Jacqueline Diamond - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? - Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

“What do you know about raising a child?” Dex demanded. “Can you change a diaper? Do you know anything about burping a baby?”

“I can learn,” he said.

Burt raised both hands in a paternalistic gesture. “Perhaps it would help if you met Annie. She’s with her nanny in the other room.”

Jim remembered hearing a baby cry earlier. Now he couldn’t wait to meet her. “Absolutely! And she’s going home with me. I’ll change a diaper right here on your desk if I have to.”

The attorney’s nostrils flared. “That won’t be necessary. Miss Smithers! You can come in now!”

DEX FOUGHT against showing the slightest weakness. The last thing she needed was to get dizzy and have Jim grab her again. It wasn’t fair that a mere mortal could light fires with his fingertips.

She didn’t want him to touch her, and she didn’t want to see this baby. If she did, Dex might make a decision that would be catastrophic for the little girl.

Every child deserved a loving home with parents who were capable of nurturing her with laughter and tenderness. No decent mother would condemn Annie to life with an arrogant playboy posing as a father. Nor would she take the baby herself, when she knew that inside her hot-tempered exterior lay a heart of ice.

Dex had been raised by parents who didn’t know how to love, only how to approve or disapprove. Often she heard their voices in her mind critiquing her every action, and in her own tone when she corrected a student. She would never inflict such a parent on an innocent baby.

An honest person didn’t shrink from admitting her shortcomings. What Dex wanted most, the loving family she’d never known, was beyond her ability to create. But she was capable of a selfless act. She would save Annie from a similar fate.

She steeled herself as a rake-thin woman entered the office, pushing a stroller. Strapped inside, with hair frizzing into a halo and a plump body wiggling to get free, was…Dex.

A tiny Dex. A nine-month-old Dex, all set to make the same mistakes as she blundered through life, to quail before the same unkind children who teased her about her adolescent chubbiness, to be scorned by the same self-centered teenage boys and to cry herself to sleep at night.

Annie needed a home with parents who could shield and support her. She deserved to grow up happier and with a greater capacity for love than the mother she resembled down to the smallest spiral of her DNA.

“It’s amazing.” Leaping from his chair, Jim went to crouch beside his daughter. “She looks exactly like me.”

“Like you?” Dex couldn’t believe it. “Since when do you have curly hair?”

“Oh, that.” He shrugged off the comment. “Haven’t you noticed her eyes? They’re mine. You can’t miss it!” Unstrapping Annie, he lifted her to his shoulder.

Silently, Dex conceded the point. The baby did have piercing brown eyes like his, not her blue ones. Still, it was a small resemblance.

Entranced at rising to such heights, the baby giggled and waved her arms. Nonsense syllables bubbled up. “Ga ga da da ba ba.”

“Did you hear that?” Jim demanded. “She said Dada!”

“You’re fantasizing,” Dex countered.

“I suggest the two of you come to some agreement between yourselves,” Burt said from behind his desk. “In her will, Dr. Saldivar explained the baby’s genesis and recommended that you receive joint custody since she has no close relatives. I suppose you could battle this out in court, but I doubt that would be in the best interests of the baby.”

Nor of Dex’s pocketbook, either. In fact, the battle would be lost before it began, since the best legal representation she could afford would be a student from De Lune University’s law school.

Last year, the campus legal aid center had handled a disputed family case in which, if she recalled correctly, the father ended up with custody of his mother-in-law and the judge took home the baby. Or, at least, that’s the way it had sounded in the campus newspaper.

“There’s no question about it. I’ll take charge from here.” Jim turned to the nanny. “Miss Smithers, I’d like you to work for me.”

“That can be arranged.” The nanny frowned at the baby in Jim’s arms and whipped out a comb. “Just a minute, sir.” Standing on tiptoe, she dragged the comb through the baby’s crinkled hair. It stuck after two inches.

“Naturally, I’ll match your salary,” he said. “You’ll get the same benefits and retirement plan as my other employees.”

“Dr. Saldivar’s salary would not be adequate. I’m well aware of who you are, sir.” Without waiting for his reply, the nanny produced a bottle marked Curl Relaxer and spritzed it over Annie’s head. The baby let out a wail and clapped her hands to her scalp. “No, no, no!” Miss Smither’s scolded. Pushing the tiny hands away, the nanny yanked the comb through the locks. “She’s lost her headband again. I think she must eat them.”

“Was Dr. Saldivar underpaying you?” Adjusting his grip on Annie, Jim wiped a blob of curl relaxer from his cheek.

“Dr. Saldivar had to make do on a researcher’s income. You don’t,” the woman responded tightly, and from her purse produced a plastic headband with gripper teeth. “Now hold still, Ayoka.” She clamped the thing across the baby’s temples and scraped back the hair. Tears welled in the little girl’s eyes.

“I’m willing to raise your salary if you’re being underpaid,” Jim said. “But only if you’re being underpaid.”

Dex couldn’t stand it any longer, not when tears were rolling down the baby’s cheeks. “Don’t you touch her!” she yelled at Miss Smithers. “You horrible woman, can’t you see that headband is hurting her?” Racing across the room, she removed the plastic band from Annie’s head and shoved it into the nanny’s grasp.

“I won’t have a child in my charge going around with messy hair.” The nanny looked down her nose at Dex’s own frothy mane.

Jim stared in surprise at the tears on his daughter’s cheeks and at the viselike headband. “I didn’t even notice,” he said.

“Of course you didn’t!” Dex retorted. “You’re not a father any more than I’m a mother. And neither is this poor excuse for a nanny. The child needs a real family.”

“I can learn,” the millionaire said quietly. “As for Miss Smithers, she and I have been unable to arrive at a mutually agreed-upon salary, so her services won’t be needed.”

“Cheapskate,” muttered the woman. After collecting her spray bottle from a polished table, where it left a moisture ring, she marched out of the room.

Squirming to watch her departure, Annie slid lower in Jim’s grasp. Her left shoe dropped to the floor, and a strap on her yellow sundress fell across one pudgy upper arm. In another minute, her outfit—which was much too flouncy and fussy, in Dex’s opinion—was likely to fall off entirely.

“Here, I’ll take her.” Without waiting for permission, she slid her hands under the little girl’s arms and transferred the baby to her own shoulder. Annie nestled there contentedly. “For the record, I like your hair, babycakes.”

Jim smiled. “I have to admit, she does resemble you a little.” He didn’t seem to notice the wet spot the baby’s mouth had left on his zillion-dollar suit.

“Resemble me?” Dex wanted to chew him out, but it was hard to stay angry when she held this cooing bundle in her arms. “She is me.” To the lawyer, she said, “A person is entitled to custody of herself, isn’t she? Well, look at us.”

“She’s half you,” Jim conceded. “And half me, Dex. You’ve already said you don’t want her.”

“I want what’s best for her. A good home, not a cold mansion the size of a hotel.” The campus had buzzed with descriptions of Jim’s hilltop residence since he hosted a scholarship fund-raiser last fall.