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Bethany smiled. “At that age very few babies will let you feed them. They want to do it all themselves. The best solution is to give them a few soft bites of food at a time and stay out of it. They’ve finally worked out what their fingers are for, and they can’t wait to use them at every opportunity.”
He smiled back, and the tiredness lifted from his face, which positively glowed with the light of this new information. It came to her that Nicholas was a man who enjoyed learning things and wasn’t too proud to let a woman teach him, provided he was sure she knew what she was talking about. The insight startled her for an instant as she became aware of a temporary bond stretching between them, forged by their concern for this adorable baby. Bethany would give a lot not to have to break that bond by revealing the real reason for her visit.
Knowing it was foolish, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, at least not for the moment. She told herself it was for the baby’s sake, but it wasn’t the whole truth. She enjoyed the way Nicholas was looking at her, as if she was some kind of miracle worker. After her recent experience with her fiancé, Alexander Kouros, who had dumped her as soon as he discovered she couldn’t have his children, it felt good to have a man look at her as if she was special and wonderful. It would change as soon as Nicholas knew why she was here, but for now it felt uncommonly good.
“You have a knack for this,” he told her, his rich baritone voice admiring. “It never occurred to me that her howls were a declaration of independence.”
“It wouldn’t unless you know what to expect,” she assured him. Working at the children’s shelter, as well as helping to bring up her foster brothers and sisters, she’d had more than the usual amount of practice for her age. It made the knowledge that she could never use her experience to mother her own child all the more painful.
As she felt her eyes start to swim, she blinked furiously. She had promised herself she wasn’t going to let this beat her. “There’s something else we can try. Do you have any ripe bananas?”
He looked startled but moved toward the refrigerator where a well-filled fruit bowl was perched as if it had been shoved there out of harm’s way. “Will this do?”
Bethany accepted the golden fruit, feeing it yield to her exploratory squeeze. “Perfect.” She peeled half the fruit, broke off two small chunks and placed them in Maree’s plastic bowl. “Here you go, kitten. Try these for size.”
With another gurgling “ah, ah, ah” sound, the baby pincered one of the chunks and dropped it onto the pile of cold spinach. Bethany’s flickering glance caught Nicholas’s pained wince, but he wisely said nothing. Moments later Maree rescued the banana and poked it into her mouth, gnawing on it contentedly.
Bethany levered herself up from her kneeling position beside the high chair. “The best thing we can do is leave her to eat the banana by herself. Or not as she chooses.”
“She won’t choke or anything?”
She shook her head. “You don’t have to leave the room. Just get on with a few chores and keep your eye on her progress, but let her make most of the running. As soon as she starts playing with the food, lift her down and wait until the next mealtime. It helps not to let her graze between meals. That way she’ll be hungry for what’s on the menu next time around.”
“You are truly amazing. Are you sure you’re real and not some kind of fairy godmother?” he asked, an appreciative light dancing in his pewter gaze. It made the years peel away so she got a momentary glimpse of the boy he must have been—handsome, devilish and irresistibly attractive. All the qualities were still there, but packaged in a body that was so undeniably male that she felt a surge of involuntary response.
What would it be like to be on the receiving end of a personal compliment from this man, she found herself wondering. She had a feeling he wouldn’t bestow them idly, but neither would he withhold them if he thought they were genuinely deserved. The thought brought a flush of color to her cheeks, and she turned to watch Maree so he wouldn’t see his effect on her.
Her reaction was as inappropriate as it was unexpected, and she tried to tell herself it was probably no more than a rebound thing. She had been hurt by Alexander. In his gratitude, Nicholas was being charming to her. He was also the most attractive man she’d met in a long time. It wasn’t hard to see why the combination should so disturb her.
If she let it. She decided to keep the conversation on neutral ground. “All babies go through this stage. They’re learning how to use their bodies and control their world, which starts with trying to control their parents. I’m sure Maree’s crying has dragged her mother out in the middle of the night plenty of times lately. It’s a kind of test to see if the baby can make her mother respond.”
There was a long silence punctuated only by the sound of the baby playing with the banana. “I’m afraid Maree hasn’t had that luxury. Her mother and father were killed seven months ago. I’m the only relative she has left.”
Her gaze flew from the gurgling child to the man standing behind the high chair. He looked as if he was carved from stone but his eyes held a bleakness which tore at her. Her admiration of him soared, even as she felt her heart go out to him in his personal tragedy. “I’m so sorry. I had no idea.”
