The Boss and the Baby

by Leigh Michaels

  “No trouble at all. I’ll accept applause later for my role in keeping her away from the hospital.” Megan reached across the narrow bed to touch Molly’s arm. “Mother means well, you know.”

  “If you tell me she’s just eager to help, I will bite you.”

  Megan frowned. “I’m not defending her, you understand, just explaining. But I’m surprised I have to, Molly. With the way she was raised, of course she does whatever she has to in order to save face, to appear as good as the rest of the crowd. She was tormented by other kids all through her childhood, you know, because she didn’t fit in. She didn’t speak properly because her parents didn’t know how, and her clothes weren’t just out of fashion, they were patched and faded and all the wrong size. She didn’t own a winter coat till she went to work and earned it.”

  Molly’s eyes were wide.

  “She scrabbled herself up from something so far below poverty there isn’t even a word to describe it. She remade herself. Did you know her name was Alice originally? But the abuse of those early years left scars. She can’t stand the thought that someone might be pointing at her, criticizing her, making fun of her—because she lived with cruelty for too many years to forget it. I thought surely you’d understand how inadequate she feels, Molly. You’re the brains in this outfit, not me.”

  “She’s never told me any of that! I think you’re wrong that I’m the brains—but you’re certainly the favorite.”

  Megan shrugged. “If so, it’s because I went along. I was a good girl. I complied. And I fulfilled her dreams—acquiring the wealthy husband, the blue-blooded relatives, the perfect house. And becoming the social leader that even the social leaders look up to.” Her voice was full of irony.

  “I knew those things were important to her,” Molly said softly. “I didn’t know why. No wonder, when I announced that I was pregnant and there was no chance I’d marry the father of my baby, she went up in smoke.”

  “And she told a whole lot of very silly stories that I’m sure she regrets. But now, of course, to admit what she’s done would set off the old cycle again, make her the focus of criticism and gossip. So she’s stuck between wanting to preserve her image and wanting to make everything right with you again.” Her gaze rested thoughtfully on Bailey. “She doesn’t know how to bridge that gap, Molly. She’s afraid to get too attached to either of you. Afraid you’ll leave again.”

  “She seems to be doing her best to drive me away.” Molly shook her head. “Between the advice and the criticism—”

  “Probably that’s exactly what she’s doing. Not on purpose, of course.” Megan hesitated, then said more softly, “I think I can understand how she feels, Molly. I had time to think tonight, too, when Bailey was missing. I realized what I was giving up by not getting to know her.” There was pain in her voice. “And I faced up to why I’ve been so distant and so rude.”

  Molly held her breath, afraid that the slightest sound would break the mood.

  “I was jealous of you because you had what I wanted—a healthy baby. And I didn’t want to get close to Bailey because it hurts too much to be reminded of the child I lost.”

  Molly’s chest felt like a boa constrictor had seized her. “I didn’t know. I’m sorry, Meg. There’s so much I didn’t know.”

  “Don’t blame yourself. No one knew at the time. I miscarried so early in the pregnancy that we hadn’t even told Mother and Dad about the baby.”

  Molly remembered something her father had said about Megan not wanting to have children. It would have been a horribly insensitive remark if he knew what had happened. So obviously he didn’t know.

  But it was equally apparent that Luke did. No wonder he’d sent Megan upstairs to sit with Warren instead of out in the cold to search! He’d wanted to protect her in this second possibly delicate pregnancy.

  And no wonder Megan had been of two minds about being pregnant—pleased about the baby, frightened of the possibility of another miscarriage.

  “And then, afterward, Rand didn’t want to tell anybody what had happened,” Megan went on. “He said they’d just ask nosy questions and offer awkward sympathy. And there’d soon be another pregnancy, anyway, so there was no sense in talking about the one that had gone wrong.”

  Molly had her own opinions about that, but she decided it would be prudent to keep them to herself just now.

  “Only there wasn’t. It’s been more than two years.”

