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Simon was standing there, somehow taller than she remembered. He wasn’t wearing a suit, either, which gave her a jolt of surprise. She got another jolt when she realized just how good he looked when he pried himself out of the sleek lines of his business “uniform.” Casual in a charcoal-gray sweater, black jeans and cross trainers, he actually looked even more gorgeous, which was just disconcerting. He looked so…different. The only thing familiar about him was the scowl.
When she caught herself just staring at him like a big dummy, she said quickly, “Hi. Come on in. Baby’s in the kitchen and I don’t want to leave him alone, so close the door, will you, it’s cold out there.”
Simon opened his mouth to speak, but the damn woman was already gone. She’d left him standing on the porch and raced off before he could so much as say hello. Of course, he’d had the chance to speak, he simply hadn’t. He’d been caught up in looking at her. Just as he had earlier that day in his office.
Those big blue eyes of hers were…mesmerizing somehow. Every time he looked into them, he forgot what he was thinking and lost himself for a moment or two. Not something he wanted to admit, even to himself, but there it was. Frowning, he reminded himself that he’d come to her house to set down some rules. To make sure Tula Barrons understood exactly how this bizarre situation was going to progress. Instead, he was standing on the front porch, thinking about just how good a woman could look in a pair of faded blue jeans.
Swallowing the stab of irritation at himself, he followed after her. Tula wasn’t his main concern here, after all. He was here because of the child. His son? He was having a hard time believing it was possible, but he couldn’t walk away from this until he knew for sure. Because if the baby was his, there was no way he would allow his child to be raised by someone else.
He’d been thinking about little else but this woman and the child she said belonged to him since she’d left his office that morning. With his concentration so unfocused, he’d finally given up on getting any work done and had gone to see his lawyer.
After that illuminating little visit, he’d spent the last couple of hours thinking back to the brief time he’d spent with Sherry Taylor. He still didn’t remember much about her, but he had to admit that there was at least the possibility that her child was his.
Which was why he was here. He stepped inside and his foot came down on something that protested with a loud squeak. He glanced down at the rubber reindeer and shook his head as he closed the door. His gaze swept the interior of the small house and he shook his head. If more than two people were in the damn living room, they wouldn’t be able to breathe at the same time. The house was old and small and… bright, he thought, giving the nearly electric blue walls an astonished glance.
The blue walls boasted dark yellow molding that ran around the circumference of the room at the ceiling. There was a short sofa and one chair drawn up in front of a hearth where a tiny blaze sputtered and spat from behind a wrought-iron screen. Toys were strewn across the floor as if a hurricane had swept through and there was a narrow staircase on the far wall leading to what he assumed was an even tinier second story.
The whole place was a dollhouse. He almost felt like Gulliver. Still frowning, he heard Tula in the kitchen, talking in a singsong voice people invariably tended to use around babies. He told himself to go on in there, but he didn’t move. It was as if his feet were nailed to the wood floor. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the baby or anything, but Simon knew damn well that the moment he saw the child, his world as he knew it would cease to exist.
If this baby were his son, nothing would ever be the same again.
A child’s bubble of laughter erupted in the other room and Simon took a breath and held it. Something inside him tightened and he told himself to move on. To get this first meeting over so that plans could be made, strategies devised.
But he didn’t move. Instead, he noticed the framed drawings and paintings on the walls, most of which were of a lop-eared bunny in different poses. Why the woman would choose to display such childish paintings was beyond him, but Tula Barrons, he was discovering, was different from any other woman he’d ever known.
The child laughed again.
Simon nodded to himself and followed the sound and the amazing scents in the air to the kitchen.
It didn’t take him long.
Three long strides had him leaving the living room and entering a bright yellow room that was about the size of his walk-in closet at home. Again, he felt as out of place as a beer at a wine tasting. This whole house seemed to have been built for tiny people and a man his size was bound to feel as if he had to hunch his shoulders to keep from rapping his head on the ceiling.
