Corporate Daddy. Arlene James
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Sue stopped wriggling and looked up alertly. “Mama,” she called. “Mama?”
“Poor darling,” Mary Ellen crooned, gathering the child against her. Amanda Sue crammed her hand in her mouth and waited, as if listening for her mother’s voice.
Logan sighed. “Her m-o-t-h-e-r was a blonde.” He spelled out the word to avoid causing his bewildered daughter to ask for what she could not have, ever again.
“Her name was Bailey, wasn’t it?” Mary Ellen went on. “Donna Bailey?”
Amanda Sue’s ears seemed to perk up, but she made no sound. Mary Ellen eased the pacifier pinned to Amanda Sue’s T-shirt into the child’s mouth. The baby sucked absently.
“Yes,” Logan said, wishing he could avoid the subject, knowing he couldn’t.
“What was she like?” Mary Ellen wanted to know.
Logan tried to keep deep regret from sounding like bitterness. “I remember her as adventurous, full of life, independent. She was a military brat. She told me that both of her parents were lifers. So, naturally, she followed in their footsteps. She learned to fly helicopters in the army and got a small plane license after.”
“So our Amanda Sue gets that fierce spirit from both ends,” Mary Ellen said, petting the baby’s head. Amanda Sue looked up somberly at the stranger who was her grandmother, the lilting curls springing up in the wake of Mary Ellen’s touch.
“It would seem so,” Logan admitted. “The way I understood it, Donna’s parents died trying to set a record in a hot air balloon. I’d say the need for adventure was ingrained.”
“What about Donna? How did she die?” Mary Ellen asked.
He swallowed, remembering the tall, shapely blonde with whom he’d enjoyed a few weeks of fun and games. Of all the women he’d known, Donna was the last with whom he’d expected to have made a child. He wasn’t surprised, though, that she hadn’t contacted him after discovering that she was pregnant. The Donna he had known was fiercely independent and proud of her ability to take on whatever life threw at her. She had followed, quite literally, in the footsteps of her parents.
“She was piloting an experimental glider,” Logan explained succinctly. “It crashed.”
“Poor thing.” Mary Ellen sighed. Amanda Sue leaned against her, porcelain eyelids drooping over bright blue eyes. “I deeply regret the tragedy, but I can’t say I’m sorry to have this little one in our lives. How did the authorities know to contact you?”
“Donna left instructions.”
“Well, thank goodness for that, at least.”
Logan nodded, watching his daughter slip off to sleep. She’d been fighting it tooth and nail from the moment he’d picked her up at the airport in San Antonio. The social worker who had accompanied her had predicted that the child would drop off to sleep in the car, but instead Amanda Sue had squirmed and kicked and fought the seat belt, working out of it several times. The drive down to the ranch had been a nightmare. He’d never felt so inadequate. But he had to admire her fighting spirit.
She was innocence personified, impish and cherub cheeked with ivory fair skin, curly, reddish-brown hair, and eyes that sparked pure blue fire, and in addition, she possessed the mind of a warrior. Even as he took a perverse pride in her spirit, however, he couldn’t help thinking that fatherhood was going to be problematic enough without it. God knew he didn’t have the slightest idea how to go on.
His own father had been a washout as both a parent and a husband, so much so that Logan had always figured his safest bet was to avoid both states fervently. He’d thought, briefly, in the first moments of shock, about refusing custody of his unexpected daughter, but he’d quickly rejected the idea. Amanda Sue was a Fortune; she deserved to be raised as one. Thank God for his mother.
“How are we going to handle this?” he asked, suddenly wanting it all settled.
Mary Ellen studied the small hand curled around her forefinger. “What do you mean by this?”
“Her. Amanda Sue. How are we going to work it?”
Mary Ellen looked up then. “I don’t know what you mean.”
“Well, obviously she has to live here,” he pointed out impatiently, waving a hand to encompass the luxurious eight-bedroom, contemporary Colonial house with its many amenities, including pool, tennis courts, decks, balconies and spacious guest quarters. Even with his brother Holden and his wife Lucinda in residence, the place had more than ample room. Still, Mary Ellen shook her head.
“She belongs with you, Logan. She’s your daughter.”
His daughter. The words still brought a shock of unreality with them. “I don’t know anything about being a father!” he countered, and the sound of his voice jerked the baby awake. She took one look around and wailed. He bounded to his feet. “See! She’ll be miserable with me!”
Mary Ellen made an exasperated sound and gathered the child into her lap, bouncing and cuddling her. “There, there, darling. He didn’t mean to shout. There, there.” She poked the pacifier into the cupid’s bow mouth, and the piercing wail shut off instantly.
Logan pushed a hand through his wavy, dark brown hair. “I don’t know how to take care of a baby,” he said in a level voice that in no way conveyed the panic he was feeling.
Mary Ellen chuckled. “Logan, no first-time father—or mother, for that matter—knows how to take care of a baby. You’ll learn as you go, that’s part of it.”
“My father didn’t,” Logan grumbled.
Mary Ellen looked up at him with implacable blue eyes a shade paler than his own. “He did the best he could, Logan. So will you, and I’m quite sure it will be more than enough. In fact, I think you’ll make a wonderful father.”
“Just let her stay until we get used to one another,” Logan pleaded shamelessly, but Mary Ellen was at her reasonable, logical best.
“And how will you do that with her living here at the ranch and you living fifty miles away in San Antonio?” she asked. “No, son, there’s only one way to do this, and that’s to dive in headfirst. Besides, I want to be a grandmother, not another parent. I’ve raised my family, and I did it pretty much on my own, as you well know. I want to concentrate on other things now. It’s only fair. And your uncle Ryan really needs my help with the business right now. This kidnapping mess and the divorce are enough for any one man to handle on his own.”
Guiltily, Logan sat down again. His own world had spun so out of control that he hadn’t even thought of Ryan or Baby Bryan and his parents. “You’re right. What’s the latest news concerning the kidnapping?”
Mary Ellen looked at the child drifting off again in her arms. “It’s the most confounding thing. Bryan disappears, the wrong baby is returned, and he turns out to be a Fortune, too.”
Logan shook his head. “How are Matthew and Claudia holding up?”
Mary Ellen sighed. “It’s hard to say. In one way, having Taylor with them is a comfort—that’s what they’re calling the other baby, you know, Taylor—but in another way, it’s a definite problem. I mean, what if Matthew turns out to be his father? Claudia will be destroyed.”
“You don’t really think that’s possible, do you? I mean, Matt’s always been such a straight shooter.”
Mary Ellen looked down meaningfully. “I’d say just about anything is possible, wouldn’t you?”
Logan looked to his newfound daughter. “Obviously.”
“Right now, though, I think the priority for Ryan and the whole family is getting Bryan back.”
“That’s understandable,” Logan said, and Mary Ellen nodded, looking at her granddaughter.
“Life