How could he resist such a plea?
Not that he knew a damn thing about babies, but if she was going to stay here, he could ask her questions. How difficult could it be?
“Here?” she squeaked, surprised.
“Here. We agreed on three days. Three days you get. But I’m warning you. I know nothing about babies.”
A glowing smile spread over her face. “I’ll show you. It’s not that hard. Just don’t leave her alone unless she’s in her bed. She’s even working on climbing out of the high chair.”
“How old is she?” he asked in astonishment.
“Just over seven months. And already pulling herself up on things. Today she stood by the side of the tub and knocked off my bath powder. Oh. I didn’t clean it up. I’ll do that as soon as I show you where you’ll sleep.”
He could see the excitement rising in her, evidenced by her body language. He suddenly wondered if his own mother had simply grown too tired of the burden of raising a child by herself. It was the first thought he’d had of his mother in a long time that hadn’t condemned her, and it took him by surprise.
“This way,” she said as she walked down a short hall, Mandy on her hip. The baby watched him over her mother’s arm, her brown eyes almost as big as Melissa’s.
It was a small house. The bedroom, the master bedroom, wasn’t large, but like the living room, it was pleasant, airy and welcoming. The queen-size bed was covered with a white goose-down comforter and big fluffy pillows, simple, not frilly.
He’d hoped for a king-size bed, but he shrugged his shoulders. He’d be comfortable here.
“I cleared space in the closet for your clothes, and I emptied two drawers in the dresser,” she said.
He nodded, missing the meaning of her words. Then it struck him. “This is your room?”
“Yes, normally, but I’m sleeping—”
“I should take the guest room. You stay in here.” He wasn’t sure he’d be able to sleep, anyway, if he thought about her in the bed. More and more his eyes were drawn to her slender curves.
“Oh, no. That’s impossible. I’m staying in my office.”
“You said you were staying here,” he reminded her sharply, panic flooding him at the idea of being on his own with a baby.
“My office here,” she explained. “I have three bedrooms. Mandy’s, this one and the third, which I turned into a home office. But there’s a nice couch. I’m going to sleep on it.”
It occurred to him again that this woman wasn’t asking for all that much. She intended to sleep on a couch, giving him her comfortable bed, so she could sleep late one morning. The comforts he’d enjoyed since he’d taken his job in Chicago shamed him. He had life pretty easy compared to Melissa. He even had a maid to clean his apartment every week.
“I’ll take the sofa bed,” he assured her gruffly.
“No. You see, it’s not a sofa bed and—well, you’re too big. It’s much more my size.” She smiled as if she’d won a prize. Then she took his garment bag from him and put it in the closet.
With a shake of his head, he followed and set his tote bag on the floor. She whisked around him and turned back the cover on the bed, revealing blue-and-white-striped sheets.
At least he wouldn’t have to sleep on a lacy, flowery bed.
“The bathroom is the door at the end of the hall. I’ll go sweep up the powder on the floor. Then it will be all yours while I put Mandy to bed. That usually takes a while,” she finished with a rueful smile at her baby.
Mandy gurgled, as if agreeing with her mother.
“You only have one bathroom?” he asked before he realized how impolite his words sounded.
“Yes, but you can have first—you’re right. This is never going to work.” She turned back to the closet, lifting his garment bag from the rod.
His hand covered hers and forced the bag back onto the rod. The warmth of her, the soft floral scent she wore, enveloped him, and he rapidly withdrew his hand. “I’m sorry. I wasn’t criticizing your home. I was surprised, that’s all.”
“I realize your place is probably more—more luxurious than mine, but—”
“Your home is nice and I’ll be more than comfortable here. More than you will be.”
She stared at him, seemingly unsure of what to do.
“Look, Russ, this is a mistake. We both know it. Let me take you to a hotel. Whether you stay the weekend or go home at once is up to you.”
He squared his jaw and stared down at her. “I’m not leaving.”
She slumped against the wall, obviously too tired to argue again. “We’ll talk in the morning.” And she walked out of her bedroom.
* * *
RUSS UNPACKED HIS TWO BAGS, his mind racing. He’d talked to some of the other bachelors. They’d had interesting weekends that involved spending time with a sexy woman, often wining and dining her. Some had even ended in marriage.
His weekend was going to be a little different. He’d be offering formula to a seven-month-old. The baby’s mother, though she certainly qualified as an attractive woman, had sleep, not sex on her mind.
But in spite of the opportunities she’d given him to walk away, he couldn’t. Those big brown eyes would haunt him the rest of his life if he did. He wasn’t normally considered a softy, but somehow Melissa got to him.
When he heard his hostess enter a room across from his, he opened his door. “Are you putting her to bed now?” he asked.
She spun around, as if he’d taken her by surprise. Then she turned her back to him. “Yes, I am. We’ll try not to disturb you.”
“I thought you might let me watch. So I’ll know what to do.”
Again Melissa faced him, frowning. “Russ, I told you—” But the baby rubbed her eye with a pudgy fist and whimpered, distracting her mother. Russ stepped across the hall while Melissa soothed her child.
“Is she all right?” he asked.