He noted that the kitchen was clean but as cluttered as the living room. Canisters lined up on the counter beside a small microwave and an even smaller TV. Cupboard doors were made of glass, displaying ancient china stacked neatly. A basket with clean baby clothes waiting to be folded was standing on the table for two and the smells pouring from the oven had his mouth watering and his stomach rumbling in response.
Then his gaze dropped on Tula Barrons as she straightened up, holding the baby she’d just taken from a high chair in her arms. She settled the chubby baby on her right hip, gave Simon a brilliant smile and said, “Here he is. Your son.”
Simon’s gaze locked on the boy who was staring at him out of a pair of eyes too much like his own to deny. His lawyer had advised him to do nothing until a paternity test had been arranged. But Harry had always been too cautious, which was why he made such a great lawyer. Simon tended to go with his gut on big decisions and that instinct had never let him down yet.
So he’d come here mainly to see the baby for himself before arranging for the paternity test his lawyer wanted. Because Simon had half convinced himself that there was no way this baby was his.
But one look at the boy changed all that. He was stubborn, Simon admitted silently, but he wasn’t blind. The baby looked enough like him that no paternity test should be required—though he’d get one anyway. He’d been a businessman too long to do anything but follow the rules and do things in a logical, reasonable manner.
“Nathan,” Tula said, glancing from the baby on her hip to Simon, “this is your daddy. Simon, meet your son.”
She started toward him and Simon quickly held up one hand to keep her where she was. Tula stopped dead, gave him a quizzical look and tipped her head to one side to watch him. “What’s wrong?”
What wasn’t? His heart was racing, his stomach was churning. How the hell had this happened? he wondered. How had he made a child and been unaware of the boy’s existence? Why had the baby’s mother kept him a secret? Damn it, he had had the right to know. To be there for his son’s birth. To see him draw his first breath. To watch him as he woke up to the world.
And it had all been stolen from him.
“Just…give me a minute, all right?” Simon stared at the tiny boy, trying to ignore the less-than-pleased expression on Tula Barrons’s face. Didn’t matter what she thought of him, did it? The important thing here was that Simon’s entire world had just taken a sharp right turn.
A father.
He was a father.
Pride and something not unlike sheer panic roared through him at a matching pace. His gaze locked on the boy, he noticed the dark brown hair, the brown eyes—exact same shade as Simon’s own—and, finally, he noticed the baby’s lower lip beginning to pout.
“You’re making him cry.” Tula jiggled the baby while patting him on the back gently.
“I’m not doing anything.”
“You look angry and babies are very sensitive to moods around them,” she said and soothed the boy by swaying in place and whispering softly. Keeping her voice quiet and singsongy, she snapped, “Honestly, is that scowl a permanent fixture on your face?”
“I’m not—”
“Would it physically kill you to smile at him?”
Frustrated and just a little pissed because he had to admit that she was at least partially right, Simon assumed what he hoped was a reassuring smile.
She rolled her eyes and laughed. “That’s the best you’ve got?”
He kept his voice low, but didn’t bother to hide his irritation. “You might want to back off now.”
“I don’t see why I should,” she countered, her voice pleasant despite her words. “Sherry left me as guardian for Nathan and I don’t like how you’re treating him.”
“I haven’t done anything.”
“Exactly,” she said with a sharp nod. “You won’t even let him get near you. Honestly, haven’t you ever seen a child before?”
“Of course I have, I’m just—”
“Shocked? Confused? Worried?” she asked, then continued on before he could speak. “Well, imagine how Nathan must feel. His mother’s gone. His home is gone. He’s in a strange place with strangers taking care of him and now there’s a big mean bully glaring at him.”
He stiffened. “Now just a damn min—”
“Don’t swear in front of the baby.”
Simon inhaled sharply and shot her a glare he usually reserved for employees he wanted to terrify into improving their work skills, fully expecting her to have the sense to back off. Naturally, she paid no attention to him.
“If you can’t be nice and at least pretend to smile, you’ll just have to go away,” she said. Then she spoke to the baby. “Don’t you worry, sweetie, Tula won’t let the mean man get you.”
