A Baby In His In-Box

Maybe she needed that whole month, Molly thought desperately. Her decision should have been cut and dried, but somehow it wasn’t. Six months ago, if anyone suggested she could conceivably fall in love with a man like Flynn McGannon, she’d have checked herself into a funny farm for immediate shock treatments.

He was a bellower. A man who expressed both humor and temper at the same roaring volume. He worked like a slave, played like a glutton, intimidated strangers and clients both with his booming voice and unpredictable moods—and then invariably acted confounded why anybody would be afraid of him.

Molly knew precisely why she was.

He was too sexy for her. Too sexy, too self-centered, too dare-the-world wild, too everything that she wasn’t. She wanted a husband, children, a family. Not an affair with a man who was bluntly honest about his terror of wedding rings. Flynn loved risk. She honestly hated it. He saw every day as a free-wheeling adventure. She was a list-maker.

Nothing could come from kissing him but trouble. Heartache. A woman as sane as she was—and the whole world knew Molly Weston was practical and hopelessly straitlaced—simply had more brains than to hurl herself off a cliff without a parachute.

But he tempted her. Like no man ever had. It was those eyes. It was that nasty, simmering, electric thing that shimmered in the air between them. It was that daredevil zest for life that captivated her, and made crazy ideas fester in her mind—like that she’d regret it forever if she never made love with him. Like that she might only have this one chance. Like that maybe everyone should have the right, just once in life, to do something foolish and impulsive....

She heard sudden commotion from outside his office. A door slamming. Voices raised. Pandemonium wasn’t uncommon in the workday at McGannon’s, but something registered in her mind as off-kilter. Still, she couldn’t look away from the heat in Flynn’s gaze. Didn’t want to.

He wanted her. Maybe Flynn desired a couple hundred women—possibly even in the same day—but the whole sensation was new to Molly. She’d never felt washed in the warm liquid gaze of a man’s desire, bold, nakedly honest, dangerous, magnetic. She’d never figured out how the patooties she’d ever stirred his interest. Most men pegged her accurately and swiftly—she was a conventional woman, a picture-straightener, an obsessive list-maker, attractive enough but in a nice way. Everyone knew she was nice, for Pete’s sake. It was probably going to be on her epitaph.

Not him. He looked at her like she was Christie Brinkley who’d just popped in to strip for him. Or like she was a succulent choice bit of lobster and he’d just come off a week’s fast. She knew that was all nuts—but something went haywire in her perceptions around Flynn. Never mind what was real. How he made her feel was painfully real enough.

She’d been falling in love with him for months now. Denying it. Making excuses—calling it hormones, calling it PMS, calling it an affection that had naturally developed from working with a fascinating man every day. She’d been calling it every word under the sun but the one she was afraid was true.

Her hand lifted. Fingers already curving to the shape of his neck.

He saw. That slow, wicked grin of his faded. His face almost turned grave—and Flynn rarely took anything in life too seriously. His gaze shifted from her eyes to her mouth, the playfulness disappearing from his expression. This kiss would be different, she sensed.

The other ones really hadn’t been without a parachute. But this one might be.

Still her hand raised higher, until her fingers were bare, naked inches from touching him. Her heart was suddenly pounding, pounding.

Until she heard the bellowing wail of a baby.

Molly stepped back, startled, just as a woman barreled into Flynn’s office. And not just a woman, but a baby— a pumpkin-shaped squirt of maybe a year old, who was squirming in every direction and announcing loudly to the world that he was unhappy. The woman was flustered and distraught, trying to juggle the eel of a baby and baby gear and a flapping purse.

“Flynn, damn you. No one wanted to even let me see you...I practically had to battle past a nutcase in a bathrobe at the front desk—”

Molly froze for a second. Flynn whirled around. Bailey shot in just behind the woman, his face flushed like a brick—and yes, he was wearing a bathrobe over his clothes. Bailey was one of Flynn’s brilliant creative nerds; very sweet, just a little goofy. When he had a creative challenge inspiring him, he wore his lucky robe. No one paid attention, not even Molly anymore. Bailey never voluntarily met the public, because nerves brought out his stutter—and he was stuttering painfully, trying to explain to Flynn how the lady had barged past him.

Molly heard that conversation, but she wasn’t really listening. The intrusion was just so bizarre.

The woman dropped a diaper bag on the carpet. Then she plunked down the baby with the same kind of exasperated attitude. The baby, let free, quit bellowing and squirming and promptly took off on all fours.

“What on earth... ?” Flynn reached behind him to yank the blinds open further. Cheerful sunlight instantly poured in, but didn’t seem to illuminate anything that was going on. Flynn wasn’t easily thrown by any brand or flavor of surprises. His bushy eyebrows lifted in question, but initially his expression showed more intrigue than concern over the mystery woman’s arrival.

Molly didn’t catch the lady’s face until she straightened back up. Golden hair billowed around her shoulders then. A red sweater hugged a top-heavy bust; poured-on jeans showed off several miles of slim legs. Her face might have been strikingly pretty, if there hadn’t been huge shadows under the eyes and drawn lines around the mouth.

“Don’t you ‘What on earth’ me, Flynn McGannon. And don’t even try claiming not to recognize me.” Either fury or nerves made her voice shrill. Molly could see the skilled effort with makeup, but it didn’t conceal the pallor of her skin or the exhausted dark eyes.

