The Hot Daddy Box Set Page 10

  I pushed the thought out. Forcing her to be more involved in the situation was unprofessional and rude, especially now that I understood the pain of her past and what babies represented to her. I might not mind being an ass now and again, but I tried my best to avoid being actively cruel.

  My gaze drifted down to the sleeping Sasha. What a pity. Morgan was a natural when it came to kids. The woman trained at the fancy school couldn’t handle the baby at all, and my assistant had her asleep within minutes. A miracle. At least it seemed that way to me.

  “Since Sasha’s asleep,” I said, “I think I’ll go check on some of my email backlogs. I know you’ve been doing your best, but I also know there are more than a few I need to personally respond to.”

  I reached down to pick up the infant seat. Sasha could sleep in my office easily enough. I wasn’t going to taking any calls, just working on my computer.

  “It’s okay,” Morgan said softly. “You can leave her here. If you move her, you might wake her up anyway.”

  My hand hovered over the handle of the infant seat. “Are you sure?” I said. The last thing I wanted to do was force her to watch the baby, especially given everything she’d just told me about her past.

  “No, really, it’s fine,” she said. “I really don’t mind. It’s not a big deal at all.” She smiled. “If anything, it’s rather soothing to see a sleeping baby right next to my desk.”

  Morgan sat back down at her desk. Even though her cheeks were still reddened from her crying, she’d dried her tears, and once again looked like the professional woman I’d been working with.

  In truth, I was surprised. The raw pain on display from before was so intense I thought she might not have been able to recover from it without going home. Her emotional recovery impressed me.

  Morgan tilted her head staring at me for a moment.

  “What?” I asked. “Is there something on my face?”

  She shook her head. “No, it’s just you look awful.”

  I laughed. “Thanks. I try.”

  “I’m not trying to be mean. How much have you slept? That’s what I’m getting at.”

  I blinked. I hadn’t been expecting that sort of question. “Not as much as I would have liked. The baby’s been crying a lot. Fussy. Gassy. I didn’t expect her to sleep through the night, but she seems to not want to sleep at all.”

  “Some babies are like that, but she’ll even out here in about four to six weeks most likely.”

  “Four to six weeks?” I groaned and slapped a hand to my forehead. “I was hoping more like four to six days.”

  “Sorry to be the bearer of bad news.” Morgan chuckled. “What you might want to do is just answer a few emails and then take a nap. One of the first rules of dealing with a newborn is sleep when you can because you never know when the baby will be awake.” She grabbed the bottle from the infant seat. “I’ll go put this in the refrigerator in the break room, and I can feed her when she wakes up.”

  I shook my head. “I—it’s not your job to watch Sasha. That’s not why I brought her here.”

  Morgan smiled. “I know it’s not my job. I’m volunteering. Watching a sleeping baby is about the easiest thing in the world. I’ll still be able to do everything else. Don’t worry about it. Just quickly catch up and then take your nap.”

  I hesitated for a moment and then nodded. “Thank you.”

  “You’re welcome.”

  I proceeded into my office but left the door open so I could see Morgan’s desk and the baby. I sat down behind my own desk. It wouldn’t hurt to spend a few minutes catching up.

  The feel of the leather against my back and butt was oddly soothing. It’d only been a couple of days, but my old daily life seemed distant and strange, like something I’d never truly be able to return to. My attention drifted to the baby.

  Maybe I’d start coming back to the office on a daily basis soon, but that little girl had changed everything. It was true that my old life was over. It had died with my sister, and I had to start accepting that if I was going to move on.

  Morgan’s pain showed me what it was like to be anchored in the past. That was fine for her. She only had to worry about herself, but I had my niece to consider. I needed to move on as soon as possible, and work would help with that.

  I tore my attention away from my niece to start going through some of my emails. I hadn’t totally ignored work, as I could access everything from home, but the last few days hadn’t left me much time to read many of the emails or reports that came through my account, so I was still very behind.

