The Playboy's Own Miss Prim

by Mindy Neff

  “Ethan, it’s not always like that.”

  “You got a written guarantee to back that up?”

  “Faith,” she said immediately. “Love. What about the need for two parents to bring up Katie?” Never mind that she herself would be a single parent if she were to keep Katie. At least for a time.

  “We had a great family life with just Dad and us boys. Being raised in a single-parent home didn’t hurt me any. I think I turned out okay. No reason why Katie won’t, too.”

  “But little girls need a woman’s influence…especially at certain times in their lives.”

  “What, you think a dad doesn’t know about periods and female stuff?”

  “Not as well as a woman.”

  “Now you’re being sexist. Shame on you. I happen to know men can raise girls just as well as they can raise boys. My neighbor Stony Stratton is a prime example. He’s been raising his goddaughter, Nikki, since she was just a baby.”

  “Still—”

  He put his hand over hers. “I know what you’re doing, Dora.”

  “You do?” Was she that transparent? She didn’t want to push him into making a snap decision. The wrong decision. There was nothing keeping her here other than her own declaration that she’d put him on a sort of month’s probation. She didn’t have any rights. Not legal ones. She’d bulldozed her way in and was only here by Ethan’s good grace, manners and his admitted terror and ignorance of how to take care of a baby. That could all change in a day.

  And a day was way too soon.

  A lifetime was way too soon.

  “Yes. You’re fulfilling your promise to Amanda. And I fully understand you wanting to make sure I have Katie’s best interests at heart before you leave. I can’t tell you how much I appreciate you taking the time to coach us. Parents don’t usually have the luxury of hands-on instructions. They just have to jump right in and get a baptism by fire.”

  Before you leave. Dora stood and went to the kitchen window, absently watching the breeze flutter the open lacy curtains. She hadn’t been Katie’s parent, but she’d been there from the beginning, had certainly experienced the baptism by fire Ethan spoke about. She’d had to learn right along with Amanda all the ins and outs and dos and don’ts that came with children. Each day brought trials and triumphs and a love that grew deeper and stronger.

  And now she was on the verge of having that love ripped right from her heart. She could well be less than a month away from losing the most important thing in the world to her. She could only hope and pray that didn’t happen.

  One of them was going to lose. She wasn’t Katie’s mother. She didn’t come with the package.

  Her only hope was that Ethan would see that a child didn’t fit his lifestyle, that Dora was the logical one to raise Katie, adopt her.

  If not, Dora loved Katie enough to let her go. She wouldn’t deny the little girl the opportunity to have a father. And Ethan Callahan was a very good man.

  The sting of tears pressed at the back of her throat, and she took a breath to hold them at bay, drinking in the earthy scent of animals and hay that drifted through the window. A full moon rode the eastern sky, bathing the outbuildings and corrals in a swath of white as though someone had turned on a huge spotlight.

  Lost in thought, she jumped when a hand rested on her shoulder.

  “Easy.”

  She hadn’t heard him come up behind her. “Sorry. I don’t usually startle so easily.” But was the jolt from fear or attraction? Just a simple touch and she felt the heat, the electricity.

  “Did I say something to upset you?”

  She turned to him, looked into his impossibly blue eyes. Katie had blue eyes. So did she, Dora thought. They could be a family. And where in the world had a thought like that come from? “No. I was just thinking about kids coming with owner’s manuals and parents jumping into fires.”

  “Sounds painful.”

  “Can be. I’d suggest you rest up. Your marathon cram session starts tomorrow.”

  “Ah, I see you don’t think I’m up to the task.”

  When he gave her that sexy grin, he was so hard to resist. “Little babies have been known to make grown men cry.”

  “I don’t doubt it. But I happen to have a way with the ladies.” His fingers toyed with the ends of her hair, coming awfully close to the swell of her breasts.

  Her breath stopped in midinhalation and she had to make a conscious effort to breathe.

  His gaze seemed to see all: it went from her eyes to her mouth to her chest, then back.

