Jennifer Greene - A Baby In His In-Box

She pelted past his work cubicle, then past Simone’s and Darren’s—Darren was working at home today—then barreled around the comer to Bailey’s. She stopped dead, her hand pressing tight to her heaving heart.

The search was over.

Bailey was on all fours, his balding head shining under the fluorescent light. Bailey might be goofy enough to wear a “lucky bathrobe” over a pin-striped shirt, but he was a brilliant man. People skills weren’t exactly his strength, but he was inspired by impossible problems, attacked every challenge with the same dour, methodical, pedantic perseverance. Molly saw his hind end before she spotted the baby. Bailey, grave as a judge, seemed to have attacked this particular problem by cornering it under his desk. Guessing from the sea of wadded-up paper littering the floor, the two of them had been playing ball.

“Bailey, for Pete’s sake, I’ve been looking everywhere for the baby—” A breath that felt as if she must have been holding it for five solid minutes whooshed out of her lungs.

“Sheesh, it’s about time someone came in and saved me.” Bailey, sounding pitifully aggrieved, scooched away from the baby as soon as he spotted her. “I’ve been having a heart attack. It crawled in here after me and then it let out this wail loud enough to curdle milk. How was I supposed to know what it wanted? I never had any kids! Flynn ran out after that woman, and I didn’t know where you were, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do—”

“Bailey, you turkey! I don’t know anything about children, either, but I can’t believe you sat right there and let the baby eat paper!”

“Let? Let? Like I had some choice in the matter? The first thing the child did was grab some paper and start chewing. You try taking it away from him and see what happens.”

“He cries, huh?”

Bailey was more explicit. “The kid has a set of lungs like a hyena.”

Molly crouched down. The little one had a giant mouthful of paper and was extremely busy, trying to stuff in more. She obviously had to get the paper away from him, but for one stark second, she felt an emotional fist squeeze her heart tight. The scene in Flynn’s office had happened so fast and furiously that she really hadn’t caught a good look at Dylan before.

The baby had a pudgy little body and chunky legs and, oh my, a terribly homely face. The chin of a prizefighter in miniature, plain bones, a bump of a nose—Dylan just wasn’t going to be auditioning for the Gerber poster child, but Molly told herself maybe he could grow into all that character potential. That wasn’t, though, the reason her heart stopped.

The little one had exuberant bristles of auburn hair. The color of Flynn’s. Exactly the color of Flynn’s. And maybe the baby was no beauty, but the eyes... the eyes were cerulean sky blue, as bright and full of light—and mischief—as Flynn’s.

Molly’s heart just seemed to freeze. She really hadn’t wanted to believe the woman in his office. Virginie had obviously been distraught, irrational, terribly beside herself. Hardly a credible source. But the look of Dylan cast a different color on things. There was no ignoring that the likeness between the two did exist.

The baby acknowledged her closeness by lifting those heart-throbber blue eyes to her face.

“Hi there, sweetie. Dylan...”

“You’re going to take him out of here, aren’t you?” Bailey said nervously.

“If he’ll let me pick him up. But I’m not going to do anything fast and scare him. For heaven’s sake, he doesn’t know me, do you, love bug?” She kept her voice low and soft, and tried a smile. The urchin smiled back, revealing two brilliant white teeth—and a mouth chockful of drool-coated paper. “I don’t suppose you’d let me reach in there and take out that paper, would you?”

The smile vanished. The baby’s lips clamped closed faster than a vault at Fort Knox.

“Okay, okay, we’ll forget about that for a second or two. Would you like to come with me for a bit? I’ll show you my office. It’s the only normal spot in the whole place. And maybe we could come up with a cracker from the kitchen. Dylan go with Molly?”

“Dylan go with Molly,” Bailey parroted urgently.

Dylan grinned at Molly, grinned at Bailey, and then whipped his fanny in the air and took off on all fours in the opposite direction.

Molly had the fleeting thought that she only knew one other male on the planet with that kind of contrary nature.

And then she chased after the miniature redhead.

Less than a half hour passed before Molly heard knuckles rap on her office door. Sooner or later she figured Flynn would track her down—and the whereabouts of the baby. The question was just how long he was tied up talking with the child’s mother...or trying to talk with her. Molly was sitting behind her desk when Flynn turned the knob and poked his head in.

“Simone said the baby was with you?”

“Yup, safe and sound.” Or her office had seemed safe and sound until Flynn stepped in, Molly thought dryly. She’d only closed the door to keep the baby contained. Unlike all the other offices at McGannon’s, hers was a haven of normalcy. A traditional desk. File cabinets. Two sturdy chairs. Pencils sharpened to uniform points were neatly aligned in a Monet mug; a photo of her parents and two younger sisters sat on the credenza; the files on her desk were color-coded and stacked as straight as a ruler.

The orderly, tidy atmosphere changed irrevocably the instant Flynn arrived. It always did. Molly was never quite sure how he could turn a nice, quiet, peaceful day into a tornado of testosterone. The sizzle in the atmosphere was always a sudden thing, like the first crack of lightning before a storm. One instant she was a CPA, the next, she was aware of her breasts and hips, whether her hair might be messy, what she’d look like to him naked. Molly had tried to analyze the problem from a dozen different angles, but there seemed no answers—except that Flynn had the unnerving gift for making a woman feel restless. Edgy. Alive, as if someone had tickled her awake from a sound sleep.

Momentarily, though, he was the edgy one. “She’s gone,” he said. “I still can’t believe it. Nothing I said to her made any difference. She took off. Just like that.”

Molly leaned back in her office chair, watching him pace. “I was afraid she would. When she walked out of your office, she didn’t seem to be listening to anyone about anything. But I’m sure she’ll be back, Flynn. She was just terribly upset. No mother would just desert her baby like that.”

“Well, I assume she’ll be back, too. But damned if I know what I’m supposed to do in the meantime. I feel like somebody dropped a bomb in my lap—what if the kid got sick, right now, right this minute? Who’s responsible for it? I don’t even know if I have the legal right to get care for it—for God’s sake, I don’t even believe the child is mine.”

Molly wasn’t sure what Flynn believed. He was thrown for six. That was obvious. But she couldn’t help but be aware that he hadn’t really looked at the baby—not earlier, when Virginie had staged that scene, and not now.

Dylan was safe enough. Molly had scooped up his diaper bag from the office, a blanket from the break room, crackers and a mug of milk from the kitchen—the cracker had been bribery to con the baby into giving up his mouthful of paper. The urchin had charged around her office for a couple of minutes on all fours, and then simply curled up on the blanket...one minute a dynamo of energy, the next snoozing harder than a whipped puppy.

Flynn had to realize the baby was right there. No matter how agitatedly he was pacing around, he never even accidentally came close to that blanket. Now, though, he punched a fist into his palm. “There are things I obviously have to do immediately. Call a lawyer, for one. And find out what pediatricians are in town. And maybe I should be calling my doc, too...hell, I don’t know what kind of tests are done to prove or disprove parentage...”