"All right, but you know Tae Bo aerobics doesn't really qualify for
self-defense," he drawled.
"Just bring the car seat and the bag with you."
Matt followed her into her apartment, expecting to see something
similar to his place, something clean
and utilitarian with perhaps a
feminine touch. What he saw was sheer chaos, layers and layers of white
fabrics, silks and satins adorning the couch and the love seat, spools
of threads, stacks of lace, a sewing machine in one corner, and a
mannequin in the other. There were bridal magazines on the coffee
table, boxes of pearls and beads, and swatches of ribbons on the floor
in a discarded heap. It was a single man's nightmare. Maybe that was
it. Maybe he'd fallen asleep on his feet. Maybe he was dreaming.
"I have to wake up," he said. "Just wake up."
She stared at him uncertainly. "Have you been drinking?"
"No."
"Really? You look like you have a hangover."
"I haven't had much sleep the last three days. I've been too busy
pulling a city official's hand out of the till. You can
read about it in the morning paper, by the way."
"Oh, I don't get the newspaper," she said with an offhand toss of her
head.
"You don't get the paper?" Everyone got the paper. It was part of life,
a ritual as important as eating
and drinking and sleeping. "Why don't
you get the paper?"
"The news depresses me. Can you see if there is a diaper in that bag?"
"The news may be depressing, but it's important. How can you manage
your life if you don't read the paper, if you don't know what is going
on in the city you live in, the world that surrounds you9"
She cleared her throat. "Okay, I lied. I read the paper every morning."
"Now, you are lying. What is wrong with you?" He didn't understand how
anyone could not read the newspaper.
"Right now I'm holding a stinky baby. That's what's wrong with me. Did
you find that diaper yet?"
Matt set the bag down on the floor and dug through it, wishing he'd
never come home at all. He'd been looking forward to peace and quiet,
some downtime after the stress of the last few days, but here he
was
right back in the middle of somebody else's mess. Relieved to find a
disposable diaper in the bag,
he pulled it out and handed it to her.
She cleared off the end of one couch and laid the baby down, then
quickly changed her. She didn't
seem to have any problem with the
baby's flailing legs and arms or the shrill crying that continued until
she fixed the last piece of tape.
"You look like you've done that before," he commented.
"A few times. I baby-sat when I was a teenager." She picked the baby up
and offered her to him.
"Do you want to hold her now?"
"No. No." He shoved his hands into his pockets and took a step back,
almost tripping over a large spool of lace.
"Sorry about that." She gave the spool a nudge with her foot. "I'm on
deadline."
"For what? Are you getting married in the morning?"
"I'm doing the alterations on a wedding dress. I have a bridal shop on
Union Street. Devereaux's is the name. Do you know it?"
"I don't make a habit of knowing where the nearest bridal shop is."
She offered him the first genuine smile he'd seen all night. "I bet you
don't."
"What is your name anyway?" he asked, realizing he couldn't keep
thinking about her as "that woman."
"Caitlyn Devereaux."
"So why isn't all this stuff at your shop?"
"Because Tiffany Waterhouse moved up her wedding date. It turns out
she's pregnant, and she absolutely cannot go down the aisle looking
like a watermelon—her words, not mine. I brought her dress home to
finish because she's getting married at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning
instead of in four weeks as
she'd originally planned. And her family is
very well connected, so 1 don't want to disappoint her."
Matt looked at the yards and yards of material draped over the couch.
"She must be really fat."
"That's just her train, a six-foot trail of lace that goes down the
aisle after her," she added at his blank expression. Caitlyn moved the
baby from one shoulder to the other. "She still isn't happy. I wonder
if she's hungry."
"I wonder who she is."
"We should call the police."
"I suppose." Even as he agreed, he felt the same prickly uneasiness
he'd experienced earlier. Why would anyone leave a baby in his hallway?
"She's so young," Caitlyn murmured, caressing the baby's head with her
fingers. "She can't be more than two months old. How could anyone just
put her down and walk away? Especially her mother." She shook her head
in bewilderment. "How could they do that?"
Matt had a hundred answers, but there was something about Caitlyn—an
innocence, maybe—that made him instinctively want to shield her. Heii,
it probably had something to do with all the white lace in the room.
Before he could reply, Caitlyn walked up to him and pushed the baby
against his chest. "Hold her for a second. I want to look through that
bag and see if I can find a bottle or instructions or something."
