“And leave the baby with someone you’ve never met?” The anger that had been smoldering since he’d first discovered she’d lied to him about taking leave and had taken Dylan to a center full of other babies reignited.
“I’ll make sure I get someone with good references.”
“You won’t need to.”
Fear shadowed the gold-green eyes. “What do you mean?”
“We agreed that you would take leave!”
“You demanded that I take leave—I never agreed.”
Connor ran his hands through his hair and tried to remember back to what had been said. “Well, you certainly never objected. You know I’d assumed you’d agreed.”
“Did I?” But her gaze flickered away.
“You lied to me by omission, Victoria.” He bore down on her. “How dare you take the baby to day care without consulting me? We hold joint custody, remember … or are you trying to get me angry enough to apply to court to have that revoked?”
She looked shaken. “You can’t do that.”
“I can—and I will if you persist in this stupidity. What’s important here is Dylan’s well-being.”
“Everything I’ve done has been in Dylan’s interests.”
“No, it isn’t.” His rage boiled over. “You’re only looking after your interests—your damned career that’s so important to you. Not caring for a grieving baby!” He shook his head. “God, but you make me sick!”
She went white. “I—”
He couldn’t let that air of deceptive feminine fragility sway him. “Spare me from ambitious women who walk over everyone to get what they want.”
A sprinkling of freckles he’d never noticed before stood out in sharp relief against her pallor. “I would never jeopardize Dylan for my career—”
“Never?” he said softly. “That’s why you took a young baby to a nursery full of other children where he could pick up viruses?”
“Chuck said—”
“That it was unlikely, not that it was impossible.” He leaned closer until his nose was up against hers. “Do you think that’s what Suzy wanted for her baby?”
She stumbled back. “Suzy enrolled Dylan in that center. I’ve done nothing Suzy would not have done herself.”
That caused him to hesitate, but only for an instant. Dylan was his son. When he thought what might have happened … Damn, he’d never be able to trust her with Dylan again. “Why the hell didn’t you call me?” he snarled.
She remained mute.
Of everything, it was the not calling that enraged him most. She was so pigheaded, so stubborn she would’ve let the baby come to harm before she called him.
His baby.
What had once been a favor to a devastated friend, a random donation of sperm, had turned into the most important thing in his life. Dylan was more precious than anything in the world. And she hadn’t bothered to tell him that his baby was sick. The baby he’d entrusted her with against his own better judgment.
A surge of sheer instinctive paternal possessiveness shook him as he stalked closer. “It was an unforgivable mistake not to call me.”
Pinned against the wall, she faced him. The glaze of shock had receded and her eyes shot sparks at him. “You would’ve taken Dylan away from me.”
“Oh, for …” He broke off before the force of the crude curse erupted.
She squeezed her eyes shut.
Recognizing how real her dread was, Connor stepped back and leashed the anger that vibrated through his large frame. “This has gone far enough. I’m taking the baby with me.”
“No.” There was raw pain in the sound. “You can’t!”
“You’ll find that I can.”
Victoria’s head came up. Her cheeks were stained with hectic color, a vivid contrast to her previous bleached paleness. “No. Michael and Suzy wanted us to share custody. I can only see one way that this can work.”
“What’s that?”
“I’m coming to live with you, too.”
Connor gave her an incredulous stare. The silence reverberated with tension. Then he said, “Fine. You can come, too!”
Chapter Seven
Victoria walked into Connor’s palatial home for the first time the next evening, not sure of what she would find.
What she didn’t expect was to see Connor lying on his back on the thick carpet in the living room, bouncing above him a bathed, ecstatic Dylan. She hesitated in the doorway and watched as Dylan squealed in delight and Connor whooped.
A long-forgotten sense of being the outsider swept her, of being the kid with the mother who slept all day while her father blew in and out of town like tumbleweed.
Then Connor caught sight of her, and flashed her a dizzying smile. “Look, Dylan, there’s Victoria.”
She dropped her leather laptop case and took a step forward. Dylan stretched his arms toward her. She swung him up and buried her nose against his neck. He smelled clean, of baby powder and calamine lotion. He made soft snuffling sounds and her heart melted.
“How was your day?” Connor had sat up, the laughter fading from his face as his eyes became watchful.
She let out a deep breath. “A lot better than yesterday.” Knowing that Dylan was being looked after by Connor’s housekeeper had lifted a great weight off her shoulders.
“How’s Dylan been?” She set the baby down on the floor and, dropping down beside him, she tugged his T-shirt up.
“Ratty a little earlier. But he had a good sleep.”
“The spots are looking better, not so red.”
“He was fussing so I bathed him … and the cool water seemed to settle him.”
“He loves his bath.” Victoria searched Connor’s chest for signs that Dylan had splashed with his usual abandon but he looked as immaculate as ever. Typical. If it had been her, her shirt would be clinging to her.
“I think you can handle bath time from now on. You must do a far better job.”
His grin flashed back. “I’ve changed—both my jeans and shirt looked like candidates for the wettest wet.”
“Oh.” Victoria instantly felt better. “I’ve arranged for some of my things to be delivered tomorrow. I’ll put the rest into storage and let the town house.”
“I’ve made some calls,” Connor said. “I’ll be interviewing for an au pair for Dylan tomorrow during the morning.”
“But I thought we’d do that together.” He was doing it again—taking over, marginalizing her involvement. And underlining her own insecurities. “I want to have input into the person that we hire.”
Connor frowned. “I’ve already arranged the interviews, and I’ll be working from home until I employ an au pair. It’s not fair to leave Moni with the house and Dylan.”
“Moni?”
“My housekeeper. I’ll introduce you shortly.”
