Baby for Keeps
Janice Maynard
A woman and baby walk into a bar…It might sound like a joke, but saloon owner Dylan Kavanagh knows it's all too serious. Struggling single mom Mia Larin needs him. She helped him when they were young, and the bachelor means to do everything in his power to protect Mia and her child. Giving her a job, a room under his own roof, is easy. Keeping it all about business isn't….Dylan is a successful, eligible catch, but are Mia's feelings just a case of hero worship? Or will she still need him, still want him, once her circumstances change?
“I need to go.”
Dylan had the good sense to look abashed. “Sorry. I didn’t see you standing there. Did you sleep well?”
The expression of every woman within earshot was the same. Shock. Dismay. Vested calculation.
Mia wanted to tell them not to worry, but it didn’t seem the time. She held out her arms for the baby. “I’ll take her. Thanks for dinner. I’m surprised to see you looking so comfortable and domesticated with a baby. Or was that nothing but an act for your groupies?”
His eyebrows rose to his hairline, but still he didn’t surrender the baby. “The little Mia I knew was never sarcastic.”
“The little Mia you knew wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I’m not a child anymore.”
He stared at her. Hard. The way a man stares at a woman. “No, you definitely are not.”
* * *
Baby for Keeps
is part of the No.1 bestselling miniseries from Mills & Boon
Desire™—Billionaires and Babies: Powerful men wrapped around their babies’ little fingers.
Baby for Keeps
Janice Maynard
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
JANICE MAYNARD is a USA TODAY bestselling author who lives in beautiful east Tennessee with her husband. She holds a BA from Emory and Henry College and an MA from East Tennessee State University. In 2002 Janice left a fifteen-year career as an elementary school teacher to pursue writing full-time. Now her first love is creating sexy, character-driven, contemporary romance stories.
Janice loves to travel and enjoys using those experiences as settings for books. Hearing from readers is one of the best perks of the job! Visit her website, www.janicemaynard.com (http://www.janicemaynard.com), and follow her on Facebook and Twitter.
I dedicate this book to children everywhere who think they are not smart. Don’t ever believe it! It’s a great big world out there. Follow your dreams … always!
Contents
Chapter One (#u16b98077-d24a-54cb-892e-1621659404a0)
Chapter Two (#udae83933-f8f7-563c-bede-260c332e852f)
Chapter Three (#uc31f26dc-35d9-512e-ae4d-06851219e558)
Chapter Four (#u8a738566-6972-516f-a6a4-7dc55813e224)
Chapter Five (#u41f84ac2-d343-5348-b464-8ef59e2a1fa2)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fifteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Sixteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seventeen (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
One
Saturday nights were always busy at the Silver Dollar Saloon. Dylan Kavanagh surveyed the crowd with a gaze that catalogued every detail. The newlyweds at table six. The habitual drunk who would soon have to be booted out. The kid who looked nervous enough to be contemplating the use of a fake ID.
Around the bar—a winding expanse of wood that dated back to the 1800s and had been rescued from a building in Colorado—the usual suspects ordered drinks and munched on peanuts. The tourists were easy to spot, not only because Dylan knew most of the locals, but because the out-of-towners scanned the room eagerly, hoping to spot celebrities.
Western North Carolina’s natural beauty drew people for many reasons. Families on vacation, for sure. But the state was also a hot spot for location scouts. Dylan’s home, the elegant town of Silver Glen, was no stranger to famous faces. Just last week one of Hollywood’s iconic directors had wrapped production on a civil-war picture.
Dylan shrugged inwardly. He had no interest at all in the famous or the infamous when it came to the world of filmmaking, no matter how many A-listers dropped by for a drink or a meal. Once burned, twice shy.
Suddenly, he realized that he had unconsciously been watching something that sent up a red flag. The woman at the other end of the bar was knocking back drinks at an alarming rate. He frowned, surprised that his head bartender, Rick, hadn’t already cut her off.
Working his way behind the bar, Dylan inched closer to Rick. Two other servers were helping out because things were so hectic. And that wasn’t counting the three waitresses handling food orders out on the floor.
When Dylan was in earshot of his employee, he tapped him on the shoulder and muttered, “You need to pull the plug on the lady in pink. She’s had enough, I think.” The woman exhibited an air of desperation that didn’t mix well with alcohol.
Rick grinned, his big hands busy filling drink orders. “Not to worry, Boss. She’s drinking virgin strawberry daiquiris.”
“Ah.” It was blisteringly hot outside, an airless summer evening that justified anyone having a cold one...or two or three. The AC was working very well in here right now, yet the woman swallowed her icy drinks with reckless precision. With a nod, Dylan moved away, aware that he was creating a traffic jam in the narrow space.
Rick, who was two decades his senior, cocked his head toward the door. “Go home, Boss. We got this.” The big, burly man with the country accent was perfectly suited to his job. And he was a pro. He and the rest of the staff didn’t need Dylan hovering and giving the impression he didn’t trust them.
But the truth was, Dylan loved the Silver Dollar. He’d bought it as a twenty-year-old kid, and after renovating the old building from the ground up, he’d opened what was to become one of Silver Glen’s most thriving businesses.
Dylan had been a wealthy man when he bought the bar. And if the place ever went belly-up, he’d be a rich man still. As one of the Kavanaghs, the family that put Silver Glen on the map back in the mid-twentieth century, Dylan could easily afford to spend his days and his dollars on idle living. But his mother, Maeve, had brought up all seven of her boys to respect the value of a hard day’s work.
That wasn’t why Dylan was hanging around the Silver Dollar on a Saturday night. He had put in plenty of hours this week. The reason was far more complex. This bar was proof—hard-core evidence—that he wasn’t a total failure in life. Despite his youthful stumbles, he had made something of himself.
He didn’t like thinking about his adolescence. Parts of it had been a nightmare. And the ugly reality that he was never going to match his older brother in academic achievement had tormented him right up until the day he admitted defeat and dropped out of college.
The truth was, he felt more like himself here at the saloon than most any other place. The Silver Dollar was laid-back, sometimes rowdy, and always interesting. It felt comfortable. Nobody here knew about his failings. No one, even the locals, seemed to remember that Dylan had been metaphorically voted “student most likely to be a bum.”
He’d absolutely hated not being able to master the required subjects in school, but he had masked his anger and frustration by building a reputation for insolence, irresponsibility and wild partying.
Only when he had found this old building disintegrating and in disrepair had he finally settled down and found his passion. Like the building, there was more to Dylan than met the eye. But he’d had to prove himself. So the Silver Dollar was more than a project. It was his personal declaration of independence.
Besides, Dylan was between relationships at the moment, and he’d rather be here mingling than sitting at home watching summer reruns. He was a people person, plain and simple. That brought him back to the puzzle of the woman in pink.
Ignore her. Rick was right. Dylan should go home. As much as he enjoyed spending time at the Silver Dollar, there was more to life than business. Before he departed, though, he knew he had to check on his unusual and intriguing customer. When the stool beside her became available, Dylan took it as a sign. He had Irish blood running in his veins. Sometimes the universe pointed toward a clear and obvious path.
It wasn’t strange to have a single lady drinking at the bar. But the ones who did were usually trolling for a pickup. This slight, harried-looking woman seemed to be encased in a bubble of solitude, her eyes focused on her drink. Quietly, he sat down to her left and only then saw what he hadn’t been able to see from his previous vantage point.
She was holding a baby.
An infant, to be exact. Cradled in the woman’s right arm, resting in her lap, was a tiny, sleeping child. A girl, if the little pink ribbon stuck to her one curl of dark hair was any indication.
Already regretting his impulse, Dylan assessed the situation instantly, realizing that more was at work here than a woman needing a drink. If he were smart, he would back away. His impulse to wade in and help people often went unappreciated, or even worse, blew up in his face.
When the woman didn’t so much as acknowledge his presence, even though they were sitting practically hip to hip, his gut told him to stand up and walk away. He would have. He should have. But just then the slender female plopped her glass on the bar, hiccupped and gave one of those little multiple-hitching sighs that said louder than words she had been crying, was about to cry or was trying not to cry.
