Claimed by the Rebel: The Playboy's Plain Jane / The Loner's Guarded Heart / Moonlight and Roses. Jackie Braun

      The baby was too close now. Touching her, squawking at her like a little bird, tangling his fists in her hair.

      She waited to break, to shatter, for her heart to burst into a million pieces.

      Standing there with Dylan’s arm around her, held fast by his strength, with the sweet-scented baby pulling at her hair and chirping away at her in baby talk, something did shatter. The ice around her heart. Only, behind it was not destruction but warmth. The loveliest warmth burst through her.

      She wiped her tears on Dylan’s chest, took a step back. “Can I hold him?” she whispered.

      The baby came to her so willingly, gurgling and blowing spit bubbles. Her arms closed around him, and she felt his wriggling, beautiful strength.

      She felt life. In all its mystery and all its magnificence.

      She met Dylan’s eyes and heard herself saying, her voice brave, “I had a miscarriage. I lost my baby. The marriage didn’t make it.”

      He just looked at her. He didn’t try and make it better, but he didn’t try and look away, either. He didn’t try and change the subject. He didn’t offer words that would not and could not help. He just looked at her, and there was something in the look in his eyes that she could hang on to.

      “Come on,” he finally said. “Let’s sit down over here.” He guided her to the waiting room, which was blessedly empty, and she took a chair, the baby nestled happily against her. Dylan took the chair beside her, covered her hand with his own.

      “What’s his name?” she asked.

      “Jake.”

      “I was going to call my baby Jonathon. It was a boy, too.”

      “Jonathon’s a nice name. I think you would have been a good mom. No. A great one.” He did not say she was young and there would be more babies, more chances, as if one child could be replaced with another.

      “I took it really hard,” she told him.

      “Would there be any other way to take it?” he asked softly.

      “Marcus, my husband, seemed relieved.” She had never said that to another living soul before. Had she even said it to herself? The words were tumbling out now.

      “He said ‘I’m not sure I was ready for a baby.’ He hadn’t wanted to try again. What he’d wanted was for me to get over it. He didn’t understand how you could grieve for something that had never breathed.” She paused, and said so softly maybe she just said it to herself, “But my dreams breathed.”

      Dylan swore under his breath. One word. Not a word anyone else had said, except maybe her in the darkness of night when she had found herself so alone with a heart full of misery.

      And Dylan meant it. And she knew he was a man who would never be relieved if something happened to his unborn baby. Never.

      The yearning leaped in her, clawed at her, told her, Take a chance on him.

      On him? That was craziness! She had looked after his flowers. She knew better. Except what she had seen in his eyes just now was like a beacon that called the ships lost at sea home to safe harbor.

      “If Tara’s your sister,” she asked, suddenly, “who’s Sarah?”

      He slid her a look, smiled crookedly. “PR manager.”

      “Margot?”

      “Receptionist at my office.”

      “Janet?”

      He sighed. “It’s Sister Janet.”

      “I think,” she decided out loud, “I’ll move to another country.” Was it even possible to outdistance what was unfolding within her? How far would she have to run to escape the hope that was unfurling inside of her?

      “Katie, my lady,” he said, “Oh, Katie, my lady.”

      Katie, my lady. Just a teasing phrase, not something that was intended to increase the yearning within her. But spoken with such tenderness, from his heart, that’s exactly what it did. And it made her decide she wasn’t going anywhere. Not just yet.

      And then he took his hand in hers, and he kissed the top of it, and sighed, a man who would rewrite the past for her if he could.

      But what would he write on her future?

      The baby, who had been slurping contentedly, suddenly popped his thumb from his mouth and roared, “JAAAKE.”

      She laughed, startled and delighted.

      “We’re working on volume control,” Dylan said affectionately. “He only has one setting, loud. And if I put him on the ground, he only has one speed.”

      “Let me guess. Fast.”

      “How did you guess?”

      “Um. I can tell this is one acorn that didn’t fall too far from the McKinnon family tree.”

      “Mr. McKinnon?” a nurse called. “Can you come with me for a minute?”

      Dylan studied Katie. “Do you want me to leave Jake with you or take him with me?”

      Katie struggled to keep her face composed. Yearning, sweet and tantalizing, burned through her. What she wanted to do was bury her face in the sweetness of that baby’s scent and never come up for air again.

      “Leave him with me,” she whispered.

      “Hey, stinker,” Dylan warned his nephew sternly, “don’t live up to your reputation.” And then he turned and followed the nurse down the hallway.

      Katie watched him go, and even though she knew better, even though she was trying so hard not to get any more entangled with a man who could exercise so much power over her—without any awareness of that power on his part—she felt her treacherous heart go right down the hall with him.

      Dylan found his sister. She was being prepped for surgery and needed to give him some instructions, but he was having trouble focusing on her completely.

      He wanted to kill somebody, or at least hurt them badly. He wanted to kill a man he’d never met before. He wanted to kill the man who had been so selfcentered he’d left Katie all alone with her grief for that unborn child. What had she said? Her husband had been relieved.

      Dylan couldn’t believe a man could look into those eyes and not find it in himself to be there, one hundred per cent for her. Not want to be there for her.

      “No chocolate, candy, choking-size hazards, hamburgers or steak and lobster,” his sister said.

      Dylan focused on Tara. Sheesh. She had been given something to control pain until her surgery. “What are you talking about?” he asked her.

      She sighed elaborately. “Earth calling Dylan. I’m trying to tell you how to take care of a baby.”

      “Me?” he said. Katie’s face faded from his mind and he focused on his sister. “I’m not looking after Jake. Where’s Sam?”

      “San Francisco. Fogged in. So unless you want your favorite nephew to go to foster care, time to step up to the plate.” She giggled helplessly. “Step up to the plate. Get it? That’s priceless, given your old career.”

      “Ha, ha,” he said without an ounce of humor. “When’s Sam going to get in?”

      “Dylan, I have no gift for predicting the weather even when I’m not on drugs.”

      After getting a ton more of unhelpful advice from his sister, Dylan went back down the hall to the emergency waiting room. Katie had found a box of toys, and was now sitting on the floor with his nephew, unmindful of getting her outfit dirty; though of course that was, one would assume, why you wore an outfit like that. You wouldn’t worry about wrecking it, you’d hope you could! Thank goodness, she had