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Molly heard that conversation, but she wasn’t really listening. The intrusion was just so bizarre.
The woman dropped a diaper bag on the carpet. Then she plunked down the baby with the same kind of exasperated attitude. The baby, let free, quit bellowing and squirming and promptly took off on all fours.
“What on earth... ?” Flynn reached behind him to yank the blinds open further. Cheerful sunlight instantly poured in, but didn’t seem to illuminate anything that was going on. Flynn wasn’t easily thrown by any brand or flavor of surprises. His bushy eyebrows lifted in question, but initially his expression showed more intrigue than concern over the mystery woman’s arrival.
Molly didn’t catch the lady’s face until she straightened back up. Golden hair billowed around her shoulders then. A red sweater hugged a top-heavy bust; poured-on jeans showed off several miles of slim legs. Her face might have been strikingly pretty, if there hadn’t been huge shadows under the eyes and drawn lines around the mouth.
“Don’t you ‘What on earth’ me, Flynn McGannon. And don’t even try claiming not to recognize me.” Either fury or nerves made her voice shrill. Molly could see the skilled effort with makeup, but it didn’t conceal the pallor of her skin or the exhausted dark eyes.
“I didn’t claim anything. But I honestly don’t know...” Flynn was frowning now, studying her hard.
“Virginie,” she snapped. “Tuscon. The Silver Buckle. Add up thirteen months—the age of your son—and the nine months I carried him, and maybe that night’ll come back to you. You were with some party. I was with some party. But the only party that mattered was the one that ended up back at my place. Chivas was your drink that night, as I recall. Unfortunately, I recall more than that. You were a hell of a lover, you cretin. But no man’s worth the price you cost me.”
“Son?” Flynn echoed blankly, and then wildly shook his head. “That isn’t possible. You said you were protected—”
“Ha. So suddenly you do remember that night—and if it isn’t just like a man to remember the part that gives him an excuse. And at the time, I was. On the pill. But I missed a couple—and before you tell me that was my fault, let me tell you that I don’t give a damn. That doesn’t make the baby any less your responsibility—”
“Look, if you’d just try to calm down...you can’t just show up out of the blue, making claims that you seem to expect me to instantly believe—”
Virginie didn’t try responding to that. She seemed on a one-track road, the words spilling out of her at cyclone speed. “Your son’s name is Dylan. And he’s all yours as of this minute. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You can’t even guess. My life’s been a nonstop nightmare from the instant this child was conceived. I was sick. Lost my job. He had colic and he doesn’t sleep and I’m about to lose my apartment and I can’t do it anymore. Right now I don’t even have a way to feed him—”
“Wait a minute. Wait a minute, just slow down—”
“The hell I will. And don’t waste your breath offering me money because this isn’t about money. It’s about everything. I never figured you’d want to know you were a father, but that’s just tough. Every woman on earth isn’t cut out for motherhood. I gave it a shot—you don’t know how hard I gave it a shot—but nothing’s working out. I can’t do it anymore, and you’re responsible for this. It took me forever to find you—”
Molly had never seen Flynn lose color before. Normally when he was upset, he got noisy, not quiet. But he raked a hand through his hair and looked dead-quiet now. “Surely you realize this is impossible? You can’t just barge in here and claim I’m the father of a child. I can see you’re upset, but if you’d just calm down—”
“I’m not calming down. I’m leaving. You. With your son.”
“It’s not my son.” Flynn’s baritone could have carried to the next county. So could the blonde’s shrill soprano.
“Oh, yeah it is. I know it is. And if you’ll look back twenty-one months ago, you’ll know it is. If not, there has to be some blood test or something that’ll prove it to you—because believe me, it will.” She snatched up her tote-size purse again, but withdrew a folder from it and tossed it on his desk. Pictures spilled out. What looked like medical records, maybe a birth certificate. “I need a job. I need a place to live. I need a chance at life again, and I’m going after it The baby ruined everything I ever had. He’s your problem from this minute on.”
When she spun around, Flynn lurched toward her. “Wait a minute. For God’s sake, you can’t just walk out of here—”
“Watch me.”
