Corporate Daddy

He shoved the child at her, threw her almost. Emily caught the wailing bundle and clasped her tight. Suddenly she was looking down into an astonishing pair of bright blue eyes rimmed with thick red-brown lashes and sparkling with diamond-bright tears. Emily pulled back, taking in the angelic face and tousled curls. The little one shuddered on a sob, and Emily’s heart turned over.

“Well, hello there,” she said softly. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

“Ba-ba-ba-ba,” the little one cried, bottom lip quivering. “Ba-ba-bobble.”

Emily looked at Logan. “What’s wrong with her?”

Logan lifted his chin, stretching his well-muscled six-foot frame. “She hates me, that’s what’s wrong with her,” he grumbled, plunking the diaper bag on top of her desk.

The baby suddenly lunged for the bag, crying, “Baba-ba! Babable!”

Emily spied the top of a bottle protruding from an end section of the bag. “I think she wants a drink.”

The little one shook her head wildly. “No!” She reached again, opening and closing her little hand pleadingly. “Ba-a-ba-ob-ba!”

Emily suddenly understood. For a child this age, a drink must be something taken from a sippy cup, a bottle was nourishment. “She’s hungry. She wants her bottle.”

Logan looked as though he’d been dragged through a keyhole backward. His strong, aristocratically sculpted features were haggard, his full mouth turned down at the corners, his dark brown hair rumpled rather than waving back sleekly from his high forehead. He wrenched open the diaper bag and started tearing through it with broad, long-fingered hands.

“It’s right there on the end,” Emily pointed out.

He turned the bag on its end and plucked the pink bottle from its pocket. The baby reached for it, making a sound somewhere between a relieved laugh and an accusing sob. He jerked off the nipple cover and thrust it at her.

“You should check it first,” Emily advised as the child snatched it out of his hand. “The milk could be spoiled.”

“Mother filled 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.”