Found: One Secret Baby (10 page)

“There’s a big pedestrian promenade next to the mall. We can meet at the north end, near Santa Monica Boulevard.”

“I suppose that will do. What time tonight?”

“Not tonight. It’s better if I bring him to meet you tomorrow morning when he won’t be so tired.” And I’ll have more energy to deal with you. “What about nine o’clock?”

“In the morning?” Mrs. Danby gasped. “Let’s say eleven. I need time to prepare myself.”

Rosalie rolled her eyes. “Eleven will be fine.”

“We’ll see you then. Goodbye.”

Before Rosalie could find the breath to ask what “we” meant, the other woman clicked off.

Morgan considered himself lucky he’d been able to convince Lillian not to call a cab for the three-block walk from her hotel to where they were supposed to meet Rosalie and Joey.

Now he’d have to rely on more good luck if he wanted to make Plan B work, after the way he’d botched Plan A.

A moment’s thought would have told him, if there were two things Rosalie didn’t want a man to offer her, money and great sex would head the list. Not that she wasn’t open to great sex, but that’s not what she’d want to hear. Not first, or second. If the old-fashioned phrase “not that kind of woman” ever applied to anyone, it applied to Rosalie Walker.

The problem was, he hadn’t thought at all. He’d reacted in a moment of blind panic and tried any way he could to keep her from walking away.

The last time his whole life seemed to depend on stopping a woman from walking away, he’d refused to kiss his mother goodbye. That hadn’t worked so well, either.

“Is that them?” Lillian asked. “Morgan, I’m shaking.”

She held out a carefully manicured hand that did, indeed, quiver. Real emotion from Lillian. Who would have expected it?

He steeled himself, then followed Lillian’s gaze to the bench where Rosalie sat with Joey in her lap, reading him a book.

She looked as if she hadn’t been sleeping well, but that might have been wishful thinking based on his own recent familiarity with guilt and regret-induced insomnia.

In any case, she was dressed to impress. Somewhere she’d acquired enough knowledge of women like Lillian to find the perfect medium between the lawyer Rosalie and the mother Rosalie. Her dark hair was piled up on her head and she wore pearl earrings that matched the necklace visible at the neckline of her blue silk blouse. Tailored slacks showed off her curves, and pink toes peeked out at him from her low-heeled sandals.

His insides twisted.

As they walked closer, he realized she’d dressed Joey up, too. The kid wore red corduroy pull-up pants instead of his usual jeans, and a woven shirt with matching stripes instead of the usual t-shirt. He’d already wiggled enough to undo one of the buttons across his belly and reveal a slash of pink baby flesh.

When Rosalie saw them, her Joey-smile faded, replaced by something like panic. She recovered quickly, stowed the book in the tote next to her, and stood up with Joey on one hip.

Rosalie felt all the wind rush out of her in a whoosh.

She’d half expected Morgan to show up with his stepmother, but the reality carried a wallop ten times more powerful than the thought.

She refocused on the woman at his side. She’d often wondered what kind of woman could have raised Charlie, but she would never have come up with anyone like Lillian Danby.

The first thing she noticed was the older woman’s apparent fragility. She was very slender, the hand on Morgan’s arm almost a claw, her legs shapely but so thin Rosalie wondered how she found stockings to fit. The woman’s face was thin too, and had the rigidity of repeated cosmetic surgery. What was the saying? “You can never be too thin or too rich.”

Mrs. Danby wore a black designer skirt, cream-colored blouse, and a bright-red jacket that should have been too warm on such a sunny day, but her eyes were the same watery blue as Charlie’s and, like his, hard as diamonds. Behind the fragile façade, Rosalie saw the unbending will of someone who’d heard the word “no” too little when she was a child, and was rich enough to ignore it now she was an adult. Oh, yes, this was Charlie’s mother.

“How do you do?”

Mrs. Danby ignored her proffered hand, eyes fixed on Joey.

“You lied to me, Morgan. He doesn’t look at all like my poor Charleston.”

When the strange lady brushed one hand across Joey’s cheek, he jerked his head away and buried it in Rosalie’s shoulder.

“He has the same round face as that woman. And her little nose. The men in my family all had substantial noses.”

And the women all had their noses fixed, Rosalie suspected.

“He’s a toddler,” Morgan said. “Who knows what he’ll look like later on?”

Was that the best he could do? Rosalie shot him a glare, but he turned away with a shrug.

Mrs. Danby belatedly held out her hand. “You must be Ms. Walker, the woman who’s been taking care of my grandson.”

“I’m his guardian, yes.”

Mrs. Danby’s handshake was surprisingly firm and brief enough to border on rudeness. An awkward silence fell amid the bustle of the plaza around them.

