Beauty and the Baby

She’d made up her mind about this and she wasn’t about to allow him to rain on her parade. “Energy.”

He laughed, shaking his head. Watching her as she moved about his broom closet of an office. “Like you need some.”

Her eyes laughed at him. The man was never satisfied. She’d be satisfied just removing the furrow from between his brows. “This afternoon you were complaining I looked tired.” She grinned. “There is just no pleasing you, is there?”

She had a way of lighting up a room, he thought, even when he wanted nothing else than to stay in the dark. “You don’t have to please me, Lori—”

Lori came around to his side of the desk and then sat down on top of it. She looked down on Carson, her eyes teasing him. “No, but I’d like to try. It’s a dirty job but someone has to do it.”

“Why?”

His eyes looked so serious. Her grin softened into a smile. “Because you deserve to be happy.”

He lifted his shoulders, shrugging carelessly. “Not according to my ex-wife.”

“What does she know?” Lori scoffed. She’d never really liked Jaclyn. The woman had turned out to be a self-serving gold digger, pushing Carson to get further along in his career not for his benefit, but for hers. “If she knew anything, she wouldn’t be your ex-wife, she’d still be your wife.”

The assertion embarrassed him. He didn’t know how to handle compliments. He never had. “What are you doing here, anyway?”

She’d almost forgotten. “I came to see if I could find Angela’s phone number.”

More than a hundred and seventy kids came to the center during the week. He was drawing a blank. “Angela?”

“The tall, thin girl who’s so good at basketball. Brunette, dark brown eyes. Laughs like a blue jay,” she prompted.

The last struck a chord. “Oh, right.” And then he looked at her. He couldn’t think of a more unlikely coupling. “Why do you want her number?”

She debated just how much she should tell him. “I want to see how she’s doing.”

“Why? Can’t find anyone your own age to play with?” Carson studied her face in the dim light. “You’re serious.”

“Yes.”

He couldn’t read her expression any more than he could read Japanese. “Why would you want to see how she’s doing?” Instincts told him not to drop the matter. “Something wrong?”

Lori didn’t want to break a confidence. “It could be.”

The expression on Carson’s face told her she’d lost all chance of leaving the building with the phone number without giving him some sort of an explanation. She hadn’t promised Angela not to tell anyone, but it had been implied. Still, Carson had a good heart, despite his tough, blustery manner and he’d been running this center for a while now. He had a right to know what was going on. Besides, he might be able to offer some insight into how to handle the situation.

Lori bit her lower lip. “She thinks she might be pregnant.”

The news stunned him. He stared at Lori blankly, wondering if he’d heard right. “She’s only, what, thirteen?”

“Fifteen,” Lori corrected, although she could see how he’d make the mistake. Angela had a baby face that made her look younger than she was.

Thirteen, fifteen, there hardly seemed a difference. “A baby.”

She knew how Carson felt. But it was a sad fact of life. “Babies have been having babies for a long time now.”

Carson scrubbed his hand over his face. Damn it, the center was supposed to prevent this kind of thing. The kids were supposed to use up their energy on sports, not sex. “How do you figure into this?”

“I found her crying in the back of the locker area today and got her to talk to me.”

Lori had that kind of knack, he thought, the kind that made people open up to her, even hard cases. At times even he had trouble keeping his own counsel around her. “Does her mother know?”

She shook her head. “I think Angela’s afraid of her mother.”

“I’d be afraid of my mother if I was pregnant at fifteen.”

She laughed. “If you were pregnant at fifteen, it would have made all the scientific journals.” Her grin broadened and she was relieved to be able to have something to laugh at. “If you were pregnant at any age, it would have made the scientific journals.”

Carson gave her a dry look. “Very funny.” Maybe it would do Angela some good to talk to Lori, he reasoned. Girls in trouble tended to do drastic things. Minimizing his current program, Carson typed in something on his keyboard and brought up a directory. He scrolled down the screen. “Here it is, Angela Coleman.” Taking an index card, he jotted down the phone number for Lori, then handed it to her.

She looked at the single line, then held the card out to him. “How about the address?”

“Oh no, I don’t want you driving there in your condition.” When she turned to look at the screen, he shut the program.

She frowned at his screensaver. “The DMV have a ban on pregnant women?”

She was going to fight him on this, he just knew it. The woman didn’t have the sense of a flea. “Lori, it’s not the safest neighborhood.” He shouldn’t have to tell her that.

“Angela lives there.”

There were times he just wanted to take Lori by the shoulders and shake her. Because there were times that her Pollyanna attitude could put her in serious jeopardy. It was bad enough that she traveled here to work. He didn’t want her taking unnecessary chances by pressing her luck. “There’s nothing I can do about that. There is something I can do about you, though.”

She knew he meant well, but good intentions still didn’t give him the right to order her around. “Slavery went out a hundred and thirty-seven years ago, Carson. You don’t own me.”

He rose from his chair and looked down at her. “No, but I’m bigger.”

Lori wiggled off the desk. And met him toe to toe, raising her chin defiantly. “Plan to stuff me into a box?”

Damn but her chin did present a tempting target. So did her lips. The thought shook him and he blocked it almost immediately. But not soon enough to erase it or its effect on him.

“If I have to.”

And then her expression softened. He couldn’t tell if she’d been putting him on or not. Or was doing so now. “In your own twisted little way, you care about me, don’t you?”

“Don’t overanalyze everything.” He didn’t want this going any further. “You’re carrying around my niece or nephew in there, that gives me the right to tell you not to be an idiot.”

“You do have a way with words.” Lori looked at him for a long moment. Others might buy into his gruff routine, but she didn’t. She’d seen something else in his eyes. A man who didn’t know how to connect. Even though he sorely needed to. “You miss her a lot, don’t you?”

Now what the hell was she talking about? It was getting late and he was in no mood for this. “Who?” he snapped.

“Sandy.”

The mention of his now five-year-old daughter took some of the fire out of him. He let his guard down an inch. There was no shame in admitting his feelings about the little girl. “Don’t get to see her nearly enough.”

That was because he spent nearly every waking minute here, she thought. “Why don’t you take tomorrow off? I’ll cover for you. Go see your daughter.”