by Abby Gaines
Maybe it was the shock of hearing the truth about the adult who’d taken responsibility for him, but Ben started to cry. Olivia began typing as if her life depended on it.
Tyler cursed. “Bethany!”
She’d just made it out the door. Though she told herself not to, she stuck her head back around.
“He’s crying.”
She gave him a thumbs-up. “Well done—you’re a natural at this parenting stuff.”
“Can’t you do something?” And when she would have pulled the door closed and left, he added, “Please?”
Darn it, he was projecting the kind of male helplessness that called to a woman’s maternal instincts, then subverted those instincts, thanks to the addition of a sexy smile, into something far less wholesome.
Drawn by a force too strong to resist, Bethany eased back into the office. “I’m doing this for Ben. Not for you.”
“Of course.” She could tell herself that if she liked, Tyler thought, but he was the one she hadn’t been able to turn down.
“If this was about you, I’d be out of here so fast you wouldn’t see me.”
“Dust,” he agreed.
Her blue eyes turned calculating. “And you understand that I have never, ever given you any kind of signal? You agree that I am not attracted to you in any way?”
Tyler was aware of Olivia’s bristling speculation. What was the bet his mother would hear about this conversation within the hour?
Ben’s cry turned to the kind of howling wail that would have someone at the far end of the building dialing 911.
“I agree,” he lied. He sent Olivia an intimidating look. She winked in reply.
“Sweet baby,” Bethany cooed to Ben as she unclipped his harness. She lifted him out of the seat, and for one second the sobbing stopped, but then it was back full force. She grimaced as Ben got too close to her ear.
She had pretty ears, Tyler noticed, with her red-brown hair tucked behind them.
Bethany swayed with Ben in her arms, her attention so focused on the baby that Tyler felt as if she no longer saw him or Olivia. Softly, sweetly, she sang, “Rock a bye baby, on the treetop, when the wind blows the cradle will rock.”
“With lyrics like that, it’s no wonder I don’t remember any of those old rhymes,” he said. “Who would put a baby up a tree?” Ben’s cries had quieted somewhat, but Tyler figured any guy might shut up and listen with Bethany crooning at him, no matter how psychotic the words.
“When the bough breaks—” Bethany frowned at Tyler as she sang on, lowering her voice to a murmur as the baby’s sobs turned to wet hiccups “—the cradle will fall, and down will come baby, cradle and all.”
“You’ll give him nightmares,” Tyler protested.
“He doesn’t understand the words,” Bethany said in the same low voice she’d used for the song.
“You don’t know that for sure. This is probably why you’re having so much trouble with his sleeping.”
“If you think you can do better…” Eyes sparking, she offered the baby to Tyler. He got the message loud and clear: if he didn’t shut up, she’d walk right out of his office.
He shut up. Bethany held all the aces when it came to Ben, though, fortunately, she didn’t seem to realize that.
Suddenly, taking Ben to the divorced-dads meeting didn’t seem like such a great idea. What if he started yelling again? But without a kid in tow, Tyler would look too much like his old playboy self, despite the clean-cut, low-key outfit he’d adopted for the occasion.
He propped himself against a filing cabinet, made no effort to take Ben from her arms. “No way can I do better than you,” he soothed her. “How would you like to come along to this meeting and show the single fathers how a pro does it?”
“No, thanks, this is my night off.” With Ben now settled, she headed into Tyler’s carpeted office. Tyler picked up the change bag she’d left on Olivia’s desk and followed her.
Bethany spread a changing mat on the floor and whipped off Ben’s wet diaper.
As Tyler watched, Ben’s soft unfocused gaze found him, then sharpened into a kind of bemused recognition. It struck Tyler just how vulnerable this little boy was, bare bottomed in a roomful of strangers, with the office door open so even Olivia could see the whole process.
“Give the kid some privacy,” he told Olivia, who was observing with a kind of fascinated repulsion.
