A Bride for Jackson Powers (Desire, 1273)

by Dixie Browning

  And then she was forced to listen to a recital of how expensive taking care of a baby was, with diapers and pediatricians’s bills and baby food. That was followed by a few snide remarks about people who could afford to go off on cruises while other people had to stay home and work. “It was Daddy’s insurance money. I don’t see why you had to keep it all.”

  Hetty didn’t bother to remind her that most of Gus’s small insurance settlement had gone to pay Sadie’s medical and burial expenses, the household living expenses, plus the bills Jeannie had run up before she’d run off. After that there had been Robert.

  She said only, “I know babies can be expensive, honey, but they’re worth every penny and every minute you spend on them.”

  Not until after she hung up did she realize that she had neither asked to come home nor promised to. Nor had she mentioned her own penniless state. Replacing the phone, she sat for several minutes, feeling a mixture of guilt and relief. At least she knew now that Jeannie would welcome her back. She suspected even Nicky would be willing to put up with her as long as she agreed to pay room and board and take over Robert’s care while they both worked.

  Although how he expected her to earn enough to pay room and board, and at the same time take care of Robert, was beyond her.

  They would just have to learn the facts of life, Hetty told herself. She had done it. There was something to be said for the sink-or-swim method of gaining an education.

  On the bright side, maybe things weren’t quite so hopeless as she’d thought. True, she had missed her cruise, which meant she had wasted an awful lot of money. On the other hand, she’d had herself an affair, which she would never have dreamed of doing back home, even if there’d been anyone she was faintly interested in.

  She had seen places she had never expected to see. She had always dreamed of traveling, and now she had. There was nothing to keep her from going back home, settling down in her comfortable, familiar rut and taking care of Robert while his parents finished growing up.

  Oddly enough, the prospect didn’t seem nearly as inviting as it would have only a few days ago.

  Jax put it off as long as he could, two days, to be exact, but in the end he drove across town to the address Lina had given him, where Hetty and Sunny were staying.

  He should have called first. They might not even be there. On a day like this, the first in nearly a week without the threat of rain, Hetty had probably cranked up the new stroller and gone out to explore.

  He only hoped the place was in a decent neighborhood. Lina had vouched for it, and he trusted his secretary implicitly.

  Which meant there were now two women he trusted. That was a record. He’d have to watch his step or risk losing his cynicism. For a man in his profession, that could be a real handicap.

  The apartment was in one of the older homes near the college that had been turned into student housing. It was no worse than most, but no better. He needed to settle on a house as quickly as possible, and get them moved in.

  The foyer smelled of stale pizza, cigarette smoke, incense and room freshener. Trying not to inhale too deeply, he climbed the stairs. By the time he reached the second floor and thumbed the buzzer, he was frowning. The stairs were both steep and narrow. To go out, Hetty would have to wrestle the stroller down to the first floor, then go back and get Sunny. Not an ideal situation.

  “Jax! I—I wasn’t expecting you.”

  “Those stairs are a hazard.”

  “The stairs?”

  “Maybe I should have called first, but— Are you busy?”

  She was even more beautiful than he remembered, despite the wet towel tied around her waist and the wriggling baby under her arm. He told himself to back off and start again before she slammed the door in his face.

  So he did. “Hi, sweetheart,” he greeted his daughter, taking one small bare foot in his hand. “Hey, she’s smiling. You think she recognizes me?”

  “Of course she recognizes you, you’re her father. Come in and let me close the door, we’re letting the heat out.”

  Feeling awkward, he stood until she told him for heaven’s sake, to sit down. “You take up too much room, standing in the middle of the floor.”

  The place was small, all right. The word cramped came to mind. There was the usual student furniture, including a plank-and-cement-block bookcase, a yard-sale sofa and chair and a mismatched dining set.

  “So—I see you got settled in all right.” Go ahead, impress her with your conversational skills, why don’t you?

