The Baby Came C.O.D.

Libby’s wide smile drooped instantly. “We did. But she ran away.” Her sigh was so deep, Evan had the impression that she had let all the air out of her body. “Mama says sometimes things you love do that. They just go away.” Suddenly hopeful, she asked, “You haven’t seen her, have you? She’s white and pretty and really soft.”

“No, I haven’t seen her.” Although, at the moment he wished there was a cat around—getting a stuffed-up nose might be a good thing. Rachel’s aroma seemed to be deepening. “Go see what’s keeping your mother.”

But Libby stayed where she was, cocking her head as she looked up at him. He talked funny. “Nothing’s keeping her, silly. She’s free.”

“I mean—” Evan sighed, giving up. He had absolutely no idea how to talk to someone who came up to his belt buckle.

He would have to find Claire himself. For a moment, he debated leaving Rachel where she was and instructing Libby to watch her. After all, Rachel wasn’t about to execute a half gainer off the table. But Libby might. There was nothing to do but take the baby with him.

What the hell had he ever done to deserve this?

As he picked up the seat again, Rachel ceased fussing and stared at him with what looked like wonder in her eyes. Opened so wide, they looked as if they took up half her face. Her expression reminded him of one of his sisters. She looked like Paige, he realized suddenly, then dismissed the thought. All babies tended to look alike. It didn’t mean anything.

The burden in his arms began to feel progressively heavier to him as he walked in the general direction Claire had taken. She’d said something about the garage.

Pausing, he asked Libby, “Where’s your garage?”

Libby’s tolerant smile was reminiscent of her mother’s. “Outside.”

Strength, he needed strength. “I mean, how do I get to it from inside your house? Where did your mother go?” He enunciated each word slowly, clearly and sharply while trying not to lose his temper.

“I’m right here,” Claire announced, returning. “Did you miss me?” she couldn’t resist asking.

Evan looked like the poster child for the beleaguered and the befuddled. Not to mention the angry. She imagined that the latter emotion was directed at the world in general and probably at her specifically. His type always had to have someone to blame, which was a pity, she thought, because he was kind of cute.

Evan turned around at the sound of her voice. “Can you take her now?” It came out less of a question than a demand.

“Not yet,” she answered patiently. “My hands are full.”

“What is all that?” he asked. She had a blanket slung over her shoulder and a box tucked under her arm, and she was dragging something along that looked like netting strung over tubes.

“Your salvation,” she said glibly.

While searching for the box of cloth diapers she’d packed away, Claire had come across the Portacrib. She’d decided that it wouldn’t be a bad idea to bring it out, as well. After all, the baby was going to need someplace to sleep, and she knew without asking that Evan didn’t have anything. She could lend him a few things. Any furniture that Libby hadn’t managed to destroy in her exuberance, Claire had saved in hopes that someday another, possibly more quiet baby would make use of it. She wanted more children than just one. One, she had grown up feeling, was a very lonely number.

Claire leaned the collapsed crib against the side of the sofa. “I guess since time is of the essence for you, we’ll set up here for now.”

Depositing the box of diapers on the coffee table, Claire spread out the blanket on the sofa. “All right, I think we’re all ready.”

“Great.” He set down the baby seat on the table beside the box and lost no time in initiating his retreat.

Only to be stopped in his tracks.

“Not so fast, Evan.”

Now what did she want? “But I—”

“—need a demonstration.” She wasn’t about to let him fast-talk his way out of this.

Evan stared at her. Communication between them had just ground to a standstill. “Of what?”

He was either very dense or very stubborn. Or both. She opted for the last choice. “Of how to change the baby.”

What made her think he wanted a demonstration? “I don’t have time for this.”

If he wanted to play it that way, so could she. “All right, then I don’t have time to watch her.” Picking up the seat, she presented it to Evan. “Sorry. Those are my terms.”

Maybe it was the smell, but his brain was definitely in a fog. He had no idea what she Was talking about. “What are your terms?”

Claire grinned. She heard surrender in his voice. In the face of that, she could afford to be magnanimous.

“I’m making them up as I go along.” Setting the seat down again, she undid the straps restraining Rachel, then lifted her out. Gingerly, Claire tucked her arm around the baby, who was soaked. “But I really want you to try your hand at changing the baby.”

He remained rooted to the spot. There was no way he was about to touch that. “Into what?”

Claire gave him a look. “Into dry diapers.”

“You mean open up that—?” There was horror written all over his face. He’d sooner put up with a first-class, intensified audit than attempt to remove Rachel’s very heavy diaper.

