A Bride for Jackson Powers (Desire, 1273) by Dixie Browning Page A

diapers again that they come in two different styles. Girls and boys.”
    “You’re kidding.” He said it flatly, replacing the wine bottle in the cooler. “Pink and blue, you mean?”
    “Well, there’s that, but it’s—they’re padded in different places. You see—well, I don’t know how much you know about anatomy,” she said, and then slapped a hand over her face.
    “About as much as the average forty-year-old, I guess,” he said blandly.
    “What I meant was—oh, for heaven’s sake, just buy the pink ones!”
    Then he was laughing, and Hetty was, too, and she blamed it on the wine and on the hot bath and on the romance she’d been reading. Blamed it on everything except the truth.
    That she was wildly attracted to the man, and seeing him again and again under the most intimate circumstances made it almost impossible to keep her imagination in check.
    “Okay, pink diapers, stroller, playpen—whatever she needs. Did you get yourself some pretty things? A warm coat and a pair of boots, I hope.”
    “I got everything I need, and thank you very much. Did you have any luck finding a house? Because you must know this place is costing you an arm and a leg, and if you’ve already got an apartment in town, then you could move us into something smaller and cheaper and then you can—”
    “Hetty.”
    She broke off. “What?”
    “You’re chattering.”
    He was staring at her. He’d been staring at her for several minutes. It was making her nervous, because she was trying so hard not to stare at him.
    The man was devastating. So what if his features were just short of perfection, the sum total was every bit as intoxicating as the wine she was drinking on practically an empty stomach.
    “You didn’t eat your chicken.”
    “I wasn’t as hungry as I thought.”
    “Is that what’s making you so edgy?”
    She was tempted to tell him the truth. Scrambling for a reasonable excuse, she said, “New shoes.”
    “Oh. You’re talking too much because you bought some new shoes, is that it?”
    “I’m talking too much because I have a blister on my left heel and because you make me nervous, and because—”
    “Hetty,” he said in a voice as soft as midnight fog.
    “What?” she practically snarled.
    “Give me your foot.”
    “I’m not giving you anything! I’ve already given you far too much.” His eyebrows rose at that, and she hastened to explain, only making matters worse. “I mean, you know my whole life history, and I don’t know anything at all about you except that your great-great-grandfather was a sea captain who gave up the sea and adopted a baby girl.”
    “Give me your foot.”
    “Jax, you might as well know I’m not really as glamorous as I look, it’s the clothes.” She plucked at the bulky bathrobe. “Not this, but my other things. You know what I mean. I bought all these glamorous new things for my cruise because I didn’t have anything the least bit suitable, and—well—underneath, I’m really just plain old Hetty Reynolds, who’s never been anywhere or done anything the least bit exciting.”
    He’d pretty well figured that out all by himself. Heresisted the urge to haul her into his arms and hold her until both of them came to their senses, because, glamorous or not, there was something about the woman that brought out a protective streak he hadn’t known he possessed.
    “I know,” he said gently, warming her with his eyes.
    “And I’m not used to staying in hotels. If you want to know the truth, I’ve never stayed in one before in my life. Motels, yes, but they don’t have room service, much less all these little goodies. All this is—” She waved her arms, and Jax reached under the table, captured one of her feet and lifted it onto his knee.
    “D’you know what killed Calvin Coolidge?”
    She goggled at him. There was no other way to describe it.
    “Blister on his foot. Infection set in, and next thing you know, he was gone.”
    “You’re making that