Читать книгу His Forever Family - Sarah M. Anderson - Страница 9

Two

Breathing hard, Liberty admired the view as Marcus sprinted away from her. When he reached the water fountain, she turned her attention back to the lake. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring at her boss’s ass. Even if it was a fine ass. And even if the owner had just made one of himself.

Instead, she took the time to appreciate the gift that was this morning. She hadn’t set foot in a church in a good fifteen years. But every morning she stood here and looked out on Lake Michigan and gave thanks to God or the higher power or whoever the hell was listening.

She was alive. She was healthy. She had a good job that paid for food and a safe apartment. There was even some money left over for things like running shoes and haircuts.

“Liberty?” Marcus yelled from the water fountain. “Liberty!”

Even though Marcus couldn’t see her, she glared at him. What the hell had gotten into him this morning? One of the reasons she worked for him—aside from the insane salary he paid her—was the fact that he treated her as an equal. It was a bit of delusion on her part to pretend that she was on par with the likes of Marcus Warren, but it was her delusion, dammit.

And that delusion worked only because it was just her and Marcus on these runs, both in running clothes. The delusion didn’t work when he was wearing a four-thousand-dollar suit and she had on the finest suit she could find on 80 percent clearance at Macy’s. And the delusion sure as hell wouldn’t work if she accompanied him to a three-day destination wedding extravaganza that no doubt cost more than she’d ever earn in her lifetime.

Someone would see through her facade. It’d get ugly, fast.

“Liberty!” He was even louder this time.

Was he not used to women saying no to him? Oh, whom was she kidding? Women didn’t say no to him. Why would they? He was gorgeous, single, richer than sin and eminently respectable. “What?”

“I need you!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Hurry!”

She realized he wasn’t standing at the water fountain anymore. He was on his knees by a trash can in the gravel that surrounded the fountain. His shoulders were hunched over and he looked as if—oh, God, he wasn’t having a heart attack, was he?

Liberty began to hurry. The three years of daily morning runs with Marcus had given her enough stamina that she broke into a flat-out run.

“Are you okay?” she demanded as she came up to him. “Marcus—what’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and one hand over his mouth. Just then, something in front of him made a pitiful little noise.

She looked down. What she saw didn’t make sense at first. There was a box and inside was something small and dark and moving.

“Baby?” Marcus said in a strangled voice.

“Baby!” Liberty cried with a start. She didn’t know much about babies, but this child couldn’t be more than a week old. The baby was wrapped in a filthy rag, and dark smudges that might have been dirt but were more the color of dried blood covered its dark skin. Wisps of black hair were plastered to its tiny little head. Liberty stared in total shock, trying to make sense of it: an African American newborn in a shoe box by the trash can.

“It was—the box—it was closed,” Marcus began to babble. “And I heard a noise and—baby. Baby!”

The baby opened its little mouth and let out another cry, louder this time. The sound broke Liberty out of her shock. Jesus Christ, someone had tried to throw this baby away! In a box in this heat? “Move,” she commanded and Marcus dutifully scooted out of her way.

Her hands shaking, Liberty lifted the baby out of the box. The rag fell away from the impossibly tiny body—no diaper. A boy, and he was caked in filth.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered as the baby’s back arched and it let out a squeal. His little body was like a furnace in her hands.

“What do we do?” Marcus asked. He was clearly panicking.

And Liberty couldn’t blame him. “Water,” she realized. “He’s too hot.”

Marcus held out her water bottle, the one he’d been filling. She grabbed the rag and said, “Soak that in the fountain,” and took her bottle.

The baby squirmed mightily in her arms and she had this moment that was almost an out-of-body thing, where instead of looking down at a little baby boy she’d just plucked from a shoe box, she was looking down at William, the baby brother she’d never gotten the chance to see, much less hold. Was this what he’d been like, after their mother gave birth in prison and the baby was taken away to a foster home? Had William died like this?

No. This baby, whoever he was, was not going to die. Not if she had anything to do with it.

“This is disgusting,” Marcus said, but she didn’t pay any attention to him.

