The Playboy’s Unexpected Bride. Sandra Marton
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agreed to provide the baby a proper home. He didn’t know a damned thing about babies—how could he? But he hadn’t known a thing about running a business, either, when he’d started out.
No problem.
You didn’t know how to do something, you learned. Or, if it was more expedient, you hired people who did. That was what he’d done, what he’d assured the social worker whose job it was to make sure the baby was properly cared for he would do.
And he had.
He’d sent his PA shopping for baby clothes, a crib, a highchair, bottles, formula, diapers and the thousand other things an infant required. He’d had the interior designer who’d done his Fifth Avenue triplex turn the guest suite into a nursery. He’d contacted a nanny agency and interviewed more women eager to clean baby bottoms than he’d have imagined existed in the world, let alone New York.
And, last week, Kath’s mother-in-law had suddenly come on the scene. Nobody had even known she existed until then.
Would she ask for custody? If she did, should he fight her for it? Or would his niece be better off in her care?
Linc couldn’t come to a decision. On the one hand, women knew more about kids than he ever could. Wasn’t it in their DNA? On the other, the child was his blood. She was his only remaining connection to Kathryn.
What would Kath have wanted? She’d loved him the way he’d loved her. The circumstances of their lives—no father, a mother who drank and forgot they existed most of the time—had made them unusually close. Still, there was no way to know if she’d have wanted her baby raised by him or her mother-in-law. His attorney was checking things out.
The bottom line was that Kath was gone and a small, squalling stranger had dropped into his life. He’d had to leave increasing responsibility for running Aldridge Inc. in the hands of his people. They were all excellent managers, hand-selected by him, but Aldridge had grown into a multimillion-dollar company and he was integral to that growth.
He knew it was time to put the turmoil of the past months behind him and get back to the work he loved and maybe to some kind of social life, but you had to sleep nights to do that.
Right now, the baby’s screams were reaching a crescendo, carrying all the way from the guest-suiteturned-nursery on the second floor of the penthouse to his bedroom on the third.
Where in hell was the nanny?
Linc threw back the duvet and started to the door. Halfway there, he remembered he was wearing boxers, his usual sleeping apparel but not what you’d choose for an appearance before Nanny Crispin.
She was the fifth woman he’d hired and the first that seemed to be working out.
The first hadn’t lasted a week. Linc had come home an hour early one night and found her rolling on the Aubusson rug in the great room with a guy with studs in his ears, nose and lip and other places he’d glimpsed and tried to forget.
He’d thrown them both out.
Nanny Two had lasted ten days. Day eleven, she’d reeked of pot.
Nanny Three had simply vanished. Her replacement, Nanny Four, had seemed okay until the evening she’d greeted him at the door wearing one of his Thomas Pink handmade shirts, spiked heels and a smile.
Then the agency sent him Nanny Crispin.
She was sixtyish, tall and skinny. Her hair was steelgray, her small, wire-framed eyeglasses sat squarely on the bridge of a high, narrow nose. Linc doubted if she knew how to smile but she’d come highly recommended and, he supposed, whether or not she ever smiled was immaterial.
It couldn’t possibly matter to a four-month-old infant. A baby’s needs were purely physical. Food. Warmth. Cleanliness. This baby was getting all that. He’d made sure of it by hiring Nanny Crispin.
Sighing, Linc grabbed the trousers he’d worn last night. The baby’s howls had reached earsplitting proportions. Nanny Crispin would have to endure the sight of his bare chest—and what the hell was she doing, anyway, letting the kid scream?
He marched down the hall and went down the steel and oiled teak spiral staircase.
The door to the nursery stood open. All the lights were on, illuminating the crib where the baby was screeching like a wind-up toy gone berserk. Nanny Crispin, wrapped like a mummy in a flannel robe the same color as her hair, sat in a straight-backed chair beside the crib, arms folded over her flat chest.
Linc cleared his throat. Pointless. Nobody could have heard the roar of a jet engine over the wails of the baby.
“Nanny Crispin?”
As always, he felt like an idiot addressing a woman twice his age that way but she’d made it clear that she expected his housekeeper, his driver and him to call her by her title.
He walked to the crib and waited for her to notice him. When she didn’t, he tapped her on the shoulder. She reacted as if she’d been scalded, leaping to her feet, spinning to face him, her mouth forming a perfect O.
“I didn’t meant to startle you.”
Nanny Crispin stared at his chest.
“I said, I didn’t mean to—” Hell. He took a breath, fought back the urge to grab something to cover his naked chest and decided to get to the point. “What’s wrong with the baby?”
“Do you not own a robe, Mr. Aldridge?”
“Do I not…?” Linc flushed. Suddenly, he was six years old. “Well, sure, but I heard the baby and—”
“Your attire is inappropriate. I am a single woman and you are a man.”
“Yes, but—”
But one of them was crazy. He was indeed a man. She was about as sexually appealing as a stick, never mind the age difference or the fact that she was his employee. If she’d looked like the reincarnation of Marilyn Monroe, that last fact would have been enough to keep him at arm’s length.
Linc jerked his chin toward the crib. “I’m not worried about decorum right now, Nanny Crispin. I want to know why the baby is screaming.”
“She is screaming because she is undisciplined.”
“Undisciplined. Well, then, of course she…”
His voice faded away. Undisciplined? He frowned. True, he knew nothing about babies, but did four-month-old infants cry because they were undisciplined?
“Are you sure?”
“I have been taking care of babies for forty years, Mr. Aldridge. I know an undisciplined child when I see one.”
Linc looked at the baby. Her face was purple. Her arms and legs were pumping. His frown deepened.
“Maybe she’s hungry.”
“I gave her eight ounces of formula four hours ago. Eight ounces is the proper amount.”
“What about her diaper? Does it need changing?”
“No.”
“Well, is she too warm? Too cold? Could something be hurting her?”
Nanny Crispin’s thin mouth narrowed until it all but disappeared. “She is simply in need of discipline, as I said.”
“And that means?”
“It means I shall outlast her temper tantrum. Goodnight, sir.”
Linc nodded. “Okay. Sure. Goodnight.”
He turned, walked away, got halfway up the stairs and paused. The baby was still crying but her screams had become sobs. Somehow, that was even worse.
Would Kath have let her daughter weep? Would she have called this a temper tantrum?
He swung around, went back to the nursery, ignored the scowl of disapproval and the pursed lips.
“How