by Arlene James
Goody, who was usually fairly standoffish with everyone but Emily herself, displayed no such inclination with Amanda Sue. Indeed, the cat seemed to accept this little person with far more aplomb than she ever had adults. Whereas slamming doors often sent the cat scurrying for cover and a backfiring car once had reduced the bedroom curtains to instant shreds, Amanda Sue’s giggles and gurgles and shrieks seemed to have no impact on the animal at all. That long, tigerish tail maintained a lazy, rhythmic thumping whether the baby pounded or petted, pulled or stroked.
When it came time to go, Amanda Sue seemed to assume Goody would go with them, and Goody seemed of the same mind, curling herself around Emily’s ankles and meowing insistently. Emily figured, Why not? Goody was now de-clawed and normally well-behaved. If Logan disapproved, she’d just take her cat and go home. Goody, who was always eager to take a ride, hopped into the big canvas tote bag that Emily held open and made room for the food and litter that Emily added. Once deposited on the floorboard of the car, Goody hopped out of the bag and wandered around, finally settling next to Amanda Sue in the back seat. For once the child didn’t try to escape her safety restraints. Instead she babbled to the cat as if she was a long-time companion, feeding her bits of dry cereal from the snack pack Emily had given her. Watching them in the rearview mirror, Emily could only shake her head. For the first time that day, she found herself genuinely smiling and relaxed.
Logan put his hands to his waist and surveyed what appeared to be a happy domestic scene. Apparently he’d acquired a cat from somewhere, a big fat yellow thing that lay draped over his daughter like a delicately striped blanket, its white belly exposed to Amanda Sue’s gently patting hand. Delicious aromas wafted from the kitchen, and Emily could be heard humming as she tended whatever produced the rumble in his stomach. The house looked neat and clean, despite the toys Amanda Sue had thrown out of the playpen situated in the center of the floor where the coffee table had once been. Home had never seemed so welcoming before. He walked toward the playpen.
“Who’s your friend, ’Manda mine?”
Amanda Sue looked up, delight shining in her eyes. She hopped up, the cat curling away from her, and reached for him. “Up-up!” He swung her into his arms. The cat jumped out of the pen and twined around his ankles. He bent and picked it up, too, letting it drape across his hand as he lifted it to his face. The cat met him nose to nose. “Who’s this?”
“Cat,” Amanda Sue said.
“I can see that.” Logan sat down on the couch, the cat curling into his lap as close to Amanda Sue as it could get.
“Gooey,” the child informed him, poking a finger into her mouth.
“Gooey?”
“I think she’s saying, ‘Goody.’ That’s the cat’s name.”
Logan looked up, smiling at Emily. He found much reason to smile. She was wearing faded jeans and a soft, butter-yellow sweater that showed off her slender, shapely form. Her feet were bare. The top two buttons in the front of the sweater were open, and when she folded her arms beneath the firm mounds of her breasts, a narrow strip of creamy skin showed above the waistband of her jeans. Her long hair had been pulled back into a ponytail that swung over one shoulder. Altogether she made a very fetching picture, so much so that he had to look away to remember what they were talking about.
“Ah, Goody, that’s a strange name, isn’t it?”
She nodded. “It’s short for Good as Gold.”
He laughed and scratched the cat’s ears. “Anyone else would have called her Goldie.”
“Actually it’s short for Good as Gold Jr. Her mother got Goldie.”
“I see. So she’s yours, then.”
“Hope you don’t mind my bringing her along, but Amanda Sue was so taken with her when we stopped by the apartment, and—”
“It’s no problem,” he said, scratching the animal between the ears. The cat purred and stretched and kneaded his pant legs with her paws. Amanda Sue’s muffled giggle made him look her way. She squatted in the curve of his arm, the end of his tie firmly clamped between her teeth. Logan sighed, and then he laughed. If anyone had ever told him that he’d be perfectly happy to sit with a fat cat ruining the crease in pants and a kid intent on eating his tie, Emily just standing there smiling down at him, he’d have backed slowly out of the room and called the white coat brigade.
“Do I smell dinner?” he asked, still grinning ear to ear.