She folded herself into a cross-legged position on the gravel, ignoring the way the rocks dug into her skin. “It’s okay,” she soothed as she tried to dribble some water into the baby’s mouth. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Oh, you’re such a sweetheart.” The baby turned his head from side to side and wailed piteously. Panic gripped her. What if he wasn’t going to make it? What if she couldn’t save him? “You’re loved,” she told him, tears coming to her eyes. “And you’re so strong. You can do this, okay?”

“Here,” Marcus said, thrusting the rag at her. Except it wasn’t the rag—it was his shirt.

She looked up and found herself staring right at Marcus Warren’s bare chest. In any other circumstances she would have taken her time admiring the view because damn. He was muscled and cut—but still lean. He had a true runner’s body.

The baby whimpered. Right. She had much more important things to deal with than her boss suddenly half-naked. She held the baby away from her body. “Drape it over him.”

Marcus did as he was told, laying the sopping-wet cloth over the baby’s body. The sudden temperature change made the poor thing howl. “It’s okay,” she murmured to him, trying to get a little water into his mouth. “You’ll feel better soon.”

“Should I go for help? What should we do?”

Help. That would be a good thing. “My phone is in my pack,” she said. He didn’t run with his phone—that was her job. “Call 911.” She was amazed at how calm she sounded, as if finding a baby on the verge of heatstroke in the trash was just another Tuesday in her life.

Marcus crouched behind her and dug through the fanny pack that held her water, keys and phone. “Got it.” She told him her password without a second thought and he dialed. “We’re at Buckingham Fountain and we found a baby in the trash,” Marcus said way too loudly into the phone.

“Shh, shh,” Liberty soothed as Marcus talked to the 911 dispatcher. “Here, let’s try this.” She dipped her finger into the water and held it against the baby’s mouth. He sucked at it eagerly and made a little protest when she pulled her finger away to dip it into the water again.

He latched on to her finger a second time—which had the side benefit of cutting off the crying. Liberty took a deep breath and tried to think. There’d been a baby at her second foster home. How had the foster mother calmed that baby down?

Oh, yes. She remembered now. She began to rock back and forth, the gravel cutting into her legs. “That’s a good boy,” she said, her ears straining for the sounds of sirens. “You’re loved. You can do it.”

Agonizingly long minutes passed. She couldn’t get the baby to take much more water, but he sucked on the tip of her finger fiercely. As she rocked and soothed him, his body relaxed and he curled up against her side. Liberty held him even tighter.

“Is he okay?” Marcus demanded.

She looked up at him, trying not to stare at his body. Never in the three years she’d worked for Marcus had she seen him even half this panicked. “I think he fell asleep. The poor thing. He can’t be more than a few days old.”

“How could anyone just leave him?” Now, that was more like the Marcus she knew—frustrated when the world did not conform to his standards.

“You’d be surprised,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze back to the baby, who was still ferociously tugging on her finger in his sleep. Aside from being hot and filthy, he looked healthy. Of course, she’d never seen William before he died in foster care, so she didn’t know what a drug-addicted newborn looked like. This child’s head was round and his eyes were still swollen; she’d seen pictures of newborns who looked like him. She just couldn’t tell.

“You’re just about perfect, you know?” she told the infant. Then she said to Marcus, “Here, wet your shirt again. I think he’s cooling down.”

Marcus did as he was told. “You’re doing an amazing job,” he said as she wrapped the wet cloth around the baby’s body. The baby started at the temperature change, but didn’t let go of her finger. Marcus went on, “I didn’t know you knew so much about babies,” and she didn’t miss the awe in his voice.

There’s a lot you don’t know about me. But she didn’t say it because it’d been less than—what, twenty minutes? If that. It’d been less than twenty minutes since Marcus Warren had said he trusted her because she was the one person who was honest with him.

She wasn’t—honest with him, that was. But that didn’t mean she wanted to lie outright to him. She hated lying at all but she did what she had to do to survive.

So, instead, she said, “Must be the mothering instinct.” What else could it be? Here was a baby who needed her in a truly primal way and Liberty had responded.

The baby sighed in what she hoped was contentment and she felt her heart clinch. “Such a good boy,” she said, leaning down to kiss his little forehead.

