because I’m still working. I’ve just changed…locations.”
For the first time since she’d arrived, he noticed the thick leather bag hanging from her opposite shoulder. Papers bulged from every pocket. His gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, changed locations?”
“I had to get out of there. My boss was driving me crazy. But worrying about Bri was driv
ing me more insane. And when my boss left for a golf game, I realized I could leave early, without anyone missing me today, so I thought maybe—”
His gaze narrowed. “Maybe what?”
“Maybe I could spend the rest of the day here. With you and Sabrina.”
“With me. And the baby.” The words weren’t a question.
“I still have some work to do, and I’m sure you want to get some writing done, so I thought we could work together. That’s the best of both worlds, don’t you think?” She smiled. “Win-win.”
“With you. And her here.”
“You mentioned you’ve been stuck with your writing, right? Some kind of writer’s block? Maybe having some company will give you some inspiration.”
He put his back to his desk. To the fat pile of nothing stacked up beside his computer. “This is all because you really don’t trust me, isn’t it?”
“It’s not that. It’s…” The baby let out a whimper, and almost like an instinct, Ellie’s body began to sway, her hips moving in this easy fashion, as if she had some kind of innate knowledge Dalton didn’t possess.
He couldn’t take his eyes off her. The movement was so natural, so feminine. And it stirred something deep inside him, something almost primal.
Dalton swallowed hard. He’d thought he could do this. Thought he could spend a few days with the kid, help out a woman in need, while also taking his mind off the fact that his book wasn’t going so well.
But he couldn’t.
“This won’t work.” He walked out of the office and headed downstairs again, back into the living room—Ellie still following like a determined puppy. He circled the room, gathering up the plethora of stuff the kid had—it looked like a baby explosion in his house—and started dumping it into the car seat. He hoisted the loaded car seat and held it out to Ellie. She ignored the pink and white kid container. “I’m…busy. And this is an interruption I don’t need.”
She turned and paced, thinking, her hips still in hula mode, while the kid kept fussing. Ellie worked the pacifier against the kid’s mouth. “What are you writing?”