Excuse Me? Whose Baby?: Excuse Me? Whose Baby? / Follow That Baby!

Five women stood, leaned and knelt around the playpen, making cooing noises. Jim assumed they had wandered over to enjoy the unexpected visitor. He couldn’t even spot the tiny figure inside until he got close enough to see over the women’s shoulders.

Ignoring a pile of stuffed animals and toys, Annie sat regarding the women around her with mingled interest and uncertainty. Someone had fixed tiny yellow ribbons in her hair, one of which had fallen out.

As he approached, the little girl plopped onto her knees and crawled toward the fallen ribbon. Her audience responded with encouraging cries of, “Go for it!” and “You can do it, honey!”

Jim cleared his throat. The response was electric. The five women swiveled, straightened, or—depending on their starting position—leaped to their feet. They weren’t afraid of him, but they did seem embarrassed to be caught making goo-goo eyes at a baby.

“Congratulations, Jim!”

“Way to go on the stock market!”

“I guess I’ll be getting my new house soon!” This last remark was a reference to BVT’s stock-option program, which extended to all employees.

Four of the women melted away and returned to their offices. Only his secretary, Lulu Lee, remained. “She’s so cute! I can’t believe how lucky you are!”

He hadn’t told anyone who the mother was, only that he’d recently learned he had a daughter. People would talk, of course, but that couldn’t be helped.

“I’m not sure those yellow ribbons are such a good idea,” Jim said. “Couldn’t she swallow one?”

“Oh!” Lulu leaned in and snatched the fallen ribbon from the playpen. Then she began removing the others from Annie’s hair. “Willa from accounting put them on her.”

Jim crouched next to the playpen. “How’s it going?” he asked the baby.

“Ga ga da da.” She hoisted herself to her feet, hanging onto the rim of the playpen.

He was lost. If there had been some other task Jim meant to accomplish today, he forgot it utterly.

“Look at her!” he said. “Nine months old and she’s standing up! She must be some kind of genius.”

“I wouldn’t doubt it.” Lulu gave him a teasing smile.

“You don’t seem surprised. Do they all do that?”

His secretary, who had long expressed a desire to have children if her boyfriend ever got around to popping the question, nodded sagely. “According to the books, they often stand by this age. Some children are even walking by now.”

“They must be freaks of nature,” Jim said. “If Annie isn’t doing it, it can’t be normal.”

“She’s a bright child,” Lulu said. “I wonder where she got that hair.”

It was as far as his secretary would go toward prying. Jim made a mental note never to let her catch a glimpse of Dex. Lulu’s hair was lustrously straight and black, bespeaking her Chinese heritage.

It was only natural for her to be curious about Annie’s mother, he reminded himself. “Must be a throw-back,” he said, in response to her statement. “I think my great-grandmother stuck her finger in a light socket once.”

Then he remembered that this little girl would someday inherit the company. It wasn’t too soon to prepare her for taking the reins of command. “I’m going to give her a tour of the facilities.”

“I’m sure she’ll enjoy that,” Lulu said.

Annie did. For the first five minutes, she took a keen interest in all the blinking computers and admiring employees.

Jim’s tale of how he’d started the company in a garage, moved to a leased plant and finally built this facility quickly bored the baby. She yawned. Then she drooped against his shoulder.

“Nap time,” said one of the women engineers.

Jim had forgotten that babies needed naps. No wonder this one was exhausted. She’d had a long day, and it wasn’t even five o’clock yet.

He took her out to his covered parking spot. This afternoon, he’d brought the European sedan with an infant seat installed in the back. Strapping a sleepy baby into it turned out to be a challenge, but he was getting used to manipulating her tiny limbs.

When his nose brushed her cheek, he discovered that she smelled like Dex and was startled to realize he missed the woman. Missed her mentally and physically.

Thinking about her was dangerous. For safety, Jim tried to focus on Nancy.

As always, the image of his calm, self-possessed pal soothed him. After his mother died of cancer when he was fourteen, she’d been the friend he turned to for comfort and advice while his father worked long hours selling insurance.

In the month following his rendezvous with Dex, Jim had felt restless and off-center. That was why he’d flown to Washington and proposed to Nancy. It had been, he told himself, a wise step toward his chosen future, and the fulfillment of long-cherished plans.

He wished she had accepted immediately. Instead, she’d murmured that things were up in the air at her university and that her career was at a turning point. Jim hadn’t wanted to press her, but for some reason, the knowledge that Dex would be living in his household made him more anxious than ever to set a wedding date.

Jim pulled the car out of the parking lot and glanced at Annie. She was dozing peacefully in the back seat as he halted for a red light. Impulsively, he dialed Nancy’s number on the car phone. It was about eight o’clock in D.C., so she ought to be home.

“Hi, this is Nancy,” purred her familiar voice. The sound was so smooth that he expected her to add that he should leave a message after the beep, but she didn’t.

“Are you there?” Jim said into the hands-free speaker. “In person, I mean?”

“Jim?” Nancy said. “It’s great to hear from you. What’s up?”

He’d last called her about a month ago. She’d told him how well her parents were doing and had brought him current on the activities of her six younger siblings.

The topic of his proposal hadn’t come up. Jim didn’t want to broach it too abruptly this time, either, nor did he wish to brag about his stock coup. There was, however, other news he needed to tell her. “I wanted to let you know that I have a baby.”

The silence lasted until the light turned green. Then she said, “A baby?”

As he accelerated north on Mercury Lane, he explained about Helene Saldivar. There seemed no point in mentioning Dex, so he didn’t.

When he was done, Nancy said, “A baby. Well, that is a surprise.”

“You don’t mind, do you?” he asked. “I know you spent a lot of time taking care of your younger brothers and sisters, but you like kids, right?”

“Of course.” Nancy sounded as if she were thinking things over. “You know, my current research involves babies.”

“What sort of research?”

“I’m investigating how infants acquire language,” she said.

“Annie says ‘da da’ quite clearly,” he boasted as he drove through the gates of Villa Bonderoff.

“Specifically, I’m investigating how some babies acquire multiple languages. In any case, she’s there and I’m here, so it’s irrelevant,” Nancy said briskly.

“How’s it going with your grant? You mentioned something about problems.”