“Please, wait!” she called over the top of her car. “I’ve got to talk to you!”
She was not Marcia-from-the-Shopette; West was certain he’d never seen this woman before. Straightening, he held either side of the basket as the slim woman hurried up the walk, her high heels clicking until she reached the wide circle of porch light.
“Uh, sorry, I can’t talk,” he said, avoiding the woman’s eyes. “I’ve got laundry to finish.”
“It’s a good thing I’m here, then,” she said, swinging her purse over her arm. “Don’t you know you’re supposed to take the baby out of his romper before you wash it?”
Ah, heck, now he had to look at her. “Are you sure?” He shot her a purposely incredulous look. “The kid made it through the spin cycle okay.”
Pushing back a wispy gold tendril of hair that had strayed from her French twist, the woman rolled her eyes and shook her head. “Please tell me you aren’t West Gallagher.”
“Okay, I won’t tell you that.” Which was as good as admitting he was. Why on earth had he done that? Because the new arrival had on black, open-heeled sandals and nude hose, sophisticated with a hint of sexy? Because he was partial to honey-gold hair and big hazel eyes? Because he liked the black, bodyskimming skirt she wore with that short jacket?
Hell, he was turning into an idiot over a pretty face. He had to start getting out more. “Who might you be, anyway?” West asked.
“Marcia Kinster’s lawyer—Annie Robicheaux,” she said, still looking frustrated. As if to prove it, she threw both hands up into the air, and West focused in on her nails. Shell pink. He loved pink on a female. Her lips were a glossy, almost natural peach—a very kissable color.
He scowled. Everything about this woman suited his tastes to perfection, except that she was a lawyer. It occurred to him that he ought to feel relieved. Here was someone watching out for Marcia’s best interests. She could take Teddy off his hands. But still, she was a lawyer, and that made him hold his tongue for right now as he waited for the bomb to drop. He had no doubt that it would.
It was that kind of an evening.
He was West Gallagher. Annie Robicheaux stared at the tall, broad-shouldered man in front of her. According to Marcia Kinster, her client who had taken his seminar and was her reason for being here, Gallagher was a man with magnetism. Gallagher could mesmerize a crowd, make them remember their hurts, their pasts, and then convince them of how wonderful and powerful they all were despite everything. Gallagher could also make them think they actually had control over their futures. He could energize people with his stories and give them hope.
Her eyebrows rose incredulously. This guy? Impossible. Even though the man in front of her was attractive in a dark, steely eyed sort of way, and dressed in a ritzy shirt and nicely cut slacks, he seemed pretty mortal to her. But maybe that was because, made curious by Marcia Kinster’s raves, she had read his book and had put what Gallagher did for a living on the same level as a hawker of cure-all tonic in the nineteenth century, selling an instant solution to your troubles. Chase your dream, change your life. How absurd.
Marcia had obviously gone off the deep end.
“It was bad enough that my client went to your silly seminar instead of paying my bill,” she said, feeling the beginnings of a good tirade coming onmaybe one of her best. “But what on earth could she have been thinking of when she left her baby with you? Her child? With a dream chaser she doesn’t really know?”
He glared at her wordlessly.
Annie shook her head sadly. Really, where was all his charisma? “I mean, I’ve read your book, and I must say I wasn’t impressed. You seem to be living somewhere outside of reality.”
“Actually, for tonight, I hope you’re right,” West said. “I hope this all turns out to be just one big, bad dream.” He jiggled Teddy, who was beginning to squirm. “If you want a refund on the book, Ms. Robicheaux, I suggest you contact your bookstore. As it is, you’ve caught me in the middle of something important. So if you’ll excuse me—”
“You don’t seem to understand, Mr. Gallagher, so I’ll make it clear,” she said, her peach hps pursing. “I’ve come for the baby. Marcia has obviously made a horrible mistake.”
“You’re telling me,” West said, shifting the weight he was holding. Teddy found his rattle and began shaking it.
“Then you’ll let me take Teddy?” she asked.