“Why don’t you introduce Joey to his grandmother?” Morgan suggested.

At the sound of his name, Joey stared up sideways at the tall man next to the strange woman and muttered, “Mawg,” as if he too, was surprised at his step-uncle’s pandering behavior.

She’s the only family I have,
Morgan had told her.

But Joey was the only family Rosalie had.

“Why don’t we sit down?” she suggested.

She sank back down on the bench, arms tired from holding Joey so tightly. Luckily he settled on her lap without protest.

Mrs. Danby frowned at the bench, probably afraid it carried some dire contamination, raised her eyes skyward, then sat primly next to Rosalie. That left the far end of the bench for Morgan, out of Rosalie’s range of sight.

“Joey,” she coaxed, “this is your grandmother.” She turned to Mrs. Danby with a forced smile. “What do you want him to call you? Grandmother is quite a mouthful at his age.”

Horror dawned on the other woman’s face. “Grandmother? No. Maybe … maybe Nana? That doesn’t sound so old, does it?”

This last question was to Morgan, who responded with a small grunt.

“Joey, this is Nana. Mrs. Danby, this is Joey.”

A moment too late Rosalie remembered “nana” was Joey’s word for bananas. He looked around for the promised snack and ignored the woman who had leaned in to kiss him.

“No nana.”

Mrs. Danby pulled back. “You’ve already taught him to hate me, haven’t you? I knew I should have demanded custody as soon as Morgan found my little darling.”

“Not that it would have been legally possible,” Morgan commented from the other end of the bench.

Rosalie took a deep breath for patience, not sure which of them she hated more.

“No,” she corrected. “Joey thinks I promised him a banana. Maybe we should find another name for him to call you.”

Mrs. Danby relaxed her rigid posture a little. “He could call me Lillian. That’s what his father always called me.”

Rosalie wasn’t sure how far to trust the glint of moisture in the other woman’s eyes, but tried again with Joey.

“Honey, this is Lillian. Can you say ‘Lillian’?”

“Lin.” Joey touched Mrs. Danby’s face. “Lin.”

“He’s adorable, isn’t he?” The older woman was talking to Morgan again, as if Rosalie wasn’t there, or as if she was a servant. “I’m sure he knows who I am.”

“Do you want to hold him?” Rosalie offered reluctantly.

Horror returned to Mrs. Danby’s face. “His face is so … damp. See, he left a mark on your blouse. I can’t go around with wet spots on my clothes. What would people think?”

Rosalie didn’t even want to count all the ways that response was wrong. “So, what do you want to do now?”

“I’d like to take the little dear back to my hotel with me.”

“No,” both Rosalie and Morgan said at the same time.

Morgan’s body had gone tense. Was he there to stop his stepmother physically, if necessary, or to help her take Joey away from her?

Cold prickles ran up Rosalie’s spine. She pulled the child away from his grandmother and held him so tightly he gave a grunt of protest.

No. Reason pushed away panic. These two people were not about to commit a federal crime by kidnapping Joey on a crowded plaza. She forced herself to take long, slow breaths.

“Perhaps this had been enough of a visit for today.” She took the ice of her panic and put it into her voice.

“Perhaps so.” Morgan stood up and took his stepmother’s arm.

She stood. A tear trickled down her cheek.

“How can you be so heartless?”

Since it wasn’t clear which of them she’d spoken to, Rosalie chose to ignore the accusation.

Morgan shot Rosalie an apologetic look. “Lillian, that’s enough. I don’t know what you meant to accomplish by demanding to see Joey, but you’ve done it now. Let’s leave Ms. Walker and her son in peace.”

Mrs. Danby directed an ineffectual slap at his chest. “He is not her son. He’s mine. My grandchild. I can’t leave him here with her.”

“Yes, you can, and you will,” Morgan replied. “Right now.”

His tone, like his body, was so tight with rigidly controlled anger that Joey burst into tears.

“See, he doesn’t want me to go.”

“Or he wants you to go. Hard to tell. Rosalie …”

The way he said her name made her knees feel so weak she was glad she was already sitting down. Damn his eyes.

“Rosalie, why don’t you take him away and see how he reacts?”

Past ready for the ordeal to be over she shifted Joey to hold him with one arm while she gathered their things with her free hand and dumped them in the stroller. She pulled herself to her feet, Joey and all, and started the stroller toward where she’d parked the car.

Joey stopped crying. Over her shoulder he called “Bye, Mawg.”

A burst of pride lightened her steps, despite the awkward scene behind them. Two two-word sentences in one day!

