Baby Before Business. SUSAN MEIER

with her, Madelyn thought, dressing the baby for the trip outside. After his arrogance the night before, she doubted she was even attracted to him anymore. She didn’t like arrogant men. No smart woman did. She would happily stay so far away from him he wouldn’t even have to worry about talking to her.

      Madelyn found a spare set of keys for the SUV hanging on a bulletin board in the mudroom and twenty-three dollars casually strewn on a coffee table, probably money he’d taken from his pocket the night before. She didn’t feel she was stealing. She was stocking his damned cupboards. She certainly wasn’t using her own money. In fact, if she ever did have to spend her own money on things for the house or the baby, she was expensing it!

      After buckling Sabrina in the car seat, Madelyn drove to a nearby convenience store. She purchased the items she needed, holding Sabrina on her hip because if there was a stroller in the stack of baby items that still littered the foyer, Ty hadn’t yet put it together. She juggled the milk, eggs, bread, coffee and baby on the way to the checkout counter and had only a little more success carrying everything after the clerk put her purchases into bags. Maneuvering the baby and the bags on her left hand and arm, she opened the SUV door, then dumped the groceries on the passenger-side seat and fastened Sabrina in again.

      By the time she returned to Ty Bryant’s kitchen, she was exhausted, frazzled and not a woman to be trifled with. So, when she found Ty sitting at the kitchen table as if life were good and easy, and he said, “There you are,” as if she’d stolen his SUV, it took every ounce of her control not to throttle him.