Doorstep Daddy. Shirley Jump

less about morons, and more about his insistence on keeping his staff caged in the conference room for one unproductive hour after another. “Lincoln, maybe if you didn’t have so many meetings…”

      “Ellie, meetings are essential. They’re where all the best ideas are born. Or they would be, if I actually employed people who possessed the brain cells to foster ideas. That’s why I need you, Ellie. You’re my right-hand woman. I swear, I couldn’t function around here without you.”

      “You don’t need seven hundred meetings a week to function, Linc.”

      He shook his head, refusing to have this argument. He started to walk away, then returned. “Oh, and Ellie, before I leave today, I wanted to tell you, I need you to create a script this afternoon. I need it on my desk first thing tomorrow.”

      “Create a script? Today?”

      “Yeah. You know that celebrity chef, the one with the new book? Apparently he can’t do anything but cook and read. So I need you to write him up something that makes him look and sound intelligent and entertaining.” Lincoln smiled. “I know you can do it, Ellie. You’re my can-do person. Let’s have this meeting, then.”

      Ellie laid her head on her desk. So much for her plan to knock off early. Even if Lincoln wasn’t here to oversee her, she had enough work to fill the entire rest of the day.

      Every time she thought she’d get some time for herself…

      It evaporated like rainwater on hot summer pavement. How she hated this job. But if she quit, how would she support Bri? Where else would she work? Any other job in television would be just as demanding. Ellie sighed, then reached for the phone and called Dalton back.

      When he answered, the first thing she heard was Sabrina’s loud wails, cutting through the phone lines like razors. Ellie’s pulse quickened, mother’s instinct beating inside her, telling her to go to her child—

      “Is everything okay?”

      “It’s fine. She’s crying. I gotta go.”

      “No, wait. Is she wet? Does she need to eat?”

      Dalton let out an exasperated breath. “I don’t know yet. That’s why I’m trying to get off the phone and find out. Now are you going to let me go do that or not?”

      Let Dalton hold Sabrina, let Dalton calm her down. The jobs she, as Sabrina’s mother, should be doing—instead of heading in for yet another stupid, aimless meeting.

      Did she have a choice? Lincoln trusted her to come up with something fabulous in the next three minutes. And right now, on her legal pad, her idea of fabulous looked a lot like letter D’s.

      “Wait,” she said before Dalton could hang up.

      Another exasperated gust. “What? Kid crying here, you know.”

      The knot of growing tension in her gut told her this arrangement with Dalton couldn’t work. Her, sitting here, miles away from Sabrina. Missing her baby more and more every day, missing the scent of her, the feel of her in her arms, a pain that refused to stop. Her mind concocting ten thousand different possible scenarios of Dalton falling asleep, leaving the stove on, forgetting Sabrina at the park—

      “I have an idea,” Ellie said, knowing even as she said the words that there was no way she could make this work—and no way she could afford not to make it work, at least, for her heart. Money- wise, it was another story. “And I promise, you’re going to love it.”

      “That’s what my mother told me when she signed me up for ballroom dancing lessons when I was ten,” Dalton said. “And I can tell you from personal experience that ‘I have an idea’ and ‘you’ll love it’ doesn’t always go together in my book.”

      CHAPTER THREE

      BY THE time Ellie showed up on his doorstep, Dalton had thrown in the towel, raised the white flag, and tossed up his hands in surrender. The kid—who had originally been calmed with a stare—now wanted him to do the one thing he’d vowed not to do.

      To be held.

      He would feed her, change her diaper. Lay her down for a nap. Pick her up momentarily, basically just long enough to unload her again on the floor or into the car seat.

      But walk around with the kid on his shoulder? No. Not part of the job description. And not something he, of all people, should be doing. For one, he had a childhood history of butterfingers with babies. His mother hadn’t nicknamed him Dropsy Dalton for nothing. For another, he and babies didn’t…bond well.

      But there was more to it than that. Much more. A history Dalton didn’t like to think about—

      And wouldn’t.

      This was a temporary gig, one he’d taken on in a moment of clear emotional weakness, which meant he wasn’t about to try to change that pattern. And he didn’t have to. Before he knew it, he’d be done with the whole thing.

      He was sitting in his armchair, pushing at Sabrina’s car seat with his toe, rocking her back and forth. She had the plug in her mouth, but she was still managing to cry around it. Dalton was praying in his head for Sabrina to just give up the battle and go back to sleep.

      Then his doorbell rang, and he heard knocking. “Dalton? It’s Ellie.”

      Salvation had arrived.

      He pulled open the door and let her in. “Finally. You’re here. She’s missed you.” Actually, he’d probably missed Ellie more—strictly in a take-back-this-kid sense, of course.

      A smile took over Ellie’s face. The kind that socked Dalton in the gut and hit him with an almost envious feeling. Had anyone ever looked at him like that? Ever been that happy to see him at the end of the day? “I can hear that.” She brushed past Dalton, beelined for the car seat, unsnapped the kid, and picked her up. A second later, she had the kid against her chest, working the circles again, and had quieted her down. Somewhat.

      “You all set? If so, I’ll go back to work.” He handed Ellie the diaper bag, practically throwing it onto her shoulder.

      “Wait. You haven’t even heard my idea. Remember? I mentioned it to you on the phone?”

      “Tell me later.” He started toward his office. “You’re here. My shift is over.” Okay, so it was only three in the afternoon, probably too early for his shift—if that’s what he could call it—to be anywhere near over, but Ellie was here, and that was good enough for him.

      He was done. D-O-N-E. And not a moment too soon. What had he been thinking? Trying to take on a baby, of all things? He couldn’t do this. Shouldn’t do this.

      All day, he’d tried to tell himself he could keep his distance. Not be taken in by those baby blue eyes and that gummy smile. That being with this kid wouldn’t open up those doors he’d worked so hard to shut. Or disrupt his life.