Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

“Someone?” Dex trooped alongside as Jim strolled toward the house, taking three steps for every two he made. “How many people work here?”

“Not many,” he said. “There’s Rocky, the butler. And the gardener and the maid.”

“Do they live here?”

“They have apartments over the garages.”

“They sound like kindred spirits,” she said.

Unaccountably, Jim felt a prick of jealousy.

They mounted a curving stone staircase from the driveway to the garden above. The many levels of the site had been one of its primary appeals, although Jim had experienced some regrets later when he saw the problems it created for Rocky. His butler had lost a leg while serving in the Marines.

Still physically fit at forty-one, Rocky hated having anyone give him special treatment, though. He’d always been tough, and he still was.

Come to think of it, Rocky probably figured kids ought to be treated like Marine recruits. For the first time, Jim felt a twinge of worry at the possibility that Annie might not fit into his household quite as easily as he’d assumed.

If Nancy didn’t agree to marry him, he supposed he would have to hire a nanny on a long-term basis, but he didn’t like the idea. Dex was right about a child needing to be with people who loved her.

At the top of the steps, his guest paused to drink in the profusion of flowers peering shyly from a rock garden. There were primroses and petunias, pansies and dianthus and something yellow and daisy like whose name he didn’t know.

“This looks so natural,” she said. “It’s beautiful.”

“My landscape architect designed the whole thing, right down to—” Jim frowned at a major weed sprouting near the edge of the bed. “Well, not that.”

He made a mental note to mention it to Kip LaRue, the gardener. It wasn’t the fellow’s fault he was sometimes inattentive. He’d been lucky to survive a helicopter crash that left him with head injuries three years ago.

Jim’s household was a testament to his early years in the Marines. He’d made rough-and-ready friends then, and now he employed some of them.

He was glad he’d called ahead to alert them to Annie’s arrival. Surely at least Grace, the maid, would warm to the little creature.

The smell of disinfectant hit Jim as he opened the side door that led into a sunroom. Dex wrinkled her nose, and Annie stuck out her tongue.

“What’s that smell?” Dex asked. “Never mind, I recognize it. Is somebody sick?”

“Not that I know of.” Jim regarded the glass-topped ice cream table set with expensive china. “It looks like we’re going to eat in here.”

If not for the smell, it would have been a lovely place for lunch. The high-ceilinged room had tall glass windows, a couple of designer trees and a profusion of hanging ferns and fuchsias. Filtered green light gave the air a magical quality, as if it hovered in another dimension.

Someone, however, had scrubbed the flagstone floor with disinfectant and applied liberal doses to the walls. Jim hoped this wasn’t Grace’s idea of how to prepare a house for a baby, but he suspected that might be the case.

“Can we open a window?” Dex blinked, and he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed from the fumes.

“Sure.” When Jim transferred the baby into her arms, Annie grabbed onto her mother like a baby monkey. He had to admit, the kid had strong ideas about whom she belonged to. “Do you have allergies?”

“Not usually. I may be allergic to your house, though,” Dex said.

As he cranked open the tall windows, Jim hoped she was joking. “My maid gets a little carried away sometimes with the cleanser. She used to be a Marine drill sergeant.”

“Are you serious?” Dex buried her nose in Annie’s cheek.

“She mustered out four years ago.”

Before he could explain further, the interior glass door crashed open. It hung on such well-oiled hinges that the slightest push made it crunch into the wall. As always, he jumped, and so did his guest.

A wheeled tray clattered through, covered with domed dishes and a small silver dish mounded with puréed fruit. It was pushed by a big man in camouflage fatigues.

“Attention!” shouted Rocky Reardon, drawing himself up to his full six-foot-five. “Mess is served!”

Dex’s entire body quivered as if the sound had set her vibrating. Annie clapped her hands over her ears. “Ow,” they both said.

Jim glanced anxiously at his butler. In the five years that Rocky had worked for him, the man had maintained strict discipline. Since he treated Jim as his superior officer, this posed no problems. But where would he put a baby in the chain of command?

“Rocky, this is Annie,” he said. “I hope you two will get along.”

Rocky’s gaze fixed on the little girl. It was a quelling look that had once set recruits’ knees to trembling—Jim’s included.

