by Sabrina York
Lisa had the grace and beauty of a top model and, consequently, made the money to match. Her bone structure was exquisitely detailed, and there was never a lock of perfect blonde hair out of place. She paid $300 for manicures and wore a $1,000 suit today. A suit now stained with vomit. “She threw up on me, Dom!” Her voice was a high-pitched screech, which only made Jessica scream louder.
He handed her a burp rag as he lifted Jessica, who immediately hushed. “I did try to warn you that she gets upset by strangers.”
She glared up at him from her perch on the antique Louis XIV chaise lounge. “I could use some sympathy.”
He felt torn between the need to calm Jessica, and the need to coddle Lisa. “As soon as we find a nanny who is compatible with Jessie, I promise you and I will have an evening out. In the meantime, send a bill to the office for the suit.”
Her perfect lips curled. “This isn’t about the suit.” She shrugged. “I can easily replace it. I can’t so easily replace you. It’s like the child has stolen you.”
He sighed, feeling guilty for wishing Lisa’s photo shoot had lasted a few days longer—only long enough for them to find a nanny that didn’t walk out after the first day. Was that asking for much? “She’s a baby. She hasn’t stolen me.” He grinned. “Jessie’s just chosen me as her security blanket.”
Lisa didn’t seem amused. “I’ll be going to the Bahamas in two days. When I return, call me if you’ve made arrangements for the child.” She rose from her seat to stride from the sitting room, barely inclining her head to Elena on the way out.
“That didn’t go well,” Elena said with a sigh.
“No. That is an understatement.” He put Jessica in the swing and rotated the handle. She frowned for half a minute and looked puzzled, before finally starting to cry again. He sighed heavily as he lifted her into his arms. More than a week had gone by since her arrival, but she hadn’t bonded with anyone except him. They needed to find a nanny soon so he could return to work. Only so much could be handled via phone, fax, and email during nap times.
“Do you think Jessica scared her away?”
Dom’s lips twitched as his mother’s carefully hidden optimism. He knew they didn’t like each other, but at least Elena kept up pretenses. “I doubt it. She’ll recover from the baby vomit trauma by the time she returns.”
“If she doesn’t?”
He shrugged, not willing to verbalize his answer. Jessica kindly provided a distraction by grabbing a handful of his hair and tugging hard enough to bring tears to his eyes. All he could do was take the future a day at a time for the moment. The rest would sort itself out as time passed.
Chapter Four
“It reeks in here, Caris. When did you last take a shower?”
Caris blinked her eyes open as Mandy shoved aside the drapes covering the small windows to let in sunshine. “Close the curtains. Leave me alone.”
With a sigh, Mandy sat on the corner of the bed. “You have to get up. It’s been three weeks—”
“Three miserable weeks since I’ve seen my daughter!” Caris burrowed deeper under the covers. “I just want to die.”
“Oh, Caris, please don’t do this.” Mandy pulled the covers away from her. “Your daughter needs you.”
“I can’t find her.” Caris sat up, crossing her arms over her pajama-clad chest, nominally aware of her petulant behavior, but uncaring. Nothing mattered without Jessica. “CPS won’t help me look for her. What am I supposed to do?”
Mandy took a paper from under her arm and unfolded it. “This was in The Gossiper.” She spread the pages across Caris’s lap.
Caris frowned as she looked down at the article. She shoved it aside. “Why should I care if a model was seen without her usual companion?”
She sighed with exasperation. “Read the darn thing,” she said as she returned the paper to Caris’s lap, and flicked on the lamp.
Wrinkling her nose, Caris struggled to concentrate on the blurry words. They gradually came into focus, and she scanned the article. Lisa Bonham had been seen partying in Jamaica on the arm of a fellow model, whose exotic look was a perfect contrast for her classic beauty, according to the reporter. Nothing of relevance stood out until she ran across a single line. Lisa dismissed the absence of her usual partner, Dominick McNeil, by saying he was babysitting his niece.
