probably wake him.
She went through the great room and down the hallway to the master bedroom. Tapping lightly on the door, she softly called, “Jordan?”
“Come in,” came a voice that was much too robust to come from someone who should have been asleep.
Vicki pushed her way through the door and frowned.
Jordan sat up with his back against the headboard, his stocking feet crossed at the ankles. An open laptop rested on his thighs and a pair of reading glasses was perched upon his nose. Make that an astonishingly sexy pair of reading glasses.
She tried to block the sexiness from her head, otherwise her impending lecture wouldn’t be nearly as effective as she needed it to be. She plopped a hand on the hip that didn’t have a twenty-two-pound toddler on it and narrowed her eyes at Jordan.
“Seriously?” she said, jutting her chin toward the laptop.
“Yeah, I know.” He grimaced. “I just needed to check one thing.”
“You’re supposed to be
resting,
Jordan, not working. Those are two very different concepts. It’s easy to tell them apart.”
He looked at her over the rim of his glasses and grinned. “Who knew Vicki Ahlfors was such a smart a—” He glanced at Mason. “Aleck,” he finished.
No, no, no. Her cheeks would
not
heat up at his teasing.
“No changing the subject,” she said, keeping her voice as firm as possible. “I didn’t volunteer to watch Mason so you can work.” The little boy shifted in her arms and Vicki caught another whiff of his aroma, reminding her of the reason she’d come in here in the first place. “Please tell me you have diapers,” she said.
“In there.” He pointed to the master bath.
Vicki cursed the deep flutter that traveled through her belly as she entered Jordan’s bathroom. There was something way too intimate about this. The discarded facecloth hanging on the rim of the sink, the bottle of multivitamins, the razor—not an electric one, a classic manual razor, the kind that required control and a steady hand.
She briefly shut her eyes against the image that tried to crop up in her head. Thinking about Jordan and his steady hands was bound to get her in trouble.
At the far end of the long vanity sat a stack of disposable diapers, along with more baby wipes, lotion and powder. She grabbed a plush towel from the wooden towel rack and gently laid Mason on top of it.
She’d just pulled off his pants when she heard Jordan say, “I can do that.”
Vicki’s back stiffened. She’d been so busy with Mason that she hadn’t heard him approach.
“I’ve got it,” she called over her shoulder.
The tingle that raced down her spine was completely inappropriate, but wholly expected. Those tingles were par for the course when it came to being in close proximity to Jordan. The new Vicki was supposed to be done with those tingles, but apparently she hadn’t gotten the memo.
Standing watch just over her shoulder as she efficiently went about changing Mason’s diaper, Jordan said, “You handle that like a pro.”
“Changing a diaper?” she asked.
“Yeah, especially with the way that one squirms.”
As if on cue, Mason immediately started to writhe around on the vanity. Vicki caught his feet together in one hand and moved her hip to block him from rolling right off the counter.
“I see what you mean.” She leaned over and nibbled Mason’s chin. “But your cute little booty isn’t getting away from me.” She looked back at Jordan. “Goodness, is there anything more adorable than those two bottom teeth that peek out whenever he smiles?”
“Nothing I’ve found,” he said with a laugh.
He finally backed away, making it easier for Vicki to get her breathing under control. His nearness was pure torture on her new quest to not be affected by him.
He settled in the doorway and leaned a shoulder against the jamb. “How’d you learn to change a baby’s diaper?” Jordan asked. “You don’t have any kids of your own.”
Vicki snorted as she
Joanna Wayne Rita Herron and Mallory Kane