“Yes. She’s tired. Come on, sweetie, let’s put on your jammies and change your diaper.” She placed the baby in her crib with a stuffed toy.
“Will she mind if I watch?” It seemed kind of intrusive to him to be so intimate with a stranger, even if the stranger was a baby.
His question, at least, erased that stiff expression Melissa had been wearing. With a chuckle, she shook her head. “No, she won’t mind. A seven-month-old has no modesty at all.”
He stood there as Melissa moved around the room, taking a disposable diaper from the top of the dresser, finding a clean sleeper from the top drawer.
“She wears that footy thing to bed? I thought she’d wear a nightgown,” he said.
“She always throws off the covers,” she told him. “With a sleeper, I know her feet are warm.”
He leaned over the baby, lying in her crib. “You’ve got a good mommy, Mandy.”
Mandy gurgled and rolled over, then pushed herself to a sitting position. Before he knew it, she’d pulled herself to a standing position, clinging to the railing of the crib.
“Hey! Look what she did,” he exclaimed, amazed.
Melissa glanced over her shoulder. “That’s why I told you never to leave her alone, except when she’s in her bed. I’m afraid she’ll fall to the floor and break something.”
She came back to the baby’s bed and settled Mandy onto the mattress again to change her diaper. Russ watched her carefully. Not that diapering a baby was difficult, but it was new territory for him. At the ranch, most of the boys were long past diapers.
Mandy smiled at him after Melissa removed the T-shirt she’d been wearing. He couldn’t hold back a matching grin. “She likes having her clothes changed?”
“No,” Melissa said with a smile. “I told you, she has no modesty. She likes to go without clothes at all.”
As if to prove her mother�
�s point, Mandy tried to squirm away from Melissa as she slipped the sleeper onto her arms and legs. In spite of all her wriggling, the baby couldn’t get free, and Melissa quickly did up the snaps. “Mandy, behave,” Melissa ordered, but her tone was soft.
“As soon as you turn out the light, will she pull it off again?” he asked.
“No. She takes a bottle before bedtime, and it makes her too drowsy to think of it, even if she could undo the snaps.”
“So you’re not breast-feeding her?” he asked. One of his friends had become a father and talked about breast-feeding. Instantly, his eyes were drawn to that part of Melissa’s anatomy. After enjoying the delicious curves beneath her blouse, he lifted his gaze and it slammed into hers. “Uh, I mean—”
“No, I’m not...anymore.” She picked Mandy up and turned to leave the room.
Russ hurried after her, all the while reminding himself not to notice the sweet sway of her hips or her shapely calves as she preceded him. She was a mother, not some woman on the prowl!
He reached the kitchen in time to see her open the refrigerator door. Over her shoulder, he noticed a number of bottles already prepared on the middle shelf.
She removed the lid and nipple on one and stuck it in the microwave, setting the timer, all the while balancing Mandy on her hip.
“Want me to hold Mandy while you...do whatever else you need to do?” he asked belatedly.
She turned to look at him but drew back as if he’d threatened the baby. “No. That’s all I need to do.”
Puzzled, he took a step closer. Did she want his help or didn’t she? “I could hold her, anyway, just to get her used to me.”
“I don’t think—” she began, then something changed her mind. “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt just for a minute.” She handed her daughter to him, her gaze sharp, as if she was afraid he might drop her.
“Do I have to support her head? I heard babies need that all the time,” he said, staring at Mandy, who seemed just as surprised as he was that everything was going so well.
“Not really. At seven months, she manages just fine, but—be careful.”
He was so enthralled with the bundle of sweetness in his arms that he only vaguely noted her mother’s lack of confidence in his abilities.
“Hey, little girl, how’re you doing?” he asked softly, then panicked when the smile she’d had on her lips turned into a frown.
“What’s wrong? Did I do something wrong?” he asked. His panic seemed to be conveyed to his charge, and she whimpered.
Immediately Melissa scooped her child back into her arms. “No. She isn’t used to having a man hold her.”
Russ was amazed at the loss he felt with Mandy’s removal from his arms. With another part of his mind he was processing the information he’d just received from her mother.
“You don’t date.” It wasn’t a question, because he already knew the answer. The real question was why not.
She shot him a guarded look. “No.” The microwave dinged and she took the bottle out.
When he realized she had to screw on the lid and nipple, he held out his hands for the baby. “Let me try again.”
“No, I can—”
“Come on, Melissa. I’m not going to drop her.” He reached for Mandy, feeling more confident on his second try.
Melissa hurriedly fixed the bottle, then reached for Mandy, who wasn’t upset this time.
“I could feed her,” Russ said.
Somehow, he wasn’t surprised by Melissa’s rejection of his offer.
He was beginning to get the idea that while Melissa might want to sleep in, she wasn’t comfortable with strangers handling her child. “Do you take her to those church programs where they keep the baby for a few hours every week?”
“Mother’s Day Out? No. Those places spread germs. Mandy’s never sick because Mrs. Tuttle and I are the only ones who take care of her.”
“Who is Mrs. Tuttle?”