Libby erupted into a fit of giggles, not bothering to cover her mouth this time. The sound was infectious, and Claire found it difficult not to join in. And impossible to keep the smile from her lips.

Gently, she laid Rachel down in the center of the blanket and slipped off the soggy pajama bottoms. “That is exactly what I mean. You obviously don’t know how, and there’s no time like the present to learn.”

Was she out of her mind? “Why would I want to learn?”

Claire dropped the pajama bottoms in a little heap on the blanket and looked at him. She answered patiently, speaking to him as if she were trying to make a child understand something that was just beyond his reach.

“I have a little news flash for you—the number of times you change a baby is disproportionate to its size.” She considered that for a moment. Math had never been her strong suit. “Or maybe the inverse. At any rate, the smaller they are, the more they need to be changed. And at this stage of her life, Rachel is going to need a lot of changing.”

All right, he understood that part of it. But why did he have to learn how to do it? “But you’re going to be—”

“Helping out,” Claire supplied, and squashed any other belief he had been entertaining. “I don’t intend to be her permanent nanny. I have a business to run.”

“A business?” Evan echoed in disbelief. “You?”

It was a rare thing for Claire to get angry. She liked to think of herself as a reasonable and even-tempered woman. But she knew an insult when one was hovering in front of her.

“You say that as if you don’t believe that’s possible. Why?”

As if in reply, Evan glanced down at her long legs curled beneath her as she sat on the edge of the sofa, and at her clothes, which lovingly adhered to her body. Businesswoman wouldn’t have been the first label he would have pinned to her. Nor the second. She looked as if she would be more at home on the cover of a magazine than undertaking any sort of business venture.

But this wasn’t the time to get into that. “No reason.” And then he looked at his watch again. This was taking far longer than he had anticipated. He still had to go over his notes before he went into the meeting. “Look, I’m really pressed for time.”

“You keep saying that.” And it was obvious from her expression that she neither believed his protest nor was going to accept it. “Make time. She obviously must mean something to you or you wouldn’t have her.”

The leap from point A to point B seemed to have been made entirely without reason. Evan’s brow furrowed as he tried to make sense of it and failed. “What kind of logic is that?”

“Mine,” she informed him blithely. “Now, then, shall we?” Claire patted the blanket in an open invitation.

Not to be left out of the project, Libby demanded, “What can I do? What can I do?”

Wedging in between Evan and the baby on the sofa, Libby pranced from foot to foot as if the ground were too hot for her to stand on in any one place for more than a second.

Evan assumed that Claire would tell her daughter to stand aside and be quiet—that’s what he would have done. But Claire didn’t do what was expected. He had a feeling the statement covered a lot of territory.

“Get me some tissues, Lib. I don’t have any wipes,” she explained to Evan as if he even knew what those were. “So tissues are going to have to do in a pinch. And a washcloth,” she called out to her daughter. “Run some warm water over it, honey. And be sure to wring it out.”

Claire emphasized the last part, knowing if she didn’t, Libby was going to leave a trail of water all the way from the bathroom sink to the sofa.

Waiting, Claire cooed soft words at the baby that Evan could only half make out. But the tone was soothing. And it worked, he noticed. Rachel was calming down. Maybe this would work out after all, at least for now.

Claire stripped Rachel down to her diaper, then leaned back and gestured for Evan to take over. “All right, go ahead.”

Evan felt something sicken in his stomach. “Go ahead?” he repeated dumbly.

Why was he acting as if his brain level had suddenly been reduced to that of a potato?

“Change her,” Claire urged, moving aside for him to have clear access. “The grand opening awaits.”

He actually reached out one hand before he stopped. He just couldn’t go through with this, not for any amount of money in the world.

“I don’t—I’ve never—” He looked at her helplessly, falling back on the only thing he’d learned that worked. “How much do you want per diaper?”

“That’s pathetic,” she informed him. Then, with a tolerant sigh, Claire elbowed him out of the way. Evan was never so glad to move aside in his life. “Watch and learn,” she instructed, taking her place again.

Rachel began to kick, churning up the mess within, he guessed.

“Libby?” Claire called out expectantly.

The streak wearing pink overalls zipped back to her side, with a box of tissues in one hand and a slightly dripping washcloth in the other. “Here, Mama.”

Claire took them as solemnly as if she were receiving a knight’s sword and shield. She set both items on the table.