“You do.”
“You’re an angel, Emily Applegate. What’s on the menu?” he asked, carefully tugging his tie from Amanda Sue’s mouth. She squawked a protest and snapped her teeth at him as if intending to bite him. “Hey!”
Emily chortled. “Besides you, you mean?”
He frowned at Amanda Sue. “You wouldn’t bite Daddy, would you? It’s not nice to bite people.” His daughter snapped her choppers together repeatedly but made no actual attempt to bite him. It seemed to be some kind of game to her. He tickled her under the chin to distract her and was surprised to find her drooling slightly. “Is something wrong with her?” he asked Emily worriedly.
“I think she’s just cutting teeth.”
“Really? She already seems to have all she needs.”
“In front, maybe. It’s time for her molars now.”
“Ah.”
“And we’re having tortellini for dinner.”
He lifted his eyebrows in an expression of approval. “Yum.”
“Cheese tortellini with shrimp sauce, to be exact.”
“Double yum. When do we eat?”
“As soon as you’re washed up.”
He stood and stripped off his coat and tie. “Will you watch Amanda Sue for a minute while I change?”
“Do you need to ask?”
He flashed her a smile as he moved toward the bedroom. She really was an angel. He wondered how long it would take him to make that halo slip. Quickly trading his business clothes for jeans and T-shirt, he stuck his feet into an old pair of loafers and headed to the bath, where he soaped and rinsed his hands.
Emily and Amanda Sue were in the kitchen, leaving Goody to curl up in a corner of the couch for a nap. He hurriedly joined them, noticing that Amanda Sue’s high chair had been moved to a new spot between his and Emily’s places at the table. Amanda Sue beat the tray with a spoon, demanding to be fed while Emily cut up her tortellini and steamed vegetables.
“Just a minute, baby. Almost ready.”
Logan took his chair and began filling his plate. “Looks great!”
“Not so fast there, Dad,” Emily said, sliding Amanda Sue’s plate over to him. “I think it’s time you took over this particular duty.”
He opened his mouth to protest that he was starving, but then he closed it again, seeing the look in Emily’s eye. She was right. Amanda Sue was his daughter. Nodding, he pried the spoon from her determined little fingers and picked up a bite of the mangled pasta.
“Not too much,” Emily coached, and he shook off some of the excess before lifting the spoon to the child’s mouth.
“Mmm-mmm,” she said, swallowing. Before he could even reload the spoon, her mouth was open for more. He tried to manage bites of his own dinner, as Emily always seemed to do, but Amanda Sue was like a little bird with its mouth constantly open. Worse, she consistently refused the vegetables and demanded more pasta.
“Try combining them,” Emily advised, calmly eating her own dinner.
When that didn’t work, he took to hiding the veggie bits in mounds of pasta. Amanda Sue actually ate a few but spit out others. Finally, Emily took pity on him.
“Eat your dinner. I’ll take it from here.”
He practically tossed the spoon at her. While he wolfed down his own meal, he watched Emily manage Amanda Sue with new respect. She was a natural mother. Come to think of it, she was good at just about everything she put her hand to. Her business skills were certainly top-notch, and he’d learned to rely on her instincts as often as his own. She could cook, too, bless her.
And she wo
uld be good in bed.
He knew it with that sense that men of experience have about such things. He knew something else, too. It would be different with Emily. She would not be one of those women whose faces all seemed to blur together in his memory. She would always stand out. The idea made him uncomfortable somehow, but he was no less determined to have Emily Applegate. In fact, he couldn’t remember ever being so determined to win a woman. He wondered how long it would be before Amanda Sue was ready for bed.
“That was delicious,” he said, watching Emily carefully guiding the spoon gripped in Amanda Sue’s fist toward her open mouth. The child yanked away, turning her face at the last moment, and smacked herself in the ear with the spoonful of food.
“Oh, no,” Emily said, “poor baby.” She took the spoon and picked up her napkin to wipe away the food. Amanda Sue let her do so long enough to grab a fistful of tortellini and cram it into her mouth, then tried to wipe off the evidence on the back of her head. Logan couldn’t help laughing.
