Baby for the Billionaire(67)

The thud on her back took her breath away. Her eyes shot open in time to see a football rolling along the blanket and a pair of sneakers following in swift pursuit. Boyish hands scooped the ball up.

“Jordan, apologize at once!”

“Sorry.” A sheepish grin appeared from beneath a baseball cap. “Won’t do it again.” A singsong note of overuse underlay the words.

Her breath back, Victoria suppressed the urge to call him a name—or worse, grin at him and condone the carelessness. “Perhaps kick the ball the other way.”

Connor sat up beside her, perching Dylan on his knee, and gave the boy a level stare.

“No, I’ve already told Jordan that he’s not to lose a fifty-dollar ball in the tiger’s cage.” A harried-looking woman with red hair standing up in spikes had appeared. “You have to be more careful, boy.”

But Jordan was already gone, zigzagging over the lawn, dribbling the ball ahead of him.

“Kids.” The woman rolled her eyes. Then she added, “At least yours is still harmless. Enjoy him while you can. It gets worse.”

Victoria started to correct the redhead, to tell her that Dylan wasn’t their baby. Then she stopped herself. It was just too hard to explain.

So she smiled instead. “We will.”

“Your baby’s very cute.”

Dylan gurgled and blew a raspberry on cue.

“Thanks.”

Jordan’s mother shifted her attention to Connor. “He’s going to have his mother’s goldy-brown eyes and his father’s dimples.”

“I’m sure you’re right,” Connor said politely.

Victoria could’ve kissed him for silently standing by her decision to say as little as possible.

Victoria had laughed with Suzy in the past when complete strangers had told short, blonde, bubbly Suzy how much the newborn Dylan looked like her—not realizing he didn’t possess any of Suzy’s DNA. Now the memory made her ache with loneliness.

“I’d better find Jordan before he wrecks the place.” The redhead scanned the surroundings until she found her son. “Or lands in the pond with the goldfish!” She gave them a rueful smile. “I made the mistake of having only one—so when he doesn’t have a friend, guess who has to play with him?” She thrust a thumb at her chest. “Me. Don’t do what I did. Make sure you have another kid to keep yours company.”

Victoria fidgeted, uncomfortably hot at the too-tempting idea of creating a baby with Connor. Thankfully, Jordan’s mother didn’t seem to expect a reply; she simply wiggled her fingers at Dylan before vanishing in Jordan’s wake.

After what seemed an age Victoria couldn’t bear the tingling silence any longer. Unable to help herself, she turned her head. And instantly wished she’d resisted the lure.

Connor was staring at her with predatory speculation, and the normally cool eyes simmered with heat.

Her heart skipped a beat.

Victoria pulled herself together. It was up to her to defuse this sexual tension, and as rapidly as possible.

She chose to do so with humor. “Poor Jordan. What on earth is his mother going to tell his girlfriends one day?”

Connor flung his head back and laughed. And the strange, heavy ache below her heart expanded, filling her with a yearning she’d never expected.

The day ended all too soon.

After securing Dylan in the backseat, Connor held the Maserati’s passenger door open for Victoria. And found himself staring at her legs with all the frustrated hunger of a university student eager for his first lay.

They were nice legs. Encased in opaque winter stockings, they were shapely, too. So why the hell hadn’t he noticed them before?

Probably because he’d never seen them. She usually wore black trousers, or long skirts in neutral colors. Black, navy or gray. She never wore a denim skirt that rode up.

Like now.

But he shouldn’t feel this … desperate … about stroking them.

She cleared her throat. “You can shut the door.”

Caught.

“Sorry.” He shook his head sheepishly. “Don’t know what I was thinking.”

She gave him an old-fashioned look. He shrugged and decided to try for some damage control. He didn’t need her knowing how she’d tied him into damned Gordian knots. “So I’ve always been a bit of a leg man—blame a male’s basic instincts.”

“Control those instincts.” But she laughed, flushing a little. “You’ve spent too long around the animals today, I think.”

“Perhaps,” he conceded.

