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While Judah struggled to make sense of the man’s words, a booming voice from the front of the room rolled into the hallway.
“I am pleased and proud to announce that the architect designing the Grantham-Ford Art Museum will be Judah Huntley. Judah, please come forward and say a few words.”
Judah’s eyes darted between three faces: Rossi, the baby and the blonde.
It was official. He’d just fallen down Alice’s rabbit hole.
Two (#u6491bffd-a4ba-5955-80d6-a973f0f7dd05)
Three things occurred to Darby at the same time.
One, Judah Huntley was more gorgeous than she remembered.
Two, he had a kid he didn’t know about.
Three, hers wasn’t the only messed-up life.
Oh, he was good. On hearing he had a child, his expression barely changed, but his ink-blue eyes held disbelief and a heavy dose of WTF. The baby, stunningly gorgeous with rosy cheeks and hair the color of bitter chocolate, looked at them from the stiff arms of the woman carrying her.
Darby knew she should move away, she should give them some privacy but...
She wasn’t that noble, and this was too good to miss. How would Judah Huntley juggle the announcement of the commission and the news that he had a child? Would he flip, freeze, flee?
Darby couldn’t wait to find out.
The baby let out a soft cry, Judah was called to the front of the room again and the weary woman took a step toward Judah, holding the baby out like a parcel. Judah threw up his hands in a hell-no gesture and the baby responded by letting out a shriller cry.
Darby forgot about the drama playing out in front of her eyes and focused on that small face scrunched up and turning red. The wails grew louder and someone she recognized as one of the foundation’s board members appeared at the door.
“Mr. Huntley, they are calling for you. You’ve been awarded the design contract.”
No surprise there. Judah was an amazing architect.
But his ability to ignore a screaming baby annoyed her. Pushing past the lawyer, she reached for the little girl, ignoring the look of relief on the older woman’s face. Tucking the baby into the crook of her arm, Darby placed her pinkie finger in the little girl’s mouth and felt the tug of tiny lips.
Darby looked at Judah. “She’s hungry.”
He threw his hands up in the air and shook his head. “Not my problem.”
“Apparently it is,” Darby responded tartly.
“Um... Mr. Huntley. Really, you need to come back inside.” The man tugged the sleeve of Judah’s jacket.
Darby noticed, again, that the jacket covered a set of rather big arms and broad shoulders. Judah’s easy dismissal of this beautiful baby was irritating, but her hormones had yet to receive the message that she shouldn’t be imagining what Huntley’s body looked like under that expensive suit.
Judah pushed his hand through his thick, expertly cut hair and she heard the barely audible swear he dropped. Yeah, Huntley wasn’t having a good day.
He gripped the bridge of his nose. After a brief pause, he lifted his head and Darby saw the determination on his face, the assertiveness in his eyes. There was something superhot about an alpha male doing his thing...
Judah nodded to the closed door of the ballroom.
“I’m going to go back in there to accept this damn commission. Rossi, you are going to take the baby with you and you will call me and we will arrange a suitable time to meet and discuss Carla’s insanity. Do not ambush me again.” That dark blue gaze scraped over her and he shook his head. “You, I have no idea who you are but if you’d kindly give the kid back, we can all go on with our lives.”
His tone suggested that he wasn’t interested in hearing any arguments and when no one spoke, he turned around and walked back into the ballroom, the board member following closely behind. Darby heard the audience’s roar of applause and looked down at the little girl in her arms.
She had Judah’s nose and the shape of his eyes and Darby could see the hint of Judah’s shallow dimple in the baby’s left cheek. Like his, the baby’s hair was dark, her sweet brows strong. She was utterly perfect and those deep dark eyes—brown, not blue—looked up at Darby’s, content to suckle on her pinkie.
She was, possibly, the most beautiful baby Darby had ever seen and as she’d been obsessed by babies for longer than was healthy, she’d seen more than a lot. This little girl looked like what she was, the offspring of two boundlessly beautiful people.
Before his death, Darby’s father had been a well-known Boston businessman and her parents had been, at one time, the heart of Boston society, so she’d had a taste of fame. But Huntley and his ex-girlfriend were famous on an entirely different level. Carla, an exciting, lushly beautiful, stunningly wealthy opera-singing heiress, had millions of social media followers and was tabloid gold. Thanks to his talent, his stupidly sexy body, and his penchant for dating models and actresses, Judah was also a media golden boy.
They might be famous, but Darby wasn’t impressed by either of the little girl’s parents right now.
How could Carla just shove her child out of her life, pass her on like she was an unwanted package? And why hadn’t Judah stepped up? Didn’t they realize that a child was a gift, indescribably precious? What was wrong with these people?
Had the world gone mad?
