had had merely been drinks and laughs and maybe sharing a platonic mattress.
He’d been sure that nothing else had happened. He liked Nora well enough but she was a long—long—way from his type. To say she was rough around the edges was a kind description of the woman who had hacked out a place in the woods to build her cabin with her own two hands, and who made her living running dogsled races. And rough around the edges was not something he’d ever found attractive.
But now he couldn’t be absolutely positive that nothing beyond drinks and laughs had happened. Maybe he had offered her more than a place to crash for a night.
Mickey didn’t look like Nora, Aiden reminded himself, in an effort to find something to hang some hope on to. Mickey didn’t look like Aiden, either. Or like anyone Aiden knew.
But the hope he derived from that was fleeting. Looks were hardly conclusive proof of anything.
Which meant that he was going to have to do some investigating. Some testing. Some questioning.
And all right away.
Unfortunately.
Because although this was not something he ever wanted to be faced with, having it happen now was phenomenally bad timing.
He was grateful to Howard Wilson for submitting Boonesbury for the grant that Emmy Harris was there to consider them for. The money would be a huge help in updating the care he could give, and Aiden had planned to do everything he could to convince her to recommend that they get it. Only now he had Mickey and this whole situation to deal with, too.
But there was nothing he could do about it. He just had to hope that Emmy Harris would be as understanding and patient as she was lovely to look at.
That thought made him nervous the moment after he’d had it. On two counts.
First of all, Emmy Harris had already not seemed patient and understanding about Mickey. Actually Mickey’s arrival had sort of pushed her over the edge, Aiden recalled, as he considered the end of last evening and the foundation’s director saying what she’d said about Howard setting up these complications, about this being a trial by fire.
She hadn’t seemed patient or understanding then. She’d seemed agitated.
And second of all, what was he doing thinking about her being lovely?
That didn’t have a place in any of this.
It was tough to ignore, though, he secretly admitted to himself.
Because she really was a knockout. And a whole lot more his type than Nora Finley.
Not that he was interested in Emmy Harris personally. But, purely on an empirical basis, she was a very attractive woman. How could he not notice that? How could he not notice that she had skin as flawless as Mickey’s? And high cheekbones that no plastic surgeon could have fashioned as well? And a small nose with the faintest hint of a bump on the bridge that kept it from being too perfect and ended up making it just plain cute? And lips full enough to inspire images of long, slow kisses…
Fast—think about what you didn’t like about her, he ordered himself before his mind ventured too much farther afield than it already had.
He hadn’t been wild about that bun her hair had been in—that was something he hadn’t liked.
Although the hair itself was a great color—rich mink-brown all shot through with russet red.
And her eyes were a fascinating color, too. Dark brown but with rays of glittering green all through them so that first he’d thought they were brown and then he’d wondered if they were green, before he’d finally sat across the kitchen table from her and been able to really figure it out.
Plus there were those legs of hers. Terrific legs.
Any woman in a skirt and nylons was a rare, bordering-on-nonexistent sight in Boonesbury. But even if it had been an everyday occurrence, her legs would have caught his attention. Long, shapely legs that made them a particular treat.
A treat that only started there. It continued all the way up a great little body that was just curvy enough to let him know she was a woman underneath that stuffy suit and high-collared blouse.
Oh, yeah, she was easy on the eyes.
And smart.
And she had a sense of humor, too—something he was really a sucker for in a woman….
Aiden mentally yanked himself up short when he again realized the direction his thoughts had wandered.
So much for thinking about what he didn’t like about her.
But even when he tried to come up with something else, he couldn’t. The bun was about it in the negatives column. And he had no doubt one swipe of a hairbrush would take care of that.
Which was probably why, even in spite of the mess with Mickey, he was looking forward to this next week more than he had been before he’d met Emmy Harris.
This isn’t a social event, he reminded himself.
This week was work. And that was the only way he should be thinking about it.
Besides, even if Emmy Harris had been there for some other reason, Aiden knew better than to let down his guard with a woman like her.
She might be more his type than Nora Finley, but he could tell the minute she’d stepped up to him at the airport that she was not the kind of person who could make a go of life in the Alaskan wilderness.
Emmy Harris might look pretty special, but he knew right off the bat that she wasn’t the kind of special to live where high fashion translated to anorak jackets, mukluks and thermal underwear. Where the only restaurant was also the gas station and the mayor’s office. Where there wasn’t a shopping mall within driving distance. Where a fair share of women—like Nora—considered cutting their nails with a gutting knife to be a manicure.
And if there was one thing Aiden already knew from painful experience it was that it was a losing battle to make any attempt to fit the round-peg kind of woman Emmy Harris was into the square hole of Boonesbury.
Oh, no, that wasn’t something he’d ever try again.
But even so, he thought as the sun began to make its first appearance through the open curtains of his bedroom window, he did have to admit that having the foundation’s beautiful director there with him for a little while would be a nice change of pace.
Of course it would have been a nicer change of pace if he didn’t have an abandoned baby and possible fatherhood looming over his head at the same time to distract him, but it was still a nice change of pace, anyway.
On the other hand, considering how intensely aware he’d been of every detail about Emmy just in the first few hours of knowing her, maybe having Mickey around as a buffer was a good thing.
Mickey made a noise just then that sounded different from the sucking noises, and Aiden rolled to his side again to check on him.
When he did he found the baby’s eyes open and his fist in his mouth.
Mickey