“Not on your life.” He squinted his eyes at her. For all he knew, this lady was angry enough about Marcia leaving her baby with a “dream chaser” that she would turn Teddy right over to the foster care system if she got hold of him. “For some reason, I was the one she wrote the note to, authorizing me to take care of Teddy. Apparently, Marcia trusted me, but not anyone else.” And neither should he.
Annie felt terrible. Marcia had called her twice yesterday, and she hadn’t been able to return her calls. If she had and she’d learned what Marcia had been planning to do, she was certain she could have convinced the young woman to put her trust in her, and at the very least, she could have taken Teddy and avoided this whole scene. At best, she could have talked Marcia out of this fiasco.
This was all her fault. “I’m not just anyone. Teddy is my client.”
“You don’t say.” West stared down at the top of the baby’s head, his face serious. “Hey, Teddy, what do you pay your lawyer with—play money?”
“He uses charm and wit,” she said, her lips wrinkling to show her disdain for his humor. “Two items you sorely lack.”
“Yeah, well, it’s easy to be cute when you’re a baby. We older guys have to work at it.” He grinned again.
Oh, good Lord, the man had a dimple. Annie decided it was time to get out of there before she discovered what else Gallagher had that made women like Marcia lose their better sense.
“Look, Marcia must have been hoping I’d come here and take Teddy. If not, why did she leave me these?” Yanking a second piece of paper out of her purse, Annie thrust it and the one she already held toward him. Putting down the basket, he took them, his large hand brushing against her fingers as he did so. A surprised look of mutual awareness lingered between them like fear after a lightning bolt.
She jerked her hand away and added, “I found them both when I got home. One’s the note she left me with your address on it. How would she have gotten that, I wonder?”
“Off the checks I wrote at the Shopette, probably,” West speculated. An argument for using cash if he ever heard one.
She didn’t skip a beat. “There’s also a copy of the letter she wrote you. If I hadn’t been delayed at the office, I would have caught her in time to stop her from this ridiculous whim of hers to make her dream happen—whatever that dream might be.”
“Why is it so ridiculous to want something wonderful to happen in your life?”
For a few seconds Annie stared into Gallagher’s dark eyes. They held a warmth she wasn’t used to seeing in the wealthy clients she’d been getting lately, and for a minute, she was caught in their comforting lock.
“I believe you shouldn’t waste time hoping and planning for things that will never happen,” she said, swallowing a tight throat. “Dreams are a waste of valuable time.”
“I don’t believe that. Dreams are all people really have to live for.”
“Marcia has her baby to live for, Gallagher. She didn’t need to desert Teddy to go chasing rainbows. No dream is more important than a child’s welfare.” Her hazel eyes challenged him.
“I agree wholeheartedly.”
All of a sudden she was winning? She watched Gallagher read the letters she’d just handed him, uncertain she should be thinking in terms of winning and losing where he was concerned—it might be dangerous to assume anything so cut-and-dried about him. But she’d been thinking of her life and work in terms of winning and losing for a long time now, and it was hard to change. Back and forth, all day long, for the three years since she’d become a lawyer, and a few before that. Win—lose. Win a settlem
ent. Lose a suit. Win a new client. Lose your dream.
She shook her head. A man like Gallagher would think in other terms, she knew. Such as dreaming and wishing, and that obstacles were imaginary images not to be conquered, but ignored. Well, she wasn’t letting him ignore her.
Fully aware of the lawyer staring pensively at him, West finished the letters Annie had given him. One was a copy of the same one he had. The other, written on the same stationery in the same jagged handwriting, begged Annie Robicheaux to check on Teddy—just in case West Gallagher wasn’t the paragon of virtue she’d assumed he was.
If Marcia hadn’t been one-hundred percent positive about his character, why had she left Teddy with him? Women, West thought, made everything that should be easy very difficult. “Marcia should have just left her baby with you and not gotten me into this,” he muttered, handing her back the notes and hoisting the basket and the baby back up.
“Exactly my point,” she said.
“So why didn’t she?”
