Undercover Daddy by Delores Fossen Page B

disagree with that, but then her eyes widened. “You mean because of the danger? Well, I’d planned on sleeping next to him anyway. I figured you’d take the sofa in the living room.”
    “Not a chance of that.” He caught on to one of Christopher toes and played a silent game of Little Piggy. Christopher grinned from ear to ear.
    Elaina didn’t grin. She frowned. “Then, I’ll take the sofa. You can stay with Christopher.”
    She obviously didn’t understand that these were rules, not suggestions. “No one is going to take the sofa. We’re all going to sleep in the same room because it’s the only way I can make sure both of you are safe.”
    That improved her posture. Her shoulders went back, and he got a better view of what the water had done to her top, the way it clung to her breasts. Man, he could see the outline of nipples.
    “You think gunmen are going to storm the house?” Elaina asked.
    It took a second to gather his breath. Nipples! “I think I don’t want to take a chance like that,” he countered.
    She handed Christopher his toy duck when it floated out of his reach. “You’ve seen the nursery, and you know it’s not big enough for both of us.”
    He wasn’t sure a shopping mall was big enough for both of them. “You’re wasting your time with this argument. We’re staying in the nursery. I’m doing this for your own good. For your safety. ”
    “But who’ll protect us from each other?” she mumbled. But then, Elaina immediately waved that off. “Don’t answer that. I don’t want to know.”
    Too bad. It suddenly seemed like a critical subject. Or at least an interesting one. “Maybe we should address it. The attraction,” he clarified just to make sure they were on the same page.
    “The only reason to address it is to dismiss it. I’m not getting involved with another man. Especially a man who has the power to destroy me.”
    He found her honesty refreshing, and his attitude had nothing to do with her top. Or her nipples. Or her snug jeans. Or her bare feet with their peach painted toenails. Or even her scent.
    Okay, maybe it did have something to do with those things. But Luke vowed that he wouldn’t let his stupid male body make bad decisions for him.
    “Kevin left you with a bitter taste in your mouth,” he commented to keep the conversation going. It was better than the silence. He did a second round of the Little Piggy game with Christopher.
    “Oh, yes. But then, you can probably say the same thing. After all, you were separated when your wife died.”
    Touché. “It’d gone beyond that,” he confessed. Why, he didn’t know. He just suddenly felt the need to spill his guts to the one woman who didn’t care one iota about what he’d been through. “Taylor had filed for a divorce.”
    She studied him, and he could almost see the wheels working in her head. “Yet she didn’t tell you that she was pregnant.”
    “Nope. She didn’t. But then, Taylor never wanted kids. That’s one of the reasons we decided to go our separate ways.”
    Her stare softened a bit. No more visual accusations. “You wanted to have children?”
    “For as long as I can remember.” For some reason, he wanted to blather on about this part, too. Maybe the bath water had soaked his brain. “My parents died in a car accident when I was three, and I was raised in foster care. Bad foster care,” he added. “I always wanted a chance to experience a good family life. Taylor, though, wanted the opposite. She’d had a rough childhood, too, and felt she couldn’t be a good mother.”
    Elaina stayed quiet a moment. “Do you think she was planning to give up Christopher for adoption?”
    He wanted to shout a resounding no, but he couldn’t. Because Luke honestly didn’t know the answer to that. “Maybe. Another of our big areas of disagreement was my job. She said it was too dangerous, but she didn’t want me to quit because she liked all the traveling I did. It gave her some space, as she