  In addition, the entire momentum of every project and deal I’d been making had been thrown off. Some I might be able to salvage with minimal effort, but others might be permanent losses. That was inevitable in business, but that didn’t mean I liked it.

  As I glanced through my unread emails, I marveled at how much filtering Morgan had already done for me. She’d handled a lot of the small business in my name but made sure not to answer anything too critical or anything that required me to make a decision that would affect my company’s bottom line. She’d been the perfect assistant during this moment of intense crisis in my life, even though everything that was happening was undoubtedly hurting her as well.

  I shook my head, surprised. For all my poor instincts when selecting a nanny, it seemed like I’d picked, or at least lucked into, a good choice of assistant with Morgan.

  The thought invigorating me, I spent about fifteen minutes practicing business triage, focusing on only the most critical matters. The real issue was all the meetings I’d had postponed, but I decided to not worry about any of them for the moment, as I still had a couple of weeks to find my bearings. If the situation was still out of control by that time, then I’d have to start making some serious decisions about how best to handle my role in the company.

  It’s not like CEOs never went on vacation, after all. I’d just been too much of a workaholic and hadn’t prepared an effective backup plan.

  A loud yawn escaped my mouth. Morgan had been right. With the baby’s constant crying, I’d not been getting much sleep, even with the nanny there. A quick twenty-minute nap wouldn’t hurt, I figured.

  I rose and headed over to the couch. I lay down, yawning again. All I needed was just one little nap and a lot of coffee, and I was sure everything would be fine.

  I’d just closed my eyes when Morgan knocked on my door.

  I let out a quiet groan and sat up. So much for my nap.

  Morgan held Sasha in her arms. She looked so natural holding my niece it was startling. I stared for a moment before realizing that the baby wasn’t crying.

  “Sorry to bother you,” Morgan said softly. “Especially when I was the one who told you to lie down.”

  “No, it’s okay.” I shook my head. “She woke up?” I looked over at Sasha, and she was nuzzling Morgan’s chest.

  “Yes, and she needs to be changed. I would have just changed her myself, but I couldn’t find a diaper bag. Sorry.”

  With a grunt, I hopped up. “Damn it. I must have left it in the car. I’ll go get it.”

  “I can get it.”

  “No. I’ll do it. It was my mistake.”

  I rushed past a wide-eyed Morgan toward the elevator, cursing myself for not thinking ahead. I wasn’t supposed to have to be thinking about all of this. That was why I’d hired the nanny. Of course, she’d turned out to be utterly incompetent and couldn’t do more than mutter about what her training told her to do, whether it worked or not.

  Exhaustion weighed on my mind, but simple mistakes had piled up into larger mistakes, which was why I was now having to travel down forty stories into the underground parking lot to get a diaper bag I should have brought with me. I could complain about Fiona, but it didn’t change the fact that this screw up was on me.

  I ran my fingers through my hair as the elevator continued its descent. It’d only been a couple of days, and I was already overwhelmed. It was a very unfamiliar feeling. I’d fought
my way through the business world, earning money and respect. Even when a challenge was tough, I always understood how I could overcome it with more effort. With the baby, though, I wasn’t sure.

  Then again, I imagined a lot of new parents dealt with that, and it didn’t help that I was still trying to process my sister’s death. I couldn’t be sure if Daisy would have been equally ill-prepared. Maybe she’d spent months reading every book out there on how to take care of a baby.

  The more I thought about it, the more that sounded right. For all my complaints, she’d been very good about taking care of herself during the pregnancy. The question of a nanny had never come up, and even some of the people at her funeral had mentioned it’d been a while since they’d seen her. She’d cut down on partying and bar hopping because she was worried about the baby.

  My sister had already started growing up. I just hadn’t fully realized it.

  The elevator opened into the parking garage, and I hurried to the car to grab the diaper bag. The trip back up to my office went quickly enough, and I handed the diaper bag to Morgan.

  She laughed, “Not a good thing to leave the diaper bag forty stories down.”