“Don’t encourage her,” Emily scolded, but her own mouth was wiggling. “She has to learn to eat like a lady.” She filled the spoon again and put it in Amanda Sue’s hand. She instantly tossed the contents over her shoulder, threw the spoon down and started trying to get out of her chair.
“Down!” she demanded.
Emily sighed and went after the floor with a napkin. “Let me get this, then you can have your bath,” she said.
“I’ll take care of the bath,” Logan said, getting up.
She left what she was doing and popped up onto her feet, gaping at him. “Really?”
“Yep. Like you said, it’s time I started taking over, so I’ll bathe Miss Amanda Sue, dress her for bed, and then I’ll come back down here and clean up the dishes. How’s that?”
“First you’d better catch me while I faint,” Emily drawled, parking her hands at her hips.
“Anytime,” he said, holding out his arms. “Swoon away.”
“On second thought, save your strength. Bath time may be more of a challenge than you realize.”
“Coward.”
“I prefer the term prudent.”
“You prefer to have the last word.”
“True,” she said, adding smugly, “and now I have it.” With that she walked out of the room.
Laughing, Logan concentrated on stripping Amanda Sue of her shirt and getting her out of the chair. When they reached the bathroom, Emily had run the water and fixed the seat in place.
“Downstairs with you,” Logan ordered. “We can handle it from here. Can’t we, ’Manda mine?” The baby was already trying to climb into the tub.
Almost forty minutes later, he carried his happy daughter back downstairs. The bathroom looked like a flash flood area, and he was bare-chested, his soaked T-shirt draped over the towel bar to dry. Amanda Sue, however, was clean and ready for bed in a long, cotton-knit nightgown, despite the fight she’d put up to stay in the tub. Emily was sitting with her feet up on the couch when he came down, the cat in her lap, her feet flexing back and forth. He put Amanda Sue down next to her.
“You watch her,” he said, turning toward the kitchen. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
“Don’t bother,” she said, pushing the cat off her lap and pulling Amanda Sue onto it. “I took care of it.”
“Thank God,” he said fervently, and turned back to drop down on the couch at her feet. She laughed and started to pull them up, but he stopped her, his hands fastened firmly around her ankles. “You deserve a good foot rub for that,” he said, remembering the feel of her scalp beneath his fingertips and the way she’d moaned as he’d massaged her headache away. He wanted to hear those moans again—and more.
“My feet are fine,” she insisted, but he pulled them down into his lap, anyway.
“They aren’t tired? Don’t hurt at all?” he asked, smoothing his hands over their tops.
“Not much,” she mumbled.
“Wearing dress shoes every day must be a real pain,” he said, starting with the left foot. He dug his thumbs into the arch and rubbed them outward in smooth, even strokes.
“You wear dress shoes every day,” she pointed out, her breath catching a little as he massaged her instep.
“But they don’t have high heels.”
“Aah.” Her eyelids fluttered, and she murmured, “Good point.”
He lengthened his strokes to include the ball of her foot.
“Oh, my.”
“Feel good?”
“Heavenly.” She sighed and closed her eyes, smiling.
He moved to the right foot. Long before he finished she was as loose as a rag doll and purring as surely as the cat, a fact not lost on Amanda Sue, who immediately demanded such attention for herself. Literally scooting down Emily’s body, she lay back atop Emily’s legs and lifted a little foot for her father’s attention. He and Emily both got a good laugh out of that, but it was nothing compared to the attack of outright glee that Amanda Sue demonstrated when Logan tickled the soles of her feet.
Emily sat up and got in on the act, kissing Amanda Sue everywhere that Logan tickled, knees, ribs, chin, behind the ear and so on. Then Amanda Sue decided to turn the tables and tickle Daddy, beginning with the bend of his elbow. He pretended to laugh, much to her delight, and then it was Emily’s turn to play her part.
Emily balked.
Amanda Sue poked her sharp little fingernail into the tender inside of Logan’s elbow and commanded Emily, “Tiss!”
