The Tycoon's Instant Daughter

“Good. It wouldn’t do to have a picky eater for a nanny.”

A slight crease appeared between Emma’s thin brows, but she apparently decided that Cord’s remark required no comment from her. She asked, “Would you like me to send a snack up for you tonight, Mr. Stockwell?”

“No, Emma. Thanks.”

She went out and he followed, pausing to lock up the offices behind him. When he turned back to the wide hallway, Emma Hightower had disappeared.

Cord took the West stairway to the second floor, and his rooms, which were also in the West Wing, above the suite of offices. He passed up the door to his own bedroom, at the end of the wing, and proceeded straight to the room with the robin’s-egg-blue walls, where his daughter should, by all rights, be asleep in her crib.

He paused before the closed door, listening—for a baby’s cry, or possibly a woman’s soft lullaby. But all he heard was silence.

Carefully, hardly realizing he was holding his breath, Cord turned the brass knob and slowly pushed open the door. The room was dark, the shades drawn against the moon outside. He tiptoed in, across the soft blue rug that in the daylight showed a pattern of swirling stars.

Yes. She was there. Sound asleep. He stood very still. After a minute, as the silence stretched out, he realized he could hear her breathing in tiny, even sighs.

As his eyes adjusted, he saw her more clearly, her round baby cheeks, her fat little mouth, that soft dark hair and the stubborn little chin.

All Stockwell. Yes.

He felt something tighten inside his chest.

All Stockwell.

Mine.

So strange. He’d never seen himself as a father. In all likelihood, he wasn’t going to be a very good one. He worked hard and he played harder, and he left the joys of family for other men. He was too much like the old man who lay dying at the other end of the house, and he knew it, to be any good as a husband. Pity the poor woman who might have married him. He would have made her life a misery, because he’d betray a wife eventually. Monogamy just plain wasn’t in him.

However, he’d always tried to be responsible, in his own way. He liked women. Plural. Well, not several at once. But a lot of them, one at a time. And while he was liking them, he’d always been damn careful not to get one of them pregnant. But apparently, with Marnie Lott—whose face, he felt a little ashamed to admit, he could hardly remember—he hadn’t been quite careful enough.

And now there was Becky.

The more he got used to her, the more he looked at her and burped her and held her in his arms, the more he thought that having her was just fine.

Perfect, really.

He’d done his bit toward perpetuating the family line. And he hadn’t had to get married and ruin some poor woman’s life to do it.

Becky made a small, cooing sound. But she didn’t wake. She cooed again, and rubbed her tiny lips together, then turned her head with a sigh toward the wall.

Cord stayed very still. He didn’t want to wake her, really. She might start crying and then Ms. Miller would come flying in here, shooting him narrow-eyed looks—and then probably deciding it was time he learned to do more than burping. He’d end up changing a diaper or something equally unsettling. He knew that woman. And he understood the kinds of things she was going to start expecting him to do.

But Becky’s eyes stayed shut. He watched the gentle rising and falling of her tiny chest and realized she wasn’t going to wake up, after all.

He was just about to tiptoe out when he heard a faint sound—the creaking of a chair, perhaps, or the squeak of a floorboard. He looked up, through the open door to the playroom and beyond.

A sliver of golden light shown beneath the closed door to the nanny’s room.

Ms. Miller was still awake.

Should that surprise him? It was only ten-thirty. No real reason she should necessarily have been sleeping.

Except, maybe, that he pictured her as someone who went to bed at twilight and rose before dawn.

He pictured her in a white cotton nightgown, with little bits of lace in small ruffled rows, at the cuffs and around the neck. The kind of nightgown a young girl would wear, so modest, covering everything—unless she just happened to stand in front of a lamp.

And then a man would be able to see it all: soft, secret curves sweetly outlined, and a tempting dark shadow in the V where her thighs joined…

Cord shook his head—hard.

What the hell? Was it possible he’d just had a sexual fantasy concerning Ms. Miller?

No. Not a fantasy. An erotic image, that was all. A quick flash on the screen of his overactive imagination, more proof of the unflagging persistence of his libido.

It meant nothing. He started to turn again.

But then he noticed the shadows. He could see them, moving across the floor. She was walking around in there.

Why?

Oh, for pity’s sake, Stockwell, he thought in disgust. It’s her room. She has a damn right to walk around in it whenever she wants.

But was she all right? Was something disturbing her? Was there something she needed, something he’d forgotten to make certain that she had?

She was his guest, after all, until she found her own replacement. At least, he supposed he should consider her a guest, since they’d never actually agreed on what he would pay her.

Now that he thought about it, what he would pay her was something they needed to agree on. He wouldn’t take advantage of her. She didn’t make a lot of money in the first place. She was also giving up her own vacation time to take care of his little girl and interview nannies for him. She deserved to be paid for it, and he intended to make certain she got what she deserved.

In several long strides, he covered the distance between his daughter’s crib and the nanny’s door. Leaving himself no opportunity to pause and reconsider, he knocked quickly, three sharp raps.

For a moment, after he knocked, there was silence. A thoroughly nerve-racking dead quiet. And then, at last, she pulled open the door.

Almost, he groaned.

He could not believe what his eyes were showing him.

Chapter Four

Cord looked down, to collect his scattered wits.

Her feet were bare. They were very nice feet. Pale and long, with pretty toes.

No polish. Uh-uh. No polish for Ms. Miller.

He couldn’t resist. He let his gaze wander upward, taking in the white nightgown—white cotton, yes. Exactly. With the lamp behind her, he could see the outline of her ankles and the lower swell of a pair of surprisingly strong-looking calves.

But no more.

She hadn’t followed his fantasy—correction, erotic image—to the letter, after all. She also wore a robe. A green one, of some indeterminate light fabric, over the white gown.