Female tears scared the crap out of Dylan. He was no different than any other member of his sex in that regard. He had grown up without sisters, and the last time he saw his mother cry was at his dad’s funeral years ago. So the urge to run made complete sense.
But something held him in his seat. Some gut-deep, chivalrous desire to help. That, and the faint female scent that made him think of summer roses blooming in the gardens up at the Silver Beeches, his brother’s ritzy hotel on top of the mountain.
Still debating what he should say or do, he paused for another careful, sideways glance. His mystery lady was sitting down, so it was hard to gauge her height, but average was his best guess. She wore khaki pants and a pale pink, button-down shirt. Dark brown hair pulled back in a ragged ponytail revealed her delicate profile and a pointed chin with a bit of a stubborn tilt.
Something about her was very familiar, perhaps because she reminded him of the actress Zooey Deschanel, only without the smile or the joie de vivre. The woman at Dylan’s side was the picture of exhaustion. Her left hand no longer held a drink, but even at rest, it fisted on the bar. No wedding ring. That, however, could mean anything.
Stand up. Walk away.
His subconscious tried to help him, it really did. But sometimes a man had to do what a man had to do. Grimacing inwardly, he leaned a bit closer to be heard over the music and the high-decibel conversations surrounding them. “Excuse me, ma’am. I’m Dylan Kavanagh, the owner here. Are you okay? Is there anything I can do to help?”
* * *
If Mia hadn’t been holding her daughter, Cora, so tightly, she might have dropped the sleeping baby. The shock of hearing Dylan’s voice after so many years burned through her stupor of despair and fatigue and ripped at her nerve endings. She had walked into the Silver Dollar because she heard he was the owner and because she was curious about how things had turned out for him. She hadn’t really expected him to be here.
Looking up, she bit her lip. “Hello, Dylan. It’s me. Mia. Mia Larin.”
The poleaxed look that crossed his face wasn’t flattering. Only a blind woman could have missed the mix of emotions that was a long way from “Great to see you.” He recovered quickly, though. “Good Lord. Mia Larin. What brings you back to Silver Glen?”
It was a reasonable question. She hadn’t lived here since the year she and Dylan graduated from high school. He had been eighteen and full of piss and vinegar. She had been sixteen and scared of what lay ahead. She’d also been a social misfit with an IQ near 170 and little else to commend her. While she was in graduate school, her parents had sold the family home and retired to the Gulf Coast, thus severing her last connection to Silver Glen.
She shrugged, feeling her throat close up at the memories. “I don’t really know. Nostalgia, I guess. How are you doing?”
It was a stupid question. She could see how he was doing. The boy with the skinny, rangy frame had filled out, matured, taken a second helping of tall, dark and gorgeous. His warm, whiskey-brown eyes locked on hers and made her stomach do a free fall, even though she was sitting down.
Broad shoulders and a headful of thick, golden-chestnut hair, along with a hard, muscled body added up to a man who oozed masculinity. She wondered if he was still as much of a badass as he had been as a teenager. Back then his aim in life seemed to be seeking out trouble.
He was the first boy she’d ever had as a friend, the only boy who had ever kissed her, until she got out of college. And here he was, looking too damned appealing for his own good.
Dylan grinned, the flash of his smile a blow to her already damaged heart. In an instant, she was back in school, heartsick with a desperate crush that was laced with the knowledge she had as much chance of ever becoming Dylan Kavanagh’s girlfriend as she did of being voted Homecoming Queen.
He raised a hand, and at some unseen signal, the bartender brought him a club soda with lime. Dylan took a drink, set down his glass and flicked the end of her ponytail. “You’ve grown up.”
The three laconic words held equal measures of surprise and male interest. Her stupid heart responded with adolescent pleasure despite the fact that she was now past thirty, held two doctoral degrees and, as of twelve weeks ago, had become a mother.
“So have you.” Though it galled her to admit it, she couldn’t hold his gaze. She was no longer the painfully shy girl she had been when he knew her before, but even the most confident of women would have to admit that Dylan Kavanagh was a bit overwhelming at close range.
He toyed with the straw in his glass, not bothering to disguise his curiosity as he looked down at Cora. The baby, bless her heart, was sleeping blissfully. It was only at two in the morning that she usually showed any aversion to slumber.
“So you have a child,” he said.
“What tipped you off, smart guy?”
He winced.
Appalled, she realized that her careless comment must have sounded like a reference to the past. She’d tutored him because he had dyslexia. As a senior, Dylan had hated being forced to take help from a classmate, especially one who had skipped two grades and was only fifteen. The pride of a cocky teenage boy had taken a beating at having Mia witness his inability to read and master English textbooks and novels.
“That’s not what I meant,” she said quickly. “I’m sorry. I’m a little self-conscious about having a baby and not being married. My parents are adjusting, but they don’t like it.”
“So where’s the kid’s dad?” Dylan seemed to have forgiven Mia for her awkward comment. His eyes registered more than a passing interest in the answer to his question as he waited.
“I’m not really prepared to go into that.”
The man on her right reared back in raucous laughter and jostled her roughly. Mia cuddled Cora more tightly, realizing that a bar was the last place in the world she should have brought her infant daughter.
Dylan must have come to the same conclusion, because he put a hand on her arm and smiled persuasively. “We can’t talk here. Let’s go upstairs and get comfortable. It used to be my bookkeeper’s apartment, but she moved out last Tuesday.”
Mia allowed him to help her to her feet. Grabbing the diaper bag she’d propped on the foot rail, she slung it over her shoulder. “That would be nice.” For a woman with a genius IQ, she probably should have been able to come up with a better adjective. But this encounter seemed surreal. Her social skills were rusty at best. Given the fact that she hadn’t slept a full night since Cora had been born, it was no wonder nice was the best she could do..
“Follow me.” Dylan led her across the restaurant floor to a hallway at the back of the building. The steep, narrow staircase at the end was dimly lit.
He insisted on taking the diaper bag and would have taken Cora as well, but Mia clutched her tightly. “I can carry her.” She trailed in his wake as they ascended, trying not to ogle his tight butt packaged nicely in well-washed jeans.
She knew the man in front of her was a millionaire several times over. Yet somehow, he had the knack of appearing to be just one of the guys. It was a talent she had envied in high school. Mia hadn’t fit in with any crowd or clique. Shy and serious, she had been all but ostracized by her classmates who were two years or more ahead of her in adolescence.
On the landing, Dylan paused, giving her a chance to catch up. “The area to our left is storage. As I said, this apartment up here was my bookkeeper’s. But she got engaged and moved across the country. You can imagine what a mess I’ve made of things. I need to hire somebody soon or I’ll have the IRS on my back for not paying my quarterly taxes.”
He opened the nearest door and ushered her inside. Mia looked around with interest. They stood in a good-size living area furnished with a sofa, loveseat and two chairs upholstered in a navy-and-taupe print. The neutral rug was clean but unexceptional. Faded patches on the walls indicated where pictures had hung. “How long was she with you?”
Dylan dropped the diaper bag on a chair. “Nearly since the beginning. Her first husband died and left her with almost nothing. So this job was a godsend both for her and for me. But a couple of months ago, she met a trucker downstairs, and the rest is history.”
Mia sank onto the sofa with a sigh and laid Cora beside her. The baby didn’t stir. “Life is full of surprises.”
He sprawled in a chair at her elbow. “It sure as hell is. You remember my brother Liam?”
“Of course I do. He always scared me a little bit. So serious and intimidating.”
“He’s loosened up a lot since he met Zoe. She’s his new wife. You should meet her. The two of you would probably get along.”
“Really? Why?”
Obviously his throwaway statement was meant to be rhetorical, because he hesitated. “Oh, you know. Girl stuff...”