She pushed the stroller faster, eager to get as far as possible from both the Danbys.

“That was cruel, Morgan,” Lillian told him as they watched Rosalie walk away. “How can you let her take my grandson?”

“She isn’t taking him, she’s keeping him. For good, if I have anything to say about it.”

“You don’t,” his stepmother barked, but then seemed to sag under the weight of the encounter with Joey. “I refuse to walk all the way back to my hotel. Find me a cab.”

He looked over his shoulder for Rosalie. She was headed toward the mall.

Luckily two taxis were parked at the near end of the plaza. He helped Lillian into one of them, gave the driver a twenty and the name of her hotel, then rushed after Rosalie over his stepmother’s protests.

The plaza was full of women with strollers, but only one of them drew him toward her like a magnet. She’d stopped by another bench and sat down to clear the gear out of the stroller so she could put Joey in it, but the wriggly toddler had other ideas.

“Here we go, buddy,” Morgan said as he scooped Joey from her arms.

She gave him a glare that would send a lesser man into full retreat.

“How about you go to you-know-where and take your stepmother with you?”

He sat beside her and bounced Joey up and down his knee.

“Hey, I had nothing to do with it. I found out she was here when she called me from her hotel yesterday. All I could do was damage control.”

“Because you happened to be in Los Angeles yet again?”

Morgan shifted his grip on the kid so he didn’t have to look at her. He’d used the last week to pull strings and make deals to ensure Paul Thompson would never sue for custody of Joey again. Once he’d won that battle, he’d caught the next flight out here to see if he could find a way to make Rosalie understand that, as clumsy and ill-timed as his bedside proposal had been, God help him, he actually did want to marry her. He’d figured he’d tell her about Thompson, then get them past the fiasco of last weekend and back on track with his plan, which now was as much about the two of them as about Joey.

Until Lillian dropped her little stink bomb in his path.

The wave of anger distracted him enough that he loosened his hold on Joey. The kid broke free and toddled off at full speed toward the cheerful music of a mariachi band.

Morgan and Rosalie both lunged after Joey, bumped into each other, and tumbled to the pavement. Somehow he managed to land on the bottom, one arm around her, his other flung out to break their fall.

She gave a quiet “Oof” when they landed.

For a long moment they stared at each other, the air between them hot with pent-up need.

Dimly he heard Joey screech and a man’s voice say, “This your kid?”

Rosalie scrambled up off him. He noticed she didn’t take advantage of several opportunities to put her elbows and knees in places that might have caused him serious pain. Maybe that was a good sign. Or maybe she was just a nice person.

By the time she’d reclaimed Joey and calmed him down, said thank you to the elderly man who’d caught the kid, and found a way to straighten her own disheveled clothes, Morgan had reorganized the stroller so she could strap a still cranky Joey into place and hand him a hard, fat cookie.

Morgan expected her to walk off the moment Joey was settled, but instead she sat, or collapsed, back down on the bench. She pulled a bottle of water out of a hidden pocket in the diaper bag and took a long drink.

“I’m afraid I only have one of these,” she apologized.

“I need something a little stronger right now, anyway.”

She gave him a sharp look and took another drink before she capped off the bottle and hid it away again. “So, why
are
you in L.A. this time?”

Okay, she’d given him another chance. He hoped he’d be able to convert it into a win, for his own sake as much as Joey’s.

Morgan was too close. Rosalie could feel the heat of his body, smell the blend of musk and sex that was uniquely his, and see the tension in the muscular shoulders hidden under his black polo shirt. She shifted away under the pretense of taking a boardbook out of Joey’s bag and handed it to him.

“I’m in town to give you an update on the custody situation.” Morgan’s business-like tone rasped against her already-raw nerves.

“Which you can’t do by phone?” She stood up so abruptly she dropped the diaper bag on the ground. “This isn’t a good time. I need to get Joey home, and …”

Morgan bent to pick up the bag and stowed it under the stroller.

“Can I buy you lunch?”

“What is this compulsion you have to feed me? It’s not as if I’m too thin.”

“You’re the perfect shape for a woman, but I think the kid may be hungry.”

Joey had the corner of the book in his mouth and was chewing on it thoughtfully.

“He’s got a tooth coming in.”She dug around in the back of the stroller for another teething cracker, ignoring the heat on her face and the tendrils of pleasure his compliment planted in her heart.

“But you have to eat. And I have to eat. Why not eat together?”

She handed Joey the cracker, her mind whirling too fast to find an answer.