Olivia rolled her eyes. “I saw your cute baby bottom more times than I can remember when you were this age. Doesn’t seem to have done you any harm.”
“Great.” Tyler moved to block her view of Ben. “My secretary has not only seen my butt, she talks about it.”
“Don’t they all?” Bethany asked in surprise, and it took him a second to realize she was joking. He glared at her, and heard Olivia snicker.
“How about I give you a whole day off on Sunday, instead of tonight?” he said. To remind her how irresistible he was to women, he added, “Miss Georgia’s always saying she loves kids, I’ll invite her over on Sunday for some hands-on experience.”
Bethany knew she should refuse to help him out, should make him fend for himself with Ben tonight. And she didn’t feel a need to humor Miss Georgia’s desire to play mommy.
But something had shifted in the dynamic between Tyler and Ben just now. Something had clicked.
One minute she’d been changing the diaper, with Tyler looking and yet not looking, with his usual disinterest.
Then everything had changed.
She’d seen it in his sudden straightening, in the flaring of compassion in his eyes, in his admonishment to Olivia and his not-so-subtle shielding of the baby.
Bethany didn’t know why it had happened, but she knew what it meant. As of right now, Tyler saw Ben as a person, with dignity in his own right.
She wasn’t naive enough to believe Tyler had suddenly developed a fully evolved conscience in place of his throw-money-at-the-problem attitude. And certainly Ben’s need for privacy was not one of the more pressing issues.
But maybe that moment of recognition had been a first step—a baby step, if you will—on the journey to becoming a less selfish human being.
And once Tyler Warrington learned to care, who knew how much help he’d give her for her research?
THE RATIO OF MEN to women in the ballroom at the Excelsior Hotel was pretty well what she’d expected. After all, this was a convention for single dads. Among the fathers chatting in clusters, taking their seats in ordered rows or handing babies and preschoolers over to the woman running the daycare area in the back left corner of the room, Bethany counted just two female hotel workers, the daycare woman, plus herself.
Everyone else had a Y chromosome. A couple of hundred divorced dads, a handful of male reporters—Divorced Dads International had a reputation as a vocal and sometimes aggressive supporter of fathers’ rights—and Tyler.Tyler insisted on putting Ben in the day care so he could “meet some other kids,” once again showinghis skewed prioritization of Ben’s needs. Bethany suspected Tyler wanted to fit in with the other dads.
The meeting was called to order. The organization’s chairman introduced Tyler as the man they’d all seen in the news this week as the remporary guardian of baby Ben. He used terms that couldn’t have been more glowing if Tyler had delivered Ben himself while surrounded by raging fire in the middle of an earthquake, rather than just opening a duffel bag and finding the little boy lying there. Tyler wore a self-deprecating, and very appealing, smile that said he was just your regular hero, no need to make a fuss, folks.
He eased into his speech with a couple of jokes about diapers and sleepless nights. So what if he knew nothing about either? He had the kind of charisma that made people—even tough, tattooed men, as some of these guys were—pay attention, laughing when they should, murmuring in sympathy or agreement in key moments.
As he moved into what Bethany guessed was the main part of his speech—as unfazed as his audience by the occasional squeal of laughter or cry
of frustration emanating from the day care area—Tyler acknowledged he didn’t have a lot of experience with babies.
“But,” he said, “I’m starting to figure that being a father is the most rewarding, fulfilling, hope-giving experience a man can know. It beats those other coming-of-age experiences—first car, first girlfriend, graduation—hands down.”
Now that was impressive.
And familiar.
The rat was repeating exactly what she’d said last night.
“Heck,” he said, “I’d go so far as to say it’s better than sex.”
Okay, that was original. Obviously he didn’t mean it, but it got a big laugh from the audience.
“In my experience, fathers love their kids just as much as moms do,” Tyler continued. “They’re just not as good at showing it. But every kid needs a dad to be a role model. Maybe not so obviously at Ben’s age, but in a few years’ time he’s going to need someone to show him what being a man is all about.”
