she slipped into his head.
So what did that mean? That after fifteen minutes with her he was infatuated?
That was ridiculous.
He hadn’t been infatuated-at-first-sight with anyone since his first year in college. He hadn’t been particularly infatuated even after-first-sight with anyone for longer than he could remember. He enjoyed the company of the various women in his life. He looked forward to spending time with them, to everything they did together. But infatuated?
That was something else entirely.
That was like having a schoolboy crush and that wasn’t something Rand Colton did.
But how else could he explain being so excited about going to work?
Maybe he was just glad to finally have someone competent onboard. Maybe the idea of getting his office in order again had just gone to his head.
Of course it would help if she hadn’t put that five-o’clock stipulation on things, he thought, actually searching for something contrary to find in the situation.
What was that all about anyway? She’d been so adamant.
There had to be a man behind it, he decided. Some guy she was rushing home to, whether she admitted it or not.
But that possibility rankled Rand and again he looked for a reason.
He had so much work he needed taken care of—that was all. And there she was decreeing that her day would end at five o’clock on the dot no matter what.
Decreeing—that rubbed him wrong, too. And there’d been plenty of it. Plenty of decreeing and dictating. And big baby-blue eyes or no big baby-blue eyes, he didn’t like it.
Any better than he liked the thought that she might be running to some other man….
Oh, brother, there was that again.
Some other man? As if he were involved with her and a boyfriend would be another man in her life?
“Maybe I’ve been working too hard,” Rand muttered to himself, disgusted with his own train of thought.
Lucy Lowry was just one more in a string of women who had passed through his office since Sadie’s retirement, he told himself reasonably. There had been a dozen before her, there would be more after her, and that was all there was to it. What she did outside the office and who she fraternized with were her own business and no concern of his.
And being eager to see her again this morning?
It was just…
Well, he didn’t know what it was. But it wasn’t infatuation.
He tossed aside his unread newspaper, set his coffee cup on the nightstand and got out of bed, feeling more agitated than eager now. Because the very idea that he might be interested in Lucy Lowry was too much to bear.
Women didn’t come into his life and tell him what to do. And he sure as hell didn’t like them if they did. He was only tolerating it in Lucy Lowry because he was in dire need of office help and Sadie had assured him he would get it from her niece.
Yet despite all his sternness with himself, all his reasoning and rationalizing, as he headed for the shower Lucy Lowry popped into his mind’s eye again and he found himself wondering what that burnished hair of hers looked like down, falling in loose curls around her face.
And if she might wear it that way today…
Lucy’s doorbell rang at precisely seven-twenty-nine.
She opened the door, expecting to find Rand Colton on the stoop and instead faced a stout, balding older man in a chauffeur’s uniform.
She glanced beyond him at the long black Town Car parked at the curb and assumed her boss was waiting there.
“I’ll be right out,” she informed the driver.
Then she closed the door again and went into the living room where Max sat on Sadie’s lap, his teddy bear snuggled into the crook of one pajama-clad arm.
“Okay, buddy, I have to go. Remember what I told you last night—Aunt Sadie will bring you to day care later this morning when she goes to read to the kids. Until then you’ll stay at her place. She’s making you a special breakfast and I put your dinosaur videotape in your backpack so you can watch that if you want or you can watch cartoons. Then you’ll come home with Aunt Sadie this afternoon and stay with her again. I probably won’t be home before you go to bed but it’s only this once and I’ll call you today and again tonight. Got all that?”
Max nodded solemnly, more asleep than awake and seemingly unfazed by his mother’s imminent departure.
“I’ll miss you,” Lucy told him.
“Miss you, too.”
“Be a good boy.”
Again the nod.
Lucy knew he’d be fine. She didn’t have a doubt that Sadie would take good care of him or that he’d enjoy playing with kids his own age at the day care. She knew he did well with other children, that he made friends easily. But she still felt awful leaving him for such an extended amount of time.
It’s only for today, she reminded herself.
And fast on that thought came one that had been popping into her head all through the last evening and again this morning like some kind of consolation prize—that she was spending the time away from her son with Rand Colton.
She didn’t want that to be something that could brighten her spirits. But for some reason it was. Some reason she didn’t even want to think about, let alone analyze.
“Kiss,” she demanded of her son.
An instant, impish grin tugged at the corner of Max’s mouth just before he planted a wet one on her cheek. Then he turned his face for her to do the same to him.
“I’m taking the Triceratops to day care with me,” he informed her in the meantime.
“Okay, but you know the deal. You have to share.”
“Then maybe I better take the Tyrannosaurus, too.”
Max said that as if it were serious business, which, to him, dinosaurs were.
“Have a nice day.” She ruffled his hair as she said goodbye to her aunt, then forced herself to walk out the door.
“You have a good day, too,” Sadie called after her.
The big black Lincoln Town Car outside had windows too darkly tinted to see through, yet knowing Rand was in that back seat made Lucy’s pulse pick up more speed with each step that drew her nearer.
She wanted to believe it was nothing but first-day jitters. But she knew better. This had more to do with the man himself. And as much as she wished she could deny that fact, she couldn’t.
There had been something about
