and in print publications didn’t do this man justice. They simply told the world that he was incredibly good-looking. And by good-looking, she meant fantastically hot. It was toasty warm inside his house, but she was still shivering, partly from shock but mostly from a punch of “throw me to the floor and take me now.”
Under Linc’s button-down shirt and tie was a wide chest and, she was sure, a hard, ridged stomach. His shoulders were broad, his legs long and muscular and his short, thick dark hair was just this side of messy. And those eyes, God, his eyes. They were a deep and mysterious gray, a color somewhere between summer thunderclouds and pewter. Short, thick black lashes, a slightly crooked nose and dark, rakish eyebrows added character to his too-sexy face.
But the photographs didn’t capture the power sizzling under his skin, the intelligence radiating from those eyes, the don’t-BS-me vibe emanating from him. They certainly didn’t capture the sheer and unrelenting masculinity of the man.
The man she was fiercely, ridiculously attracted to. Of course she was, Tate sighed, because she was a Harper woman and Harper women never made life easy for themselves.
Her eyes moved from his face to the baby tucked into the crook of his elbow, and she swallowed hard. She remembered his earlier question about what she wanted from him, and, not for the first time since stepping into the brownstone, she wondered what she was doing here. She wasn’t the type to fall apart in a crisis, who needed a man to sort her life out and she’d learned, at a very early age, not to depend on anyone else to help her muddle through life. People, she’d found, and especially those who were supposed to love her, were generally unreliable.
Ellie was her responsibility, not Linc’s. So, really, there was no point in extending this very uncomfortable visit. And the zing of sexual awareness dancing along her skin, making her heart bounce around her chest, added a level of awkward to their encounter.
Tate got to her feet, walked over to him and reached for Ellie, pulling the little girl into her arms. Eleven months old and abandoned, Tate thought. How could Kari do this? Again?
“I’m sorry, Linc, we shouldn’t have come here.” Tate heard her words running together and tried to slow down. “We’ll get out of your hair now.”
Linc leaned forward and placed his muscular forearms on his thighs, his eyes penetrating. “Take a breath, Tate. Sit down, drink your coffee and let’s talk this through.”
“I should let you go back to work.”
“My day is already shot,” he admitted. “Tell me what happened.”
Tate gave him a quick rundown of her day, and when she was finished, Linc asked, “Where’s the note she left you?”
Too tired to argue, she told him where to find it and sat down with Ellie propped on her lap. Tate took her little hand in hers and thought that Ellie was amazingly docile for a child that had been dumped with a stranger.
“So, though this note is short on details it seems to imply that you now get to call the shots with regard to Ellie,” Linc said.
“Imply being the operative word,” Tate bitterly replied. “And what am I supposed to do with her? Look after her? Place her in foster care? Give her up for adoption?”
“I don’t think you have the legal right to do the last two,” Linc said, and she saw the anger burning in his eyes. “But why couldn’t she just do any of this herself? Why involve you?”
“I don’t know. I didn’t even know about Ellie until I got to the diner. I haven’t seen Kari for two years.” Tate rubbed her thumb gently over the back of Ellie’s hand. “And that meeting was tense.”
“Why?”
She started to tell him that they’d had a huge fight because Kari abandoned her son. Tate had been so incensed at her cousin’s blasé attitude toward Shaw that she’d stopped communicating with her. Tate noticed Linc’s hard eyes and knew that he wouldn’t appreciate, and didn’t need, her defending his son. Linc Ballantyne was obviously very capable at fighting his own battles.
“Family stuff.” Tate eventually pushed the short explanation out.
Linc linked his hands together and leaned back, placing his ankle on his knee and tapping the sheaf of papers balanced on his thigh. “So, what are you going to do?”
Tate forced herself to think. “Right now, I suppose I need to find us a place to stay—”
“Whoa! You’re homeless, too?”
Tate glared at him and held up her hand in an indignant gesture. “Hold on, hotshot, don’t jump to conclusions. I’m a travel presenter, out of the country for most of the year, so I live out of hotel rooms. Once a year, I get a long vacation, and I came back to New York to meet with my producers. I was planning to find a hotel for a night or two, until I decided where I wanted to spend my vacation. I might have to rethink leaving New York now, since I have Ellie with me.”
“Do you have enough cash? She needs diapers and clothes and...stuff.”
Stuff. Tate wrinkled her nose. How unhelpful.
She did have enough money. Her living and travel expenses were paid for by the production company, so her hefty salary went straight into her savings account. Kari was a flake, but she wasn’t. “Yes.”
“You don’t seem like you have much experience with babies.”
“Or any,” Tate replied self deprecatingly. “I’ll buy a book,” she added.
“God.” Linc muttered, shaking his head. “Do you know how to change a diaper at least?”
“I’m sure I can figure it out,” Tate huffed.
Linc rubbed the back of his strong neck, above the patch of tanned skin between the collar of his shirt and his hair. It was the dead of winter—why was he tan? And why did she feel the insane urge to taste his skin?
“Are you going to call Child Services and place her into foster care?”
It took Tate a moment to pull her attention back to the conversation...Ellie and what to do with her. Focus, Harper.
Tate looked at Linc and saw the wariness in his eyes and realized that this was a test, that this moment would make him form an opinion of her that wouldn’t be easy to change. Wariness and distrust would slide into contempt.
Strangely, she felt the need not to disappoint him, since she felt like Harper women had disappointed him enough already.
This wasn’t about him, she chastised herself. It was about Ellie and what was best for her, so Tate tried to imagine how she would feel watching a Child Services officer walking away with Ellie, and she shook her head. “No, I can’t do that.”
Tate saw, but ignored, the flash of relief that crossed Linc’s face.
“I’m on vacation, and I can look after Ellie as well as any foster mother could, once I figure out the basics.” She sighed. “I think I need to consult a lawyer and find out whether I can, temporarily, keep her.”
He nodded but remained silent.
“Just so you know,