Even if Morgan didn’t take her by surprise when he’d showed up with his stepmother, she hadn’t been prepared for the full impact of the encounter. She’d suspected her body would betray her, would heat and tingle under his gaze, his touch. But she hadn’t expected her heart to ache with a longing to be in his arms that had nothing to do with sex and everything to do with the man she’d thought he was. The man whose image had disrupted her dreams for the last week. The man she’d missed so much.

Tears of frustration with herself, as much as anything, burned behind her eyes.

Damn. Morgan could see the tears Rosalie refused to let fall.

He’d expected her to be angry with him, after how he’d blown it the last time he saw her, but not sad, not like this. It’d never occurred to him he might be able to make her cry. He’d never let anyone, any woman, get that close before.

The women he dated were well aware of where he stood. Since what they wanted from him was some combination of his prestige, his wealth, and reliably good sex, they had no problem with it. They all knew he didn’t do relationships.

Until he’d met Rosalie. This woman, and the kid, made the prospect of … many years with her far more attractive than he’d ever have expected.

But the tears, and the power over her he hadn’t known he had, changed all that. Now he needed to walk away before he hurt her anymore.

He was half-way to his feet, “Goodbye” half-way to his lips when Joey reached out a damp, messy hand and grabbed a pudgy handful of his best pair of five-hundred-dollar jeans.

“Mawg?”

Morgan sank back. He’d forgotten what was at stake here.

Rosalie was a strong woman. He hated knowing he’d probably hurt her someday, but she’d be able to deal with it. Joey was a little kid. He needed Morgan to look out for him. Walking away wasn’t an option.

Across the plaza, the mariachi band finished a Mexican ballad to scattered applause.

“This isn’t a good place for an update on the custody battle,” he pointed out.

No place with Joey around would be. Besides, he needed to regroup, rethink how to win her over.

“And I’d rather not explain it on the phone,” he went on. “If you can’t do lunch, maybe we could have dinner tonight?”

“Feeding me again?” She gave him a lopsided smile.

“It’s traditional. You know, caveman brings mammoth steak back to cave.”

“Mammoth steak? Oh, yum.”

Her smile faded. He watched the mental battle he could see so clearly in her eyes, not sure which side he wanted to win until she said, “Yes.”

His heart gave a little jump of triumph. “Seven o’clock?”

Why, why, why did she agree to have dinner with Morgan? Rosalie did not need to go through all that again. What kind of idiot was she?

The kind who’d spent most of her life hoping against hope things would turn out the way she wanted them to, just once. And here she was again, caught in the same old trap.

At least he’d changed the invitation from lunch to dinner. They’d eat and talk, period. Jill was free to sit with Joey, which provided Rosalie with the perfect excuse to make a quick escape.

Morgan didn’t say where they were going, and she didn’t have the nerve to call and ask, so while Joey napped she stared for a long time at the line of dark suits in her closet, but the perfect dress didn’t miraculously appear.

She ignored the flowered dresses gathered at one end of the rack. Vanessa was right. Flowers were not her. Some other time she’d figure out why it had taken her so long to realize that.

The only flower-free dresses she owned were the blue chambray, the black halter, and a dark green silk shirtwaist she wore to weddings. Why not wear the shirtwaist to dinner with Morgan? The irony might serve as a counter-weight to her over-eager heart in case he repeated his crazy proposal.

She refused to think about what Vanessa had said about men and buttons. Or how true it had turned out to be.

Morgan was right on time again, but of course Jill wasn’t.

“I’m running late,” Rosalie explained when she opened the door in her bathrobe and high heels. “I should have remembered the Jill factor—always allow an extra fifteen minutes.”

“No problem. I can watch Joey until she gets here or you finish getting …”

She felt her face go red at her half-naked state.

“… ready,” he finished.

“I’m afraid I was using the electronic babysitter while I got ready.” Her hand went to the carefully structured hairdo she’d somehow managed to create.

“Electronic babysitter? I didn’t know technology had gone quite that far.”

“You’d call it a television.”

“Oh.” He grinned at her and her foolish heart bounced in her chest.

To distract herself she took note of the dark suit he wore. The ironic green-silk dress would be fine.

“You can watch with him. Are you a Sesame Street fan?”

“Can’t say I am. But I could learn.” Again that grin.

Just then Jill sprinted up the walk and screeched to a halt in the doorway.

“Sorry I’m late. Wow, quite a fashion statement there, Rosalie. Hi, Mr. Hottie.”

A flush crept across Morgan’s face. “Er, hi, Jill.”

Rosalie managed not to laugh. “I guess I forgot to introduce you the last time. Jill, this is Mr. Danby.”

“Whatever,” the girl replied. “Where’s my main squeeze?”

“Watching TV. Why don’t you tell Mr. Danby about your soccer team’s trip to Sacramento?”

