Matt’s heart about stopped. “That’s good?”
“That’s excellent!”
He swallowed the lump of emotion that formed in his throat. He might not be brilliant at parenting. Hell, he might not be ready to parent, but it seemed Bella trusted him. That gave him such an emotional high he could have happily kissed Claire, but everything that had happened between them the day before came tumbling back and his chest tightened.
He didn’t want to get involved with her. Worse, he didn’t want her to know how tied in knots she had him. So he headed for the counter and pulled out the coffee and filters.
“You still should have woken me when she got up.”
“There was no need.”
Pouring grounds into the filter, he said, “She’s my responsibility and I take my responsibilities seriously.”
To his complete surprise, she sniffed a laugh. “No kidding. A guy doesn’t get to be where you are by shirking his responsibilities.” She paused, glanced around. “Unless you inherited your money.”
“No. I didn’t.”
She only smiled.
“You’ve never heard of me, have you?”
“Should I have? Are you some kind of celebrity?”
He gaped at her. “Don’t you read the financial pages? See the most eligible bachelor section of any Boston magazine? I’m not a movie star but I’m kind of well known in Boston.”
“Never heard of you until we were contacted by Ginny’s attorney.” She lifted Bella and tickled her belly with her nose. “Look, I get it that you’re some big-deal financial guy. And that’s cool, but I don’t keep up on that stuff.”
He said, “Whatever,” brushing her off, but his heart beat out a strange tattoo. It was the first time since he’d gotten rich that he met someone who didn’t know the details of who he was. He might have thought it would be insulting. Instead, it felt strangely liberating.
“I’m going to take her upstairs while I change.” Light and happy, Claire’s voice drifted over to him. “Now that her tummy’s full, she may go down for a nap, which will give us time to call the nanny service.”
His stomach plummeted. The nanny service. That explained the happiness. As soon as he officially hired help, she got to go home.
Annoyance zinged through him, making him snippy. She might be glad to be leaving, but she didn’t have to be so obvious about it. “I guess I may be doing some apologizing since you hung up on the service I called last night.”
She rose with a laugh. “Or we could just call a different service.”
“I thought you said that was the best one?”
“That one’s the best, but the other two aren’t too far behind. We’ll decide which to call when I get downstairs.”
She left the kitchen and he found a bowl and a box of cereal. By the time she returned, he’d eaten and read the morning paper.
She set the baby monitor on the table. The small screen above the little speaker showed Bella sound asleep in her crib.
“I thought that needed to stay in her room.”
“The camera and microphone are in the room. The screen and speaker go where we go.” She sighed. “It took me a little longer to get her to sleep than I’d expected.”
He set the paper aside, trying to be nonchalant about the fact that the cute jeans she’d changed into had set his heart to humming again and her desire to go home annoyed him. He shouldn’t want her to stay. He should be glad she was going. So that’s how he acted. Cool. Casual. Unconcerned that she was leaving.
“Give me a minute to get into some clothes and we’ll call the nanny service.” He headed for the door, but stopped. Just because he was annoyed that didn’t give him license to be a bad host.
“Have you eaten?”
“No, but a cup of coffee will be enough.”
He frowned. “Really, Ms. Kincaid. A professional like you should know a good breakfast is necessary.”
She laughed. “Yeah. I should know. But I’m not much of a breakfast person.”
She turned, opened a cupboard, grabbed a mug and poured herself a cup of coffee.
Matt stood watching her, mesmerized. She was so casual around him, and his home, that the place didn’t feel so…sterile. Maybe that’s why he didn’t want her to leave? Even filled with people, his house never felt like a home.
He shook his head. Now where the hell were his thoughts going? He had to stop this.
He turned away from the sight of her sipping her coffee and left the kitchen.
In his closet, ridiculously, he stared at the clothes. She made simple jeans and a T-shirt look good. It wasn’t that he felt he needed to one-up her. He didn’t even feel he should be trying to entice her. But he had the strangest urge to look really good.
Irritated with himself for thinking such weird things, he grabbed jeans and a T-shirt and put them on. God only knew why this woman made him think like this. But he wasn’t falling victim. He refused.
He found her in the kitchen reading the same paper he had read while she was with Bella. “Ready?”
She snagged the baby monitor as she rose. “As ready as I’ll ever be.”
Finally. A little sadness in her voice. Not that he wanted her to stay. He was sure he and Bella would be fine once they got a nanny. It was simply insulting that she was so eager to bustle away. He knew her sadness probably stemmed from not wanting to leave Bella. But that pleased him more than thinking she didn’t want to leave him. Bella was a baby who needed all the love and affection she could get. He was a grown man who could find himself a new sex partner and be happy—
He frowned. Now, why did that suddenly seem tawdry? Unappealing?
She met him at the door. Holding the baby monitor in one hand as she slid the other into the back pocket of her jeans, she looked up at him. “The business cards are still in the den?”
His mouth went dry. Putting her hand behind her back caused her breasts to punch out, just slightly. But enough to bring his gaze there. He followed the path of a neat little pink T-shirt that hugged her trim waist and fell short of meeting the waistband of her low-rise jeans, exposing an enticing strip of pink skin.
“Well?”
His gaze jumped to hers. “Huh?”
“The business cards? Are they in the den?”
“Um. Yes.” Praying to God she hadn’t seen the direction of his gaze, but knowing she’d have to be blind to have missed it, he pushed on the swinging door and headed down the hall.
In his office, she set the monitor on the desk between them as he picked up the business cards she’d given him the day before.
If it killed him, he intended to get his cool back. “Okay, agency number one is out for now, since you hung up on them.”
She sniffed and looked away.
“So we’re on to agency two.”
He dialed the first three numbers on the landline on his desk and suddenly a squawk came from the monitor. He glanced at the screen and saw Bella pulling herself into a sitting position as she sobbed.
Claire rose. Motioning with her hand, she said, “You keep going. I’ll get her. She probably needs a diaper change.”