Whiskey sniffed at the baby, taking a thorough inventory of his person as I struggled to find words.
“Winsical, Zero?” Arkady whispered in my ear. “What is this name? Is it another silly game you play with one of your conquests?”
“It most certainly was not!” I assured him, straightening my suit jacket. Yes, I’m still wearing the suit I wore the day I died—ironically missing the hole in the left breast pocket where I was shot through the heart.
Stevie stared down at the baby—a beautiful one, I might add—then back up at the ceiling. “So, Winsical, what up?” she asked, planting her hands on her hips and tapping her bear slipper.
My sigh was ragged, my throat as tight as when I was held captive by Albanian insurgents with a rope around my neck. “I have no explanation, Stephania.”
Or should I say, I had none I could offer without sounding like a blooming arse.
“Well, Baby Daddy, it looks like you’ve got some explaining to do. Like who, in all your Secret Agent Man travels, called you Winsical? Let’s start there,” she said, leaning down in front of the baby and giving him her finger, which he latched onto and drove into his gummy mouth.
I didn’t like the hard, cynical edge to my usually dulcet-toned Stevie’s words. Not one bit. Swallowing, I saw Arkady watching me as I struggled past the boa constrictor lodged quite suddenly in my throat.
He put the back of his beefy hand over his mouth to keep his snickering mostly silent.
“Winsical? Your thoughts would be awesome sauce right now.”
Clearing my throat, I took a breath of air then exhaled. “Her name was Inga Von Krause-Nurnberger, and she often made up ridiculous names for me. Winsical being one of many. We did it to pass the time. A play on words, of sorts. I called her Inga the Stinga because of her stingingly sharp wit.”
Stevie rose from her haunches and waited. She didn’t even snicker.
The silence was deafening—meaning, that wasn’t a good enough explanation.
“Getting dizzy up here, dudes!” Belfry cried out, flapping his tiny wings as he circled again. “I can only play bat mobile for so long before I black out!”
Stevie didn’t speak a word as she grabbed the handle of the carrier and took it into the parlor, where she set it on the live-edge coffee table I’d talked her into purchasing.
Truly a beautiful piece, by the way. Totally worth every penny paid. Though I’d guess furniture is the least of concerns at this point.
The baby reached his arms upward, his chubby fists waving in the air. His eyes, a deep chocolate so like Inga’s, twinkled under the dim recessed light, and my heart shifted for the little lad. He truly was quite the looker.
Stevie sat in front of him and reached out a hand, and he latched on immediately, bringing her finger back to his gummy mouth with a coo of excitement.
Whiskey immediately positioned himself beside the table, his eyes darting protectively to the small child.
And the silence continued.
Until Stevie picked up the letter, a simple enough note on yellow legal paper. Squinting at it, she sighed.
I stared down at the paper she held. “What else does is say, Stephania?”
She pressed it to her chest so I couldn’t finish reading. “You know, Winsical, you don’t seem to have much to say. Why is that, International Man of Mystery? Is this another secret you’re going to keep from me?”
Secrets. There were many between us. Including the biggest of all. Where I’d hidden my Aston Martin.
“And I don’t mean the secret about where you’ve been hiding your silly sport’s car,” she said as though she’d read my thoughts. She looked to the baby then, smiling down at him, and cooed, “Tell Daddy he knows that’s not what I mean. Go on, sweet boy. Tell him.”
The baby responded by bouncing in his seat in excitement.
Stevie looked to the ceiling. “See? Even the baby knows you know that’s not what I mean.”
I fought the roll of my eyes. A habit I’ve adopted from Stevie when irritated, which I can’t seem to shake no matter how hard I try. I know which secrets she means. As a for instance, she wants to know how I know Miranda, my ex-lover and fellow traitorous spy, is the woman who murdered me.
I’m not quite ready to explain the day I died, or how my passing came to be. The betrayal is deep—so deep, I’m not up to vocalizing the words just yet. But I know what I saw. I was there, after all.
“Then I don’t know what you mean, Stephania.”
“Come now, Zero, even I, simple-minded farm boy, know what she means,” Arkady chided.