Molly couldn’t seem to unfreeze. The whole scene was just so unreal. The frantic-faced woman and the whole yelling match couldn’t have taken five minutes. She stormed back out of the office as fast as she’d stormed in.
Flynn hiked after her. Molly had never seen his complexion turn that ashen gray before. She heard his booming voice from the hall, fading as the two of them reached the front doors. There wasn’t another sound in the entire office—not because Flynn’s handful of staff weren’t there, but likely because everyone had been listening as intently to the whole scene no differently than she had.
It took a few seconds before Molly could seem to gather her wits. And another second before she abruptly realized that the infamous “Virginie” had left a package behind her.
The baby had been padding around on all fours, fanny in the air, crawling at cruising speeds that could probably earn him a ticket on the freeway.
Temporarily, though, the baby was nowhere in sight.
And no one seemed to give a damn.
Two
Molly hustled out of Flynn’s office in search of the baby.
Initially real worry never occurred to her—she figured she’d have heard the sound of the baby crying if he’d been in trouble, and there were other adults around besides. She just wanted to find him. It wasn’t the safest environment in town for a crawling toddler to be running around loose.
Flynn’s office opened into the circular area that the staff called Brainstorming Central. Undoubtedly the original architect had designed a normal office space with walls and doors, but Flynn had predictably obliterated all that logical construction long since.
The virtual reality booth was an intrinsic part of the “think tank,” but she poked her head in there—and found no baby. In the middle of Brainstorming Central was a table the size of a small country. Recliner chairs tipped back as far as beds. The ceiling was lavishly decorated with posters—cartoon characters, wilderness scenes, rock stars, bad jokes, saintly inspirational quotes. Molly first thought that decorating the ceiling was loony, but after six months of working with the lunatic staff, she’d discovered she was too fond of all of them to take exception to their eccentric office decor ideas.
She whipped around the circumference of the table, bent over to spot any miniature bodies, checking chairs and any possible hiding spot. Still, she caught no sight or sound of the mite.
Her pulse was charging, her heart clanging nerves. She told herself she was naturally concerned about the missing Dylan, but that was only a partial truth. She’d been rattled long before realizing the baby had disappeared. The whole bizarre scene with Dylan’s mother had acid jumping in her stomach...and worse than that, her mind kept doing instant replays of the embrace she’d almost invited from Flynn.
A lump clogged her throat as she sprinted out of Brainstorming Central toward the break rooms. All right. Embrace was a pale word for what she’d been inviting from Flynn. She’d wanted to make love with him. Could have, might have, wanted to—if they hadn’t been interrupted at that precise moment.
Thoughts spun in her mind like whirling dervishes in a high wind. Darn it, was that baby really his? And had Flynn really slept with that woman—a woman he barely seemed to recognize?
Molly had been so positive she knew him. His impulsiveness and unpredictability were part of what made him an exciting, dynamic man, and yes, those character traits made her uneasy, too. Maybe he was wild, but she’d never known him to do anything seriously irresponsible. She’d believed he had a good heart. And now...
Now you aren’t sure of anything, duckie. Except that there’s a baby loose and someone has to find the little one before he gets hurt.
She flipped the light switch in the bathroom and peered in—no baby. She closed that door and charged into the first break room. Since none of Flynn’s staff—besides herself—had even a remote concept of normal work hours, the back room contained bunk beds, a stereo and TV entertainment center. It wasn’t unusual to find someone crashing in there any hour of the day, but Molly peered under beds and around comers and closets. No bodies surfaced, large or small.
Still, those whirling-dervish thoughts kept hurling through her mind. Had he really had a one-night stand with someone he didn’t know, didn’t value, just a fling between the sheets to satisfy an itch—was that all sex meant to Flynn? And yeah, Molly knew she was just a teensy bit rigid...aw hell, her dad used to say she’d strangle on a principle before giving an inch, but that didn’t stop the sick-dread feeling from churning in her stomach. All the times Flynn had playfully tried to seduce her, she’d thought she was special to him. She’d thought they were building something special between them. She’d really thought...
Quit thinking, you dimwit. Find the baby.
She pedaled into the second break room, and immediately spotted a body—just not the size body she was searching for.