  “Lina took care of everything, the hotel bill and all. She let me stop off at a supermarket, since eating out with a baby can be awkward.”

  “What about takeout? Here, let me—” He reached for his wallet.

  “No.” They’d argued over her salary, with Hetty insisting she didn’t want to be paid in advance, it was too much like being in debt. “Lina bought the groceries. She put them on your credit card, so everything’s all taken care of. There’s a two-burner surface unit and a tiny refrigerator, and we manage just fine, don’t we, sugar?”

  Sunny responded by starting to fuss. “I’d better finish getting her dressed.”

  Frustrated on several accounts, Jax watched her disappear into the bedroom. He wondered if she was as embarrassed as he was, and for the same reason. It was the first time they’d been together since the night they’d made love. He’d left before she’d woken up the next morning, telling himself he needed time to go home, shower and shave before going to the office. But the truth was, he’d awakened with some crazy notion of making an honest woman of her. It had scared the hell out of him, so he’d run.

  Swearing silently, he crossed to the window, a matter of three paces across an ugly fake Oriental rug. Staring down at the passing traffic, he told himself that what he ought to do was follow her into the bedroom and settle this thing once and for all.

  Only he would probably end up getting in even deeper. For a guy who was supposed to be reasonably intelligent, he was making one damn-fool mistake after another. Not only socially, but legally.

  Technically Hetty was his employee. He didn’t think of her that way, but technically that’s exactly what she was. The only reason he hadn’t paid her a month’s salary in advance was that she refused to take it. For the sake of her prickly pride they’d settled on some sort of barter system. She looked after his daughter full-time, and he paid all her living expenses. She’d swallowed it, but not willingly.

  But no matter how you sliced it, the woman was his employee, and he had seduced her. Which cast what had happened into a totally different light. Being a lawyer, he could hardly ignore that aspect.

  Abruptly he turned and was about to march into the bedroom with some notion of getting everything out into the open, when she slipped back through the door, pulling it almost shut behind her.

  “There—she should play for a little while. I bought her some crib toys, I hope you don’t mind. When she gets tired of playing we’ll have milk and bananas and she’ll help me fix supper.”

  It took the wind clean out of his sails. Jax stared at her, wondering how she could be so calm, when he was so damned conflicted. From wanting her, to exposing himself to harassment charges, back to wanting her in a way that was painfully obvious.

  Hadn’t she even noticed? Could she possibly be all that indifferent? Was he the only one involved here?

  Oh, hell. “I’d better go,” he said abruptly. “I just thought I’d come by and see Sunny, but since she’s asleep—”

  “Jax—”

  “I’ll be looking at houses again tomorrow, so I might not have time to—”

  “Jax?”

  “And interviewing. I’ll get Lina to set up some interviews with—”

  “Jackson!”

  “What!”

  She shook her head slowly. “Listen to us, we’re yelling at each other. I can’t think of a single reason why we should. I thought we’d parted friends, at least.”

  He raked his fingers thr
ough his hair, then dropped down onto one of the red-enameled kitchen chairs. “Yeah, you’re right. I guess I’m still off balance. This sort of thing is new to me.”

  “Being a father? Buying a house?”

  He glared at her. “You know what I’m talking about. Hetty, believe it or not, I’m not used to spending a night in a woman’s bed and then having to deal with her on another level. I’ve always kept my—my social life and my professional life in different compartments. What am I supposed to say? Do we talk about your work, or do we talk about—” he shrugged “—about other things?”

  Hetty studied him for several moments, wondering how any man could look so arrogant and so vulnerable at the same time. It was part of his charm, she supposed—looking the way he did and being the way he was.

  Which to her way of thinking was about as close to perfect as any man could be.

  “We don’t have to talk at all if you’d rather not. Now that we’ve—well, we’ve got the personal matter out of our systems, we can—”

  “Personal matter! Is that what you call it? And what do you mean, we’ve got it out of our systems?”

