Claimed by the Rebel. Jackie Braun

can take it from here,” he said bravely. “I’ll take him over to my sister’s. I have her key. The place is babyproofed and supplied.”

      Something flitted across her face. Relief? But it was quickly replaced by another look. Determination. “You don’t think I’m leaving you alone with this baby, do you?”

      “I can manage a baby.”

      She rolled her eyes. “No, you can’t.”

      He should have felt insulted, but he didn’t. He felt relieved. And, oddly enough, not relieved at the very same time. As confused as he had ever felt. Before, even if she had been saying no, he’d felt as if he was in control. Now he didn’t. And he was pretty sure Dylan McKinnon out of control was not going to be a good thing.

      “Really,” he said, a bit more forcefully, “I can manage it. I make million-dollar decisions every day. Forty-two people work for me. I’m the honorary spokesperson for three different charitable organizations. What is one twenty-pound baby in comparison to all that?”

      She looked entirely unimpressed. “Dylan McKinnon, have you ever kept a plant alive for more than three weeks?”

      “What kind of plant?” he hedged.

      “Any kind. A garden flower? A houseplant?”

      Mental pictures of a sordid history that included many dead, dead plants formed in his mind’s eye.

      “Anything green?” she asked, as if she was relaxing her standards to give him a chance.

      “Bath towels?”

      She shook her head. “Living green.”

      He lived in a condo. He didn’t even have to remember to water the lawn! “The fact that plants, er, fail to thrive around me is irrelevant.”

      “Hmm. How about a puppy? Or a kitten?” She looked at him, shook her head. “A goldfish? Guppies?”

      He scowled at her. “My lifestyle has never allowed for pets.”

      “Precisely my point. You don’t know how to care for things.”

      “I travel! I know how to care for things! My car is cared for! That’s diamond finish on the wax job in case you didn’t notice.”

      “Living things,” she amended.

      Her chin was getting a stubborn set to it. A smart man would have been running. But he was in charge of a baby now, and it was hard to run with twenty pounds of squirming baby under your arm, and plus, he was thinking he kind of liked her chin pointed at him like that.

      “Speaking of cars,” she said, “do you have a car seat?”

      And that clinched it. Dylan McKinnon knew, that whether he wanted to or not, he needed Katie Pritchard right now. Only a girl like her could be trusted to think of something as all important to his nephew’s wellbeing as a car seat.

      The baby did that wrinkly thing with his forehead, held his breath and started to turn a very unbecoming shade of red.

      How humiliating. Dylan didn’t just need Katie. He needed her desperately.