Like everyone else at McGannon’s, Simone Akumi was a character. She was Flynn’s chief programmer, and stood a regal six feet, with a face the color of dark mahogany and austere features that reflected her personality. Her IQ scored off the map, but she had a tough time talking to lesser mortals. Typically she was garbed in a long, flowing African print—with a headset parked on her wiry white hair. The headset meant she was working, and only someone with a death wish interrupted Simone when she was concentrating. Molly rapidly scanned the room before trying to catch her attention.
Glass doors led outside to a patio and rolling sweep of lawn—Flynn had been known to have staff meetings picnic-style on the grass. But on a crisp October day, thankfully the doors were safely closed, so the baby couldn’t escape that way. Past the counter table was a double-size refrigerator—anything could be in there, from mystery meat to sushi to pizza to a quart jar of maraschino cherries. Three coffeemakers were simultaneously bubbling on the sink counter. Everyone was violently fussy—and possessive—about their favorite brands. Simone just turned around to pour a mug when Molly frantically motioned for her to lift one ear cup.
“Did you see it? A baby anywhere around here?”
“If you’re referring to that small hellion of a Caucasian traveling on all fours—good Lord, is it really Flynn’s?” Simone, for once, didn’t seem to mind the interruption.
But Molly had no time to chat. “I don’t know. I just know it disappeared when everyone was talking—”
“Well, the last I saw it, it was trailing after Bailey. Poor tyke. Clearly it’s too young to have developed any sort of judgment in people. And Bailey looked petrified.” Simone adjusted her headphones back in place. From her expression, she was back to concentrating on work before Molly had even spun around.
With her heart thudding, she clipped double-speed into the work area shared by all the programmers. Maybe she hadn’t been really that worried about the baby before, but darn it, Bailey was even more absentminded than Simone, and the programming office was the most dangerous place for a little one. Computers and printers and modems created an incessant nerve-racking clatter. Phones and cords and all kinds of electronic equipment were too easily reachable by small fingers.
Ralph’s cubicle was first—and he was there, ensconced in his orange throne chair that wincingly clashed with the red carpet. He was twenty-four, typically working barefoot, with a plaid shirt buttoned nerd-style to the throat, and a long, straggly blond ponytail swinging behind him. He was pounding at two keyboards—pretty much simultaneously—and since Ralph wouldn’t likely notice a tornado when he was working, there was little point in grilling him.
She pelted past his work cubicle, then past Simone’s and Darren’s—Darren was working at home today—then barreled around the comer to Bailey’s. She stopped dead, her hand pressing tight to her heaving heart.
The search was over.
Bailey was on all fours, his balding head shining under the fluorescent light. Bailey might be goofy enough to wear a “lucky bathrobe” over a pin-striped shirt, but he was a brilliant man. People skills weren’t exactly his strength, but he was inspired by impossible problems, attacked every challenge with the same dour, methodical, pedantic perseverance. Molly saw his hind end before she spotted the baby. Bailey, grave as a judge, seemed to have attacked this particular problem by cornering it under his desk. Guessing from the sea of wadded-up paper littering the floor, the two of them had been playing ball.
“Bailey, for Pete’s sake, I’ve been looking everywhere for the baby—” A breath that felt as if she must have been holding it for five solid minutes whooshed out of her lungs.
“Sheesh, it’s about time someone came in and saved me.” Bailey, sounding pitifully aggrieved, scooched away from the baby as soon as he spotted her. “I’ve been having a heart attack. It crawled in here after me and then it let out this wail loud enough to curdle milk. How was I supposed to know what it wanted? I never had any kids! Flynn ran out after that woman, and I didn’t know where you were, and I didn’t know what I was supposed to do—”
“Bailey, you turkey! I don’t know anything about children, either, but I can’t believe you sat right there and let the baby eat paper!”
“Let? Let? Like I had some choice in the matter? The first thing the child did was grab some paper and start chewing. You try taking it away from him and see what happens.”
“He cries, huh?”
Bailey was more explicit. “The kid has a set of lungs like a hyena.”
Molly crouched down. The little one had a giant mouthful of paper and was extremely busy, trying to stuff in more. She obviously had to get the paper away from him, but for one stark second, she felt an emotional fist squeeze her heart tight. The scene in Flynn’s office had happened so fast and furiously that she really hadn’t caught a good look at Dylan before.
