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