  For a second, I felt bad about handing it to her instead of changing the baby’s diaper myself, but she smiled as she went to work changing Sasha.

  Just as she finished up, the elevator dinged, and Hunter appeared with three cups of coffee in hand.

  He set it down on Morgan’s desk and patted me on the shoulder. “How are you holding up?”

  “Well enough, all things considered.”

  He nodded toward the coffee. “Have some of that; it’ll help.”

  I walked over to pick up a cup and gulp down some coffee. If anything, the caffeine would help with my exhaustion.

  Hunter walked toward Morgan and Sasha. The baby lay on the ground, cooing in her new diaper. My friend knelt by the baby and rubbed her stomach, making funny faces.

  Morgan smiled and laughed at the baby as well.

  I watched the two, shaking my head. It was one thing when a woman who wanted kids melted over a baby, but now a man was doing it.

  It’s not like I disliked Sasha. She was a baby. It wasn’t like she had much of a personality yet, but at the same time, I wasn’t falling for her like everyone else. Even that idiot Fiona seemed to like the baby. She just couldn’t control her.

  I could only wonder why I felt differently.

  Chapter 16

  Morgan

  I was relaxing on my couch Sunday morning with a cup of coffee in my hand when my cell phone rang. I let out a long sigh. I’d not even been able to take a sip of the drink yet, and my stomach rumbled, angry and demanding breakfast.

  “I swear, Jacy, if it’s you calling me early in the morning on a Sunday, I’m going to drown you in Lake Washington,” I mumbled. I was sure the police would understand my frustration and side with me.

  It wasn’t like it was an unknown thing for my friend to do. One time she called me at 6 AM just to let me know she’d scored with some guy she met at a club. When I explained how that wasn’t something I needed to know so early in the morning, she’d huffed about it for days and acted like I was the bad guy.

  Setting down my coffee, I reached over to grab my cell phone from my end table. My brow was furrowed as I looked at the caller ID. It wasn’t Jacy. The call was from Daniel.

  I hesitated for a moment, wondering why he might be calling me.

  My breath caught, and my pulse pounded in my ears. What if something had happened to the baby? What if she’d died just like mine?

  “Hello?” I finally answered, my heart thundering.

  “I—I don’t know what to do,” he said, his voice frazzled and panicked sounding.

  I didn’t like hearing Daniel sound so frightened, and my fear for the baby was still making my blood race.

  “About what?” I asked.

  “It just never ends. Never ends. No matter what I do.”

  “Daniel, slow down. I don’t understand what you’re talking about. What never ends? Are you okay? Is the baby okay?”

  “Yes, the baby’s okay. No, wait, she’s not.”

  My hands started shaking. “She’s not okay? What’s wrong?”

  “The baby just keeps screaming and screaming. I’ve tried everything. My housekeeper could probably help, but she doesn’t work on weekends.” I heard him shift the phone and then I could hear Sasha’s loud cry.

  I let out a sigh of relief. The baby wasn’t hurt, just out of control. That was something I could deal with.

  “An hour of that today, hours of it yesterday,” Daniel said, returning to the phone.

  “Okay, I understand.” I reached up with my free hand and wiped some tears from my eyes. I hadn’t even realized I’d started crying. “I—what if I came by? Maybe I can help.”

  “You think you can?” Daniel said, a desperate eagerness in his voice.

  “It certainly couldn’t hurt. Reinforcements and all. Just let me drive on over. I’ll be there soon.”

  “Thanks,” Daniel said, and quickly hung up.

  I used my sleeve to dry my remaining tears. My heart wasn’t thundering, but I was still a little jumpy from the burst of adrenaline when I’d thought something was wrong with Sasha.

  “Get a grip, Morgan,” I whispered to myself.

  Daniel and that baby needed some help right now. I didn’t understand why the nanny wasn’t doing something, if only running interference, but Daniel had reached out to me for help, and I was going to offer it, especially after hearing him on the phone.