  Her voice grew even quieter in contrast to his own belligerence. “I only meant now we can get on with the business of finding you someone to look after Sunny.” He started to interrupt her again, but she held up a hand. “Jax, would you let me—that is, I’d like to help you interview nannies. Sometimes a woman’s point of view can be helpful.”

  “A woman’s point of view? You mean like that book about martians?”

  She knew exactly which book he meant, because the library had given in to popular demand and acquired the bestseller that had compared men to the planet Mars and women to the planet Venus.

  She shrugged. “Whatever you want to call it, you have to admit that you don’t have much experience in dealing with babies.”

  “And you do, I suppose. Got a degree in infant and child development.” He was being a jerk, and he knew it.

  “No, but I’ve been a daughter, a stepmother, and a stepgrandmother. I kept Robert until he was almost Sunny’s age. That should count for something. I do know that Sunny will adjust better with someone who won’t try to force her into a strict schedule. Babies need structure, but she’ll set her own routine soon enough.”

  So it was decided. Nothing else was. Jax left a few minutes later feeling more conflicted than ever. He’d wanted to haul her into his arms and kiss the living daylights out of her, then take her into that closet-size bedroom and make love to her until he lacked the strength to fall out of bed.

  But he hadn’t. Thank God he wasn’t entirely brain dead yet.

  The real estate saleswoman had left word that she had a couple of places she would like to show him and would he be available the following day?

  Lina said, “You’re meeting her at this address tomorrow at two. I’ve postponed Henderson until Thursday. He was glad of the extra time, because it gives him a chance to get together with the liability people.”

  “How about calling that temp place you were telling me about and seeing what you can set up for today. After five, preferably. You know what I’ll be needing.”

  Lina gave him what he thought of as her drill sergeant look. “I know what you’re needing, all right, and it’s not another one of those antacid pills you keep chewing on. Those things might make your bones stronger, but your stomach’s not going to settle until you face up to certain facts.”

  He didn’t ask what facts, because he didn’t want to know. Some facts were best avoided as long as possible.

  “I made you an appointment with an ophthalmologist for next week. Men and their silly pride.” She shook her head. “You’re starting to get squint lines.”

  He called Hetty and told her about the interviews Lina had set up. “We’re meeting in my office this afternoon after work. If it’s all right with you, I can pick you up at four-thirty.”

  “We’ll be ready.”

  “We?”

  “Sunny and I.”

  He said, “Oh, yeah,” hung up the phone and smacked himself on the forehead with his fist. It had been that kind of day. Tomorrow didn’t promise to be any better, what with the feds trying to pin down the ship owner about paying for the cleanup, the captain responsible for the spill in the hospital with a ruptured appendix and an appointment to look at houses.

  As if he knew the first thing about looking at houses.

  With all that on his mind, he kept imagining himself asking Hetty things like, “King-size or queen-size, honey? I think a queen-size bed’s big enough, don’t you?”

  Things like, “Gas logs or the real thing? Me, I kind of fancy sitting in front of a real log fire, don’t you?”

  As though they’d be sharing everything.

  “Lady, you are seriously screwing up my brain,” he muttered as he cleared his desk of the day’s accumulation and slammed shut the top drawer.

  She was ready when he arrived. Correction—they were ready. Sunny was wearing a new yellow snowsuit—did they still call them that? Kids had worn snowsuits when he was a boy. He couldn’t remember much of his early childhood, but he remembered that much.

  Hetty wore a dark skirt under an all-weather coat. Her shoes were the kind invariably described as “sensible.”

  On her they looked sexy as the devil.

  “We’ve got rush-hour traffic to contend with. Lina set up four interviews, with the first one set for six. We allowed twenty minutes for each, which means it might cut into dinnertime. Will twenty minutes each be long enough?”

  “It sounds about right. I’ve never interviewed anyone before.”

  “I thought you were the expert.” He skillfully avoided a collision with a stalled delivery truck.