The baby had a pudgy little body and chunky legs and, oh my, a terribly homely face. The chin of a prizefighter in miniature, plain bones, a bump of a nose—Dylan just wasn’t going to be auditioning for the Gerber poster child, but Molly told herself maybe he could grow into all that character potential. That wasn’t, though, the reason her heart stopped.
The little one had exuberant bristles of auburn hair. The color of Flynn’s. Exactly the color of Flynn’s. And maybe the baby was no beauty, but the eyes... the eyes were cerulean sky blue, as bright and full of light—and mischief—as Flynn’s.
Molly’s heart just seemed to freeze. She really hadn’t wanted to believe the woman in his office. Virginie had obviously been distraught, irrational, terribly beside herself. Hardly a credible source. But the look of Dylan cast a different color on things. There was no ignoring that the likeness between the two did exist.
The baby acknowledged her closeness by lifting those heart-throbber blue eyes to her face.
“Hi there, sweetie. Dylan...”
“You’re going to take him out of here, aren’t you?” Bailey said nervously.
“If he’ll let me pick him up. But I’m not going to do anything fast and scare him. For heaven’s sake, he doesn’t know me, do you, love bug?” She kept her voice low and soft, and tried a smile. The urchin smiled back, revealing two brilliant white teeth—and a mouth chockful of drool-coated paper. “I don’t suppose you’d let me reach in there and take out that paper, would you?”
The smile vanished. The baby’s lips clamped closed faster than a vault at Fort Knox.
“Okay, okay, we’ll forget about that for a second or two. Would you like to come with me for a bit? I’ll show you my office. It’s the only normal spot in the whole place. And maybe we could come up with a cracker from the kitchen. Dylan go with Molly?”
“Dylan go with Molly,” Bailey parroted urgently.
Dylan grinned at Molly, grinned at Bailey, and then whipped his fanny in the air and took off on all fours in the opposite direction.
Molly had the fleeting thought that she only knew one other male on the planet with that kind of contrary nature.
And then she chased after the miniature redhead.
Less than a half hour passed before Molly heard knuckles rap on her office door. Sooner or later she figured Flynn would track her down—and the whereabouts of the baby. The question was just how long he was tied up talking with the child’s mother...or trying to talk with her. Molly was sitting behind her desk when Flynn turned the knob and poked his head in.
“Simone said the baby was with you?”
“Yup, safe and sound.” Or her office had seemed safe and sound until Flynn stepped in, Molly thought dryly. She’d only closed the door to keep the baby contained. Unlike all the other offices at McGannon’s, hers was a haven of normalcy. A traditional desk. File cabinets. Two sturdy chairs. Pencils sharpened to uniform points were neatly aligned in a Monet mug; a photo of her parents and two younger sisters sat on the credenza; the files on her desk were color-coded and stacked as straight as a ruler.
The orderly, tidy atmosphere changed irrevocably the instant Flynn arrived. It always did. Molly was never quite sure how he could turn a nice, quiet, peaceful day into a tornado of testosterone. The sizzle in the atmosphere was always a sudden thing, like the first crack of lightning before a storm. One instant she was a CPA, the next, she was aware of her breasts and hips, whether her hair might be messy, what she’d look like to him naked. Molly had tried to analyze the problem from a dozen different angles, but there seemed no answers—except that Flynn had the unnerving gift for making a woman feel restless. Edgy. Alive, as if someone had tickled her awake from a sound sleep.
Momentarily, though, he was the edgy one. “She’s gone,” he said. “I still can’t believe it. Nothing I said to her made any difference. She took off. Just like that.”
Molly leaned back in her office chair, watching him pace. “I was afraid she would. When she walked out of your office, she didn’t seem to be listening to anyone about anything. But I’m sure she’ll be back, Flynn. She was just terribly upset. No mother would just desert her baby like that.”
“Well, I assume she’ll be back, too. But damned if I know what I’m supposed to do in the meantime. I feel like somebody dropped a bomb in my lap—what if the kid got sick, right now, right this minute? Who’s responsible for it? I don’t even know if I have the legal right to get care for it—for God’s sake, I don’t even believe the child is mine.”
