Natural Born Daddy. Sherryl Woods

taking her usual place on the corner of his desk. Her skirt hitched up a practically indecent three inches, exposing shapely thighs. Her attempt to tug it lower failed dismally. One of these days he really was going to have to have a talk with her about office decorum.

      “Don’t you ever sit in a chair?” he grumbled.

      “Sure,” she said easily. “At my desk. At yours, this is better. So, what’s it going to be today? Roses? Candy? Balloons? A trip to the moon?”

      Jordan sighed. He was running out of ideas. “What would have worked on you?”

      “I’m easy. I’d have caved in after the first two or three dozen roses,” she said readily. “Of course, DeVonne did have to get a little creative. He actually told me he loved me. Have you mentioned anything along those lines to Kelly?”

      He could feel patches of color climbing into his cheeks. Ginger’s expression told him she could interpret exactly what that meant. She regarded him with a mix of disgust and pity.

      “You haven’t, have you? Jordan Adams, you don’t deserve a woman like Kelly. You’re some kind of throwback to another era. You think you’re doing her some great favor just by asking, don’t you?”

      “Of course not.”

      Ginger rolled her eyes. “Work on that delivery, boss. It’s not believable. You probably told her something romantic like how she’d never have to work another day in her life or how she could attend teas with all the hoity-toity people in Houston society, am I right?”

      It was close enough that Jordan could feel another rush of blood up the back of his neck. He scowled at his secretary. “Don’t you have work to do?”

      “Just taking care of your love life. Once you make up your mind what you’re sending today, I’ll place the order. Then I’m out of here. I’m taking the afternoon off.” Her eyes sparkled with anticipation. “DeVonne is taking me in-line skating tonight. It’s our anniversary. I intend to look sexy as hell for the occasion.”

      “In-line skating? And you call me unromantic,” Jordan muttered.

      “We met in-line skating,” Ginger informed him huffily. “Bumped smack into each other. Believe me, when you smack into a professional linebacker, you’re down for the count. When I finally caught my breath, I took one look into those big blue eyes of his and it whooshed straight out of me again. The man is awesome.”

      She wagged her pencil at him, obviously hinting she was ready to take notes. “So, what’s it going to be today?” she asked again. “Try to be original, boss. Even I’m getting bored and I’m not on the receiving end.”

      “More roses, I suppose,” he said, sounding thoroughly defeated even to his own ears.

      Ginger shook her head. “Enough with the roses already. She’s bound to be sick of them. I think I’ll make it orchids. And if you don’t have anything better to do this afternoon, I’d suggest you go to the mall and pick out some outrageously expensive perfume to send tomorrow.”

      He stared at her blankly. “What kind?”

      “Something French and sexy. Something that will drive you wild when you get a whiff of it.”

      He thought Kelly smelled pretty good as it was, fresh and clean. He wasn’t sure he wanted her to smell like a Paris whorehouse. This might be another of those times when it would be best to go with his own instincts and ignore Ginger’s. “I’ll look around,” he promised.

      An hour later, after wandering through a mall indecisively, he walked past a lingerie shop. He stopped in his tracks and stared openmouthed at the display in the window. All that silk and lace would definitely drive a man wild. He tried to imagine Kelly’s reaction if she opened a box and found something like that inside. Would she slap him upside the head? Laugh at him? Or would her imagination kick into overdrive the way his was doing? Would she finally realize that he truly thought of her as a sexy, provocative woman? He figured it was worth the risk.

      After glancing around to see if he was being observed, he sucked in a deep breath and marched inside. He’d never seen so many silky underthings in his life. Each struck him as more daring and sensual than the next.

      “May I help you?” a girl barely out of her teens inquired perkily. A Ginger-in-training, he decided.

      “I’d like to buy something for a lady.”

      She grinned. “I’m relieved,” she said. “I doubt we’d have anything in your size.”

      The unexpected joke, which also reminded him of his secretary, released some of his anxiety. “I don’t have a clue about sizes and stuff like that,” he admitted.

      “Is she about my size? Bigger? Smaller?”

      “A little taller,” he said without hesitation, then paused. The rest seemed downright intimate to be discussing with this total stranger. She was watching him expectantly, though. She was probably used to men fumbling around with embarrassment.

      “Maybe a little bigger…” He cleared his throat. “On top,” he added in a choked voice.

      She grinned again without batting an eye. “Got it. And on the bottom?”

      He thought of Kelly’s cute, sassy little behind. “Curvy,” he said. “But not too big.”

      The teenager grinned. “Okay. Now, did you want a teddy? A negligee? Bra? Panties?”

      He was stymied. His gaze went back to the item that had drawn his attention to the window. Rexanne had owned something similar, but seeing her in it had never seemed to stir him the way just the thought of seeing Kelly wearing one did. He had no idea what it was called.

      “What’s that?” he asked.

      “A teddy. It’s from France. Very chic.”

      Ginger had said he ought to get something from France that was capable of driving him wild. Another glance at the teddy told him that ought to do it. No question about it. With Kelly in it—or mostly out of it—he wouldn’t be able to catch his breath for a month.

      “I’ll take that.”

      “In red, black, pink or blue?”

      “All of them.”

      The clerk’s eyes lit up, which hinted that he might have made a mistake not asking about the price. He didn’t care. “Can you wrap them?”

      “Absolutely.”

      Fifteen minutes later he exited the store with his elegantly wrapped package. An hour later he was driving straight toward west Texas at a speed that openly defied state law. This was one gift he intended to give her in person. Tonight. And he was too damned impatient to waste time waiting around in an airport to be on his way. Besides, a long drive was the only way he could think of to cool off before he scared her to death by making it plain exactly how badly he wanted her.

      * * *

      The pounding on the front door woke Kelly from a sound sleep. She glanced at the clock beside her bed. It was well after two in the morning. She automatically sniffed the air for the smell of smoke. A fire was the only thing she could think of that would cause all this uproar at this hour. The air smelled summer fresh with just a hint of the flowers she’d planted in pots on the porch below.

      Grabbing her old chenille robe from the foot of the bed, she belted it tightly around her and glanced outside. She spotted Jordan’s car parked haphazardly in front of the house. So much for the who, she thought wearily. All that remained was the why. Why would he be carrying on like a lunatic in the middle of the night? She’d sent him a polite thank-you note for the gifts. Maybe he hadn’t considered it adequate, but this was hardly an appropriate hour to discuss her lack of manners.

      She hurried down the stairs, pausing only to reassure a sleepy-eyed Dani that there was no problem.

      “Go on back to bed, sweetie. It’s just