Robyn Grady - Bargaining for Baby / The Billionaire's Baby Arrangement

The next thirteen days would be tantamount to torture—not wanting to say goodbye to Beau, yet having to get back to Sydney. Needing to leave the memory of that kiss behind yet craving to know the sensation again. Talk about chronic inner turmoil.

Jack hunkered down beside the baby, his boots dusty and blue jeans stretched at the knee. When Beau’s rattle slipped from his tiny grasp, Jack picked it up and shook the plastic keys until Beau grabbed and stuck one back in his mouth.

A side of Jack’s mouth hiked up. “Guess he’s hungry.”

“He’s had lunch. I think he’s ready to be put down.”

Jack tickled Beau’s tummy and, enjoying it, the baby squawked and threw the keys down. Jack chuckled softly. “He looks like Dahlia. Same cheeky grin.”

Maddy smiled. Cheeky grins must run in the family. Whenever Jack smiled at her that certain way, whenever his gaze dipped to stroke her lips, she could dissolve into a puddle, no problem at all. Guess he’d worked that out last night.

Cait called from the top of the stairs. “Want some lunch, Jock?”

Still on haunches, he swiveled around on the toes of his boots. “I’ll get something later.”

Cait nodded. “Can I put the bairn down for you, Maddy?”

“I can do it,” Maddy called back.

But Cait was already on her way. “You can indeed. But he hasn’t been out of your sight since seven this morning.”

Jack scooped the baby up and gave him a little bounce in the air before handing him up to Cait.

Beaming, Cait brought him close. “Now it’s my turn for a wee cuddle.”

Beau looked so at home in Cait’s arms, Maddy had no reason to cut in … except, after Cait and Beau’s departure, she and Jack would be left completely alone. The idea set her pulse hammering all the more.

As Cait and the baby vanished back into the house, Maddy gathered her highly-strung nerves. She’d simply have to deal with this situation in an adult-like manner. She’d offer a sentence or two while keeping communication friendly but unquestionably aboveboard. Then, after a reasonably short amount of time, she could follow Cait inside. Distance, and safety from possible humiliation and regret, accomplished.

With a blithe air, she collected her BlackBerry off the blanket. “Interesting that Cait calls you Jock.”

“Jock. Jack. Jum. All short for James.”

Maddy’s insides clutched. Jack was James?

She remembered his reaction—the flinch—that first day she’d told him the baby’s name. He and Dahlia hadn’t spoken in years and yet she’d named her baby in part after her big brother—Beau James. Maddy could only imagine the stab of guilt when he heard. The gut wrench of regret and humility.

Her voice was soft. “It must’ve meant a lot to know Dahlia remembered you that way.”

He removed his hat and filed a hand through his thick hair. “It was our grandfather’s name, too. A family name. But, yeah, it was … nice.”

Staring at his hat, he ran a finger and thumb around the felt rim then pushed to his feet. Squinting against the sun sitting high in the cloudless sky, he glanced around.

“Great day. Not too hot.” He cocked a brow at her. “How about a ride? “

Maddy couldn’t help it. She laughed. He never gave up. Which could be a problem if he applied that philosophy to what had happened outside the stables last night. But he hadn’t needed convincing; when she’d put up the wall, reminded him of a couple of facts, he’d promptly taken his leave.

At his core, Jack was an old fashioned type. He’d had an emotional wreck of a week. Their talk beneath the full moon—the comfortable, dreamy atmosphere it created—had caught them both unprepared. Now, however, they were fully aware of the dangers close proximity could bring. He was involved with another woman. Maddy had no intention of kissing Jack Prescott again.

She had less intention of jumping on a horse.

With a finger swipe, she alleviated her phone’s screen of fine dust. “Think I’ll leave the rodeo tricks to the experts.”

“You don’t have to leap six-foot fences. We can start off at a walk. Or we could double.”

Maddy guffawed. With her arms around his waist, her breasts rubbing against his back … After seeing reason so soundly last night, surely he knew that suggestion was akin to teasing a fuse with a lit match.

“I’ll get you riding,” he went on, setting that distinctive hat back on his head, “even if I have to seize the moment and throw you on bareback.”

The oxygen in her lungs began to burn. Quizzing his hooded gaze, she knew she wasn’t mistaken. He wasn’t talking about horses anymore and he wanted her to know it.

“In the meantime—” he offered her his hand “—what say I take you on a tour of Leadeebrook’s woolshed.”

Her thoughts still on riding bareback, Maddy accepted his hand before she’d thought. The skin on sizzling skin contact ignited a pheromone soaked spark that crackled all the way up her arm. On top of that, he’d pulled too hard. Catapulted into the air, her feet landed far too close to his. Once she’d got her breath and her bearings, her gaze butted with his. The message in his eyes said nothing about awkwardness or caution.

In fact, he looked unnervingly assured.

After a short drive, during which Maddy glued her shoulder to the passenger side to keep some semblance of distance between them, they arrived at a massive wooden structure set in a vast clearing.

“It looks like a ghost town now,” Jack said, opening her door. “But when shearing was on, this place was a whirlwind of noise and activity.”

Maddy took in the adjacent slow spinning windmill, a wire fence glinting in the distance and felt the cogs of time wind back. As they strolled up a grated ramp, she imagined she heard the commotion of workers amid thousands of sheep getting the excitement of shearing season underway. Sydney kept changing—higher skyscrapers, more traffic, extra tourists—yet the scene she pictured here might have been the same for a hundred years.

When they stepped into the building, Maddy suddenly felt very small and, at the same time, strangely enlivened. She rotated an awe-struck three-sixty. “It’s massive.”

“Eighty-two meters long, built in 1860 with enough room to accommodate fifty-two blade shearers. Thirty years on, the shed was converted to thirty-six stands of machine shears, powered by steam. Ten manual blade stands were kept, though, to hand shear stud sheep.”

“Rams, you mean?”

“Can’t risk losing anything valuable if the machinery goes mad.”

She downplayed a grin. Typical man.

Their footsteps echoed through lofty rafters, some laced with tangles of cobwebs which muffled the occasional beat of sparrows’ wings. Through numerous gaps in the rough side paneling, daylight slanted in, drawing crooked streaks on the raised floor. Dry earth, weathered wood and, beneath that, a smell that reminded her of the livestock pavilion at Sydney’s Royal Easter Show.

Maddy pointed out the railed enclosures that took up a stretch of the vast room. “Is that where the sheep line up to have their sweaters taken off?”

He slapped a rail. “Each catching pen holds enough sheep for a two-hour shearing stint. A roustabout’ll haul a sheep out of the pen onto a board—” he moved toward a mechanism attached to a long cord—powered shears “— and the shearer handles things from there. Once the fleece is removed, the sheep’s popped through a moneybox, where she slides down a shute into a counting pen.”

“Moneybox?”

He crossed the floor and clapped a rectangular frame on the wall. “One of these trap doors.”

“Must be a cheery job.” She mentioned the name of a famous shearing tune, then snapped her fingers in time with part of the chorus and sang, “‘Click, click, click.’”