Your Baby or Mine?

“This is great. I work at home two to three days a week.” It was part of Bytes and Pieces’ policy to help solve Southern California’s escalating gridlock problem rather than add to it. All that had been needed was a terminal connected to the main computer at the office and he was on his way. “Something could be worked out.”

Temporarily forgetting about Mrs. Stewart, Marissa addressed the more pressing problem: getting through Beckett’s thick head. She raised her voice. “Yes, if I wanted it to, but, Mr. Beckett, you’re missing a crucial point here.”

He ceased mentally patting himself on the back. “I am?”

“Yes.” She looked up at him, carefully enunciating each word. “I said no.”

The foundation of the Arch of Triumph he was constructing suffered a terminal crack. He tried to smooth it over.

“Not in so many words,” Alec observed quickly.

The man had to be a salesman. “Actually, in a lot of words, some of which you wouldn’t allow me to get out. I have a very full schedule and I really don’t need to take on any more right now.”

He had a feeling about Marissa and Andrea. She would be good for his daughter. He wasn’t about to give up without a fight. “How much are they paying you here?”

His question caught her off guard. “That’s a little personal, don’t you think?”

Alec shook his head. He wasn’t trying to pry, he was trying to win. “Money is never personal. It’s a very public thing. Whatever it is, I can double it.”

The man didn’t know how to take no for an answer. Given his looks and the expensive cut of his clothing, she suspected that he probably didn’t hear it very often. “I take it that you’re used to getting what you want?”

He realized that honesty carried weight with her. It was gut feeling, but he went with it.

“No, just not used to being this desperate. I’ve had four nannies for Andrea in a year. Four women I hand-picked after long, exhausting sessions of talking to enough women to easily fill up a convention hall. They all came from reputable agencies and had long, glowing references in their possession, but things just didn’t work out.”

She wondered if the women left because of some problem that had to do with him. She couldn’t see how it could have been because of Andrea. “Why is that?”

He thought for a moment, trying to remember. “Ellen left because she fell in love with someone who was leaving town. Celeste decided that she wasn’t cut out to be a nanny. I fired Sue. Ingrid, the first nanny, retired. I think Andrea might have had something to do with that. There’s no getting away from the fact that she’s a handful.” He thought of Christopher. Andrea was positively docile in comparison. “But I think you’re used to that.”

Marissa couldn’t help smiling. Christopher was a live wire by anyone’s definition. “You might say that.”

Good, he had her attention. Alec didn’t let the opportunity slip away. “Anyway, I really don’t have the time to go through the process again. I’m in the middle of marketing this new software I developed and the thought of sitting and listening to the peccadilloes of a squadron of women while I try to separate fact from fiction to find a woman who has enough love, patience and enthusiasm to handle my daughter is particularly daunting right now.” He gave it his best shot. “Especially when I’ve found a woman who would be perfect for the job.”

Marissa sighed. He was giving her an awful lot of credit. Either that, or he really was serious about dreading the thought of conducting interviews. Either way, she couldn’t help him.

“Well, I thank you for that, but speaking of jobs…” She glanced over her shoulder at the group. Mrs. Stewart had been inordinately patient. She had to answer the woman’s question and start the new game portion of the class. “I should be getting back to mine.”

He had thought that he was winning her over. “What about my offer?”

“It’s a very flattering one, but I’m afraid I’m going to have to pass.” She was walking backward, away from him, and managed, somehow, to avoid colliding with anyone or stepping on any of the toddlers that were almost everywhere he looked. The woman was uncanny. “But I’ll let you know if I find someone who can live up to your specifications.”

“Outside of Mother Teresa, Mary Poppins and you,” he murmured to himself, “I don’t know of anyone.” Temporarily deflated, Alec looked at his daughter. He had to be in the office tomorrow. This wasn’t going to go over well with his mother. “Do you think your grandmother is up to taking you for another day?”

Andrea screwed up her face and made a familiar sound. Alec looked around for someplace where he could change his daughter. There was a change table against the far wall and he headed toward it just as Marissa called for attention.

