Baby Before Business (Silhouette Romance) (10 page)

He sighed, not even slightly confused about why she knew the end of the story. “Seth?”

“He was trying to help me understand the Cooper situation so I could spin it for the press. He ended up helping me understand why you behave like such a grouch.”

“See, there you go. Even my brother thinks I’m a grouch.”

“No. Grouch was my word. Your brother thinks you’re a great man. In the same way I can’t help seeing goodness underneath your gruff personality, Seth also believes everything you do has an altruistic purpose.”

Ty rolled his eyes. “Romantics.”

“Seth isn’t a romantic.”

“He was. But something must have happened. He hasn’t told me about it, but it’s not our way to pour out our hearts in deep-felt conversations. When he suddenly became quiet and then behaved more maturely at work, I simply recognized that something bad had happened, but it hadn’t killed him and he’d learned a valuable lesson. So I let it alone. In fact, I liked the change.”

“Because he’s becoming like you.”

Ty blew his breath out in a disgusted gust. “I’m not Satan. I actually have my good points. But I don’t want you going around thinking I’m a nice guy. I want even less for you to go around telling my employees I’m a nice guy.”

Madelyn rose from the park bench. “You
are
a nice guy. And I figured out days ago that’s why you fight so hard to make people believe you’re mean. But this story about your fiancée confirms it. You’d rather strike fear than risk anyone having too much influence over you. You think being grouchy is how you stay in control and successful.” She took a quick breath and turned to the sidewalk. “But I think you’re into overkill.”

With that, she left him alone in the park with Sabrina, and though her parting comment didn’t please Ty, he didn’t ponder it because he noticed that he wasn’t panicked
about being alone with Sabrina. He knew he could handle her.

Pride shot through him. He couldn’t raise this baby alone, but he most certainly would be a good parent with the help of a nanny to handle the things that didn’t require a parent’s love.

Realizing what he’d unwittingly admitted, his heart swelled with pride again. He loved this kid. He
loved
Sabrina.

And he owed that to Madelyn.

With the morning sun streaming down on him, his usually tense muscles relaxed, and with one very happy baby sitting in the stroller in front of him, Ty suddenly wondered if Madelyn wasn’t right about more than the baby. Maybe Anita had done more damage than he’d thought. Or maybe he’d carried being mean and staying aloof just a bit too far.

Ty behaved oddly when he returned home with Sabrina, but Madelyn simply stayed out of his way. When the first of three potential nannies arrived for her interview later that day, Madelyn went shopping. When the interviews continued on Sunday afternoon, she visited her parents.

Monday morning, Madelyn stuck to her decision to stay out of anything not directly related to Sabrina or PR and left the house for work while Ty chatted—unusually pleasantly—with her parents. But because she’d stopped for a doughnut, she found herself standing next to him at the elevator in the main lobby. She frowned. He wasn’t using the private elevator in the side corridor?

She turned to look at him. “Slumming?”

“Experimenting.”

What the hell did “experimenting” mean?

Two secretaries entered the lobby and walked to the elevator. “Good morning, Mr. Bryant. Madelyn,” they said in unison.

“Good morning, ladies,” Ty said and Madelyn gaped at him.
He’d said good morning?

“Nice day.”

“Yeah, it’s a beautiful day,” Mary McCready agreed.

And Madelyn suddenly saw what he was doing. He was
experimenting
with interacting with his employees. He was
experimenting
with doing the things she’d been trying to get him to do for the past two weeks. He’d
heard
what she’d said on Saturday and he was taking her advice. The realization shocked her so much she let her floor pass and rode with him to the top floor, which held only his office suite.

When she stepped out with him, he said, “Do we have a meeting I don’t know about?”

She took a breath. “No.”

“Then scram. I have things to do.” He walked to Joni’s desk and took his messages. He read only one before saying to Joni. “Call that jerk back and tell him we won’t do business with his company ever again.” He grabbed the message and changed his mind. “No, let
me
call him.”

Madelyn turned to the elevator. Tyrant Ty lived. If he was taking her advice by experimenting with her PR suggestions, the changes weren’t going to happen overnight, but she wasn’t complaining. She
needed
him to mingle with his employees. Taking baby steps into the process was better than not taking any steps at all.