More silence ensued, but for the whir of Belfry’s wings and the baby’s soft noises of joy as he gnawed on the tip of Stevie’s finger.
“Okay, if you won’t give it up. If you want to play dumb and obtuse, I’ll say it. You have a baby, Win. This note says, and I repeat: You. Have. A. Baby! You know, diapers, college funds, formula? So, care to explain why Inga dropped your baby off here? Or better still, care to explain when you put the baby in Inga’s belly? Oh, wait, here’s one for you, and I hate to sound repetitive, but where in the Sam Hill is Inga and why did she drop your baby off here?”
I bit my tongue before I spoke, and avoided Arkady’s prying eyes as I did.
As I formulated my answers to Stevie’s questions, the baby saved me—momentarily, I’m certain—from having to answer when he made the most adorably pouty face just before he began to howl.
I tell you, he went from zero to a million in two point two seconds flat.
Stevie popped open the strap keeping the boy in place, scooped her hands under his chubby body as though she’d been doing it all her life, and hauled him to her shoulder, the note from Inga still pressed to her chest.
I’d really like to see what exactly the rest of that note says.
As she began to bounce and pace with him across our area rug, Whiskey hot on her heels, she looked up at the ceiling once more. “Win? Answer the question. How did this baby come to be?”
“Surely Dita explained. Of all people, I’d have expected Dita to explain how a baby comes to be.”
Dita being Stevie’s very flirtatious mother with a trail of discarded men lining her life’s path. However, Dita, upon seeing the damage she’d done to Stevie’s childhood, had turned over a new leaf as of late.
And very well, I admit it. Bad timing for a joke, but levity is in order, don’t you think?
The baby began to buck, his tiny legs thrusting up and down as he howled louder, his round cheeks becoming redder while Stevie grew angrier. “Not funny, Spy Guy. Now, unless you want a conscious uncoupling here, tell me what the heck’s going on and tell me fast, or it’s curtains for you!”
“Think about the timeline, Stephania—”
“How can I think about anything with this poor child screaming?” she said through clenched teeth.
Oh, bloody hell. The clenched teeth, a sure sign we were headed for a row. A loud one, if I didn’t play my cards right.
“He needs to eat and be changed, you bunch of rejects,” Belfry panted as he buzzed his way to Stevie’s shoulder and collapsed against her neck.
Stevie peered into the carrier, rooting about until she let out a ragged sigh. “There’s a bottle in here. Thank Pete, there’s a bottle. Oh, and a pacifier! Score! Look, buddy,” she whispered against the screaming child’s forehead. “Mommy left you a midnight snack. Belfry, to the kitchen, so we can heat this up for him. You up there? Get your butt in the kitchen, too. You’ve got some mansplaining to do, and if you don’t do it, I’m going to give all your money to Mr. Piscatello so he can travel the globe, hunting down a better-equipped medium than you to locate his pig at the Rainbow Bridge!”
Stevie marched into the kitchen, the baby in one arm, yowling for all he was worth, the carrier in another. She dropped the carrier on our kitchen island and turned to the microwave, shoved the bottle inside and punched some numbers in.
“Hang tight, handsome. Auntie Stevie’s hooking
you up. Now, let’s see if Mommy left you diapers, because if she didn’t, we’re in deep schlashizzle, pal,” she murmured, foraging through the carrier until she’d pulled out the baby’s blanket. “Nothing. No diapers. Sweet Fancy Moses, where are we going to get diapers at this hour?”
When the microwave dinged, she pulled the bottle out, shook it, tested it on her wrist, leaned the baby back in her arm and coaxed the bottle into his mouth until he suckled the nipple. All while we watched with rapt attention.
The little chap shuddered as he gulped the milk, sighing in relief, while Stevie smiled down at him and whispered words I couldn’t hear, swaying back and forth in a rhythmic motion.
Something rather odd happened in my stomach at that moment—something warm and unfamiliar. But I chose to ignore that feeling. Mostly due to the fact that I didn’t understand it or wish to address it in front of Arkady.
Clearing my throat, I thought it best to compliment her in order to ease her back into our conversation on the child’s parentage. “You’re quite good at this, Stevie. You’re to be applauded for your skills.”
