Jennifer Greene - A Baby In His In-Box

“That’d be my best guess.”

“Okeydoke.” He scooped up all the toddler-size diaper packages on the shelf and dumped them into the cart. Darned if that didn’t win him an outright chuckle.

“McGannon, you nut, you’ve cleaned out their entire supply! You really think the baby needs quite that many?”

“Listen. Mol, as far as I can tell, this kid’s a leaker. Put anything in one end, and thirty seconds later it comes out the other. I’m not risking running out in the middle of the night...what’s next on your list?”

“Food.” Predictably Molly had a systematic list in one hand, a sharpened pencil in the other. “I’m not sure what to buy. Milk and cereal-type things are pretty obvious, but I think he only has two teeth. Whatever we get, it needs to be food that he doesn’t have to chew.”

“Marshmallows,” Flynn suggested.

“I had in mind something more nutritious,” she said dryly.

“Well, yeah. But marshmallows are a staple of life. And how about hot chocolate? That’s a good kid thing, isn’t it?”

“I’ll tell you what. You find the baby food aisle and I’ll take care of making the choices. And Flynn, for Pete’s sake! Take your keys out of the baby’s mouth!”

“You can’t be serious. You heard him when we walked in here. Until I gave him the keys, I thought he was dying. I thought someone was stabbing him in the back with a knife. I thought we were gonna be arrested for noise pollution—”

“I believe he was trying to clearly communicate that he was slightly bored. I also believe it’s possible that Dylan inherited that bellow from his father’s side of the family... but we won’t go into that again. I don’t think your keys are a good play toy—they aren’t clean.”

“Not clean? On what planet is that supposed to be relevant? You’re talking about a kid who tries to pig out on paper and carpet lint.”

“You think he’s getting hungry? We’re not even halfway through this list, and darn it! I didn’t even think of a car seat.” She started scribbling again. “You have to have a car seat for a baby this size. It’s the law.”

“Mol?”

“Hmm?” She was almost too busy penciling stuff on her list to look up.

“Thanks,” he said quietly. “For coming with me. I know I’ve been making jokes, but I don’t want you to think I don’t seriously appreciate your helping me out.”

For a few seconds the ice chips seemed to melt in her eyes.

He caught a glimmer of a spring thaw...but it didn’t last. “You’d better wait until we’re done before you thank me. When you write out the check for this, you may have a stroke.”

Holy kamoly, she filled four carts before calling it quits.

Naturally Flynn had experienced the inside of a grocery store before, but never with a shopping pro. Molly zipped and zoomed down the aisles, checking things off her list, cooing to the baby and muttering about prices at the same time.

Flynn didn’t have a stroke about the amount of the check, but a full-fledged panic attack hit him when they reached the parking lot.

Night had fallen faster than a stone, temperatures dropping just as swiftly. His black Lotus had a thimble-size trunk space. There wasn’t a prayer of stuffing all the baby loot into his car. Her more sensible Taurus was parked next to his, gleaming white under the parking lot neon lights. Molly’s face looked pearl-soft in the evening shadows, but her stockinged legs and suit jacket were inadequate protection against that crisp, sharp air and she was starting to shiver.

She was also busy. As if she didn’t trust him, she took charge of Dylan, and was organizing the baby in the car seat as if she were a general attacking a strategic logistics problem. “I don’t think baby car seats are meant for sports cars, but I do believe he’s finally secure...”

Finally she lifted her head. Finally—for the first time since this whole blasted store outing began—her eyes met his, but her gaze shifted away faster than the spin of a dime. “Getting all this stuff to your place, though, is another problem entirely. Unless you’ve got another suggestion, I don’t see we have another choice... we’re just going to have to fill my trunk, and then I’ll follow you to your place.”

“I hate to ask you to do that,” Flynn said, which had to be the biggest lie he’d told in a year.

“There just is no other way. But you’d better give me your address in case I lose you in traffic.”

Like a kid scared when the lights were turned off, he didn’t want Molly to leave him. The feeling of dependence was totally alien. He’d grown up stubborn, sweating out his fears of the dark alone, working his way through school, never asking for anything from anyone. Given his background, he’d learned young to count on no one but himself, but that kind of pride and independence had dominated his whole life.

Not now. Not tonight. At the moment he had the pride of a wilted turnip. He watched Molly’s headlights in the rearview mirror, checking every few seconds to make sure he hadn’t lost her on the whole drive to his place. Once past the traffic on Westnedge, the cars thinned out. For the last half mile, suburban busyness disappeared altogether and the only lights on the road belonged to the two of them.

Flynn wasn’t anxiety-prone. He liked chaos. Hell, he’d practically built chaos into a fife-style—and was damn content with his choice. But his heart had been beating to panicked drums ever since Virginie blew into his office that afternoon.

He hadn’t stopped moving since then. He’d needed a couple of hours on the phone—to call his lawyer, to call his doctor about blood tests, and to start checking the pediatricians in town for credentials. But he barely got started on any of that before Molly showed up in his office doorway with the caterwauling minisize redhead.

His mind should have been on Dylan. And was. The problem of the baby loomed like a cyclone on his emotional horizon, but damnation, Molly was a cyclone-size problem, too. Even after intensively working together for the last six months, he couldn’t explain what she’d come to mean to him. He knew she was the marrying kind, that flirting too far with her was dangerous...he also knew that he’d been daring her, daring himself, daring the two of them toward a cliff edge of risk that wasn’t wise.

Flynn had never overvalued wisdom. He valued... life. Every day had the intrinsic capacity for adventure. There was an excitement in air, food, water—anything, everything—but only if a guy looked, only if he opened his life to risk and all the possibilities.

Maybe he and Molly were temperamentally chalk and cheese. But he’d had her regard before this. She’d liked him, he knew. She’d found something in him to respect. It went beyond hormones, beyond that nice, hot, sexual attraction firing between them with both barrels.

At least until Virginie blew into his office that afternoon.

Flynn pulled into his driveway. On cue, as he turned the key, the sidekick in the car seat next to him let out a pithy squawl. He whipped his head around. Yeah, Molly was still there, pulling up behind him. His heart could postpone that panic attack for a little while longer.

Molly popped her trunk, then stepped out of her car and took a quick, cool drink of the view. Humor flashed in her eyes as she hiked past him toward the baby. “Honestly, McGannon. I could have guessed this was your house even if I hadn’t seen the address.”

“How so?”

“It’s a castle.”

“A castle? Actually it’s pretty small—”

“Size has nothing to do with it. Only a creative-type dreamer would be drawn to this place.”

“You don’t like it?” Flynn had imagined bringing her here a dozen times.