“Ba ba?” said the baby, unafraid, and held out one hand to him.

“She likes me.” Wonder trembled in Rocky’s voice. “Look how little she is! Sir, she’s the spittin’ image of you. Only a whole lot cuter.”

“You like babies?” Dex peered at him. Jim had to admire the way she refused to back off even when faced with this mountain of a man.

“Yes, ma’am,” said Rocky. “I sometimes take care of my nieces and nephews. Can I hold her?”

“Sure.” She waited as the butler walked stiffly across the room. People never suspected that Rocky had an artificial leg unless he chose to take it off and wave it at them, which he’d only done twice—once during a bar fight and another time when the maid demanded he cook hash the way they used to serve it in the Marines.

Rocky cradled the infant. From this great elevation, Annie studied her parents. “Whee!” she said.

“I could feed her in the other room,” the butler suggested. “I’ll hold her on my lap, since we don’t have a high chair yet. She’ll be perfectly safe, ma’am.”

“I suppose that would be all right.” Dex clasped her hands, as if worried but unwilling to insult the man.

“Grace went out for supplies, ma’am, but I processed this fruit here.” With his free hand, Rocky scooped up the silver bowl. “It’s all-natural canned peaches, no additives.”

“Thank you, Rocky,” Jim said.

“Yes, sir.” The man shifted as if trying to figure out how to salute with a baby in one hand and a bowl of puréed fruit in the other, then settled for a nod and left the room. Jim was relieved. He’d been trying for years to get his butler to stop saluting.

Dex peeked under one of the domes. “This meal looks great.”

“Help yourself.” Jim removed another of the covers.

Rocky hadn’t had time to prepare anything hot, but he’d done a fine job on the triangular tuna-salad sandwiches with the crusts trimmed. They were topped by sprigs of mint and accompanied by scoops of homemade potato salad.

They sat down with their plates and glasses of iced tea. A couple of times, Dex looked toward the door as if trying to see where Rocky had taken the baby, but by now they’d vanished into the depths of the house.

It occurred to Jim that a woman who’d just met a child, particularly a child she intended to give up for adoption, shouldn’t be so concerned about its wellbeing. He wondered if Helene Saldivar had shown this much devotion, especially in light of her selection of Miss Smithers as nanny.

“What are you thinking?” Dex asked after downing a couple of rapid bites.

“I was wondering what kind of mother Dr. Saldivar made,” he admitted.

“Cold and calculating,” she replied promptly.

“I didn’t realize you knew her,” he said.

“So you agree? About her personality, I mean?”

He recalled Dr. Saldivar as he’d last seen her, at a fund-raiser last fall for the fertility center. “She did seem aloof, but I assumed it was her professional demeanor.” Yet, knowing that she’d borne his daughter not long before the fund-raiser, he found it amazing that she’d been able to hide that fact. What a bizarre woman. “You’re right.”

“She must have been warped,” Dex said. “She lied without compunction.”

“On the other hand, you’ve been known to shade the truth yourself.” Jim downed a sandwich and helped himself to seconds.

“You mean about moving away?” Dex said. “I panicked. So did you.”

“Excuse me?”

“You mean it’s a coincidence that you ran off and proposed to another woman one month after we…made each other’s acquaintance?” she said. “You can’t expect me to believe that!”

Jim frowned. He hadn’t seen anything odd about proposing to Nancy a month after loving, and losing, Dex. It had seemed perfectly natural.

He’d planned to marry Nancy for a long time, but their careers had gotten in the way. Especially hers. She’d left Clair De Lune to teach at a small college in Alaska, then jumped at an offer of a university position and research grant in Washington.

Along the way, she’d refused to accept any help from Jim. A word in the right ear, and she could have been working much closer to home. She’d wanted to succeed on her own merits, though, and he respected her decision.

Somehow the years had slipped away without his realizing it. He hadn’t wanted to press her and hadn’t felt any particular urgency about getting married. Not until recently.

“I figured nature was telling me something,” he mused. “That I was ready to settle down.”

She stared at him. “You can’t mean that you had any settling-down thoughts about me!”

No, he didn’t mean that. Did he? Jim tried to recall exactly what he’d been thinking and feeling four months ago, but he couldn’t.

