Still, there was that look in his eyes...defiant, daring her to see need in him! Foolishly it made her want to turn toward him, run her hand over the coarse stubble of that jaw and assure him that, yes, she was there to rescue him and that everything would be all right.

Instead, she kept moving forward until she came to an open door and peered inside. There was a playpen set up in the room, and in it was a nest of messy blankets and stuffed toys.

Holding himself up on the bumper, howling with indignation and jumping up and down, was the most beautiful baby she had ever seen. He looked like he was a little over a year, chubby, dark hair every which way, completely adorable in pale blue sleepers that had the snaps done up crooked.

Was he McAllister’s baby? While a secret baby would have been the story of the century, her thoughts drifted way too quickly from story potential to far more treacherous territory.

What on earth was Kiernan McAllister doing with a baby when that was what she had always wanted?

It caught her off guard and left her reeling even more than spinning her car into his front garden had!

We want such different things, her ex-boyfriend, Dylan, had said with a sad shake of his head, dismissing her dreams of reclaiming a traditional life like the one she had grown up in as a life sentence of dullness.

Their last night together, the extravagant dinner had made Stacey think he was going to offer her an engagement ring.

Instead, she had been devastated by his invitation to move in with him!

Really, his defection had been the last straw in a life where love had ripped her wide open once too often. To add to the sting of it all, they had worked in the same office, he her direct superior, and she had been let go after their breakup, which she—and everyone else at the office—knew was entirely unfair.

Still, in the wake of her life disasters, Stacy had made up her mind she would be wounded by love and life no more! But now the yearning inside her caused by seeing that Christmas-perfect great room, and now by thinking of this man before her with a baby, only made her realize how much work she had yet to do!

Though why, when she knew how much work she had to do, her eyes would go to McAllister’s lips, she could not be certain. McAllister’s lips were full and bold, the lower one in particular spine-tinglingly sensual.

Dangerous, she told herself. He was a dangerous kind of man. His lips should be declared the pillars of salt one should never look at for danger of being lost forever. She was stunned by both the peril and intensity of her thoughts.

She was not, after all, who he was expecting, and she was certainly not a qualified nanny.

But she felt as if she had to know the story of the baby.

And McAllister—despite the outward appearance of confidence—was obviously desperate for help in this particular situation.

And if she could give him that even temporarily, McAllister might be much more amenable to the real reason she had come!

Gratitude could go a long way, after all.

The baby was startled into silence by her appearance. He regarded her with deep suspicion.

As if he knew she was trying to pass herself off as something she was not.

He seemed to make up his mind about her and began to whimper again.

“Ivan, stop it!” McAllister ordered.

The baby, surprisingly, complied.

“Ivan,” she said, and walked over to the baby. “Hello, Ivan.”

The baby appeared to reconsider his initial assessment of her. He smiled tentatively and made a little gargling noise in his throat. Her heart was lost instantly and completely.

“You don’t know my nephew’s name?” McAllister asked, startled. “It’s Max.”

She glanced back at McAllister. His arms were folded over his chest, and he was regarding her with suspicion identical to the baby’s seconds earlier.

His nephew. The blanks were filling in, but all the same it was unraveling already. Stacy was going to find herself tossed unceremoniously out into a snowbank beside her car and, really, wasn’t that what she deserved?

“Aren’t you his nanny?” McAllister demanded. “That’s who I was expecting.”

“I’m Stacy,” she said, drawing in a deep breath. “Stacy Murphy Walker.” Now would be the perfect time to say who she really was and why she was here.

Tell him the rest of it. But her courage was failing her. So much easier to focus on the baby!

“Uppie? Pwweee?”

And it did feel as if this baby—and maybe Kiernan, too—really needed her. And it felt as if she needed to be in this house that cried for a Christmas tree and a family to encircle it.

She reached into the playpen. The baby wound his chubby arms around her neck, and she hoisted his surprisingly heavy weight. He nestled into her and put his thumb in his mouth, slurping contentedly.

“I’m not exactly your nephew’s regular nanny,” she heard herself saying, “but I’m sure I can help you out. I’m very good with children.”

She told herself it wasn’t precisely a lie, and it must have been a measure of McAllister’s desperation that he seemed willing to accept her words.

He regarded her and apparently decided she was a temp or a substitute for the regular nanny, which would also, conveniently, added to the bad roads, explain the delay in her arrival. After scrutinizing her for a moment, he rolled his broad shoulders, unfolded his arms from across his chest and looked at her with undisguised relief.

“I’m Kiernan McAllister.”

“Yes, I know. Of course! Very nice to meet you.” She managed to get one arm out from under the baby’s rump and extended it, not certain what the protocol would be for the house staff. Did you shake the master’s hand?

He crossed the room to her and took her extended hand without a second’s hesitation, but she still knew extending hers had been a mistake. She had felt his hand already as he helped her from the chaise in his bathroom.

Despite the fact that his hand was not the soft hand of an office worker or of her comrades in writing, but hard and powerful, taking it felt like a homecoming.

And if she thought the mere sight of his lips had posed a danger to her, she could see his touch was even more potent. A homecoming to some secret part of herself, because something about his hand in hers sizzled and made her aware of herself as smaller than him.

And feminine. Physically weaker. Vulnerable in some way that was not at all distressing, though it should have been to a woman newly declared to total independence and a hard-nosed career as a freelancer.

She yanked her hand out of his and felt desperate not to give him the smallest hint of her reaction to him. “And just to clarify, is your nephew Ivan or Max?”

“Max. I just like to call him Ivan.”

Stacy looked askance at him.

“As in Ivan the Terrible,” he muttered.

She could feel disapproval scrunch her forehead—a defense against the electric attraction she felt toward him—and something like amusement crossed McAllister’s features as he regarded her, as if he was not even a little fooled.

Annoyingly, the light of amusement in his eyes made him look, impossibly, even more attractive than before!

“But his name is really Max.” He cocked his head. “I guess that works, too, if you think about it. He’s Max everything. Max noisy. Max sleepless. Max filthy, at the moment. He’s just over a year. A horrible age, if there ever was one.”

“He’s adorable,” she declared.

“No. He’s not in the least.”

“Well, he is right now. Except, he might need changing—

“Never mind! If he needs that, you have arrived in the nick of time. And while you look after it I will do the manly thing, and go look after your car. You can change his nappy and then be on your way.”

Well, there was no need to tell him the truth if she was leaving that quickly!