Evan forced himself to watch. He got as far as seeing Claire tear off the tabs on either side of the kicking chubby legs before he averted his eyes.

“Yuck!” Libby pronounced.

For once, Evan thought, the little girl was guilty of understatement.

Chapter Three

The first thing Evan did when he returned to his office was call Devin. Maybe it wasn’t an entirely rational decision on his part, given that Devin was four hundred miles away. But Evan knew that if anyone could find out who the mother of this child was, it was Devin. His brother had a knack for locating missing people. Distance wouldn’t be a problem.

Why Devin wanted to spend his life in pursuit of people who, for all intents and purposes, had vanished was beyond Evan’s comprehension. In his opinion, finding them didn’t pay nearly enough to compensate for the effort involved. But for the first time in his life, Evan was actually glad his brother had decided to become a private investigator.

As soon as he heard the receiver being picked up on the other end, Evan asked, “Are you busy?”

There was a pause, and for a second, Evan was afraid that he’d gotten Devin’s answering machine. He was in no mood to deal with recorded messages and was about to hang up when he heard, “Depends on who’s asking. If it’s the IRS, the answer is no. If it’s the competition trying to see how I’m doing, then the answer is yes. Truth is located somewhere in between.”

Evan didn’t need to see his face to know that Devin was grinning. They hadn’t shared the same sense of humor since a year after puberty had hit.

“It’s me, Devin. Evan,” he added impatiently when there was no response on the other end.

The deep chuckle told Evan that his brother had known all along who was calling. “And a hello to you, too, brother,” Devin replied. “Don’t you believe in preliminary niceties anymore?”

“You’re the last one to give a lecture about that.” Evan had always been the one who lived by the rules, who crossed every t and dotted every i. That was why this turn of events seemed so incredible, so unfair if it was true. He’d always taken precautions, for heaven’s sake.

Except, he realized suddenly, that one time.

The fruity taste of the Mai-tais had hidden their potent punch, and he’d downed one after another until he’d found himself acting amorous and passionate—entirely out of character.

No, he refused to believe that that one night, which was mostly a blur anyway, could have resulted in the fifteenpound bundle he’d had delivered to his office.

“Look,” Evan said sharply, “I didn’t call to argue about protocol.”

Accustomed to his brother’s abrupt manner, Devin was unfazed by the annoyed tone. “Nice to know. Why did you call?”

Evan was aware that he was gripping the receiver too tightly. He hated asking Devin for a favor, even one he was planning on paying for. “I need you to find someone for me.”

If Devin was surprised by the request, he hid it well. “All right, what’s the person’s name?”

Evan thought of the note. There’d been no signature on it. “I don’t know.”

That made it harder, but not impossible. Half of the people Devin had looked for were nameless to him when he began his search. “Description?”

Irritation, fueled by frustration, began to mount. Evan knew he sounded like a fool. He could just visualize Devin smirking at him. “I don’t have one. That is, I do, a few, but none of them might be the right one.”

If Devin was smirking, he gave no indication of it. Instead, he sounded concerned. “Evan, you okay? You sound…addled.”

It wasn’t a word that Devin would have used to describe his brother under normal circumstances. Yet addled was exactly how Evan sounded—as if something had just happened to shake him up. This had to be big. Evan didn’t rattle easily—at least, not enough to come to his brother for help.

Evan bristled. He didn’t care for the observation, however deserving it might be. “You’d be addled, too, if someone just left a baby in your office and said it was yours.”

Devin let out a low whistle. “Someone left you a baby?”

Had his brother suddenly gone deaf? “I just said that,” Evan snapped.

Devin wasn’t slow, but when it came to his work, he believed in being methodical. That meant getting all the facts down straight the first time around. “And it’s not yours.”

“No.” The denial was quick, decisive. And untrue. “That is, I don’t think so.” Evan’s wavering deteriorated even further. “I don’t know.”

Right now, it didn’t strike Devin that his brother knew a hell of a whole lot, but this wasn’t the time to point that little tidbit out.

“And the person you want me to find is…?” His sentence trailed off as he waited for Evan to complete it for him.

Was Devin playing games at his expense? “The baby’s mother, naturally.”

Devin blocked out his brother’s tone. Letting it get under his skin wasn’t going to do either of them any good.

“Do you have any idea who she might be, Evan? Anything at all for me to go on?”

Yes, he had something for Devin to go on. Something he didn’t want to admit to. His night of the endless Maitai. Evan ran a hand through his hair, bracing himself. If Devin was going to be of any use, he had to tell his brother everything.