He wasn’t accustomed to self-examination. For heaven’s sake, he was on top of his life, his business and, above all, himself, so why flail around in search of renegade emotions? “Certainly not. The timing was purely coincidental.”

“I see.” Having cleaned her plate, Dex eyed the plates of carrot cake, cheesecake and chocolate mousse arrayed on the cart’s lower shelf. “Do you always have three desserts?”

“Rocky didn’t know what you liked,” he said. “So he gave you a choice.”

“I have to choose?”

“Have all three. There’s more in the kitchen.” Jim watched in amazement as she took him at his word, plopping three plates onto the table.

He couldn’t remember the last time he’d seen a woman eat one dessert, let alone three. None of the skinny executive ladies he sometimes dated did, and as for Nancy…well, he couldn’t remember.

They hadn’t spent much time together since she’d moved away five years ago. Mostly they saw each other on holidays, when she came to visit her parents, or when he went to Washington on business.

It was time to get back to the subject that had brought him and Dex together. “How did you meet Dr. Saldivar, anyway?”

Busy making short work of the carrot cake, she didn’t immediately answer. She approached eating, like everything else, with total absorption.

Jim flashed back to their night of lovemaking. She’d brought him alive in ways he hadn’t known were possible. Her mouth, her hands, her breasts had excited him almost past bearing.

“One of my jobs is campus courier,” Dex said, serenely unaware of the direction of his thoughts. “I met her while delivering mail to her department. I don’t remember how the subject came up, but she said she needed a donor to help some of her desperate patients have children. So I agreed.”

“Maybe she was sincere,” he said. “Initially, anyway.”

“Dr. Saldivar didn’t see patients,” Dex said.

“She didn’t?”

“I found that out today. That’s why I’m so angry. It was a con job, pure and simple.” She patted the corners of her mouth with her cloth napkin. “How about you? How exactly did she get her hands on your sperm?”

The way she phrased the question was so startling that Jim choked on a bite of sandwich and went into a coughing fit. Before he could recover, Dex hopped up, ran around the table and grasped him from behind.

As he struggled to break free, he felt a fist prod into his stomach. Three short thrusts against his solar plexus threatened to launch his entire set of internal organs into outer space.

“Should I call the paramedics?” she shouted.

Somehow, perhaps because his life depended on it, he managed to wheeze, “No.” After a couple of swallows of iced tea, he added, “Not unless you plan to attack me again. Then I might need a stretcher.”

Dex resumed her seat. “It’s called the Heimlich maneuver.”

“I’ve heard of it. I just didn’t realize it was a new form of assault.” He waved away her response. “I’m kidding. It’s a good skill to know, but you were too quick off the launching pad. I could have coughed that food up by myself.”

“Better safe than sorry,” said Dex.

He didn’t have a response. Not a coherent one, anyway. Instead, as soon as he caught up on his breathing, he returned to her earlier question. “You asked about Helene.”

“Maybe I shouldn’t have.” Dex quirked an eyebrow. “What went on between the two of you really isn’t my business.”

“Me and Dr. Saldivar?” He felt like coughing again, but restrained himself. “Not even remotely. Besides, don’t you think I’d have questioned her motives if she suddenly whipped out a vial and preserved a specimen?”

“She could be very persuasive.”

He laughed. “I suppose so, but in my case, she was doing me a favor. Making sure I was fertile.”

“Why?” Dex asked.

It was disconcerting, the way she asked such personal questions without blinking. It threw him off balance, and Jim wasn’t accustomed to anyone else getting the upper hand. Or forming one into a fist and plunging it into his midsection, either.

“There’s no need to go into details,” he said. “If you’re going to be living here, we need to respect each other’s privacy.”

“Whoa!” She stopped halfway through the slice of cheese cake. “I haven’t agreed to that.”

So she wanted to play hardball. Well, Jim was a master at that game.

“Fine. I’ll have my lawyer draw up the custody papers, you can sign Annie over to me, and that’ll be the end of it.” He folded his arms and leaned back to await the fireworks.

4

INSTEAD OF ARGUING, Dex regarded him calmly. “What amazes me is that a man who has everything could be so selfish.”

In his outrage, Jim forgot about maintaining the upper hand. “What makes you say that?”