She raised her head from the article, feeling the first stirrings of excitement. The first stirrings of anything besides rage and pain since Brendan’s late night call three weeks ago, when he’d told her that she would never see Jessica again. “Do you think Jess is with his brother?”
Mandy shrugged. “I put Dominick McNeil’s name in the computer. A quick search didn’t show any mention of his own children or of a wife—only a brother named Brendan, with whom he owns controlling interest of McNeil Worldwide. Who else would he be babysitting?”
She pushed herself from the bed, swaying slightly as she stood. “I have to find him. He has my baby.” She jerked to a halt in mid-step toward the dresser. “How do I find him?”
“He lives near Corvallis, Oregon on a ranch called the M & M. I couldn’t find an exact address, but if you call information they can probably get a listing for you so you can talk to him.”
Caris stared at Mandy with confusion. “Why would I want to speak with him?”
Mandy’s eyes widened. “So you can see how Jess is.”
“No! What if he won’t tell me anything? I have to go there. Just to see her,” she whispered as she padded across the thin carpet to open the top drawer of her dresser.
“I don’t think you should. What if you just make things worse?”
“How can they be any worse? Brendan stole her, and no one cares. They don’t believe me when I say he called to tell me I would never see her again. Everywhere I turn, I hear her best interest is served by being with her father.” Caris shook her head again. “I’m tired of trying to do things the right way.”
Mandy bit her lip and frowned as Caris took an armful of underwear from the dresser. “What will you do?”
She deliberately avoided her friend’s worried eyes. She walked over to the bed before realizing she hadn’t gotten the suitcase from the closet. After dropping the load, Caris went to the closet to remove the piece of battered luggage given to her secondhand from a foster mother during one of her many transits. It hadn’t been an act of kindness, but rather a method of more expediently removing Caris from the scene after the garbage bag ripped. She took it to the bed and opened it, and added the underwear. “I’m just going to check on her.”
“How? What if they won’t let you see her?”
Caris shrugged. “I’ll figure something out.”
Mandy sighed and stood up from the bed. “I didn’t think I could talk you out of it.” She dug in her pocket and dropped a thick wad of bills on the bed.
Caris froze for a second, before she slowly reached for the money. She thumbed through it before lifting her gaze to Mandy’s. “There’s about five thousand dollars here. Where did it come from?”
She shrugged. “I took out a loan.”
She frowned at her friend. “Who would loan you money? Your credit is worse than mine.”
Mandy’s eyes skittered away, to settle on a picture of Jessica propped on the scarred nightstand. “Mr. Patterson gave me an advance.”
Caris shoved the money back toward her, spilling $100 bills across the bed. “I can’t take this. Return it to him right now.”
Mandy leaned down to push the pile back to Caris. “Take it. Without this, you can’t go after her.”
“I can’t let you take money from that man.” She shuddered, imagining what the loan terms might be. “The price is too high.”
A shadow passed across Mandy’s eyes. “I’ve already arranged to pay the interest, and then some,” she whispered. She met Caris’s eyes. “It doesn’t matter if I return the money. I’ll still have to pay him the rest. It’s stupid not to use it.”
With a deep breath, Caris
gathered the bills and laid them across the foot of the bed. “Why would you do this for me?”
“We’re friends,” Mandy said in a shaky voice. “And Jess needs her mother.”
“I can’t ever repay you for everything—”
“You don’t have to.” Mandy wiped at the tears streaking down her cheeks. “Don’t do anything illegal, huh?”
“I won’t,” Caris promised as she turned back to the dresser, breaking eye contact.
Mandy sniffed. “Yeah, right.” She cleared her throat. “I guess this is goodbye.”
“I’ll be back after I check on Jess, so I can start the process to regain custody.” Her voice broke, and heat suffused her face. She held her breath, wondering if Mandy would call her on the lie.
Instead, her roommate came around the bed to hug her.
Caris returned the embrace. “Thank you for this. If I can do anything at all…”
“Maybe one thing,” Mandy said as she stepped back.