“You didn’t read the article in the local paper?”
She shook her head, and a frown of puzzlement etched his brow as if he had expected her to know and couldn’t understand why she didn’t. Was he mixing her up with another writer? The only way she could find out was by confessing her real purpose and now didn’t seem like the right time. “I’m afraid not. If you’d rather I went away and came back some other time.” She was gathering up her bag as she spoke.
His hand on her arm stayed her. “You don’t have to leave. It still hurts to think about, but I’ve had time to come to terms with what happened.”
The heat of his touch sent awareness flashing through her, as incandescent as a signal flare. Her eyes widened. Had Nicholas felt it, too? With an effort she met his eyes and made herself ask, “Was it an accident?”
He nodded. “There was a signal failure at a railway crossing not far from here. My brother and sister-in-law were driving across when an express train slammed into their car without any warning. Maree was the only survivor because she was strapped into a baby seat. Even then, given the state of the car, it was a miracle she survived. There wasn’t a scratch on her.”
This time when her eyes blurred she made no attempt to conceal it from him. “What a terrible tragedy.”
“It was, but all we can do is go on.”
“As you’re doing with your little niece?”
He nodded. “I’m all she has in the world, and I mean to give her the best upbringing I possibly can.”
The baby, her cheeks bulging with bananas, looked the picture of health and happiness as she bounced up and down in her high chair. Apart from the recent adornment of pureed spinach, she was spotlessly clean, dressed in a gorgeous romper suit decorated in teddy bears, with a pink ribbon adorning one of her baby curls.
She was in far better condition than her uncle, Bethany decided. Nicholas looked as if he had thrown his pants on in haste and forgotten—or never had time—to shave this morning. A bluish tinge darkened the strong line of his jaw, giving him a rugged, almost-piratical appearance which was more appealing than it had any right to be. The fatigue darkening his eyes only added to his masculine appeal, and to her horror, Bethany found herself wishing she could do something to help.
This would never do. She was here for one purpose and one only, to persuade him to let her write about the Frakes Baby House. But how could she come out and say so now, when he had just revealed the depths of a personal tragedy far greater than she had anticipated?
She couldn’t, she decided. Her hand closed resolutely around her bag. “I should go. The interview can wait until another time.”
“Dammit, you needn’t start feeling sorry for me,” he growled, startling her into freezing where she stood. “I’ve had enough of that from my neighbors around here. They act as if Maree and I have a contagious disease called tragedy. When you walked in knowing nothing about out situation, you treated us just like anybody else and it was like a breath of fresh air. At least stay and have a cup of coffee with me. You said yourself the best thing to do is keep busy in the kitchen while Maree feeds herself.”
Bethany gave a wan smile. “All right, one cup of coffee. But only if it’s no trouble.”
“After the morning I’ve had, coffee isn’t any trouble, it’s a medical necessity,” he assured her. “How do you take yours?”
“Black with one sugar,” she supplied, settling herself on a high stool next to a breakfast counter. It was cluttered with the remains of what looked like his breakfast, and she smiled wryly at the sight of an open packet of chocolate flavored cereal, a milk carton and a plastic bowl, the twin of the one Maree was using. Evidently Nicholas didn’t believe in healthy breakfasts, for himself, anyway.
As he spooned coffee into the pot, he looked up in time to catch her smile. “What?”
“No wonder you look so tired if you’re existing on this stuff,” she observed.
He shrugged. “Who has time to cook?”
She surprised herself by saying, “If you keep an eye on the baby, I’ll make you an omelette that will make your mouth water.”
His mouth looked as if it was watering at the very idea. His sweeping gesture took in the refrigerator and stove. “Be my guest. Everything you’re likely to need is here.”
He moved aside to let her take over the food preparation area, and she surveyed the gleaming modern stove with apprehension. She must be crazy letting a misguided sense of compassion drive her to volunteer for this. Or was she simply delaying the moment when she had to disillusion him by admitting why she was really here?
Whatever the reason, it was too late to back out now. Nicholas had thrown himself into a comfortable-looking oversize leather chair which flanked the stone fireplace. He watched with interest as she whipped up eggs and milk, shredded cheese and added a few leaves of parsley from a pot growing on the windowsill, then set the mixture sizzling in a large cast-iron pan.