But getting on the elevator, she couldn’t stop the voice that whispered to her that advice wasn’t the only thing she’d given Ty over the weekend. She’d also given him the cold shoulder. She’d pulled so far away from him emotionally, they could have been living in different houses. His decision to try her advice might be his way of saying that he missed her. God knows she had missed him. Especially when she’d glimpsed how sweet he was with Sabrina in his unguarded moments Saturday evening and Sunday morning. She desperately wanted him to be the nice guy and from his “experiment” it seemed he now wanted that, too.

Her heart leaped and her hope soared. If the nice guy really was coming out, then the time they had to live together until the playground presentation and the
Wall Street Journal
interview would be very different. He might even stop pretending he didn’t find her attractive. There was a good possibility he would kiss her again.

When just the thought of having his lips touch hers weakened her knees to the point that she worried about her ability to walk, Madelyn realized the deed was done. She didn’t merely like Ty anymore. She loved him.

Or at least she loved the man she knew lived way deep down inside him somewhere. A man who, it appeared from his behavior that morning, was digging his way out. But if the nice guy didn’t succeed, Madelyn knew she was in big trouble. The nice guy might be able to love her, but the bossy, pushy tyrant couldn’t. And if she didn’t handle this correctly, she would get her heart broken.

Driving home that night, Ty felt restless and irritable. The day had gone remarkably well with him being superconsiderate and polite to his employees. Every meeting ran smoothly. Every discussion came to a satisfactory conclusion. But Ty didn’t think the results of his experiment were conclusive. They only proved his employees liked being mollycoddled. They did not prove his business would continue to make money enough to employ an entire town full of people or that Bryant Development would continue to run at the high standards that caused them to win job after job.

The school of hard knocks had taught him that the only way a company stayed on top was by pushing. Pushing, demanding and never backing down had been Ty’s edge for so long, he wasn’t sure the company would survive if he suddenly became soft.
He
would survive. His employees would thrive—or at least so they thought. But he wasn’t sure the company would. And this company was the only thing he and Seth had left of their parents. Changing his business strategy was an enormous risk. Ty wasn’t one for taking risks. He thought. He planned. He negotiated. He did not gamble.

Pulling into his driveway, Ty sighed. He was so tired of thinking about this that he wanted two fingers of bourbon, a four-hour sports marathon—any sport would do—and some blessed peace and quiet.

Instead, he walked into the kitchen to find a crying baby and a less-than-civil female who announced there was no dinner and she wasn’t cooking.

“Why didn’t your mother make dinner?” Ty asked as he rummaged through his cupboards, ostensibly looking
for something he could make from among the groceries Madelyn’s mother had purchased.

“She had a church thing this afternoon.” Madelyn paused long enough to sigh. “Why don’t you just call Louie’s?”

“Because the restaurant doesn’t do takeout and I have to set up some kind of special deal with him.”

“Then make some macaroni.”

For that Ty turned. “I ate enough macaroni to last a lifetime after my parents died. I did not become wealthy to eat like a pauper.”

For a few seconds Madelyn stared at him, then in the cutest, most bubbly way she began to laugh. Ty stared at her in total confusion. Soon Sabrina stopped crying and she stared at Madelyn, too.

Ty’s eyes narrowed. “Well, that was certainly a creative way to quiet her.”

“I couldn’t help it,” Madelyn said, using her free hand to wipe away her tears. “I like macaroni and you talk about it as if it’s poison.”

“It’s not poison. I’ve just had my fill.”

“Then why don’t you take the baby and I’ll try to find something to cook.”

Now that Sabrina wasn’t crying anymore, that sounded like a good idea. Ty walked over and slid his hands around Sabrina’s waist to take her from Madelyn, but as he began to pull Sabrina away, he caught Madelyn’s gaze and the strangest thing happened. She smiled at him and every antsy jumpy nerve, every piece of stress tightening his muscles, instantly relaxed.

