Your Baby or Mine?

Her pin threatened to unravel threads out of the carefully crafted sweater if either of them made any sudden moves.

“We seemed to be attached.” When he just stared at her, Marissa indicated the pin with her eyes. She shifted Christopher up higher in her arms, then tried to undo the connection using one hand.

The pin remained firmly entrenched in the sweater. Great, Marissa thought, just what she needed when she was running late. Exasperated, she blew her bangs away from her eyes.

Her baby was squirming, making it impossible to disengage the pin. They were close enough for Alec to take in everything about her and process more information than he normally would. Her eyes were an electric blue that managed to dim the color of the outlandish T-shirt she had on. Her hair was a riot of wisps and curls and yet somehow still looked as if it had been painstakingly arranged that way. Her lips were slightly larger than her oval face and delicate features warranted, keeping her from being beautiful, but definitely not from being engagingly striking.

She was having absolutely no success. “Here, let me try,” Alec offered.

He immediately realized his mistake when he reached for the pin. The situation would call for him getting a little more familiar with her than he figured they’d both be comfortable with. He didn’t think it would be prudent to be brushing his fingertips along a strange woman’s breast, no matter what the reason.

Alec dropped his hand. “Maybe not,” he amended. The woman’s wide lips pulled into an amused smile and he realized that they didn’t keep her from being beautiful. They enhanced her beauty.

“Mammmmaaaamaaa.” Christopher was yelling directly into her ear.

Marissa blinked, as if that would help her block out the deafening cry. She raised her eyes to the stranger’s. He looked definitely flustered and not happy about it. Marissa attempted to work the pin free again.

“Shh, Mamma’s trying to get herself uncoupled from this nice man.”

This was ridiculous. Class had probably already started and he was standing out here, being one half of a Siamese twin. “I think you’d do better with two hands,” Alec suggested.

“Maybe,” she agreed, “but if I put my baby down out here, you’ll get to witness a first-class imitation of a gazelle. And I won’t be able to do any dashing unless you happen to know how to run backward.”

Christopher had been walking ever since he was ten months old and peace as she knew it had gone out the window the moment he had taken his first step. Setting him down here while she was attached to this stranger was just like asking for trouble.

The baby looked as if it was all arms, legs and teeth. It was against Alec’s better judgment, but there didn’t seem to be much choice.

“Here, let me hold him for you.”

Pausing, Marissa looked at the green-eyed stranger. A smile curved her lips again. She nodded at the pink rompered baby in his arms. “You already seem to have your hands full.”

Alec shifted Andrea to one arm, holding out his other hand. “I can hold them both.”

He fervently hoped he wouldn’t wind up embarrassing himself. Together the babies probably weighed only about forty-five pounds or so, but the fact that hers seemed to be in perpetual motion was going to be a definite problem.

Marissa’s smile widened. The man looked as if he was getting himself ready for an ordeal. That had to be his first baby, she mused. Still, since no one else appeared to be coming around the bend, letting him hold both children seemed to be the only solution at the moment. And it was getting late.

She presented Christopher to him. “Okay, but you’d better brace yourself.” She noted that Chris was setting off the man’s daughter, as well.

“Thanks for the warning,” Alec muttered, accepting the boy, swinging feet and all. Instant contact was made with Alec’s stomach. Alec tried not to wince at the unexpected blow.

But Marissa saw it. “Sorry.” She flushed ruefully. “I’ll hurry.”

Very deftly, taking care not to snag the sweater, she worked one of the pinwheel blades loose. Two more to go. How had they managed to tangle themselves up so well so quickly?

She wasn’t hurrying fast enough for Christopher, or for the stranger, who was having trouble hanging on to both babies.

“Maaaa-aaaa.”

Alec winced, feeling an eardrum shatter. “Good lungs.”

The offhand remark evoked a bittersweet pang within Marissa. Stupid, stupid. There was no reason to feel that way. She fumbled with the thread she was trying to ease off the next point of her pin. All that was far behind her now, she reminded herself. More than two years in the past.