Before Matt could protest, he found himself wrapping his arms around a
tiny baby who felt so small, so fragile in his arms, he thought he
might break her. And when the baby began to squirm and whimper, Matt
awkwardly shifted his feet and patted her back. He looked to Caitlyn
for relief, but she was still digging through the diaper bag.
"Hey, I could use some help here," he said.
"I found some formula . . . and a bottle," she added triumphantly,
holding it up like a trophy. "A little water, and I think we can make
her a lot happier."
Matt followed her into the adjacent kitchen. No way was she leaving him
alone with the baby. He found her kitchen to be as chaotic as the
living room—cookie jars with faces on them, pasta noodles in colorful
glass containers, magnets of every shape imaginable on the
refrigerator, and a couple of potted plants on the windowsill, some
looking
half dead despite the freshly watered soil. Apparently, Caitlyn didn't
like to throw anything away.
With the clashing bursts of color, the room felt warm and cozy,
inviting. Probably too inviting, Matt decided. Definitely too inviting,
he added silently as Caitlyn came over to him. As she put the bottle
into the baby's mouth, her blond hair drifted against his chest and
arm. She was so close he could smell flowers in her hair and mint in
her breath, then her breasts grazed against his arm as she maneuvered
the bottle in the baby's mouth, and his heart skipped a beat. Her
femininity called out to him like a siren, and he felt his body harden,
a completely unwelcome reaction considering the fact that he was
holding a baby and Caitlyn was a perfect stranger. Perfect being a big
part of the problem.
"Here you go, sweetie," Caitlyn cooed. "Take a sip. There's a good
girl."
"Don't you want to hold her?" Matt asked, feeling more uncomfortable by
the second.
Caitlyn hesitated, then said, "I don't think so."
"'Are you sure you don't know who this baby is?" he asked her again as
they returned to the living room.
"Of course I don't. Why would you ask that?"
"She seems to like you."
"Well, I'm a nice person. Babies can sense goodness."
"Then I must be a nice person, too. She's not crying anymore."
"We'll have to see how she feels about you when she's done sucking on
her bottle," she said with a wry smile. She knelt down on the floor
next to the diaper bag and began searching through it, much the way he
had done a few minutes before.
"There's no note in the bag. 1 already looked," he told her.
After a minute, Caitlyn sat back on her heels and frowned. "What mother
leaves her baby without even
a note?"
Matt pulled the bottle out of the baby's mouth as she stopped sucking
and appeared to be done. "What
do I do with her now?"
"Put her over your shoulder and pat her back until she burps."
"I think you ought to do that."
"Fine. Let me grab her blanket. She might be getting cold." As Caitlyn
pulled the baby blanket from the straps of the car seat, something
fluttered to the ground.
"Oh!" She reached for the piece of paper, then looked into Matt's eyes.
"There is a note."
Matt felt his body tense. "What does it say?" he asked shortly, having
trouble getting the words out of
his mouth. He had a bad feeling about
this—a very bad feeling.
Caitlyn read silentiy, the tension growing with each passing second.
"What the hell does it say?" he demanded.
She looked up at him through troubled eyes. '"Someone named Sarah wants
you to take care of her baby."
"Sarah." He breathed her name like a long-forgotten scent.
"Who is Sarah?"
He stared at Caitlyn, knowing she'd asked him something, but he
couldn't concentrate, couldn't focus. Sarah? How could it be? He
remembered the eerie sensation he'd felt walking up to the apartment
building, as if someone was watching him. And the phone call, the
woman's voice . . . had it been
Sarah? My God! Had she actually been standing
outside his apartment?
Matt strode across the room, thrust the baby into Caitlyn's arms, then
dashed out the door.
"Hey, where are you going?" Caitlyn cried. "You can't leave me with
your baby"
two
"You can't leave me with your baby," Caitlyn repeated helplessly, but
Matt was gone, and she was
alone. She took in a deep breath and let it
out, glancing down at the baby's cherubic face. "Well, this is
something, isn't it? What are we going to do now?"
The baby smiled up at her, and Caitlyn felt her heart melt at its sweet
innocence. A tightness came into her chest, making it difficult to
breathe. This baby, this darling baby, reminded her of everything she'd
ever wanted, and it was suddenly too much for her.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "You have to go home."
The baby squinted, her little mouth turning down into a pout just
before she let out a wail.