Molly wasn’t sure what Flynn believed. He was thrown for six. That was obvious. But she couldn’t help but be aware that he hadn’t really looked at the baby—not earlier, when Virginie had staged that scene, and not now.
Dylan was safe enough. Molly had scooped up his diaper bag from the office, a blanket from the break room, crackers and a mug of milk from the kitchen—the cracker had been bribery to con the baby into giving up his mouthful of paper. The urchin had charged around her office for a couple of minutes on all fours, and then simply curled up on the blanket...one minute a dynamo of energy, the next snoozing harder than a whipped puppy.
Flynn had to realize the baby was right there. No matter how agitatedly he was pacing around, he never even accidentally came close to that blanket. Now, though, he punched a fist into his palm. “There are things I obviously have to do immediately. Call a lawyer, for one. And find out what pediatricians are in town. And maybe I should be calling my doc, too...hell, I don’t know what kind of tests are done to prove or disprove parentage...”
“Flynn?”
“What?” He stopped hurling himself around the office long enough to look at her. She’d had some time separate from him—time to get tough, to firm up her common sense, to put any unmanageable emotions on chill until she was ready to handle them. But it was still rough seeing that devastated look in Flynn’s eyes. God knew, he responded to everything volatilely and emotionally—but nothing like this. Even if he’d brought every ounce of the problem on himself, he’d still never had that drawn white look around his eyes before.
“I think you’re right...that you need to do all those things,” she said quietly. “But I’m afraid you have a more critical priority than any of that.”
His eyebrows lifted in query. “Like what?”
“Like the baby himself, McGannon. He needs food. More diapers than were in that bag. A crib, or something to sleep in. And she put some clothes in there, but not enough to last more than a few days.”
“Molly...” Flynn threw himself in the chair opposite her desk, and focused on her with those incredibly electric blue eyes. “I can’t do any of that stuff. I’ve never been around a baby, wouldn’t have a clue what to buy or what it needs—”
“Neither have I. No, Flynn.”
“No? I didn’t ask you anything.”
“But you were going to. I took on the baby for a few minutes because someone had to—and I was glad to help. But just because I’m a female doesn’t make me a born expert in child care. I haven’t been around little ones, either. I honestly don’t know any more than you do.”
“You have to know more than I do,” Flynn muttered, and yanked a hand through his scalp. “A stone would know more than I do about babies. A leaf. A slab of concrete. I’ve got work on my desk higher than a mountain, a project halfway done, the phone’s ringing...I don’t even know how to suddenly stop an entire business for a child—”
“Flynn,” she said gently, firmly. “Look at him.”
But he wouldn’t look at the child. He just kept looking at her, with those eyes as magnetic as blue lightning. There was so much power and character in his face, more natural charisma than one man had a right to. But it was the honesty of anxiety in his expression that touched her far more now. “This isn’t your problem, Molly, I realize that,” he said slowly. “But I don’t know who else to ask for help. Not until I at least figure out what I’m supposed to do with him.”
Molly sighed. She really couldn’t imagine Bailey or Simone pinch-hitting. Not with a problem like this. “Well, he’s sleeping now. And I realize you really do need to make those phone calls and get some business squared away. He can stay here until he wakes up.”
Flynn didn’t move. Just kept looking at her with that confounded helpless expression—until Molly threw up her hands in exasperation.
“All right, all right. After that I’ll go shopping with you. I realize that’d be really hard for you to do alone, and with a baby in tow besides. But I’m warning you ahead, my advice is worthless. I don’t know anything! The best I can say is that between two adult heads, we should be able to handle picking out at least some basic baby supplies.”
Well, darn it, she thought. That was what she thought he wanted—her offering help. Yet once she suckered in that far, he still didn’t look happy. Flynn invariably bellowed and barreled into most tricky life situations, but he still hadn’t budged, and his voice turned bass-low and careful.
“You’re angry with me, aren’t you. You’re not looking at me the same way, talking to me the same way. She really upset you.”
“Maybe you’d better call her Virginie instead of ‘she.’ If she’s the mother of your child, I think it might be appropriate for you to remember her name.”
“I’m not a father,” he said quietly, clearly.
“Look at the baby,” she said again.