  I grabbed my coffee and gulped some down, my hands unsteady. In my time with Daniel, I’d seen him awkward a few times and annoyed, but never so much at a loss. It was strange seeing a rich and powerful man like him so humbled.

  Power is relative, I supposed.

  Another gulp of coffee followed, and then I went to grab my keys. I was sure there was some simple thing he was missing to help Sasha, and once I explained it to him, the baby would calm down. I hoped he didn’t mind, though, if I gave his nanny a good talking to.

  When I arrived and got out of my car, my jaw dropped at the size of Daniel’s huge house. Mansion was probably a better word to describe it.

  Admittedly, it was kind of silly to be overly surprised by a rich man living in a fancy house, especially a billionaire. It’s not like I would have expected him to live in some studio apartment he shared with a college kid.

  I couldn’t help but wonder what he did with all that space, especially since he was a workaholic and wasn’t even home all that often. The landscaping was equally awe-inspiring, with carefully groomed bushes surrounding the house, and green perfectly manicured grass you could probably use to play golf. Thick rows of evenly spaced pine trees provided a natural barrier around the vast property.

  Shaking the thoughts from my head, I rushed to the door. Money helped him buy a house, but it hadn’t helped him with his niece. I could. At least I hoped I could.

  I pressed the doorbell and waited. About a half-minute later, the door swung open. It took all my self-control not to gasp, but my hand still flew to my mouth.

  Daniel stood in the doorway, haggard, bags under his eyes. He’d obviously not shaved for several days, and his sweatshirt and sweat pants were stained with God knows what. Baby vomit, maybe?

  The shrill scream of the baby filled the air, and I winced. I could see how hearing that for an hour straight had unnerved him.

  “I’m sorry,” Daniel said, looking down. “I shouldn’t have called you. I just panicked. Like I said, I don’t have anyone here, even my housekeeper.”

  “I don’t understand. Why would you go to your housekeeper for help? What about the nanny? Even if she’s not very good, she can still do something, if only hold the baby for a while.”

  Daniel face darkened as he looked up. “She quit. She just upped and quit because she couldn’t take it anymore. That’s what she told me.” He scrubbed a hand over her face. “I can’
t believe that woman. Who does that? But the baby’s crying, and I can’t get her to stop.”

  “It’s okay,” I said softly. “I’m here now.”

  I knew I shouldn’t be there. It wasn’t smart. I knew it wasn’t a good idea on many levels. I was the walking embodiment of someone who had serious issues related to babies, and Daniel was my boss. This wasn’t my baby.

  The more time I spent around Daniel and the baby, the more I blurred the lines between personal and professional, something I’d already screwed up when I’d kissed him in the bar.

  I sighed. It didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I could turn around and leave now that I was here. The painful cry of the baby and the defeated look on her uncle’s face were almost too much to bear. I couldn’t walk away now, no matter how bad of an idea this was.

  I sighed and stepped inside. “You go get cleaned up,” I commanded. “I’ll take care of the baby.”

  “I—” Daniel began.

  “Go on, a shower will do you good,” I said, turning toward the source of the screams. “I’ll have her calmed by the time you get back.”

  Even though I said it with such confidence, I wasn’t sure I could do much. I might have just been lucky the last time I dealt with the baby. After all, there were so many reasons she could be upset, and it wasn’t always a matter of someone not trying hard enough.

  Daniel stared at me, exhaustion in his eyes, and finally turned to head up the stairs. I watched him for a few seconds before hurrying to the squealing baby.

  Sasha lay in her playpen bundled up, red-faced, and screaming. She was one unhappy baby.

  I picked up the baby, nestled her against my shoulder. I sniffed and didn’t smell anything. I spotted a fresh bottle in the playpen. Probably not food. Daniel must have tried to feed her.

  I started shushing her and patting her back, suspecting the issue was gas. It was still a bit early for colic.

  The baby continued to screech for the next minute or so before finally burping. The screeching weakened into whimpering, and then she quieted completely and rubbed her nose against my shoulder as I continued to pat her back. Just gas in the end.