“My best guess is that it might be this entertainer I met on a cruise ship. A singer,” he added. If he’d been sober, this would never have happened. He wouldn’t have thought of flirting with a woman he didn’t know, much less bedding her.

Or had she flirted with him? Evan tried hard to remember, but it was all one heated blur with very little of it clear.

“Why, Evan, you sly devil. And here I thought you were married to your work.” His laughter obliterated anything else Devin might have said for more than a minute. “Boy, did I ever have you pegged wrong.”

Evan didn’t care for being the source of Devin’s amusement. If he could have, he would have slammed the phone down in his brother’s ear. But now wasn’t the time to take offense.

He needed Devin. But he also needed his privacy, and a thought had suddenly occurred to him. “Look, not a word of this to the girls and Mother, do you hear?”

“Raise your voice any louder, and everyone between Newport Beach and San Francisco will hear.” Devin paused, as if considering something. “Send me a dollar.”

Evan thought he must have heard wrong. Devin was making even less sense than he normally did. And if this was a joke, it wasn’t funny. “What?”

“Send me a dollar,” Devin repeated mildly. “Then you’ll be a client and I won’t be able to tell them anything, even if they try to wheedle the information out of me.”

Evan knew his sisters were more than capable of getting a stone to talk if they set their minds to it. Determination, in one form or another, was a strain that ran through them all.

“You find out who this is, and I’ll send you more than a dollar. I intend to pay you for your services, you know,” he added, feeling somewhat uncomfortable about the whole arrangement. He didn’t want Devin getting the wrong impression. “I’m not asking for charity.”

Nothing changed. Evan was as uptight as ever. Devin blew out a breath. “In case you haven’t looked in the mirror lately, Evan, we’re brothers. It’s not called charity when it’s between family.”

Still, if you paid for something, you got what you paid for. “I’d feel better paying you.”

“Well, I wouldn’t.” There was a note of annoyance in his voice. There were lessons Evan had never learned, he thought. He wondered if his brother ever would. But now wasn’t the time for that, either. Devin got down to business. “How old is this baby?”

“You know I’m not any good at things like that.” But because Devin obviously wanted an answer, Evan thought for a minute, remembering the note. It had mentioned taking care of the baby for six months. “About six months old or so.”

Devin did a quick calculation. “I’m going to need a list of the names, numbers and addresses of the women you’ve been intimate with within the last two years or so.”

The laugh that met the request was dry and without humor. “Won’t be much of a list.” He waited for Devin to make some sort of snide comment. But Evan was disappointed.

“Good, I won’t have that much work to do. I’m really busy with another case, as it is.”

So Devin was working. No ego, no attempt at crowing or rubbing the matter in. Maybe he’d been too hard on Devin, after all. Evan thought a minute. “How about the cruise entertainer?”

She was the first one Devin intended to question. “By all means, include her.”

It wasn’t that easy. “I haven’t got an address for her, or a number. Or a name, for that matter,” he added, thinking out loud. “She called herself Siren.”

“Original,” Devin commented dryly. “That’s where the detecting part comes in, brother of mine.” He tapped a pencil on his desk, thinking. “I’ll need the name of the cruise line—and anything else you can think of. Fax everything to me when you’re ready.”

Evan was ready now. “I don’t have to fax it—I can give you everything you asked for right now.”

Jotting them down for his own sake as he went, Evan recited the women’s names. There was a grand total of three. He added in everything that seemed relevant, including the fact that as far as he knew, two of them were in relationships now. They might even be married. He’d lost touch.

“You’re right,” Devin agreed, looking the names over. “It’s a short list. Sure you haven’t forgotten anyone?”

Evan knew that Devin hadn’t meant it as a criticism, but it still smarted. “You’re the one who’s always had women pounding at your door, not me.”

His brother was referring to their formative years, Devin thought with a smile, when for some damn reason, Evan had hung back, refusing to avail himself of the ready companionship that was out there. But that was all in the past These days, Devin had more-serious thoughts on his mind than the easy, pleasurable loving of willing women. More and more, one woman was beginning to take center stage.

“Only because you weren’t interested,” Devin reminded him. He had the feeling his brother could do with someone in his corner. “Look, like I said, I’m busy with another case right now, but I can take a commuter flight and be up there in forty-five minutes if you need me.”

The offer was unexpected and appreciated, even if Evan didn’t know exactly how to make that fact known without embarrassing both himself and his brother. Because he didn’t know how else to do it, he let it slide without comment.

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