The Baby Surprise

“When he does, does he have any dimples? Especially one over the corner of his mouth?” Devon asked then.

So that was what he was looking for. “No, he doesn’t.”

“Because my mother and my oldest brother’s daughter have a dimple.”

“Ah, so you wondered if Harley had one as a sign that he might be yours. No, no dimple. Actually, he resembles Clarissa pretty strongly.”

“I noticed that.”

Harley let his head fall heavily against Keely then, and she knew he was fading. “I should probably get him to bed,” she informed Devon without much enthusiasm. It wasn’t that she wanted Harley to stay up, but she thought that since Devon had come specifically to see the infant, once Harley was gone, Devon would leave, too. Which, of course, was as it should be.

But he’d just gotten there and, even though she knew she should resist it, she didn’t want him to go yet.

Then, as if her wish for more time with him had been granted, he said, “I’m curious about a couple of things. Would it be all right if we talk after he’s in bed?”

“Sure,” Keely agreed too quickly to leave him any doubts that she was willing.

She stood with Harley and tried to get him to wave bye-bye. But he still wouldn’t let go of the sock and after a few attempts she admitted defeat. Then she took the baby to the kitchen to microwave his bottle and went upstairs to put him down for the night.

By the time she returned to the living room, Devon Tarlington had removed his jacket and, although he was sitting right where he’d been before, he seemed considerably more relaxed.

“Can I get you something to drink?” Keely offered. “Wine? Beer? Coffee?”

“No, thanks. Just your company will be great.”

Okay, there was no good reason that comment should please her so much, she told herself as she sat at the end of the sofa nearest to him, curling her legs underneath her.

“Well, what do you think?” she asked bluntly then. “Besides not having the family dimple, did you see a resemblance in Harley?”

“No, I didn’t. But I don’t suppose that means anything one way or another.”

“Probably not,” Keely agreed.

“How did you and your sister get into this?” he asked then.

“By buying this house.”

Devon glanced around. “How did buying this house get you involved in my potential mess? Did Harley come with it or what?”

“No, Harley didn’t come with it. We just bought it and the payments are nothing to sneeze at. Neither is the upkeep. So we decided to offset some of the expense by getting a housemate and we ran an ad in the newspaper.”

“And Clarissa answered it,” Devon finished for her.

“She and Harley. We weren’t crazy about that at first. There was only one room other than mine and Hillary’s, but Clarissa insisted it didn’t matter, that she and Harley could share it. After about half an hour with Harley we’d fallen in love with him, so we agreed to accept them as housemates.”

“Maybe he is mine,” Devon joked as if Harley’s charm could be attributed to him.

It made Keely laugh. “I don’t know, if you can’t see the benefits in chewing cold socks I have my doubts.”

“Okay then, I guess we can skip the blood test and I can just go on about my business.”

“Sorry, you’re not off the hook that easily.”

Keely liked the way his face lit up when he laughed. The way tiny lines fanned out from the corners of his eyes. She liked the sound of his laughter and the fact that he had a sense of humor. But she tried not to pay so much attention to those things and went on answering his question about how she and Hillary came to be in the position they were in with Harley.

“Anyway,” she said, “that was six months ago. Shortly after Clarissa moved in she began to abuse the arrangement. She was constantly asking either Hillary or me to baby-sit, and it wasn’t that we minded, it was just that once Clarissa was out she didn’t tend to come back when she said she would.”

“That sounds like Clarissa,” Devon muttered somewhat under his breath. “What starts out seeming fun and spontaneous ends up just being irresponsible.”

“That about sums it up. Anyway, at first she’d just be a few hours late. Then she’d call and say she was spending the night with whoever she was with, she’d be back in the morning before Harley woke up. Then she started staying away for days at a time and nothing we did or said made any difference to her. She wasn’t really even apologetic.”

“That sounds like Clarissa, too.”

“Last week she disappeared completely. Apparently, at some point while Hill and I were gone she’d moved her things out of the house, because she said she was running to the store while Harley napped and then she never came back. When Harley woke up and we went in to get him we realized his things were all that was left in there. Except a manila envelope that had information about the lawyer and the documents assigning Hill and me as Harley’s temporary guardians, and the letter telling us either you are Harley’s dad or Brian Rooney is, that we should figure out which of you it is and turn Harley over to his father.”

“So she managed to give you quite a surprise, too.”

“To say the least. We contacted the lawyer and he confirmed everything. Clarissa had flown the coop.”

Devon was shaking his head. “Amazing.”

“I’m sure we could find her,” Keely continued. “But it just seems like a waste of time. Clarissa made it clear to the attorney that she doesn’t want anything to do with Harley. And to tell you the truth, it isn’t as if she was good for him before this. She didn’t care if he was clean or fed, if he had what he needed in any way. Hill and I actually thought that she might have just left him in his crib and taken off whether we were here or not. But if you really wanted me to—”

“Don’t go looking for her on my account,” Devon said before she could finish that. Then he changed the subject. “But there’s one thing I have been considering since you showed up at my door yesterday. I think I should be with you when you tell Brian Rooney what’s going on.”

“Why is that?”

“A couple of reasons. He’s kind of a hothead for one and it’s hard to say how he’ll take this.”

“Oh, so I can spring it on you but you don’t think I can spring it on him?”

“I’d just feel better if you didn’t have to spring it on him by yourself. Plus, just in case he does something stupid—like refuse to give blood for the test— I’d like to be there to help persuade him. Since I have a pretty high stake in this.”