The baby burped and then her face scrunched up, her eyes closing. Darby had enough experience to know that the little girl was about to fill her diaper. The telltale smell wafted up and Darby half smiled. Yep, there it was.
Darby looked up and saw the two lawyers grimace in immediate expressions of distaste.
“She needs changing,” Darby stated just in case they hadn’t made the connection between the smell and the problem.
Identical looks of horror and two steps back. “No! No, no, no!”
The baby squirmed in Darby’s arms and let out a wail loud enough to be heard in Fenway Park. Okay, time to go.
The baby was stunningly cute and too adorable for words, but Darby had come here to work. It wasn’t a surprise that Huntley had been awarded the project, but Darby knew there were lots of well-heeled socialites in that room with money to burn. Some of them might want a summer place designed or a house renovated.
Business had been a bit slow lately and she needed a new, lucrative project. She also needed to finish the renovations to two small apartment buildings she owned in Back Bay and get them on the market, but she knew it might take some time to sell them at the price she wanted.
Thank God she was due her quarterly dividend check from Winston and Brogan tomorrow; that was the money she’d allocated to her IVF fund. With that money and any she managed to save over the next four months, she could have the procedure in five months’ time. At the thought, her stomach churned, then burned.
Unlike Huntley and his ex, she wanted a child.
Didn’t she?
The two Europeans exchanged a long look as if they were silently arguing about who was going to do the honors of changing the little girl. They both looked horrified.
“I need to get going,” Darby said.
A charming smile crossed the lawyer’s face. “The nanny we hired to look after Jacquetta since we left Italy has been dismissed. Could you change her since neither of us knows how?”
“What makes you think I do?” Darby asked.
Mr. Slick just shrugged, and Darby knew she was being played. It had been years since she’d changed a diaper, but she’d looked after babies as a teenager. She was sure it was like riding a bike; one didn’t just forget. And God, if she left little Jacquetta—goodness, what a mouthful—in their hands, the kid would be more miserable than she was now. It was one diaper, Darby could deal.
Darby held out her hand for the bag draped over the lady’s shoulder. Darby would change Jacquetta—Jac—make up a bottle for the little girl and send them on their way. There was no doubt she’d remember this encounter for the rest of her life: hot guy, cute kid, drama...
“There’s a baby room just around the corner.” Darby jerked her head at the woman. “You’re coming with me.”
“Perché?”
Why? Jeez, these people were seriously whacked. “Because you don’t just hand over a baby to a stranger, that’s why.”
Mr. Slick smiled at her. “The corridor ends just beyond the restroom so there is nowhere to take little Jacquetta. If you wanted to steal her, you’d have to pass by us. And we’ll be here waiting.”
Darby frowned, unease crawling across her skin.
“Besides, this is one of the best hotels in Boston, there are cameras everywhere.” Mr. Slick winced as Jacquetta’s cries escalated in volume.
Dammit. She was going to do this.
Darby started to walk down the hallway. Feeling eyes on her, she looked back. Her gut was screaming at her that their expressions were too bland, that she was being played. How the hell had she ended up in this situation?
Then Jac released a high-pitched scream and Darby looked down, her heart hurting over the little girl’s distress. The baby, defenseless and innocent, had to come first. Darby would change her and make up a bottle, maybe give her a little cuddle and then Darby would hand her back.
Her life would go back to normal in ten minutes.
Darby walked down the corridor, her hand tapping Jac’s little bottom, unable to resist dropping a kiss on the baby’s curly head. In the baby changing room, Darby laid Jac on the soft changing table and looked down into the little girl’s exquisite face.
“Should I have one just like you?”
Jac, being no more than nine months old, didn’t have a clue.
Little Jac sucked her bottle as Darby walked back down the hallway, her shoulders aching from the unaccustomed weight of holding a baby and a seriously heavy baby bag. The baby was clean and happy, and Darby could hand her over and go back to her life.
Except that, when she turned the corner, there was nobody to hand the baby back to.
Hearing noise from the elevator, Darby spun around and saw the two lawyers standing in the elevator.
“Give the baby to Judah Huntley,” Mr. Slick told her, his words sliding between the closing doors.
Darby couldn’t believe what they’d done. They’d left Jac with a stranger! How did they know she wasn’t a psycho, that she wouldn’t just walk off with the baby?
Dumping the heavy bag into the stroller and leaving it in the hallway, Darby pushed open the door to the ballroom with her hip and scanned the audience. It wasn’t difficult to find Huntley since he was taller than pretty much everyone. His dark head was bent to better hear the words of an olive-skinned brunette wearing a low top. Her expression brazenly suggested that she wouldn’t say no if Huntley invited her to take a tour of his guest suite, or the nearest closet.
