Bringing Up Baby

by Charlotte Douglas

  “What do you mean?” Devon asked.

  “The guests will know the wedding’s a fake when it airs on national television.”

  Leona dismissed him with a breezy wave. “Devon’s creative. I’m sure she’ll think of something. As for me, I have to get this contract back to New York.”

  DEVON SUPPED the pale yellow sundress over her head, slid her feet into the sandals Leona had brought and tried to erase Colin’s disapproving expression from her mind. For a few moments while they bathed the baby, she’d felt not only physically close to him, but emotionally attuned, as if some invisible conduit of feelings bound them together. Leona’s arrival with the contract had severed that connection and brought Colin’s censure to the forefront again.

  “Why should I care what the man thinks?” she asked Amanda as she strapped her into the carrier. “Nobody’s holding a gun to his head, and he’ll be well compensated for his trouble.”

  But when Colin met her in the driveway and climbed behind the wheel of his truck, her pulse quickened at the sight of him. She kept her tone businesslike, not wanting him to know he affected her. She’d already proved her incompetence as a parent. Life with Aunt Bessie had left her equally unprepared for a relationship with any man, even one as appealing as Colin O’Reilly.

  They drove the few blocks to her house with only Amanda’s gurgle of laughter to break the silence. When Colin pulled to the curb behind a truck and a large van marked Restoration Services, her house appeared undamaged, except for smears of oily residue above the windows.

  “Once I get my purse and car keys, Amanda and I won’t trouble you any longer,” she said.

  “No trouble.” His flat tone contradicted his words.

  “We’ll take over Leona’s room since she’s checking out today.”

  He jumped from the truck. “Look, we’ve already been through this. My dad wants you to stay with me.”

  She clambered from the truck and confronted him. “But you don’t?”

  He wouldn’t meet her eyes. pucking his hands into the back pockets of his jeans, he turned to survey the house. “Let’s call it a fair exchange. I do your interview, and you humor my father by staying at our house until you can move back into yours.”

  His cool logic annoyed her. As much as she loved Mike, she didn’t believe that living several days in the same house with Colin, who obviously didn’t want her there, was such a hot idea, but they needed the time together to prepare for the interview. “Fine. Now will you watch the baby while I find my purse?”

  He shook his head. “Let me get it. The restorers should have a go at the inside before you see it again.”

  His thoughtfulness mollified her ruffled feelings. “My purse is upstairs on the dresser in my room.”

  Colin headed up the walk, and she nodded to a workman who removed a ladder from the van and carried it into the house. In a few minutes, Colin reappeared with her purse.

  “I wiped it down to kill the smoke odor,” he said.

  “Thanks.” She checked the side pocket for her keys. “Did you ask the restorers about my clothes?”

  He pulled a bandanna from his pocket and wiped soot from the back of his hand. “They’re sorting out what needs to be dry-cleaned. The rest I’ll load in the truck and bring back to the house. You can use our washer and dryer.”

  She nodded and mentally tried to organize the overwhelming number of tasks before her. “I’ll stop at the grocery for diapers and formula and meet you at your place.”

  After a curt nod of acknowledgment, he sprinted back into the house. She reached for her wallet to count her cash, then remembered she’d removed the wallet when she contributed to a solicitor for the high school band the previous morning. Not wanting to make the trip upstairs, she’d shoved the wallet into a drawer of the hall table.

  She removed Amanda from the truck, carried her up the driveway to her Honda, unlocked the car and strapped the carrier into the back seat.

  “This won’t take but a minute, kiddo.”

  She tossed her purse in the front, then dashed up the walk into the house. Gagging at the stench of state smoke, she shifted lumber someone had stacked in front of the hall table and retrieved her wallet. The voices of workmen drifted up the hallway from the kitchen, and the temptation to inspect the damage almost drew her to the back of the house until she remembered the baby alone in the car.

  She sidestepped lumber and debris to reach the front door, then bounded down the steps and across the lawn toward the driveway. Blinking in disbelief, she stopped dead in her tracks.