Her face flushed. This was always her problem. She had never mastered the art of careless chitchat. Fussing with Cora’s blanket for a moment gave her a chance to look away. She should probably go. But she’d made such a complete and total mess of her life, she was deeply grateful to have an excuse to focus on someone other than herself for a moment. Gathering her composure, she leaned back and gave Dylan a pleasant smile. “Well, other than your brother’s marriage, what’s been going on in Silver Glen since I’ve been gone?”
* * *
Dylan propped an ankle on the other knee and tucked his hands behind his head. “Have you had dinner?” It wasn’t an answer to Mia’s question, but he was starving.
“No. Not really. But you don’t have to feed me.”
“It’s on the house. For old time’s sake.” He pulled out his cell phone and sent a text to the kitchen. “They’ll bring something up as soon as they can.”
“Sounds good.” Mia’s smile was shy. He remembered the slight duck of her head and the curve of soft pink lips when something pleased her. Not that pleasing Mia had been Dylan’s forte. He’d resented like hell the fact that he had to take help from a fifteen-year-old kid. And truth be told, he had probably made Mia’s life a misery more often than not.
“Why did you do it?” he asked. The question tumbled out. He hadn’t even known he was going to ask it.
A slight frown creased her forehead. “Do what?”
“Tutor me.” His face was somber.
“Wow, Dylan. It’s taken you this long to ask that question?”
He shrugged, making her more aware than ever of the breadth of his shoulders. “I was busy before.”
“You were, at that,” she agreed. “Football, basketball, dating hot girls.”
“You noticed?”
“I noticed everything,” she said flatly. “I had the worst crush on you.”
He blanched, remembering all his careless cruelties to her. Even though in private he’d been pathetically grateful when she helped him make sense of a Shakespeare play, in public he had shunned her...or made jokes about her. Even at the time, with all the cluelessness of an adolescent boy, he’d known he was hurting her.
But maintaining his image as a badass had been his one and only goal. While some of his classmates were getting scholarship offers from Duke or the University of North Carolina, Dylan had struggled to pretend he didn’t care. College was stupid and unnecessary. He’d said it enough times that he almost believed it. But when he slunk off to community college and couldn’t even make passing grades there, his humiliation was complete.
“I owe you about a million apologies,” he said, his mouth twisting in a grimace of regret. “You tried so hard to help me.”
“I might point out that you did pass senior English.”
“True. And without cheating, if you remember.”
“You wrote an essay about why Romeo and Juliet was such an unbelievable story.”
“Well, it was,” he protested. “What kind of idiot takes poison when he could have kidnapped the girl and run away to Vegas?”
Mia chuckled, the laughter erasing her air of exhaustion and making her look more like the girl he’d known in high school. “It wasn’t your fault, Dylan. The problems you had. Someone should have diagnosed you in elementary school, and your educational career would have been entirely different.”
“You can’t blame them too much. I did a damned good job of pretending that I was lazy and unmotivated.”
“You may have fooled a lot of people, but you never fooled me.”
Two
Dylan’s wry smile and self-deprecating assessment made Mia’s heart hurt. Dyslexia was no minor roadblock. Mia knew that Dylan had scored above average on intelligence tests. When it came to creating ideas and working with people, he far outstripped her in ability. Dylan was smart and gifted. Unfortunately, his talents didn’t align with the way traditional education evaluated achievement.
She circled back to his earlier question. “You asked me why I tutored you.”
“Well, why did you?”
“I suppose it was for lots of reasons. For one thing, the teacher asked me to. And for another, I was no different than any other girl at Silver Glen High. I wanted to spend time with you.”
He rubbed his jaw. “Is that all?”
“No.” Time for brutal honesty. “I wanted you to succeed. And I thought I could help. No matter how hard you tried to pretend differently, I knew you hated feeling—”
“Stupid,” he interjected with some heat. “The word you’re looking for is stupid.”
She stared at him, taken aback that his intelligence still seemed to be a sore spot for him. “Good grief, Dylan. You’re a successful, respected businessman. You work for a living even though you don’t have to. You’ve made the Silver Dollar Saloon into something special. Why does it matter now that you struggled in school? We’re not kids anymore. You’ve more than proven your capabilities.”
His jaw clenched, his eyes stormy, though somehow she knew his agitation was not directed at her. “And what about you, Mia? What do you do?”
“I’m a medical researcher. Over in the Raleigh/Durham area. My team has been working to prove that the standard series of childhood vaccines is safe for everyone.”
“And I sell beer for a living.”
“Don’t be flip,” she said, her temper starting to rise. “It’s not a competition.”
“Of course not. I was never competition for you. How many languages do you speak?”
His sarcasm nicked her in ways she couldn’t explain. She hadn’t asked to be smart. In fact, there had been many days in her life when she would have given almost anything to be the epitome of a dumb blonde joke. She glanced at Cora, who was still sleeping peacefully.
“I should go,” she said quietly. “I didn’t mean to stir up the past. It was nice seeing you again.” A chill of disappointment clenched her heart and brought back unpleasant memories of being out of step with the world.
She and Dylan stood at the same moment.
His face registered consternation and shame. “Don’t leave. I’m being an ass. It’s not your fault you’re a genius.”
“I’m a woman,” she said flatly. “And will it make you feel better to know that I’ve made an absolute mess of my life?” Her voice broke on the last word. Tears she had worked so hard to keep at bay for the past several hours burst forth in an unattractive sobbing mess.
Inside her chest, a great gaping hole filled with uncertainty and fear made it hard to breathe. She didn’t feel smart at all. What she really felt was panicked and desperate.
She put her hands over her face, mortified that Dylan was here to witness her inevitable meltdown.
Without warning, she felt his warm hands on her shoulders. “Sit down, Mia. Everything’s going to be all right.”
“You don’t know that,” she said, sniffling and, as usual, without a tissue.
“Here. Take this.” The pristine square of white cotton he pulled from his back pocket was still warm from his body. She blew her nose and wiped her eyes, feeling hollow and shaky.
Dylan tugged her down beside him on the sofa, both of them glancing at Cora automatically to make sure she was in no danger. The baby was oblivious. “Don’t worry,” she said, trying to laugh. “I’m not going to have a nervous breakdown.”
He grinned, revealing the slightest hint of a dimple. “Why don’t you tell me what’s going on?”
“It’s a long story.”
“I’ve got all night.”
The genuine concern in his eyes disarmed her, despite her embarrassment. It couldn’t hurt to have an impartial opinion. She was at a crossroads, and perhaps she was too close to the situation and too sleep-deprived to make a rational decision.
“Okay,” she said. “You asked for it.”
“Start at the beginning.” He stretched a muscular arm along the back of the sofa, making her uncomfortably aware of his masculine scent and closeness. His khaki slacks and navy knit polo shirt with the bar’s name embroidered on the chest fit him in a way that emphasized everything about him that was male.
Her hands shook, so she clasped them in her lap. “After I turned twenty-nine, I realized that I wanted a baby. A cliché, I know, but my biological clock was ticking so loudly, I couldn’t ignore it.”
“Did the man in your life agree?”
“There was no man at that moment. Well, there was one. For about fifteen minutes. But we were a terrible match, and thankfully we both recognized it before we did anything irrevocable.”
“So who did you have in mind for a daddy?”
“Nobody,” she said simply. “I was well educated and financially secure. I decided that I could raise a child on my own.” She couldn’t fault the skepticism she saw on his face. In retrospect, she had been both naive and overly confident in her abilities.
“There’s still the matter of sperm.”
His droll comment made her cheeks heat again. “Well, of course, but I had that all figured out. As part of the scientific community in Raleigh, I possessed a working knowledge of what was going on in most of our experimental labs. And of course, fertility research was and still is a majorly funded arm of study.”
“Still no sperm.”
“I’m getting there. Once I found a doctor and a facility that I trusted, I had all the initial tests to see if I was healthy and ovulating well.”
“And were you?”
“Definitely. So I knew the timing was right. Then all I had to do was visit a sperm bank and select the proper donor.”