“Name it.”
She wrinkled her nose. “Take a shower.”
The first laugh in weeks passed through Caris’s mouth, taking a tiny bit of tension with it. “Of course.”
Later that afternoon, Caris waved to Mandy from the window of a Greyhound. She thought she saw tears streaming down her friend’s cheeks, but couldn’t be sure because of the tinted window and the tears gathered in her own eyes. As they pulled out of the station, embarking on a two-day drive from Topeka to Corvallis, she hid her face in her hands, hiding her tears from the middle-aged man beside her. She cried from mingled sadness and optimism, knowing she would soon see her baby again, but had probably just seen Mandy and her home for the last time.
“Mom?” Dom tried to reach the diaper as Jessica kicked away, finally grasping it, and narrowly averting her head dive off the changing table at the same time.
Elena shuffled into the nursery. “Yes?”
“Were you able to line up an interview with another nanny?”
She sighed. “I called around, but reputation has preceded this job. I found one agency who had a nanny they were confident could cope with Jessie’s quirks.”
He breathed a sigh of relief as he placed the diaper under her bottom and fastened the tabs. “This one has to work. I can’t keep staying home from work, and you know what a disaster it was the day I tried to take Jessie into the office with me.”
Elena’s lips quirked. “I have heard the horror stories.”
Dom shook his head as he lifted a contentedly cooing Jessica into his arms. She grabbed onto the hair sprouting from his chin, tugging vigorously. “Ouch.” He pulled her hand away from the beard he kept meaning to shave off and set her on a large quilt covering a corner of the converted guest room. Elena had managed to produce a first-class nursery in a matter of hours, just two days after Jessica became the newest resident of M & M. “When will the girl arrive?”
“They said a couple of days. Something about her finishing her latest assignment first.” Elena frowned. “She specializes in difficult cases.”
Dom frowned. “Difficult cases?”
“Recalcitrant children, special-needs, and behavioral problems. This woman—Ms. Sherry—apparently has a way with these children. She smoothes the way for more permanent caretakers to step in.”
Dom’s brows furrowed together. “Jessica is not difficult. She’s just had a hard time adjusting.”
Elena patted his arm. “Of course, dear. I’m sure Ms. Sherry will sort things out.”
“She has to,” he said under his breath. If a permanent nanny couldn’t be found for Jessica, he would have to take a leave of absence from McNeil Worldwide—and he would be damned if he allowed Brendan to sneak his way into the CEO position. Sometimes, in his more paranoid, less rested moments, he wondered if Jessica was his brother’s secret weapon for destroying Dom’s authority. Even if that was the case, he couldn’t muster the energy to care. Mainly because energy was a thing of the past—from before the time of midnight feedings, all-night walk-a-thons, and three A.M. colic—but also because Jessica had filled a place in him he hadn’t known was empty. If she was a tool of his downfall, he would happily surrender.
Caris tried to be interested in the scenery as they passed through several states, where the plains gently yielded to ever-increasing hills, before turning to mountains. She was sure nature at its best was a grand site, but had no energy or true will to focus on it. Her only thoughts centered on getting to Jessica and taking her from the McNeil family. This time, they wouldn’t find the baby or her.
Two days after beginning the trip, at close to the same time in the afternoon as when she had left Topeka, they pulled into a small, one-story bus station in the college town of Corvallis, Oregon. She followed the procession off the bus and walked over to a small island of brownish-green grass that was home to a stinted Douglas fir. It was too fragile to lean against, so she settled for standing by it as she breathed in the fresh air. After being confined on the bus for two days, with minimal stops and one transfer, it felt wonderful to stand in the weak sunshine. Small drifts of snow lined the edges of the parking lot, now faded to a dirty brown shade except for the occasional glimpse of pristine white. A mist of rain fell from the sky, but she barely noticed as the drops clung to her brown hair.
After a moment, Caris returned to the bus to retrieve her battered case from the compartment under the bus. The driver, an African American man with a kindly smile, eyed it before passing it over. “You must be a traveler.”
