Jewel had been their mother’s darling, whereas Lucy had been largely ignored. Jewel had been spoiled and coddled, treated like a pampered lapdog. Until the day their mother had just left without warning or apology.
For Lucy, who was used to being ignored by both parents, things had gone on pretty much as they always had. Jewel, who was used to their mother’s elaborate shows of affection, had pulled one outrageous stunt after another trying to get their father’s attention. And when that hadn’t worked, the attention of any man.
And now Jewel had done the unthinkable. She’d abandoned her own baby. But Isabella would never suffer from it. Not if Lucy had anything to say about it.
She dropped down on her knees before Isabella. “I’m not going to let that happen to you. No psychological freezer burn for you.”
And Dex was certainly the kind of man to freeze out his child. She’d seen the way he’d treated Isabella so far. He hadn’t held her. Had barely even looked at her.
“Here’s the thing about Dex Messina. He fools a lot of people, but you can’t let him fool you. He pretends to be the laid back, easygoing younger brother. The one you don’t have to worry about. But you’ve got to keep your eye on him. Don’t let him too close.”
Lucy saw past that facade of his.
She’d done her research—long before she’d ever even met him. She’d read everything she could find about him. Derek may have the reputation as the heartless businessman, but Dex wasn’t to be trifled with, either. He was the brother who negotiated deals and wooed investors. The more she thought about it, the more she realized he wasn’t really the black sheep of the family. No, he was the wolf in black sheep’s clothing.
Definitely not the warm and responsive dad she’d choose for Isabella.
Emotionally unavailable, certainly. But cold? Maybe that wasn’t quite the right word. Heat had simmered in his gaze every time he’d looked at her. His touch had nearly scalded her. Passion seemed to lurk just beneath his surface, surging forward at every reminder of the night they’d spent together.
Except they hadn’t spent a night together.
They had never met before twenty-four hours ago.
He might remember a night of passionate sex with a tempting vixen, but it wasn’t her he remembered. No, whatever emotion or passion he remembered was for another woman entirely.
She sighed and rocked back on her heels, resisting the urge to bury her head in her hands and just cry. Because whether or not Dex wanted her or not was completely beside the point. Because if he ever found out that she wasn’t the woman he’d slept with—that she wasn’t Isabella’s mother—he’d guarantee she never got custody of Isabella. He’d destroy all her hopes for the future.
And she wasn’t going to let that happen.
Jet lag followed by a near sleepless night up with Isabella should have been enough to knock him out completely. And it did. But for only a few hours. By three in the morning he was awake again and pacing the length of the guesthouse’s living room.Not for the first time, he crossed to the bay of windows looking out over the pool. He pressed his forearm to the window and leaned his forehead to his arm. He couldn’t take his eyes off the window of the room where he’d put Lucy and Isabella.
Dinner had been a chilly affair. Even little Isabella seemed to feel the tension. If he didn’t know better, he’d say they’d had some kind of powwow and had mutually decided to give him the cold shoulder.
Or maybe they just both sensed how nervous he was. What did he know about babies?
Absolutely nothing.
Until last night, it had never even occurred to him that he might have one in his life.
The concept of settling down, getting married, having kids…those were just things Derek hassled him about. Which Dex had always considered ironic since Derek wasn’t exactly Mr. Commitment himself.
No, Derek was one hundred percent married to his job, with only the occasional extramarital affair with things like dinner and sleep. Women ranked a distant fourth. Marriage might as well have been a word from another language. Dex’s list might look different, but kids were just as far down it.
Except now he had one. And he didn’t know what the hell to do with it.
All he knew was that he was damn sure going to do a better job than his own father had done.
Which was probably why, when he saw the light go on in Lucy’s room, he immediately headed for his closet and pulled out a pair of jeans.
By the time he’d pulled them on, a procession of lights blazed from the second story east wing down to the kitchen. He slipped down the stairs and crossed the slate patio to the French doors of the kitchen, where he let himself in with his key.
Lucy looked up when he entered. She was dressed in a white cotton tank top and a pair of denim shorts that left the length of her legs exposed. Her legs were lightly tanned without being the baked brown of a woman who frequented the tanning salon. Her feet were bare, her toes painted a delicate pink.
The picture she presented would have been nearly irresistible if it hadn’t been for the crying infant she held in her arms.