It did smell good, she thought with a flush of pride, as she placed a plate on a small table beside him a few minutes later. He eyed the golden creation hungrily. “You really are a miracle worker if you cook as well as you charm babies.”
A perverse streak of pride prevented her from admitting that an omelette was the only thing she could cook, other than baby food. Her brother Sam called her the “Thrill Griller” because he never knew what was going to come out of her culinary efforts. More often than not it was a charred mess. In defiance, to avoid being the butt of any more family jokes whenever it was her turn to cook dinner, she had gritted her teeth and mastered the art of making omelettes. Served with a salad, her cheese omelette could pass any test.
It was doing so now, she saw as Nicholas proceeded to demolish the six egg treat with total disdain for the risk to his arteries from all that cholesterol. She had loaded the omelette with extra cheese since he looked as if he could use the fuel. “This is good,” he mumbled around a forkful of food. He sounded so much like Maree with her banana that Bethany had to smother a laugh. She didn’t think he would appreciate the comparison.
To distract herself while he ate, she tidied up the remains of the baby’s meal then draped a towel over her shoulder and lifted Maree out of the high chair, resting her against the towel. Several hearty burps later, one of which she would swear hadn’t come from the baby, Bethany handed Maree to her surrogate father. “Both of you look disgustingly satisfied,” she observed, feeing an unwilling frisson of pleasure at her own part in the achievement.
Nicholas began to jiggle Maree on his knee, and the baby chortled happily. “I’d say we’re both in luck with our fairy godmother, don’t you agree, Mareedle-deedle-dumpling?” The baby gurgled what sounded like agreement. “There, you see? The expert in fairy godmothers agrees with me.”
Bethany felt an ache so sharp and fierce that at first she didn’t connect it with the sight of the big man cradling the baby against the hard wall of his bare chest. But nothing else could explain the intensity of the pain which knifed through her. It had to be the image of Maree’s dark head nestled in the angle between Nicholas’s powerful jaw and his chest. He rested one hand lightly against Maree’s back while the other cupped her chubby hips as if holding a baby was the most natural thing in the world to him.
Bethany was gripped by a need so powerful it threatened her breathing. She turned away and forced herself to say around a betraying huskiness, “I’ll finish making the coffee.”
The simple act of locating cups and pouring the brewed coffee into them helped to anchor her so that by the time she turned to ask Nicholas how he preferred his coffee, her hands no longer trembled.
She needn’t have worried. In the few minutes it took her to pour the coffee, both Nicholas and the baby resting on his chest were fast asleep.
Chapter Two
“Oh my.” Bethany finally allowed her eyes to brim as she sagged against the breakfast counter. Nothing was going to disturb Nicholas and Maree for a while. They made such a heartwarming sight that she would have felt moved to tears even without the biological need clamoring at her.
The baby wasn’t the only one playing havoc with her emotions, Bethany was forced to admit as she sipped the coffee moodily. Nicholas Frakes was also having an odd effect on her equilibrium. When she first planned to interview him, she had reckoned without the sheer animal magnetism he exuded. She had never before met a man who was so...well... male.
On the surface he was everything she disliked in a man: physically large, which made her feel uncomfortably small and vulnerable; messy and disorganized, when she preferred everything to be in its place; and so attractive that he had to be a candidate for Playboy of the Western World.
All right, she was clutching at straws with this last one. Playboys didn’t usually take in orphaned babies or run themselves ragged trying to get them to eat, she acknowledged, her innate sense of fair play springing to the fore. He did have some redeeming qualities. But he was still large and messy, and just being around him made her want to do reckless things like cook and clean and take care of his baby.
What was going on here?
She gave herself a mental shake. Finding Nicholas in charge of a baby when it was the last thing she’d expected must be distorting her perception. It was also making her forget that she was here under false pretenses. Nicholas believed The Baby House had something to do with child care. Once he knew her journal was for dollhouse enthusiasts, it would be the end of her fairy godmother image. He probably wouldn’t be able to get her out of his house fast enough.
The thought was enough to banish the mistiness from her eyes. She finished the coffee and looked around. Interviewing Nicholas was out of the question until he’d slept off his exhaustion, so she may as well make herself useful. It might even weigh in her favor when he was deciding whether or not to throw her out on her ear.
