Читать книгу Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby! - Jacqueline Diamond, Isabel Sharpe - Страница 13

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.

She would miss her little apartment and her friendship with Marie Pipp, too, when she finished her dissertation and found a teaching job. There was practically no chance of landing one at De Lune U., which hired only experienced full-time teaching staff.

Her parents, on the occasions when they communicated with Dex, harped on the point that it was time to finish her dissertation and launch a stellar career in academe. They would agree, one-hundred percent, about putting Annie up for adoption.

What if I don’t want a stellar career in academe? What if what I really want is right here?

But she couldn’t have it. She was in no position to raise Annie herself, even if Jim would agree. As for the man who had breached her defenses without even trying, he was in love with someone else.

And wrong for her, anyway. Too smooth. Too rich. Too…everything.

Dex pedaled harder. She flew past the entrance to the campus and down University Avenue to Sirius Street, where she turned left into the middle-class residential area in which she lived.

She tried to focus on how good it would feel when she finished her dissertation. She could devote herself to teaching, research and writing professional articles. At last, she would make her own place in the world.

The bike zipped past a cozy bungalow. In the porch swing, a young mother rocked her baby while watching a toddler splash in a wading pool.

Dex’s heart swelled. Why did she keep torturing herself? It was inexplicable, yet since childhood, Dex had treasured forbidden dreams of domesticity.

She’d sneaked romance novels into her bedroom, and in the margins of school notes, invented elaborate baby names like Eldridge and Valeria. Isolated by the twin handicaps of insecurity and overweight, she’d found her greatest pleasure in reading and in babysitting.

But regardless of what her instincts told her, she wasn’t cut out to be a mother. And while Jim Bonderoff might make a decent enough father if he had the right wife, he didn’t, and he might never have. What kind of girlfriend hadn’t bothered to accept his proposal in three months?

What Dex wanted for her daughter was the one thing that had been denied to her: the chance to grow up loved and cherished and nurtured so she could pass those qualities on to her own children. And it was obvious that neither Jim nor his blundering staff members were equipped to give Annie this kind of upbringing.

She turned a corner and swooped down Forest Lane. Mrs. Zimpelman, who was leaning on her rake and listening on the phone, smiled when she spotted the bicycle. She began talking in animated fashion, no doubt boring a friend with the news of Dex’s arrival home.

Across the street, Dean Pipp knelt in the garden snipping herbs into a wicker basket. She wore a floppy black hat, a gingham apron over a shapeless gray dress and a pair of skaters’ pads on her knobby knees.

“Hello, there!” she called. “What did the lawyer want?”

Dex angled her bicycle around the side of the house and came to explain about Helene and Annie and Jim. By the time she finished, Marie had finished gathering her herbs and led the way into her book-filled house.

“I’ll certainly miss you.” The dean removed her apron and knee pads and hung them on a coatrack. “It’s only for a week, though, you say?”

“Or less, if I can persuade him that adoption is the best course.” Dex tried not to dwell on how difficult it was going to be to wrench her daughter away from one self-important father and a pair of no-holds-barred leathernecks.

The elderly woman frowned at a padded envelope lying on her hall table. “Oh, dear, I must have put the mail here and forgotten. What is this?”

Dex glanced at the envelope. It bore the return address of a rare books dealer. “Something you ordered?”

“Well, yes, of course,” said Dean Pipp. “Now I remember. I asked for everything they had about the Richard Grafton controversy. I’m afraid there isn’t much.”

Knowing that her landlady wrote papers about obscure literary matters, Dex tried to dredge the name Richard Grafton from her memory, but failed. “Was he a poet?”

“Oh, surely you remember Richard Grafton.” The dean rattled open a drawer, pulled out a sharp engraving knife and sliced open the envelope to reveal an aging volume. On the cover was imprinted Chronicles of England, by Richard Grafton. “He was a sixteenth-century writer.”

“Refresh my memory,” said Dex.

“It’s all in here.” Her landlady smiled and recited from memory, “‘Thirty dayes hath November, Aprill, June and September, February hath twenty-eight alone, and all the rest have thirty-one.”’

“He wrote that?” Dex asked.

“Yes, but did he write it first?” The dean cocked an eyebrow as if inviting Dex into a fascinating mystery. “There’s a similar poem by William Harrison, written at almost the same time, and rhymes of that nature pop up elsewhere in folklore.”

“I see. So there’s a controversy.” Dex regarded her landlady fondly. Hardly anyone was likely to care who really wrote that bit of doggerel, but she had no doubt that it would make a fascinating article.

“Oh!” Marie dropped the book on the table with a thump. “I nearly forgot! There’s a student in your apartment. She wanted to talk to you about something or other and insisted on waiting. Her name is, let’s see, Coreen or Cara or…”

“Cora Angle.” The student had asked to speak to Dex after receiving a D-plus on a paper. Dex had suggested she drop by so they could have some privacy, but they hadn’t specified a time. “I’d better hurry. She’s upset enough as it is.”

“See you later.” Clearly absorbed in her project, Dean Pipp wandered into the living room, reading the book out loud. She was still wearing her floppy hat.

Hoping that Cora hadn’t been waiting long, Dex let herself out of the house and loped toward the free-standing garage. From the driveway, a straight, weathered staircase led to the apartment. She clattered up and opened the door, which she left unlocked during the day.

The single room looked smaller and darker than usual, by contrast to the expansive scale of Jim’s house. Dex didn’t see anyone, but she heard a tuneless mumble coming from the tiny kitchen. She had to close the door to take a look, because the kitchen was behind it.

Cora Angle, her large frame cramped in the small space, was wiping a dish and carrying on a conversation with herself. “I shouldn’t hang around,” she muttered. “She’s obviously busy. She did promise to see you. I’ll only be in the way.”