"Okay, maybe not yet," Caitlyn said quickly. She put the baby up on her
shoulder and patted her back, bouncing her up and down until she heard
a small satisfying burp. Then all was quiet. She lowered the baby into
the cradle of her arms and walked over to the couch to retrieve the
blanket. By the time she wrapped the child up in a tight
cocoon, the baby had drifted off to sleep. Setting her back in the car
seat, Caitlyn picked up the piece of paper and reread the note that had
sent Matt rushing out the door. The words were scrawled in a shaky
hand, the ink not fully completing each letter.
Matt,
I can't believe I've found you
again. When I read your name in the
newspaper, I knew it was
a sign. Please take care of Emily. I have no
one else to ask, and I'm desperate. I'll call soon.
Sarah
Sarah. Caitlyn sat down on the floor next to the sleeping Emily and
leaned against the couch. Who was Sarah? An old girlfriend, an
ex-lover? Matt had taken off in such a hurry. She'd never seen the
blood drain out of anyone's face quite so quickly.
Matt must have loved this woman once. He'd looked stricken at the sound
of her name, shocked to the cote., ft appeared that maybe Matt
was
the
baby's father.
Caitlyn stood up and walked around in an aimless circle, wondering what
she was supposed to do now. When was Matt coming back? She deserved an
explanation. It was after midnight, and she was now babysitting for z
man she'd met twenty minutes ago!
He certainly wasn't what she had expected when she'd heard a
newspaperman was moving in across the hall. She'd pictured someone
older, with glasses and a serious expression, wearing loose suits and
ties
that didn't match. She certainly hadn't expected a sexy hunk of a
man in tight-ass black jeans and a leather jacket. He looked like
someone who'd be more comfortable out of an office, maybe on the back
of a Harley or in a smoky nightclub someplace where men drank Scotch
and no one asked for last names.
Caitlyn shook her head in derision at her own wild imaginings. Her
curiosity and overly active imagination had gotten her into trouble
plenty of times before. But she couldn't seem to stop herself. Dreaming
and drawing were as vital to her as eating and breathing.
Instinctively, she reached for the sketch pad on the table, and within
seconds, her fingers flying over the page, she had sketched the face of
Matt Winters. She studied it for a second, tilting her head in critical
analysis. No, it wasn't quite right. His jaw was strong and square, his
features more ragged. His wasn't a traditionally handsome face, but
rather an interesting one, with the lines of life etched in his
forehead and around the corners of his eyes. And those eyes, a deep,
rich brown that reminded her of semisweet chocolate. But whoever had
said the eyes were the window to the soul hadn't met this man, for
Matt's eyes hadn't revealed one tiny clue to who he was or what he was
thinking.
No, his eyes had guarded every last secret of his heart. Yet despite
his wariness, his expression had changed when she'd placed Emily in his
arms. He'd softened, as if something untouchable deep within him had
been touched, some long-forgotten core of tenderness perhaps?
As Caitlyn slated at her sketch, she realized it wasn't nearly good
enough; it really didn't resemble him at all. And she was once again
confronted with her inability to get it right. Why couldn't she put
down on paper what she saw so clearly in her head? In the past few
months there seemed to be a short circuit in her brain between the
thought and the execution, a block she couldn't hurdle or climb over or
even push aside.
She started to erase the sketch, then quickly tossed down the pad as
heavy footsteps drew her attention
to the doorway. There would be time
to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her muse a little later. She
got to her feet as Matt entered the room. His face was still ashen, his
eyes bleak.
"I couldn't find her," he said heavily. '"God dammit, I couldn't find
her."
"Maybe tomorrow," Caitlyn said uncertainly, not sure how to react to
the intense pain in his expression.
"No, not tomorrow, not ever! I can't ever find her. I've been looking
for years, everywhere I go."
"Who is she?" Caitlyn asked in confusion. "An ex-girlfriend?"
He shook his head. "No. She's my sister."
"Your sister?" It wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. Caitlyn sat
down on the arm of the couch. Not having siblings, she had no idea of
the intensity of a brother-sister bond, but Matt's emotion seemed
unusually deep. "Well, maybe someone else in your family knows where
she is," Caitlyn offered when Matt remained silent.
"I have no other family." He paused for a long, tense moment, then
said, "Where's the note?"
"Here." She picked it up off the coffee table and handed it to him,
watching him read each word at least twice.