Annie didn’t know, but she could hazard a guess. Marcia Kinster had come to her law office desperate about the poor living conditions in her low-income apartment. Annie had promised to track down Marcia’s absentee landlord and convince him to do needed repairs, but occupied with two cases for a couple of other clients who actually paid money, she hadn’t had a chance to get to it yet. Maybe Marcia thought if she were too busy to handle all her work, then she would be too busy to help her out with Teddy.
And wasn’t that a sad reflection on her? Because she was working hard to get wealthier clients so she could afford what she really wanted in life, she hadn’t been there when Marcia had called yesterday. And being there for people who really needed her was why she’d become a lawyer.
“Whatever Marcia’s reasons,” West said when Annie didn’t answer, “she went and involved me and my conscience. The only person I’m handing that baby over to is a member of its family.”
Annie’s eyes flashed fire. West was attracted by them for a minute, until he remembered that she’d scoffed about following one’s dreams. Deflated, he reminded himself that he didn’t have time in his life for a woman.
But that didn’t mean he couldn’t look.
“Be reasonable, Mr. Gallagher,” Annie said softly. “I’m sure a man as busy as yourself doesn’t have time for a baby. I do.”
Her satiny tone annoyed West. She was as slick as the social workers who, just to shut him up, had kept promising him he would see his brother again soon. He’d had problems trusting people since. He wasn’t about to turn Teddy over to Annie-whether she liked it or not. The powers that be had made Marcia-fromthe-Shopette choose him to take care of her son, and he knew better than to tempt fate by saying no.
“Besides,” Annie pushed when he seemed to be considering what she’d said, “why should you have to take care of a child who was dumped on you?”
“Because I want to,” he said simply. “Aren’t I novel?”
“You certainly are that,” she replied with a sigh. “Men are always such a problem for me.”
From fire to frustration. West had to grin. “So why are you so eager to take on Teddy yourself?” he asked.
She wasn’t about to tell him the real reason, so she gave him the same excuse she was giving herself. “I don’t feel right leaving him here with someone who is nothing more than a modern-day tonic salesman, pushing dreams instead of brown bottles. I’ll bet you even have an infomercial.”
“You have something against free enterprise?”
“You do have an infomercial!”
He didn’t have time to answer. Teddy, who’d been playing with the sleeve of West’s shirt up to that point, began to fuss and hold out his hands to Annie.
The empty feeling that had haunted Annie for years reached out and pulled at her again, but before she could reach for the baby, Gallagher put the basket down and picked Teddy up. Seeing the baby so close and longing to hold him herself frustrated her, so she pushed aside her feelings and resumed her argument—to win.
“Look, no matter why Marcia left Teddy with you,” Annie said, “she abandoned her baby, which means she wasn’t thinking too clearly—especially if she fell for your malarkey about being able to obtain your dreams simply because you want to.”
He actually had the audacity to smile. “You think going after what you dream about is malarkey?” he asked. “Don’t you have any fantasies you’d like to pursue?”
His midnight-blue eyes were just too darned deep, and for a few seconds Annie had a fantasy all right—a fantasy about Gallagher she had no right having in front of an innocent baby. She blinked it away. “I keep myself based in reality.”
“What a shame.” He looked regretful and, with his tousled dark hair and thick eyebrows over deep blue eyes, sexy, all at the same time.
All too aware she was staring, she couldn’t take her eyes off the picture the man made with the baby. Gallagher was tall and broad-shouldered, a big, rugged man, yet he looked perfectly comfortable holding Teddy. Teddy had no complaints, either, sucking on his fist as he leaned his head against Gallagher’s chest. Her heart thumped and she wondered if maybe, just maybe, life was going to go her way for a change.
Stop it, Annie, she told herself. From the publicity she’d read about him, she and Gallagher were like oil and water. He drifted in a dreamworld while she toiled her tail end off in the real one.
“Really, Mr. Gallagher,” she said, tired of arguing. Tired period. She’d had a long day with her clients, and now this. She wanted to get Teddy settled for the night at her place. “I’d hate to have to call in social services to make sure Teddy will be safe, but maybe that’s what I should do.”
