turned toward the sound of her voice and looked at the hall as if he could see through the walls to the kitchen at the back of the house. Something inside him tightened in expectation at the sound of Tula’s voice. His body instantly went on alert, a feeling he was getting used to. In the three days she and the baby had been here, Simon had been in a near-constant state of aching need.
She was really getting to him, and the worst of it was, she wasn’t even trying.
Tula was only here as Nathan’s guardian. To stay until she felt Simon was ready to be his son’s father. There was nothing more between them and there couldn’t be.
So why then, he asked himself, did he spend so damn much time thinking about her? She wasn’t the kind of woman who usually caught his eye. But there was something about her. Something alive. Electric.
She smiled and that dimple teased him. She sang to the baby and her voice caressed him. She was here, in his house when he came home from work, and he didn’t even miss the normal quiet.
He was in serious trouble.
“Simon?”
Now her voice almost sounded worried because he hadn’t answered her. “Yes, it’s me.”
“That’s good. We’re in the kitchen!”
He held on to the lop-eared bunny and walked down the long hallway. The rooms were big, the wood gleaming from polish and care and the walls were painted in a warm palate of blues and greens. He knew every creak of the floor, every sigh of the wind against the windows. He’d grown up in this house and had taken it over when his father died a few years ago.
Of course, Simon had put his own stamp on the place. He’d ripped up carpeting that had hidden the tongue-and-groove flooring. He’d had wallpaper removed and had restored crown moldings and the natural wood in the built-in china cabinets and bookcases.
He’d made it his own, determined to wipe out old memories and build new ones.
Now he was sharing it with the son he still could hardly believe was his.
Stepping into the kitchen, he was surrounded by the scented steam lifting off a pot of chili on the stove. At the table, Tula sat cross-legged on a chair while spooning something green and mushy into Nathan’s mouth.
“What is that?” he asked.
“Hi! What? Oh, green beans. We went shopping today, didn’t we, Nathan?” She gave the boy another spoonful. “We bought a blender and some fresh vegetables and then we came home and cooked them up for dinner, didn’t we?”
Simon could have sworn the infant was listening to everything Tula had to say. Maybe it was her way of practically singing her words to him. Or maybe it was the warmth of her tone and the smile on her face that caught the baby’s attention.
Much as it had done for the boy’s father.
“It’s so cold outside, I made chili for us,” she said, tossing him a quick grin over her shoulder.
The impact of that smile shook him right down to the bone.
Mick had been right, he thought. Tula was nothing like the cool, controlled beauties he was used to dating.
And he had to wonder if she was as warm in bed as she was out of it.
“Smells good,” he managed to say.
“Tastes even better,” she promised. “Why don’t you come over here and finish feeding Nathan? I’ll get dinner for us.”
“Okay.” He approached her and the baby cautiously and wanted to kick himself for it. Simon Bradley had a reputation for storming into a situation and taking charge. He could feed a baby for God’s sake. How difficult could it be?
He took Tula’s chair, picked up the bowl of green bean mush and filled a spoon. Behind him, he could sense Tula’s gaze on him, watching. Well, he’d prove not only to himself, but to her, that he was perfectly capable of feeding a baby.
Spooning the green slop into Nathan’s mouth, he was completely unprepared when the baby spat it back at him. “What?”
Tula’s delighted laughter spilled out around him as Simon wiped green beans from his face. Then she leaned in, kissed him on the cheek and said, “Welcome to fatherhood.”
An instant later, her smile died as he looked at her through dark eyes blazing with heat. Her mouth went dry and a sizzle of something dark and dangerous went off inside her.
They stared at each other for what felt like forever until finally Simon said, “That wasn’t much of a kiss. We’ll have to do better next time.”
Next time?
Five
Tula remembered sitting in her own kitchen thinking that this was not a good idea. Now she was convinced.
Yet here she was, living in a Victorian mansion in the city with a man she wasn’t sure she liked—but she really did want.
Last night at dinner, Simon had looked so darn cute with green beans on his face that she hadn’t been able to stop herself from giving in to the impulse to kiss him. Sure, it was just a quick peck on his cheek. But when he’d turned those dark brown eyes on her and she’d read the barely banked passion there, it had shaken her.
Not like she was some shy, retiring virgin or anything. She wasn’t. She’d had a boyfriend in college and another one just a year or so ago. But Simon was nothing like them. In retrospect, they had been boys and Simon was all man.
“Oh God, stop it,” she told herself. It wouldn’t do any good of course. She’d been indulging in not so idle daydreams centered on Simon Bradley for days now. When she was sleeping, her brain picked up on the subconscious thread and really went to town.
But a woman couldn’t be blamed for what she dreamed of when she slept, right?
“It’s ridiculous,” she said, tugging at her desk to move it into position beneath one of the many mullioned windows. A stray beam of rare January sunlight speared through the clouds and lay across her desktop. She didn’t take the time to admire it though, instead, she went back to getting the rest of her temporary office the way she wanted it.
She didn’t need much, really. Just her laptop, a drawing table where she could work on the illustrations for her books and a comfy chair where she could sit and think.
“Hmm. If you don’t need much stuff, Tula, why is there so much junk in here?” A question for the ages, she thought. She didn’t try to collect things. It just sort of … happened. And being here in the Victorian where everything had a tidy spot to belong to made her feel like a pack rat.
There were boxes and books and empty shelves waiting to be filled. There were loose manuscript pages and pens and paints and, oh, way too many things to try to organize.
“Settling in?”
She jumped about a foot and spun around, holding one hand to her chest as if trying to keep her heart where it belonged. He stood in the open doorway, a half smile on his handsome face as if he knew darn well that he’d scared about ten years off her life.
Giving Simon a pained glare, she snapped, “Wear a bell or something, okay? I about had a heart attack.”
“I do live here,” Simon reminded her.
“Yeah, I know.” As if she could forget. She’d lain awake in her bed half the night, imagining Simon in his bed just down the hall from her. She never should have kissed him. Never should have breached the tense, polite wall they’d erected between them at their first meeting.
Only that morning, they’d had breakfast together. The three of them sitting cozily in a kitchen three times the size of her own. She had watched Simon feeding a squirming baby oatmeal while dodging the occasional splat of rejected offerings and darned if he hadn’t looked … cute doing it.
She