SUSAN MEIER - Her Baby's First Christmas

Worse, in a few seconds, Jared would be the one beyond the thin wall naked under the stream of water. She grabbed the remote control and found a television station. She desperately needed to divert her attention.

Jared stepped into the bathroom confused about Elise. Her very evident physical attraction to him would have made him nervous, except he knew there was no way in hell she’d ever act on it. Mostly because she didn’t trust him and he sincerely doubted she ever would.

It infuriated him that after all the time they’d spent together he still had to coax her to let him watch Molly while she showered. He could believe Michael paid her well to housesit for six months. He could believe Elise saved all her money. Both of which were good reasons she could afford to pay her own expenses. So he hadn’t realized just how stubborn she was until the disagreement over him watching Molly.

That had shown him something he should have paid more attention to before, but had glossed over. She wasn’t simply independent about paying her own way; she didn’t really like him doing anything for her. She was the first woman he’d met in five years who didn’t see him as the source of every answer to all of her troubles. Of course, the only women he dealt with were clients, so he couldn’t be too hard on them for expecting him to do his job. But having to fight Elise for the “privilege” of helping her really wore on him.

He turned on the shower, stripped and stepped under the hot spray. He was so accustomed to people depending on him that he had to reach the whole way back to his days as an assistant district attorney to remember the last time he’d met a woman this distrustful. Those were the women he’d interviewed who had been battered and abused. He wondered again about the man who had left Elise and fought back the urge to find the guy and knock him into tomorrow. It wasn’t his business, but right at this moment that didn’t matter. Any time he had prepared a woman to testify against an abusive man he’d fought these same urges—

He froze under the hot spray. Shampoo bubbles slid down his forehead and into his eyes. He’d just thought of the past and his chest hadn’t tightened. He’d remembered being an assistant district attorney without reliving the pain.

Before he had a chance to really delve into what that meant, the shampoo stung his eyes and he shoved his head under the water. He washed himself, dried and put on the same kind of outfit Elise had. Sweatpants and a black T-shirt. If her outfit was intended to tell him she was off-limits, he’d use his to show her he got the message and agreed.

But as he squeezed paste onto his toothbrush, he suddenly realized she would fight him about who would sleep on the bed and he groaned in frustration. Everything with this woman turned into a battle.

Ready to simply tell her she was sleeping on the bed and he was sleeping on the floor, he marched out of the bathroom only to find her standing in his path, holding a coin, ready to flip it.

He stopped dead in his tracks. Her pretty red hair glistened in the light of the lamp on the dresser. Her T-shirt skimmed her breasts and hinted at the curve of her waist, the swell of her hips. The sharp, spicy scent of her shampoo mixed with remnants of the soap or shower gel she’d used and floated to his nostrils.

Reaction ricocheted through him. And again his brain sort of froze, unable to believe what was happening. He hadn’t felt an actual attraction to a woman in so long that the responses rolling through him right now were foreign, novel. Yearnings and needs that had lain dormant burst to life. For the first time in five years his hormones demanded control.

But Elise was the absolutely worst woman to be awakening his sexual urges. Not just because they were traveling together, but because she reminded him of the abused women he’d prepped for trial as an assistant district attorney.

What if Elise had been abused?

She probably wouldn’t have trusted him enough to ride across the country with him if she’d been physically abused. But from his two years as an A.D.A., he did know that emotional abuse could make a person antisocial. Overly independent.

Yeah. Something was definitely up with Elise and he wouldn’t do anything to make it worse.

He snatched the coin from her fingers before she realized what he was doing. He tossed it in the air, caught it and set it on the back of his hand with a smack. “Heads or tails?”

“Tails.”

He peered down. Saw the tails side of the coin and said, “Too bad. It’s heads. I sleep on the floor.” Then he tossed her coin back to her.

She caught it deftly. “Wait! I didn’t see the coin.”

“You have it in your hand.”

“You know what I mean. I didn’t see that it really was heads. You can’t just bully me…”

“Bully you into sleeping on the bed?” He laughed and walked to the closet, where he extracted the extra pillow and blanket. “Wow. What a horrible man I am for giving you the bed.”

“But I—”

“—Won the toss and get to sleep on the bed,” he said, walking to the open space at the other side of the room where he could spread out a blanket and drop his pillow. No matter how far away he walked, he could still smell her.

Yeah, it was better for him to sleep on the floor .

CHAPTER THREE

JARED awakened to the sound of laughter. He bounced up quickly and groaned. Not only was it still dark, but sleeping on the floor had played hell with his back.

He turned and saw a small strip of light coming from the bathroom, then heard Elise say, “Oh, you like that, do you?”

Her soft, feminine voice reminded him of how much trouble he’d had falling asleep while surrounded by her scents and listening to her rustle the bed sheets as she tossed and turned.

He pulled in a breath to banish all that from his mind and called, “Everything okay in there?”

“What?”

“I said—” He stopped, hauled himself off the floor and went to the bathroom door. Though it was partially open, he turned his head, not venturing to look inside. “I asked if everything was okay in there.”

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