“No,” West protested, reaching out to catch her wrist in fingers of steel. Her eyes went frosty as she stared down at his hand. Almost immediately, his grip loosened.
“Listen, can we continue this discussion inside?” he asked. “I think he needs changing. Hang on a minute.” With the baby balanced on his shoulder and secured with one arm, he moved over the basket and grabbed a diaper. “Would you mind toting the basket inside for me?”
“Mind? Mr. Gallagher, I have just begun to fight.” She had absolutely no intention of going anywhere without Teddy, and the sooner she was able to convince him of that, the better.
2
Inside Gallagher’s house, Annie’s heels sank into thick, maroon carpeting as she followed West through the foyer into his living room. Putting the basket where he pointed on the floor at one end of the plush velvet sofa, she sat as West disappeared, diaper in hand and Teddy on his hip. Not for one second had he put the baby down, and it didn’t look like he ever planned to.
“Fine, Gallagher,” she muttered, staring at a glass cabinet containing expensive collector’s cars, and then down at the gold watch on the carved-edge coffee table in front of her. “Trust me not to steal your valuables, but don’t trust me not to steal someone else’s baby.”
How was she going to persuade Gallagher to give her Teddy so she could leave? She’d already played her ace threat—calling social services—and all it had gotten her was a few more minutes to change West’s mind. Courtroom strategy would have her finding and taking advantage of his weak points to get Teddy, but time was working against her. And besides, from what she’d seen of West Gallagher so far, she had to wonder if he had any.
Closing her eyes briefly, Annie took a deep breath. She wasn’t an ogre—not enough of one to call social services, anyway. But if for some reason Marcia didn’t come back, neither she nor the man in the next room had any choice but to call in the authorities. Unlike West, she was a realist.
She hadn’t always been that way. She’d been eighteen when she’d received her guardian’s blessing to marry Jean-Pierre Robicheaux, a Cajun from outside New Orleans who’d swept her off her feet. She’d dreamed of her, Jean, and his three-year-old, motherless daughter, Mariette, being one happy family, with more children to come in the future. An only child, Annie had pla
nned for at least three more of her own. But reality had proven very different from her dreams when Jean-Pierre had romanced his way out of her life and into someone else’s.
As if Jean’s cheating and desertion hadn’t been bad enough, she’d lost Mariette, too. She’d made the mistake of thinking of the little girl as her own child, especially after Mariette had started calling her Mommy. The moment Jean had driven away with his daughter waving goodbye to her, Annie’s heart had broken.
Her throat tightened. It was at that moment her wish to have her own child had taken root deep inside her. Over the years the idea had budded and blossomed into a full-grown desire that she’d tucked away near her heart, where she rarely probed, ready to be felt again when the time was right. To have her own child and be loved like Mariette had loved her again—unconditionally—was her dream.
Annie swallowed the lump in her throat and jumped out of her seat, pacing the room. She was nowhere near having her own child. Working as hard as she had lately to build up her practice, she’d had no time for relationships—and a baby had to have a father. Physically, the only eligible man she’d come across in weeks was Gallagher, and he floated around like a carefree butterfly with all his talk of dreams. She’d dealt with plenty of dreamers in her family; she hardly needed to net herself this one.
Gallagher’s loud groan interrupted Annie’s thoughts. She didn’t exactly know where he was, so she stood where she was in the living room and called, “Having trouble, Gallagher?”
“Nothing I can’t handle,” he yelled. After a brief hesitation he added, “I stuck myself with a pin.”
A pin? “Gallagher, that was a disposable diaper. They don’t need pins.”
“Now you tell me.”
Her eyes narrowed. She thought he might be teasing her, but in case it turned out he wasn’t, she added his lack of knowledge about children to the argument against his keeping Teddy, which she was going to start the second he returned to the room—assuming he was planning to, that was.
The One-Week Baby (Yours Truly) Page 2