  Her car—with Amanda in it—was gone.

  Chapter Six

  For those mothers who choose cloth diapers over the environmentally disastrous disposable ones, changing a squirming child without losing diaper pins in the process presents a challenge. A handy solution is a bar of soap on the changing table in which to push the pins until you’re ready for them.

  Amanda Donovan, Bringing Up Baby

  At Devon’s shout, Colin raced through the cluttered hall, leaping over stuffed animals and baby furniture before barreling out the front door.

  The screech of brakes drew his attention to the center of the street, where a speeding car slammed to a halt within inches of Devon’s shapely legs.

  “What’s the matter with you, lady,” the driver yelled. “Are you crazy?”

  Without a word or acknowledging glance, Devon scurried across the pavement into the neighbor’s yard, where the trunk of her Honda rested among the broken branches of an ornamental kumquat tree.

  Colin sprinted down the steps and across the lawn and street to reach the Honda just as Devon removed Amanda from the back seat.

  “What happened?” he asked.

  She jiggled the child stiffly, and Amanda held out her chubby hands to him. “I just left her for a minute to find my wallet—”

  The woman was crazier than he’d thought. “You left her alone in a car with the engine running?”

  “Of course not! I’d just strapped her in the back scat. I didn’t start the car.” Splotches of brilliant red stained her high cheekbones, and her lips tightened with anger.

  He opened the driver’s door and inspected the interior. “The emergency brake isn’t on, and you left the car in neutral. When you slammed the rear door, you must have started it rolling.”

  She glared at him over the baby’s silky curls. “The car’s been sitting in the driveway for two days. Surely if it had been in neutral, it would have rolled before now.” Her eyes widened. “And I didn’t close the door, so how—”

  “Oh, dear.” Devon’s plump little neighbor stood on her doorstep, surveying the damage. “You’re not hurt, are you?”

  Devon shifted Amanda upright against her shoulder. “We’re fine, Mrs. Kaplan, but I’m sorry about your lawn and tree—”

  “Not to worry.” The old lady approached and held out her arms for the baby. “Trees and grass can be easily replaced. What matters is that you’re safe. And who’s this little princess, a niece of yours?”

  Mrs. Kaplan lifted Amanda from Devon’s arms with the ease of experience and ran her finger along the baby’s dimple. Amanda beamed and grabbed at the woman’s glasses.

  Colin seethed with outrage. Devon’s carelessness could have killed the child, her mad dash into the street could have killed her, too, yet the women stood chatting as if nothing of consequence had happened.

  “Amanda’s visiting for a while.” Devon looked up and down the street as if searching for someone. “Mrs. Kaplan, have you noticed any strangers this morning—anyone loitering around my car?”

  With a sigh of disgust, Colin turned away. Why couldn’t Devon admit responsibility for her actions? She had to realize her carelessness placed the baby at constant risk.

  Mrs. Kaplan stopped cooing and making faces at the child long enough to answer. “Strangers? The neighborhood’s been full of them—firemen, police and workmen have been all over your place.”

  “And just a few minute
s ago?” Devon asked.

  The old woman shrugged. “I was talking to my sister on the telephone. I can’t see your house from the kitchen.”

  “I’ll move the car,” Colin said.

  Devon agreed without protest and handed him the keys. He climbed into the car and transferred it from Mrs. Kaplan’s lawn to Devon’s driveway. He waited beside the vehicle while she crossed the street with Amanda in her arms.

  “Don’t start on me,” she warned when she came within speaking distance. ‘I’m not a careless dimwit.”

  Anger and sunlight flashed in her hazel eyes. She could have been killed, and he was suddenly overwhelmed with an awareness of just how much this spunky woman had begun to mean to him. When she straightened her tanned shoulders and glowered at him, he suppressed the urge to kiss the look of disapproval from her mouth.

  Instead, he leaned against the fender and rammed his fists into his pockets. “How do you explain what’s happening? First, a suspicious fire—”

  “I told you,” she interrupted with indignation, “I wasn’t using the cooktop. I haven’t used it in weeks.”