“Thanks,” she said brusquely. “But I’d appreciate it if you would rearrange the interviews for when I come home. We’ve got joint guardianship—and that means we’re partners, we consult each other and make joint decisions.” That would be hard for him. Connor North didn’t have a compromising bone in that powerful, autocratic body.
Her gaze dwelled for a moment on the strong shoulders, the determined jaw, then locked with his unreadable gray gaze. A shivery awareness caused her to shift her attention back to the baby wriggling on the carpet.
“I want to satisfy myself that the person looking after Dylan is the best candidate we can get.”
“And you don’t trust me to find that person?”
She thought of his track record. He hadn’t done a great job picking trustworthy people to surround himself with in the past. Dana Fisher and Paul Harper had turned out to be faithless. But she couldn’t very well remind him of that.
Instead she said stubbornly, “I’m coguardian, I have a right to be involved.”
“You’re determined to make this as difficult as possible, aren’t you?”
Victoria shook her head. “I just want to make sure you choose the right person.”
So the next day, in consultation with Victoria, Connor rescheduled the interviews. Two were set for that night and one for Friday evening. The first candidate, a young woman with impeccable qualifications, had already arrived by the time Victoria came home from work, late and flustered.
After ten minutes’ easy conversation with Anne Greenside, Connor had decided she was the perfect choice.
But Victoria clearly had other ideas. “I see most of your jobs have involved older children,” she quizzed Anne.
“I love babies,” Anne said with a sincerity Connor found convincing.
“But you can’t stay late?”
Connor had known that would be a stumbling block the moment he’d seen the woman’s resume. Despite her devotion to Dylan, Victoria was ambitious. Work would always come first. She would want a nanny who could work late. On a regular basis. He didn’t have to cast his mind back far to remember the kind of hours Dana had worked.
“I live with my invalid mother—she needs me at night. But I can start tomorrow, if that makes it easier for you and your husband.”
“We’re not married—Dylan’s not even our baby,” Victoria blurted out.
“I’m sorry. I wasn’t aware of that.” But Anne looked curiously from one to the other.
“My fault,” said Connor easily, “I should’ve explained the situation to the agency.” He quickly filled her in.
“Poor baby.” Anne looked stricken. “He’s fortunate to have the two of you. But it’s not going to be easy for him as he grows up.”
“What do you mean?” Victoria asked first.
“He’ll always have questions—he’s not like other children now. His parents’ death has seen to that.”
“He’ll have us.”
Connor could feel Victoria’s growing tension.
“Yes, but you’re not his parents. You aren’t planning to adopt him—” She looked at them enquiringly.
Connor shook his head slowly.
“We haven’t discussed it,” Victoria said repressively.
After Anne had left, Connor said. “I like her. She’s perfect. We should offer her the position before someone else snaps her up.”
Victoria shook her head. “I don’t agree. And she’s very opinionated.”
But Anne had said spoken the truth. It was in Dylan’s interests for them to consider all points of view. But Connor bit his tongue. He should’ve expected this. When had Victoria ever agreed with him? Yet, instead of accusing her of merely trying to frustrate him, he drew a deep breath. “Her references are fantastic.”
“I still need to call and verify them. I can only do that tomorrow.” She glanced at him. “Anyway, we have to see the others. I’d like you to keep an open mind while we interview them.”
Before he could respond the next candidate had arrived. It didn’t take long for Connor to catch Victoria’s eye. She looked equally dubious.
He relaxed a little. His concerns that Victoria might oppose him simply for the hell of it evaporated.
They thanked the woman for coming and Connor saw her out.
When he returned to the study Victoria said, “She was awful.”
“Agreed.” That must be a first. He started to grin and Victoria smiled back, her mouth wide and luscious. Instantly, heat spread through him.
“I want someone older. Steadier.”
Connor forced his gaze away from her mouth and tried to focus on what she was saying. “Not too old.”
Victoria stuck her bottom lip out in that infuriating way that he’d come to recognize meant trouble.
“I can see you’ve already decided on Anne,” she said. “You should’ve waited until I came before you started the interview.”
The warmth and desire that had filled him evaporated. “Don’t be unreasonable. I didn’t start it alone by design. You were late.”
“Something came up.” But she looked abashed. “It won’t happen tomorrow.”
But when Victoria rushed home on Friday evening, it was to find that the third prospect had cancelled. And Connor had gone ahead and employed Anne.
“I called. You were in a meeting,” he said to her intense fury.
“You should’ve waited.”
“I didn’t want to mess around and lose Anne,” he said with patient logic that infuriated her further.
After giving Dylan his bottle that night, Victoria headed downstairs in her nightgown and dressing gown to make herself a cup of tea in the state-of-the-art kitchen, still annoyed at his take-charge actions.
She drank the hot tea, and thought how lovely it had been to come home to a hot meal that Connor’s housekeeper had prepared. Usually she was too tired at night to make much more than a sandwich for dinner.
When she’d finished her tea and rinsed out the cup, she felt much better, and wearily wound her way up the stairs to her room—suite of rooms, she amended. A large bathroom and two bedrooms led off the sitting room. The smaller of the bedrooms had been converted into a nursery—complete with pale-blue walls and bright-yellow ducks stenciled as a border.
She pushed open the nursery door. As her eyes adjusted to the dimness from the night-light she made out a big, bulky shadow beside the cot where the baby slept.
Connor.
She stilled. She hadn’t expected to find him here. Stupid. Of course he’d want to say good-night to the baby. Her anger at him was overtaken by the slow pound of her heart that was suddenly loud in her ears.
Connor turned his head. “The big guy is fast asleep.”
“I know, I put him down.” Victoria felt the smile tug at the corner of her lips. “Tonight was a struggle, he fought so hard against sleep.”