Doorstep Daddy

“It’s Ellie. Ellie Miller. You’re watching my daughter?”

“You think I have so many kids over here I’d be confused over which one belongs to who?”

“You are watching my daughter, aren’t you?”

“Not really.”

“What?”

“Calm down. She’s sleeping. That does not require me to stare at her, watching each and every breath.”

Ellie wanted to argue back that it darn well did, but she knew better. Even she didn’t watch every one of Sabrina’s breaths, though there had been many times when Sabrina had been first born, especially in those last few precious days of maternity leave, that she had noted every blink, every movement, wanting to commit every second to memory. Even now, she felt as if she was missing so many millions of moments, ones she’d never be able to recoup. The familiar ache deepened. The walls closed in around her. The room had never felt more like a cage. “Then what are you doing?”

“Do you want all the details? Including any bathroom breaks? Or just the overall minute-by-minute?”

“Just the overall.”

“She ate. I changed her diaper. She fell asleep. After she crawled all over my house. You should have warned me.”

“Warned you?”

“Yeah, that the kid moves. I didn’t know she was mobile. It was like following the Road Runner.”

“I missed the first time she crawled,” Ellie said softly. “Mrs. Winterberry called me and described every second of it. But it wasn’t the same.”

“Oh.” Dalton paused a second. “Sorry to hear that. Well, she crawled around a lot. Got her knees all dirty. Guess I need to get my cleaning lady in here more.”

“Then what?”

He thought a second. “Then she fell asleep. So I went to work. You called. Interrupted my work. Now, can I get back to—”

“Did you burp her? Rock her? Make sure she has her pacifier? And her special blanket? If she wakes up and doesn’t have those things, she’ll get upset.” Worry crowded Ellie’s shoulders. She should never have left Sabrina with Dalton. He didn’t know her daughter. Sabrina’s likes and dislikes. How she preferred to sleep, with her blanket tucked under one arm, her pacifier nearby, but not in her mouth. Her favorite toy always around when she was on the floor—a vinyl mouse that squeaked when Sabrina squeezed it.

What if the baby got upset? Missed her mother? There were a million details to watch, and if Dalton missed one, Sabrina would cry, and the guilt would just kill Ellie.

Ellie should be there. “When was the last time you checked on her? Made sure she was okay?”

“Boy, you are tense, aren’t you? I’ve been around kids before. She’ll be fine.”

But something wavered in his voice, and doubt rocketed through Ellie’s gut. Mrs. Winterberry had assured her Dalton had plenty of experience with children.

Then why did he sound unsure? As if he doubted he’d know what to do, should his stare- into-her-eyes technique fail?

Had Ellie asked enough questions? Had she interviewed him thoroughly? Or left too fast this afternoon?

“Are you positive you don’t want me to—”

“Ellie,” Lincoln said, popping his head into her office, “meeting in three minutes.”

“Dalton, can I call you back in a second?” When he agreed, she hung up and turned her attention to her boss. “I’ll be there, Lincoln.”

“Good. And bring your notes about the soccer diva-dude. We have to re-hash this morning’s meetings. Seems no one got a clear picture of what I wanted. We need another run-through of the whole show.” He ran a hand through his thick shock of white hair. A tall man given to loud suits, Lincoln had this perpetual look of stress about him, no matter what he did or what time of day it was. “Maybe you can get through to everyone. And translate my gobbledy-gook into something the rest of those morons will understand. I tell you, it’s like working with a bunch of monkeys around here.”

Ellie was tempted to tell Lincoln it was less about morons, and more about his insistence on keeping his staff caged in the conference room for one unproductive hour after another. “Lincoln, maybe if you didn’t have so many meetings…”

“Ellie, meetings are essential. They’re where all the best ideas are born. Or they would be, if I actually employed people who possessed the brain cells to foster ideas. That’s why I need you, Ellie. You’re my right-hand woman. I swear, I couldn’t function around here without you.”

“You don’t need seven hundred meetings a week to function, Linc.”

He shook his head, refusing to have this argument. He started to walk away, then returned. “Oh, and Ellie, before I leave today, I wanted to tell you, I need you to create a script this afternoon. I need it on my desk first thing tomorrow.”

“Create a script? Today?”

“Yeah. You know that celebrity chef, the one with the new book? Apparently he can’t do anything but cook and read. So I need you to write him up something that makes him look and sound intelligent and entertaining.” Lincoln smiled. “I know you can do it, Ellie. You’re my can-do person. Let’s have this meeting, then.”

Ellie laid her head on her desk. So much for her plan to knock off early. Even if Lincoln wasn’t here to oversee her, she had enough work to fill the entire rest of the day.

Every time she thought she’d get some time for herself…

It evaporated like rainwater on hot summer pavement. How she hated this job. But if she quit, how would she support Bri? Where else would she work? Any other job in television would be just as demanding. Ellie sighed, then reached for the phone and called Dalton back.

When he answered, the first thing she heard was Sabrina’s loud wails, cutting through the phone lines like razors. Ellie’s pulse quickened, mother’s instinct beating inside her, telling her to go to her child—

“Is everything okay?”

“It’s fine. She’s crying. I gotta go.”

“No, wait. Is she wet? Does she need to eat?”

Dalton let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m trying to get off the phone and find out. Now are you going to let me go do that or not?”

Let Dalton hold Sabrina, let Dalton calm her down. The jobs she, as Sabrina’s mother, should be doing—instead of heading in for yet another stupid, aimless meeting.

Did she have a choice? Lincoln trusted her to come up with something fabulous in the next three minutes. And right now, on her legal pad, her idea of fabulous looked a lot like letter D’s.

“Wait,” she said before Dalton could hang up.

Another exasperated gust. “What? Kid crying here, you know.”

The knot of growing tension in her gut told her this arrangement with Dalton couldn’t work. Her, sitting here, miles away from Sabrina. Missing her baby more and more every day, missing the scent of her, the feel of her in her arms, a pain that refused to stop. Her mind concocting ten thousand different possible scenarios of Dalton falling asleep, leaving the stove on, forgetting Sabrina at the park—

“I have an idea,” Ellie said, knowing even as she said the words that there was no way she could make this work—and no way she could afford not to make it work, at least, for her heart. Money- wise, it was another story. “And I promise, you’re going to love it.”

“That’s what my mother told me when she signed me up for ballroom dancing lessons when I was ten,” Dalton said. “And I can tell you from personal experience that ‘I have an idea’ and ‘you’ll love it’ doesn’t always go together in my book.”

CHAPTER THREE

BY THE time Ellie showed up on his doorstep, Dalton had thrown in the towel, raised the white flag, and tossed up his hands in surrender. The kid—who had originally been calmed with a stare—now wanted him to do the one thing he’d vowed not to do.