“Shut it, Ghost, and cough it up. What do you mean by think of the timeline?”
“Well, I died about a month and a half before I met you. Had I, even in my last month of life…ahem…entertained Inga, she’d spend nine months in gestation, correct? Putting her in the month of September when giving birth. That means this child would be at least—”
“Nine to ten months old, Winsical,” she responded—again with clenched teeth.
“Bah! He bloody well is not that big. Next, you’ll be telling me he’s renting his own apartment and paying his own utilities, Stephania! He’s too small. Look at the size of his feet, for heaven’s sake. He’s freshly from the womb! Aren’t they walking and talking at nine months old?” I shook my head. “It’s impossible for me to be his father.”
“Aw, Winterbutt, you really didn’t have a life besides spying, did you?” Belfry admonished. “Haven’t you ever paid attention to a newborn baby, mate? Have you seen the size of them?”
I straightened, faltering at Bel’s question. I guess I hadn’t paid very close attention to babies in general. Either they were walking or they weren’t. “I don’t suppose I’ve ever paid a great deal of attention…”
Bel giggled his tiny chirp. “Then let me explain. Sure, some baby’s walk early, but nine or ten months is pretty early on the developmental scale even for an overachiever. He won’t be walking for another couple of months, maybe even three or four.”
I blanched. I know I did, because I saw Arkady cluck his tongue and shake his head. I mouthed the words “Help me” to him, but he shook his finger and grinned.
“Thus, if we do the math, Baby Daddy, you could absolutely be this little one’s father. Now, I can’t say for sure he doesn’t look like his mother, but I can say he has some of your features. The beautiful shape of his brown eyes, to name one.”
“You think the shape of my eyes is beautiful?”
Her pretty lips, plump and the color of strawberries, pinched into a thin line. “No, I think his are beautiful. I think yours are lying. Listen, Winsical. It’s not a huge deal if you were catting about before you died. You have been known to chase a skirt or two in the afterlife, why would that have been any different when you were here on Earth? The problem here is this: Why would Inga drop her baby off to you? How did she find out you have anything to do with me and this address? Doesn’t she know you’re dead? And the biggest question of all—where is Inga?”
“I am not this child’s father, Stephania!”
“I don’t care if the Pope is his father. We need to know what happened to Inga and what inspired her to put this baby in your care!”
Fair enough. I had to set aside my personal feelings and look at this from a different perspective. But I drew a blank. “I don’t know why she did this.”
As the baby pushed the bottle from his mouth after having totally drained it, she launched him up on her shoulder like the pro I didn’t know she was and began to pat his back. “Well, I’ll tell you what—you think, Win. Think hard, because we have a baby—rather, I have a baby—and I don’t know what to do with him. If I call Sandwich or Dana, they’ll take him from me and put him into foster care, because I can’t exactly tell them he’s my ghost friend’s child and they have nothing to worry about because I got this, now can I? And I’m not going to let them put him in foster care. No can do. Have you watched 20/20? Some of those foster homes are nightmares, and no orphaned baby on my watch is going to lie in a crib for twenty hours a day while some hateful woman collects paychecks to ignore him! Understood?”
“Not all foster homes are bad, Boss,” Belfry interjected. “There are some loving homes out there.”
Stevie narrowed her eyes, they’re fierce glow shining in our dim kitchen. “I know that, Bel. But I also know there are some bad ones, too. So we should take a chance this child’s foster home will be a good one—safe? You wanna roll the dice with his little life? You forget, in my former life, I was a 9-1-1 operator in Texas. Do you remember the call from that one woman who claimed she didn’t know how the baby—a two-month-old baby—got locked in that hot car while she was having her nails done? Do you remember how that sweet child’s life teetered in the balance for three days before he finally rallied? Do you?”
Belfry snuggled against Stevie’s neck, his tiny white head butting against her ear. “I do, Boss. I’m sorry. Thank gravy he ended up adopted.”
“No foster homes. Period. Now, let’s go find some hand towels and we’ll MacGyver some diapers until morning, when we can buy him some.”
With that, she took the baby, the pacifier, that bloody note, and her big, big heart out of the kitchen and up the stairs to MacGyver some diapers.