“The best.” She didn’t raise her eyes from what she was doing. “Daddy’s a tenor with the Metropolitan Opera.” Or was, Marissa amended silently, the last time she’d seen Antonio.

Alec regarded the woman thoughtfully. If her husband was with such a prestigious group, what was she doing out here in leggings and an outlandish shirt, stuck to him? Why wasn’t she in New York? Alec glanced at the slender fingers that were fluttering between them, working at the pin.

No ring. Divorced?

Her son made a grab for Alec’s ear, obviously determined to destroy by force what he hadn’t obliterated with his voice. Alec moved his head back as far as he could. He slanted a glance at the woman. “Could you, um, hurry up with that?”

She almost had it. “One second.” Marissa bit her lip ruefully. “I can’t believe how tangled it got in just that one collision.” The freed thread seemed to bounce back against the sweater. She smoothed it down with her fingertips. “There.” She sighed. “We’re free.” Marissa turned her attention to Christopher, grinning. “I’ll take that, thank you.”

Alec shifted so that she could easily reclaim her baby. Relief skied over him with the speed of a winter Olympic contender. “All yours.”

There was way too much feeling in that proclamation, Marissa thought, amused. At least the man was honest. He made no attempt to pretend that holding on to her wiggling son was a piece of cake. Christopher had worn out a number of baby-sitters in his time. He was the reason she’d opted for this kind of a job while she was trying to earn her masters degree. A degree that had been temporarily interrupted while she took time out to have Christopher and get at least a cursory handle on motherhood. Those hadn’t been her original plans, but she had adapted, just as she had adapted when she had discovered that Antonio’s plans for the future did not include being a father. With one stroke of a pen, he had shed her, their marriage vows and their unborn child.

Andrea grabbed the collar of Alec’s sweater and was hanging on to it as if her very life depended on it. He suspected that sharing space with the woman’s bundle of joy might have had something to do with this reaction.

“It’s okay, Andrea.” He bounced her against his shoulder and she made a noise he swore passed for a giggle. “Daddy’s all yours again.”

The woman’s eyes seemed to glow with warmth as they washed over his daughter. “Is that her name?” she asked. “Andrea?” Alec nodded, holding the door open for her. “Pretty.”

He supposed that some sort of conversation was in order as he followed the woman inside the huge room. Making small talk with strangers had always made him uncomfortable, though he seemed to manage well enough for no one to really notice.

“What’s your boy’s name?” There was no indication that the child in her arms was a boy. The clothing was neutral, as was the color. And the baby’s hair was at a length that could have gone either way. But something told Alec that no female child could yell like that.

“Christopher,” Marissa answered.

He’d always liked that name. “Rugged,” he commented, looking at the boy. “Suits him.”

Marissa cast a long glance around the room. It was filled with brand-new equipment and toys, both purchased and donated, just ripe to set off the imagination. Her classes were happy places that everyone looked forward to attending. And it looked as if everyone was already here. Time to start. “Thanks.”

He followed her, wondering if there were assigned places or if people just sat anywhere and milled about. He couldn’t have been more out of his element than if he had just tied a bungee cord around his waist.

“Do you know anything about the instructor?” Alec looked around, trying to discern if anyone in the room looked like a teacher. “This is my first time here.”

So that was it. Marissa turned around to face him. “I didn’t think I recognized you.” She tried to remember if there was a new name on the register. People came and went so frequently, it was hard to keep track. The classes were relatively unstructured, which was what attracted most parents to them. It was a place to exhale, to be shown that they hadn’t terminally ruined their offspring by misguided deeds, and to feel good about parenting, themselves and their children.

Judging by the turnout, she figured she was doing a good job of reaching her goals.

Andrea was wetting his sweater just below the snag, trying to suck it all into her mouth. Alec moved her to his other side. “I just registered.”

Marissa nodded at several mothers looking her way, then smiled brightly at the man. “Well, then, welcome to the class. I’m Marissa Rogers.”

Alec was feeling increasingly more uncomfortable. By his rapid count, there were only three other men here. He began to wonder if this had been such a good idea after all.

“Looks like the teacher’s one of those people who doesn’t take responsibility seriously.”