Desire Collection: August 2017 Books 1 - 4. Rachel Bailey

start to bubble.

      “You need a nanny, Linc,” Beck told him, ignoring Tate’s protest. “Unless you plan to take some time off.”

      “I am not leaving my son with a stranger,” Linc said, his jaw rock hard.

      The new nanny would be a stranger, too, but that pertinent fact seemed to have escaped Linc’s steel-trap mind. Tate’s hand gripped her coffee cup, reminding herself that throwing the object would accomplish nothing. Unless the cup hit his head and knocked some sense into him.

      “No, what you are really saying is that you won’t leave Shaw with a Harper,” Tate said, pushing herself to her feet.

      Their eyes clashed and Linc nodded. “Yeah, I won’t leave him with Kari’s sister. Just like I wouldn’t leave him with your mother.

      “Not that she’s ever asked to see him,” Linc added, his voice bitter. To Linc, who obviously valued family so highly, her mother’s lack of interest had to be a knife to his heart. Tate wanted to tell him that her mother was dead, she wanted to put him in his place, but those words died when she opened her mouth to retaliate.

      “Stop comparing me to Kari.” It took all her effort to keep her voice calm. “I’m not my sister.”

      “If it walks like a duck...” Linc said, his words deliberately careless.

      Tate heard Jaeger’s groan. “Dammit, Linc. Stop being an asshat.”

      Linc threw up his hands, his handsome face dark with suppressed anger. “It’s not like I’m making assumptions here, Tate. Kari spoke about you. You never went to college, wanting to travel instead. You missed countless family events because you had something better to do. You can’t wrap your head around commitment, and you’d rather have your freedom than stay in one place. You make a habit of quitting jobs and ending relationships on a whim. Knowing all this, how can I trust that you won’t ditch my kid if you have something better to do?” Linc linked his hands behind his head as his chest rose and fell in agitation. “He’s my life. I’d never forgive myself if something happened to him on your watch!”

      This was why she’d kept her distance from her family, why she’d worked so very hard to create another identity. All her life comparisons had been drawn between her and Kari. Linc was just another in a long, long line of people who’d assumed she was just like Kari and condemned her for it.

      She sighed. She’d lived most of her life feeling trapped between two worlds—her family’s perceptions of who she was and who they thought she should be.

      Now, far away from the life she’d left behind, she felt free, like she could finally be who she really was. People either liked her, or didn’t, for who she was without reference to Kari. She made it a point to not worry about what people thought about her, to try to live her life on her own terms according to her own truth.

      But, unfortunately, Linc’s assumptions about her hurt, and feeling hurt annoyed her. She’d known him for a few hours; his opinion shouldn’t matter to her.

      But, dammit, it did.

      Tate, feeling as if she was fighting a riptide, took Ellie from Sage’s arms and dropped a kiss on her silken head. Determined not to let Linc, or his siblings, see how upset she was, she tossed her head and gritted out, “You got all your information about me from Kari, yet here I stand, holding her child, the second one she’s dumped. I think there’s something wrong with that picture.”

      Tate walked toward the stairs, feeling the acid burn of tears in the back of her throat. At the door, she made herself turn, to look at Linc once more, probably for the last time. “I’ll call for a cab, and I’ll be gone in an hour. Good luck in your search for a perfect nanny.”

       Five

      As Ellie played at her feet with plastic toys, Tate looked out her bedroom window to the tree-lined street below. Tate watched as Beck swung Shaw up onto his shoulders, the little boy laughing with delight. Sage was walking alongside Beck, and Jaeger stopped to close the wrought iron gate behind him. They were taking Shaw to his pre-K, Tate surmised. The Ballantyne siblings were a close-knit unit, something she and Kari had never managed to be.

      She was, once again, alone. Tate looked down at Ellie’s dark head and smiled. Well, she wasn’t completely alone; for the next few weeks or so she had this precious little girl for company. Tate bit her lip, wondering if she’d ever see Shaw again. She wanted to be part of his life, but whether Linc would allow that was a tenuous possibility at best. However, there was one thing she did know beyond a shadow of a doubt. When she restored Ellie to Kari she’d be a constant and consistent presence throughout Ellie’s life, whether Kari wanted her to be or not.

      Well, as constant and consistent as her travels and job allowed. Shaw and Ellie were her nephew and niece, the only family, apart from Kari, she had. She wanted a better, healthier relationship with them than she had with her sister and her mother.

      The Ballantyne crew turned the corner, and Tate realized that it was a bit of a shock to realize how envious she was of them, of the deep love they shared. A part of her wanted to know what unconditional love felt like—how it felt to be supported, to have a backstop, a soft place to fall. Tate shoved her hands into her hair, frustrated with herself. These thoughts were dangerous and counterproductive. Besides, love’s favorite sport was to push her heart through a grinder.

      “I handled that badly.”

      Linc’s words danced over her skin, and her stomach quivered. As angry and hurt as she was, he still made her feel like she’d been plugged into a source of pure energy. Unable to face him, Tate sat down on the seat built into the window and watched the road below.

      “I’m sorry. I was rude and dismissive and judgmental,” Linc stated.

      Tate lifted her hand to rub the back of her neck and closed her eyes, wishing that he’d just go away. It would be so much easier if she could just wait for the cab in peace, if she could slip out of the door and avoid this confrontation. She realized that she’d hardly spent any time with him, but she was already so sick of him looking at her and seeing Kari.

      Hell, he’d probably thought that he was kissing Kari. It was highly possible that his attraction to her had nothing to do with who she was and everything to do with him taking a walk down memory lane.

      Out of the corner of her eye Tate watched as he walked past Ellie to sit beside her on the bench, lifting his ankle up onto his knee. “God, I’m exhausted.”

      Tate felt his broad, warm hand on the back of her neck and turned her head to look at him. She wanted to pull away from his touch but his fingers pressing into the knots in her neck felt amazing. Not going anywhere, not going to pull away, her body told her stubborn brain.

      “You must be exhausted, too.” Linc dug his fingers into the tight cords of her neck, and it took every ounce of determination she had not to moan from sheer pleasure. “Did you sleep last night?”

      “Not much, no.”

      “‘Me, either,” Linc admitted. “Let’s talk, Tate. And this time, let’s try not to kiss or yell at each other.”

      They could try, but she didn’t know if they’d succeed. Because she still wanted that mouth on hers. If he tried to kiss her she didn’t think she could resist him. Embarrassingly, her brain had lost all control over her body...

      “Okay.”

      Linc dropped his hand and pulled his thigh up on the bench so that he could look at her. “I am sorry for earlier. As Jaeger pointed out after you left, I acted like an ass because I don’t like change.”

      “And you don’t know me so you don’t feel comfortable leaving Shaw with me. It’s okay, I get it. It’s a big, bad world—I’ve seen most of it—and I’m thankful that you are a protective dad.”

      “I appreciate