Naturally, Whiskey trotted behind her, faithful as ever.
Then more silence ensued until Arkady said, “You step in big pile of hot steaming bull pucky, eh, Zero?”
Straightening my shoulders, I looked him directly in the eye. “I most certainly have not, Arkady.”
“Then why you no tell my little mango how you know for sure this baby is not yours?”
Because I know, from all her joking and teasing about my alleged skirt chasing, she’s never going to believe me. Inga and I never had a tryst. She was the daughter of an infamous arms dealer, caught up in his web of deceit, married to an evil man she despised, who I, on occasion, advised when I was in deep cover with her father’s ring of smugglers. But as I said, due to my largely over-exaggerated past, Stevie’s never going to believe I didn’t have a dalliance with Inga.
It’s almost safer to let her think I’m a skirt chaser than to confess my true feelings. Yet, in my bid to hide my feelings, to keep Stevie pursuing her own life free of our unorthodox entanglements due to my restrictions, I’m sabotaging the very thing I wish for most.
Her.
Chapter 3
“Look!” Stevie grinned from where she sat on her bed, holding the baby up in the air, his chubby legs making that pumping action he seemed to favor when he was excited. “Don’t either one of you ever tell me I have too much costume jewelry again, because if not for all of these cheap broaches, we’d have no way to keep Baby-Spy’s drawers up.”
She smiled adoringly as he laughed down at her, his stout body encased in some sort of toga/diaper-like outfit made of the soft blue hand towels from her bathroom and secured with five or six broaches in strategic places.
“Well done, malutka! You were born to nurture,” Arkady praised, making me once more roll my eyes.
“Stop, old chap,” I hissed in my aggravation, knowing full well Arkady was, as you American’s say, sucking up. “You’re just buttering her up like a Christmas goose to stay on her good side. It’s unseemly, friend. Not to mention transparent.”
He chuckled, slapping me on the back in his good-natured way. “Hah! You should do like Arkady Bagrov and make with the butter for Christmas. It is sweeter.”
; “What are you two giggling about like schoolgirls up there?” Stevie asked, cuddling the baby to her breast as his eyes began to slide closed. Whiskey hopped up on the bed and planted himself right beside her, watching the baby intently as though someone had instructed he do such.
“We’re hardly giggling, Dove.” Believe me. Nary a chuckle escaped my lips.
She set the baby down on his blue blanket, tucking it under his chin while she rubbed his downy cheek and Whiskey pressed his enormous head to the baby’s feet as though guarding him. “So have you remembered anything about Inga?”
Of course, it was time to come clean, for all the good I thought it would do me. “That child is not mine, Stephania. As beautiful as he is.”
Her strawberry lips made a thin, distrustful line. “Well, I got some news for you, she thinks he is. Why would she think that, Spy Guy?”
“I’ve racked my brain trying to understand why she’d label me his father when she absolutely knows I’m not. I don’t understand the purpose here.”
“Maybe she thinks you are the father…”
“There is no way she’d think that. Positively none.”
“And why is that?”
“Because when we met, whilst I was undercover in her father’s organization, she was married.”
There it was, that look of skepticism on Stevie’s beautiful face. I’d come to cringe when she gave me that look, knowing the tales of my exploits were coming back to haunt me.
“Married women have affairs, Win,” she murmured, tucking the baby under the comforter of her bed, then placing the inordinate number of decorative pillows she possesses up against him to keep him in place.
It’s infuriating that she can’t see my arrogant eyebrow rise in…well, arrogance.
“They do, indeed. This man does not, or did not, have affairs with married women.” Not knowingly anyway. There was that countess in Slovenia… Nevertheless, I adhere to a strict code among men, and I do not dabble in someone else’s schoolyard.
Stevie slid off the bed on silent feet and moved to the puffy armchair she favored when reading, crossing her legs in her favorite yoga pose. “You sound insulted that I even suggested it, Win. But I’m not sure why. I mean, you’ve told me about countless female escapades, haven’t you? Why wouldn’t I consider the possibility this child is yours?”
Ain't Love a Witch? (Witchless in Seattle Mysteries Book 6) Page 3