“She did that last night when I was taking care of her, too,” he said as he typed in the code to disarm the alarm.
“Did what?”
“That crying thing. I couldn’t get her to stop.”
“Did you feed her?”
“No. Raina—Derek’s assistant—said to give her a bottle when she woke up at one. But this was at four or five.”
The look Lucy shot him said it all.
She crossed to a cabinet and pulled out a bowl, which she filled with water and then stuck in the microwave to heat. The hum from the microwave must have soothed Isabella because her crying slowed to the occasional whimper.
Lucy’s silence confirmed it. She thought he was an idiot.
“Hey,” he said in his defense. “She couldn’t have been hungry, she’d just eaten a couple of hours earlier.”
This time he could have sworn even Isabella shot him a dirty look before nuzzling her face into Lucy’s neck. The scene they made, snuggling together in the dimly lit kitchen was charmingly intimate. Not to mention exclusionary.
They were a pair, those two. A family complete without him.
Resentment rushed through him. That was his daughter.
His daughter who cringed away from him. His daughter who cried when he held her. Whom he didn’t know how to care for or feed.
All because Lucy had kept her from him. Because she’d denied him his rights.
Part of him wanted to lash out at her. Yet something held him back. Maybe it was the darkened intimacy of the kitchen. The late-night feeding. The simple domesticity of it.
He didn’t want to be angry with her. He just wanted to be a part of it. To have his daughter not flinch from his touch.
The microwave beeped just as Lucy returned from the pantry with a canister of formula. She blinked as if surprised he was still there.
“You don’t have to stay. I don’t need your help.”
“Obviously.” Derek accused him of always taking the easy way out. Well, not this time. “But I’m up. And I have to learn how to do it sometime. It might as well be now.”
She eyed him suspiciously for a moment, then stepped away from the can of formula. “Okay. First you wash your hands.”
She guided him step by step. She stood stiffly beside him, with Isabella turned carefully away from him, almost as if Lucy didn’t want her to see him preparing the bottle.
A few minutes later the bottle was warmed and he held out his arm for Isabella. Lucy frowned but handed her over. Her expression made him feel like he was ripping the infant from her arms. Isabella’s instant cries of protest didn’t help matters.
He lowered himself to one of the bar stools along the counter and mimicked the posture he’d seen Lucy use when she’d fed Isabella after dinner. He held Isabella out in front of him, cradled along one arm, her head in his hand, so she faced him. Her face scrunched up in apparent agony as she waved her little fists around, howling all the while.
Lucy hovered nervously behind him, ratcheting up his tension level.
“Do you want me to take her?”
“No, I can do it.”
“Oh, I’m sure you can do it. But maybe you could try some other time. When she’s not hungry.”
He’d done some pretty crazy stuff, back before he’d settled into his current respectable position in the company. He’d crossed the Alaskan tundra in a dog sled. He’d spent a season living with a Bedouin tribe in the Sahara. He’d climbed Mount Kilimanjaro, for Christ’s sake. He could do this.
He could feed one tiny infant.
Lucy must have sensed his determination because she leaned over his shoulder and wrapped her hand around his hand holding the bottle.
“You don’t just shove it in her face. You have to let her know it’s here if she wants it. Just rub it across her lips like this.”
She moved his hands to run the bottle’s nipple along Isabella’s bottom lip. Slowly, Isabella’s cries faded and she sucked the bottle into her mouth. She continued to gaze at him with rebellion in her eyes, but she drank greedily. Triumph surged through him.
After a moment, he became aware of Lucy’s hand on his shoulder, of the warmth of her pressed against his back and along his arm. The smell of her seemed to envelope him. Something feminine and sleepy and sweet. If he turned his face, his lips would brush her cheek.
For an instant, he felt like he was part of the family. Part of the bond they shared.
Instantly, panic blossomed in his chest. Run! it screamed. Get out now. Write the woman a generous check and show her the door!
But he shoved the feeling aside, forced his heartbeat to slow and bellied up to the bar of responsibility. He wasn’t that guy anymore—that guy who dodged his obligations in favor of a good time. He didn’t want to be that guy. Okay, he mostly didn’t want to be that guy.
With no appreciation for his internal struggle at all, Lucy jerked her hand away. She quickly put space between them, rounding to the other side of the counter where she bustled around the kitchen putting up the formula and rinsing out the bowl she’d heated the water in.