Page 29 of The Billionaire in Her Bed

Chapter Eight

Fifteen minutes alone with the kid, and Eli was already sure of two things. One, babies ate a lot. And two, everything they ate, they either spit up or shat out.

He stripped off his puke-stained shirt and checked his watch again. It was up to eighteen minutes now. Eighteen long, excruciating minutes since Charise had banged on his door and begged him to come sit with Jaden until Brooke got back from Manhattan.

He didn’t know she’d gone into the city. Not that she needed to apprise him of her every move. He was confident enough not to control the women he dated. If that’s what he and Brooke were doing.

At some point, they’d have to figure it out. But that meant he’d have to come clean about who he was and why he was there, and he wasn’t sure how he was going to do that without risking whatever it was they had together. Especially now that he’d signed a letter of intent for the Hearthstone Group—the new LLC he’d formed—to buy Candy Court. If that cheating bastard Simon had the balls to try to enforce the non-compete clause in their partnership agreement—well, Eli would let their lawyers hash that out.

He couldn’t wait for the mess at Momentum to get cleared up. He’d hired a private investigator to tail Dupree, hoping that would lead to the mole, but so far he’d come up empty. If Eli didn’t act fast on Candy Court, someone else would. The building was too good a deal to pass up.

But so was Brooke. She was the real deal. A woman who saw him for who he was, not what kind of car he drove or how much he had in his bank account or who he could introduce her to. Instead of going to stuffy museums and expensive restaurants, they’d spent the past few weeks discovering Brooklyn’s simpler pleasures—and their nights discovering each other’s bodies. So far, everything he’d uncovered he liked, about the borough and the bartender. More than liked, if he was being truthful.

Eli raked a hand through his hair and swore under his breath. How the hell had he gotten himself into this impossible situation? And how the hell was he going to get out of it with his business—and his manhood—intact?

A piercing wail brought him back to the problem at hand.

“All right, big guy.” Eli tossed his shirt into the sink to be rinsed out later—good thing it was one of Ginny’s Wal-Mart specials and not a designer label—and plucked a freshly wiped and diapered Jaden out of his bouncy seat. “Let’s try this again.”

Second time had to be the charm. After a little bit of fumbling with the bottle Charise had thrust in his hand on her way out the door, he settled onto one of the chairs at her tiny kitchen table, cradling Jaden against his bare chest. The kid wasn’t going to get him this time if he could help it. “Okay, buddy. I ditched the shirt. Try to steer clear of the pants.”

He nestled the baby’s head in the crook of his arm and held the bottle to his lips. He’d never fed a baby before, but it didn’t seem that hard, except for the whole spitting up thing. Something that, according to Google, was easily remedied by periodic burping.

Jaden’s squalling stopped, and he latched onto the bottle, his little cheeks caving in with the effort of sucking down milk as fast as he could. Eli tilted the bottle upward—another trick he’d learned in his Google search—and stared down. Kids weren’t something he’d spent a lot of time thinking about. He’d always assumed he’d find the right woman and get around to having one or two someday, but with his busy career, that day was in the distant future. Suddenly—shockingly—that future didn’t seem so distant anymore. And the woman in it was a smart-mouthed, curvy brunette.

The doorknob clicked, and Eli looked up to see said brunette burst into the room, frazzled but still beautiful, her hair streaming behind her and her face red from the still chilly early-March air. “Ohmigod, Charise, I hope I’m not too late. The D-train took forever to show up and…”

Her eyes found him, and she stopped mid-sentence. Her oversize bag fell to the floor with a heavy thud, making him wonder what the hell she kept in there.

“Not Charise,” he said with a wicked grin.

“I can see that.” Her gaze lingered on the baby snuggled against his bare chest, and he thought he heard her mumble something about her ovaries exploding.

He choked back a laugh. “Sorry, I didn’t catch that.”

Her reddened cheeks flushed even more. “What can I say? A shirtless man feeding a baby. It’s ridiculously hot.”

“Any shirtless man?” He shifted Jaden to his other arm.

“I plead the fifth.” She scanned the apartment. “Where’s Charise?”

“She had to get to work. I offered to fill in until you got here.”

“Offered?” Brooke unbuttoned her coat and hung it over the back of a chair. “Or was drafted?”

“Now it’s my turn to plead the fifth.”

“I suppose she made you take your shirt off, too. Or was that your idea?”

“No, that was this little fellow.” He glanced down at Jaden, who was still slurping away like a champ. “We had a slight accident our first go-round.”

She took a seat opposite him. “Pee, poop, or puke?”

“All of the above.”

“Ouch.” She held out her arms. “Why don’t you let me take over?”

The bottle was almost empty, and Jaden’s eyes were drooping. Eli pried the nipple out of his mouth and moved him to his shoulder. “I’m fine.”