  “Not on hiring, on babies. And I never claimed to be an expert.” Sunny was in her carrier, strapped into the back seat. She was making noises. “Did you hear that?” Hetty exclaimed, beaming. “She called you Daddy.”

  “Sounded like doggy to me.”

  “Who’s the expert here?”

  “Yes, ma’am. Duly noted.”

  They were bantering, almost the way they had back at the airport once they’d gotten used to each other. As bad as things had been before they’d finally escaped, she had never lost her sense of humor.

  Of the four applicants scheduled, the first was a no-show. “Reliability is important,” Hetty said. “I guess showing up counts for something.”

  “Might be stuck in traffic somewhere,” Jax offered, feeling generous. They were in his pine-paneled office. Sunny was on his lap playing with a wad of rubber bands while Hetty admired the view of the shipyard from his corner window.

  “I didn’t realize we were this close to the water.”

  “In Norfolk, you’re never that far away. Although at the rate it’s growing, pretty soon Greater Norfolk will take in more territory than a few states I could mention.”

  “Where do you keep your boat?”

  “Little place on the Intracoastal Waterway. Sort of a mom and pop marina. I’ll take you there this weekend and show you.”

  “Oh, but—”

  Before she could voice whatever excuse she’d been about to put forth, the next applicant showed up. She was chewing gum. She wore the kind of perfume that was priced by the pint instead of the ounce. All the same, Jax went through the process and promised to let her know by the next afternoon.

  “Poor thing, she’ll be disappointed,” Hetty said after the woman had left, leaving her potent essence behind. “She might really need the job.”

  Jax opened a window and let the fresh air blow through for a few minutes. “I haven’t noticed a lack of Help Wanted signs lately, have you? She’ll find something if she’s really interested.”

  “I hope so,” Hetty murmured, looking worried as he called in the next applicant. Dammit, Jax told himself, there was such a thing as having too soft a heart.

  The next woman had requirements of her own, including health insurance, two full da
ys off a week, her own living quarters and a car at her disposal.

  “Well, hell,” Jax said plaintively after she’d been shown out. “At this rate, I’m never going to find help.” He raked his fingers through his hair, a habit he had when he was tired and worried and things weren’t falling into a neat, orderly pattern.

  “Those were reasonable requests. Maybe not the insurance—at least, not right off. All the same, someone a little more flexible might be better. With babies, you can never tell what might come up.” Hetty was sitting across the room holding a drowsy Sunny on her lap, the baby’s head pillowed on her breast.

  Jax wished it were his head. He wished—

  The next applicant, a red-cheeked young woman who didn’t look old enough to be out of school, poked her head through the doorway and called out, “Hi, am I too late? Have you already found someone?”

  So they went through the process all over again, and Jax told her they would let her know tomorrow.

  Hetty, gathering up Sunny’s diaper bag, her own purse and coat, said, “Now that one, I like.”

  “She’s just a kid.”

  “She showed up. That means she’s at least marginally responsible.”

  “Or hungry.”

  “So? She’s bright and cheerful, and with babies that counts for a lot. Besides, she said she had seven brothers and sisters, so she’s obviously had experience.”

  “So have you.”

  Hetty didn’t know what to say to that, so she didn’t say anything. Jax locked up and saw them out into the cold, damp air. “Is that ocean I smell?” she asked as he bundled them into the car.

  “Yeah, I guess it is. It carries when the wind’s out of the northeast.”

  He’d hardly noticed, having inhaled so deeply when he was reaching past her to fasten Sunny into her carrier that his head was still reeling. She smelled of her own clean, subtle fragrance. He suspected it was little more than soap, shampoo and hand lotion, plus her own particular chemistry.

  Whatever it was, it affected his senses in a way no expensive perfume ever had.

  He drove without attempting to make conversation. Traffic was still heavy. Sunny was humming. At least that was the only way he could describe it.