Logan looked a challenge at Emily, who flushed, but then bent and quickly brushed a dry kiss over the spot. Amanda Sue went for the underside of his chin then, and panic flashed in Emily’s golden eyes. Quickly, she turned on the cat. “What about Goody? Are Goody’s paws ticklish, do you think?”
Amanda Sue promptly plopped over and tried to tickle the bottoms of Goody’s paws. Logan stared a steady rebuke at Emily over the top of the child’s head, but Emily would not even meet his eyes. He knew that she got the message, though. It wasn’t going to be that easy. What was flowing between them would eventually back up and flood them both. He could wait.
When the cat grew tired of the game, it simply got up and went away, leaving behind a yawning Amanda Sue.
“It’s somebody’s bedtime,” Logan said pointedly, expecting Emily to once more talk him through the process of getting his stubborn daughter to sleep. When Emily rose, he scooped up Amanda Sue and headed for the stairs.
“I’ll see you Monday morning,” Emily said, halting him in his tracks.
“What?”
“I have to go,” she said, stepping into her shoes.
“Go?” He frowned, knowing he sounded like a perfect idiot.
“Logan, I’m going home,” she said firmly. “It’s the weekend. I want to sleep in my own bed, clean my house, relax. You’re fine here on your own with Amanda Sue. You know what you’re doing now.”
“With the normal stuff,” he protested, wrenching out of Amanda Sue’s way as she reached for his nose. “What if something unusual happens?”
Emily gave him a look that clearly said he wasn’t pulling anything on her tonight. “If something comes up that you really can’t handle, just call me.”
Bitterly disappointed, he cast around in his mind for some argument to sway her. Unfortunately, he found none. All that was left for him was graceful capitulation. “Okay. You’re right. She’s my responsibility, after all. You go on home. We’ll be fine.”
She turned away without another word and started looking for her cat, which had disappeared. “Goody! Come on, Goody. Let’s go for a ride. Goody, Goody, Goody.”
Amanda Sue put her head back and shouted, “Gooey!”
“Did she go upstairs?” Emily asked.
Logan shook his head. “Don’t think so.”
Emily looked around a few minutes more, but came up empty. “I’ll check the laundry room. I put out a temporary litter box in there.”
“If she’s not there I’ll help you look for her.”
He put Amanda Sue into the playpen and tossed all the toys back inside with her, then followed Emily into the kitchen. She went to the laundry room door and looked inside. “There you are.”
“Find her?” He went after her, arriving just as she turned back. They bumped, chest to chest. “Whoops!” His arms automatically came around her. For just an instant, they stood together, caught by a single thought, a shared memory of lips melding and desires flaring out of control.
“Emily,” he whispered, aware of a faintly pleading tone.
She swallowed, her gaze dropping to his mouth, and he felt a flash of triumph. But then she jerked back, skittering away as though he’d suddenly grown fangs.
“I, uh, left the t-tote bag in the corner,” she stuttered.
He tamped down his disappointment and irritation. “I’ll get it.”
He slipped past her and retrieved the bag, while she took care of the laundry room. She reemerged with the cat in her arms, explaining, “I bagged and disposed of the litter I’d put in there.”
He nodded and handed her the tote bag. She placed the cat inside, grasped the handles and carried it toward the living room. Keeping his face carefully expressionless, he followed at a distance. She kissed Amanda Sue goodbye, stepped into her shoes, and all but ran toward the entry hall with the bag in tow. He strode after her.
“Emily?”
She stopped but didn’t turn to face him.
He let her sweat a moment, then he said casually, “Have a good weekend.”
Her shoulders sagged momentarily, then straightened rigidly. “Thanks. You, too.” She flashed a weak smile over her shoulder and made her escape.
Logan leaned against the wall and folded his arms across his chest. She’d run, all right, as fast as her long legs would carry her, but the day was coming when she wouldn’t—and they both knew it.
Six
Emily groaned when the telephone rang. It was the middle of the night, and she hadn’t slept a wink. Now what? She sat up, pushed her hair out of her face and reached for the lamp on the bedside table. Snatching up the phone in mid-ring, she snapped, “What?”