The Baby beneath the Mistletoe

Stunned, Mikky raised her eyes to his. “What are you doing with a baby?”

Great, Tony thought, this was all he needed to add to the confusion he was already wading through. He leaned out again to see if there was someone lurking in the shadows, ready to capitalize on this practical joke they were playing. But the lot was as empty now as it had been five long minutes ago.

The sinking sensation that this was no joke was beginning to penetrate.

“Holding it.” Tony ground out the words.

“Besides that?” Mikky asked, shouldering her way past him into the trailer. As she moved by him, she took the baby into her own arms.

Though a protest initially leaped to his lips, Tony surrendered his burden willingly. One glance at Mikky forced him to admit that she had a far better feel for holding a child that size than he did. It had been a long time since he’d held a baby in his arms. The bittersweet memories holding it evoked was just about doing him in.

He didn’t need this on top of everything else.

Mikky knew for a fact that Marino had no other children. What was he doing with this baby? Turning to look at him, she saw that there was no explanation forthcoming. It figured.

“Well?” Opening her jacket, she cradled the baby against her, enjoying the warm feel of its small, rounded body. Maternal feelings that had long been sublimated leaped up within her. She wanted children. A whole house full of them. Unable to resist, she kissed the small head. “Where did it come from?”

His wide shoulders rose and fell. “I found it on the doorstep.”

Why did every scrap of information she got from him first have to be preceded by a tug-of-war? “No, I mean really.”

“Really,” he insisted. Tony gestured toward a beaten-up baby seat. “The baby was in that.”

Cooing soothing noises at the small invader, Mikky turned to look at the baby seat. It looked as if it had been in service a very long time. The baby was making sucking sounds against her shoulder that she recognized as hunger in the making. It was going to need baby food and milk and soon.

With one hand holding the child in place, she picked up the blanket from the baby seat and shook it. A creased envelope fell out.

Unable to open it herself, Mikky held the envelope out to Tony. She couldn’t help wondering if her initial sympathy for him was misguided. Maybe there was more to this man than she’d thought. Maybe this was his baby....

“Want to read it?”

Tony took the envelope from her before the tone of her voice registered. He looked at her sharply. “Why? You think it’s mine?”

“Is it?”

His laugh was short and completely devoid of humor. “Only in a parallel universe.”

He hadn’t looked at another woman since he’d met Teri, much less engaged in a liaison with one. And there had been no one since his wife’s death. He was completely dead inside.

Annoyed at her, he tore open the envelope, taking off a corner of the note with it. Ignoring Mikky, he shook the note out and quickly read it. There wasn’t much to read.

Curious, unable to see anything in his expression, Mikky stood on her toes to look around his arm at the note herself.

“Please take care of Justin. I know you can,” she read out loud. No help there. She looked at Tony. “Not much to go on, is it?”

Instead of answering right away, Tony dropped the note on his desk, letting it land on the blueprint, which, she noticed, looked far more crumpled now than when she’d left a few minutes earlier. That it was apparently smoothed out again indicated he’d obviously had a change of heart about his feelings. He was a hard man to figure out, she thought.

“No,” Tony answered, his voice very still, “it’s not.” He felt as if someone had just dropped an anvil on his chest.

Moving into the light so she could get a better look at his face, Mikky saw that his olive complexion had grown almost pale. “What’s the matter?”

His eyes averted, Marino refused to even look at her. “Nothing.”

Mikky was tired of having him bite the hand she kept offering in friendship. She took the same tone she took with one of her brothers on the infrequent occasions when their moods turned nasty.

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me.” When he began to turn from her, she butted her hand against his shoulder and pushed him back around so that he was forced to face her. He looked at her in mute surprise. “I was raised in a house full of brothers, and I know when a man’s trying to hide something. Now what’s wrong? You turned pale when you said the baby’s name.”

She was going to harp on this until he caved, Tony thought angrily. It was none of her damn business, but he told her anyway. “Justin was my son’s name.”

“Oh.” Where did she go from here, hobbling the way she was with her foot in her mouth? Mikky thought. She caught her lower lip in her teeth. “I’m sorry.”

His scowl grew darker. “I don’t need you to be sorry.”

The war was on again. It figured. His type didn’t know how to show any emotion other than growling. “Okay,” she said tersely. “Moving on. Did you see anyone?” The baby was beginning to leave a very wet spot on her shoulder where he was sucking on her blouse.

Tony shook his head, frustrated. Why had someone singled him out? There had to be a reason, didn’t there? What was it?

“There was a knock on the door. I thought maybe it was you, coming back to apologize. When I opened the door, there wasn’t anyone there, except for him.” He nodded toward the baby.

It was exactly what she was coming back to do—apologize—but his thinking she had reason to suddenly threw a fresh log onto the dying fire of Mikky’s anger.

Her eyes widened as she looked at him. “Why should I apologize?”

“Because—”

But before he could continue, she held up a hand, waving away whatever it was he was going to say that would undoubtedly launch them into another round.

“Never mind, forget I asked. That isn’t important now.” She moved the baby into the crook of her arm. The smile that was on the rosebud mouth threatened to completely melt her heart. “But this baby is. What are you going to do about him?”

“Me? You’re the one who’s holding him. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, remember?”

There had to be more to this. Some kind of connection he wasn’t admitting to.

“Whoever left him on your doorstep,” she pointed out, “obviously thought you could take care of him.” She consciously avoided using the baby’s name, though she thought of it as an odd coincidence.

Take care of a baby? Tony thought. That was laughable. He could barely take care of himself right now, much less anyone so helpless. It was all he could do to function in the morning.

He wasn’t answering her, she thought. Was he just ignoring her, or didn’t he know? Mikky tried again. “So what are you going to do?”

Tiny fists opened and closed, catching air. Tony watched despite his effort not to. “I have no idea.”

Chapter Three

Confronted with his indecision, Mikky gave the situation only a moment’s thought and passed the baby to Tony. One of her brothers was a police detective. He’d take it from here. “Well, the right thing to do is to turn him over to the police.”

Without realizing it, Tony held the baby closer to him. The whimper told him he was holding Justin too tight. “For what, loitering?”

“If you’d stop being antagonistic toward me for a minute, you’d realize that—”