  “But you have another chance,” Molly said. “And this time will be different. Lots of women miscarry for all sorts of reasons. It doesn’t mean you will again.”

  She would do anything in her power to be able to wipe the haunted look from Megan’s eyes. But Molly knew only one thing would accomplish that—holding her baby in her arms.

  And Megan would have the additional joy of having a loving husband, a happy father, at her side in that moment.

  Bailey stirred and opened her eyes and cried out, confused by the unfamiliar surroundings, and Molly scooped her up.

  It’s you and me, honey, she thought as she held her daughter. That’s all there’s going to be. And that’s all we need.

  When her head finally touched her own pillow, Molly dropped like a rock into sleep. She woke knowing it was late and heard Bailey’s cheerful chatter coming from the kitchen. She wrapped herself in a bathrobe and followed the sound.

  Bailey was daintily nibbling a doughnut and in the process showering powdered sugar over table, chair, floor and pajamas. Another doughnut lay on her plate awaiting attention. A mug full of hot chocolate, with a marshmallow on top, stood at her elbow.

  Molly eyed the breakfast and raised an eyebrow at Alix, who took a deep breath. “I’m just so glad... If she’d wanted caviar for breakfast I’d have gotten it for her.” There was a trace of defiance in her tone.

  “Gramma was nice to give me doughnuts,” Bailey added. Her voice was thick with powdered sugar.

  So we have a new alliance forming, Molly thought. But that was as it should be. A grandparent and a grandchild teaming up against the generation in the middle could be healthy once in a while.

  Alix’s gaze wavered, and that small sign of uncertainty tugged at Molly. Maybe Megan was right, she thought. Her mother was trying, but didn’t know how to break the ice.

  Molly reached into the doughnut box. “Oh, why not? Everybody needs to be hyperactive once in a while, and I’ll need all the energy I can muster to work today. Put another spoonful of sugar in your coffee, Mom, and join us.”

  Alix sat down, her spine straight and her body stiff. “Surely you’re not taking Bailey to Oakwood today?”

  “Why not? She’ll have to learn the rules, so why not do it while the memories are still strong? Besides, the longer you just think about things the worse they get.”

  That philosophy, she thought, applied to her every bit as well as it did to Bailey. She couldn’t avoid Luke, so her best move was to face him as soon as possible, act just as she normally would and wait to see how he intended to approach the problem.

  Alix was studying Bailey’s face. The child was intent on her hot chocolate, repeatedly submerging the marshmallow in an effort to melt it. “I expect you’re right.”

  Molly dropped her doughnut.

  “And I suppose the less everybody makes of this incident,” Alix said thoughtfully, “the more likely she is to be all right and not turn into a spoiled brat.”

  “Precisely.” Molly could hardly get the word out.

  “In other words,” Alix said, “no more doughnuts for breakfast, Bailey.”

  Molly hadn’t recovered from the shock of having her mother agree with her by the time Watkins opened Oakwood’s front door for them. She’d never seen such a sunny look as the one he fixed on Bailey or seen a dog go into ecstasy as Lucky did when she spotted her playmate. Bailey, calmly taking the homage as her due, peeled off her jacket, dropped it in the precise center of the floor and held out her arm for Watkins to inspect the faint mark—already starting to bruise—wh
ere the intravenous needle had been.

  Upstairs in the makeshift office, Warren listened patiently to Bailey’s fractured account of her hospital experience. And when she went off with Mrs. Ekberg to be delivered to the kitchen, he leaned back in his chair with a sigh and said, “I’m so thankful that she’s safe.”

  But that was all. So, Molly thought, whatever Luke might have told his father about the episode, he hadn’t dropped the biggest bombshell.

  But why should she have expected any other result? She should have known he’d react this way—with cynicism and disbelief.

  In fact, she admitted, she had known it. That was why she’d sworn, long before Bailey was born, never to tell him. Only shock had made her break her vow of silence last night, with results she could have—should have—predicted. He was going to take her at her word and convince himself that the whole thing had been a nightmare woven in her overwrought mind.

