“What?” Her eyes went wide and her jaw dropped.
Of course he’d surprised her. Hell, he’d surprised himself. “A hundred thousand dollars,” he repeated, then added, “on the condition you help me with...” He waved one hand at the baby.
“Her name is Emma,” Sadie said wryly.
“Good. You already know that, so you’re ahead of the game.” Nodding to himself at the brilliance of his solution, he demanded, “Well? What do you say?”
“I think you’re crazy,” Sadie said. “But yes, I’ll stay for a month. Help you find a nanny.”
“And help me take care of it until then.”
“Her.”
“Right. Her.” He reached for his phone, punched a couple buttons and waited for a second. “Kelly. Tell the team the meeting’s postponed until tomorrow. Something’s...” he looked at Sadie and the baby “...come up.” Huge understatement.
When he hung up, he looked at Sadie and deliberately shoved his hands into his slacks pockets so he couldn’t be forced to hold the baby again. “Call Alice at the house, tell her what’s happened. Have her get a room ready for the kid—order whatever she needs and offer a big cash bonus for quick delivery and setup.”
“Ethan—”
“You still work for me, Sadie. Get it done.” Then he walked to his desk, sat down and started working. He avoided looking at Sadie again and told himself it was for the best. Hell, the baby wouldn’t want to be held by him, anyway.
A few hours later, Sadie and Ethan, along with the baby, were at Target, staring at a wall of baby supplies.
“How does anyone know what to get?” he asked of no one in particular.
“Well, here I’ve got a little experience,” Sadie admitted. “On those rare Sundays off, I’ve been shopping with Gina, my sister-in-law.”
“You’re elected as guide, then.”
Sadie noticed that he looked completely out of place in the perpetually crowded store. In his elegantly cut suit, he would have been much more at home in his meeting, or in a five-star restaurant, or even just sitting in his sleek black convertible. But here in Target, Ethan Hart was enough out of the ordinary that every woman who passed him paused to stare. Of course, that happened everywhere. The man practically oozed sex and success.
But at the moment, he was devoting himself to staying as far away from the big red cart and the baby strapped into it as humanly possible. Sadie gritted her teeth. She’d promised to help him with the baby, not do everything herself. Not even for a hundred-thousand-dollar bonus. This was Ethan’s chance to step outside the carefully built path he’d designed for himself, and Sadie wanted to see him do it. But now wasn’t the time for that argument. Pretty soon, the baby would be hungry. Or wet again. Or tired. Sadie would rather avoid the inevitable meltdown that she’d witnessed with her infant nephew just a couple weeks ago.
“Okay,” she said abruptly. “First, we need diapers.”
“Right.” Ethan instantly turned to the task at hand. “But what size? There’s a million of them.” He scanned the shelves, looking like a blind man trying to feel his way through a forest.
“You held her. How much do you think she weighs?”
He pushed one hand through his hair. “Twenty pounds?”
“Okay,” she said. “Start there. I’ll get some formula and bottles and...everything.”
Yes, she’d been shopping with Gina, stocking up on baby supplies, but that was just adding a few things to an already well-stocked house. This was starting from scratch, and she was overwhelmed with deciding what Ethan might need to care for Emma. He was right—there were just too many things.
While the baby slapped her hands on the cart and Ethan stayed at the end of the aisle, reading the descriptions on every bag of diapers, Sadie loaded in whatever she thought might be useful. Toys, a stuffed bear that Emma grabbed hold of and refused to release, bottles, bibs, nipples, pacifiers... The cart was pretty much full when Ethan turned and dropped a single package of diapers on top of it.
“One?” she asked, stunned. “Really? You think one package will do it?”
“How the hell do I know? You’re the expert here.”
“Ooh,” Sadie said with a grin. “That had to have been hard for you to say. Ethan Hart, the man who’s never wrong and must be obeyed at all costs.”
He scowled. “I don’t remember you being this sarcastic over the last five years.”
“That’s because I muttered most of it,” she admitted. “Get two more packages to start and that should hold us.”
“For what? The apocalypse?” He stared at the cart. “She doesn’t really need all of that, does she?”
The baby frowned, as if she understood what Ethan had said and disapproved. Sadie almost laughed, but she was afraid it might sound hysterical, so she swallowed it. Busy shoppers rushed past them as music pumped through the store speakers. “Do you really want to find out in the middle of the night that you need something and you don’t have it?”
“Oh, hell no. Fine. We’ll take it all.” He started to walk away, but Sadie stopped him.
“She needs clothes, too, Ethan.”
He goggled at her. “This is incredible. How do people do this?”
“Well, most people don’t have to do an entire stock-up run all in one day...”
“Right.” He looked over the aisles they had just been picking clean and said, “You know, the chocolate business makes billions, but turns out, that’s just peanuts. The real money is in baby junk. How can someone who can’t even talk possibly need so much stuff?”
She almost felt sorry for him. Almost. This was a huge disruption in the placid lake that was his life. But hey, sink or swim. “It’s a mystery. Come on. Baby clothes.”
He followed after her, grumbling under his breath, and Sadie looked into Emma’s eyes and grinned. In the five years she’d worked for the man, Sadie had never seen Ethan completely out of his element. And it was sort of endearing. She didn’t need another reason to be drawn to him, though, so she really tried to dismiss what she was feeling.
Then he did it to her again when he picked up baby pajamas and discarded the penguins in favor of the ones covered in teddy bears. When he caught her looking at him quizzically, he shrugged and tossed the jammies into the cart. Then, pointing at the baby now chewing fiercely on the stuffed bear’s ear, he said simply, “She likes bears.”
Sadie took a deep breath to still the jolt of her heartbeat. He didn’t want the baby, but he was doing everything he could to make sure she was cared for. He didn’t like change, but he was so far accepting a huge one in his life. He didn’t belong in Target, but here he stood. And God knew he shouldn’t look so damn sexy, but there it was. Even as she thought it, she spotted a woman staring at Ethan with open admiration.
Sadie told herself to get past it. Get over it. She was going to leave Ethan behind so she could find the right man for her. No matter how she felt about Ethan, no matter how her blood burned when she looked at him, going after him was a catastrophe waiting to happen.
He wasn’t the man for her and trying to pretend otherwise was just setting herself up for a crash. So she busied herself by concentrating on the shopping and promising herself that one day, she’d be doing this for her own family.
The sad part of that dream was Ethan wouldn’t be a part of it.
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