The Ties that Bind. Emilie Rose
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let you get back to work. Thanks for loaning me the book. And please stop by the nursery if you get a chance. Graham would love to spend time with his daddy.”
He flinched then his expression turned thundercloud dark. She fled.
But now she knew her boss had at least one redeeming characteristic beneath his armor plating. He was generous to others.
Just not his own son. And that was unforgivable.
“If you’re happy and you know it beat your drum,” Anna sang to the boys.
Cody and Graham each pounded out his own tempo with a wooden spoon on the copper bottom of a pot borrowed from Hollister’s well-equipped kitchen.
The door to the room designated as the nursery burst open, revealing her boss. “What in the hell are you doing?”
The boys fell silent. Graham’s bottom lip quivered. He scuttled into Anna’s lap and hid his face in her breasts. She wrapped her arms around him. Was he afraid of his father?
“Having music time. Are we disturbing you?”
“Yes.” A muscle in Hollister’s rock-hard jaw twitched and the veins on his forehead protruded.
“Odie pay,” her son warbled, making Anna smile despite the ogre in the room.
“Yes, Cody is playing his drum,” she enunciated slowly in an effort to help his budding language development.
Cody banged his pot, drawing Graham out of hiding. Hollister’s son clapped his hands and both boys chortled infectiously. The two of them together were so adorable. For a moment Anna thought she saw her boss’s expression soften with something like…yearning?
Her son uncharacteristically offered his spoon to Hollister. “Man pay.”
Hollister stared, blank-faced.
“Cody is asking if you would like to take a turn with his drum.”
The lines bracketing her boss’s mouth deepened. “No. Keep it quiet. I’m trying to work.”
Another echo from her past. She’d tried so many times as a child to engage her father. “We’ll try.”
“Don’t try. Do it.” He pivoted with a military snap of muscles and left the room, dragging the air from Anna’s lungs with him. She stared at the empty open door, listening to the retreat of his angry footsteps.
“If you’re grumpy and you know it pat your drum,” she mumbled under her breath. “Okay, boys, bath time.”
Surely Hollister couldn’t complain about the boys splashing too loudly. Cody squealed with excitement—an ear-piercing sound that might bring her boss stomping back, then Graham joined in. Anna cringed, but when Hollister didn’t barrel back into the room she herded the imps toward the bathroom.
She knelt by the garden tub, stripped the boys down and had them happily paddling in the shallow water within minutes. Keeping an eye on two slippery bathers required unblinking vigilance, but their joy in the experience made it worth her while.
She shampooed Graham’s dark hair then Cody’s red locks, laughing at their comical expressions. She’d always expected to have children, and definitely more than one. But not before Todd had found a job and they’d built up a nest egg. But life had other plans.
She didn’t regret rejecting Todd’s knee-jerk suggestion to terminate her pregnancy. She’d thought she’d convinced him they could make their little family work, that if they budgeted carefully, her salary was enough to support the three of them until he sold some of his songs. She’d believed he’d accepted her decision to have Cody.
But time and his disappearance had proven her wrong and her parents right. They’d told her repeatedly that Todd was irresponsible and mooching off her, but she’d been convinced they were only pressuring her to find a man just like her father—the way her sister had—and she’d ignored their warnings.
Using the handheld showerhead Anna rinsed the last of the soap from Cody then Graham. She dried Graham first, set him on the bath mat and handed him one of Cody’s rubber bath boats to keep him occupied. “Wait for me to dry Cody, sweetie.”
She turned back to her son. Cody splashed and managed to get soap in his eyes. He wailed. Anna rinsed him again. She heard Graham cackle with laughter but the sound had come from outside the bathroom. She whirled around in time to see him bolt through the bedroom door. Her heart kicked wildly. She hoped Hollister had remembered to latch the stair gate.
Snatching up Cody without even bothering with a towel, she raced after her charge. Graham’s naked little legs pumped furiously. “Graham. Stop. Graham!”
The little fugitive chugged past the gate—which was closed, thank heaven, down a hall and around a corner to a wing of the house Anna hadn’t explored yet. She struggled to hold on to Cody’s slippery wet body. Graham disappeared through a set of double open doors. Anna barreled through it right behind him.
Hollister, shirtless, stared aghast at his son then lifted his disapproving gaze to Anna. Anna jerked to a halt.
Her boss’s chest looked like a sculpture, the muscles well-defined and encased in tight, tanned skin with a dusting of dark hair across his pectorals. He had a six-pack or an eight-pack or—wow, how many abdominal muscles were there anyway?—above his low-riding jeans. And those muscles were nothing compared to the big ones roping his arms and shoulders.
Anna’s pulse pounded like a jackhammer, and tension twisted low in her belly. Her face and body filled with heat. Embarrassment, she assured herself, because she’d just blundered into the man’s bedroom.
But she knew better. It might have been almost two years since she’d experienced it, but she recognized the bite of desire. Why now? And why for him, a man whose attitude toward his son infuriated her?
“What in the hell is going on?” Hollister barked, effectively stopping Graham.
“I’m sorry. Graham got away from me after his bath.”
Anna’s peripheral vision captured the king bed, covered with a black spread. Running shorts and a tank top draped across one corner. The room had white carpet, black glossy furniture, a beautiful stone fireplace and a huge window overlooking the river behind the house.
They’d obviously caught Hollister changing and if they’d arrived a minute later…She gulped and momentarily squeezed her eyes shut. He might have been as naked as the boys. She refocused on her quarry.
“Your little guy is quite the runner. Like father, like son, huh?”
Hollister didn’t even crack a smile.
She gulped. “Come on, Graham.”
The wide-eyed tot stood frozen, staring up at the glowering man above him. His bottom lip quivered. Anger sparked inside her. A child should not fear his father.
“Graham, let’s go get dressed, sweetie,” she cajoled, but the tot remained rooted.
“And now the update we’ve been promising you on the disappearance of international news correspondent Katherine Hersh,” a voice said from the huge flat-screen TV hanging on the wall. Hollister’s head whipped toward the screen. His body tensed. His jaw clamped granite hard.
Anna backed a step. “We’ll just g—”
“Quiet,” he barked and Anna stopped much as Graham had earlier.
“We have not been able to ascertain why Hersh was targeted three weeks ago, and none of the extremist groups in the region where her film crew last saw her are claiming responsibility for her abduction. The area where she went missing is known for its civil uprisings over the past decade. If you remember, Hersh’s brother was killed within fifty miles of here two years ago while he was covering the coup for a competing network. The rebels have yet to demand a ransom, and even if they do and it’s paid there’s no guarantee Hersh will be released unharmed. And