Читать книгу Corporate Daddy - Arlene James - Страница 11

“So she’s really ours.”

Mary Ellen Lockhart Fortune tucked her thick, wavy red hair behind her ears and made a silly face at her wriggling granddaughter who smiled, yawned, rubbed her eyes and flipped over onto her belly, quickly crawling toward the end of the couch. Mary Ellen and her tall, handsome son, Logan, both made a grab for the child. Logan reached her first, coming off his seat on the ottoman at his mother’s knee. Holding his daughter at arm’s length—much like an escaped piglet that had found the mud hole—he gingerly carried her back to the original spot and sat her next to his mother. Sixteen-month-old Amanda Sue promptly flopped and flipped, emitting a shrieking grunt in the process, as if warning him not to interfere with her plans again. Mary Ellen chuckled. Logan quivered. The battle of wills his surprise baby daughter had been waging with him these past two hours was wearing on him.

“She’s a Fortune, all right,” he muttered, capturing his daughter again. Amanda Sue twisted and screamed, then went limp and put back her head in a dramatic sob for release. “That temperament confirms it, as if the blue eyes, hereditary crown-shaped birthmark and the blood test didn’t. Plus, her hair’s almost as red as yours, a little darker, maybe.”

“She looks like you and Eden,” Mary Ellen said wonderingly.

“I’m not sure my sister would appreciate being lumped into the same category of looks as me,” Logan said, struggling to put his daughter back on the couch, “but I did notice that Amanda Sue looks like some of Eden’s baby pictures, discounting the hair, of course.”

“Was her mother red haired?” Mary Ellen asked gently.

Amanda Sue stopped wriggling and looked up alertly. “Mama,” she called. “Mama?”

“Poor darling,” Mary Ellen crooned, gathering the child against her. Amanda Sue crammed her hand in her mouth and waited, as if listening for her mother’s voice.

Logan sighed. “Her m-o-t-h-e-r was a blonde.” He spelled out the word to avoid causing his bewildered daughter to ask for what she could not have, ever again.

“Her name was Bailey, wasn’t it?” Mary Ellen went on. “Donna Bailey?”

Amanda Sue’s ears seemed to perk up, but she made no sound. Mary Ellen eased the pacifier pinned to Amanda Sue’s T-shirt into the child’s mouth. The baby sucked absently.

“Yes,” Logan said, wishing he could avoid the subject, knowing he couldn’t.

“What was she like?” Mary Ellen wanted to know.

Logan tried to keep deep regret from sounding like bitterness. “I remember her as adventurous, full of life, independent. She was a military brat. She told me that both of her parents were lifers. So, naturally, she followed in their footsteps. She learned to fly helicopters in the army and got a small plane license after.”

“So our Amanda Sue gets that fierce spirit from both ends,” Mary Ellen said, petting the baby’s head. Amanda Sue looked up somberly at the stranger who was her grandmother, the lilting curls springing up in the wake of Mary Ellen’s touch.

“It would seem so,” Logan admitted. “The way I understood it, Donna’s parents died trying to set a record in a hot air balloon. I’d say the need for adventure was ingrained.”

“What about Donna? How did she die?” Mary Ellen asked.

He swallowed, remembering the tall, shapely blonde with whom he’d enjoyed a few weeks of fun and games. Of all the women he’d known, Donna was the last with whom he’d expected to have made a child. He wasn’t surprised, though, that she hadn’t contacted him after discovering that she was pregnant. The Donna he had known was fiercely independent and proud of her ability to take on whatever life threw at her. She had followed, quite literally, in the footsteps of her parents.

“She was piloting an experimental glider,” Logan explained succinctly. “It crashed.”

“Poor thing.” Mary Ellen sighed. Amanda Sue leaned against her, porcelain eyelids drooping over bright blue eyes. “I deeply regret the tragedy, but I can’t say I’m sorry to have this little one in our lives. How did the authorities know to contact you?”

“Donna left instructions.”

“Well, thank goodness for that, at least.”

Logan nodded, watching his daughter slip off to sleep. She’d been fighting it tooth and nail from the moment he’d picked her up at the airport in San Antonio. The social worker who had accompanied her had predicted that the child would drop off to sleep in the car, but instead Amanda Sue had squirmed and kicked and fought the seat belt, working out of it several times. The drive down to the ranch had been a nightmare. He’d never felt so inadequate. But he had to admire her fighting spirit.

She was innocence personified, impish and cherub cheeked with ivory fair skin, curly, reddish-brown hair, and eyes that sparked pure blue fire, and in addition, she possessed the mind of a warrior. Even as he took a perverse pride in her spirit, however, he couldn’t help thinking that fatherhood was going to be problematic enough without it. God knew he didn’t have the slightest idea how to go on.

His own father had been a washout as both a parent and a husband, so much so that Logan had always figured his safest bet was to avoid both states fervently. He’d thought, briefly, in the first moments of shock, about refusing custody of his unexpected daughter, but he’d quickly rejected the idea. Amanda Sue was a Fortune; she deserved to be raised as one. Thank God for his mother.

