“Morning, little guy,” he said softly.
Mickey granted him a tentative smile from behind the fist.
“Ready to get up?” Aiden asked as if the infant would answer him.
Mickey grinned even bigger, as if that idea had thrilled him.
“Okay, but here’s what I’m thinking,” Aiden informed the baby. “I’ll get you cleaned up and fed, and then you’re going to have to pay me back by keeping things on the up and up while Ms. Emmy Harris is around. You can’t let me do anything stupid. What do you say?”
Mickey finally removed his fist from his mouth and blew a spit bubble for him.
“I’ll take that as a yes.”
But Aiden was worried that Mickey had his work cut out for him.
Because as he got out of bed to pick up the baby he could feel the itch to see Emmy again, to hear her voice, to catch a whiff of her perfume.
An itch so strong he wasn’t sure how he was going to ignore it.
Even if the medical future of the whole county was riding on it.
For Emmy there was ordinarily nothing like a good night’s sleep to recharge her batteries and help her face the day.
But she had had nothing like a good night’s sleep. And when she woke up at five minutes after seven, she was aggravated with herself. Even if she was on a business trip, it was Sunday and there was no hurry getting to work. The least her body could have done was to have let her get some rest.
Although, it wasn’t actually her body at fault. Her body was supremely comfortable in the feather bed.
It was her mind that had kept her awake most of the night. Her mind that had kicked up again now.
She kept her eyes closed and took deep breaths, willing herself not to think about anything.
Just sleep, she told herself. Just sleep…
But her nose was so cold where it poked above the covers that she thought that might be keeping her awake.
Which meant she would have to get up, have her bare feet touch an undoubtedly frigid floor, expose herself completely to what her nose was suffering already and go all the way to the far corner of the room to turn on the space heater.
What exactly was it that people saw in rustic living? It was a mystery to her.
She sighed and resigned herself to having to leave her warm cocoon to get some heat in the place.
Flinging aside the electric blanket and quilt, she ran on tiptoes to the space heater to turn it on, then dived back under the covers again.
But that mad dash didn’t save her, and even after she was back in the warm bed a chill shook her whole body like a leaf in the wind.
How could any place in the twenty-first century—especially in Alaska—not have central heat, for crying out loud?
But once the chill had passed and the room was beginning to warm up, Emmy relaxed again and admitted that it was nice under that electric blanket and the weight of the quilt. She even began to wonder if maybe she’d be able to fall asleep again after all.
She closed her eyes and gave it a try.
Just sleep. Just sleep…
But would her stubborn brain give her a break?
Absolutely not.
It started spinning with the same thoughts that had kept her up most of the night—that it was a dirty trick Howard was playing on her to put all these obstacles in her way to test her on her very first trip for the foundation.
But he wasn’t going to get the best of her. The determination to pass the test was stronger this morning than it had been the night before.
She figured that she’d already overcome some of the obstacles: she’d gotten on that small plane rather than allowing fear to rule; she’d left Aiden Tarlington to contend with the baby rather than digging in as if it were her problem; and she’d made it through her first night in the attic room without heat.
So there, Howard!
Of course, she’d also spent the night tormented with vivid images of Aiden Tarlington and a strange longing to be back downstairs with him.
But that didn’t count as a failure of the test; keeping her from sleeping was not foundation business. It only counted as foundation business if she was distracted from her reason for being here. And while the much-too-attractive doctor had the potential to do just that, she was not going to let it happen.
Any more than she was going to let herself get sidetracked by the complications of the oh-so-cute baby who had come onto the scene last night.
Because although it might not be easy to keep her focus, she was going to do it. She really was. Howard was not going to win this one.
She’d fought for this job, and now that she had it, she was going to do it. She was going to do it better than anyone had ever done it before her—man or woman. And without a peep of complaint.
She just needed to wear blinders of a sort. She needed to block out the effects of Aiden Tarlington’s appeal, the draw of the adorable Mickey, and keep her eye on the ball.
And that was what she was going to do.
The little pep talk bolstered her confidence and she felt herself actually beginning to drift off to sleep again.
And if while she did, the picture of Aiden Tarlington came back into her mind and made something warm and fuzzy inside her stir to life?
Well, she wasn’t working at the moment, was she?
There may have been no hurry for Emmy to join Aiden for the tour of Boonesbury but, when the next time her eyes opened it was eleven o’clock, she bolted out of bed in a panic. What kind of impression did it make for the foundation’s director to sleep that late?
She rushed to the bathroom to take a shower but that was no quick thing. She had to deal with the peculiarities of a pitifully poor spray of water that literally ran hot one minute, cold the next, and never just warm enough to stand under.
She’d wanted to do something nice with her hair. Something nicer, more youthful and definitely more attractive than the bun. But that would have taken too long so she ended up leaving it to fall loosely around her shoulders.
And as for clothes, she could hardly dawdle when it came to deciding what to wear, and quickly chose a pair of black slacks and a long-sleeved, white, split-V-neck T-shirt. Then she applied blush and mascara—as fast as she did in her car on the way to her office when she’d slept through her alarm.
Yet it was still noon before she grabbed the black knee-length cardigan sweater she’d brought with her and bounded down the stairs to knock on Aiden’s door.
“It’s open. Come on in.”
A
