expression. Butterflies that had nothing to do with the baby fluttered in Kelsey’s belly.
“Daddy, Kelsey, look,” Mariah’s little voice interrupted. The adults dropped their hands as if they’d held hot potatoes and turned toward the little girl. She pointed at the windows. “The snow stopped.”
“So it has.” As though nothing had passed between them, Ryan turned away from Kelsey and got up for a closer look.
Maybe the moment had been her wild imagination. Maybe it had been her fluxuating and unpredictable hormones. But she didn’t think so.
The flutter intensified and she thought of her baby. This job was the best thing for him or her. And since Kelsey had no intention of ever getting romantic with a success-oriented workaholic like Ryan, she was perfectly safe. With that firmly in mind, she rose to follow Ryan and Mariah to the windows. Her cramped legs and back thanked her.
“The cloud cover seems to be breaking,” Ryan was saying.
“It is, Daddy. See right there?” Nose pressed to the window, Mariah turned her face toward her father. Her expression was sweet and confident. “Just like I told you before. Everything will work out fine. And it has. We found Kelsey, and now the storm has stopped. Things are looking up.”
Kelsey caught Ryan’s eye and both adults chuckled.
Yes, indeed. Maybe things were finally looking up.
Even if Ryan Storm was a little too attractive.
CHAPTER THREE
MARIAH HAD BEEN RIGHT. Planes began to fly again in a matter of hours. Once their seats were secured, the newly formed trio trudged to an eatery for a late-night snack and a round of general conversation. In that hour, Kelsey began to feel far more comfortable with the idea of working for Ryan and tutoring Mariah. The child desperately needed a woman’s influence and nurturing. And if there was one thing Kelsey could do, it was nurture.
The first sign of a snag came when Ryan said, “Before we board, I’ll call ahead to be sure a car is available to take us home from the airport.”
“I can get a cab.” She poked a fork into her fruit cup, spearing a piece of melon. It was the only thing on the menu she could afford.
Ryan, who’d ordered a full country breakfast, paused in mid-bite, frown puzzled. The result of not shaving in a while framed his mouth in such a sexy manner, Kelsey could hardly stop staring.
“Why would you need to do that?”
“It beats walking.”
“You aren’t walking. You’re going home with us.” The words were a statement of fact that brooked no argument.
Kelsey gulped, swallowing a whole grape. “You’re kidding, right?”
“I hired you because I need you now. Tonight. Tomorrow.”
The choice of words, coupled with his manly, scruffy look, brought to mind all kinds of possibilities. Troubling possibilities.
“I wasn’t expecting to begin work quite this soon.”
Nonchalantly, he applied grape jelly to his toast. The sound of knife against toast scraped against her nerves. “That was the deal.”
Not the way Kelsey remembered. She shook her head. “I’d be a lunatic to go home with a strange man in the middle of the night.”
“I’m not a stranger, Kelsey. You know me, and you have my assurance. You are perfectly safe with me and Mariah.” He wiped a bit of ketchup from Mariah’s chin. “Right, peanut?”
Mouth full of hamburger, Mariah batted her long-lashed eyes and bobbed her head at Kelsey in reassurance.
The little girl was such a sweetheart. Kelsey patted her hand and winked.
Though she’d been away from Dallas since her marriage four years ago, she still kept up with the local news. Ryan made the business news quite often and was known as a straight arrow who didn’t party, much to the dismay of Dallas society. And he had a child, for goodness sake.
“But my family is expecting me.” Sort of.
“Call them.”
“At this time of night?”
He gestured with his fork. “Either way, you’ll wake them.”
The man had an answer for every argument. “Now I understand how you became successful at such an early age.”
He grinned. Her stomach dipped so that she almost backed out of the entire deal.
But in the end, her desperate need for a job and a place to live, along with Ryan’s quiet insistence, won out and she agreed to go straight to his home. As a last-ditch effort at common sense, she’d phoned her father to let him know her where-abouts. He’d been none too happy about the late call, so she’d been brief, promising to drop by as soon as she was settled in her new job. Jim Slater had mumbled, “Fine,” and hung up. It was no more than Kelsey had expected. Relations had been strained since her father remarried so soon after her mother’s death.
Still, she felt strange following Ryan Storm around the airport, through the terminal and into the waiting limo.
The sensation didn’t improve upon arriving at his upscale, two-story town house in east Dallas.
Ryan, on the other hand, behaved as though he brought strange women home all the time. The thought gave Kelsey pause. Maybe he did. Maybe he was just ultra sneaky about it.
With Mariah draped across his shoulder asleep, he nudged his chin toward the stairs. “Second door on the right.”
Kelsey went ahead of him, flipped on the light and stripped the covers back on the canopy bed in preparation for the slumbering child. Ryan smiled his thanks and slid his small, limp load between the pink princess sheets.
“Shall I undress her?” Kelsey asked but didn’t wait for an answer. She reached for the child’s shoes while Ryan stripped away her coat.
“Good enough for tonight,” he said quietly. “Let her sleep.”
In the hush, she watched him tuck the cover beneath the sleeping beauty before placing a kiss on her forehead. Mariah squirmed, mumbled and then flopped over, burrowing deeper into the soft, inviting bed.
Tenderness crept into Ryan’s exhausted face. He stood beside the bed, looking down at his child for several long, sweet seconds. Emotion fluttered beneath Kelsey’s ribcage as she wondered about the man who was never home but who appeared to adore his child. Was he simply unaware of how much his child needed him? Or was he, like Mark, more concerned with success than with his family?
She also wondered about Mariah’s mother. What kind of tragedy had taken her at such a young age? What kind of woman was she that a man like Ryan Storm had married her? Did he still love her? How well had Mariah dealt with her mother’s loss?
Straightening, Ryan snapped off the bedside lamp, plunging the room into semidarkness. The resulting atmosphere was softly intimate, too much so. With