“Huh? Sure. Okay. I just gotta get a snack.”

Jill led Morgan toward the kitchen as she chattered full speed. Rosalie checked to make sure Joey was content in his playpen, fascinated by the numbers that danced across the television screen, before she rushed to her room.

She emerged ten minutes later to find Joey on Jill’s hip, while Morgan snapped a picture of them on Jill’s cell phone, and Smudge and Sylvester wound around the legs of his black suit.

“Oooh, cool. Thanks, Mr. D.” The girl plopped Joey back into the playpen and grabbed the cell. “Gotta send it to my friends. He’s sooo cute.”

“It runs in the family.” Morgan gave Rosalie a look of well-banked desire. “Or not in the family exactly, but you know what I mean.”

“Thank you. Will I need a wrap of some kind?”

She hoped not, since she didn’t have one that went with the dress, but she also didn’t want to have to borrow his jacket again if they went to the beach.

He shook his head. “It’s quite pleasant out.”

It was, she discovered when she’d told Jill they’d be back before her midnight curfew, kissed Joey, and let Morgan gesture her out the door ahead of him.

The flower-scented night wasn’t too warm. The breeze off the ocean was gentle. The sky was a soft violet, edging into hyacinth overhead, and full of stars.

Then she noticed the car parked at the curb.

“A Rolls?”

He chuckled as he opened the car door for her. “Why not?”

By the time he got in beside her, she’d figured it out.

“You rented the Rolls to drive Lillian around, didn’t you?”

“No. I chose it to drive you around. You forget I didn’t expect Lillian to be here.”

She closed her eyes and sank into his words for a moment. The smell of the leather seats mixed with his sexy scent. The purr of the engine blended with the softness of the night air. Her body felt languid, half-asleep, and yet strangely alive, with tingles and tugs in secret places.

He turned out onto the boulevard and Rosalie surrendered to reality. “Why is she here?”

“I haven’t a clue. She said she wanted to see Joey before she made a final decision about suing for custody. I hoped he’d be difficult but, of course, he was sweet and adorable.”

“She didn’t even want to hold him.”

“He does tend to be sticky.”

Rosalie cast him a sidelong look of disgust.

“Hey, don’t ask me to explain Lillian to you. I don’t pretend to understand her myself.”

“It’s almost as if he’s a possession she feels she has to own, not a child. That’s sad, and a little scary.”

“Uh-huh.”

His tone reminded her Lillian was the woman who had raised him. And Charlie. Maybe she’d been more maternal when she was younger. Or maybe not.

“Where are we having dinner?” she asked to change the subject.

“My condo.”

She jerked around in her seat to face him. “You’re taking me to your place again?”

“It’s quiet, and I have a wonderful caterer.”

He also had a very large, very comfortable bed, Rosalie remembered with a shiver of desire she couldn’t deny.

“Don’t worry. I wouldn’t ever make you do anything you didn’t want to do.”

The problem wasn’t what she wanted to do but what she didn’t dare allow herself to do.

“I will
not
have sex with you again tonight.” She half expected him to point out she hadn’t been invited to, but instead he shook his head.

“Was the last time so awful?”

She turned away. “No, but …”

“Believe me, sex with you is the furthest thing from my mind right now.”

She raised one eyebrow and he shrugged.

“Okay, maybe not the furthest, but not at the top of the list, either.”

She didn’t want to think about where on the list it might be. She closed her eyes and let the luxury of the car and Mozart on the sound system carry her away.

When they reached the condo she strolled past the leather-and-chrome sofa to gaze in wonder out the floor-to-ceiling window at the colorful lights of her city.

“Would you like a glass of wine before dinner?” Morgan asked. “Since I ordered prime rib, I opened a bottle of red to let it breathe before I went to pick you up.”

She swallowed and stepped away from the window. “Sure.”

She didn’t watch as he poured the wine, but chose a modernistic leather armchair and set her purse on the table next to it. The leather felt cool on her legs, but its soft, sensuous texture seemed to caress her through the silk.

So this was what it was like, not to splurge once in a while, but to be rich all the time. She wasn’t sure she liked it. She certainly didn’t feel comfortable surrounded by all this luxury.

She didn’t, in fact, feel comfortable at all. Part of it was the awareness that she was alone with Morgan and his bed was a few feet, or given the size of the penthouse, a few yards away. And part of the discomfort was the hot tug of need deep inside her and the prickle of excitement along her skin. Nerves, she told herself.

Rosalie was nervous. For some reason he couldn’t have explained, Morgan found that charming. He handed her a glass of the Château Lafite Rothschild and was charmed all over again by the surprise on her face when she took her first sip.