“Who, I’m assuming, would be a doctoral student with intellectual capabilities matching your own.”
He was entirely serious.
She shook her head vehemently. “No. Not even close. I would never do that to a child of mine. I wanted a normal baby.”
“Good Lord, Mia. You mean to tell me you deliberately tried to make little Cora less smart than her mother?” The baffled shock on his face gave her a moment’s pause.
“I wouldn’t say that.” She heard the defensiveness in her words and winced inwardly. “But I selected a candidate who was a blue-collar worker with average intelligence.”
“Why?”
“I wanted her to have a happy life.”
* * *
Dylan honestly didn’t know what to say. I wanted her to have a happy life. Those eight words, quietly spoken, told him more about Mia than if he’d had her résumé in front of him. For the first time, he understood that even if his school career had been painful and difficult, Mia’s had also, but in an entirely different way.
The knock on the door saved him from having to respond to that last, heart-wrenching statement. Soon he and Mia were enjoying appetizers and burgers. Based on the drinks she had ordered downstairs, he avoided anything alcoholic and instead opted for Cokes to accompany their meal.
Mia ate like she hadn’t eaten in a week. “This food is amazing,” she said. “Thank you so much. I’ve been living off frozen dinners and frozen pizza for days. My mom helped out for the first week and a half, but the baby exhausted her, so I finally encouraged her to go home.”
He lifted an eyebrow, helping himself to another handful of French fries. “You’ve left me hanging,” he said. “Finish your story, please.”
“I was hoping you’d lost interest. The whole sorry tale doesn’t put me in a very good light.”
When she wiped a dab of ketchup from her lower lip, to his surprise, he felt a little zing that was a lot like sexual interest. Squashing that thought, he leaned back in his chair. “I’m all ears.”
Mia was slender and graceful. Though she wore neither makeup nor jewelry, she carried herself with an inherent femininity. Back in high school, he had kissed her once upon a time, more out of curiosity than anything else. The heat had surprised and alarmed him. He needed Mia’s help with schoolwork. He couldn’t afford to alienate her, just because his teenage libido was revving on all cylinders.
Now, thinking back to how he had perceived the fifteen-year-old Mia, he wondered what had attracted him. She’d been quiet and timid, although she had managed to stand up to him on more than one occasion when he tried to blow off a project or an assignment.
Her looks and figure had been nothing spectacular in the eyes of a teenage boy. Mia had been on the cusp of womanhood, with no breasts to speak of, and a body that was still girlish despite her maturity in other ways. Yet something about her had appealed to him. In all of their interactions, she had never once made fun of his ineptitude, nor had she patronized him.
Now, from the vantage point of adulthood, he marveled that she had put up with his arrogance and antagonism. Though eventually they had become friends, for weeks at the beginning of their relationship he had acted like a total jerk. And an ungrateful jerk at that.
He kept silent, counting on the fact that she would eventually talk to him if he didn’t push.
Mia finished the last swallow of her drink, stacked her dishes neatly and curled her legs beneath her. “The thing is,” she said, wrinkling her nose as if about to confess to a crime, “artificial insemination is expensive. I assumed, quite erroneously, that since I was young and healthy I would get pregnant the first time.”
“But you didn’t.”
“No. And every month when I got my period, I cried.”
“Why was it so important to you?”
She blinked, her expression one of shock, as though no one had ever dared ask her that question. “I wanted someone of my own to love. You may not remember, but my folks were older parents. They had me when my mom was forty-three. So though I love them very much, I understood why they wanted to retire and move south. Even when we lived in the same state, we didn’t see that much of each other.”
“Why not?”
She hesitated. “They were proud because I was smart, but they had no idea what to do with me. Once I was out on my own, the gulf widened. I’m sure part of it was my fault. I never quite understood how to talk to them about my work. And besides...”
“Go on.”
“I found out when I was a teenager that my parents had never really wanted children. It was a Pandora’s box kind of thing. I read one of my mom’s journals. Turns out that when I was conceived, my mother was going through menopause and thought she couldn’t get pregnant. So I was an unwelcome surprise in more ways than one. They did the best they could. I’m grateful for that.”
Dylan thought of his big, close-knit, sometimes rowdy family. And of the way his mother cherished and coddled each of her sons though they were now grown men. They all had their moments of discord, of course. What family didn’t? But he couldn’t imagine a life where his brothers and his mom weren’t an integral part of who he was. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly. “That must have hurt.”
Mia shrugged. “Anyway, you asked why the baby was so important. The truth is, I wanted someone to love who would love me back. I wanted a family of my own.” She laid a hand gently on the baby’s blanket. “It took eight tries, but when the doctor told me I was pregnant, it was the most wonderful day of my life.”
Since Dylan had witnessed her tears not so long ago, he surmised that the euphoria hadn’t lasted. “Was the pregnancy difficult?”
“Oh, no. Not at all.”
“And did people ask questions?”
“My staff was actually fairly small. And we each worked on a particular aspect of the project. So we were more like professional acquaintances than the kind of deeper connections you sometimes make in an office environment. My friend Janette knew the truth. Frankly, she thought it was a bad idea all along...tried to talk me out of it more than once. But she was supportive once I actually became pregnant. She even went with me to childbirth classes and stayed with me at the hospital when Cora was born.”
“So what went wrong? Why did you come back to Silver Glen and walk into my bar?”
She leaned her head against the back of the sofa, her gaze bleak. “A dreadful domino of events. My job paid well, and I had a healthy savings portfolio. But I drained all of it trying to get pregnant. Even that didn’t seem so irresponsible, because I knew that I could live on a strict budget and build up my savings again. Only I hadn’t counted on the fickle finger of fate.”
“Meaning?”
“While I was on maternity leave, the funding for my research and my lab was eliminated. Big-time budget cuts. So now I had a brand-new baby and no job. And, as a wonderful dollop of icing on the cake, my roommate with whom I rented a condo decided to move in with her boyfriend.”
He leaned forward and rested his hands on his knees, smiling at her with an abundance of sympathy. “That sucks.”
She managed a somewhat teary chuckle. “I probably wouldn’t be such a basket case if little Cora here slept at night. But no matter how many books I read and how many theories I try, all she wants to do is snooze during the day and play all night.”
“I don’t blame her. That’s my M.O. sometimes.”
His droll humor made her smile, when the last thing she felt like doing was smiling. She remembered that about him. Dylan was always the life of the party. He could rally a crowd around a cause, and best of all, he wasn’t moody. Some guys like him, i.e. rich and handsome, were egotists. But Dylan was the opposite.
He’d spent his high school years trying to prove that he was one of the gang. No one special.
She felt embarrassed suddenly. He must think she was a total nutcase. It was time to go. But just as she was gathering herself to depart, little Cora stirred and cried out.
Dylan’s face softened as he focused on the tiny hands that flailed above the edge of the blanket. “Somebody is about to get mad.”
“I need to feed her.”
“Do you have baby food with you? I can send one of the staff to the store to get some.”
“Um...no...thanks. I need to feed her. You know...nurse her.”
His neck turned red. She could swear his gaze brushed across her breasts before landing somewhere on the far wall. “Of course. No problem. There’s a comfy chair in the bedroom. Will that work?”
“That would be perfect.” She rummaged in the bag for a clean diaper and a pack of baby wipes, conscious that he noted her every move. “I won’t be too long. But don’t feel like you have to entertain me. It’s been fun catching up. I’ll leave when I’m done.”
He stood when she did, watching intently as she scooped Cora into her arms and bounced her so the baby’s displeasure didn’t escalate into a full-blown crying fit. Fortunately, Cora settled down and even smiled.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” Dylan said. “I don’t want you to rush off. In fact, I’d love to hold Cora for a little while when you’re done. Would you mind?”
She gaped at him. Big, brawny Dylan Kavanagh wanted to hold a baby? The thought sent a warm curl of something humming in the pit of her stomach. What was it about men and babies that made women go all gooey inside? “Of course I don’t mind. But don’t you have things to do?”