One glance at the open cabinets showed Dex that her thrift-store dishes had been rearranged. They were stacked in an orderly manner, the plates and saucers on the lower shelf, cups and glasses on the upper one.

“Oh, hi!” The tall freshman stopped wiping and gave her a tentative smile. Pale blond hair straggled down Cora’s pudgy cheeks, and there was a dust smear on the shoulder of her tan smock.

“You’ve been working hard.” Dex decided not to point out that the new arrangement, while more efficient, put the cups too high for her to reach easily. She could always switch them back later.

“I like to organize things.” The chubby girl watched her apprehensively, as if expecting a rebuke. She reminded Dex of herself not many years ago.

“Well, thank you.” She indicated the half-full coffeemaker. “Care for something to drink?”

“Okay. Sure,” said her guest. “I’m sorry for just showing up. I mean, I know you weren’t expecting me.”

“It’s okay,” Dex assured her. “I told you to drop by, right?”

“Right.” Cora cleared her throat. “Listen, I just came to tell you I decided to drop out. I guess college is too hard for me.”

“If you were smart enough to get in, you’re smart enough to do the work.” Dex frowned as she poured the coffee. She hated to see anyone leave, especially after less than a year. “A lot of people have trouble adjusting. How are your other classes?”

Cora put two spoonfuls of sugar in her coffee and slouched in a seat at the counter. “Cs and a few Ds. College is costing my parents a lot of money, and I’m not doing well enough to justify it.”

“Do you want me to see if there’s financial help available?” Dex refused to give up easily. True, the young woman’s papers and tests had been mediocre and sometimes worse, but she might blossom.

“I’ve already got a partial scholarship.” The young woman shrugged. “Originally, my parents said I should just get a job, but when I won the scholarship, they agreed to help. The thing is, I knew from the first few days that I made a mistake by coming here, but I didn’t want to admit it.”

“What makes you think so?” Dex asked.

The freshman’s forehead wrinkled. “The other kids all seem so sure of themselves. I never know what the teachers expect. I keep trying to guess, and getting it wrong.”

With relief, Dex realized that she might be able to help. “Maybe that’s the problem. You’re too busy trying to second-guess the professors instead of expressing your own point of view.”

“But who would care what I think?” Cora nibbled at the split ends of her hair.

“I do,” Dex said. “Listen, I’ll make you a deal.”

“What kind of deal?” The young woman fiddled with her coffee cup.

“You promise to stay in college for the rest of the semester,” Dex said. “In exchange, I’ll critique your papers in advance for your other classes. I can’t in fairness help you prepare for Professor Bemling’s class, since I’ll be grading you, but what you learn should apply to everything.”

“I—I can’t afford to pay you much,” the freshman said.

“No charge,” said Dex.

“I can’t accept such generosity.” Cora pressed her lips together before continuing. “Besides, I’m sure there are more deserving students.”

I’m going to rescue you whether you want me to or not. “First of all, you deserve my help as much as anybody. Second, I’m not being generous. Consider this a loan,” Dex said. “Next year, you can tutor a freshman who’s having problems, and she can pass the favor on to someone else the following year, and so forth. How’s that?”

Reluctantly, the woman nodded. She must be eighteen or nineteen, and yet she seemed very young. At twenty-six, Dex had considered herself still a kid. Until today.

Now she was a mother. And a tutor. Next to Cora, she felt practically ancient.

Then she remembered that she was going to be staying at Jim’s. “Let me give you another address. I’ll be helping out a friend with some baby-sitting for a week. You can contact me there.”

She hated to hedge, but people gossiped like crazy around campus. The discovery that James Bonderoff had a daughter by Helene Saldivar, and that the biological mother was a mere teaching assistant, would fan the flames to wildfire proportions.

Cora accepted the slip of paper gratefully. “I can’t believe you’d do this for me.”

“That’s why I’m in the teaching field,” Dex said.

After the freshman left, she mulled over the conversation. Was she in education because she enjoyed helping people? That hadn’t been mentioned anywhere in her parents’ expectations.

She did enjoy her time in the classroom on those occasions when Hugh was ill or at a conference. The problem was that college-level instruction required researching and writing professional papers, which she did not enjoy. Also, the lectures were often delivered to large groups of students with little or no personal contact and the grading left to an assistant.

Well, it didn’t matter. She didn’t belong in any other world, so she had better make the best of this one.

After tucking a few changes of clothes and her personal care items into a backpack, Dex opened her desk drawers and flipped through the notes she’d accumulated for her dissertation. She really ought to finish it this coming summer, which was only a few months away.

She’d chosen to write about how the structure of Shakespeare’s plays prefigured movies and television. While watching Kenneth Branagh’s movie version of Henry V, Dex had been struck by how visual it was and how well the scenes, with little adaptation, worked on the screen.

Her parents had agreed that it was an interesting subject. Her mother had sent a long letter with suggestions for how to approach the matter, and her father had urged her to publish the thesis as soon as possible to gain critical attention.

That had been a year ago. Since then, Dex hadn’t been able to muster any interest in working on the dissertation. It seemed to belong more to her parents than to her.

Oh, grow up, she told herself. As soon as she returned from Jim’s, she would buckle down and get to work.

A short time later, she locked the door and set off with her backpack. En route, she stopped at a baby store and bought a bicycle seat for Annie. It was quite an extravagance, since she’d only be able to use it for a week, but perhaps she could give it to the adoptive parents.

Maybe Annie would stay in Clair De Lune. Maybe Dex would see her from time to time, riding in this very bicycle seat, whizzing around town behind some bearded man or long-haired woman.

Unexpectedly, tears pricked her eyes. It must have been the wind.