LITMIR.BIZ

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daughter busily sucked her pacifier for a few seconds, then pushed it out with her tongue. She smiled at something in a dream, showing tiny white teeth, and just abruptly frowned, her bottom lip pouting. She was amazing, alarmingly so, and Logan knew, deep down, that he was very lucky to have her. He only hoped that he was up to the task of raising her.

      “What am I going to do with her, Mom?” he whispered.

      Mary Ellen’s gaze was loving and wise. “You’ll figure it out, dear. I have every confidence in you.”

      But Logan wasn’t so sure. Mary Ellen was his mother, after all. She had always believed in him, found the best in him. Even now when she had every right to blast him for his irresponsibility in conceiving a daughter out of wedlock, a daughter he had only recently learned existed, she merely smiled and trusted him to do the right thing. It was because of her that he’d worked his way to the Executive V.P. position of Fortune Tx, Ltd. He could have played on the Fortune name and the Fortune influence to get where he wanted to go, but Mary Ellen had expected him to earn his way honestly, and he had taken pride in doing so.

      Business was second nature to him, though. It was part of who he was. Most of what he had achieved was the product of sheer instinct. Fatherhood, on the other hand, was like a strange planet where nothing was as he expected. Up was down and in was out in this eerie land. He had no idea of his own worth here, his own power, but he had no choice except to step out and endure whatever came, making up solutions as he went along. He took a deep breath and stepped out.

      “We’ll head back to San Antonio right after lunch.”

      Mary Ellen smiled. “You’ll be fine. Both of you. Once you get her settled in and find someone to watch over her while you work, life will be rich and sweet again, just in a different way.”

      He hoped that she was right. He prayed to God that she was right. For his daughter’s sake.

      Emily Applegate, like everyone else in the building, heard the screams even before the elevator doors opened. Logan’s executive assistant lifted her head, absently smoothed the heavy, sandy-brown bun on the back of her head, and listened. The cries obviously belonged to a child, a very angry, desperate child. She couldn’t imagine who would have brought a child into the office, but she would shortly know. They all would. Office doors were opening. People were stepping out into the hallway.

      She stayed at her desk, gold-framed reading spectacles perched on the end of her nose, and watched the stir through the glass wall of her office, thinking that Logan had picked a good day to be out on personal business. He’d left a cryptic message on her voice mail sometime last night, informing her of his change of plans. She’d been shuffling appointments and standing in at meetings all day and desperately needed about two hours to catch up on her weekly report.

      Thoughts of the weekly report had been supplanted by curiosity, however, when the wails had first reached her. What caught her attention now, though, were the looks on people’s faces as the wailing drew nearer. They were stunned, all of them, stunned speechless, apparently. And suddenly she knew why as Logan Fortune himself stepped into view, a squalling bundle of auburn curls and flailing arms and legs caught against his chest.

      Emily stood, chin dropping, in a complete state of shock as Logan turned, maneuvering briefcase, child and—wonder of wonders!—diaper bag to push through the glass door. He stumbled into the room, yanking free the diaper bag as the door closed against it. Inside the closed room, the sound was deafening, shrill enough to split eardrums if not shatter glass. Logan looked at her as if she was the one making it, then he juggled the child in her direction.

      “For pity’s sake, Applegate, take her!”

      Emily scrambled forward. “Mr. Fortune, what—”

      He shoved the child at her, threw her almost. Emily caught the wailing bundle and clasped her tight. Suddenly she was looking down into an astonishing pair of bright blue eyes rimmed with thick red-brown lashes and sparkling with diamond-bright tears. Emily pulled back, taking in the angelic face and tousled curls. The little one shuddered on a sob, and Emily’s heart turned over.

      “Well, hello there,” she said softly. “What’s wrong, sweetheart?”

      “Ba-ba-ba-ba,” the little one cried, bottom lip quivering. “Ba-ba-bobble.”

      Emily looked at Logan. “What’s wrong with her?”

      Logan lifted his chin, stretching his well-muscled six-foot frame. “She hates me, that’s what’s wrong with her,” he grumbled, plunking the diaper bag on top of her desk.

      The baby suddenly lunged for the bag, crying, “Baba-ba! Babable!”

      Emily spied the top of a bottle protruding from an end section of the bag. “I think she wants a drink.”

      The little one shook her head wildly. “No!” She reached again, opening and closing her little hand pleadingly. “Ba-a-ba-ob-ba!”

      Emily suddenly understood. For a child this age, a drink must be something taken from a sippy cup, a bottle was nourishment. “She’s hungry. She wants her bottle.”

      Logan looked as though he’d been dragged through a keyhole backward. His strong, aristocratically sculpted features were haggard, his full mouth turned down at the corners, his dark brown hair rumpled rather than waving back sleekly from his high forehead. He wrenched open the diaper bag and started tearing through it with broad, long-fingered hands.

      “It’s right there on the end,” Emily pointed out.

      He turned the bag on its end and plucked the pink bottle from its pocket. The baby reached for it, making a sound somewhere between a relieved laugh and an accusing sob. He jerked off the nipple cover and thrust it at her.

      “You should check it first,” Emily advised as the child snatched it out of his hand. “The milk could be spoiled.”

      “Mother filled it before we left the ranch,” Logan muttered, “and with the outside temperature in the fifties, it isn’t likely to have spoiled yet. I just didn’t know where Mother had put it.”

      The baby had already guided the nipple to her mouth and now put her head back, nursing strenuously. “Let’s get your sweater off, little lady,” Emily crooned, carefully slipping free one arm and then another while the child nursed industriously, passing the bottle back and forth from hand to hand.

      Logan leaned a hip against the desk, folding his arms. “She’s been screaming for the last half hour,” he said. “I tried the pacifier, but she spit it at me.”

      “Wouldn’t you spit out rubber if you wanted milk?” Emily mused, lifting her chin as the baby reached for her glasses with one hand while holding the bottle with the other.

      Logan sighed resignedly. “I just don’t know how to read her. She’s like an alien life-form! How am I supposed to deal with that?”

      Emily tossed the sweater onto the desk and shifted the little one in her arms, sweeping a well-practiced censorious glance over curious faces beyond the glass. People quickly shifted away, moving back into their offices. Emily looked at the man whose executive assistant she had been for the past two years. “Want to tell me what’s going on here?”

      He straightened and took a deep breath. “Emily Applegate,” he said wearily, making it a formal introduction, “I’d like you to meet Amanda Sue Fortune. My daughter.”

      Emily nearly dropped the child on her head. “Your what?”

      Logan nodded grimly. “Yeah, how’s that for a kick in the pants?”

      Emily could only stare, first at him, then at the child quickly emptying her bottle. Almost as long as she’d known him, Emily had harbored a secret crush on her philandering boss, knowing perfectly well that she had no chance with him and was better off for it. The thought, however, that someone else had borne him a child made her voice unusually raw. “Who’s her mother?”

      Logan winced as the child jerked the bottle from her mouth and cried,

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