Her Secret, His Child

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

making excuses. Which made him all the more curious. And determined.

"Here's my office, such as it is." He directed her to the little room off the entryway. His desk was there because he'd purchased a new one. And a sturdy box he was using as a chair. The filing cabinets hadn't made it yet.

"What on earth is in all those folders?" she asked, staring at the piles surrounding the room.

"Stuff." Kyle shrugged. He still hadn't found his folder of photos from Walden Pond. Maybe they were in the sock and skivvies box, too.

"So, you have the receipts?" she asked, standing just inside the door of his office.

Handing her the manila folder he'd unearthed, Kyle said, "You'd better take a glance at those, make sure everything you need is there."

And while she looked, he looked, too. Dressed in a pair of loose-fitting slacks and an equally loose cotton blouse, she could have been trying to hide her glorious body. But unfortunately Kyle found her modest clothes more of a turn-on than the form-fitting skimpy red dress she'd worn the night he met her.

She could wear a tent, and he'd be turned on. He knew what secrets the voluminous clothes hid. Knew them intimately. Every inch. Every taste. Every smell…

' 'These are all plane tickets and hotel receipts, but what about mileage, parking and meals?" she asked, frowning as she once again thumbed through the slips of paper.

TARA TAYLOR QUINN

Meal receipts? Who saved meal receipts? And where would he save them? His organizer was already bursting at the seams. "Surely they aren't going to amount to enough to matter."

' 'Of course they will." She glanced up—and then quickly back down. "They're one-hundred percent deductible as a business expense."

"What happens if

I don't have them?"

"We can claim up to a certain amount without them. You lose the rest."

Her expression was so serious he couldn't help grinning. "Gosh, and I'm such a big eater, too."

Jamie's face was straight as she looked back up at him, taking him in from the glasses across the bridge of his nose to his jeans and bare feet. "I wouldn't know," she finally said.

"You would have, though, if you'd hung around long enough to find out," he said softly. He'd promised himself to move slowly, to stay away from accusation.

But patience wasn't one of his strong suits.

"Hung around?" Her blue eyes were confused. "Where?"

"In the hotel room."

Head bowed, she studied the receipts she held. "I did hang around. All the way till morning."

"Dawn was more like it."

"It was long enough." She raised a hand to lift the hair off her shoulders. He thought her fingers were shaking. "When I woke up, you were gone."

"Only to get breakfast." Kyle took her hand, held it as he stepped behind her. ' 'I came back with two

HER SECRET, HIS CHILD

sacks of goodies and had no one to share them with."

She was trembling. He could feel it as she turned slowly to face him. "You came back?"

Gazing down into the only pair of eyes that had ever taken his breath away, he nodded. She thought he'd abandoned her? Was that why she'd run away? Was that all the past five years had been about?