“I didn’t claim anything. But I honestly don’t know...” Flynn was frowning now, studying her hard.

“Virginie,” she snapped. “Tuscon. The Silver Buckle. Add up thirteen months—the age of your son—and the nine months I carried him, and maybe that night’ll come back to you. You were with some party. I was with some party. But the only party that mattered was the one that ended up back at my place. Chivas was your drink that night, as I recall. Unfortunately, I recall more than that. You were a hell of a lover, you cretin. But no man’s worth the price you cost me.”

“Son?” Flynn echoed blankly, and then wildly shook his head. “That isn’t possible. You said you were protected—”

“Ha. So suddenly you do remember that night—and if it isn’t just like a man to remember the part that gives him an excuse. And at the time, I was. On the pill. But I missed a couple—and before you tell me that was my fault, let me tell you that I don’t give a damn. That doesn’t make the baby any less your responsibility—”

“Look, if you’d just try to calm down...you can’t just show up out of the blue, making claims that you seem to expect me to instantly believe—”

Virginie didn’t try responding to that. She seemed on a one-track road, the words spilling out of her at cyclone speed. “Your son’s name is Dylan. And he’s all yours as of this minute. You don’t know what I’ve been through. You can’t even guess. My life’s been a nonstop nightmare from the instant this child was conceived. I was sick. Lost my job. He had colic and he doesn’t sleep and I’m about to lose my apartment and I can’t do it anymore. Right now I don’t even have a way to feed him—”

“Wait a minute. Wait a minute, just slow down—”

“The hell I will. And don’t waste your breath offering me money because this isn’t about money. It’s about everything. I never figured you’d want to know you were a father, but that’s just tough. Every woman on earth isn’t cut out for motherhood. I gave it a shot—you don’t know how hard I gave it a shot—but nothing’s working out. I can’t do it anymore, and you’re responsible for this. It took me forever to find you—”

Molly had never seen Flynn lose color before. Normally when he was upset, he got noisy, not quiet. But he raked a hand through his hair and looked dead-quiet now. “Surely you realize this is impossible? You can’t just barge in here and claim I’m the father of a child. I can see you’re upset, but if you’d just calm down—”

“I’m not calming down. I’m leaving. You. With your son.”

“It’s not my son.” Flynn’s baritone could have carried to the next county. So could the blonde’s shrill soprano.

“Oh, yeah it is. I know it is. And if you’ll look back twenty-one months ago, you’ll know it is. If not, there has to be some blood test or something that’ll prove it to you—because believe me, it will.” She snatched up her tote-size purse again, but withdrew a folder from it and tossed it on his desk. Pictures spilled out. What looked like medical records, maybe a birth certificate. “I need a job. I need a place to live. I need a chance at life again, and I’m going after it The baby ruined everything I ever had. He’s your problem from this minute on.”

When she spun around, Flynn lurched toward her. “Wait a minute. For God’s sake, you can’t just walk out of here—”

“Watch me.”

Molly couldn’t seem to unfreeze. The whole scene was just so unreal. The frantic-faced woman and the whole yelling match couldn’t have taken five minutes. She stormed back out of the office as fast as she’d stormed in.

Flynn hiked after her. Molly had never seen his complexion turn that ashen gray before. She heard his booming voice from the hall, fading as the two of them reached the front doors. There wasn’t another sound in the entire office—not because Flynn’s handful of staff weren’t there, but likely because everyone had been listening as intently to the whole scene no differently than she had.

It took a few seconds before Molly could seem to gather her wits. And another second before she abruptly realized that the infamous “Virginie” had left a package behind her.

The baby had been padding around on all fours, fanny in the air, crawling at cruising speeds that could probably earn him a ticket on the freeway.

Temporarily, though, the baby was nowhere in sight.

And no one seemed to give a damn.

Two

Molly hustled out of Flynn’s office in search of the baby.

Initially real worry never occurred to her—she figured she’d have heard the sound of the baby crying if he’d been in trouble, and there were other adults around besides. She just wanted to find him. It wasn’t the safest environment in town for a crawling toddler to be running around loose.

Flynn’s office opened into the circular area that the staff called Brainstorming Central. Undoubtedly the original architect had designed a normal office space with walls and doors, but Flynn had predictably obliterated all that logical construction long since.

The virtual reality booth was an intrinsic part of the “think tank,” but she poked her head in there—and found no baby. In the middle of Brainstorming Central was a table the size of a small country. Recliner chairs tipped back as far as beds. The ceiling was lavishly decorated with posters—cartoon characters, wilderness scenes, rock stars, bad jokes, saintly inspirational quotes. Molly first thought that decorating the ceiling was loony, but after six months of working with the lunatic staff, she’d discovered she was too fond of all of them to take exception to their eccentric office decor ideas.

She whipped around the circumference of the table, bent over to spot any miniature bodies, checking chairs and any possible hiding spot. Still, she caught no sight or sound of the mite.

Her pulse was charging, her heart clanging nerves. She told herself she was naturally concerned about the missing Dylan, but that was only a partial truth. She’d been rattled long before realizing the baby had disappeared. The whole bizarre scene with Dylan’s mother had acid jumping in her stomach...and worse than that, her mind kept doing instant replays of the embrace she’d almost invited from Flynn.