a way, to act like she needed such a promise—like she was some blushing virgin who’d never dream of spending the night in a stranger’s house—but she knew perfectly well that a stranger as respectable as Conner Tarkington would never approach her door.
Still, his attempt at reassurance was endearing. And somehow, oddly satisfying. Because it showed that, at least on some inner level, he was as aware of her as she was of him.
Not that anything would come of such awareness, she reminded herself after phoning Shawna and canceling the request for a place to stay. A blue-blood lawyer would probably never look beyond the surface of a woman he viewed as a gold digger…and it wasn’t like she wanted him to! No matter how ruggedly attractive Conner Tarkington might be, no matter how unexpectedly nice he might be, she wasn’t letting herself wonder about him.
But as she put Emma to sleep in the blanket-padded bureau drawer on the floor beside her twin bed, she had to remind herself with increasing severity that she was not going to think about this man. About his intriguing combination of challenge and compassion. About the same compelling gaze and instinctive self-assurance that had drawn her to Kenny in the first place.
No, she wasn’t letting herself make such a mistake again. Ever. Because she now understood the danger in noticing the raw, elemental appeal of a man like that.
It had been far too easy to fall in love with a Tarkington.
And it had cost far too much.
Coffee.
He needed coffee.
Conner opened his eyes and felt a moment’s disorientation at the sight of the white stucco ceiling before remembering where he was. The Scottsdale vacation villa, right…which would explain why this room seemed so much lighter than the oak-paneled office where he’d woken up too often lately, before vowing to limit his workdays to twelve hours or less.
Still, there was always coffee in the kitchen at Weller-Tarkington-Craig, where the more ambitious junior partners arrived by dawn. And judging from the light on the ceiling, it had to be past dawn. More like—he blinked at the watch on his bedside table—seven-thirty in the morning?
God, had he really slept that late? There was no excuse for it, not on his first day of setting up The Bryan Foundation. Even though he’d pushed himself harder than usual these past few weeks, completing and reassigning cases to cover his leave until January fifteenth, sleeping until seven-thirty in the morning was unforgivable.
He’d better get that coffee fast.
It didn’t take long to shower, shave and dress for a day with no appointments, and by seven-forty Conner was heading for the kitchen—when the lusty squeal of a baby woke him more effectively than a jolt of caffeine.
A baby…?
Emma, he remembered.
And Lucy.
He found them in the living room, where Lucy was just bundling her daughter into a quilted carrier. “You must’ve been wiped out, to sleep through all the noise this morning,” she observed, picking up her own denim jacket with the same easy grace he remembered from last night. “Emma’s been up since five.”
Con vaguely remembered hearing an infant’s shrill cry sometime during the night, but the sound must have been absorbed into some dream. Still, it had made him wonder again why Kenny had chosen someone with a baby to keep him company during the Phoenix Open.
Although the baby couldn’t be more than a few weeks old, so she wouldn’t have been around at the time.
And Kenny had probably been dazzled by Lucy’s sparkling energy, which Conner had to admit was even more enticing after a full night’s sleep. This morning she wore her wild curls pulled severely off her face and a conservative white shirt tucked into khaki slacks, as if dressed for a job interview, but there was still no hiding her vibrant, vivid beauty.
“No kidding,” he muttered, wondering if she was seriously planning a job interview at this hour of the morning. “I guess you didn’t need coffee to wake up, huh?”
Lucy grinned apologetically as she shouldered the pink diaper bag resting on the table beside the front door. “There isn’t any coffee,” she told him. “I quit drinking it while I was pregnant, and the past week I’ve been getting it at the diner.”
Oh, hell. “Where’s the diner?”
“Emma and I were just on the way there,” she answered, which made him remember that she’d mentioned a weekday shift someplace. “The bus comes at eight, so—”
“I’ll take you,” Con offered, bracing himself for more time with the baby. “As long as I can get a cup of coffee there.”
Starting coffee was her first task of the day, Lucy assured him, because she had the place to herself for lunch setup until the owner arrived at nine. So within a remarkably short time he found himself at the polished plastic counter of an old-fashioned diner, taking his first, sustaining gulp from the thick white mug she handed him.
“You’re a lifesaver,” he told her as she poured another mug for herself and pulled a handful of flimsy paper placemats from under the counter. “I have to remember to pick up some coffee on the way home.”
“Next best thing to a baby when you need to wake up,” she agreed, deftly spreading placemats from the far end of the eight-seat counter to his side, where the baby carrier rested. “Isn’t it, Emmie?”
The baby responded with a perfectly timed coo, jubilantly waving her fists from the depths of her carrier. It was easier than he’d expected, Conner realized, watching Emma’s look of rapt attention—a wide-eyed fascination he hadn’t remembered from last night. “She’s a morning person, huh?”
“Yeah,” Lucy agreed, tweaking her daughter’s fist with a smile of pure enjoyment, “and I don’t know where she gets that.” She picked up her coffee, then rested the mug on the counter so she could look at both the baby and him as she took her first sip. “I’ve always been a night person, and her dad…” She shrugged, as if Emma’s dad was the type who had never watched a sunrise. “Well, you know Kenny.”
Kenny?
Conner almost choked on a mouthful of coffee. That piece of news, delivered so offhandedly that Lucy evidently viewed it as common knowledge, explained a lot. His brother’s abrupt departure for Asia, Lucy’s haunted look when she mentioned that Kenny had already paid her, and most of all the reason she’d been offered this house-sitting job in the first place. But for Kenny to install her in the family home and then just walk out…
“Does he know about Emma?” Con demanded.
Lucy’s eyes darkened with what looked like a flash of hurt. “I haven’t talked to him since March,” she answered flatly. She picked up the baby, who was still waving both fists, and cradled her gently against her shoulder without meeting Con’s gaze. “He didn’t want her, and I don’t want him involved.”
But if Kenny had said he didn’t want Emma, which wasn’t hard to believe, then he’d obviously known about the baby. And while it was bad enough to walk out on a woman, it was something else altogether to ignore a child.
You did the same thing, remember?
“Well,
