And she loved that baby.
Simon Bradley was going to have to work very hard to convince her that he was worthy of being Nathan’s father.
* * *
The scent of rosemary filled the little house by the bay a few hours later.
Tula danced around the kitchen to the classic rock tunes pouring from the radio on the counter and every few steps, she stopped to steal a kiss from the baby in the high chair. Nathan giggled at her, a deep, full-belly laugh that tickled at the edges of Tula’s heart.
“Funny guy,” she whispered, planting a kiss on top of his head and inhaling the sweet, clean scent of him. “Laughing at my dance moves isn’t usually the way to my heart, you know.”
He gave her another grin and kicked his fat legs in excitement.
Tula sighed and smoothed her hand across the baby’s wisps of dark hair. Two weeks he’d been a part of her life and already she couldn’t imagine her world without him in it. The moment she’d picked him up for the first time, Nathan had carved away a piece of her heart and she knew she’d never get it back.
Now she was supposed to hand him over to a man who would no doubt raise Nathan in the strict, rarified world in which she’d been raised. How could she stand it? How could she sentence this sweet baby to a regimented lifestyle just like the one she’d escaped?
And how could she avoid it?
She couldn’t.
Which meant she had only one option. If she couldn’t stop Simon from eventually having custody of Nathan—then she’d just have to find a way to loosen Simon up. She’d loosen Simon up, break him out of the world of “suits” so that he wouldn’t do to Nathan what her father had tried to do to her.
Looking down into the baby’s smiling eyes, she made a promise. “I’ll make sure he knows how to have fun, Nathan. Don’t you worry. I won’t let him make you wear a toddler business suit to preschool.”
The baby slapped one hand down onto a pile of dry breakfast cereal on the food tray, sending tiny O’s skittering across the kitchen.
“Glad you agree,” she said as she bent down, scraped them up into her hand and tossed them into the sink. Then she washed her hands and came back to the baby. “Your daddy’s coming here soon, Nathan. He’ll probably be crabby and stuffy, so don’t let that bother you. It won’t last for long. We’re going to change him, little man. For his own good. Not to mention yours.”
He grinned at her.
“Attaboy,” she said and bent for another quick kiss just as the doorbell sounded. Her stomach gave a quick spin that had her taking a deep breath to try to steady it. “He’s here. You’re all strapped in, so you’re safe. Just be good for a second and I’ll go let him in.”
She didn’t like leaving Nathan alone in the high chair, even though he was belted in tightly. So Tula hurried across the toy-cluttered floor of her small living room and wondered how it had gotten so messy again. She’d straightened it up earlier. Then she remembered she and the baby playing after she put the chicken in the oven and—too late to worry about it now. She threw open the door and nearly gulped.
Simon was standing there, somehow taller than she remembered. He wasn’t wearing a suit, either, which gave her a jolt of surprise. She got another jolt when she realized just how good he looked when he pried himself out of the sleek lines of his business “uniform.” Casual in a charcoal-gray sweater, black jeans and cross trainers, he actually looked even more gorgeous, which was just disconcerting. He looked so…different. The only thing familiar about him was the scowl.
When she caught herself just staring at him like a big dummy, she said quickly, “Hi. Come on in. Baby’s in the kitchen and I don’t want to leave him alone, so close the door, will you, it’s cold out there.”
Simon opened his mouth to speak, but the damn woman was already gone. She’d left him standing on the porch and raced off before he could so much as say hello. Of course, he’d had the chance to speak, he simply hadn’t. He’d been caught up in looking at her. Just as he had earlier that day in his office.
Those big blue eyes of hers were…mesmerizing somehow. Every time he looked into them, he forgot what he was thinking and lost himself for a moment or two. Not something he wanted to admit, even to himself, but there it was. Frowning, he reminded himself that he’d come to her house to set down some rules. To make sure Tula Barrons understood exactly how this bizarre situation was going to progress. Instead, he was standing on the front porch, thinking about just how good a woman could look in a pair of faded blue jeans.
Swallowing the stab of irritation at himself, he followed after her. Tula wasn’t his main concern here, after all. He was here because of the child. His son? He was having a hard time believing it was possible, but he couldn’t walk away from this until he knew for sure. Because if the baby was his, there was no way he would allow his child to be raised by someone else.
He’d been thinking about little else but this woman and the child she said belonged to him since she’d left his office that morning. With his concentration so unfocused, he’d finally given up on getting any work done and had gone to see his lawyer.
After that illuminating little visit, he’d spent the last couple of hours thinking back to the brief time he’d spent with Sherry Taylor. He still didn’t remember much about her, but he had to admit that there was at least the possibility that her child was his.
Which was why he was here. He stepped inside and his foot came down on something that protested with a loud squeak. He glanced down at the rubber reindeer and shook his head as he closed the door. His gaze swept the interior of the small house and he shook his head. If more than two people were in the damn living room, they wouldn’t be able to breathe at the same time. The house was old and small and… bright, he thought, giving the nearly electric blue walls an astonished glance.
The blue walls boasted dark yellow molding that ran around the circumference of the room at the ceiling. There was a short sofa and one chair drawn up in front of a hearth where a tiny blaze sputtered and spat from behind a wrought-iron screen. Toys were strewn across the floor as if a hurricane had swept through and there was a narrow staircase on the far wall leading to what he assumed was an even tinier second story.
The whole place was a dollhouse. He almost felt like Gulliver. Still frowning, he heard Tula in the kitchen, talking in a singsong voice people invariably tended to use around babies. He told himself to go on in there, but he didn’t move. It was as if his feet were nailed to the wood floor. It wasn’t that he was afraid of the baby or anything, but Simon knew damn well that the moment he saw the child, his world as he knew it would cease to exist.
If this baby were his son, nothing would ever be the same again.
A child’s bubble of laughter erupted in the other room and Simon took a breath and held it. Something inside him tightened and he told himself to move on. To get this first meeting over so that plans could be made, strategies devised.
But he didn’t move. Instead, he noticed the framed drawings and paintings on the walls, most of which were of a lop-eared bunny in different poses. Why the woman would choose to display such childish paintings was beyond him, but Tula Barrons, he was discovering, was different from any other woman he’d ever known.
The child laughed again.
Simon nodded to himself and followed the sound and the amazing scents in the air to the kitchen.
It didn’t take him long.
Three long strides had him leaving the living room and entering a bright yellow room that was about the size of his walk-in closet at home. Again, he felt as out of place as a beer at a wine tasting. This whole house seemed to have been built for tiny people and a man his size was bound to feel as if he had to hunch his shoulders to keep from rapping his head on the ceiling.
He noted that the kitchen