Irrationally annoyed, Darby focused on the photographs flashing onto the presentation screen on the far side of the room, each image stealing her breath. The first photo was of Huntley’s proposed design for the Grantham-Ford museum and it was fantastic. The building looked curvy and feminine, sultry and almost, dare she say it, sexy. It was stunning and, dammit, so much better than her own design. The man deserved to win the commission. As images of his previous designs rolled across the wall, she stood there, blown away yet again by his talent.
Darby pulled her gaze away from the images and looked back to the creator of those magnificent buildings, surprised to find his eyes on her. God, he was a good-looking man. An intriguing combination of sexy and smart, tough and taciturn.
She jerked her head to summon him over and studied him as he made his way toward her, graceful despite his height and large frame.
Stepping back into the hall, Darby glanced down at the sleeping bundle in her arms, smiling at the very feminine version of that masculine man heading her way. She’d hand Jac over to her him and remind herself that this beautiful child was not her problem. She had her own baby issues to figure out.
As Judah reached the door, the chairman of the board, so in love with his own voice, tapped his glass with a spoon and the room fell quiet.
Puffed up with self-importance, he spoke into the microphone. “Given this foundation’s commitment to supporting Bostonian talent, I understand that some of our local professionals might be upset that the design has been awarded to a New York–based architect, but the winning design was simply outstanding. That said, it is my great pleasure to announce that Huntley and Associates is looking for a local architect to work with Judah Huntley on the art museum project.”
The room erupted into clapping and cheers, and Darby looked at Judah, her eyebrows raised.
Judah shrugged before murmuring, “He’s making it sound like more than it is. My new hire will be little more than a glorified intern, the liaison between the foundation and myself.”
Darby felt the sharp nip of annoyance. “She or he won’t get to work on the construction documentation?”
“I have a team back in New York for that. They are a well-oiled machine.”
So the position was not something she was interested in. She was an architect, not an intern. “Do you intend to pay this person or are they expected to work for the honor of being able to put your name as a reference on their resume?”
He didn’t react to her snippiness. “They’ll be paid.”
“How much?” Darby demanded. She wasn’t interested in working as an intern but she was curious what world-renowned architects paid.
Judah named a figure and Darby’s mouth fell open. That much? Seriously? Well, wow. At that rate, her interest rose. Pity he was a baby-rejecting jerk or she’d put her name in the hat.
Jac hiccuped in her sleep and Judah’s eyes shifted to the living doll in Darby’s arms. She looked into his face for any hint of acceptance or compassion and felt disappointed when she found none. She didn’t like him, but she reluctantly conceded that his hard and brooding expression was as sexy as his debonair and urbane facade. The many faces of Judah Huntley, Darby mused.
This man, who is uninterested in his own child, is the opposite of what you are looking for in a man.
“Why do you still have the child?”
Darby narrowed her eyes at his clipped tone. “I have her because I changed her diaper for your friends. They said they’d be waiting for me in the hallway, but they left before I could hand her back.”
Judah glared at her and in the dim light, she saw concern jump into his eyes. “What?”
He was a smart guy, why was this difficult to understand? “Do try to keep up, Huntley. I changed her diaper, made up some formula and when I got back, the two Italians were in the elevator. I thought about chasing them down, then figured the easier option was to hand Jac over to you.”
“Jack? Her name is Jack?”
Darby heard the weird note in his voice and wondered why the name rocked his boat. “They called her Jacquetta but that’s too much of a mouthful, so I shortened it to Jac,” Darby replied. “Here you go.”
Darby tried to hand Judah the child, but he stepped back, looking horrified.
Oh, no! She’d already done more than enough. “This is a child, Huntley! Your child, apparently. You don’t just get to throw your hands up in the air and step back. She’s a baby, not a package you can refuse.”
Judah rubbed the back of his neck. “Damned Carla. What the hell is she playing at?”
“So, I take it Jac is a bit of a surprise? That you didn’t know about her?”
“Of course I didn’t know about her! She’s not—” Judah snapped his mouth shut and gripped the bridge of his nose in frustration.
That he’d been about to say that the baby wasn’t his was easy to work out. But Darby wasn’t that much of an idiot. Judah might not want Jac to be his, but the little girl was a carbon copy of him, down to her nose and stubborn chin.
Judah glanced down at Jac and lifted his big shoulders. “I can’t take her.”
Oh, God, she was so done with this. Darby lifted her free hand, gripped Judah’s lapel and stood up on her toes, annoyed to realize that she still needed more height to look him in the eye. “Listen to me, you spoiled, inconsiderate ass! This baby was brought to you by those useless fools and if I track them down, I will carve them up for leaving her with a stranger and then disappearing. I could’ve been a baby trafficker, a nut case, a psycho!”
Amusement jumped into Judah’s eyes. “Are you?”
