Читать книгу Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby! - Jacqueline Diamond, Isabel Sharpe - Страница 14

AFTER HIS LUNCH with Dex on Friday, Jim Bonderoff returned to his office for two hours. In that time, he made one hundred million dollars.

That was how much his stock went up when news was announced of a faster, smaller computer chip developed by researchers at Bonderoff Visionary Technologies. The company’s other investors became similarly enriched, and he declared a bonus for employees.

Word traveled fast. De Lune University President Wilson Martin was one of the first to call with congratulations and a hint about future donations.

Of course, he didn’t ask Jim for money directly. What he said was, “I want to take this opportunity to thank you for your past generosity to our school.”

“And I want to tell you how much I’ve enjoyed being an honorary Ph.D.” Jim, who’d never completed college, had been thrilled to receive the degree at graduation ceremonies last June. It honored his achievements in the fields of business and technology.

“You earned it, buddy!” Wilson Martin spoke with a gung-ho attitude more reminiscent of a car salesman than of a university president. Right now, he would be sitting at his desk, brushing back the thick hair that he dyed silver to disguise the fact that he was only forty-two years old. “By the way, did you hear the tragic news about Dr. Saldivar?”

“Something about an elephant, I gather.” Jim propped up his foot and retied one of his jogging shoes. He dressed comfortably whenever he didn’t have an important meeting.

“Tragic loss,” Wilson said. “It was her dream to someday see us establish a medical school on campus.”

It hadn’t taken the man long to work his way around to his longtime dream. Jim doubted it had also been Helene’s, but obviously she provided a convenient way of bringing up the subject.

Well, Jim was a hundred million dollars richer, minus taxes. Why not make a sizable donation? He was on the verge of proposing it when something occurred to him.

He had a daughter. This money was hers, too.

Not that he intended to spoil her. He considered it foolish to give young people huge amounts of money. Still, he felt for the first time as if he were the custodian of his wealth instead of its outright owner.

“I’d be happy to look at some cost projections,” he said.

“We’ll get right on them,” the president responded. “In any case, we’re always glad to see BVT prospering. It’s good for the community.”

Jim was glad when the man rang off. Not that he disliked Wilson Martin, but Jim had other things on his mind. One in particular, and she was waiting in his outer office.

He strode across the variegated carpet and went into the adjacent room. Between the fax machines, copiers and computers sat a portable playpen.

Five women stood, leaned and knelt around the playpen, making cooing noises. Jim assumed they had wandered over to enjoy the unexpected visitor. He couldn’t even spot the tiny figure inside until he got close enough to see over the women’s shoulders.

Ignoring a pile of stuffed animals and toys, Annie sat regarding the women around her with mingled interest and uncertainty. Someone had fixed tiny yellow ribbons in her hair, one of which had fallen out.

As he approached, the little girl plopped onto her knees and crawled toward the fallen ribbon. Her audience responded with encouraging cries of, “Go for it!” and “You can do it, honey!”

Jim cleared his throat. The response was electric. The five women swiveled, straightened, or—depending on their starting position—leaped to their feet. They weren’t afraid of him, but they did seem embarrassed to be caught making goo-goo eyes at a baby.

“Congratulations, Jim!”

“Way to go on the stock market!”

“I guess I’ll be getting my new house soon!” This last remark was a reference to BVT’s stock-option program, which extended to all employees.

Four of the women melted away and returned to their offices. Only his secretary, Lulu Lee, remained. “She’s so cute! I can’t believe how lucky you are!”

He hadn’t told anyone who the mother was, only that he’d recently learned he had a daughter. People would talk, of course, but that couldn’t be helped.

“I’m not sure those yellow ribbons are such a good idea,” Jim said. “Couldn’t she swallow one?”

“Oh!” Lulu leaned in and snatched the fallen ribbon from the playpen. Then she began removing the others from Annie’s hair. “Willa from accounting put them on her.”

Jim crouched next to the playpen. “How’s it going?” he asked the baby.

“Ga ga da da.” She hoisted herself to her feet, hanging onto the rim of the playpen.

He was lost. If there had been some other task Jim meant to accomplish today, he forgot it utterly.

“Look at her!” he said. “Nine months old and she’s standing up! She must be some kind of genius.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Lulu gave him a teasing smile.

“You don’t seem surprised. Do they all do that?”

His secretary, who had long expressed a desire to have children if her boyfriend ever got around to popping the question, nodded sagely. “According to the books, they often stand by this age. Some children are even walking by now.”

“They must be freaks of nature,” Jim said. “If Annie isn’t doing it, it can’t be normal.”

“She’s a bright child,” Lulu said. “I wonder where she got that hair.”

It was as far as his secretary would go toward prying. Jim made a mental note never to let her catch a glimpse of Dex. Lulu’s hair was lustrously straight and black, bespeaking her Chinese heritage.