“She’s a neighbor. She says she’s Mandy’s granny, since she doesn’t have one. She keeps Mandy while I go to work.”
“You couldn’t get her to give you a morning to sleep in?” he asked.
“Not really. Mrs. Tuttle tires easily. I wouldn’t ask her to keep Mandy overnight. It’s enough that she looks after her from noon to four. I bring the rest of my work home and do it after Mandy goes to bed.”
“Sounds like you’re a very busy lady.” He noted the shadows under her eyes, but she had been remarkably cheerful since he’d arrived.
“Yes, but Mandy is worth everything. You probably don’t think that since I’m asking for a break. But it’s just for one morning. As a Mother’s Day present. I thought—I’ll understand if you want to take a pass,” she said abruptly.
“So what baby-sitters do you use when you go out at night?” he asked, ignoring her offer. “If you have a good one, we could have one evening out this weekend, my treat. After all—”
“No. I don’t leave Mandy at night.”
Uh-huh. “What about Lindsay? I bet she’d be glad to take care of Mandy Saturday evening.”
Melissa left the kitchen. By the time Russ caught up with her, she was sitting in a corner of one of the couches, the nipple of the bottle already in Mandy’s rosebud mouth.
He crossed the room to sit in the green leather chair again. “What about Lindsay?” he reminded her.
“She has too much going on right now.”
“Don’t tell me she’s never offered to help you out. I know Lindsay better than that.”
Melissa kept her gaze on Mandy’s little face. “Of course she offered, in the beginning. But...but it was too hard to let anyone take over for me. Mandy is my responsibility, since Greg’s not here.”
“Greg was your fiancé?”
“Yes.”
“So you think he’d want you to drive yourself batty taking care of your baby with almost no help?” He wasn’t sure why he was pushing so hard on this issue. Maybe it was because it seemed a waste for a beautiful woman to cut herself off from the male population like this.
Or maybe it was because he wanted the opportunity to spend some time with her, without the baby. He immediately rejected that idea. He had no interest in a mother of any age.
She stiffened and fired him a glare that almost singed his toes. “Russ, I am not batty just because I would like to sleep in one morning.”
He almost smiled but knew that reaction would irritate her even more. And he had another question for her, one that he wanted answered, even if it was none of his business.
“And did you also promise Greg that you’d remain alone the rest of your life?”
CHAPTER THREE
MELISSA WAS STUNNED by his question. He had no business asking such personal questions. Since Greg’s death, she hadn’t had to explain herself to anyone, and she wasn’t going to now. “I don’t think that’s any of your business.”
He didn’t say anything.
When she turned her back on him, however, he asked, “Why are you so upset over a simple question?”
“My private life is none of your business.”
“You invited me into your personal life, Melissa. I had a pleasant, impersonal weekend planned, lots of glitz, glamour and activity. You’re the one who altered it.”
“Well, I’ve changed my mind. I don’t want a personal weekend.” Then she added grudgingly, “Even if you are good with Mandy.”
“Thanks. I like her, too,” he said with a grin that made him all the more attractive.
Mandy complained and Melissa realized she’d let the bottle slip out of the baby’s mouth. “Sorry, sweetie,” she whispered.
“Need me to take over? I’d pay attention.”
She gave him an exasperated look. “No, I do not. Why don’t you go to bed,
or watch television. I don’t need your help.”
“I’m trying to learn about Mandy so I can let you sleep in.”
“No! I told you I’ve changed my mind. It was a silly thought. If you want to fulfill your part of the bargain, you can model for me tomorrow.” She looked away from his fit body, trying to avoid thinking about sketching him. Or photographing him.
“Model? Like at the auction?”
She swallowed, her throat suddenly dry, as she remembered Russ’s strut across the stage, a sexy grin on his face. “No, but do you have the outfit you wore?”
“The cowboy stuff? Nope, but I’ve got a pair of jeans with me. And the swimsuit you asked for.” He tilted his head, his blue-eyed gaze fixed on her. “What would I be modeling for?”
“I’ve got an idea for a new line of greeting cards. My clients are asking for cowboy-oriented cards for tourists. When I saw you at the auction, it occurred to me I could base my character on you.”
“So I’d pose and you’d draw me?”
She nodded. It wasn’t that she was as intent on her plan as she had been. She’d been too tired after Mandy’s birth to even think of starting something new. But she was grateful that she’d distracted him from his earlier question.
“Nude?”
She dropped Mandy’s bottle as she stared at him, openmouthed. Mandy instantly sent up a loud protest.
“I think I’d better take over the feeding. It will be good practice for me and keep Mandy from getting upset.” As he was talking, he got up from the leather chair and scooped the baby and her bottle out of Melissa’s arms. By the time she pulled herself together, banishing the image of Russ posing nude, he and Mandy were enjoying themselves.
“I was—you shouldn’t—of course not nude. I don’t do those kind of cards!” Guiltily, she remembered her idea about him in a bathtub. But that wouldn’t really be nude. No one would know what he wore below water level.
“I didn’t think you did,” he assured her soothingly, as if she were Mandy.
“Then why did you—you were trying to upset me!”
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