Sirens came screaming toward them. Then the paramedics were upon them and everything happened fast. The baby was plucked from her arms and carried into the ambulance, where he wailed even louder. It tore her up to hear him cry like that.

At the same time, a police officer arrived and took statements from her and Marcus. Liberty found herself half listening to the questions as she stood at the back of the open ambulance while the medics dug out a pacifier and wrapped the baby in a clean blanket.

“Is he going to be okay?” she asked when one of the paramedics hopped out of the back and started to close the door.

“Hard to say,” the man said.

“Where are you taking him?”

“Northwestern is closest.”

Marcus broke off talking with the cop to say, “Take him to Children’s.” At some point, he’d put his shirt back on. It looked far worse for wear.

The paramedic shrugged and closed the doors, cutting Liberty off from the baby. The ambulance drove off—lights flashing but no sirens blaring.

The cop finished taking their statements. Liberty asked, “Will you be able to find the mother?”

Much like the paramedic, the cop shrugged. She supposed she shouldn’t have been surprised. After all, she’d barely survived childhood because, aside from Grandma Devlin, people couldn’t be bothered to check on little Liberty Reese. “It’s a crime to abandon a baby,” he said. “If the mother had left the baby at a police station, that’s one thing. But...” He shrugged again. “Don’t know if we’ll find her, though. Usually babies are dumped close to where they’re born, and someone in the neighborhood knows something. But the middle of the park?” He turned, as if the conversation was over.

“What’ll happen to the baby?” Marcus asked, but Liberty could have told him.

If they couldn’t find the mother or the father, the baby would go into the foster system. He’d be put up for adoption, eventually, but that might take a while until his case was closed. And by then, he might not be the tiny little baby he was right now. He might be bigger. And he was African American. That made it that much harder to get adopted.

She looked in the direction the ambulance had gone.

The cop gave Marcus a sad smile. “DCFS will take care of it,” he said.

Liberty cringed. She did not have warm and fuzzy memories of the Department of Child and Family Services. All she had were grainy memories of frazzled caseworkers who couldn’t be bothered. Grown-up Liberty knew that was because the caseworkers were overwhelmed by the sheer number of kids in the system. But little-kid Liberty only remembered trying to ask questions about why her mom or even Grandma Devlin wasn’t going to come get her and being told, “Don’t worry about it,” as if that would make up for her mother’s sudden disappearances.

What would happen to the baby? She looked at her arms, wondering at how empty they felt. “Marcus,” she said in a hoarse voice as the cop climbed into his cruiser. “We can’t lose that baby.”

“What?” He stared at her in shock.

She grabbed on to his arm as if she was drowning and he was the only thing that could keep her afloat. “The baby. He’ll get locked into the system and by the time the police close his case, it might be too late.”

Marcus stared down at her as if she’d started spouting Latin. “Too...late? For what?”

Liberty’s mouth opened and the words I was a foster kid—trust me on this almost rolled off her tongue. But at the last second, she snapped her mouth shut. She’d created this person Marcus saw, this Liberty Reese—a white college graduate, an excellent manager of time and money who always did her research and knew the answers. Liberty Reese was invaluable to Marcus because she had made herself valuable.

That woman had had nothing in common with Liberty Reese—the grubby daughter of an African American drug addict who’d sold herself on Death Corner in Cabrini-Green to afford more drugs, who’d done multiple stints in prison, who hadn’t been able to get clean when her daughter was shipped back to foster care for the third time, who couldn’t tell Liberty who her father was or even if he was white, who’d given birth to a baby boy addicted to heroin and crack and God only knew what else.

That’s not who Liberty was anymore. She would never be that lost little girl ever again.

She looked back in the direction the ambulance had gone. That little baby—he was lost, too. Just as her brother had been in the few weeks he’d been alive. Completely alone in the world, with no one to fight for him.

Liberty would not allow that to happen. Not again.

She opened her mouth to tell Marcus something—she wasn’t quite sure what, but something—except nothing came out. Her throat closed up and tears burned in her eyes.

Oh, God—was she about to start crying? No—not allowed. Liberty Reese did not cry. She was always in control. She never let her emotions get the better of her. Not anymore.