He tucked his hands in his back pockets and shook his head, his face alight with mischief. “Are you kidding? Mia Larin has come back to town all grown up. This is the most interesting encounter I’ve had in a month. Go feed the little one. I’ll be here when you get back.”
Three
Dylan watched Mia walk into the bedroom and push the door closed, though the latch didn’t click shut. His brain whirled with a dozen thoughts and emotions as he wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t sat down beside her at the bar. Would Mia have taken the baby back out to the car and driven away?
The thought made him uneasy. Had she sought him out on purpose, or was their meeting an accident?
He paced the room, wondering how long it took a woman to nurse a baby. Thinking about Mia baring her breasts and feeding her child was not wise. He had the weirdest urge to go in there and watch. Such a normal, human activity shouldn’t affect him so strongly. Maybe it was because in his memories Mia was little more than a young girl herself.
Women were always at a disadvantage when it came to child rearing. It was all well and good to say a mother could have everything—career and family life. But it required a hell of a lot of juggling and tag-team parenting to make it work. Dylan’s mother, when widowed long ago with seven boys, had leaned on her eldest son, Liam, to help carry the load.
Mia had no one.
Dylan could have gone back downstairs for a few minutes. He could have turned on the television. He could have sat down and relaxed after a long day. But instead, he paced. Things he didn’t even know he remembered came rushing back from his subconscious. The way young Mia had chewed on the ends of her erasers. The little huffing sound of exasperation she made when she thought Dylan wasn’t trying hard enough. The small frown that appeared between her eyebrows when she concentrated.
Oddly enough, he had found the eraser thing endearing. It made her seem human. Most of the time Mia’s grasp of the kind of books that befuddled Dylan either baffled him or angered him or embarrassed him. As an adult, he understood that his academic difficulties were the result of a very specific problem. But he still reacted to the memories with an inward wince that told him he had a chip on his shoulder, even now.
Without thinking about what he was doing, he worked his way toward the bedroom door. Because the door didn’t latch and because it was old and not level, the crack between the door and the frame had gradually widened. Dylan stood mesmerized, seeing only a slice of the room beyond. But it was enough to witness the quiet radiance on Mia’s face. The way she looked at her baby made his chest tighten.
He rested a hand on the doorframe, swallowing hard as he realized that one of Mia’s breasts was bare. He couldn’t really see all that much from his vantage point. Spying on her was unforgiveable. But he couldn’t look away from the picture of mother and child. The entire world was made up of moments like these, day after day.
For Dylan, however, it was brand-new. Witnessing it wrenched something inside his chest. Seeing Liam with Zoe these past few months had made Dylan vulnerable somehow...as if he couldn’t help but wonder whether he would ever want that kind of tie...that kind of bond.
As Mia buttoned her blouse, he retreated hurriedly. By the time she walked into the living room, he was leafing through a magazine that had been left behind. He looked up and smiled. “Is her tummy full?”
“It is indeed. She’s very happy at the moment if you were serious about holding her.”
“Of course I was.” As he took the baby from Mia, his hand brushed her chest inadvertently. He was a grown man. It shouldn’t have embarrassed him. But all he could think about was the curve of Mia’s breast as she offered it to this infant. He turned away so he could hide the fact that he was flustered. “She’s beautiful.”
“I think so, but I suppose I’m prejudiced.”
In his peripheral vision he saw Mia sit down on the sofa again. He circled the room slowly, singing nonsense songs, crooning bits of nursery rhymes he remembered from his childhood. He could swear that Cora’s big, dark eyes, so like her mother’s, focused on his face.
Half turning, he spoke softly. “She’s going to be a charmer. I think she’s flirting with me.” When there was no response from Mia, he looked over his shoulder. She was curled up on the sofa, her cheek pillowed on one hand. Apparently she had plopped down and simply gone to sleep. Instantly.
He shook his head at Cora. “You’re going to have to give Mommy a break, little one. She’s worn out.”
Debating his options, he decided to sneak downstairs and let Mia rest. The town had declared all public buildings no-smoking zones last year, so there would be nothing to harm the baby. And besides, Mia had been the one to bring her child into the bar. Surely she wouldn’t mind.
* * *
Mia awoke slowly, completely disoriented. Had Cora cried out? She listened for a moment, and then in a blinding rush of recollection she realized where she was. But as she sat up and glanced around, she noted that her daughter and Dylan were nowhere to be found.
Telling herself there was no need to panic, she scrubbed her hands over her face and tried to shake off the feeling of being drugged. The nap had helped, but it wasn’t the same as a full night’s sleep. She stood up and stretched.
Grabbing her things, she smoothed her shirt and her hair and walked downstairs. The bar was still noisy and busy. When she actually looked at her watch, she groaned. It was after midnight. She found Dylan seated in a booth playing patty-cake with her baby. Standing two deep at his elbow was a group of fawning women. Now this was the Dylan she remembered. She wasn’t sure, however, that she appreciated his using her baby as entertainment for his admirers.
Behind the bar, the big man who had poured her drinks earlier sketched a wave as he continued serving customers. Good heavens, what must Dylan’s employees think of Mia’s presence? Of Cora’s?
Screwing up her courage, she edged toward the booth. Though she was no longer a social disaster, approaching a cluster of strangers still wasn’t easy for her. She cleared her throat to attract Dylan’s attention. “I need to go,” she said.
Dylan had the good sense to look abashed. “Sorry. I didn’t see you standing there. Did you sleep well?”
The expression of every woman in earshot was the same. Shock. Dismay. Vested calculation.
Mia wanted to tell them not to worry, but it didn’t seem the time. She held out her arms for Cora. “I’ll take her. Thanks for dinner.”
As Dylan wiggled his way out of the booth, his entourage melted away. He moved closer to Mia, forcing the two of them into an intimate circle. “Don’t be in such a damned hurry.”
She put her hands over Cora’s ears, scowling. “Watch your mouth. I’m surprised to see you looking so comfortable and domesticated with Cora. Or was that nothing but an act for your groupies?”
His eyebrows rose to his hairline, but still he didn’t surrender the baby. “The little Mia I knew was never sarcastic.”
“The little Mia you knew wouldn’t say boo to a goose. I’m not a child anymore.”
He stared at her. Hard. The way a man stares at a woman. “No, you definitely are not.”
It appeared that the man flirted indiscriminately, because she knew for a fact that he had no interest in her. “Give me my child.”
Holding Cora even more tightly, he nodded his head toward the back. “I’ve got a closet-size office back there. Give me fifteen minutes. Then if you want to go, I won’t stop you.”
She was confused and tired and more than a little depressed. But short of wrestling him to the ground and making a scene, it appeared she had no choice. “Fine. Fifteen minutes.”
Dylan’s office was a wreck. He must have been telling the truth about his bookkeeper, because there was easily a week’s worth of receipts and purchase orders stacked haphazardly across the surface of the scarred oak table he used as a desk. Still holding Cora, he motioned Mia into one of two chairs in the small space. “I have a proposition for you.”
“You must be hard up if you’re propositioning a nursing mom with a bad haircut and legs that haven’t been shaved in two weeks.”
This time she definitely saw him wince. “You used to be a lot sweeter, Mia Larin.”
“I’m a mom now. I can’t be a pushover. Are you ever going to give her back to me?”
He kissed the top of Cora’s downy head. “You forget that I have five brothers younger than me. I’ve changed more than my share of diapers over the years.”
“But not recently.”
“No. Not recently.”
If he had an agenda for this awkward meeting, he was taking his good easy time getting to the point. “What do you want from me, Dylan?”
His smile could have charmed the bloomers off an old-maid schoolteacher. “I want to offer you a job.”
“Doing what?”
He waved a hand at the mess. “Being my new bookkeeper.”
“That’s absurd. I’m not an accountant.”
He propped a hip against the table, forcing her to look at all the places his jeans were soft and worn. “You’re a genius,” he said, the words oddly inflected. “Keeping the books for the Silver Dollar Saloon isn’t exactly rocket science.”
