The Baby Came C.O.D.

“Alma, you’re a woman—”

Alma raised her hands. “Stop right there. That fact doesn’t necessarily qualify me for anything more than you.”

He refused to believe that. “But you must have some sort of maternal instincts—”

“No, I don’t. George and I didn’t have kids for a reason.”

There were more bubbles flowing from the baby’s mouth, and she was cooing. Alma reached for a tissue, but rather than wipe the tiny mouth, she handed the tissue to Evan, who took it reluctantly. He dabbed at Rachel’s mouth as if it were a stain on the carpet.

Alma frowned at the baby. Her presence was obviously upsetting her boss, and he had work to do.

“Under the circumstances, Mr. Quartermain,” she said, already edging her way to the door, “I think your best bet here is family services. Would you like me to get them on the line for you?”

It was a rhetorical question, one Alma was certain her boss would jump at. He didn’t disappoint her.

“Yes.”

Evan looked down at the baby. Rachel. He rolled the name over in his mind, but it meant nothing to him, nudged no memories to the surface.

That was because she wasn’t his, he told himself.

Rachel smiled at him, waving her hands excitedly as she made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a laugh. Probably at his expense. Her eyes were green, a deep, seawater green.

Like his were.

What if…?

“No,” Evan said suddenly, looking up toward Alma.

The secretary stopped in the doorway, looking at him with a mixture of surprise and expectation. But she made no further move to her telephone.

Evan tried to think, although for the first time in his life, it was difficult. If he called a government agency into this, there was no telling how much red tape he was going to find himself in. And if, by some strange whimsy of fate, the child did turn out to be his, it would take him forever before he could reclaim her again.

Besides, there was his reputation to think of. He wanted to keep this as quiet as possible.

“Hold off on that,” he told her.

“I think you’re making a mistake, Mr. Quartermain,” she warned.

“Maybe.”

Evan tried to put together the scattered pieces in his head into something that made sense. He had a major meeting scheduled for three with Donovan, the president of the company, and several representatives from a Japanesebased firm. That gave him almost four hours to try to get his life into some kind of order.

Like an Olympic lifter psyching himself up to hoist a record-breaking weight, Evan drew in a long breath before picking up the baby’s seat The baby screeched and laughed. He looked, he thought, catching his reflection in the window, like a man attempting to carry a bomb without having it go off.

In a way, he supposed that the comparison was not without merit.

“Alma,” he began as he passed her, “I’ll be out of the office for a while.”

Alma moved farther back, giving him all the room he needed and more. “Are you going to be back in time for your meeting?”

He raised an eyebrow as he spared her a look. “Have I ever missed one yet?”

When she pressed her lips, they disappeared altogether. Her eyes never left the baby. Everything in her body language fairly shouted, Better you than me. “No, but you’ve never had one of those dropped off in the office, either.”

“Not a word of this, Alma,” he warned sternly. “To anyone. If there’s even so much as a hint, I’ll know where it came from.”

He didn’t have to tell her twice. “Understood. What should I say if someone comes looking for you?” she called after him.

He didn’t have time to come up with a plausible excuse. There was too much else on his mind. “Make something up. As long as it’s not as bizarre as this.”

Her small, dry laugh followed him all the way to the elevator. “I’m not that creative.”

Neither was he, he thought, looking down into the child’s face. Neither was he. Rachel just couldn’t be his.

He refused to believe it. He didn’t want children, but if he were to have a child, it would be conceived in love, not in error. And he’d never been in love, not even once. He’d wanted to, tried to, but the magic that his brother Devin always talked about had never happened for him.

But then, during their teen years, his twin had fallen in and out of love enough for both of them.

And he didn’t have one of these, Evan thought sarcastically as he looked down at the child in his arms.

There was just no way she was his.

* * *

His head in a fog, his thoughts refusing to form any rational, coherent ideas, Evan really wasn’t sure just how he managed to arrive home in one piece. The only thing he did remember clearly was getting behind the wheel and taking off, then stopping abruptly when he realized that he hadn’t strapped the baby seat in properly.

Or at all.

Pulling over to the curb, he fixed that as best he could, fumbling with straps in his blazing red sports car that were never meant to restrain a female small enough to ride in a car seat.

The rest of the drive through the streets of San Francisco was an emotional blur, a rare thing for a man who did not consider himself to be the least bit emotional to begin with. He barely registered the sound of the child wailing beside him.

Over and over again, he kept telling himself that the baby couldn’t possibly be his. The number of times he’d been intimate with a woman in the past—what, year and a half?—could be counted on the fingers of one hand. And the number of women he’d been involved with was even less than that. That narrowed down the possible candidates for motherhood, and none of them had had jet-black hair.

He glanced at Rachel. Most babies had little or no hair. She had a mop of it, and it was black as coal.

Like his. Good heavens, like his. Her sudden appearance had rattled him so much, he’d actually forgotten that he had black hair.

The nervous feeling taking hold jumped up several notches on the scale.

In classic denial, he shut away the obvious. She wasn’t his.

So what was he doing, acting like a high-school kid who’d been caught trying to blow up the chem lab and was now looking for a way to avoid being expelled? He was a respected member of the business world. This wasn’t a matter to be handled by an established bachelor—this was for people who knew what they were doing. Who were accustomed to dealing with abandoned babies.

As he stopped at the red light, Evan entertained the thought of pulling over to the curb and calling directory assistance for the location of the nearest family services office. That would certainly take the matter out of his hands.

Or would it?