“Don’t tell Roberta I called her that,” he whispered to Andrea. “Or she’ll really walk out on us.”

Andrea grunted again. Alec walked faster.

Roberta Beckett smoothed back her carefully styled auburn hair with a perfectly manicured hand. Two-inch-long fingernails flickered in the air like mauve butterflies searching for a place to alight. Through a meticulous regime that she adhered to religiously, Roberta managed to look years younger than the age written on the birth certificate tucked away in her safe-deposit box. Alec knew it was one of her greatest sources of pride that most people, upon seeing her with him, mistook them for brother and sister.

“It’s not that I don’t love her, Alec. I do. I truly do.” Roberta spared a smile for the child, who was holding on to the webbed siding of the portable crib and bouncing up and down in place. “But this rocking, feeding, diapering…” Her deep, husky voice dropped an octave lower as she said the last distasteful word. “It just isn’t me.”

Who knew that better than he? Still, his back was against the wall; he wouldn’t have asked her any other way. Besides, he knew for a fact that the housekeeper performed the actual dirty work. All Roberta did was add her stamp of approval.

“I know, Roberta, and I appreciate you putting yourself out like this, but—”

She didn’t want his gratitude, she wanted results. “Haven’t you found anyone yet?”

He hadn’t even had time to call the agency. He supposed he should have begun interviews yesterday instead of going to class with Andrea, but when he’d signed up, he hadn’t planned on the nanny quitting.

Mentally, he took inventory to make sure he’d brought everything that Dorothy, his mother’s housekeeper, would need to take care of Andrea. “Ellen only quit a little more than twenty-four hours ago.”

The argument obviously carried no weight with Roberta. “God created the world in six days.”

His mother had her own brand of logic. He had ceased to try to make sense of it a long time ago. “He left Adam and Eve for last. That was the hardest part.”

Roberta sniffed. Andrea squealed with glee, then landed on a well-padded bottom and a stuffed rabbit. “You don’t have to create a nanny, just hire one.”

He had to get going. Rex, one of the two owners of the company, was his best friend and incredibly understanding, but there were limits. “Almost as difficult.”

Roberta gave him a reproving look. “I never had difficulties finding one for you.”

Alec thought of the women who had paraded through his life, the ones who had been there to substitute for the genuine article. The very memory was enough to make him not want to hire anyone. He’d had a disjointed, unstable childhood at best. He hadn’t wanted that for Andrea. But he obviously had no choice. Alec sincerely hoped she wouldn’t remember any of this.

Because he needed help, he threw the ball into Roberta’s court. “All right, then you do it. You find a nanny.”

“Me? I should think that would be something you would want to handle on your own.” Roberta pursed her lips in a disapproving pout. “Really, Alec, I thought I raised you more independently than that.”

She was unorthodox, but he loved her. That still didn’t make him incline to let her delude herself.

“No, Roberta, you didn’t raise me at all. Estelle and Elizabeth and Suzanne and Joan and several other women whose names and faces begin to escape me, they raised me."

She distanced herself the way she always did when faced with something she didn’t want to deal with. A frown brought with it several wrinkles that refused to be smoothed, creamed or coaxed away. “What is your point?”

There was a vague discomfort in her eyes. Any moment now she’d announce that she was going off on a junket somewhere, leaving him completely adrift. He had to do something before that happened.

Alec looked at his mother ruefully. “The point is that I’m a little stressed out right now and I guess I’m being rude.”

Roberta smiled, graciously accepting the apology. “Yes, you are. But I forgive you because, after all, I am your mother even if I don’t look it.”

She walked Alec to the front door. “I’ll watch her today but remember, this can’t go on forever. I want you to find a nanny quickly.”

“No more than me, Roberta,” he assured her. “No more than me.”

“By tomorrow,” she called after him.

With any luck, tomorrow could be one of the days he worked out of the office he had set up in his den. That would give him the opportunity to conduct a few interviews. If conducting interviews for a nanny could be referred to as an opportunity.