Flynn didn’t have a stroke about the amount of the check, but a full-fledged panic attack hit him when they reached the parking lot.
Night had fallen faster than a stone, temperatures dropping just as swiftly. His black Lotus had a thimble-size trunk space. There wasn’t a prayer of stuffing all the baby loot into his car. Her more sensible Taurus was parked next to his, gleaming white under the parking lot neon lights. Molly’s face looked pearl-soft in the evening shadows, but her stockinged legs and suit jacket were inadequate protection against that crisp, sharp air and she was starting to shiver.
She was also busy. As if she didn’t trust him, she took charge of Dylan, and was organizing the baby in the car seat as if she were a general attacking a strategic logistics problem. “I don’t think baby car seats are meant for sports cars, but I do believe he’s finally secure...”
Finally she lifted her head. Finally—for the first time since this whole blasted store outing began—her eyes met his, but her gaze shifted away faster than the spin of a dime. “Getting all this stuff to your place, though, is another problem entirely. Unless you’ve got another suggestion, I don’t see we have another choice... we’re just going to have to fill my trunk, and then I’ll follow you to your place.”
“I hate to ask you to do that,” Flynn said, which had to be the biggest lie he’d told in a year.
“There just is no other way. But you’d better give me your address in case I lose you in traffic.”
Like a kid scared when the lights were turned off, he didn’t want Molly to leave him. The feeling of dependence was totally alien. He’d grown up stubborn, sweating out his fears of the dark alone, working his way through school, never asking for anything from anyone. Given his background, he’d learned young to count on no one but himself, but that kind of pride and independence had dominated his whole life.
Not now. Not tonight. At the moment he had the pride of a wilted turnip. He watched Molly’s headlights in the rearview mirror, checking every few seconds to make sure he hadn’t lost her on the whole drive to his place. Once past the traffic on Westnedge, the cars thinned out. For the last half mile, suburban busyness disappeared altogether and the only lights on the road belonged to the two of them.
Flynn wasn’t anxiety-prone. He liked chaos. Hell, he’d practically built chaos into a fife-style—and was damn content with his choice. But his heart had been beating to panicked drums ever since Virginie blew into his office that afternoon.
He hadn’t stopped moving since then. He’d needed a couple of hours on the phone—to call his lawyer, to call his doctor about blood tests, and to start checking the pediatricians in town for credentials. But he barely got started on any of that before Molly showed up in his office doorway with the caterwauling minisize redhead.
His mind should have been on Dylan. And was. The problem of the baby loomed like a cyclone on his emotional horizon, but damnation, Molly was a cyclone-size problem, too. Even after intensively working together for the last six months, he couldn’t explain what she’d come to mean to him. He knew she was the marrying kind, that flirting too far with her was dangerous...he also knew that he’d been daring her, daring himself, daring the two of them toward a cliff edge of risk that wasn’t wise.
Flynn had never overvalued wisdom. He valued... life. Every day had the intrinsic capacity for adventure. There was an excitement in air, food, water—anything, everything—but only if a guy looked, only if he opened his life to risk and all the possibilities.
Maybe he and Molly were temperamentally chalk and cheese. But he’d had her regard before this. She’d liked him, he knew. She’d found something in him to respect. It went beyond hormones, beyond that nice, hot, sexual attraction firing between them with both barrels.
At least until Virginie blew into his office that afternoon.
Flynn pulled into his driveway. On cue, as he turned the key, the sidekick in the car seat next to him let out a pithy squawl. He whipped his head around. Yeah, Molly was still there, pulling up behind him. His heart could postpone that panic attack for a little while longer.
Molly popped her trunk, then stepped out of her car and took a quick, cool drink of the view. Humor flashed in her eyes as she hiked past him toward the baby. “Honestly, McGannon. I could have guessed this was your house even if I hadn’t seen the address.”
“How so?”
“It’s a castle.”
“A castle? Actually it’s pretty small—”
“Size has nothing to do with it. Only a creative-type dreamer would be drawn to this place.”
“You don’t like it?” Flynn had imagined bringing her here a dozen times.
“Oh, I like it—but I’m just chuckling because of how uniquely it suits you. And I hear our rock-star-in-training revving up the volume. I’ll get Dylan, if you just unlock the front door and start hauling things in.”
Flynn suspected she was subtly trying to suggest that he quit standing there like a dead stick. And while she unthreaded the baby from the car seat torture device, he swiftly fished into his pocket for the door key. Still, as he heaped his arms with bags to carry in, he glanced at his house.
The place was no castle. It was just old. And Molly’s dreamer label miffed him. Maybe he’d impulsively fallen in love and bought the property on sight, but it had taken months of elbow grease—not dreams—to make the old white elephant livable. The core structure was stone, with a tall, shake-shingle roof and old-fashioned mullioned windows that reflected silver in the moonlight. But a gabled roof and some skinny mullioned windows hardly made it look like some prissy girl castle.
Flynn opened the double front doors, elbowed in with his packages and quickly flicked on an overhead light Molly jogged in behind him with the baby. “Maybe you’ll like it more when you see the inside,” he said defensively. “I had to have some space. I’d get claustrophobic in a city-type apartment. There’s woods out the back, and a creek. And I do a lot of work at home, so I had to renovate some things on the inside—”
“I can see.” She was busy juggling The Squirmer, but not so busy that she didn’t shoot a look around inside. Again, her eyes danced with dry humor. “I wasn’t criticizing you, Flynn. It’s a romantic house. Ideal for an unconventional dreamer.”
“I’m not a romantic.”
“Oops. Did I touch a nerve? I’ll be careful not to use any dirty words like ‘romantic’ again...the baby’s fussing. I think you’d better bring in the diapers first.”
He brought in the diapers—and all the other confounded stuff, heaping it all in the stone foyer just inside the door. On those in-and-out treks, he either caught glimpses of Molly or heard her, talking to the baby, using her nice, warm, sexy-as-sin sensual voice—not like the one she’d been using with him all afternoon.
And somehow he’d counted on her liking his place. He did. Hell, everything was perfect—at least for a guy living alone. He’d put barn beams and a skylight in the great room, bought three giant forest green couches and elled them around the man-size stone fireplace. He wasn’t much on pictures and doodads, but the media entertainment center was prime. A thick, fat white alpaca rug made a great place to lay by a roaring fire on a blizzardy night.
As he peeled off his jacket, the goods all carried in, he thought Molly’d look damn near outstanding on that white alpaca rug. Naked. Well, maybe still wearing stockings... if he was going to fantasize, he might as well go whole hog.
The fantasy died a fast death when she stepped through the arched doorway of the kitchen, still holding the baby. “Are you done bringing everything in?”
Her voice was cool enough to chill champagne. “Yeah. Everything’s out of both cars...but after all your help and the trouble I’ve put you through, I’d like to treat you to dinner.”
“Thanks, but I’d better be