She started in the kitchen, collecting and washing the accumulated dishes and sweeping the floor. Searching around for a garbage bin, she almost fell over two baskets of clothes waiting to be washed in the laundry. She gave a sigh. In for a penny...
Luckily the laundry was well organized, so she soon had the clothes sorted and the first load humming away in the modern machine. There was enough here for three loads, she thought, stooping to sort the remaining basket. Didn’t Nicholas believe in doing laundry? Or was he waiting for his live-in lady friend to return and do it for him?
Maybe she was the driving force behind providing a home for Maree, Bethany thought with sudden insight. Bethany had given Nicholas all the credit, but maybe it belonged to the missing model she’d read about in the outdated magazine.
As if to prove her theory, Bethany came across a silk blouse at the bottom of the last basket. It definitely didn’t belong to Nicholas, and Maree was too young for such delicate apparel. That left the model who was probably away on a photographic assignment. Bethany swore under her breath at her own gullibility. If she’d used her head in the first place, she would have realized that no man slept on black satin sheets for his own amusement.
She had only herself to blame. Just as she had avoided telling Nicholas the real reason for her visit, he hadn’t actually said he lived alone with the baby, only that he was on his own today. So they were even in the lying-by-omission stakes. Somehow the thought was little comfort, and Bethany finished sorting the laundry with angry movements, slamming the washing machine lid down harder than was warranted. She wasn’t entirely sure why she was so angry, except that she was.
A wave of guilt washed over her as she heard a chorus of wails from the kitchen. By making such a racket all she’d managed to do was wake the baby. It didn’t bode well for the rest of the afternoon.
Nicholas didn’t look angry when he tracked her down in the laundry. He looked bemused at all she’d achieved while he slept. “You should have woken me. I should be doing that,” he told her, folding his arms and angling his body comfortably against the door frame.
She forced herself to ignore the impact of his presence in the small room. “Is Maree all right?”
“Rested, changed and playing with her toys in her playpen,” he informed her with a grin. “Changing her is one job I do know how to get right, maybe because I get so much practice at it.”
In spite of herself she felt a glow steal through her at the warmth of his smile, which was slightly crooked and showed the even whiteness of his teeth. The difference in their heights put her eyes close to the level of his mouth. A very kissable mouth, she found herself thinking. A mouth that could give as well as command. Another wave of heat curled through her, this time unmistakably sensual, and she ran her tongue across suddenly dry lips. This would have to stop since no good could come of it. Nicholas was already spoken for. She had the evidence right here in her hands.
She held out the filmy white blouse. “I didn’t think this should go in with the other clothes. It’s obviously delicate. When your friend comes home, she may prefer to have it dry-cleaned.”
A shadow darkened his features. “Lana’s unlikely to care either way. Country life didn’t suit her. She went home to Melbourne and she isn’t coming back.”
Bethany let the blouse fall back into the basket. “I’m sorry.” She was making a habit of apologizing to him, but this time she didn’t feel in the least sorry. She felt curiously elated to discover that the mysterious Lana had left, apparently for good. It was hardly a charitable response but she couldn’t seem to stop herself.
“These things happen,” he said dismissively, but the tension in his neck and shoulders wasn’t lost on her. He cared more than he wanted to admit. Well it was none of her business. She had already entangled herself in his domestic affairs far more than was wise. She had come here to do a job, not to get involved in his private life.
All the same it was difficult to respond with a casual nod, when she knew firsthand how painful it felt to be left nursing a wounded heart. “Shouldn’t you look in on Maree?” she made herself ask pointedly.
His piercing gaze rested on her for a long moment before he said, “Of course. You can leave the rest of the laundry for me. You’ve done more than enough already. I don’t know how I can possibly repay you.”
This was the opening she’d waited for, but she balked at taking advantage of it. “I’ll be happy with the interview I requested,” she said lightly, knowing she should use this chance to persuade him to give her the story. She couldn’t do it, she found to her dismay. If this was to work, he had to agree of his own volition. She couldn’t bring herself to blackmail him into it in exchange for the few chores she’d undertaken of her own accord.
He gave another crooked grin and held out his hand to help her step over the laundry baskets. “I could finish this,” she said with a backward look at the clothes, but his grip tightened and he towed her into the kitchen where Maree played happily in her playpen.
“Are you always this helpful to your interview subjects?” he asked, a lilt of wry humor in his tone. “If I’d known, you could have arrived earlier and worked your way through the rest of the housework.”