For a moment Keely studied Devon, wondering what form his persuasion might take and if it was wise to have him along when she told the other man about Harley.

He did have a high stake in this, she conceded. And she wasn’t thrilled with the idea of being on her own when she told yet another complete stranger—a complete stranger who apparently had a short fuse—that he might be the father of Clarissa’s child.

“What did you have in mind in the way of ‘persuading’ him if he refuses to give blood?” she asked.

Devon smiled again. “I won’t bring along a baseball bat, if that’s what you’re afraid of. I just want to be there as your backup.”

Was there a hint of flirting in that last part?

Keely couldn’t be sure. But even so, it caused goose bumps to erupt up and down her arms.

“Let me think about it,” she hedged, suddenly more concerned with her involuntary response to this man than with what might happen between him and Brian Rooney if she got them together.

“Okay,” Devon said, easily accepting that it was her decision.

He stood then. “I should probably get going.”

Keely fought a huge rise of disappointment, but she stood, too, absolutely forbidding herself to say anything to delay his departure. This was business, after all, not a social call, and their business, for the moment, was concluded.

“Have you taken Harley into the lab for his blood test yet?” Devon asked on the way to the front door once he’d replaced his sport coat.

“Not yet, no.”

“Then how about if I pick you both up tomorrow and we go together?”

That caught Keely off guard.

“Harley’s naps kind of dictate things,” she said as they reached the entry, realizing that really wasn’t an answer.

“I’m flexible. What’s good for you?”

“It’s usually hard to get much done until two-thirty or three in the afternoon.”

“That’s fine. And then after we hit the lab, how would you feel about a trip to the zoo?”

“The zoo?” Keely repeated, even more confused. Was he just trying to arrange some time to get better acquainted with Harley? Or was there something else to this?

“I’ve signed on to take pictures for a new fundraising brochure—” He cut himself short and explained, “I’m a wildlife photographer. Anyway, I wanted to take a look around, get some preliminary ideas of what I might want to shoot. And since it’s the zoo, I was thinking—zoo, kids—maybe you and Harley might like to go.”

It seemed reasonable enough when he said it like that. And not as if he had any ulterior motives. Maybe it was just a friendly invitation to something he had to do whether they went along or not, and there honestly wasn’t anything else to it. Except maybe getting more comfortable with Harley.

“Harley would love it,” she admitted, making sure Devon knew the baby was the only reason she would consider it. “And I suppose it would be a good treat after putting him through whatever the lab has to do to him. It would also give the two of you more exposure to each other in case you do turn out to be father and son.”

And maybe she was just rationalizing because she wanted to go. Although it wasn’t the animals in the zoo that were inspiring her. It was the company she’d be keeping. She just didn’t want to admit that, even to herself.

“Great,” Devon said into her wandering thoughts. “Then I’ll come by around two-thirty and we’ll go whenever Harley wakes up.”

“All right.”

Devon opened the door to leave but before he did he paused.

“There’s something else that keeps bothering me about this whole thing,” he said then, sounding reluctant to bring it up. “You may not know the answer to this, but Clarissa never wanted to have kids. I’m surprised she went through with it.”

“I do know the answer to that because she told us. But I’m not sure you want to hear it.”

“I’d rather hear it than go on wondering.”

“Until the letter, the only thing she said about Harley’s dad was that things hadn’t worked out with him and she’d gone on to greener pastures. Those ‘greener pastures’ involved a very wealthy man who owned a yacht and she’d taken off with him to sail the south seas.”

“No sense letting any grass grow under her feet just because she’d been juggling two other men,” Devon said.

“She spent several months sailing,” Keely continued, “and she said she lost track of a lot of time. And since her…cycles…were never regular anyway and she’d always practiced safe sex, it didn’t even cross her mind that she could be pregnant. It wasn’t until after she’d started to show that she even went to a doctor and by then it was too late to terminate the pregnancy. She was pretty open about the fact that she regretted not having had that option because she would have taken it.”

Actually, what Clarissa had said was that condom failure and not being able to have an abortion were the worst things that had ever happened to her, but Keely didn’t want to repeat it that way.

Devon nodded. “I guess that explains it.” Then he focused those blue eyes on her and smiled again. “I think Harley was lucky he fell into your hands when he did.”

Keely didn’t know how to respond to that, so all she said was, “He has us wrapped around his little finger.”

“Now I know he’s really a lucky man,” Devon said with a devilish grin.

He was looking at her very intently and for no reason Keely could imagine, she was suddenly struck with an overwhelming curiosity about what it might be like to have him kiss her.

Which, of course, was too ridiculous an idea to entertain, and she told herself so.

But there it was anyway—that handsome-in-the-extreme face not too far away, and those piercing eyes, and those smooth lips. And kissing was definitely what she was thinking about….

“I guess I’ll see you tomorrow then,” she blurted out, not intending to sound as if she were encouraging him to leave, but sounding that way just the same because she was in too much of a panic to escape those other, horribly inappropriate and unwanted thoughts. And inclinations.

“I’ll be here,” he assured, taking his cue and stepping out onto her porch. “Enjoy what’s left of your evening,” he added as he headed down the steps to his waiting SUV.

Why did I have to do that? she asked herself disgustedly, wishing she hadn’t just nearly kicked him out.

But even as she chastised herself she still stood there in the open doorway and watched him go, taking in the sight of a rear end that surely qualified for derriere of the decade.

And all the while she wondered what Clarissa Coburn had gotten her into.

On a more personal level.

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