“I’m not a mean—oh, for God’s sake.” Simon had had enough of this. He wasn’t going to be chastised by anybody, least of all the short, curvy woman giving him a disgusted look.
He stalked across the small kitchen, plucked the baby from her grasp and held Nathan up to eye level. The baby’s pout disappeared as if it had never been and the two of them simply stared at each other.
The baby was a solid, warm weight in his hands. Little legs pumped, arms waved and a thin line of drool dripped from his mouth when he gave his father a toothless grin. His chest tight, Simon felt the baby’s heartbeat racing beneath his hands and there was a…connection that he’d never felt before. It was basic. Complete. Staggering.
In that instant—that heart-stopping, mind-numbing second—Simon was lost.
He knew it even as he stood there, beneath Tula Barrons’s less than approving stare, that this was his son and he would do whatever he had to to keep him.
If this woman stood in his way, he’d roll right over her without a moment’s pause. Something in his gaze must have given away his thoughts because the small blonde lifted her chin, met his eyes in a bold stare and told him silently that she wouldn’t give an inch.
Fine.
She’d learn soon enough that when Simon Bradley entered a contest—he never lost.
Chapter 3
“You’re holding him like he’s a hand grenade about to explode,” the woman said, ending their silent battle.
Despite that swift, sure connection he felt to the child in his arms, Simon wasn’t certain at all that the baby wouldn’t explode. Or cry. Or expel some gross fluid. “I’m being careful.”
“Okay,” she said and pulled out a chair to sit down.
He glanced at her, then looked back to the baby. Carefully, Simon eased down onto the other chair pulled up to the postage-stamp-sized table. It looked so narrow and fragile, he almost expected it to shatter under his weight, but it held. He felt clumsy and oversize. As if he were the only grown-up at a little girl’s tea party. He had to wonder if the woman had arranged for him to feel out of place. If she was subtly trying to sabotage this first meeting.
Gently, he balanced the baby on his knee and kept one hand on the small boy’s back to hold him in place. Only then did he look up at the woman sitting opposite him.
Her big eyes were fixed on him and a half smile tugged at the corner of her mouth, causing that one dimple to flash at him. She’d gone from looking at him as if he were the devil himself to an expression of amused benevolence that he didn’t like any better.
“Enjoying yourself?” he asked tightly.
“Actually,” she admitted, “I am.”
“So happy to entertain you.”
“Oh, you’re really not happy,” she said, her smile quickening briefly again. “But that’s okay. You had me worried, I can tell you.”
“Worried about what?”
“Well, how you were going to be with Nathan,” she told him, leaning against the ladder back of the chair. She crossed her arms over her chest, unconsciously lifting her nicely rounded breasts. “When you first saw him, you looked…”
“Yes?” Simon glanced down when Nathan slapped both chubby fists onto the tabletop.
“…terrified,” she finished.
Well, that was humiliating. And untrue, he assured himself. “I wasn’t scared.”
“Sure you were.” She shrugged and apparently was dialing back her mistrust. “And who could blame you? You should have seen me the first time I picked him up. I was so worried about dropping him I had him in a stranglehold.”
Nothing in Simon’s life had terrified him like that first moment holding a son he didn’t know he had. But he wasn’t about to admit to that. Not to Tula Barrons at any rate.
He shifted around uncomfortably on the narrow chair. How did an adult sit on one of these things?
“Plus,” she added, “you don’t look like you want to bite through a brick or something anymore.”
Simon sighed. “Are you always so brutally honest?”
“Usually,” she said. “Saves a lot of time later, don’t you think? Besides, if you lie, then you have to remember what lie you told to who and that just sounds exhausting.”
Intriguing woman, he thought while his body was noticing other things about her. Like the way her dark green sweater clung to her breasts. Or how tight her faded jeans were. And the fact that she was barefoot, her toenails were a deep, sexy red and she was wearing a silver toe ring that was somehow incredibly sexy.