“I don’t need you to bail me out, Dylan. But thanks for the offer.” Watching him absently stroke her daughter’s hair undermined her hurry to leave. Dylan was big and strong and unabashedly masculine. But his hands held Cora gently.
“We’d be helping each other,” he insisted. “The job comes with room and board. Or at least until you get tired of the food downstairs. I live five miles away, so you don’t have to worry about me getting underfoot. There’s an alarm system. You would be perfectly safe alone here when we’re closed. I know the bar gets pretty noisy at times, but a fan or a sound machine would probably do the trick. The insulation between the floors is actually pretty good.”
“Why are you doing this?”
“You need some time to regroup. I need a bookkeeper. You won’t have to worry about day care. Cora is welcome here always. And with a salary coming in—though I’m sure it’s not even in the ballpark of what you were making in your field— you’ll be comfortable and settled while you look for a new position.”
It was a testament to her desperation that she considered it. Her résumé would have to be updated before she could job hunt. And the thought of spending more time with Cora was irresistible. Doing Dylan’s books could be handled while Cora napped. But still she wasn’t satisfied.
Shaking her head, she studied his face. “You can’t tell me that you offer jobs to every hard-luck case who walks through the door. Why me? Why now?”
“I think you know why,” he said quietly, meeting her gaze squarely. “I owe you more than I can ever repay. I’m sorry that I was a stupid teenage boy too proud to acknowledge what you were doing for me. But I’m saying it now. Thank you, Mia. For everything. The job is real. Please let me do this for you. It would mean a lot to me.”
“You’re serious? It was a long time ago, Dylan. And I liked tutoring you. You don’t owe me anything.”
“Then do it for Cora. Before you lost your job, you would have had to go back to work soon. Now you have a chance to spend several more weeks with her. Isn’t that enough to make you say yes?”
* * *
Forty-five minutes later, Mia found herself checking into a hot, musty, generic motel room out at the interstate. Dylan had tried hard to get her to spend the night upstairs above the bar. But she needed some space and distance to weigh the pros and cons of his unexpected offer. He had the uncanny ability to make people see things his way. She wanted to be sure she was considering all the aspects of his proposal before she gave him an answer.
The pluses were obvious. Time with her daughter. An immediate paycheck. No need to look for a new place to live when her lease ran out in a week. And it wasn’t as if she had a lot of other appealing choices. She would get a job in the Raleigh/Durham area eventually, once she found another lab looking for her set of skills. If she were lucky, the employer might even offer on-site, discounted day care. She knew of several companies that did so. But tracking down such a position would take time—time when she wasn’t bringing in money and didn’t have a place to live.
Or if she agreed to work for Dylan, she would have a roof over her head, food to eat and more time with Cora while she looked for employment in her field. Only a fool would say no—right?
Then why was she hesitating?
It all came down to Dylan. It was one thing for a young girl to have a crush on a popular senior jock. That was practically a rite of passage. But as Dylan had pointed out, Mia was all grown up. And her reactions to the equally grown-up Dylan were alarming.
The times she had tried dating in her adult life had been either disastrous or disappointing. Until she walked through the doors of the Silver Dollar Saloon, she had honestly thought she didn’t have much of an interest in sex or men. But coming face-to-face with Dylan exposed the lie she had told herself for years.
Dylan wasn’t a high school crush. He was the boy, now the man, who had made her aware of her sexual self. His masculine strength and power made her feel intensely female. In every other area of her life, people looked at her as a brain first and foremost.
She did valuable work. She knew that. Her intelligence had led her to projects and challenges that were exciting and fulfilling. But sometimes it felt that she could have just as easily been a robot. No one cared that she had emotions or, heaven forbid, needs.
That wasn’t entirely fair. Janette was a dear friend. And Janette was the one who’d introduced Mia to Howard, the botany professor who dated Mia for six months, courted her circumspectly and eventually shared her bed. Their relationship had been comfortable and undemanding, laden with pleasant conversation as well as shared interests and backgrounds.
But in the end, the absence of sparks between them meant a sad, inevitable breakup due to lack of sizzle.
With Dylan, there was plenty of sizzle—an entire forest fire of sizzle. Not necessarily on his part, but definitely on Mia’s. All she had to do was look at him and she remembered exactly how she had felt as a girl of fifteen. Perhaps the tutoring had erased some boundaries between them. Or maybe because they had kept their relationship secret, it had felt safe to her. But whatever the reason, Dylan was the only male to make her feel this way.
Discovering that truth was disheartening. If she had let a teenage crush spoil her for other men, she was doomed to a single, celibate life. On the other hand, maybe she could make her obsession work for her, not against her. A hefty dose of exposure to the mature Dylan could prove to her that the boy she had idolized was just a guy like any other. She could flirt with him, maybe even sleep with him, and then go on her way.
She tucked Cora into the portable crib and sighed with relief when the baby actually curled into a ball and went still. Cora had fallen asleep on the ride over, but Mia had anticipated another long night of being up and down with her. Maybe Dylan had worn her daughter out.
Showering and changing as quietly as she could, Mia crawled into bed and yawned. She had promised Dylan an answer tomorrow. He had given her both the bar’s number and his cell-phone number. But now she had more to think about. Her limbs felt restless and her body heavy. If she stayed in Silver Glen for six weeks, or maybe eight, however long it took to find another position suited to her skills and experience, would that be long enough to get Dylan out of her system?
Merely the thought of it made her breath catch and her thighs clench.
Janette hailed from Silver Glen as well. Though she was older than Mia, their hometown connection was what led them to become friends in Raleigh. Janette kept up with several family members in Silver Glen, and it had been a source of hot gossip when Dylan’s engagement to a young starlet ended abruptly a few years ago.
As far as Mia knew, Dylan had played the field since. If there was no one special in his life, she wouldn’t have to feel guilty about using him for her own personal entertainment.
Maybe if she could work up the courage to let him know what she wanted, they could have a mutually satisfying sexual relationship, and then as soon as Mia got a job, she and Cora would move back to Raleigh.
Cora was sleeping, but Mia was not. Her pulse jumped and skittered. Her breath came in short bursts. The exhilaration she experienced was couched in incredulity and terror. What on God’s green earth led her to think she could seduce any man, much less the gorgeous Dylan Kavanagh?
Before she could lose her nerve, she reached for her cell phone on the bedside table. Hands trembling, she sent a text. I’ll do it. But only until I get a job in my field. Working for you will be strictly temporary. As she hit Send, she wondered whom she was trying to convince.
Ninety seconds passed before he responded. Had he been sleeping? Imagining him naked and warm beneath a thin sheet made her hot enough to toss back the covers.
A quiet ding signaled his answer.
Good. Need help moving?
No. Friends will help me pack or keep the baby. When should I come?
A week? Ten days? The sooner the better. I’m drowning in ledgers.
If you find somebody else in the meantime, let me know.
I don’t want anybody else. I want you.
Four
As soon as Dylan hit Send, he groaned. That last text could be misconstrued. But surely the prim and proper Mia wouldn’t read it that way. All he had in mind was repaying Mia for what she had done for him so long ago. Any man worth his salt knew that an honorable guy settled his debts.
He’d thought about Mia over the years, usually with guilt for the way he had treated her. Sure, they had ended up being friends before it was all over, but it had been a clandestine bond. He’d been too macho and too ashamed of his academic weaknesses to let anyone see that he actually liked and respected a mousy little fifteen-year-old.
Even if his bookkeeper hadn’t quit, he would have found some way to help Mia. He had lots of friends in town. But serendipity meant that not only did he really need Mia’s help, but he was able to provide a place for her and Cora to stay rent-free. This arrangement was going to go a long way toward easing his conscience.
He turned over in the bed and sprawled on his stomach, feeling sleep struggle to claim him. At times like this, he envied his brother Liam. What would it be like to have the woman you loved tucked up in bed beside you every night? Zoe’s effervescence was the perfect foil for Liam’s serious side.
