Diana Whitney - Baby Of Convenience

Her heart seemed to wedge itself at the base of her throat, nearly choking her. The child was so desperate for a father that he consistently claimed any man who looked at him with kindness. “No, sweetie, that’s not your daddy.”

“Uh-huh,” he insisted with a smug grin, his glowing gaze riveted upward. “My daddy.”

A coolness swept her shoulders, as if a draft had slipped down the stairway. When she looked back, the doorway was empty. Royce Burton was gone, leaving nothing in his wake but her son’s sparkling grin, and a residual tingle along her own spine.

It was happening all over again, she realized. And it terrified her.

Laura arrived at the Burton home later than usual, dressed in a mortifying serving uniform and armed with a fresh bag of kitty kibble.

Embarrassed by the silly attire required by her new job at a fast-food restaurant across town, she was relieved that Marta didn’t respond to her knock at the back door. Too bad the job at Quick ’n’ Good Food Mart didn’t work out. It was bad enough she had to board a public bus looking like a barn-dance escapee. The last thing she needed today was another run-in with a prune-faced shrew who treated Laura with veiled contempt at best, open hostility on her bad days.

And any day Marta laid eyes on Laura was a bad day.

Presuming the grumpy housekeeper was preoccupied elsewhere, Laura used her key to let herself into the immaculate kitchen.

Over the past few weeks, her life had disintegrated from merely chaotic to a crowded pressure pot of panic. Wendy’s tiny mobile home seethed with noise, with frustration, with the stress of too many humans crowded into too little space. Jamie, who’d always been a happy, cheerful child, had become cranky from lack of sleep, since his nap times were routinely interrupted by the shrieks of his boisterous roommates, and the cacophony of a blaring television through paper-thin walls.

These twice-daily trips to care for Maggie’s increasingly active brood served only to stir the melee, disturbing Laura on more than one level. Maggie’s enigmatic landlord, for example. Laura had yet to figure the guy out. He was a thoroughly unpredictable sort whose myriad moods both perplexed and fascinated her.

On the one hand, Royce Burton segued quite nicely into her perception of the rich and privileged with an aloof arrogance she recognized from having lived among the elitist Michaels clan.

On the other hand, he seemed oddly concerned about the health and well-being of not only Laura and Jamie, but the animals he professed to despise as well.

He complained about the kittens’ incessant mewing, yet had carpeted the entire basement to protect the tiny animals from the dampness of an increasing autumn chill. He seemed mightily irked by Jamie’s insistence on calling him “Daddy,” yet inevitably appeared in the study doorway to watch the child play with the shiny new toys that appeared like magic in the otherwise sterile mansion. He scowled at Laura as if her presence presented the world’s biggest annoyance. Yet he made certain a veritable buffet of refreshments was available during her visits, despite his housekeeper’s obvious distress at the additional effort required.

Apparently much of his business was conducted from his study, so he was frequently at home during the kitty-care visits Laura had managed to sandwich between employment interviews, child-care duties for Wendy’s two boys and her own frantic quest to find a lawyer who didn’t care about pesky details. Like being paid, for example.

The meager salary from the second-shift serving job she’d finally landed was a mere pittance compared to her debt.

Sighing, Laura juggled the five-pound bag of cat food under her arm, vaguely aware of a peculiar warm-wood scent that reminded her of the old lumberyard down the street. A glance around the spotless food preparation area revealed that the oven wasn’t in use, nor was anything bubbling on the cookstove.

A peculiar whirring sound also caught her attention, along with a series of shuddering scrapes, thumps and other ominous noise emanating from deep within the house. She had no time for idle curiosity or speculation. She had less than fifteen minutes in which to feed the cats, head to the corner and catch her bus.

As she reached the foyer, the floor began to vibrate, and the strange whirring sound grew louder. The high-pitched hum was penetrated by a male voice shouting over the din. There was tension in that voice, and an unnerving sense of alarm.

And all the disquieting noise was coming from the cellar.

Instantly alarmed, Laura rushed forward to the open doorway just as a shadow from the stairway exploded into human form, blocking her view.

Marta’s eyes were huge, frantic. “You see what you’ve done?”

Laura could see nothing beyond Marta’s horrified expression and the frenzied fling of her arms.

“Everything is ruined, completely ruined!” A metallic shriek like a buzzsaw chewing steel horrified her. Marta jumped as if shot, then jittered around to shake her finger in Laura’s face. “This is all your doing!”

Stunned, Laura could only press a palm to her chest and stammer, “Mine? How…why…?”

“Trouble, that’s what you are. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you.” Her face contorted more with fear than fury, Marta bit her lower lip. Casting a woeful glance down at the pandemonium below, Marta pressed her knuckle against her quavering mouth. Her chin crumpled like crushed paper. Stifling a sob, she pushed past Laura and rushed toward the kitchen.

For the space of a heartbeat, Laura was frozen in shock. Then a male shout, sharp with tension and edged by fear, penetrated the chaotic noise. Something was terribly, terribly wrong.

“Maggie,” Laura whispered.

Shifting the kibble bag, she hurried down the winding stairs. Her heart nearly stopped at the sight that greeted her.

The basement looked as if it had been bombed. Sawdust was everywhere. Loose bottles of wine, some of which were probably worth more than Laura’s ancient automobile, had been haphazardly piled or rolled into a corner of the basement. Pieces from one of the expensive oak wine racks had been tossed around the carpeted floor like kindling.

A frantic shout from across the room redirected Laura’s attention. “Is it loose yet?”

Two male figures were hunkered in the corner where the straw-padded kitten bed had once been.

One of the male figures, a beefy block of a man wielding a whirring circular saw, squatted on denim-clad haunches that were partially obscured by a belt of lumpy leather pouches bristling with tools. The other was bent at the waist, his upper torso in shadows, although Laura could see the outline of a shoulder, along with a flash of forearm exposed by the rolled-up shirt-sleeve.

Maggie paced beside the two men, tail flicking, eyes focused intently on the activity.

The beefy workman flipped off the whirring saw and sat back on his heels. It took a moment for Laura’s ears to adjust to the near silence.

A peculiar muffled whine caught her attention a moment before the workman spoke. “This here rack is bolted to the floor, just like the last one.”

“Rip it out,” said the man in the shadows. The voice clearly belonged to Royce Burton, which was somewhat shocking to Laura since she’d never seen the immaculately tailored executive without a suit coat, let alone tieless, rumpled and with rolled-up shirtsleeves.

The workman shrugged. “Seems a shame. Might be able to punch a hole in the back of the rack instead of tearing out the sides of it.”

“Too dangerous. We can’t be certain exactly where it is.”

Again Laura heard the peculiar muffled whine, which evoked an instant reaction in Maggie. The mama cat emitted a comforting trill and tried to poke her head into one of the openings of the rack from which the wine bottles had already been removed.