And he finally understood why Madelyn liked him, because it was the same reason he liked her. When he
was being himself they clicked. Something about her matched with something inside him. She didn’t simply challenge him. She also calmed him. And he didn’t only push her. He also made her smile. Frequently, he made her out-and-out laugh. He couldn’t remember the last person he had been able to make laugh.

They complemented each other. She’d seen it all along. But he was only seeing it now.

He hadn’t let anybody get to know him in eight years, but day-to-day dealings had taught Madelyn a lot more about him than he would ever deliberately show anybody. And living with her, he knew some very important things about her, too.

And he liked what he knew. That was why they were drawn to each other. It wasn’t sex. It wasn’t chemistry. It was a personality connection.

Though it didn’t hurt to have the chemistry.

He smiled at her and her face seemed to blossom to life, and he knew everything he had been thinking was true. He liked her. She liked him.

Shifting Sabrina to his right, he bent and kissed Madelyn. As his lips met the softness of hers, his heart seemed to tumble in his chest. He
liked
her. Every molecule in his body sprang to life just being in the same room with her. Kissing her, having his mouth pressed against hers, made him happy. But he wasn’t sure he could make the changes she wanted him to make. He wasn’t even sure the changes she had already wrestled from him would last. He certainly wasn’t sure if what they felt would last forever.

The thought stopped him. Madelyn had never failed him. And he was trying to change for her. But it seemed
unfair for them to look at a possible romance as an all-or-nothing circumstance. Particularly since there were hundreds of points of compromise that they were ignoring.

Juggling Sabrina but holding Madelyn’s gaze he said, “I have an idea.”

“Yes?”

“This thing between us isn’t going away.”

She shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“And you don’t believe anything I tell you about me being a nasty man who you should stay away from.”

She smiled. “Not even a little bit.”

“So I was thinking that maybe what we need is a compromise.”

Her brow furrowed in confusion. “What kind of compromise?”

“Well, I like you and you like me. And we’re both adults. So maybe that sleeping together idea we’ve tossed around isn’t such a bad one.”

She gave him such a horrified look that Ty knew he’d phrased his suggestion all wrong. He tried again. “I’m not just asking you to sleep with me. I’m asking you to compromise. You want me to change. I’m not sure I can. I’m not even sure this relationship will last. But I know for sure it won’t even get off the ground unless we meet in the middle.”

She smiled, took the step that separated them, and slid her arms around his neck. “Two days ago I would have agreed, but today I don’t.”

He shifted Sabrina to accommodate Madelyn being close to him. “I assume you have a good reason to back this up.”

She stood on her tiptoes and kissed his lips soundly.
Holding Sabrina as he was, he couldn’t participate the way he really wanted to and Madelyn pulled back before he could figure out a way to prevent her from breaking their kiss without dropping the baby.

“I know you’re going to say I’m wrong, but I think I love you.”

His mouth fell open. “After two weeks?”

As if she didn’t hear his protest, Madelyn continued, “So I’m not settling for second best. I don’t want to sleep with you, I want you to love me.”

He gaped at her. He had softened enough to compromise with her and now she was forcing
him
into the all-or-nothing situation? “After two weeks?”

She shrugged. “In some ways, it’s very complimentary that you’re willing to break a lot of your own personal rules to sleep with me. But if we try things your way and sleep together before you have any real feelings for me, you would be missing out on so much. And I can’t let you do it.”

His eyes narrowed as he took in everything she said. “Your not sleeping with me is for my own good?”

“Exactly.”

“Parts of my anatomy totally disagree with that right now.”

“Those parts of your anatomy have been controlling you for too long. This,” she said, tapping his chest where his heart would be, “is what I want from you.”

With that she turned and began rummaging through the cupboards as if nothing had happened. But Ty knew everything had happened. First, he’d changed his morning routine and begun mingling with his employees. Now, he’d nearly begged a woman to try a relationship with him
even though it broke about fifty of his own personal rules, and she’d said no because she wanted his heart.

He almost wished he could give it to her but he knew he couldn’t. Not because he needed it for anything else, but because if he gave her his heart, he really would change. He really would lose his edge and his company would go to hell. People would be out of work. His parents’ dream would be gone.