She was nothing like the kind of woman Simon was used to. The kind Simon preferred, he told himself sternly. Yet, there was something magnetic about her. Something—
“Are you just going to stare at me all night or were you going to speak?”
—Irritating.
“Yes, I’m going to speak,” he said, annoyed to have been caught watching her so intently. “As a matter of fact, I have a lot to say.”
“Good, me too!” She stood up, took the baby from him before he could even begin to protest—not that he would have—and set the small boy back in his high chair. Once she had the safety straps fastened, she shot Simon a quick smile.
“I thought we could talk while we have dinner. I made chicken and I’m a good cook.”
“Another truth?”
“Try it for yourself and see.”
“All right. Thank you.”
“See, we’re getting along great already.” She moved around the kitchen with an economy of motions. Not surprising, Simon thought, since there wasn’t much floor space to maneuver around.
“Tell me about yourself, Simon,” she said and reached over to place some sliced bananas on the baby’s food tray. Instantly, Nathan chortled, grabbed one of the pieces of fruit and squished it in his fist.
“He’s not eating that,” Simon pointed out while she walked over to take the roast chicken out of the oven.
“He likes playing with it.”
Simon took a whiff of the tantalizing, scented steam wafting from the oven and had to force himself to say, “He shouldn’t play with his food though.”
She swiveled her head to look at him. “He’s a baby.”
“Yes, but—”
“Well, all of my cloth napkins are in the laundry and they don’t make tuxedos in size six-to-nine months.”
He frowned at her. She’d deliberately misinterpreted what he was saying.
“Relax, Simon. He’s fine. I promise you he won’t smoosh his bananas when he’s in college.”
She was right, of course, which he didn’t really enjoy admitting. But he wasn’t used to people arguing with him, either. He was more accustomed to people rushing to please him. To anticipate his every need. He was not used to being corrected and he didn’t much like it.
As that thought raced through his head, he winced. God, he sounded like an arrogant prig even in his own mind.
“So, you were saying…”
“Hmm?” he asked. “What?”
“You were telling me about yourself,” she prodded as she got down plates, wineglasses and then delved into a drawer for silverware. She had the table set before he gathered his thoughts again.
“What is it you want to know?”
“Well, for instance, how did you meet Nathan’s mother? I mean, Sherry was my cousin and I’ve got to say, you’re not her usual type.”
“Really?” He turned on the spindly seat and looked at her. “Just what type am I then?”
“Geez, touchy,” she said, her smile flashing briefly. “I only meant that you don’t look like an accountant or a computer genius.”
“Thanks, I think.”
“Oh, I’m sure there are attractive accountants and computer wizards, but Sherry never found any.” She carried a platter to the counter and began to slice the roast chicken, laying thick wedges of still-steaming meat on the flowered china. “So how did you meet?”
Simon bristled and distracted himself by pulling bits of banana out of the baby’s hair. “Does it matter?”
“No,” she said. “I was just curious.”
“I’d rather not talk about it.” He’d made a mistake that hadn’t been repeated and it wasn’t something he felt like sharing. Especially with this woman. No doubt she’d laugh or give him that sad, sympathy-filled smile again and he wasn’t in the mood.
“Okay,” she said, drawing that one word out into three or four syllables. “Then how long were the two of you together?”
Irritation was still fresh enough to make his tone sharper than he’d planned. “Are you writing a book?”
She blinked at him in surprise. “No, but Sherry was my cousin, Nathan’s my nephew and you’re my…well, there’s a relationship in there somewhere. I’m just trying to pin it down.”
And he was overreacting. It had been a long time since Simon had felt off balance. But since the moment Tula had stepped into his office, nothing in his world had steadied. He watched her as she moved to the stove, scooped mashed potatoes into a bowl and then filled a smaller dish with dark green broccoli. She carried everything to the table and asked him to pour the wine.
He did, pleased at the label on the chardonnay. When they each had full glasses, he tipped his toward her. “I’m not trying to make things harder, but this has been a hell—” he caught himself and glanced at the baby “—heck of a surprise. And I don’t much like surprises.”