The audience cheered, a couple of cameras flashed white lights at the stage. Bethany seethed. Once again, the master manipulator had played her. That softening she’d seen back at the office had doubtless been a ploy to persuade her to come along tonight, just so Tyler wouldn’t have to get his hands dirty actually looking after the baby.
“I may not be in Ben’s life then,” Tyler said soberly. “But I’ll do my best to make sure he’s got someone—some guy—to look up to.”
Empty words.
Tyler issued a couple of insightful suggestions that hadn’t come from Bethany, so she assumed they were straight out of Real Dads Change Diapers. Then—surely by now he was skating at the extreme limits of his capacity to talk about parenting—he began to wrap things up.
“In the few days that I’ve had responsibility for a baby, I’ve realized just what hard work parenting is,” he said.
Bethany snorted. A man in the back row whose muscled forearms and low-riding pants suggested he might be a construction worker turned to frown at her.
“You guys have my respect,” Tyler said. “Give yourselves a round of applause.” There was a stutter of self-congratulatory clapping, which at Tyler’s urging grew more solid, then thundered through the ballroom. When it died away, Tyler leaned forward at the lectern, fixed his gaze on the audience with an intimacy that suggested he was making eye contact with every man in the room.
He lowered his voice, but in the silence his masculine presence commanded, his words carried to the farthest corners. “Guys, I don’t know much about looking after a baby, but if there’s one piece of advice I can offer from my limited experience, let it be this…”
He paused, and the suspense just about killed Bethany, so she could guess what it was doing to people who actually believed this garbage. “Please, guys, no matter how busy you get with your precious kids…please, I know it’s hard…but take some time for yourselves.”
The room erupted into applause, punctuated by whoops and hollers. The tough-looking construction worker in front of Bethany blew his nose into a none-too-clean handkerchief.
The man who took more time for himself than anyone Bethany had ever met stepped down from the stage. His progress toward the back of the room, where she knew he’d arranged to chat to a couple of the reporters while the meeting continued, was slowed by men wanting to clap him on the shoulder, shake his hand or discuss their child-rearing issues. Tyler accepted the first two with buddylike equanimity and managed to deflect the last with a charming admission of ignorance that somehow came across as authoritative.
Bethany stepped forward. “I had no idea you knew so much about being a father,” she said coldly.
On a high from the applause and the adrenaline rush of having spent twenty minutes talking on something he knew nothing about, Tyler grinned. “Nor did I, Peaches. It’s amazing how it all just came to me.”
He took advantage of Bethany’s speechless outrage and moved on to greet the reporters who were his only reason for being here. One of them was a stringer for the Washington Post. Tyler had no doubt the think-tank crowd would soon be reading about tonight’s success.
He managed to hold up his end of the interview by talking common sense—no, he didn’t think men should resort to illegal methods to see their children, and yes, he thought mediation between estranged parents was a great idea—and by throwing in a few more of Bethany’s pearls of wisdom.
He could tell from her pursed lips that his parenting muse wasn’t happy…but too bad, what could she do?
The interview moved on to the search for Ben’s mother.
“Social services is trying to locate her, and we’re boosting those efforts with the help of a private investigator I hired,” Tyler said.
“What consequences will the mother face for abandoning her child?” asked the Post reporter.
Tyler would bet the divorced dads would have some suggestions. “We don’t know yet how old she is…what her circumstances are. Until we do, none of us can judge her,” he said. “The priority will be to make sure Ben ends up in a loving, supportive environment. It’s too soon to say whether that will be with one or both of his parents.”
Both reporters had brought photographers, and both wanted to take a picture of him with Ben.
Interrupting his own reply to a question about joint-custody agreements, Tyler turned to Bethany. “Could you fetch Ben from the day care?”
Her infinitesimal pause should have warned him.
“No,” she said. A battle light glinted in her eyes, and something in her tone had both the reporters turning to her.