  At mid-afternoon, after the third time she’d had to ask Warren to repeat himself, he pointed across the room at the out-of-place hospital bed and said sternly, “It’s your nap time, young woman.”

  Molly was too strung out to argue even if she could have mustered a logical line of reasoning. As she collapsed on the bed, she heard Warren mutter in satisfaction, “And Mrs. Ekberg wanted me to send this back to the attic. Ha!”

  He was nowhere to be seen when she woke, and the room was dim. Molly stretched and sat up. The day had been a complete loss, she thought. She might as well get Bailey and go home.

  She found Mrs. Ekberg dusting in the drawing room. “I’m going to call it a day,” Molly said. “Where’s Bailey?”

  The housekeeper’s duster paused. “She’s not here.”

  Dread gnawed at Molly’s stomach.

  “Mr. Luke took her with him,” Mrs. Ekberg said. “I assumed he’d told you because he went upstairs before he left, and when he came down he just announced that they were going out.”

  Molly raised her voice. “And did he happen to announce where he was going, or when he’d be back?”

  From the hallway, Luke said, “As a matter of fact, I didn’t.”

  Bailey bounded across the hallway with Lucky at her heels. “Look, Mommy! Luke made me a new badge! It’s ever so much better than the one I lost!”

  “It’s lovely, dear. Would you go out to the kitchen for a minute with Mrs. Ekberg, please?”

  They stood in silence till the childish voice and the click of the dog’s claws were muffled by the kitchen door.

  “That’s quite the air of authority you have,” Luke said, “dismissing not only the child but the staff. I didn’t realize you’d been given free rein to issue orders around here.”

  Molly ignored him. “I’d like an explanation.”

  “Of what? When I thought about it, I realized you were right—the badge wasn’t really the problem. So I took her down to the plant to make a new one. End of story.”

  “I’d decided that was to be one of the consequences of her disobedience yesterday. It was Bailey’s doing that she lost her badge, and she wasn’t going to get a new one for a long while.”

  “And I happen to think having a new one might lessen the chances that she’ll wander off toward the lake again looking for the one she lost. Do you want to make a federal case of it?”

  “You had no right, Luke—”

  “Oh, but I do.” His voice was low, but there was an edge to it like polished steel. “I have it on the best authority that I’m her father. And that gives me all the rights I choose to take.”

  Molly closed her eyes in pain. She had no one to blame but herself. She had cut the ground from under her own feet with that ill-advised confidence last night.

  “Molly, why didn’t you tell me long ago?” The edge was still in his voice, but it was marginally less threatening.

  She didn’t answer right away. She was remembering the day in his office when she’d seen him for the first time since Megan’s wedding. She had looked at him—elegant, professional, calm, self-assured, without so much as a shadow in his eyes to show that he remembered the night they had reached out to each other. She had looked at the man who was Bailey’s father and she had known that she could stand there in his office and tell him about his daughter and he wouldn’t believe her. So she hadn’t.

  She wet her lips and admitted, “I never intended to tell you at all. Last night was a mistake.”

  “A very big mistake, Molly, from your point of view.”

  “Can’t you see? I was doing my best to be fair!”

  “What about four and a half years ago? Did you give any thought to fairness then? No—you never even gave me a chance to know her. You deliberately kept her away from me. Well, now that I know, I want my daughter, Molly. And I am going to keep her.”

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  LUKE’S words, low and fierce, seemed to bounce off the drawing room walls like billiard balls. I am going to keep her....

  “Closing your eyes and covering up your ears isn’t going to change the situation,” he said. “Stop acting like an ostrich.”

  Molly realized he was right. She was standing in the middle of the room with her hands cupped over her ears as if to shut out what she didn’t want to hear. And not only was that kind of reaction not going to alter the facts, the display of fear was only going to encourage him to renew—maybe even expand—his demands.

  Except, she thought, it was impossible to expand this particular threat. There was nothing larger, nothing worse than taking her daughter away.