“You just want Annie because she’s got your genes,” Dex said. “You can’t love her, because you don’t know her. And since you’re planning to get married, you can have plenty more children. Your wife probably won’t be crazy about taking care of a stepdaughter, anyway. So why deny her to some family whose empty arms are aching?”

Jim allowed himself a rare moment of self-searching. Was he simply latching onto this baby because her eyes matched his?

No, he decided. If he brought to fatherhood the same determination that had enabled him to build his business into a billion-dollar enterprise, he could make this child the happiest person on earth.

“My daughter will be privileged and loved and special,” he said. “Ask any of my employees what I’m like. Did you know I was voted Clair De Lune’s boss of the year?”

“A child isn’t an employee.” Dex regarded him coolly. Why wasn’t she as impressed by his accomplishments as all the other women he met? Jim wondered.

“As her mother, I can’t let Annie stay here without a fight. I realize that if I get the campus legal aid center involved, I’m likely to end up with custody of Rocky and you’ll have to marry my landlady. But I owe it to my conscience to try.”

Jim remembered the scrambled custody case in question. He hated to admit it, but although his firm had high-priced attorneys on staff, he was terrified of the legal aid center. Its bumbling amateurs had a gift for turning cases so inside out and backward that judges temporarily lost their bearings.

“All I’m asking is for you to move in for a week,” he said. “Observe me in action. See for yourself how happy our daughter will be.” The word our made him lose his train of thought. How had that slipped out?

“No,” Dex replied. “I have a home, as little as you may think of it. And friends. And a life. For all you know, I might even have a boyfriend.”

“Do you?” he demanded, then wondered why the prospect disturbed him. After that one night of bliss, he’d accepted that he and Dex weren’t destined to roll around in the bedroom together again, even though it felt like sheer heaven.

“No,” she admitted.

Jim’s relief lasted only until he remembered the real subject of their discussion. After setting his plate on the cart, he leaned forward earnestly.

“If you don’t want to move in here, fine,” he said. “Leave Annie with me for a while and then see for yourself how she’s doing. If you truly find that I’m unsuited to care for her, I’ll give her up.”

She shook her head. “You won’t. It’s a ploy.”

“I’m not a liar.” He meant what he said. Still, Jim was forced to concede he wasn’t sure he could give up his daughter if push came to shove. “In any case, if we fight it out in court, a judge is unlikely to force me to put Annie up for adoption. At best, we’d get joint custody. Is that what you want?”

A wistful expression touched her face, and for a second, yearning shone in Dex’s eyes. Then she swallowed hard. “I’m not the nurturing type.”

“Then give me a chance.” Jim knew when to press his point. “I promise, if the arrangement really isn’t working, I’ll agree to an adoption. In either case, Annie gets a home and you’re off the hook.”

“I’ll have to think about it.”

Far back in the house, male and female voices rose in a dispute. Grace must have returned from the grocery store, and judging by the noise, she and Rocky were disagreeing about the baby.

Jim wished Dex had left the house before the argument erupted, since it didn’t speak well for his household. However, she hadn’t, and he needed to resolve it. “Excuse me for a minute.”

“I’m coming, too.” She scrambled alongside him into the hallway.

He could make out the words clearly now. Rocky was saying, “What idiot sterilizes disposable diapers? For Pete’s sake, you can’t put bleach next to a baby’s skin!”

“I’m not putting it next to her skin, you pie-faced moron!” the maid boomed. “I’m applying it to the outside of the diaper. This gizmo’s probably loaded with germs!”

“The chief assigned me to baby detail, not you. Get away from her,” Rocky growled.

“Are they always like this?” Dex asked as they hurried through the large, gleaming kitchen.

“Occasionally,” Jim admitted. “I think they miss being in action.”

At the entrance to the utility room, he halted. Dex wiggled into the doorway beside him, her hip brushing his thigh. He squelched the impulse to swivel and pin her against the door frame and instead focused on the scene in front of him.

On a changing pad atop the washing machine lay Annie. Before her fascinated gaze, the hulking butler and the nearly six-foot-tall maid, who at thirty-seven was as buffed up as she’d ever been, squared off in a tug-of-war over a disposable diaper. Mercifully, Grace had already set down her bleach bottle, right next to a spray can of antiseptic.