She shrugged. “In my younger days, but not so much now.” Once she had thanked the driver, Caris entered the terminal, noting the way her stomach rumbled. She grabbed a sandwich from a bank of machines and took a seat in one of the long rows of chairs. She had barely taken a bite when someone sat beside her. She looked up to find a young man looking at her. He wore a hopeful smile. She stared at him without a word, hoping her cold reception would get him moving along. She hid a grimace when he spoke.
“Are you new in town? I’ll bet you’re a new student at OSU.”
She lifted a brow. “OSU?” She took another bite of the dry egg salad and stale wheat bread.
“Oregon State University.”
“No.” She let the abrupt word be her entire answer. Caris dug out the well-thumbed map of Oregon she had picked up at a bus station in Wyoming, pretending he wasn’t still sitting beside her.
“You looking for something?”
She sighed. “The M & M ranch. Have you heard of it?”
His eyes widened. “Sure. The McNeil family owns it. It’s about ten miles out of town.”
She eyed him more closely, noticing he wore a university sweatshirt, ball cap turned backwards, and OSU sweatpants. “Are you a student at OSU?”
He nodded vigorously and pointed to the emblem on his sweatshirt. “I’m a freshman.”
His enthusiasm was contagious, and Caris grinned at him. “Do you normally hang out at the bus station?”
He shook his head. “My girlfriend just went home. I dropped her off.”
She nodded, but didn’t continue the conversation about his girlfriend. Instead, she asked casually, “Do you know exactly where M & M is?”
“Sure. You can’t miss it. Take the road straight through town, and then follow it until you see a huge sign that says M & M Ranch.” He frowned. “Why are you going out there?”
“Business.” Caris folded the map and stuffed it back in her pocket. “Thanks for your help.”
“Uh, sure. Listen, if you aren’t—”
“Is there a taxi in town?”
He lost his hopeful expression, and his voice was less friendly. “Several. I think I saw a couple from Valley Taxi in the lot.”
Caris took her case and hurried from the station, pausing only to drop the remains of the sandwich in a trash receptacle as she pushed through the sliding door. She scanned the lot and saw one car at the back of the lot with Valley Taxi across the hood. The driver seemed to be pulling away, and she ran acro
ss the lot, causing the bag to smack against her leg with each step. As she reached the taxi, it turned toward the street. Caris dropped the case to wave her arms, and the taxi drew to a halt.
The driver’s side window rolled down, and an older man with heavy jowls and sparse, gray hair stuck his head out. “You need a ride?”
“Yes.”
“Hop in.”
She lifted her case before walking around the back of the cab to get in on the passenger side. Once she was settled in the Cavalier and had her seat belt fastened, she said, “I need to buy a camera, and then I want to go to the M & M Ranch.”
“Where do you want to get the camera?”
“Is there a pawn shop nearby?”
He nodded. “Jenny’s Pawn is just up Fourth.”
She nodded, and he turned a left onto the street. She leaned against the seat, trying to catch her breath. She wasn’t breathless from jogging across the lot, but rather from the thought of holding her baby within the hour. She only hoped there would be an opening of some kind to get Jessica out of the McNeil home today. She didn’t know how much longer she could stand being separated from her baby.
The driver pulled into the lot of a small brick building. Caris got out of the car, clutching the wallet in her pocket as she entered the dim interior. She scanned the interior while waiting for the only visible clerk to finish with a payday loan for the person in line ahead of her. Bars lined the windows, and a movable chain gate rested on one side of the door. Merchandise was stacked precariously throughout the store, seeming without much order.
Once the young woman—looking as desperate as Caris felt—walked past her, she moved to the counter. The clerk was a big woman who jiggled when she moved. A blue sweatshirt, embroidered with the name Jenny, stretched inadequately across her bulk. Iron-gray curls stood up from her head, looking as if they had lost any spring years ago.
“Can I help you?” Her pleasant voice was a contrast to the rest of her.
“I need a professional kind of camera.”