The cowboy glanced at her, glared, shifted away from the baby. “Don’t laugh,” he warned her.
“I’m sorry. It just looks as if you’d be completely unfazed by almost anything life threw at you. And you’re running from a baby!”
“I am not running,” he said tersely. “Call him off.”
She did laugh then. Ty glared at her, stepped away from the baby. He had waltzed around half the living room.
“Just stop and pick him up,” Amy managed to advise between snorts of laughter. “He thinks it’s a game.”
Oh, it felt good to laugh. She knew it was partly reaction to the situation she found herself in, a release from the fear she had felt when she had been startled by the big cowboy appearing in a home she’d already been busy making hers. But life had been such a serious affair for far too long.
The tall cowboy glaring at her warningly only seemed to make it more impossible to control her rising mirth.
“Now you want me to pick him up? Before you were going to hit me with a lamp if I even looked at him.”
“That was when I thought you were the intruder,” she said, wiping at her eyes. “Now I know it’s me who is the intruder. If you pick him up and cuddle him for a few seconds, he’ll lose interest.”
“Cuddle?”
“You mustn’t say that as if I’m asking you to get friendly with a rattlesnake!”
“It was the word cuddle that I took offense to!”
“A threat to your masculinity, is it?”
“I’m wet. I’m dirty.”
“You’re scared.”
He looked at her darkly, and then heaved a sigh.
“Terrified,” he admitted, and the laughter, recently tamed, burst free again. It still felt good to release the tension that had been building in her since Ty Halliday had set her world upside down by coming in the back door of the house she had been assuming was going to be all hers for the next six months.
The tiniest smile tugged at the edges of that hard mouth, and her laughter died. Nothing in her entire existence—she’d lived all over the world, gone to university, married into a well-to-do society family—had prepared her for a man like Ty Halliday.
In a world filled with illusions, the man was absolutely, one hundred per cent real. He had physical power and presence. He was as big as an oak tree, and just as solid. He had seemed to fill the room, to charge the air in it with a subtle hiss of dark sensuality. There was something about him standing there, all cowboy, that was equal parts menace and romance.
There was toughness in the chiseled angles of his dark whisker-shadowed face, something uncompromising about the set of his chin, the muscle that jerked along his jawline, the hard lack of humor around the line of his lips.
He was handsome—Amy was not sure she had ever seen eyes that color, a flinty blue sapphire—almost beyond words, but his good looks were of the untouchable variety. He wore solitude, self-reliance, as comfortably as he wore that past-his-knees, dark, dripping Australian-style riding coat that emphasized the broadness of his shoulders and the impossible length of his legs.
“If you pick him up, the chasing-papa game will be over,” she said, though suddenly she was not at all sure she wanted to see her baby in those strong arms.
She needn’t have worried. Ty Halliday was not picking up anyone’s baby. He stepped away, Jamey followed, crowing demandingly.
“At least stop and pat him on the head and say hello to him. His name is Jamey, with a Y.”
“The Y part is important?”
“Very important,” she said solemnly. It marked one of the few occasions she had stood up to her husband and her in-laws. They had wanted James. She had not. She had thought Jamey was a wonderful compromise. They had not. But for once, she had stood firm.
“Just try it,” she said encouragingly.
Ty stopped, contemplated the situation. Jamey pitched himself into the hesitation, grabbed the hem of the wet coat and pulled himself up.
“Papa.”
Looking very much as if he was reaching out to a full-grown tiger, Ty rested a reluctant hand on Jamey’s nest of red curls.
“Hey. Little fella. Jamey.”
“Papa,” Jamey crooned, leaned into the jacket without letting go, and plopped his thumb in his mouth.
“Why does he think I’m his papa, for heaven’s sake?”
“Don’t take it personally. He calls every man that.”
“Why? Where is his papa?”
Ty looked at her then, and his gaze seemed uncomfortably all-seeing.
“Are you running from something?” he asked softly.
She actually shivered from the fierce look that crossed his face. She told herself not to take it personally. He would just be one of those men with a very traditional set of values, thinking women and children—much as he disliked the latter—were in need of his extremely masculine self for protection.
Amy hated that the old-fashioned notion actually filled her with the oddest sense of comfort.
“What would make you think I’m running from something?” she hedged, because of course that was uncomfortably close to the truth.
“Less than a week before Christmas, and you’re looking for a new home?”
“It’s just the timing,” she said. “The McFinleys wanted to be in Australia by Christmas.”
He did not look convinced, but he did not look as if he cared to pursue it, either.
“Where’s his papa?” he asked again, patting Jamey—who was showing absolutely no sign of losing interest in him—with surprising gentleness, on the head.
“I’m a widow,” she said quietly. “Jamey’s father was killed in an accident three months after he was born. It’s nearly nine months ago now.”
Some shadow passed over his face and through the depths of those amazing sapphire eyes. She felt as if Ty Halliday could clearly see the broken place in her.
She could feel his awkwardness. It was obvious from his house that he was a man alone in the world, and had been for a long time. There was not a single feminine touch in this place. It was also obvious he was a man allergic to attachments. There were no pictures, no family photographs. There was no ring on his finger.
On arriving, she had thought the McFinleys had taken their personal touches down so that she could put up her own and feel more at home. But she had not even asked herself about the unlocked door, the lack of curtains, or throw rugs or little lace dollies. She had not asked herself about the dresser still filled with neatly folded clothes.
Now, feeling his eyes on her, Amy knew it was way beyond this solitary cowboy’s skill level to know what to say to her. She was touched when he tried.
“That seems to fall squarely into the life-is-unfair department,” he said gently.
She lifted her chin. “I stopped expecting life to be fair a long time ago.”
He frowned. “No, you didn’t.”
“Pardon me?”
“That sounds like something I would say. And you’re not like me.”
“And what are you like?”
“Cynical. World-weary.”
“That’s me exactly!” she protested.
A