“How are we going to handle this?” he asked, suddenly wanting it all settled.

Mary Ellen studied the small hand curled around her forefinger. “What do you mean by this?”

“Her. Amanda Sue. How are we going to work it?”

Mary Ellen looked up then. “I don’t know what you mean.”

“Well, obviously she has to live here,” he pointed out impatiently, waving a hand to encompass the luxurious eight-bedroom, contemporary Colonial house with its many amenities, including pool, tennis courts, decks, balconies and spacious guest quarters. Even with his brother Holden and his wife Lucinda in residence, the place had more than ample room. Still, Mary Ellen shook her head.

“She belongs with you, Logan. She’s your daughter.”

His daughter. The words still brought a shock of unreality with them. “I don’t know anything about being a father!” he countered, and the sound of his voice jerked the baby awake. She took one look around and wailed. He bounded to his feet. “See! She’ll be miserable with me!”

Mary Ellen made an exasperated sound and gathered the child into her lap, bouncing and cuddling her. “There, there, darling. He didn’t mean to shout. There, there.” She poked the pacifier into the cupid’s bow mouth, and the piercing wail shut off instantly.

Logan pushed a hand through his wavy, dark brown hair. “I don’t know how to take care of a baby,” he said in a level voice that in no way conveyed the panic he was feeling.

Mary Ellen chuckled. “Logan, no first-time father—or mother, for that matter—knows how to take care of a baby. You’ll learn as you go, that’s part of it.”

“My father didn’t,” Logan grumbled.

Mary Ellen looked up at him with implacable blue eyes a shade paler than his own. “He did the best he could, Logan. So will you, and I’m quite sure it will be more than enough. In fact, I think you’ll make a wonderful father.”

“Just let her stay until we get used to one another,” Logan pleaded shamelessly, but Mary Ellen was at her reasonable, logical best.

“And how will you do that with her living here at the ranch and you living fifty miles away in San Antonio?” she asked. “No, son, there’s only one way to do this, and that’s to dive in headfirst. Besides, I want to be a grandmother, not another parent. I’ve raised my family, and I did it pretty much on my own, as you well know. I want to concentrate on other things now. It’s only fair. And your uncle Ryan really needs my help with the business right now. This kidnapping mess and the divorce are enough for any one man to handle on his own.”

Guiltily, Logan sat down again. His own world had spun so out of control that he hadn’t even thought of Ryan or Baby Bryan and his parents. “You’re right. What’s the latest news concerning the kidnapping?”

Mary Ellen looked at the child drifting off again in her arms. “It’s the most confounding thing. Bryan disappears, the wrong baby is returned, and he turns out to be a Fortune, too.”

Logan shook his head. “How are Matthew and Claudia holding up?”

Mary Ellen sighed. “It’s hard to say. In one way, having Taylor with them is a comfort—that’s what they’re calling the other baby, you know, Taylor—but in another way, it’s a definite problem. I mean, what if Matthew turns out to be his father? Claudia will be destroyed.”

“You don’t really think that’s possible, do you? I mean, Matt’s always been such a straight shooter.”

Mary Ellen looked down meaningfully. “I’d say just about anything is possible, wouldn’t you?”

Logan looked to his newfound daughter. “Obviously.”

“Right now, though, I think the priority for Ryan and the whole family is getting Bryan back.”

“That’s understandable,” Logan said, and Mary Ellen nodded, looking at her granddaughter.

“Life is so strange, isn’t it?”

Strange didn’t begin to describe his life right now, Logan mused, looking again at the cause. His now peacefully slumbering daughter busily sucked her pacifier for a few seconds, then pushed it out with her tongue. She smiled at something in a dream, showing tiny white teeth, and just abruptly frowned, her bottom lip pouting. She was amazing, alarmingly so, and Logan knew, deep down, that he was very lucky to have her. He only hoped that he was up to the task of raising her.

“What am I going to do with her, Mom?” he whispered.

Mary Ellen’s gaze was loving and wise. “You’ll figure it out, dear. I have every confidence in you.”

But Logan wasn’t so sure. Mary Ellen was his mother, after all. She had always believed in him, found the best in him. Even now when she had every right to blast him for his irresponsibility in conceiving a daughter out of wedlock, a daughter he had only recently learned existed, she merely smiled and trusted him to do the right thing. It was because of her that he’d worked his way to the Executive V.P. position of Fortune Tx, Ltd. He could have played on the Fortune name and the Fortune influence to get where he wanted to go, but Mary Ellen had expected him to earn his way honestly, and he had taken pride in doing so.

Business was second nature to him, though. It was part of who he was. Most of what he had achieved was the product of sheer instinct. Fatherhood, on the other hand, was like a strange planet where nothing was as he expected. Up was down and in was out in this eerie land. He had no idea of his own worth here, his own power, but he had no choice except to step out and endure whatever came, making up solutions as he went along. He took a deep breath and stepped out.

“We’ll head back to San Antonio right after lunch.”