"The newspaper," he murmured, looking at Caitlyn with a new light in
his eyes. "'She must have read
my byline in the paper. That's how she
found me." His mouth turned grim. "But I'm still no closer to finding
her. Why didn't she just knock on my door. Why didn't she ask me to
help her?"
Caitlyn shook her head, because she couldn't imagine what had driven
this Sarah to leave her baby unattended in the middle of the hallway.
"It's a good thing you were home."
"The phone call." He snapped his fingers. "I thought it was a wrong
number, but she said my name.
That was her. That was her," he said
again. "Sarah. She spoke to me."
"But you didn't know it was her?"
"No. She hung up. But I wrote down the number." Once again he was out
the door before she could
stop him. He returned almost as quickly, a
piece of paper in his hand. "Can I use your phone?"
She waved her hand toward the phone on the table by the door. "Go
ahead."
Matt dialed the number and waited. After a moment he hung up. "No
answer, no answering machine.
I'll have to see if I can trace the
number."
"You can do that?"
The light in his eyes dimmed. "Well, not right this second,
unfortunately. Damn" He let out a sigh.
"Do you have anything to drink?"
"Lemonade, diet Cuke, some tea?" she offered.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a good bourbon."
"Sorry. I'm not much of a drinker. Why don't you sit down?" She jumped
up and swept a pile of fabric off an armchair. "Relax for a minute and
think about what you want to do next."
Matt did as she suggested, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared
across the room at the baby. "Sarah's little girl," he murmured. "It
doesn't seem possible."
"Why not?" Caitlyn asked, reclaiming her seat on the arm of the couch.
"Because Sarah was nine years old when I last saw her."
"How long ago was that?"
"Thirteen years, four months, three and a half—well, it's been a long
time."
For a few minutes the only sound in the room came from the slight
snores issued by little Emily. Caitlyn didn't know what to say—or what
to do, for that matter. The baby was obviously meant to be in Matt's
care. A quick glance at her watch told her time was passing quickly and
Tiffany's wedding was only
hours away.
"Do you want me to help you carry Emily's things over to your place?"
she ventured.
He looked taken aback by the suggestion. "What do you mean?"
"It's late. I have work to finish, and Emily is asleep."
"What if she wakes up?"
"There's more formula in the bag and diapers, too."
"I can't take care of her by myself." He jumped to his feet, running a
hand through his hair. "Why the
hell did Sarah leave me with a baby?"
"I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that she's your
responsibility, and you need to take her home now."
He stared at her, his hands on his hips. "Maybe . . . you could watch
her tonight?"
She immediately shook her head. "No."
"I'll pay you."
"It's not the money."
He thought about that for a second. "I'll write an article about your
wedding shop. I'll get you publicity."
"No."
"You must want something You must have a price."
"You think everyone can be bought?"
"Yes."
Her jaw dropped open at his blunt answer. "Well, I can't be bought."
He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze so intense she had the
feeling he could see right into her head, and she didn't like it.
"Would you do it just to be nice?" Matt asked. "To be a good neighbor?
Because I really need your
help. I don't know how to take care of a
baby."
Caitlyn licked her lips, feeling a stab of guilt. She could help him,
probably should, and it was those
words that always drove her into
turmoil—could, should, ought to. Matt was smart enough to see that
if
money didn't work, guilt probably would. But this time she held on to
her resolve.
"She'll probably go to sleep now. Just change her and feed her when she
wakes up. I'm sorry, but I
have to finish this dress, and you have to
go back to your apartment. Frankly, you look like you could
use some
sleep, maybe even a shower."
He snapped his fingers. "I can't leave her alone while I take a shower.
What if she woke up? What if
she was scared or hungry? What if she
somehow got out of the car seat and hurt herself?"
Caitlyn sighed, sensing the battle was not yet over. "Is the word
pushover
written that clearly
on my forehead?"
"It's not there yet, but I'm still hoping."
"Emily can stay here while you take a shower, a quick shower. Then you
come back and get her. Understand?"
"Thirty minutes," he said.
"Ten."
"Fifteen."
"Not a second more, or I'll be knocking on your door."
"Deal." He paused, looking into her eyes. "Thanks."
"No problem. Just come back soon. I really can't take care of your
baby."
"Stop calling her mine. She's not mine." He closed the door firmly
behind him as he left Caitlyn's apartment. For a brief second, he was
tempted to run, but deep down inside he knew he couldn't.