Uh-oh. No way did Tyler want them copping her views about him as a parent. “The number-one problem facing a lot of dads who share custody,” he said to the reporters, “is finding a good babysitter. Sometimes you end up scraping the bottom of the barrel.” He twitched his head in Bethany’s direction, then winked to show his audience he was teasing.
But he knew how sensitive Bethany was—she had no sense of humor when it came to him winking—and, true to form, she got mad. So mad that she stalked off, red-faced, almost frothing at the mouth. Even if she’d stayed, he figured she would have been incoherent with anger.
Of course, that meant he had to get Ben himself. He excused himself from the reporters with a promise he’d be back in a minute, then headed for the day care.
“You were great, Mr. Warrington,” the woman in charge said.
“Thanks.” He gave her his warm, playful Superdad smile, and her hand moved involuntarily to cover her heart. “I’d like to take Ben out for a photo.”
“Sure, I’ll just—”
“Excuse me.” Bethany spoke from beside Tyler, startling him.
So she’d caved, huh? He might have known her do-gooder instincts wouldn’t let her butt out where Ben was concerned. She didn’t look quite as mad as before, but she held herself stiffly, as if her calmness was the product of rigid self-control. Tyler rewarded her with a full-on dazzling smile.
But she wasn’t looking at him. She said to the day care woman, “You see that little girl over there?” She pointed to an angelic-looking girl wielding a pink fairy wand to deal punishing blows to two smaller boys. The innocent-looking girls are the worst, Tyler thought, remembering how Bethany had blackmailed him. She deserved whatever grief he gave her.
“I’m a pediatrician and I noticed she’s showing signs of an allergic reaction,” Bethany continued.
The day-care woman’s forehead crinkled. “You’re a doctor? Not a babysitter?”
“A doctor and a babysitter,” Bethany said. “Mr. Warrington insists on nothing but the best care for Ben.” Understanding dawned on the woman’s face, and Bethany went on, “The girl’s allergy doesn’t look too serious, but you might want to notify her father.”
The day-care woman looked horrified. “Of course I will. Thank you so much for letting me know.” As she leafed through her list of names, looking for details of the girl’s father, she said distractedly to Tyler, “Can you get Ben yours
elf, Mr. Warrington, I need to deal with this.”
She found the information she was looking for, and scanned the crowded room.
“You go and find the dad,” Bethany encouraged her. “I’ll keep an eye on the kids for a minute.”
The woman gave Bethany a look of such gratitude that for an instant, Tyler could see how rewarding it must be to have a job like Bethany’s. If you liked that kind of thing.
He left her chatting to a couple of toddlers and made his way over to the infant section, where half a dozen babies snuggled in their car seats.
Half a dozen identical babies.
In half a dozen car seats as near as dammit identical.
Hell. Which one was Ben? Panic gripped Tyler and he forced himself to slow his thoughts. Ben was wearing a white romper. That eliminated the baby in the red sailor suit and the one in the yellow dress—which was probably a girl, though you couldn’t be sure these days.
Four babies wore white rompers, obviously some kind of must-have infant fashion. Perspiration beaded on Tyler’s brow. The baby second from the left had much more hair than Ben, he was certain. Darker, too. The one next to it looked too fat. That left two—one at either end—to choose from.
Tyler looked from one to the other. Now he could see they weren’t identical at all, but he still had no idea which one was Ben.
Bethany spoke at his elbow. “Need some help?”
Relief flooded him. Then he saw the glitter in her eyes.
“I’ll show you which baby is Ben,” she said coolly, “but it’ll cost you.”
Blackmail, her weapon of choice.
“How much?” He couldn’t afford to blow an interview with the Washington Post and if the reporter, or anyone in the audience here, suspected Tyler didn’t have a clue which baby he was responsible for, his family-man image would be shot to pieces.
He figured her price would be something to do with those kidney kids. Not the research money, for some weird reason she considered that unethical, though she didn’t hesitate to make other demands.
She drew a deep breath, and Tyler braced himself for whatever new way she’d devised of making his life difficult.