Truly Daddy. Cara Colter

some value to him.

      He tried out a boyish grin on her. If he’d been handsome before, he was incredibly so when he put a little effort into it.

      She gave him a look that could have curled steel rods.

      “Ten minutes ago, you thought I was an international jewel thief and now you want me to look after your ba—child?”

      “I never said I thought you were a thief.”

      “I never thought you were a thief,” Constable Prey said with surprise.

      “You don’t know anything about me,” she persisted desperately.

      “You don’t have a criminal record,” Constable Frey offered helpfully. “I ran it.”

      “Thank you very much,” she snapped.

      “I’ll help you, and you help me. Just for a few days.” Garret’s voice was as smooth and sensual as silk.

      “Do I really have a choice?”

      “Not really,” both men informed her.

      “I don’t have anything to wear.”

      “My stuff will fit you.”

      “That’s what I was afraid of.”

      “I’ll go get Angelface,” Constable Frey said. “Let you two get to know each other.” He wagged his eyebrows fiendishly.

      “Oh, brother,” Toni muttered.

      “Ditto,” Garret said.

      They both stared stubbornly at the flickering TV screen.

      A few minutes later the door burst open. Constable Frey ducked so he wouldn’t knock off the passenger who rode high on his shoulders.

      Even before Toni saw the girl, the whole room seemed to brighten.

      When she looked up, her breath caught.

      The child looked around three or four and was absolutely beautiful, the spitting image of her uncle, only in a more delicate form. Dark, tumbling hair, huge sapphire blue eyes.

      She stopped midsentence when she saw Toni. “Down,” she commanded royally.

      She crossed the room with a hop and a skip and then solemnly gazed at Toni before her whole face lit up with a smile.

      “Hello, Auntie,” she said.

      “What?” Garret asked. “What did you say?”

      “I said hello,” the little girl said with a careless shrug.

      “Didn’t you say ‘Hello again’? Do you know this lady?”

      Angelica looked at her with mischief dancing in her eyes.

      And Toni had the oddest sensation of indeed knowing this child. And of something deeper and more breathtaking, something like stepping off the edge of a cliff.

      Looking into those wonderful shining eyes, she fell hopelessly in love.

      Why had the little girl called her “Auntie”? And why had Garret heard something different?

      “I thought she said ‘Hello, angel.’” Constable Frey said.

      “What did you say, Angelica?” her uncle asked.

      “I just said hello,” she replied easily. “That’s all. It’s snowing out,” she said with pleasure. “I have a new toboggan. Will you go with me tomorrow?”

      A chubby hand crept into Toni’s.

      “A toboggan?” Toni said uncertainly. “Like a snow sled?”

      Angelica nodded vigorously. “I like to go really fast,” she warned.

      Suddenly, Toni, who had never seen real live snow before tonight, wanted nothing more than to go really fast down a hill with this little girl.

      Suddenly, this whole adventure seemed tinged with magic.

      Four days here did not seem like prison but like something else entirely. Fate. Destiny guiding her back to something that had always been and always would be.

      She looked into those shining blue eyes and then glanced at Garret’s, the same shade but his tinged with darker mystery, sternness, a hint of sexuality.

      She shivered.

      Hello again...

      Chapter Three

      Garret had started to feel differently about Toni when she’d looked at the trees in his driveway and, with almost childish delight, pronounced them Christmas trees.

      And even more differently when she walked up the pathway to his house.

      Until then, he could feel his defensive wall rise up. Way up. She was like a model, hair a tangled flame, eyes intensely jade, straight nose, full lips, peaches-and-cream complexion. She was long-legged and willowy, in a beautifully cut suit, the skirt short enough to make his mouth go dry.

      She was perfect and beautiful in a way that made him dislike her. She was the kind of woman men made fools of themselves over, lined up to be with.

      And he’d never been a fool or lined up for a woman and he wasn’t about to start.

      But a brick had fallen out of that defensive wall when she called that scraggly line of balsams and spruces and lodgepoles Christmas trees. And then the wall had started to crack at the precise moment she bent over and picked up a handful of snow.

      And it hadn’t been just because that short skirt had ridden up deliciously high on her thigh, either.

      It had been because he’d glimpsed something else inside her—a heart behind the polished facade, a child within the sophisticated woman who could tie the male population in knots with a blink of her tangled lashes.

      She had glanced back at him, caught with little flakes of snow around her mouth, and actually blushed.

      It had made him feel vulnerable as hell.

      Which was probably why she had jumped to the entirely erroneous conclusion that he believed her to be a jewel thief. Because when he felt vulnerable as hell, he hid behind a mask of icy remoteness.

      He wasn’t really used to feeling vulnerable. Maybe he wasn’t really used to feeling, period. But the loss of his brother, Matthew, and his sister-in-law, Sarah, and having Angelica come into his life, made the region around his heart feel oddly tender all the time.

      He was in no position to defend himself against an assault on his heart right now. As if she would, he told himself with an inner snort.

      But he made the mistake of glancing at Toni’s face when Angelica had come through the door on Frey’s shoulders. Her whole face had softened, her green eyes lit from within with gentleness.

      She was the kind of woman who could make a full frontal assault on a poor wounded heart without even knowing she was doing it.

      What if she was everything she appeared to be? Gorgeous, inside and out? Not to mention here for four days?

      “What did you say, Unkie?”

      “What? Nothing!” But Frey was grinning at him like a cat that had swallowed a canary.

      Angelica, with a final smile at Toni to ensure she had charmed her completely, came and settled herself on his lap.

      That Angelica accepted him so absolutely, trusted her love to him so completely without question, never failed to amaze him and make him feel humble. What had he done in his life to deserve this?

      “Did you bring me my cookies?”

      “What cookies?” he asked, drawing down his brows in pretended puzzlement.

      She didn’t buy it. “My cookies with the future in them. Where are