It was only natural for her to be curious about Annie’s mother, he reminded himself. “Must be a throw-back,” he said, in response to her statement. “I think my great-grandmother stuck her finger in a light socket once.”

Then he remembered that this little girl would someday inherit the company. It wasn’t too soon to prepare her for taking the reins of command. “I’m going to give her a tour of the facilities.”

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy that,” Lulu said.

Annie did. For the first five minutes, she took a keen interest in all the blinking computers and admiring employees.

Jim’s tale of how he’d started the company in a garage, moved to a leased plant and finally built this facility quickly bored the baby. She yawned. Then she drooped against his shoulder.

“Nap time,” said one of the women engineers.

Jim had forgotten that babies needed naps. No wonder this one was exhausted. She’d had a long day, and it wasn’t even five o’clock yet.

He took her out to his covered parking spot. This afternoon, he’d brought the European sedan with an infant seat installed in the back. Strapping a sleepy baby into it turned out to be a challenge, but he was getting used to manipulating her tiny limbs.

When his nose brushed her cheek, he discovered that she smelled like Dex and was startled to realize he missed the woman. Missed her mentally and physically.

Thinking about her was dangerous. For safety, Jim tried to focus on Nancy.

As always, the image of his calm, self-possessed pal soothed him. After his mother died of cancer when he was fourteen, she’d been the friend he turned to for comfort and advice while his father worked long hours selling insurance.

In the month following his rendezvous with Dex, Jim had felt restless and off-center. That was why he’d flown to Washington and proposed to Nancy. It had been, he told himself, a wise step toward his chosen future, and the fulfillment of long-cherished plans.

He wished she had accepted immediately. Instead, she’d murmured that things were up in the air at her university and that her career was at a turning point. Jim hadn’t wanted to press her, but for some reason, the knowledge that Dex would be living in his household made him more anxious than ever to set a wedding date.

Jim pulled the car out of the parking lot and glanced at Annie. She was dozing peacefully in the back seat as he halted for a red light. Impulsively, he dialed Nancy’s number on the car phone. It was about eight o’clock in D.C., so she ought to be home.

“Hi, this is Nancy,” purred her familiar voice. The sound was so smooth that he expected her to add that he should leave a message after the beep, but she didn’t.

“Are you there?” Jim said into the hands-free speaker. “In person, I mean?”

“Jim?” Nancy said. “It’s great to hear from you. What’s up?”

He’d last called her about a month ago. She’d told him how well her parents were doing and had brought him current on the activities of her six younger siblings.

The topic of his proposal hadn’t come up. Jim didn’t want to broach it too abruptly this time, either, nor did he wish to brag about his stock coup. There was, however, other news he needed to tell her. “I wanted to let you know that I have a baby.”

The silence lasted until the light turned green. Then she said, “A baby?”

As he accelerated north on Mercury Lane, he explained about Helene Saldivar. There seemed no point in mentioning Dex, so he didn’t.

When he was done, Nancy said, “A baby. Well, that is a surprise.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “I know you spent a lot of time taking care of your younger brothers and sisters, but you like kids, right?”

“Of course.” Nancy sounded as if she were thinking things over. “You know, my current research involves babies.”

“What sort of research?”

“I’m investigating how infants acquire language,” she said.

“Annie says ‘da da’ quite clearly,” he boasted as he drove through the gates of Villa Bonderoff.

“Specifically, I’m investigating how some babies acquire multiple languages. In any case, she’s there and I’m here, so it’s irrelevant,” Nancy said briskly.

“How’s it going with your grant? You mentioned something about problems.”

“Nothing you need to worry about.” She always changed the subject if there were any possibility he might make a donation to benefit her. Nancy never coveted his money, even though it was thanks to her encouragement that he’d taken the first steps toward success.

She was a great friend and a beautiful woman. Even in high school, she’d had an air of sophistication, and she was always coolly in control of herself.

He wished they were already married. He wished they’d been married for years. Then he wouldn’t have to fight these confusing, maddening, tantalizing images of Dex, naked and eager, that kept sneaking into his mind.

He reached the main parking area in front of his garages. “I’ve got to go, Nancy. Just wondered if you’d given any more thought to our future.”

“Lots of it,” she said. “If things work out the way I plan, I should have everything settled within a week. We’ll talk again.”

The word settled could be taken in either of several ways. Would she settle matters in his favor or settle permanently somewhere else? “What do you mean by—”

“I have to run. Duty calls. Take care!”

“You, too.” After he clicked off, it occurred to Jim that since he’d called Nancy at her apartment, she wasn’t likely to have any test babies lying around needing attention. Had she deliberately cut off the conversation?

He lost his train of thought when he noticed the bicycle parked by the curving stone staircase. And here came Dex, trotting down from the rock garden above.