  “I’ve got no business even thinking about kissing you,” he murmured.

  It was as though he was talking to himself rather than her. And for some reason it sparked a challenge in Dora. Maybe it was the thrill of the dare, or maybe it was simply hormones, but suddenly it became the most important thing in the world to feel his lips against hers, right here in the kitchen with the breeze blowing through the window and the peaceful sound of resting ranch animals and the not-so-peaceful yip of coyotes in the distance.

  Raising up on tiptoe, she wrapped her arms around his neck and made the decision for him. “Then don’t think.”

  She wasn’t by any means a seductress, didn’t have the experience for it. But Dora didn’t need experience to respond to Ethan Callahan. One taste of his lips and she was lost.

  Although she’d initiated the kiss, Ethan easily took over. And that’s when Dora realized she might well be in over her head. She’d expected the expertise, the clever mix of gentle seduction and heat. She hadn’t expected the burst of passion and sweet taste of vulnerability—whether it was hers or his, she couldn’t tell.

  In a movement so swift it left her reeling, his palms skimmed her rib cage, her shoulder blades, the sensitive base of her neck. With his fingers threaded through her hair, he cupped the back of her head, and Dora’s entire body went boneless, her mind blank. She let him take what he needed, and she gave willingly, without the reservations and caution she’d always exercised.

  She didn’t need instructions for this. She played it by feel, kissed him back—for the little boy who’d been abandoned, for the man who’d lost his father, for the cowboy who didn’t believe in conjugal love. And then she kissed him just for the man himself.

  And for the emerging woman in her.

  She surprised herself with the passion that erupted like a crimson spray of lava. Colors burst behind her closed eyelids. She wanted more. She forgot where she was. There was only heat and desire. A desire that bordered on pain.

  She moaned, then actually whimpered when he suddenly went still. Reality came crashing back with the force of an icy bucket of water.

  She drew back, looked into his troubled, stunned eyes, could already see the regret, the self-castigation over getting carried away.

  “Well. That was…uh, very nice.”

  “Dora—”

  She pressed her fingers over his lips. “Don’t say it.” She could hardly get the words out for lack of oxygen. She’d given it all up in the kiss. “Call me Dora, or call me legs, but don’t start in again with that preacher’s daughter stuff.”

  “That’s asking a lot.”

  “Oh, for Heaven’s sake, Ethan. Get over it. It was only a kiss.”

  She nearly laughed when his brows shot up in affront, but she was too annoyed and off balance to expend the effort.

  One kiss and her world had just turned upside down.

  She wanted Katie. Desperately.

  And she wanted Ethan, too.

  She knew she was being greedy. But there it was.

  Against all odds, crazily, she’d fallen in love. Tumbled headlong in her impulsive, never-look-back-or-ahead style. That hadn’t been part of the plan, and she wasn’t sure how she felt about it. Emotions, fantasies and what-ifs tripped through her mind at full speed, bringing elation and terror, giddiness and uncertainty.

  Now more than ever she needed to step back, to turn over the day-to-day handling of the baby to him. If he reali
zed caring for a child was too much to do on his own, perhaps he’d see the merits of taking on a partner.

  The kind of partner he could love, honor and cherish as long as they both should live.

  And she had less than a month to see how it would all play out, to see if she could accomplish this huge goal, this shifted goal.

  Impossibly, the stakes were even higher now. If she failed, not only would her heart break from losing Katie, it would shatter from walking away from Ethan, too.

  Striving to be casual, when her insides were actually a mass of nerves and arousal, she glanced at the kitchen door, gauging the steps it would take to get to the stairs and to her bedroom, to sanctuary, telling herself she would not run.

  Once in the privacy of her bedroom she would berate herself for the foolishness of falling in love with this playboy cowboy who might never be persuaded to believe in married love.

  She stepped away from him. “Better get some sleep, hotshot. Your trial by fire starts around 6 a.m.”