Dylan had heard his brother laugh more in the past few months than he had since they were kids. Liam was happier, less stressed, infinitely mellower. Even when it came to Liam, Dylan had guilt. When their father disappeared two decades ago, Liam, a mere lad of sixteen, had manned up to help their mother run the Silver Beeches Lodge, the extremely high-end hotel that had built their family finances.
While the rest of them were exploring options and making mistakes and generally learning what life was all about, Liam had stepped forward in a course already mapped out. He claimed not to resent his lot. He’d told Dylan more than once that running the hotel with Maeve Kavanagh was something he enjoyed.
Even so, Dylan hoped that Zoe would help Liam take care of a few items on his bucket list. His older brother was a hell of a guy, and he deserved the best.
Dylan sighed deeply, his body boneless as it succumbed to sleep. He’d have to paint the apartment before Mia came, and rearrange furniture to make space for the baby bed...and maybe even...
* * *
Fortunately for Mia, she wasn’t a pack rat. Most of her belongings consisted of books and bookcases, kitchen items and clothes. With Janette’s help, she spent one weekend boxing up most of the contents of her condo and ferrying it a bit at a time to a storage unit. She paid for three months in advance, knowing that surely by that time she would be back on her feet.
She still had her suspicions that Dylan was inventing work for her. His need to say thank-you, or do penance, was not something she took seriously. Anything she had done for him in the past had been freely offered. But she wasn’t going to turn down the chance to have a safety net while she looked for a new job and to spend time with Cora. Eight weeks...twelve at the most. That seemed reasonable.
Having a shot at becoming one of Dylan’s flings was merely a bonus. He was a man. She was a woman. All she had to do was get him to concentrate less on her IQ and more on her curves.
Cora, bless her, had been in a sunny mood most of the time, snoozing in her crib until it had to be dismantled. Janette’s boyfriend offered to pick up the small U-Haul trailer Mia had rented. He insisted on hooking it to her SUV and helping her load everything that was going to Silver Glen.
By the time Mia pulled away from her building, waving at Janette in the rearview mirror, she was exhausted, but the sense of turning a new page in her life was infinitely preferable to the miasma of panic and failure that had dogged her the last month. All of her misgivings had dissipated. Returning to Silver Glen was going to be wonderful.
* * *
Five hours later, she turned onto the street where the Silver Dollar was located and hit her brakes to avoid crashing into a fire engine. In front of her, two white-and-orange barricades made it clear that she had reached the end of the road.
She rolled down her window and leaned out to speak to a uniformed cop. “What’s going on?” She couldn’t see far enough ahead to tell what had caused the commotion.
The cop shrugged. “Fire at the Silver Dollar, but they’ve got it under control now.”
All the breath left her lungs. “Dylan?”
Her pale-faced distress must have registered, because he backpedalled rapidly. “No one hurt, ma’am. It happened early this morning. The building was empty.”
She leaned back in her seat and tried to catch her breath. “I’m supposed to meet someone there.”
The officer glanced in the backseat where Cora was sucking enthusiastically on a pacifier. “At the bar?” His skepticism made her feel unaccountably guilty.
“Mr. Kavanagh has hired me to be his new bookkeeper. I’m moving into the upstairs apartment.”
The man shook his head, sympathy on his weathered face. “Not today, you’re not. I hope you have a plan B. The second floor is a total loss.”
* * *
Dylan leaned against a lamppost, grimly studying what was left of his saloon. Thankfully, the main floor had sustained mostly smoke and water damage. But it would be quite a while before the Silver Dollar could reopen for business. He would pay his staff full wages, of course. But that still left the problem of his newest employee. And her child.
As he pondered his next steps, someone tapped him on the arm. When he turned, Mia stood looking at him, Cora clutched to her chest. “What happened, Dylan?” Her eyes were round.
“My own damn fault, apparently. It’s been hot as Hades this last week, so I left the window AC units in the apartment running on high all night. I didn’t want you or the baby to be uncomfortable today while you were getting settled. From what the fire marshal tells me, it looks like one of them shorted out and started the fire.”
Mia turned to stare at the building, her expression hard to read. The scene still crawled with firefighters and investigators. No one wanted to take a chance that nearby structures might get involved.
Her shoulders lifted and fell. “Well, I guess that’s that.”
“What do you mean?”
“It means Cora and I will be driving back to Raleigh.”
He heard the resignation in her voice. “Don’t be ridiculous. Nothing has changed except where you and Cora will be sleeping. My house is huge, with more than enough room for guests.”
Her chin lifted. “I’m not a charity case. It’s out of the question.”
For a moment he saw a spark of the temper he hadn’t known existed. Perhaps Mia wasn’t so meek after all. “I hired you in good faith. I’ll sue for breach of contract if you leave.”
Her eyes narrowed. “Don’t be absurd.”
“The building may be a mess at the moment, but I still have a business to run on paper.”
“I’ll have to find a place to rent until the repairs are finished.”
“First of all, rental property in Silver Glen is slim pickings. And even if you found something, they’d want you to sign a twelve-month lease. You and Cora won’t be here that long.”
“You have an answer for everything, don’t you?”
He had ruffled her feathers for sure. “It won’t be so bad, I swear. My place is plenty big. I won’t bother you at all.”
“And what if the baby bothers you? What if she cries in the middle of the night?”
He grinned, feeling his mood lift despite the day’s events. “I think I can handle it. C’mon, Mia. Think outside the box. We were friends once upon a time.”
“I’ve changed. I don’t let people push me around anymore.”
“From what I remember, that was never the case with us.” He shrugged. “If anything, you were the one ordering me to do this and that.”
“I wouldn’t have had to get tough if you hadn’t been so stubborn.”
“I’ve changed,” he said, echoing her assertion and giving her his most angelic smile.
“I’ll have to see it to believe it.”
“Then that settles it. Let me get my car and you can follow me home.”
“I never agreed to this nonsensical plan.”
“But you know you’re going to in the end. From what I can tell, you’re stuck with me for a few weeks. Chin up, Mia. It won’t be so bad.”
* * *
Mia knew Dylan Kavanagh was rich. Everybody knew it. But when you spent time with him, that knowledge tended to get shoved into the background. He had spent his life proving that he was just an ordinary guy. No flashy clothes. No Rolex watch on his wrist. No silver spoon.
The truth, however, was somewhat different. Mia had plenty of opportunity to chew on that fact as she followed Dylan’s big, black pickup truck all the way outside of town and along a winding country road. When they turned off the main highway onto a narrow lane, weeping willows met overhead, creating a cool, green, foliage-lined tunnel that filtered sunlight in gentle rays.
Occasionally a pothole left over from the winter gave one of Mia’s tires a jerk, but all in all, the road was in good repair. Cora slept through the trip, though soon she would be demanding to be fed. Thankfully, they rounded a bend in the road and Dylan’s home came into view.
To call it a house would be like calling the Mona Lisa a finger painting. Dylan and his architect had created a magical fairy tale of a place. The structure, built of mountain stone, dark timbers and copper, nestled amidst the grove of hardwood trees as if it had been there forever. A small brook meandered across the front of the property. Someone had built a whimsical bridge over one section and a gazebo near another.
Flowers bloomed everywhere, not in any neat garden, but wild and free, as if they had claimed the space for their own. Mia rolled to a halt behind Dylan and turned off the car. She wanted to take in every wonderful detail, but Cora awoke as soon as the engine stopped.
Even now, Mia marveled that someone so small and perfect was hers to love. Except for getting her nights and days turned around, Cora was a very easy baby. She had already learned to smile and coo, and her pudgy arms and legs were the picture of health.
Try as she might, Mia couldn’t see any evidence of traits from the anonymous man who had donated his sperm. Sometimes she felt guilty for robbing Cora of the chance to have a father, but other times she was simply happy to have a healthy child.
