“No worries,” Jaeger replied, his tone relaxed. He turned away and walked toward the kitchen, stopping in the doorway when he saw the mess. “That was your dinner, Ty? Yuck. Let’s order pizza. Pepperoni, anchovies, olives? What’s your poison?”
“There’s some baby food in the freezer. He’s too young to eat pizza,” Piper said, still hovering at the bottom of the stairs.
Jaeger made a production of looking at Ty and rolling his eyes. “Your mommy thinks I’m an idiot. Of course I know babies can’t eat pizza. But Chinese—you can eat Chinese, can’t you?”
* * *
Jaeger, his hands clammy and his breathing shallow, decided to keep his eyes on Ty for every second he was in charge. If he did, then nothing would happen to the kid.
When Ty fell asleep, he’d keep watching him, make sure he was breathing. Ty would be safe on his watch.
He’d debated long and hard whether he wanted to do this—whether he could spend concentrated alone-time with a baby. But the excitement he’d seen earlier on Piper’s face was worth a little cold sweat.
He liked making Piper happy, both in bed and out, and that fact made his blood run freezing cold. Between Piper and her son, Jaeger was six-foot-plus of scared.
One step at a time, Ballantyne. Keep Ty safe for the next couple of hours.
He could do that if he didn’t panic. Rainn was his safety net, just as much as he was Piper’s. If Rainn hadn’t been a yell away, there was no way Jaeger could have sat here with Ty, on his own.
But he could do this; he had to do this. The chances of this happy, healthy little boy dying of SIDS, or anything else, were a gajillion to one. His mind knew that; his heart still was in fight-or-flight mode.
Calm the hell down, Ballantyne. You can do this.
Jaeger looked out the window of the den and saw Piper climbing into a taxi, her long legs catching an appreciative glance from a pedestrian walking by.
He’d fed Ty, made some coffee and intended to tackle the mess on the kitchen floor, but then Piper walked down the stairs, and the sight of her nearly dropped him to his knees. The dress was black and skimmed across her sexy body, stopping midthigh. He’d just stared at her as she pulled on her coat, wondering whether he could dump Ty in his playpen and take her back upstairs. The dress was enough to give any red-blooded male a heart attack, and like her boots from last night, those silver ice pick heels made him think of her wearing nothing else.
He was seriously worried he might have a shoe fetish. He was seriously worried, period. Jaeger released a long sigh, holding Ty against his chest as he watched Ty’s mommy drive away.
“Your mother is driving me nuts, dude,” Jaeger told Ty, sitting in the wingback chair by the window, Ty straddling his knee. He jiggled, and Ty laughed and waved his yellow duck around. “I just look at her and my IQ drops by twenty points.”
Ty blew him a raspberry, and Jaeger bounced his knee again. “I’m supposed to be risk-averse and yet I do this. I mean, what idiot agrees to give a woman he barely knows a loan against the sale of her gems? From his own friggin’ money, no less. She makes me do things I would never normally consider, just to make her smile. I’m teetering on the edge of a cliff and it’s a long way down.”
But he had yet to take a step back.
Ty cocked his head and gave Jaeger a look he couldn’t read. Was he supposed to keep talking or keep bouncing? Hedging his bets, Jaeger did both. “The gems will definitely sell for three million, and if they are the Kashmir Blues, they’ll sell for a lot more. But I have to trust her to pay me back. I can trust her, right?”
Jaeger nodded and Ty nodded, too, liking this new game. Jaeger chose to believe the kid knew exactly what he was talking about.
“And every time she walks into the room, I just want to strip her naked and slide on home.” Jaeger heard what he’d said and winced, suddenly remembering he was talking not only to a baby but also about the kid’s mother. “Hearing me talk this way about your mom isn’t going to scar you for life and send you into therapy, is it?”
Ty tipped his head sideways and waved his hands after noticing a fabric ball on the carpet by the foot of the chair. Jaeger lowered the baby to the floor and placed the ball between his chubby legs. Then Jaeger moved off the chair to sit on the carpet next to Ty, his legs bent at the knees.