Mary Ellen smiled. “You’ll be fine. Both of you. Once you get her settled in and find someone to watch over her while you work, life will be rich and sweet again, just in a different way.”

He hoped that she was right. He prayed to God that she was right. For his daughter’s sake.

Emily Applegate, like everyone else in the building, heard the screams even before the elevator doors opened. Logan’s executive assistant lifted her head, absently smoothed the heavy, sandy-brown bun on the back of her head, and listened. The cries obviously belonged to a child, a very angry, desperate child. She couldn’t imagine who would have brought a child into the office, but she would shortly know. They all would. Office doors were opening. People were stepping out into the hallway.

She stayed at her desk, gold-framed reading spectacles perched on the end of her nose, and watched the stir through the glass wall of her office, thinking that Logan had picked a good day to be out on personal business. He’d left a cryptic message on her voice mail sometime last night, informing her of his change of plans. She’d been shuffling appointments and standing in at meetings all day and desperately needed about two hours to catch up on her weekly report.

Thoughts of the weekly report had been supplanted by curiosity, however, when the wails had first reached her. What caught her attention now, though, were the looks on people’s faces as the wailing drew nearer. They were stunned, all of them, stunned speechless, apparently. And suddenly she knew why as Logan Fortune himself stepped into view, a squalling bundle of auburn curls and flailing arms and legs caught against his chest.

Emily stood, chin dropping, in a complete state of shock as Logan turned, maneuvering briefcase, child and—wonder of wonders!—diaper bag to push through the glass door. He stumbled into the room, yanking free the diaper bag as the door closed against it. Inside the closed room, the sound was deafening, shrill enough to split eardrums if not shatter glass. Logan looked at her as if she was the one making it, then he juggled the child in her direction.

“For pity’s sake, Applegate, take her!”

Emily scrambled forward. “Mr. Fortune, what—”

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.”

With that uncanny ability of all children, Amanda Sue knew she was now the topic of conversation. She laid her head back against Emily’s chest and grinned up at Emily around the bottle nipple. Emily found herself reluctantly in love. “She is a little doll.”

“Don’t let the looks fool you,” Logan warned dryly. “That little doll has put me through sheer hell today. She can get out of a seat belt faster than—”

“A seat belt!” Emily echoed. “You had her in a seat belt, not a car seat but your standard, adult-type seat belt?”

He blinked at her. “Every car seat has its own seat belt, Emily. You know that.”

She couldn’t believe he was that uninformed. “Every infant safety seat has a belt, too, and it’s designed to keep the child safely in place. Riding a child in a car without one is so dangerous that the State of Texas, and nearly every other, has made it illegal to do so. You’re lucky you weren’t pulled over—or worse!”

He put his hands to his hips. “See? See! That’s what I’m talking about! I don’t know this stuff. Why would I? I’ve never had to think about what kids need!”

Emily found her chair with her foot and pulled it over to sit down, Amanda Sue’s weight beginning to wear on her. Amanda Sue immediately tossed her bottle aside and bucked out of Emily’s grasp, sliding to the floor, where she momentarily crouched, looking around her. “Where’s her stuff?” Emily asked resignedly.

“Right here,” Logan said, indicating the diaper bag.

“That’s it?”

“The social worker couldn’t bring more on the airplane.”

Emily rolled her eyes. “Well, we have a lot of shopping to do, then.”

“You have a lot of shopping to do,” he said pointedly.

“And who’s going to watch the baby?”

“You’ll take her with you, naturally,” he said brightly, edging toward the office door. “Just take my house key from the lockbox. I’ll meet you both there when I’m through here.”

Emily frowned. “You’re going to owe me big-time for this, Fortune.”

“Absolutely,” he said convincingly.

The lower drawer of Emily’s desk suddenly rolled out, Amanda Sue at the handle. Recognizing nothing of interest there, she toddled around the end of the desk and out of sight, ignoring Emily as she called to her. Emily jumped up and went after her. Sensing pursuit, Amanda Sue began to run as fast as her little legs would carry her. Before Emily reached her, she’d knocked over the trash can and a potted plant. The sound of Logan’s office door clicking shut came just as Emily reached Amanda Sue, who giggled as she was scooped up, then immediately howled to be let down again.

Emily laughed. “Okay, kiddo, first order of business is a dry diaper. Then we’ll order you an infant safety seat. Thank God for department stores that take telephone orders. Meanwhile, we’ll get acquainted. How does that sound?” For reply, Amanda Sue stuck her fist in her mouth and kicked both feet. Emily couldn’t help herself. She hugged the baby tight and kissed her chubby cheek, laughing at the idea of the great Logan Fortune cowering behind his office door in fear of his toddler daughter. Poor guy. Poor kid!

The whole city was in for a shock when the news got around, but maybe, just maybe, this little bolt of greased lightning would put a kink in her clueless daddy’s nocturnal activities. God knew it was time that Logan Fortune learned there was more to life than business and willing women. Much more, for those lucky enough to understand it.