Leaves and blossoms—lavender, yellow, white—clung to her brown hair, and a frothy pink sweater hugged her curvaceous body above clinging jeans. With her eyes alight, she was the spirit of springtime.

Jim got out and stood in the driveway, feeling like a teenager again. Pure raw lust rampaged through him.

“Where’s Annie?” Without waiting for a response, Dex flung open the car’s back door and crawled in. Her rear end waggled invitingly as she fumbled with the snaps and straps and then, after a dazzling gymnastic maneuver, she emerged with the baby.

Jim dragged himself back to reality. He was supposed to be the suave, urbane host, not some overgrown adolescent tripping over his tongue.

“Did Rocky show you to a guest room?” he asked. “I hope it’s big enough.” There were four bedrooms on the second floor, in addition to the master suite.

“It’s fine,” Dex said as she carried the cooing baby toward the house. “By the way, Grace and Rocky are fighting again. You might want to stop them before they rupture something.”

“Now you tell me.” Jim broke into a lope.

Disputes were nothing new in his household, but they hadn’t turned violent in a long time. Not since the first few days after Grace joined the household, when she’d insisted that Rocky cook hash and rock-hard biscuits the way she liked them. He’d not only refused but insulted her taste buds.

The two of them had known each other distantly in the service, but not until they were both working for Jim had they found themselves cheek by jowl. Each wanted to be top dog, and it had taken a while for them to learn to compromise.

Jim still winced at the memory of Rocky’s black eye and Grace’s limping from their early clashes. After a few painful days, they’d come to an agreement. Grace had relinquished mess food in exchange for the right to maintain such Marine traditions as sounding reveille at six in the morning. and hoisting the flag at eight.

Jim raced through the garden room and veered down the hallway into the kitchen. Cooking smells wafted from the stove, but he saw the burners had been turned off.

Wrestler-type grunts emanated from deep within the house. Heading to his left, Jim passed the utility room and halted in the doorway of the den.

Light streaming through French doors silhouetted the hulking shapes of his two servants. Grace, the smaller of the two but by no means the weaker, had hoisted Rocky onto her shoulders and was twirling him around. Both of them groaned like hogs at feeding time.

“He gets seasick, you know,” Jim said.

The only response was a couple more grunts. He interpreted them as meaning, “What kind of Marine gets seasick?”

“It only points out how dedicated he was,” he continued. “By the way, what’s this fight about, anyway?”

Grace stopped whirling and studied Jim blearily. It was the first time he’d seen the usually spotless maid in such a disheveled condition. Her determination to stick to Marine traditions had led her to insist on wearing a uniform in domestic service, too, although she’d bypassed camouflage for an outfit more consistent with her new duties. Usually she starched and ironed every stitch, right down, he sometimes suspected, to her underwear.

Now, however, her apron was ripped and flopping down at one side, she had a run in her stockings and the frilly white serving cap hung rakishly over her forehead.

“He told me to stick my can of disinfectant where the sun never shines,” she growled.

Rocky, balanced horizontally on Grace’s shoulders, made a low, wheezing sound. Jim interpreted it to mean, “But, chief, the whole house reeks!”

“Yes, I can smell it,” he said, approaching them. “Grace, it isn’t necessary to sterilize the house. Babies aren’t that delicate. Put Rocky down, would you?”

Grimacing, she lowered the butler to his feet. His face, Jim saw, had gone deathly pale.

With a low moan, the butler stumbled across the room and out through the French doors. Jim could hear him puking into the bushes.

“You wash that down with the hose!” Grace yelled. “No fair sticking Kip with your mess! He’s weird enough already.” Assuming a level tone, she addressed Jim. “Do you know, ever since Kip banged his head in that helicopter crash, he thinks letters and numbers have colors?”

“He’s a good gardener,” Jim said. “Now listen, you and Rocky have got to work things out.”

“Just let me pound him a little more,” said Grace. “He’ll come around.”

“That isn’t the way it’s done in civilian life.” Before he could continue, Jim’s spine tingled, and he realized that Dex was standing behind him.

Glancing back, he drank in the appearance of the two bristle-haired females, their lively faces so much alike. He hated to admit it, but the more time he spent around his daughter, the more resemblance he saw to her mother.

Maybe fifty percent, he was willing to concede. At maximum.

Annie beamed at Grace and clapped her hands. “More!” she said.

The room went utterly still. Even Rocky, staggering in through the double doors, paused in mid-stride.

“That was her first word!” Dex crowed. “Wasn’t it? Did she say anything today while I was gone?”

“Just ga ga da da,” said Jim.

“Ba ba,” replied Annie, as if they were carrying on a conversation.

Rocky’s face glowed like a Christmas candle. Grace blinked several times rapidly.

As far as Jim was concerned, the moment was worth more than a hundred million dollars.