Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

2

NORMALLY, Jim’s brain worked on multiple tracks like the quantum computer—which so far was only theoretical. He could solve so many problems simultaneously that his brain must be operating in various universes. In none of those universes, however, did Burt Page’s comments make any sense.

“What baby?” he asked. “If she went to India to adopt a child, what could that possibly have to do with either of us?”

“Ayoka isn’t adopted.” The lawyer’s Adam’s apple made a noteworthy trip up his throat. “She’s yours. Uh…both of yours.”

Dex’s face went white. She swayed in her chair.

Jim caught her arm to steady her. As he did, a strand of her scouring-pad mane brushed his cheek. It smelled like herbal shampoo, he noted in a daze.

The woman bore only a faint evolutionary resemblance to the type of ladies he usually dated, yet she aroused a powerful male response. Four months ago, she’d sent him spiraling out of control. Jim Bonderoff was a man who never lost control.

He’d luxuriated in her spontaneity and her ample curves. She didn’t fit the image of a wife and mother that he’d formed in his mind, yet he’d begun to think, for the first time in years, that perhaps he should stop trying to control every aspect of his life and simply trust his instincts.

Then she’d announced that she was leaving town and had declined to give any forwarding address. He’d been bitterly disappointed and had contemplated pursuing her to the ends of the earth.

A few days later, his common sense had reasserted itself. She was obviously the wrong woman for him, and both of them knew it. So he’d taken steps to make sure he would never lose control that way again.

Now, however, her warm presence penetrated all the layers of his consciousness. He ached to cup that pointed little chin and to touch her wiry hair, which straggled in all directions as if spread across a pillow. Not to mention what he’d like to do to those rosebud lips.

“Are you all right, Miss Fenton?” Burt leaned across his desk. “Perhaps I should summon a doctor.”

“I’m all right.” Dex wiggled out of Jim’s grasp. “And there’s no need to prop me up, either.”

“You were sagging,” he said.

“Wrong.”

“Swaying, then.”

“Catching my breath,” she snapped.

Jim wondered what had gotten into him. Hair spread across a pillow? Rosebud lips? Barbed wire and fangs were more like it.

“You were saying?” he prompted the lawyer.

“Dr. Saldivar gave birth to a daughter nine months ago,” Burt said. “She’s called Ayoka, which I understand is a Yoruban name meaning ‘one who causes joy all around.’ Annie for short.”

This was interesting, but pointless. “I still don’t see how she could be my child,” Jim said. “Dr. Saldivar and I never—” how was he going to phrase this diplomatically? “—strayed from the vertical.”

“But she did conduct some tests of a personal nature, isn’t that right?” Burt leveled him a man-to-man gaze. Having served in the Marines, Jim knew what it meant. This has to do with your manhood. It’s a guy thing. Don’t make me spell it out in front of the lady.

Jim made the connection. He hadn’t wanted to accept that this baby might actually be his but, when confronted, he could hardly deny it.

All of his adult life, he had considered fatherhood an impossible dream. After suffering a double attack of the mumps in adolescence, he’d feared he might be sterile.

Out of sympathy for others with similar problems, he’d begun donating money to fertility research.

About a year and a half ago, he’d mentioned the subject to Dr. Saldivar at the dedication of a new wing of the university’s fertility research center, which he’d funded. She’d offered to test his sperm discreetly.

A short time later, Jim had learned that he was potent enough to father a whole brood. His sperm, Helene had told him, practically leaped out of the test tube like little dolphins.

Apparently she’d kept a few of those dolphins for her own use. The realization hit him hard. He made an uncharacteristic choking sound. “I’m the father?”

Burt folded his hands on the desk. Instead of answering directly, he said, “As a young woman, Dr. Saldivar didn’t want children, so she had her tubes tied. As the years went by, however, she changed her mind, but the operation couldn’t be reversed. I suppose you might say that her biological alarm clock went off.”

“Okay, she needed a father for her baby and she chose me, without my consent,” Jim acknowledged. “But you said she had her tubes tied. If she couldn’t produce an egg, then who…”

He stopped. Inside the room, the silence coagulated. Outside, a car horn ayoogaed the Lone Ranger theme.

Even a man with a brain like a very old computer, or possibly a set of Tinkertoys, could get the picture. Jim looked at Dex. She picked at her fingernails, her gaze averted.

“That’s right,” Burt said. “Miss Fenton is the mother. Biologically speaking.”

Dex stopped shredding her manicure and addressed the lawyer. “I never authorized such a thing. We’ll put her up for adoption, of course. That was why I donated my eggs, to give some loving parents a much-wanted baby.”

Give her up? Until this moment, Jim had been oblivious to the fact that he had a daughter, but he knew immediately that he wasn’t going to let strangers raise her.

He’d wanted a child for years. Not, admittedly, out of wedlock, and certainly not with Dex Fenton. But fate, in the form of Helene Saldivar, had taken matters out of his hands.

“Don’t you even want to meet her?” Burt was saying.

“No,” said Dex.

Jim felt a sneaking sense of regret that this fireball didn’t care about her own baby, but perhaps it was for the best. “I’ll take her. Sight unseen. If I have a daughter, I’ll accept full responsibility.”

“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.