Thinking of the state of the bedroom she’d walked through on her way in, she shook her head. “No thanks. My life isn’t long enough.”
He pretended to be offended. “My housekeeping isn’t that bad. All right, maybe it is. But I have a consultancy to run as well as taking care of Maree. Editing a baby care magazine, you of all people should know how much time a toddler takes up.”
His hand in hers was warm, his strong fingers curling into her palm as if he had forgotten to release her now they were back in the kitchen. Slowly, aware of a feeling of reluctance, she untangled her hand. “Nicholas, we have to talk. I know my journal is called The Baby House but it isn’t what you think.”
“It isn’t about babies?”
“Not really.” She took a steadying breath. The truth had to come out sometime, and she had already postponed it far longer than was wise. “The Baby House is a specialized journal for collectors of miniatures and...dollhouses.”
The slow burn of his anger was evident from the rigidity of his stance and the way his hands curled into fists at his sides. “Dollhouses?”
Miserably, she nodded. “They were known as baby houses in Victorian times when furniture makers and decorators used them to show off their skills, and women displayed collections of valuable miniatures in them, long before they became children’s toys.”
“Now I understand why you didn’t know about Maree from the story in the local paper,” he said coldly. “This isn’t about her, or about any kind of family history, is it?”
Bethany’s look went to the baby playing with a set of brightly colored plastic cups, oblivious of the storm breaking around her. “In a way, what I want to write does concern your family history. I want to do a story about the Frakes Baby House.”
His breath escaped in a whistling sound of annoyance. “If you know about that, then you must know I’m not interested in having it on public show. So your little scheme to get around me by pretending to be something you’re not was a waste of time.”
She had been prepared for the switch from friendliness to hostility as soon as he found out what she wanted, but his callous attack on her integrity made her see red. She didn’t stop to consider whether she would be less angry if he hadn’t charmed her so completely to begin with. “Now just a minute. I wrote to you on my business letterhead, asking for an interview. You were the one who jumped to the wrong conclusions.”
“And it never crossed your mind that I would?”
“Of course it did. But I hoped once we met and I explained to you what I wanted, you would see reason.”
He crossed his arms, towering over her in a blatant invasion of her space. “So you think it’s unreasonable of me to want to maintain my privacy?”
She stood her ground, determined not to back away and reveal how disturbing she found his closeness. “I don’t think it’s unreasonable at all. But my story doesn’t have to be an invasion of your privacy. If you don’t want me to, I won’t even mention your name.”
His eyes glittered ferally. “You’ll just refer to it as the Brand X Baby House?”
She couldn’t and he knew it. All she could do was retreat as gracefully as possible. She only wished it didn’t hurt so much. He hadn’t even given her a chance to explain what she wanted to do, and she still had no idea why he hated the idea of giving any publicity to the dollhouse that had been in his family for generations.
Nor did she understand why it mattered so much to her—not the story, although without it she had almost no chance of saving her journal—but why his good opinion was so important to her that it hurt to be on the receiving end of his derision. She had enjoyed being called a miracle worker and a fairy godmother, but there was more. She had enjoyed the appreciative way he looked at her, even the enthusiasm with which he ate the one thing she cooked well.
Pity help her, she had even enjoyed doing his cleaning and laundry.
For a couple of hours she had felt like a normal, functioning woman, she realized with a heavy heart. After the way Alexander had dumped her because she couldn’t have his children, it had felt good to be appreciated by a man, even one who didn’t really know her. In the guise of helping Nicholas out, she had been playing house, and now it had to stop.
“Thanks for your time. I’ll see myself out,” she said, picking up her bag. This time he didn’t try to stop her, and she was thankful the security door opened easily from the inside. She didn’t fancy having to retrace her steps past the kitchen and out through his bedroom. As she made her way slowly back to her car, which was parked in the shade of a golden wattle tree, she heard Maree start to cry. Bethany’s footsteps faltered but she made herself keep walking.
“Women. You can’t trust ‘em as far as you can throw ’em,” Nicholas seethed, hearing the sound of the security door swing shut. He aimed a kick at a cupboard door and winced as the pain jarred all the way up his leg. “Damn. I should have known she was up to something. Baby house, indeed. She probably thought all she had to do was cook a meal and wash my laundry, and I’d be putty in her hands. Well it didn’t work, did it, Maree? We told her where to get off, didn’t we?”