Dylan came back to help her with the diaper bag and the small suitcase that held immediate necessities. “You can have your pick of rooms,” he said, ascending the wide stone staircase in step with her. “There are four bedrooms on the second story, but I’m sure you don’t want to lug Cora up and down the stairs all the time. I think you’ll like the guest suite on the main level. It has a small sitting room where you can put the baby bed, so you won’t have to sleep in the same room with her.”
As he opened the massive front door and ushered Mia inside, she almost gasped. The interior was straight out of an architectural magazine. Vaulted ceilings soared over the living area. Above them, a corridor with a fancy carved railing circled three sides. Doors opened off of it at regular intervals, presumably the bedrooms Dylan had mentioned.
On this level, however, the central open floor plan was flanked by wings to the left and right. “Kitchen, etcetera over there.” Dylan pointed. “And in the opposite direction, two large suites.”
Her cheeks heated. He was telling her that she and Cora would be staying in the wing that housed his quarters. She could ask for one of the rooms upstairs, but he was right. Who wanted to carry a baby up and down the stairs for every nap and diaper change?
Cora began to whimper. Mia realized that feeding time couldn’t be delayed much longer. Thankfully, Dylan was perceptive. He motioned toward the right side of the house. “If you go through the kitchen, you’ll find a sunroom that has comfy chairs. It looks like she’s getting hungry.” He touched her head gently, stroking her silky hair. “She’s been an angel, hasn’t she?”
Mia nodded, feeling her breathing get jerky because he was so close. “It’s actually easier to travel with her now than it will be in a few months. Once she’s mobile, all bets are off.”
His big body loomed over hers, his clothes smelling faintly of smoke, but not masking the aroma of shaving soap and warm male. Smiling, he cocked his head toward the opposite side of the house. “If you trust me to unload the trailer and set up the crib, I can get started on that while you’re feeding her.”
“I can’t let you do all that,” she protested weakly.
“Exactly how did you expect to hold an infant and unpack at the same time?” he asked.
“Quit being so damned logical.” It had been a very stressful day, and it wasn’t even dinnertime yet.
Dylan put an arm around her shoulders and steered her toward the kitchen. “It takes a village to raise a child—don’t you know?” he said, grinning. “It wouldn’t kill you to say ‘Thank you, Dylan.’”
She sighed inwardly, feeling as if she were being railroaded, but not really having a choice at the moment. “Thank you, Dylan.”
“That’s better. Much better. Now go feed the kid before she gets any redder in the face. I’ll handle all the rest.”
* * *
Mia fell in love with the sunroom. It didn’t really look like a Dylan room at all. At least not the Dylan she knew. Cozy furniture covered in expensive chintz fabric beckoned a visitor to sit and fritter away a few hours. The windows were screened, so clearly when the temperatures allowed, they could be raised easily.
Bookcases lined the wall that bordered the hallway. Their presence gave her pause. Dylan had a long-standing battle with the written word, but maybe he had learned to enjoy some of volumes he had collected. In one corner of the room, a hammock suspended from a metal frame rocked slightly, as if propelled by an unseen hand. Thou shalt not covet. Mia remembered her mom’s gentle admonition when she had wanted a shiny red bicycle like the one the girl next door owned.
Bicycles were one thing, but this room—oh, the temptation. Mia could see herself studying here, playing with Cora when she learned to crawl, perhaps knitting a sweater for someone she loved. In that instant, she realized that she had walked into danger.
Seeing Dylan every day in a business setting, even if it was a bar, would have been far less personal than staying in his house tucked away in the woods. Despite her silly fantasy of seducing him, she knew in her heart that the best course of action would be to keep her distance for however long she chose to stay in Silver Glen.
It was easy to imagine using him for a sexual fling, but she wasn’t really that kind of woman. No matter how much she told herself she had come out of her shell, she wasn’t in the category of females who took relationships in stride...who used sex as a game.
Case in point, her love life was so sterile, she’d chosen to conceive a baby with the help of an anonymous donor. That said louder than words she wasn’t good at connecting with the opposite sex.
Sitting down and propping her feet on an ottoman, she settled Cora at her breast and gazed out over Dylan’s backyard. It was a veritable Garden of Eden, filled with trees perfect for climbing. Why had he built such a house for himself? Did he plan to get married one day? Or had his aborted engagement soured him on the idea of wedded bliss?
It didn’t really matter. The only thing Mia needed to know was that he was willing to play host to her and her baby until his building was repaired. At the rate of most home improvement projects, that could be well after Mia was gone.
Cora ate hungrily, her quiet slurping sounds making Mia smile. Even in the darkest moments when she had lost her job and her roommate had moved out and Cora had been wide-awake at three o’clock in the morning, Mia had not regretted getting pregnant, not at all. Being a mom was hard. But she had done a lot of difficult things in her life. Starting school at age four. Skipping two grades. Entering college at sixteen. Tutoring a moody boy with enough anger and testosterone to make a girl feel faint.
He had tried so hard to pretend that he didn’t care. But Mia had known. Dylan hated feeling stupid. He resented needing her help as much as he’d been relieved to have it.
Maybe this arrangement would give him some kind of closure. Seeing Mia’s predicament should reassure him that intelligence was no buffer against the difficulties of life. No matter his challenges as a youth, he had far surpassed what many people had thought him capable of accomplishing. Even without the backing of his wealthy family, Mia was convinced that Dylan would have been just as successful. It might have taken him longer, but he would have gotten there eventually.
He had drive and determination and the kind of creativity that saw ideas and possibilities. Mia envied his fearlessness. It had taken her years to escape the prison of feeling socially inept and painfully shy.
Cora pulled away and looked up at her with bright eyes. Carefully balancing the baby on her knees, Mia buttoned her shirt and wondered whether to stay put or to seek out her host. “We’re in uncharted waters, my little beauty.”
Cora gurgled what might have been agreement. Mia put the baby on her shoulder and patted her back until a definite burp emanated from the tiny body. “Let’s go find Dylan.”
Five
Dylan gave the bed a shake to make sure it was steady. No squeaks. No wobbles. He plopped the mattress into place and stepped back to admire his handiwork. Printed instructions were often useless to him. Fortunately, he had a knack for three-dimensional reasoning that allowed him to construct almost anything that required wood and screws and nails.
“Wow, that was fast.”
He turned and saw Mia and Cora staring at him with identical wide-eyed expressions. “It’s not too complicated. But I didn’t know where you’d packed the crib sheet. I put your three suitcases in the next room. I’m assuming the boxes can wait until morning?” He glanced at his watch. “I hate to be a poor host, but the fire marshal called to say I can come downtown now and go inside to assess the damage. And I promised some friends of mine we’d play pool at a buddy’s house tonight. I can cancel, though....”
Mia straightened her spine, her arms wrapped protectively around Cora. “We don’t need you to look after us. We’ll be fine. Go. Do whatever you have to do.”
As he drove away from the house a few minutes later, he told himself that the weird feeling in the pit of his stomach wasn’t disappointment. Of course Mia didn’t need him. This whole setup was for his benefit...so he could assuage some lingering guilt from high school. He was giving her a place to stay, sure. But she would more than earn her keep when she combed through the mess that was his bookkeeping system.
Dylan had tried to make sense of the various computer files. But in the end, he’d been nothing but frustrated. He suspected that he’d done more harm than good when he’d tried to enter recent debits and credits. Though he had learned to read for pleasure, it was a slow process. Numbers were a nightmare.
When he pulled up in front of the bar, the fire marshal waved him forward. “The upstairs is not safe to access, but you’re welcome to take anything you need from the main level.”
Dylan wrinkled his nose at the acrid odor of burnt wood. “My insurance company is in Asheville. They’re sending someone out tomorrow.”
“The numbers will add up. You’d be amazed at how much it costs to recover from water damage alone, much less the smoke.”
“Yeah. But I’m more worried about the time. I’d like to reopen in a month. You think that’s possible?”
The other man shook his head. “I don’t know, Mr. Kavanagh. Money can grease a lot of wheels. But it’s still a cumbersome process. Be careful in there. The floors are slick.”
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