If she only knew how much testosterone her spontaneous smile and slender body had unleashed, she’d be running for the hills—with him in hot pursuit.

He closed the door with a snap and strode around to the driver’s side.

A stolen sideways glance revealed that despite Dylan’s inquisitive fingers her hair was still sleek. Yet sometime during the day she’d lost the faint tension that always seemed to cling to her. It must be the fact that a smile had never been far from her lips.

It wasn’t something she did often enough.

He fired up the Maserati and pulled out onto the road. “Tired?” he asked as he stopped for a red light.

“Exhausted.”

He pushed the gearshift into neutral and turned his head. “At least I’m not alone in that.”

The smile she gave him caused his groin to tighten.

“But it was worth it,” she said. “Thanks. It was a great idea.”

Connor told himself to keep it light. “Zoos were created for adults.”

She tilted her head. “Why do you say that?”

“Didn’t you notice the amount of newborns and young babies? All those parents have been waiting years to legitimately get back into a zoo, bitterly regretting the day they told their parents that thirteen made them too cool for kiddie outings.”

She laughed.

Then she ruined his pleasure by pointing out, “The lights have changed.”

“Thanks.” Connor put the car into gear and accelerated smoothly away.

“You could be right. I think most of the parents there today were having more fun than the kids.” She leaned her head back on the headrest. “Dylan certainly slept through a good part of the day.”

And it had been during those spells that he’d been tempted to give in to the devilish urge to kiss her. Hot memories of the last time he’d kissed her—when she’d almost ended up totally naked on his lap—had kept him awake more than one night since she’d moved in. But he’d resisted it, fearing he might destroy the delicate truce that had developed between them.

“I had fun,” he murmured finally.

“Me, too.”

Her voice was smiling. Connor wished he could take his eyes from the road to study her, to see if the corners of her mouth had tipped up into that irresistible curve.

Okay, he wanted her. There. He’d admitted it. He wanted to soak himself in the scent of her, wanted to sate himself in her body.

So where did that leave him?

Connor started through the options with relentless efficiency. He would have to invest time in this—Victoria wouldn’t accept anything less, he was certain of that.

Yet he couldn’t possibly have an affair with Dylan’s coguardian. Somewhere down the line it would all turn to custard, and Dylan would be the one to suffer.

He thought back to earlier in the afternoon when Jordan’s mother had mistaken them for a couple. And Dylan for his baby …

It didn’t mean a thing.

Because she’d also assumed Victoria was Dylan’s mother.

A glance in the rearview mirror showed Dylan snoozing in the backseat of the Maserati, his dark-gray eyes closed, his cheeks pink and his mouth open in an O.

Goldy-brown eyes. The woman was a kook.

Victoria bore no resemblance to Dylan at all. They weren’t even related. But they could be … if he married her.

Because then she’d be the wife of Dylan’s sperm-donor father.

He tightened his hands around the steering wheel. God, how had this gotten so complicated? It made his head go numb.

But not nearly as badly as the desire that made him crave to get Victoria into his bed, under his body—

“We should do it again sometime.”

“What?” His voice went rough with want. Could she have read his carnal thoughts?

“Visit the zoo again.”

Of course she couldn’t read his thoughts. He blew out in relief. “Yes, yes, we must.”

He could marry her—the crazy thought leapt back into his mind and just as quickly he banished it. He didn’t want to marry the woman. Hell, he hadn’t wanted to marry Dana, either. Victoria was just as career-minded—nothing like the kind of woman he wanted to live with for the rest of his life.

Except his libido refused to agree.

After putting the baby into his night suit on Sunday night, Victoria settled down to feed him his bottle in the spacious rocking chair that had been delivered to the nursery yesterday while they’d been out at the zoo.

Yesterday.

She glanced across to Connor where he sat perched on the love seat opposite her, riffling through a pile of picture books on the floor in front of him.

Yesterday she’d discovered a side to Connor that she’d never known existed. A warm, fun, funny side. But as soon as they’d gotten home Connor had disappeared, and today she’d barely seen him. She was starting to think he must be avoiding her.