SUSAN MEIER - Baby Before Business

Actually, that was both the truth and the real dilemma. Ty Bryant really was unlike anybody she’d ever met. He was handsome. He was smart. He was clearly clever to have built an empire singlehandedly. And he’d taken in a child. No matter how much Madelyn tried to downplay his caring for Sabrina by reminding herself that he was more or less forced to take the baby, she also knew he could have sent Sabrina to foster care. Of course, that really would make him an ogre—and he wasn’t.

That was it!

That was the problem! Ty Bryant really wasn’t an ogre as his employees thought. No matter how much he tormented her or made her mad, brief revelations of his nice side kept causing her to forget his bad side. So all she had to do was remember his bad side and she would be okay.

Just when she drew the conclusion that she could stop her pounding heart, daydreaming and inappropriate staring simply by reminding herself of all the impolite, self-centered, arrogant things she’d seen and heard Ty Bryant do in the past few hours, he rose from his seat.

From the way he swiped a napkin across his mouth, it appeared that he was done eating and leaving the kitchen. But when he stopped by her chair, Madelyn got her first tremor of unease. He caught her arm, hauled her up, spun her around and pressed his mouth to hers.

Madelyn knew that if she were ever going to faint in her life, this would be the minute. His mouth attacked hers, completely disarming her. She couldn’t stop her arms from reaching up to encircle his shoulders. The sexual chemistry between them was so strong it led her, guided her, pulled her to do things without her conscious thought. But she didn’t care. The kiss was so darned good she was more than happy to let it take her anywhere it wanted to go.

As quickly as he grabbed her, Ty let her loose and stepped back. Madelyn gazed up at him, too startled by the kiss to breathe, let alone speak.

But Ty didn’t seem to have the same problem. “Watch yourself, Miss Maddy,” he warned. “I’m a man who sees what he wants and takes it. If you’re going to work for me, you either have to be able to accept the consequences of your subtle flirting, or you have to stop flirting.”

“Flirting,” Madelyn sputtered, confused, aroused, angry and unable to separate her emotions long enough to know which one she should trust.

“Yeah. Flirting. I kissed you so you would respond and wouldn’t be able to deny you’re attracted to me, so we could get this darned thing out in the open. Deal with it. If you want to play sex games, I’ll be more than happy to oblige. But I met your dad and I don’t think he’d be too happy with that. I also met your mom, and I realized you’re a lot like her. She’s got a home, a family and a very steady man for a husband. Those are probably the things you want, too. And that means I’m not the guy you should be messing with.”

With that he left the room, and Madelyn fell to her chair again, so embarrassed her face burned.

The next morning, Madelyn wanted to punch something. Awake most of the night with a confused baby who sobbed nonstop because she missed her parents and didn’t understand what was happening to her, Ty’s temporary nanny wasn’t in the mood to have to dress Sabrina and leave the house for bread, milk, eggs and coffee to make breakfast. She also needed to buy formula because Sabrina had only one bottle left of the batch Pete Hauser had provided. But Madelyn had to consult her mother before she made the formula purchase. Still her “boss” wasn’t answering any of her knocks on his bedroom door and, as she had discovered the night before, his kitchen was bare.

Knowing her only recourse was to go in and physically wake him, she put her hand on the knob and almost twisted, but she suddenly realized it was very possible that he was as bare as his cupboards, sprawled across his bed like a naked Greek god.

Her chest tightened at the thought, and memories of the way he had kissed her the night before caused heat to flood through her. But so did her acute humiliation afterward. His kiss might have been so seductive it made her forget her own name, but he hadn’t kissed her because he was attracted to her. He’d kissed her to make a point.

There was no way in hell she was going into his room to wake him. If he as much as insinuated she’d approached him for anything other than his help with the baby, she knew she couldn’t be responsible for her actions. She’d absolutely deck him.

Sabrina squealed.

“Yeah, honey, we have to go out,” she told the little girl who should have been as tired as Madelyn, but seemed to have the stamina of a navy SEAL. The baby gurgled a response and Madelyn turned away from Ty’s bedroom door, determined she would never again let her attraction for that man show.

He was soooo safe with her, Madelyn thought, dressing the baby for the trip outside. After his arrogance the night before, she doubted she was even attracted to him anymore. She didn’t like arrogant men. No smart woman did. She would happily stay so far away from him he wouldn’t even have to worry about talking to her.

Madelyn found a spare set of keys for the SUV hanging on a bulletin board in the mudroom and twenty-three dollars casually strewn on a coffee table, probably money he’d taken from his pocket the night before. She didn’t feel she was stealing. She was stocking his damned cupboards. She certainly wasn’t using her own money. In fact, if she ever did have to spend her own money on things for the house or the baby, she was expensing it!

After buckling Sabrina in the car seat, Madelyn drove to a nearby convenience store. She purchased the items she needed, holding Sabrina on her hip because if there was a stroller in the stack of baby items that still littered the foyer, Ty hadn’t yet put it together. She juggled the milk, eggs, bread, coffee and baby on the way to the checkout counter and had only a little more success carrying everything after the clerk put her purchases into bags. Maneuvering the baby and the bags on her left hand and arm, she opened the SUV door, then dumped the groceries on the passenger-side seat and fastened Sabrina in again.

By the time she returned to Ty Bryant’s kitchen, she was exhausted, frazzled and not a woman to be trifled with. So, when she found Ty sitting at the kitchen table as if life were good and easy, and he said, “There you are,” as if she’d stolen his SUV, it took every ounce of her control not to throttle him.

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