  The woman was in major denial. “I stopped by your place this morning on the way to the hospital and spoke with the arson investigator. He said the burned pot held some type of latex, possibly the kind bottle nipples are made of.”

  Her jaw dropped and she stared at him with an incredulous expression. “Why would anyone cook nipples?”

  “You’re Amanda Donovan. You tell me.”

  She thought for a moment, then her puzzled look cleared. “You’re talking about sterilizing.”

  “Bingo.”

  “But I didn’t. In fact, I didn’t even remember it until you jogged my memory.”

  Her insistence on innocence bothered him. Either she was refusing to take responsibility for her actions, or someone else really had started a fire in her house. “What about the runaway car?”

  “Look—” she straightened from securing Amanda in her car seat “—because my driveway is on an incline, I always leave the car in Park with the emergency brake on. That action is as automatic to me as breathing.”

  He leaned toward her, placing his hands along the roof of the car on either side of her head. He breathed deeply of her jasmine scent and struggled to keep a clear head. “Are you trying to tell me someone else released the brake and put the car in neutral while you were in the house?”

  “That’s exactly what I’m trying to say, but obviously without effect.” She slipped beneath his outstretched arms, adjusting the slender strap of her dress that had slipped over one satiny shoulder, and circled the car to the driver’s side.

  “But why?” He squinted at her in the sunlight. Not a trace of guilt marked her pretty face, unless the apricot glow of her cheeks was an indication of remorse and not the sun’s heat. “It doesn’t make sense.”

  “Which is exactly why all these accidents scare the bejeebies out of me.” She climbed into the car, started the engine and backed into the street without a goodbye.

  He watched the car disappear around the corner. Maybe she was telling the truth, or maybe the truth was that she’d forgotten to remove the pot from the stove and to set the emergency brake. Devon appeared too intelligent, too competent to cause such accidents, but stress could make people forgetful, and instant motherhood had to be stressful.

  She’d either been unbelievably careless or someone was out to harm her and the child. Either way, they’d both need looking after, and between circumstances and his father’s pleas, it looked like he’d been elected.

  With a sigh of resignation, he sauntered back into the house and began removing damaged wood from the cabinets above the stove while he tried unsuccessfully not to think of his responsibilities toward Devon and the baby.

  ERNIE POTTS LEANED on the shelf of the pay phone outside the grocery store that the woman and baby had entered and placed a collect call.

  “Yeah, Operator,” Muriel answered in a nasal whine, “I’ll accept the charges.”

  “Everything’s working out great, sugar,” Ernie said.

  “That’s easy for you to say. You’re having a Florida vacation, while I’m here alone, bored out of my gourd, with nothing to do but watch soaps. When are you coming home?”

  “Soon.” He glanced up as the automatic doors shushed open and an elderly man exited. His quarry was still inside.

  “And you’re bringing the kid?” his wife demanded.

  “Yeah. Things are going even better than I’d planned.” He told her about the fire and runaway car.

  “Jeez, Ern, are you sure you’re not putting the baby in danger?”

  “Nah, she’ll be fine. She’s a cute little thing. You’re gonna like her, sugar.”

  Muriel’s giggle rang in his ear. “And you’re gonna love her trust fund, aren’t ya, sweets?”

  A wave of loneliness washed over him at the sound of her laughter. “Tell you what. Since we’ll be in the money soon anyway, why don’t you catch the bus and join me? You’ll have a Florida vacation, and I can use your help.”

  The doors opened behind him, and the woman came out, pushing a cart filled with groceries and Amanda in the baby seat.

  “Gotta go, sugar. If you can’t reach me when you get in, take a taxi to the motel.”

  He strolled behind the woman, climbed into his car and watched her load groceries in her trunk. When she pulled out of the parking lot, he eased his car behind her and followed.

  WHEN DEVON LIFTED THE LID of the Dutch oven, the succulent aroma of pot roast, carrots and onions permeated the kitchen. Although the idea wasn’t original, Gramma Donovan had often stressed that the best way to a man’s heart was through his stomach.

