Six
Through the baby monitor, Casey heard Mia whimpering in her sleep. Slipping out of her wide, sumptuous bed, Casey grabbed up her terry-cloth robe and headed for the door of her room.
It wasn’t surprising that Mia was awake and fretful. Their day had been filled with strange people, strange places. Even Casey was finding it hard to sleep in a new place. No wonder then that the baby was feeling just as unsettled.
Skylights dotted the roof over the long hallway, letting in moonlight that guided her way along the corridor to the room beside hers. While she hurried to Mia, Casey’s mind raced.
Jackson had naturally stepped in and taken over moving day. When they arrived at his sprawling hilltop home, Casey had been amazed to see just how much the man had accomplished in one week. Not only was her bedroom the most elegant, luxurious room she’d ever set foot in, but Mia’s nursery was the sort she was used to seeing in celebrity magazine articles.
There was a mural of forest animals on the walls, a closet stuffed with clothing, shelves filled with toys and a crib fit for a princess. The lower half of the windows in the second story nursery were barred for safety’s sake and looked out over the sweeping landscape that rushed downhill toward the ocean.
Casey, on her own, never could have provided her daughter with anything like the well-appointed room. And though she appreciated all Jackson had done to make their daughter a space in his life, she couldn’t help feeling the sharp sting of envy.
He was using his money to point out the differences in their lives and he was doing a good job of it.
She reached Mia’s room and the door was partially open, as she’d insisted it remain earlier. The baby’s cries had stopped on Casey’s short walk down the hall, but she had kept going, wanting to reassure herself that Mia was safely back to sleep. Now, Casey heard whispers just carrying over the baby’s sniffling breaths.
Curious, Casey pushed the door open silently, and paused on the threshold. Moonlight flooded this room as well, and the night-light that had been left burning was a magical thing that threw patches of stars onto the ceiling.
But she hardly noticed any of it. Instead, her gaze focused on the man standing beside the crib, holding Mia against his chest.
“No more tears, Mia,” he murmured and his already deep voice was a rumble of hushed sound. “You’re safe here. This is your new home….”
Casey’s heart twisted as she watched him soothing their daughter. Clearly, he’d left his own bed to come to this room. He wore silk pajama bottoms that hung low on his narrow h*ps and the chest he held his daughter against was bare and gleamed like carved bronze in the moonlight. His dark head was bent toward Mia’s and Casey heard his soft whispers as he soothed the tiny girl he held so carefully.
“Go back to sleep, baby girl,” he said on a soft sigh.
“Dream of rainbows and puppies and long summer days. Your daddy’s here now and nothing will ever hurt you….”
She couldn’t tear her gaze from them. There was something so sweet, so…right about the picture they made. Calling himself Mia’s daddy, promising that sweet little girl that she’d never be hurt, all of it made Casey want to both smile and cry.
Jackson swayed gently, continuing the quiet rush of whispers and Mia’s tiny sigh sounded gently in the room. And Casey’s tears won the battle, stinging her eyes, blurring her vision until she had to fight to hold them back.
As if sensing her presence, he turned, still cradling Mia, and smiled at her. “I’ve got a monitor in my room, too.”
Casey walked close to them and reached out one hand to smooth her sleeping baby’s hair. “Of course you do.”
His eyes narrowed a bit. “I am her father.”
“You’re right,” she said, meeting his dark gaze. “I’m just used to being the only one getting up in the middle of the night.”
The look in his eyes gentled some at that admission. His hand moved up and down Mia’s back, soothing, stroking. “I can understand that,” he whispered. “But you’re not alone anymore, Casey. I’m here. And I’m going to be a part of Mia’s life. I’ve already missed too much.”
She took a deep breath and nodded. This was only their first night together. She was going to have to find a way to deal with Jackson’s rights as a father.
Forcing a smile, she said, “You seem handier with babies than I expected.”
Apparently realizing that she was willing to if not end their little war, then to at least declare a temporary ceasefire, Jackson smiled. “I’ve got two nieces, remember? Emma and Katie. Emma’s a little more than a year old and Katie’s about three months. I’ve put in my babysitting time.”
Her surprise must have been stamped on her features because his smile widened into a grin that made her catch her breath.
“Didn’t know that, did you?” he asked.
“No. I mean,” she said, “I knew about your brothers’ children, I just never thought you would—”
“What?” he challenged. “Love my family?”
Well, that made her feel small and petty. She should have known better. Should have guessed. In the research she’d done on Jackson before meeting him in person, she’d learned just how tight the King family really was. She just hadn’t even thought that a man more interested in jetting off to exotic places would be so attentive to his infant nieces.
“Of course not,” she said softly as Jackson turned and expertly laid a sleeping Mia back in her crib, “I just didn’t think a man like you would want anything to do with babies.”
“A man like me?”
She moved past him, bent over the top rail of the beautiful white crib and ran the flat of her hand down Mia’s back. Listening to her child’s quiet snuffles and sighs, she smiled. “You know,” she said as she turned back to him.
“The playboy type.”
He laughed quietly. “You think I’m a playboy?”
She turned her head to look at him and almost wished she hadn’t. While he’d been holding Mia, he was gorgeous, but somehow safe. Now that he wasn’t…he looked much too tempting. All that bare, tanned, muscled flesh. The sleep-ruffled hair. The shadow of whiskers on his jaw. The heavy-lidded sexiness of his eyes.
Oh, God.
“I only know what I read about you,” she said and moved for the door. Best to get back to her own room fast, before she did something really stupid like reaching out one hand to trace the planes of those muscles of his.