“I’m getting that,” she said, reaching out to grab the jar of baby food she’d opened and left on the table. As she spooned what looked like horrific mush into Nathan’s open mouth, she asked again, “So how long were you and Sherry together?”
He took a sip of wine. “Not giving up on this, are you?”
“Nope.”
He had to admire her persistence, if nothing else.
“Two weeks,” he admitted. “She was a nice woman but she—we—didn’t work out.”
Sighing, Tula nodded. “Sounds like Sherry. She never did stay with any one guy for long.” Her voice softened in memory. “She was scared. Scared of making a mistake, picking the wrong man, but scared of being alone, too. She was scared—well, of pretty much everything.”
That he remembered very well, too, Simon thought. Images of the woman he’d known in the past were hazy, but recollections of what he’d felt at the time were fairly clear. He remembered feeling trapped by the woman’s clinginess, by her need for more than he could offer. By the damp anxiety always shining in her eyes.
Now, he felt…not guilt, precisely, but maybe regret. He’d cut her out of his life neatly, never looking back while she had gone on to carry his child and give birth. It occurred to him that he’d done the same thing with any number of women in his past. Once their time together was at an end, he presented them with a small piece of jewelry as a token and then he moved on. This was the first time that his routine had come back to bite him in the ass.
“I didn’t know her well,” he said when the silence became too heavy. “And I had no idea she was pregnant.”
“I know that,” Tula told him with a shake of her head. “Not telling you was Sherry’s choice and for what it’s worth, I think she was wrong.”
“On that, we can agree.” He took another sip of the dry white wine.
“Please,” she said, motioning to the food on the table, “eat. I will, too, in between feeding the baby these carrots.”
“Is that what that is?” The baby seemed to like the stuff, but as far as Simon was concerned, the practically neon orange baby food looked hideous. Didn’t smell much better.
She laughed a little at the face he was making. “Yeah, I know. Looks gross, doesn’t it? Once I get into the swing of having him around, though, I’m going to go for more organic stuff. Make my own baby food. Get a nice blender and then he won’t have to eat this stuff anymore.”
“You’ll make your own?”
“Why not? I like to cook and then I can fix him fresh vegetables and meat—pretty much whatever I’m having, only mushy.” She shrugged as if the extra effort she was talking about meant nothing. “Besides, have you ever read a list of ingredients on baby food jars?”
“Not recently,” he said wryly.
“Well, I have. There’s too much sodium for one thing. And some of the words I can’t even pronounce. That can’t be good for tiny babies.”
All right, Simon thought, he admired that as well. She had already adapted to the baby being in her life. Something that he was going to have to work at. But he would do it. He’d never failed yet when he went after something he wanted.
He took a bite of chicken and nearly sighed aloud. So she was not only sexy and good with kids, she could cook, too.
“Good?”
Simon looked at her. “Amazing.”
“Thanks!” She beamed at him, gave Nathan a few more pieces of banana and then helped herself to her own dinner. After a moment or two of companionable quiet, she asked, “So, what are we going to do about our new ‘situation’?”
“I took the will to my lawyer,” Simon said.
“Of course you did.”
He nodded. “You’re temporarily in charge…”
“Which you don’t like,” she added.
Simon ignored her interruption, preferring to get everything out in the open under his own terms. “Until you decide when and if I’m ready to take over care of Nathan.”
“That’s the bottom line, yes.” She angled her head to look at him. “I told you this earlier today.”
“The question,” he continued, again ignoring her input, “is how do we reach a compromise? I need time with my son. You need the time to observe me with him. I live in San Francisco and have to be there for my job. You live here and—where do you work?”
“Here,” she said, taking another bite and chasing it with a sip of wine. “I write books. For children.”
He glanced at the rabbit-shaped salt and pepper shakers and thought about all of the framed bunnies in her living room. “Something to do with rabbits, I’m guessing.”
Tula tensed, suddenly defensive. She’d heard that dismissive tone of his before. As if writing children’s books was so easy anybody could do it. As if she was somehow making a living out of a cute little hobby. “As a matter of fact, yes. I write the Lonely Bunny books.”