  “I’m not getting through to his head or his heart,” Devon muttered to Amanda, playing contentedly in the playpen Colin had brought over after the workmen had cleaned it. “And I’m going to need his help not only with this interview but to find out who’s making these crazy things happen.” She replaced the lid and adjusted the heat. “I’ll be out in the garage sorting the laundry, but I’ll leave the door open so you can see and hear me.”

  Amanda giggled and kicked her feet.

  Devon shook her head as she entered the garage. “I’m losing it, talking to a kid who can’t understand a word I say. And now I’m talking to myself. I’ll be stark raving mad before this Davis interview’s over and I find the kid a home.”

  Her nose wrinkled in disgust at the piles of smokesaturated clothes Colin had spread on a vinyl sheet on the garage floor. She had almost finished sorting them when Amanda’s chortling evolved into fullblown rage. Devon scooped up a pile of diapers, flung them into the washer, added detergent and started the wash cycle.

  By the time she reached Amanda, the child’s face glowed with indignation. A diaper check revealed the source of her tantrum. Devon lifted the child and carried her into the guest room.

  Her glance fell longingly on the box of disposable diapers she’d purchased at the grocery store, but remembering the upcoming interview, she decided she needed more practice with the cloth diapers and pins Amanda Donovan advocated, in case an on-camera change was requested.

  She removed the sopping diaper and skewered the pins into the bar of soap Gramma Donovan had suggested as the best method to keep from losing them. Amanda’s mom and dad had evidently followed that advice, judging from the pinpricked bar she’d discovered among Amanda’s things.

  She slipped the dirty diaper into a plastic bag that served as a temporary diaper pail and wiped the wiggling bottom with a damp cloth. Amanda’s wailing ceased, but the child pitched from side to side, making fastening the clean diaper an athletic ordeal.

  “Finally.” Devon secured the first pin and brushed the hair from her eyes. “Just one more and you’re all set, kiddo.”

  Amanda stared at her, wide-eyed, then screwed her face into a knot and pitched a fresh tantrum. Holding the diaper together with one hand, Devon reached for a pin with the other, but it was p
ushed too deeply into the soap and she couldn’t extract it. The bar slipped from her grasp and slid to the floor a few feet away.

  Holding the baby with one hand, she strained to retrieve the soap, but it was beyond her reach.

  “Need some help?”

  She jerked up her head at the sound of Colin’s voice. One elbow propped against the doorjamb, he observed her with raised eyebrows, then strode into the room, scooped up the errant bar and held it out to her.

  Flushing with embarrassment, she yanked the pin free and hastily fastened the diaper.

  “Supper will be ready soon,” she said.

  A muscle twitched in his cheek as if he was trying not to laugh. “I’ll run by the hospital to see Dad and be right back.”

  When he left, Devon clasped the child against her shoulder with weary determination and tried to ignore the high-decibel bellowing in her ear while she prepared a bottle. She returned to the rocker in the guest room and nudged the nipple into the baby’s gaping mouth. Amanda’s uproar ceased abruptly. As she sucked contentedly, her eyelids drooped.

  Moving carefully to prevent awakening the child, Devon carried her back into the kitchen and set her down in the playpen, where she could listen for her while she finished the laundry.

  Moving like a zombie after her night with little sleep, she stumbled into the garage and lifted the lid of the washer. Amanda’s diapers glared bright pink under the fluorescent lights.

  “I don’t need this,” she moaned, tugging the wet, discolored diapers from the washer. At the bottom of the tub lay her best burgundy silk blouse.

  She removed the ruined garment, replaced the colorful diapers and dumped bleach and detergent into the machine. She’d just started the wash cycle again, when a strange odor wafted out from the kitchen. Her pot roast was burning.

  With a strangled cry, she raced back to the kitchen and slid the pot off the burner. When she lifted the lid, she viewed with dismay the roast and vegetables already embedded in a tarry black crust on the bottom.