it before we left the ranch,” Logan muttered, “and with the outside temperature in the fifties, it isn’t likely to have spoiled yet. I just didn’t know where Mother had put it.”
The baby had already guided the nipple to her mouth and now put her head back, nursing strenuously. “Let’s get your sweater off, little lady,” Emily crooned, carefully slipping free one arm and then another while the child nursed industriously, passing the bottle back and forth from hand to hand.
Logan leaned a hip against the desk, folding his arms. “She’s been screaming for the last half hour,” he said. “I tried the pacifier, but she spit it at me.”
“Wouldn’t you spit out rubber if you wanted milk?” Emily mused, lifting her chin as the baby reached for her glasses with one hand while holding the bottle with the other.
Logan sighed resignedly. “I just don’t know how to read her. She’s like an alien life-form! How am I supposed to deal with that?”
Emily tossed the sweater onto the desk and shifted the little one in her arms, sweeping a well-practiced censorious glance over curious faces beyond the glass. People quickly shifted away, moving back into their offices. Emily looked at the man whose executive assistant she had been for the past two years. “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”
He straightened and took a deep breath. “Emily Applegate,” he said wearily, making it a formal introduction, “I’d like you to meet Amanda Sue Fortune. My daughter.”
Emily nearly dropped the child on her head. “Your what?”
Logan nodded grimly. “Yeah, how’s that for a kick in the pants?”
Emily could only stare, first at him, then at the child quickly emptying her bottle. Almost as long as she’d known him, Emily had harbored a secret crush on her philandering boss, knowing perfectly well that she had no chance with him and was better off for it. The thought, however, that someone else had borne him a child made her voice unusually raw. “Who’s her mother?”
Logan winced as the child jerked the bottle from her mouth and cried, “Ma-ma-a-a!”
“Now you’ve done it,” he grumbled, reaching for Amanda Sue.
She jerked back, clinging to Emily and crying, “Mammm-mmma!”
Trying to hide his hurt at her rejection, Logan patted her back ineffectually. “It’s all right, baby. She didn’t mean it. It’s all right. Drink your bottle. Okay? Drink your bottle.” He glowered at Emily. “Watch your mouth, okay?”
“All I said was—”
“She’s dead, all right? It just happened, but Amanda Sue can’t possibly understand that. All she knows is that her ma-m-a is gone and I’m here. She doesn’t understand that I’m her father. She doesn’t know where she is. And believe me, she’s not happy about it. She’s made that much perfectly clear.”
Emily was still struggling with the concept of Logan Fortune as a father. Amanda Sue shifted in her arms, and a suspicious warmth spread across the front of her diaper. Emily turned her around, holding the child’s small back to her chest in an effort to spare the jacket of her tan wool suit. Amanda Sue laid her head on Emily’s shoulder and whimpered, then stuck the bottle nipple in her mouth and went to work on it again.
“I—I didn’t know you had a daughter,” Emily finally managed to say.
“Neither did I,” he replied dryly, “not until the authorities contacted me after the accident.”
Emily let that sink in. “My goodness.”
“To put it lightly.”
The implications were astounding. She shook her head. “What are you going to do?”
He straightened his tie and smoothed back his hair. “Right now, I’m going to go into my office, sit down at my desk and look over your notes on this morning’s meetings. After that, well, I’ll take it as comes.”
She stared at him. “And Amanda Sue?”
He smiled. “She’ll be with you, of course, getting settled into her new home.”
“Me?”
“Who else?” he asked. “You’re the only executive assistant I’ve got.”
Emily wanted to do some screaming herself. Considering how she felt about this man, she was looking at a prescription for disaster. Her light brown eyes narrowed. “Now, wait just a minute. I’ve gone way above and beyond the job description for you in the past. I’ve lied to your many women, juggled your affairs, ordered gifts to salve wounded pride and snatched your cookies out of the fire more than once in the process, but baby-sitting your unexpected daughter is taking the term ‘executive assistant’ just a little too far!”
His expression turned pleading. “Come on, Em. She likes you, and she’s had all she wants of me right now, and vice versa, frankly. Who else am I going to count on to help me out here?”
Emily held Amanda Sue out to him. “Obviously, you’ve tried your mo—”
“Don’t say it!” he warned frantically.
Emily grimaced. “All right, fine. If your you-know-what can’t help you, why not try one of your many conquests? There’s got to be one willing to make points with you by baby-sitting your child.”
“Have you got any idea what a can of worms that would be opening?” he retorted.
“That’s not my problem,” Emily said. Apparently entertained by the exchange, Amanda Sue sat atop Emily’s arm and swung one little foot absently, slowly drinking her milk. Emily stubbornly stuck to her guns, despite the fact that she was weakening.
“Emily, I need someone I can trust,” he argued smoothly. “This is my daughter we’re talking about. I can’t leave her to some scheming female more concerned with dropping a marriage noose around my neck to get at my money than Amanda Sue’s welfare.”
Emily sighed inwardly. Without committing herself, she asked. “How old is she?”
“Sixteen months.”
With that uncanny ability of all children, Amanda Sue knew she was now the topic of conversation. She laid her head back against Emily’s chest and grinned up at Emily around the bottle nipple. Emily found herself reluctantly in love. “She is a little doll.”
“Don’t let the looks fool you,” Logan warned dryly. “That little doll has put me through sheer hell today. She can get out of a seat belt faster than—”
“A seat belt!” Emily echoed. “You had her in a seat belt, not a car seat but your standard, adult-type seat belt?”
He blinked at her. “Every car seat has its own seat belt, Emily. You know that.”
She couldn’t believe he was that uninformed. “Every infant safety seat has a belt, too, and it’s designed to keep the child safely in place. Riding a child in a car without one is so dangerous that the State of Texas, and nearly every other, has made it illegal to do so. You’re lucky you weren’t pulled over—or worse!”
