did tell me, yesterday, that I should start looking for a new nanny, that she wanted to be a grandmother, not Shaw’s caregiver. I never thought that she’d pull this, though. Blackmailer.”
Tate heard the love under his frustration, but his anger was gone. Not sure what to say, she looked down at Ellie, who was babbling to a doll she’d found in the box of toys. “I’ve called a cab. It should be here soon. We’ll get out of your hair.”
“I think you should stay.”
Tate’s jerked, completely astonished. “You want me to stay?” She frowned. “To look after Shaw?”
Linc shrugged. “Maybe.” He held up his hand when she opened her mouth to protest. “Just listen, okay? I need a nanny and you need a place to stay. As you said, I don’t know you, and when it comes to Shaw, I’m very slow to trust. Your sister—”
“Messed with your head,” Tate finished his sentence for him. She shrugged. “I get it, she’s been messing with mine all my life. What else did she say about me?”
Tate saw his hesitation and waited for him to speak. “Nothing much more than what I already mentioned. She didn’t speak much about you except to say that you were jealous of her.”
Tate rolled her eyes. “As if.” She looked him in the eye, desperate to get her point across. “I am not my sister. I didn’t go to college, but, over the years, I managed to study part-time to get a degree in world history. I did miss many family events, but I also wasn’t invited to many. I like being free to do my own thing. That’s why having Ellie to look after is a shock. Kari was flat out lying when she said that I quit jobs and end relationships on a whim—I’ve had the same job for the past six years, and I haven’t had a significant relationship to quit, on a whim or not.”
Tate just stopped herself from telling him that keeping her distance and remaining independent were essential to her. Too much information, Harper.
“Oh, and my mom didn’t contact you because Kari told her that you threatened to have her arrested if any of her family tried to reach out. She convinced my mom that you had the power and money to do that.”
Linc gripped the bridge of his nose and shook his head. “God, she’s a piece of work. I did offer to let Kari have visitation rights with Shaw, but she wasn’t interested. But if your mom wanted to meet Shaw, I’d make that happen. Supervised, but it could happen.”
Tate’s heart bumped against her rib cage at his generosity. “Thank you, but she died a couple of years ago.”
Linc squeezed her knee. “I’m sorry, Tate. I wish I’d known...” His voice trailed off. “Anyway, I was wrong to judge you by your sister’s actions but she...” Linc rubbed the back of his head, looking uncomfortable. “She ripped the rug out from under me.”
“You really loved her,” she stated, the familiar mixture of regret, guilt and sadness rolling around in her belly.
“I loved what thought I was getting,” Linc gruffly admitted.
“Which was?”
“A complete family, my family within a family. She told me that she wanted to be a mom, a wife, my partner. I thought she would be the person I could come home to, normality after a crazy day.”
Tate raised her eyebrows. “You associated Kari with normality?”
Linc grimaced. “Very briefly. Anyway,” he said, moving the conversation off Kari and the past, “getting back to what we were discussing, you moving in...” He took a deep breath. “Stay for a week, and I’ll work from home. I’ll help you with Ellie, and you can spend some time with Shaw. If, at the end of the week, I feel comfortable handing Shaw over to you to look after, I’ll go back to work and we’ll do a trade. I’ll feed and house you and pay for the PI, if you look after Shaw until I find a full-time nanny.”
Tate considered his offer, quickly running through her options. It was a fair offer, she acknowledged, except for... “I want to see Shaw in the future, I don’t want to walk away and never see him again.”
Linc’s expression softened. “I can make that happen.”
Tate nodded her thanks. “Feed and house Ellie and me, and I’ll pay for the PI myself.”
“He’s expensive, Tate,” Linc protested.
“I have money, Linc, and nothing is more important to me than restoring Ellie to Kari,” she replied, her tone firm.
“Okay, deal. But what if you find Kari, and she refuses to take Ellie back?”
Her heart lurched. God, she couldn’t think about that. Not now. “She will. I’ll make her.”
“I hope you’re right,” Linc said. “But, because we are talking about Kari, maybe you should have a plan B.”
Tate heard the insistent horn of a taxi and looked out of the window, seeing the yellow cab outside. She took a deep breath and nodded. “Okay, deal. One week and we’ll reevaluate.”
Linc placed a hand on her shoulder as he stood up, squeezing gently. “Thanks, Tate. I’ll go down and tell the taxi he’s not needed, and I’ll bring your bags back up.”
She pulled her knees up to her chest, thinking that she shouldn’t ask the question burning her brain. But she couldn’t stop the words. She had to know. “Linc...?”
He placed his hand on the doorjamb and turned. “Yeah?”
“When you kissed me last night. Were you thinking about Kari?”
Linc released a sound that sounded like a half snort, a half laugh. “No, that was all you, Tate Harper.” His dark gray eyes dropped from her face to her chest, and back up to her face again. Then his gaze lingered on her mouth, and his eyes heated as his hands curled into fists. Tate thought that he might be trying to stop himself from reaching for her.
Or was that wishful thinking?
“It was all you,” Linc repeated his words, his voice sounding like sandpaper. “Only you.”
Linc disappeared, and Tate heard him heading down the stairs. “Damn, Ellie.”
At the sound of her name, Ellie looked up and gifted her with a gummy grin.
“How the hell am I going to resist him?”
The child, not understanding the question, threw her doll at Tate’s legs.
* * *
He was living with another Harper woman, Linc grumbled to himself a couple of days later, running down the stairs from his home office to open the front door.
God help him. Kari had been, generally, a pain in his ass, but Tate, well, she was trouble on a whole new level. Because no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get her off his mind.
And he didn’t like it. Not one bit.
Linc looked at his watch and thought that he’d known her for less than three days and every minute they were together he fought the urge to take her to bed. Her perfume was in his nose, the memory of her smooth skin was on his hands, and the image of those warm cognac brown eyes, foggy with passion, were burned into his retinas. He was so screwed, metaphorically speaking. Sad as that was.
Stop thinking about sleeping with her, Ballantyne. Think about business and the fact that you are less than useless working from home, mostly because you are so easily distracted by a pair of long, sexy legs and that that tumble of long, wavy hair you want to sink your hands into.
He bit back an oath. Work was piling up, and he couldn’t leave Beck to carry the load for much longer. It wasn’t fair and it wasn’t right. Jo was having a ball with Gary, and Linc knew that he’d lost her as his full-time caregiver; he had to find someone to look after Shaw on a permanent basis.
Tate seemed to be doing okay, he reluctantly admitted. She and Shaw seemed to click, helped