  She folded her hands on the back of a Chippendale side chair and tried to regain the ground she’d lost. “You can’t have her,” she said. Her voice shook, and she had to stop and swallow hard. “You can’t take her away from me. You’d have to prove I was an unfit mother—and you can’t do it.”

  “Sure of that, are you? You don’t even have a home of your own.”

  “You don’t, either. Warren told me himself he still owns this house. You’re living on the goodwill of your father just the same way I am right now. The difference is, I’m planning to move out just as soon as I can.”

  “As soon as you can afford it? That’s another interesting point. The matter of your job—”

  “What does that mean?” she asked angrily. “Are you planning to get rid of me just to improve your case? And on what grounds? How are you going to explain to your father that I’ve suddenly become inadequate to do my work?”

  “I’m not planning anything of the sort. But you must admit your new business—with its one client—isn’t going to look terribly promising to a judge.”

  She wasn’t listening. “And as long as we’re on the subject, what about your father, Luke? You haven’t even told him, have you? He has no idea the little girl he was holding on his lap today is his grandchild. Which means that your threat is a pretty empty one.”

  “I should think with the interest you have in keeping your job that you wouldn’t want him to have another shock just now. You were the one who insisted he not even know Bailey was missing—”

  “He’ll have to face the shock sometime, won’t he? Unless, of course, you just forget about this wild idea of yours altogether.”

  “You’d like that, wouldn’t you? Well, you’re not going to get your wish.” Luke turned on his heel. “Just to satisfy you, I’ll go drop the news on him right now. Perhaps you’d like to come along in case he needs soothing. I’m sure you’d be happy to play the angel of mercy.”

  He didn’t wait for an answer before he stalked out of the room.

  In the sudden silence, Molly’s hands clenched on the back of the chair as if she was trying to squeeze it into pieces. Once again, she thought, he had turned things against her—though this time, she admitted, she’d handed him the opportunity on a platter. She’d incited him. And if, when Warren heard this announcement, he had another relapse, it would be as much her fault as Luke’s.

  Luke tapped once at the door of the temporary office next to Warren’s bedroom and w
ent in. The lights were off and the room was silent.

  He stood there for a moment, letting his eyes adjust to the dimness. Despite the incongruous furnishings and the passage of years, the sitting room was still permeated with his mother’s presence, and gradually, under the influence of that gentle atmosphere, he felt his anger seep away.

  It hadn’t truly been anger, anyway, he admitted. Yes, he’d been furious with Molly, but mostly he’d been apprehensive about Warren. He wasn’t afraid of how his father would react, exactly. Luke was a grown man, and he was taking full responsibility for his actions. Warren couldn’t ask any more than that.

  But he dreaded seeing the hurt in Warren’s eyes and knowing that his carelessness had caused that pain. And so, without even understanding why, he had almost gone to his father in defiance, with something like adolescent bravado—which would have made it all so much harder for Warren.

  “Thanks, Mom,” he said under his breath, and stepped into the hall.

  Through the stair railing he could see Mrs. Ekberg, just closing the front door. Molly didn’t waste any time in getting clear, he thought. Though he didn’t exactly blame her. Warren wasn’t likely to be too pleased with her, either. Luke wondered if she’d considered how that might affect her job.

  Mrs. Ekberg started up the stairs. Luke waited till she reached the top and asked, “Do you happen to know where my father is?”

  “In the sun room, I believe.” She looked past him and clicked her tongue. “I do wish he’d let me straighten up this room.”

  “It doesn’t really matter, does it, Mrs. Ekberg? There are plenty of other rooms.” And putting the old furniture in place won’t bring Mother back, he thought, it’ll only make the memories stronger. Which, he suspected, was why Warren was so stubborn about it. He moved to the top of the stairs.

  “I know. It’s my pride that stings, I suppose, at seeing it look so ratty. It was such a pretty room once, and your mother loved it so.” She pulled the door closed with an air of finality. “Though of course as long as Miss Molly needs it for an office... It’s worth any amount of injury to my pride to have her here. She’s so good for Mr. Warren. He laughs again, you know.”