Marie Ferrarella - Your Baby or Mine?

He looked at Andrea. So would she, he thought.

That was why he had to make it up to her. And attending this class was as good a way as any to begin. He meant to do all the things with his daughter that Christine no longer could. And all the things that Roberta had never done with him. He meant to give Andrea a stable family life, even if he was the only one in her family.

Hell of a way to start out, he thought, being late like this.

Hurrying around the corner, Alec ran straight into another roadblock. This one was softer. And noisy. A surprised squeal echoed around him, mingling with the sound of childish cries. In his rush to get to the room, he’d bumped into a dark-haired woman who appeared out of nowhere like a storm, dressed in silver leggings and a bright blue, overly long T-shirt hiked up on one incredibly slender hip.

Weighed down with diaper bag and other paraphernalia, she was holding a squirming baby in her arms.

The howl was deafening. For a split second Alec wasn’t sure if the noise was coming from his baby or hers. And then he realized that both were crying, more in startled surprise than anything else.

“Sorry,” he apologized, raising his voice to be heard above the din. “I’m in a hurry.” Almost automatically, he ran his hand over Andrea’s back to soothe her.

Marissa Rogers rubbed her head where it had made stunning contact with his shoulder. The man didn’t look particularly muscular, but he obviously had to be. It was either that, or he was smuggling iron rods beneath that green sweater of his.

“That would have been my guess,” she replied, amused.

Taking a step back, she felt something tug at chest level. Looking down, she saw that the small pinwheel pin she always wore was stuck to the man’s very expensive-looking sweater.

Though he was standing in front of the room, she wondered if he was actually going to attend the session. He didn’t look familiar to her and he was certainly dressed all wrong for roughhousing with his baby. That required clothes that were comfortable and worn, not crisp, pressed and stylish.

Her pin threatened to unravel threads out of the carefully crafted sweater if either of them made any sudden moves.

“We seemed to be attached.” When he just stared at her, Marissa indicated the pin with her eyes. She shifted Christopher up higher in her arms, then tried to undo the connection using one hand.

The pin remained firmly entrenched in the sweater. Great, Marissa thought, just what she needed when she was running late. Exasperated, she blew her bangs away from her eyes.

Her baby was squirming, making it impossible to disengage the pin. They were close enough for Alec to take in everything about her and process more information than he normally would. Her eyes were an electric blue that managed to dim the color of the outlandish T-shirt she had on. Her hair was a riot of wisps and curls and yet somehow still looked as if it had been painstakingly arranged that way. Her lips were slightly larger than her oval face and delicate features warranted, keeping her from being beautiful, but definitely not from being engagingly striking.

She was having absolutely no success. “Here, let me try,” Alec offered.

He immediately realized his mistake when he reached for the pin. The situation would call for him getting a little more familiar with her than he figured they’d both be comfortable with. He didn’t think it would be prudent to be brushing his fingertips along a strange woman’s breast, no matter what the reason.

Alec dropped his hand. “Maybe not,” he amended. The woman’s wide lips pulled into an amused smile and he realized that they didn’t keep her from being beautiful. They enhanced her beauty.

“Mammmmaaaamaaa.” Christopher was yelling directly into her ear.

Marissa blinked, as if that would help her block out the deafening cry. She raised her eyes to the stranger’s. He looked definitely flustered and not happy about it. Marissa attempted to work the pin free again.

“Shh, Mamma’s trying to get herself uncoupled from this nice man.”

This was ridiculous. Class had probably already started and he was standing out here, being one half of a Siamese twin. “I think you’d do better with two hands,” Alec suggested.

“Maybe,” she agreed, “but if I put my baby down out here, you’ll get to witness a first-class imitation of a gazelle. And I won’t be able to do any dashing unless you happen to know how to run backward.”

Christopher had been walking ever since he was ten months old and peace as she knew it had gone out the window the moment he had taken his first step. Setting him down here while she was attached to this stranger was just like asking for trouble.

The baby looked as if it was all arms, legs and teeth. It was against Alec’s better judgment, but there didn’t seem to be much choice.

“Here, let me hold him for you.”

Pausing, Marissa looked at the green-eyed stranger. A smile curved her lips again. She nodded at the pink rompered baby in his arms. “You already seem to have your hands full.”

Alec shifted Andrea to one arm, holding out his other hand. “I can hold them both.”

He fervently hoped he wouldn’t wind up embarrassing himself. Together the babies probably weighed only about forty-five pounds or so, but the fact that hers seemed to be in perpetual motion was going to be a definite problem.

Marissa’s smile widened. The man looked as if he was getting himself ready for an ordeal. That had to be his first baby, she mused. Still, since no one else appeared to be coming around the bend, letting him hold both children seemed to be the only solution at the moment. And it was getting late.

She presented Christopher to him. “Okay, but you’d better brace yourself.” She noted that Chris was setting off the man’s daughter, as well.

“Thanks for the warning,” Alec muttered, accepting the boy, swinging feet and all. Instant contact was made with Alec’s stomach. Alec tried not to wince at the unexpected blow.

But Marissa saw it. “Sorry.” She flushed ruefully. “I’ll hurry.”

Very deftly, taking care not to snag the sweater, she worked one of the pinwheel blades loose. Two more to go. How had they managed to tangle themselves up so well so quickly?

She wasn’t hurrying fast enough for Christopher, or for the stranger, who was having trouble hanging on to both babies.

“Maaaa-aaaa.”

Alec winced, feeling an eardrum shatter. “Good lungs.”

The offhand remark evoked a bittersweet pang within Marissa. Stupid, stupid. There was no reason to feel that way. She fumbled with the thread she was trying to ease off the next point of her pin. All that was far behind her now, she reminded herself. More than two years in the past.

“The best.” She didn’t raise her eyes from what she was doing. “Daddy’s a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera.” Or was, Marissa amended silently, the last time she’d seen Antonio.

Alec regarded the woman thoughtfully. If her husband was with such a prestigious group, what was she doing out here in leggings and an outlandish shirt, stuck to him? Why wasn’t she in New York? Alec glanced at the slender fingers that were fluttering between them, working at the pin.

No ring. Divorced?

Her son made a grab for Alec’s ear, obviously determined to destroy by force what he hadn’t obliterated with his voice. Alec moved his head back as far as he could. He slanted a glance at the woman. “Could you, um, hurry up with that?”

She almost had it. “One second.” Marissa bit her lip ruefully. “I can’t believe how tangled it got in just that one collision.” The freed thread seemed to bounce back against the sweater. She smoothed it down with her fingertips. “There.” She sighed. “We’re free.” Marissa turned her attention to Christopher, grinning. “I’ll take that, thank you.”