The Baby Deal. Kat Cantrell

needed to change but she wasn’t sure what. She hated being unsure.

      “Should I scrawl ‘I’m sorry’ across my forehead with a Sharpie? I’m bound to get laryngitis as many times as I’ve had to say it.”

      He chuckled and it spread through her abdomen with a tingle.

      “How about a truce instead?” He flipped her hand and shook it. “We used to get along pretty well. Let’s see if we can find a way back to that.”

      The weight of his fingers against hers took on a whole new meaning. “That sounds suspiciously like the opposite of professional.”

      “Hmm, you think so?” His hand tightened and a thumb brushed over her knuckle in a long stroke. The sparks submerged her senses with the kind of quick heat she’d done her best to forget, but it came rushing back in a torrent of memory.

      “Uh-huh. The opposite.”

      “You said that already.”

      He was watching her with intense, impossible-to-look-away-from focus, leaning into her, a slight tilt away from something irreversible. Crazy. Dangerous and frightening.

      “We should go inside,” she rasped and cleared her throat, breaking the connection and sweeping her hair off her shoulders in a poor attempt to reorient, which surely didn’t fool Shay. “Will you show me to my room?”

      “Sure. I’ll send someone out for your bags.”

      No catch in his voice, because she’d never affected him the way he did her, as if her legs would collapse at any moment. Firm, solid ground, that’s what she needed.

      He mounted the patterned steps lined with twenty-foot palm trees and exotic flowers that shouldn’t grow in the desert but did because they belonged to Shay. He created magic from nothing, an alchemy she’d never been able to analyze until it made sense.

      She reminded herself that she didn’t need to understand him. She only needed to do her job, get research notes for her book and get out.

      Forty-seven hallways later, her head spun from trying to take in the luxurious room Shay had ushered her into. The four-poster bed presided over the room from a raised dais, leading to an inviting seating area to the left that shared a flat-screen TV mounted on a swivel arm between them.

      One whole wall was clear acrylic, enclosing a tank full of colorful, darting fish, coral and glowing anemones. The remaining walls were painted a purple so dark, it should have closed in the space, but actually worked well to unite the separate areas. Raw silk in lighter purples, off-white and black covered the bed and was repeated in the fabrics of the seating area and window treatments.

      It was difficult to reconcile all this wealth and opulence with the rough-around-the-edges man she’d known in college. “Your home is beautiful.”

      “My mom.” He twisted his mouth into a self-deprecating grin. “She and the decorator were texting each other within two days. I figured why ruin her fun? So I let her have free rein.”

      Juliana recalled Mrs. Shaylen being a very proper, nervous woman who taught English at a private high school in Dallas. They’d never gotten along well, though Juliana couldn’t fathom why not. They shared a strong desire to see Shay live until his next birthday and he’d ignored both of them equally well.

      “I’ll unpack later. We should start right away with Mikey. What does he usually do in the afternoons?”

      “Different stuff. I temporarily reassigned one of the maids to Mikey. Maria. She raised five kids but has no interest in long-term child care. He’s with her now. She watches him if I have to go into the office or do a conference call from home.”

      “Maybe that’s where we should start. What are the next two months going to look like? What are you hoping to accomplish? Total immersion means there won’t be a lot of going into the office. We should organize a list of goals and then assign blocks of time to—”

      “Whoa, Schedule Police. Is all that necessary?”

      “Yes, extremely. We have a limited amount of time and a lot to cover. We need a plan of attack. Additionally, it’s important to note children thrive on schedules. They like to know what’s coming next. It’s comforting. Schedules are now a part of your life.”

      In the time she’d taken to explain the most fundamental concept Shay needed to learn, he’d edged into her space. The fine lines he’d grown around his eyes were deeper than she’d realized, aging him. He wasn’t twenty-two anymore, either, and it fit him nicely.

      If only the inside had aged as well as the outside.

      “Hey, Ju?” His gaze flitted over her and the atmosphere tangibly shifted, growing dense and tight. “Danged if I don’t like this new you. That high-brow tone you get when you’re being all consulty-like, it’s really sexy.”

      She narrowed an eye at him. “Say what?”

      “Yeah. I like it. Give me some more.” His cheekbones drew upward as he smiled wolfishly.

      “Um.” Now she had a really keen awareness of exactly how close Shay was and exactly how far away the door was. The clean freshness of his soap frayed her senses. It wasn’t what he used to smell like. “That was all I had to say.”

      “Too bad. What should we do now?”

      “Unpack.” Hadn’t she just said she could do that later? She took a step backward, hoping the movement would jar her brain into functioning again. “Then we can go over some basics.”

      “Or,” he said, wrapping his tongue around the r in a thoroughly suggestive way, “I could put some Shay in your sway, baby.”

      Her eyes shut for a brief, insane second. The first time he’d laid that line on her, she’d laughed and let him take her to dinner. After an appropriate period of dating, he’d sweet-talked her clothes off and she’d spent forty-eight hours in his bed losing all sense of time and place. His full-on masculine quicksand had sucked her under and kept her there. Pulling free had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

      “My sway is A-Okay, thanks.” Dr. Seuss instead of Dr. Cane. Shay yanked her out of academia, yanked her out of reasonableness. He had to stop. “We agreed it was best to have a professional association only.”

      When he reached out and fingered a lock of hair, she almost jerked out of her skin. With a perplexed once-over, he dropped his hand, allowing her to breathe again.

      “No. I said I was hiring you for your expertise. I did not agree to the distance between us. Feels wrong. That line worked once to get your attention. Figured I’d try it again.”

      Distance. She wished she didn’t know precisely what he meant. In college, they’d talked about everything, joked and flirted without censor. There was a strange edge now that cut in ways she hadn’t anticipated. “Well, I’m not falling for it again.”

      “Maybe I’ll find a different line, then.” When she cocked a brow, he shrugged and said, “It’s weird to be dancing around our past, trying to avoid land mines.”

      “So you figured you’d step on one deliberately?”

      “Hey, it’s easier to deal with an explosion you know is coming than one you don’t.”

      Shay’s straightforward approach was a far cry from textbook psychology and he seldom followed conventions anyway. Her doctorate wouldn’t get much traction here and they did have to spend time together. “Let’s ditch the explosives and try something else, like really putting the past behind us. We’re different people now. Maybe this time around, we can be friends.”

      His grin could have melted butter. “Can we have a sleepover and watch scary movies? I haven’t had a good midnight pillow fight in ages.”

      She laughed. “Sorry, sport. Your future includes diapers and bottles. But I’ll gladly stay up late with you for that.”

      The