“Lonely Bunny?”
“It’s a very successful series for young children.” Well, she amended silently, not very successful. But she was gaining an audience, growing slowly but surely. And she was proud of what she did. She made children happy. How many other people could say that about their work?
“I’m sure.”
“Would you like to see my fan letters? They’re scrawled in crayon, so maybe they won’t mean much to you. But to me they say that I’m reaching kids. That they enjoy my stories and that I make them happy.” She fell back in her chair and snapped her arms across her chest in a clear signal of defense mode. “As far as I’m concerned, that makes my books a success.”
One of his eyebrows lifted. “I didn’t say they weren’t.”
No, she thought, but he had been thinking it. Hadn’t she heard that tone for years from her own father? Jacob Hawthorne had cut his only daughter off without a dime five years ago, when she finally stood up to him and told him she wasn’t going to get an MBA. That she was going to be a writer.
And Simon Bradley was just like her father. He wore suits and lived in a buttoned-down world where whimsy and imagination had no place. Where creativity was scorned and the nonconformist was fired.
She’d escaped that world five years ago and she had no desire to go back. And the thought of having to hand poor little Nathan off to a man who would try to regulate his life just as her father had done to her gave her cold chills. She looked at the happy, smiling baby and wondered how long it would take the suits of the world to suck his little spirit dry. The thought of that was simply appalling.
“Look, we have to work together,” Simon said and she realized that he didn’t sound any happier about it than she was.
“We do.”
“You work at home, right?”
“Yes…”
“Fine, then. You and Nathan can move into my house in San Francisco.”
“Excuse me?” Tula actually felt her jaw drop.
“It’s the only way,” he said simply, decisively. “I have to be in the city for my work. You can work anywhere.”
“I’m so happy you think so.”
He gave her a patronizing smile that made her grit her teeth to keep from saying something she would probably regret.
“Nathan and I need time together. You have to witness us together. The only reasonable solution is for you and him to move to the city.”
“I can’t just pick up and leave—”
“Six months,” he said. He drained the last of his wine and set the empty goblet onto the table. “It won’t take that long, but let’s say, for argument’s sake, that you move into my house for the next six months. Get Nathan settled. See that I’m going to be fine taking care of my own son, if he is my son, and then you can move back here…” He glanced around the tiny kitchen with a slow shake of his head as if he couldn’t understand why anyone would willingly live there. “And we can all get on with our lives.”
Damn it, Tula hadn’t even considered moving. She loved her house. Loved the life she’d made for herself. Plus, she tended to avoid San Francisco like the plague.
Her father lived in the city.
Ran his empire from the very heart of it.
Heck, for all she knew, Simon Bradley and her father were the best of friends. Now there was a horrifying thought.
“Well?”
She looked at him. Looked at Nathan. There really wasn’t a choice. Tula had promised her cousin that she would be Nathan’s guardian and there was no turning back from that obligation now even if she wanted to.
“Look,” he said, leaning across the table to meet her eyes as though he knew that she was trying and failing to find a way out of this. “We don’t have to get along. We don’t even have to like each other. We just have to manage to live together for a few months.”
“Wow,” she murmured with a half laugh, “doesn’t that sound like a good time.”
“It’s not about a good time, Ms. Barrons…”
“If we’re going to be living together, the least you could do is call me Tula.”
“Then you agree, Tula?”
“Do I get a choice?”
“Not really.”
He was right, she told herself. There really wasn’t a choice. She had to do what was best for Nathan. That meant moving to the city and finding a way to break Simon out of his rigid world. She blew out a breath and then extended her right hand across the table. “All right then. It’s a deal.”
“A deal,” he agreed.
He took her hand in his and it was as if she’d suddenly clutched a live electrical wire. Tula almost expected to see sparks jumping up from their joined hands. She knew he felt it, too, because he released her instantly and frowned to himself.
She rubbed her fingertips together, still feeling that sizzle on her skin and told herself the next few months were going to be very interesting.
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