A Man Like Mike Read Online Free Page B

of empathy for Mike and found herself saying, “You can get him out of his high chair, if you want.” Afterward, she nearly kicked herself. Of course he could do whatever he wanted with his own nephew. His blood connection to Bailey gave him that right.
    Mike said nothing derisive about her suggestion, though, unbuckling Bailey from his high chair in silence. When he would have pulled the baby to his chest, he instead held him out and away from his body, screwing up his nose. “Aw, Jeez, is that smell what I think it is?”
    Already breaking her vow to get along with Mike, Eve took a singular glee in the offended expression on Mike’s face. She turned and sent him a sweet as saccharine smile. “Oh, I’ve been expecting that. Would you mind cleaning him up while I run his bath?”
    Mike was still holding Bailey away from his body as though he were a time bomb about to go off. The horrified expression on his face at her request was priceless, but Eve took no pity on him. “You said you wanted to help me with Bailey. Now is as good a time as any to start, don’t you think?”
    His eyes narrowed. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?”
    She couldn’t help the smile that spread. “Definitely. Come on, I’ll show you where everything is.”
    Eve gave Mike a quick tour of Bailey’s nursery, pointing out the items on the change table he would need before heading to the bathroom, leaving him looking like he was preparing for battle, one for which he’d received no training. She just managed to hold in the satisfied laugh that threatened to bubble up.
    She couldn’t hold in the laughter a minute later as she was testing the temperature of Bailey’s bath water and Mike’s appalled exclamation resounded off the walls. “Bloody hell, Eve, what are you feeding this kid?”
    The laughter burst forth. Sounded like Uncle Mike hadn’t really thought through what ‘helping her out’ would mean.
    Eve reached to turn off the running tap, then pressed her damp hands to her cheeks, already sore from that short burst of hilarity, her merriment muscles not having had a workout in recent weeks. Immediately, she sobered, all amusement dying as quickly as it had taken a breath. There was nothing funny about any of this. Mike didn’t have a clue what it took to look after a baby, yet he was determined to move in with her, at least for now, and offer this ‘help’ he thought she needed. Eve still didn’t like the idea, not one bit. She feared that if Mike hung around long enough, he would figure out that she knew little more about taking care of a baby than he did.
    “Bailey, leave those on please,” Eve instructed as she rushed by the playpen on her way to the kitchen. Hopped by was more like it, as she tried to pull on her black pumps on the fly. Bailey was doing a dishearteningly good job of pulling his shoes off, after she’d just spent a frustrating few minutes slipping his wildly kicking feet into them. “Eve might scream if she has to go through the agony of putting those back on you. And we’ll be late for childcare,” she told him, wondering vaguely when she had started conversing with the baby as though he were capable of conversing back.
    She rounded the corner into the kitchen and immediately caught sight of Mike walking toward her. She tried to straighten as she finally got her heel fitted into her shoe, but momentum carried her forward. She would have fallen on her face if Mike hadn’t reached out and caught her.
    Strong, capable arms, Eve noticed as he set her on her feet. She could feel solid, flexed biceps beneath her fingertips and coarse forearm hair brushing against the tender flesh of her inner arms. Heat emanated from him, and she realised from his slightly damp shorts and shirt that he had been jogging. He smelled not unpleasantly of the outdoors and musky, male sweat.
    “Falling at my feet, Eve?” Amusement coated the deep timbre of his voice. “I thought you were immune to my charms.”
    Not