“Give it here!” shouted the maid, and yanked the diaper away from the butler. So caught up were the antagonists that they failed to notice the new arrivals.

Rocky grabbed the diaper and gave another jerk. The fibers parted and the diaper ripped raggedly in half, sending them both stumbling.

“See what you’ve done?” snapped the butler. “Now go wash the latrines. No wonder a knucklehead like you never made sergeant major!” He reached for another diaper from an open plastic carton.

“Don’t you dare let one of those contaminated things touch that sweet little baby’s bottom!” roared Grace.

“I’ll do as I please.” Rocky patted the diaper against Annie’s knee, which was the closest part of her anatomy. “So what are you going to do about it?”

Jim cleared his throat to announce his presence, but it was too late. An infuriated Grace butted headfirst into Rocky’s stomach, bowling him over with a huge oof. On the washer, Annie clapped her hands in delight.

Still doubled up, Rocky grabbed the maid by the waist. He flipped her over his shoulder and sent her sliding onto the floor with a splat.

“That’s enough!” Jim said.

The pair stopped, breathing heavily. From her position flat on her back, Grace glared at him. Rocky didn’t look pleased at the interruption, either.

“Permission to speak freely, sir?” he said. “This is between Sergeant Mars and myself.”

He had a point. Jim generally allowed his staff to work out their own differences. They were, after all, competent adults.

As he weighed the situation, Dex hurried across the utility room to the changing station. “Neither of you knows the first thing about babies.”

“Do you?” Jim couldn’t resist asking.

“I baby-sat all through high school.” She pulled another diaper from the package. “First of all, you don’t need to sterilize disposable diapers.”

Rocky beamed. Grace’s mouth twisted in dismay as she got to her feet.

With a speed and ease that left her audience in awe, Dex grasped Annie’s ankles, lifted her little bottom and whipped off the old diaper from beneath her sundress. In milliseconds, the baby was cleaned and rediapered.

“Awesome.” Grace dusted herself off.

“As for you—” Dex swung toward the butler “—leaving a baby unattended in a high place is very dangerous. You should never even take your hand off her while she’s being changed.”

Now both staff members appeared crestfallen. Jim had never seen anyone take on his ex-Marines and win, hands down. He couldn’t resist a sneaking admiration for this diminutive whirlwind.

“We’ll do better in the future, ma’am,” Rocky said.

“You bet you will!” Dex released an exaggerated sigh. “Like it or not, I’m going to have to move in here until you two complete basic training.” She shot a stern look at Jim. “Did you plan this?”

He shook his head. “Honestly, no.”

She handed him the baby. “Try to keep out of trouble while I go pack a few things, will you?”

“I’ll drive you, ma’am,” said Grace.

“Thanks, but I’ve got my bike,” she said, and departed, leaving them all stunned.

After a moment, Rocky said, “She’s quite a woman, sir.”

“I’m afraid we don’t know the half of it yet,” said Jim.

DEX’S LEGS pumped as she cycled along University Avenue. She kept her head down and aimed for speed, trying to work off those three desserts.

Jim lived on the northeastern edge of town, where the Claire De Lune flatlands began to rise into the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains. The university was located due west of his house, also on rising ground.

Much of the land in this part of Clair De Lune remained undeveloped due to the uneven terrain, so there wasn’t much traffic for Dex to contend with. Which was a good thing, with her mind in turmoil.

Had she really agreed to move in with Jim Bonderoff? The man was maddeningly arrogant—boss of the year, indeed!—and knew less than nothing about children. He also had an endearing smile, brown eyes touched with mischief and a masculine way of moving that made her want to chuck off her clothes all over again.

The plan was insane.

Even more inexplicable was Dex’s reaction to Annie. From the moment she’d met her daughter, she’d felt as if the child were a missing part of herself.

It was ridiculous, of course. For the child’s first nine months, Dex hadn’t even known of her existence. Had Helene Saldivar not suffered an untimely death, Annie might have grown up and even wandered across Dex’s path, unrecognized and unremarked.

No. I’d have realized the moment I saw her, no matter where, that she was me. Or, at least, half me.

Rounding a bend in the curving road, Dex spotted the redbrick university dorms ahead on her right. She’d lived there for four years and still missed the camaraderie with her dorm mates.