Marcus looked down at her, concern written large on his face. He stepped closer to her and cupped her chin. “Liberty...”

“Please,” she managed to get out. “The baby, Marcus.” But that was all she could say because then she really did begin to cry. She dropped her gaze and swallowed hard, trying to will the stupid tears back.

The next thing she knew, Marcus had wrapped his arms around her and pulled her into his chest. “It’s okay,” he murmured, his hand rubbing up and down her back. “The baby’s going to be fine.”

“You don’t know that,” she got out, trying to keep herself from sinking against his chest because Marcus Warren holding her? Comforting her?

The feeling, the smell of his body—awareness of Marcus as a man—blindsided her. Want, powerful and unexpected, mixed in with the panic over the baby and left her so confused that she couldn’t pull away like she needed to and couldn’t wrap her arms around him like she wanted to. She was rooted to the spot, wanting more and knowing she couldn’t have it.

Marcus leaned back and tilted her head up so that she had no choice but to look him in the eyes. It wasn’t fair, she thought dimly as she stared into the deep blue eyes that were almost exactly the same color as Lake Michigan on a clear day. Why couldn’t he be a slimeball? Why did he have to be so damned perfect, hot and rich and now this—this tenderness? Why did he have to make her want him when she didn’t deserve him?

He swiped his thumb over her cheek, brushing away a tear she hadn’t been able to hold back. “It’s important to you?” he asked, his voice deep. “The baby?”

“Yes,” was all she could say, because what else was there? Marcus Warren was holding her in his arms and comforting her and looking at her as if he’d do anything to make her happy and dammit all if this wasn’t one of her fantasies playing out in real life.

“Then I’ll make it fine,” he said. His thumb stroked over her cheek again and his other hand flattened out on her lower back. One corner of his mouth curved up into a smile that she knew well—the smile said that Marcus Warren was going to get exactly what he wanted.

And although she knew she shouldn’t—couldn’t—she leaned into his palm and let herself enjoy the sensation of Marcus touching her. “You will? Why would you do that for me?”

Something shifted in his eyes and his head dropped toward hers. He was going to kiss her, she realized. Her boss was going to kiss her and she was not only going to let him, she was going to kiss him back. Years of wanting and ignoring that want seemed to fall away.

But he didn’t. Instead, he said, “Because you’re important to me.”

She forgot how to breathe. Heck, she might have forgotten her own name there for a second, because she was important to him. Not just a valuable employee. She, Liberty Reese, was important.

The alarm on her phone chimed, startling them out of whatever madness they’d been lost in. Marcus dropped his hand from her face and took a step away before he handed her phone to her. In all that had happened, she’d forgotten he had it.

It was eight forty-five? They’d started their morning run at seven. “You have a phone call with Dombrowski about that proposed bioenergy plant in fifteen minutes,” she told him. Despite the heat that was building, she felt almost chilled without Marcus’s arms around her.

Marcus laughed. “We’re a little off schedule today. We haven’t even showered.”

Liberty froze as the image of the two of them in the shower together barged into her mind. Normally, they ran back to Marcus’s condo, where he got ready while she caught the train to the office. Marcus had installed a shower in the restroom, so she would shower and dress there. She’d get started on organizing the notes she’d made during the run and Marcus would show up by nine thirty, looking as if he’d walked off a red carpet.

There was no showering together. Heck, there wasn’t even any showering in the same building. That’s how it worked.

But then, before ten minutes ago, there hadn’t been any tears or hugs, either. Their physical contact was limited to handshakes and an occasional pat on the back and that was it.

“Shall I call him and reschedule?”

“Please do. Then we’ll head back and I’ll make a few calls.” That was a perfectly normal set of Marcus responses.

Liberty was confident they were going to pretend that the touching and the holding and even the wedding date invitation had never happened. And that was fine with her, really.

But Marcus leaned forward. Even though he didn’t touch her again, she still felt the air thin between them. His gaze dropped to her lips and, fool that she was, she still wanted that kiss that hadn’t happened. The kiss that couldn’t happen. “I promise you, Liberty—we won’t lose that baby.”