  Chapter Six

  Ethan had scoffed at Dora’s “trial by fire” taunt. By midmorning he wasn’t feeling so smug. Trial by fire? This was more like Armageddon. Every man for himself. Survival of the fittest.

  And he was fast learning that he was not the fittest.

  Hardly knowing what had hit him, he found his testosterone-filled, all-bachelor ranch suddenly taken over by one small baby and a maddeningly sexy woman who he ached to touch but knew he couldn’t. At least he couldn’t repeat the touching—never mind that she’d been the one to start that gut-twisting, mind-blowing kiss. She ought to know better. And so should he.

  And true to her word, she’d flitted right out of the house that morning, leaving him to blunder his way through Kid 101 all by himself. Oh, sure, she’d popped back in on him now and again—to gloat, he was certain.

  Well, he wasn’t a man to give up this easily.

  Katie whimpered and patted at her diaper.

  “Again? I just changed you.” He swung the little girl up in his arms and headed back upstairs to the yellow nursery that had taken him half the morning to get organized because as fast as he put something away, Katie crawled over and undid it. But as much as she made extra work for him, he didn’t have the heart to corral her in the crib or playpen. “Seems to me if you know enough to pat your diapers this way, you ought to be ready to use a toilet.”

  Katie gurgled and kicked her legs as though he wasn’t moving fast enough to suit her, then babbled something he had no hope of understanding. He’d figured out earlier this morning that everybody stayed happier and saner if he kept up a one-sided conversation.

  “Right. You can’t walk, so that’s a problem. Well, we’ll teach you soon enough.” He laid her on the changing table, reached to get a diaper and almost let her pitch right off the tabletop.

  “Whoa! What are you trying to do, give your old man a heart attack?” With one hand on Katie’s belly, he tried to stretch his arm across to reach the diapers. It didn’t work.

  Cursing, then apologizing, he picked her up, walked the two steps to the box of disposables, then retraced his steps. He was sweating worse than he did when mucking out stalls—and imagining he could smell those stalls, too.

  “Nothing better than a baby and a church woman to make a man clean up his language, huh, Katie?” He got the diaper off, took one look at the mess and whipped his bandanna up over his nose. “Oh, man.”

  “Ga-ga,” Katie said helpfully.

  “You got that right, sugar. No, wait! Don’t move. Not the feet…oh, man,” he repeated, barely suppressing the apt curse that sprang to mind.

  A burst of feminine laughter from the doorway had him whipping around, glaring. Undaunted by his fierce look, Dora raised her camera and snapped a picture.

  The distraction was all Katie needed. Doing a credible impersonation of a miniature greased pig she twisted right out of the smeared diaper and got up to her knees. Ethan grabbed for her and, like an expert acrobat, she used his arms as leverage to stand. In less than two seconds, she was face-to-face with him, and had his bandanna jerked off his nose, staring him straight in the eyes, bouncing like a monkey and grinning like a loon.

  She was a mess. He was a mess. And despite the fiasco—as well as having his ineptness witnessed firsthand—he roared with laughter, glancing at Dora as he did so. Her camera shutter clicked once more, then lowered slowly.

  Her smile was soft…different.

  It caused his heart to thump against his ribs. He didn’t understand the shift, the jolt to his system.

  “Looks like the two of you are still surviving.”

  It was that gurgle of laughter in Dora’s voice that had him believing he’d only imagined the odd undertones he’d thought permeated the room only seconds ago.

  “Barely. For a girl, this kid does an awful lot of unladylike things.”

  “Now, Ethan, there’s nothing unladylike about a poopy diaper.”

  He lifted a brow and the baby at the same time, holding her under her arms and straight out in front of him. “Are we looking at the same baby here?”

  Dora laughed. “A bath will set things to rights and have her sweet-smelling in no time.”

  He saw her take a step back, and he took an automatic step forward, Katie still dangling out in front of him like a doll. It didn’t take an expert at reading body language to tell that Dora was about to abandon him. Again.

