Donna started and ended with engines.”
Not a surprise. Juliana remembered Donna as someone more likely to recite a complicated equation than the date her son had first rolled over. Motherhood might have changed Mikey’s mother, but Juliana doubted it. After all, what kind of mother got into an experimental spaceship without any regard to the potential consequences? Like leaving her baby to the adrenaline junkie behind the wheel of a car suited for a superhero.
“She never talked about her child? What about Grant?”
“They talked about him all the time. I didn’t pay a whole lot of attention, I guess. When they talked about a breakthrough on the liquid oxygen alternative, that’s when I tuned in. It’s weird to think about Donna as a mother instead of an engineer. The failed prototype was Donna’s. She designed it from the ground up. Worked on it for three years.”
That explained a lot. “Sometime today, call Mikey’s pediatrician. I’ll give you a list of things to ask.”
“Uh, okay.”
Juliana sighed. “Call Donna’s admin and get the name and number from her. Then start taking notes. If you want to be a father, then you have to know these things. What would you have done if Mikey developed a fever?”
“Called Linda. My admin,” he clarified before she could ask. “I must not have been clear back at your house. I need help. Not judgment.”
She unclenched her teeth. “I’m sorry.”
Shay needed her on his side. Knowing how to care for a child wasn’t innate, not even for females. Her own mother wouldn’t have won any awards; in fact, she’d thoroughly failed at instilling a sense of security in her daughter, the most important aspect of childrearing.
Most women—women who were interested—used all nine months to learn everything they could, breathing baby books until their water broke. Shay would have to do it in eight weeks and without benefit of a highly motivating nesting instinct.
He was trying. She should be trying, too, not jumping down his throat because he was still outrageously sexy and she’d just received the very nasty wake-up call that she wasn’t immune to it. She had to find an inoculation quickly because she wasn’t leaving this job without solid notes for her book and she wasn’t falling back into Shay’s crazy.
“We’re here.”
Shay hit a button on the visor and the wrought-iron gate connecting a stone wall swung open. He drove onto the property, and she got her first glimpse of a billionaire’s life.
“What are all those cranes for around the lake?” she asked and noted they were connected to a wire line circling the water.
“It’s a wakeboard cable system. You should try it while you’re here. I’ve already called my architect to come enclose the lake and the outdoor pool with something a kid can’t get through. Made his year with the dollar signs I waved under his nose.”
See, she assured herself, Shay wasn’t completely clueless. That meant her job wouldn’t be as difficult as she’d envisioned.
The house—a term which could only be applied in the loosest sense to the enormous glass-and-steel structure—straddled the center of the estate, unfolding in both directions with multiple floors, balconies and sharp rooflines. “All this for one person?”
“Eight people,” he corrected immediately. “Me, Mikey and the staff.”
Not a house. A home. He and Mikey would be a family. A sharp spike behind her rib cage reminded her she’d left Shay to find a stable man who could give her a stable life, complete with children, and now she’d be creating exactly that with Shay after all.
Only she’d have to walk away in a few short weeks, leaving a gap wide open for someone else to slide into.
“You said outdoor pool. There’s an indoor pool, too? Never mind. I have plenty of time to acquaint myself with all the goodies.” Private jets, indoor pools and an extreme athlete’s body she’d been very careful not to notice. She almost offered him an aspirin for the sore arm he must have from beating off the women with a stick. “I’m not here to act as your glorified babysitter while you jet off to Paris with this week’s playmate, am I?”
She’d assumed when they’d split that he’d find a girl better suited to being flung off a cliff—emotional and actual—but his love life after her had always been a nebulous, murky idea. Now it was real and she swallowed against the sudden burn in her throat.
He shot her a sideways scowl and threw the car into Park. “Yeah, I’ve got dates lined up out the door. A different woman every night while Mikey cries himself to sleep. My social life is nonexistent. Thanks for the reminder.”
He barreled out of the car. When he opened her door, she stepped out onto the stained concrete circular drive and grabbed his hand before he could turn away. Something needed to change but she wasn’t sure what. She hated being unsure.
“Should I scrawl ‘I’m sorry’ across my forehead with a Sharpie? I’m bound to get laryngitis as many times as I’ve had to say it.”
He chuckled and it spread through her abdomen with a tingle.
“How about a truce instead?” He flipped her hand and shook it. “We used to get along pretty well. Let’s see if we can find a way back to that.”
The weight of his fingers against hers took on a whole new meaning. “That sounds suspiciously like the opposite of professional.”
“Hmm, you think so?” His hand tightened and a thumb brushed over her knuckle in a long stroke. The sparks submerged her senses with the kind of quick heat she’d done her best to forget, but it came rushing back in a torrent of memory.
“Uh-huh. The opposite.”
“You said that already.”
He was watching her with intense, impossible-to-look-away-from focus, leaning into her, a slight tilt away from something irreversible. Crazy. Dangerous and frightening.
“We should go inside,” she rasped and cleared her throat, breaking the connection and sweeping her hair off her shoulders in a poor attempt to reorient, which surely didn’t fool Shay. “Will you show me to my room?”
“Sure. I’ll send someone out for your bags.”
No catch in his voice, because she’d never affected him the way he did her, as if her legs would collapse at any moment. Firm, solid ground, that’s what she needed.
He mounted the patterned steps lined with twenty-foot palm trees and exotic flowers that shouldn’t grow in the desert but did because they belonged to Shay. He created magic from nothing, an alchemy she’d never been able to analyze until it made sense.
She reminded herself that she didn’t need to understand him. She only needed to do her job, get research notes for her book and get out.
Forty-seven hallways later, her head spun from trying to take in the luxurious room Shay had ushered her into. The four-poster bed presided over the room from a raised dais, leading to an inviting seating area to the left that shared a flat-screen TV mounted on a swivel arm between them.
One
