Major Daddy. Cara Colter

had originally imagined. The new danger was that he rather liked how she looked when she was annoyed. Her cheeks were rosy as apples, her eyes flashed fire, and, with the barest little shove on his part, she could probably be coaxed to stamp her foot.

      “Katharine,” he said, “there’s a nice sensible name that nobody would ever mistake for an interior body part. It could be shortened to Katie. I’ve always liked Katie.”

      She stamped her foot.

      He felt a smile trying to tickle his lips, but he ruthlessly bit it back.

      “Obviously you are lacking in creativity,” Brooke said. The humorless line of her own lips should have made him think of his grade seven teacher, Miss Hunt. But it didn’t. In fact, her lips didn’t look one ounce less kissable. Not one.

      “Lacking in creativity,” he agreed without an ounce of regret.

      Saffron returned, and he noticed she was apparently unoffended that she had been labeled with a number. Probably hated her name, poor kid. He was willing to bet she got teased at school.

      “Code Yellow is a diaper change,” Saffron informed Brooke importantly and then added in a confidential whisper. “Pee-pee. Code Brown is poo-poo. Only we don’t have any diapers left because a tree fell down over the road to town. We’re using towels.”

      Brooke stared at the pure-white towels. “These towels are from the House of Bryan,” she gasped.

      He folded his arms across his chest, gazed narrowly at her, daring her to go on. Of course she did.

      “They’re worth a fortune. Look, they’re embossed. It’s a special order. It takes months to get them. Years if you aren’t Shauna Carrier.”

      She pointed out the silky, heavy embroidery, white on white so it hardly showed up, anyway, as if this was a detail he was supposed to care about.

      “Surely you could have found something else for diaper material,” she sputtered.

      “At great inconvenience to myself, I decided not to let Granny bleed to death or to let five small children fend for themselves. My humblest apologies if my methods, and my diaper service, don’t meet with your approval, Miss Callan.”

      “Ms.,” she corrected him absently, looking somewhat grieved that he had had the bad manners to point out to her that he had come to the rescue of her employer’s family. She tried for a conciliatory tone, which failed miserably. “I’m sorry. I didn’t want to give the impression I wasn’t grateful for all you’ve done, but—”

      “Good,” he said, cutting her off quickly, since in his experience the word but almost always canceled out every word that had come before it. “I’m going to take a wild guess that you are going to love what we did with the sheets.”

      “The sheets? You’re not using House of Bryan sheets for diapers? They’re Egyptian cotton. Seven-hundred-thread count.”

      He couldn’t believe this. She looked intelligent enough. Could she seriously be working herself into a lather over sheets? She was, and who was he to stop her? In fact, he egged her on just a little bit, for the pure fun of it.

      “Nope, of course we’re not using the sheets for diapers.” He waited until the relief flitted through her eyes before he continued. “Not absorbent enough. We used the sheets for bandages. Ripped them into nice lengths.”