  And though he’d never been a man to beg, he wasn’t above learning the art. Very quickly. But very carefully. He wasn’t ready to hoist the white flag all the way just yet.

  “If you could get the bath started for me, I’ll grab a towel. On second thought, maybe you could get the towel, too? My hands are kind of tied up.” He figured if he started in the middle of the conversation, casually, as though an agreement had already been reached, she’d act rather than think and help him out.

  He was wrong.

  “Actually, I just came in to get another roll of film. The guys are going to introduce me to the teasing rail—you know, where the horses flirt with one another?”

  His brows slammed down. The guys—his brothers, no doubt—had no business showing her that kind of stuff. She’d likely start asking questions in that guileless way of hers, and invariably the subject would segue into sex. What in the world could Grant and Clay be thinking? “I know what the teasing rail is.”

  “Of course you do. But it’s all new to me. And the possibilities are wonderful. Can’t you just picture a greeting card with two beautiful horses nuzzling each another? It could be one of those really touching ones for lovers—apt, don’t you think, since it’s a teasing rail and all—”

  “Dora?”

  “Or I could even do a caricature sketch for laughs—”

  “Dora?”

  “Yes?”

  Katie, smeared and smelly, still dangled happily in front of him. “Please?”

  Darn her hide, she grinned.

  “Baptism by fire, remember, Ethan?”

  He shook his head. “I’m going to regret I ever said that.”

  “Losing your touch with the ladies?”

  “Cute.”

  “Chin up, hotshot.” She backed out of the doorway. “It’s just a bath. You did it this morning.”

  “She wasn’t the color of mud this morning.”

  “Just pretend you’re hosing out one of the stalls.”

  “Hosing…” That gave him an idea. A little dexterity and a hand-held showerhead ought to do the job. “Fine.” He waved her away. “Go play. Katie and I will survive.”

  His about-face seemed to make her hesitate. He wasn’t going to admit defeat so early in the day.

  As though she’d read his mind, her smile tipped up again. “Make sure you check the water temperature.”

  Shifting Katie under his arm like a sack of grain, being careful to keep the bottom half of her dangling and not touching anything, he gave Dora a direct look.

  A manly, sexy, capable look. She w
as having too much fun at his expense, and it was time to take back control.

  Her eyes widened, and her body went still. He allowed the moment to spin out, to wrap around them, to make absolutely certain he had her full, undivided attention.

  And he accomplished just that with the single intensity of a long, provocative look.

  “I know a thing or two about temperatures, legs. It’s all about heat—warm heat, the slow-building kind that wraps you in a cocoon of security, innocence even,” he stressed softly, deliberately. “Or fiery heat, edgy and hot like an inferno. Icy heat…” He paused, his voice dropping an octave all by itself. “Now there’s an oxymoron. Ever felt icy heat, legs?”

  She shook her head—an automatic, guileless gesture that told him much more than any words.

  Now they were on a more even footing, and his ego took a healthy and much-needed leap. He wasn’t a man used to being on the inept edge of the scale. He was used to control, to seduction, to calling the shots on the mere strength of his charm.

  “Icy heat,” he continued, still holding her with his eyes alone. “The kind that sends chills of pleasure up the spine. Sure you don’t want to come test the water yourself?”

  His question was couched in innuendo, deliberately intended to evoke images that had nothing to do with bathwater and babies. It was an adult question, a man-to-woman question. Never mind that the woman in question was the last one he should be taunting this way.

  Her hands went to her camera, which hung at chest level. His gaze dropped to her breasts.

  He ought to be ashamed of himself for purposefully coming on to a preacher’s daughter, but the little minx was far too smug. At every turn she outwitted him, and darned if it didn’t make him feel competitive. And aroused.

  Ethan had enough self-control not to act on that arousal, but he liked the game, nonetheless. His smile inched up and he could feel the dimple in his cheek crease.

  But the thing about smugness was that it often boomeranged right back in a person’s face. At least his own did.