His Forever Family

Sweet Jesus. Not a cat. Not a kitten.

A baby.

Two (#ulink_d06e5a25-84a3-5e8f-a760-85fd26f382f4)

Breathing hard, Liberty admired the view as Marcus sprinted away from her. When he reached the water fountain, she turned her attention back to the lake. It wouldn’t do to be caught staring at her boss’s ass. Even if it was a fine ass. And even if the owner had just made one of himself.

Instead, she took the time to appreciate the gift that was this morning. She hadn’t set foot in a church in a good fifteen years. But every morning she stood here and looked out on Lake Michigan and gave thanks to God or the higher power or whoever the hell was listening.

She was alive. She was healthy. She had a good job that paid for food and a safe apartment. There was even some money left over for things like running shoes and haircuts.

“Liberty?” Marcus yelled from the water fountain. “Liberty!”

Even though Marcus couldn’t see her, she glared at him. What the hell had gotten into him this morning? One of the reasons she worked for him—aside from the insane salary he paid her—was the fact that he treated her as an equal. It was a bit of delusion on her part to pretend that she was on par with the likes of Marcus Warren, but it was her delusion, dammit.

And that delusion worked only because it was just her and Marcus on these runs, both in running clothes. The delusion didn’t work when he was wearing a four-thousand-dollar suit and she had on the finest suit she could find on 80 percent clearance at Macy’s. And the delusion sure as hell wouldn’t work if she accompanied him to a three-day destination wedding extravaganza that no doubt cost more than she’d ever earn in her lifetime.

Someone would see through her facade. It’d get ugly, fast.

“Liberty!” He was even louder this time.

Was he not used to women saying no to him? Oh, whom was she kidding? Women didn’t say no to him. Why would they? He was gorgeous, single, richer than sin and eminently respectable. “What?”

“I need you!” he yelled over his shoulder. “Hurry!”

She realized he wasn’t standing at the water fountain anymore. He was on his knees by a trash can in the gravel that surrounded the fountain. His shoulders were hunched over and he looked as if—oh, God, he wasn’t having a heart attack, was he?

Liberty began to hurry. The three years of daily morning runs with Marcus had given her enough stamina that she broke into a flat-out run.

“Are you okay?” she demanded as she came up to him. “Marcus—what’s wrong?”

He looked up at her, his eyes wide with fear and one hand over his mouth. Just then, something in front of him made a pitiful little noise.

She looked down. What she saw didn’t make sense at first. There was a box and inside was something small and dark and moving.

“Baby?” Marcus said in a strangled voice.

“Baby!” Liberty cried with a start. She didn’t know much about babies, but this child couldn’t be more than a week old. The baby was wrapped in a filthy rag, and dark smudges that might have been dirt but were more the color of dried blood covered its dark skin. Wisps of black hair were plastered to its tiny little head. Liberty stared in total shock, trying to make sense of it: an African American newborn in a shoe box by the trash can.

“It was—the box—it was closed,” Marcus began to babble. “And I heard a noise and—baby. Baby!”

The baby opened its little mouth and let out another cry, louder this time. The sound broke Liberty out of her shock. Jesus Christ, someone had tried to throw this baby away! In a box in this heat? “Move,” she commanded and Marcus dutifully scooted out of her way.

Her hands shaking, Liberty lifted the baby out of the box. The rag fell away from the impossibly tiny body—no diaper. A boy, and he was caked in filth.

“Oh, my God,” she whispered as the baby’s back arched and it let out a squeal. His little body was like a furnace in her hands.

“What do we do?” Marcus asked. He was clearly panicking.

And Liberty couldn’t blame him. “Water,” she realized. “He’s too hot.”

Marcus held out her water bottle, the one he’d been filling. She grabbed the rag and said, “Soak that in the fountain,” and took her bottle.

The baby squirmed mightily in her arms and she had this moment that was almost an out-of-body thing, where instead of looking down at a little baby boy she’d just plucked from a shoe box, she was looking down at William, the baby brother she’d never gotten the chance to see, much less hold. Was this what he’d been like, after their mother gave birth in prison and the baby was taken away to a foster home? Had William died like this?

No. This baby, whoever he was, was not going to die. Not if she had anything to do with it.

“This is disgusting,” Marcus said, but she didn’t pay any attention to him.

She folded herself into a cross-legged position on the gravel, ignoring the way the rocks dug into her skin. “It’s okay,” she soothed as she tried to dribble some water into the baby’s mouth. “You’re a good boy, aren’t you? Oh, you’re such a sweetheart.” The baby turned his head from side to side and wailed piteously. Panic gripped her. What if he wasn’t going to make it? What if she couldn’t save him? “You’re loved,” she told him, tears coming to her eyes. “And you’re so strong. You can do this, okay?”

“Here,” Marcus said, thrusting the rag at her. Except it wasn’t the rag—it was his shirt.

She looked up and found herself staring right at Marcus Warren’s bare chest. In any other circumstances she would have taken her time admiring the view because damn. He was muscled and cut—but still lean. He had a true runner’s body.

The baby whimpered. Right. She had much more important things to deal with than her boss suddenly half-naked. She held the baby away from her body. “Drape it over him.”

Marcus did as he was told, laying the sopping-wet cloth over the baby’s body. The sudden temperature change made the poor thing howl. “It’s okay,” she murmured to him, trying to get a little water into his mouth. “You’ll feel better soon.”

“Should I go for help? What should we do?”

Help. That would be a good thing. “My phone is in my pack,” she said. He didn’t run with his phone—that was her job. “Call 911.” She was amazed at how calm she sounded, as if finding a baby on the verge of heatstroke in the trash was just another Tuesday in her life.

Marcus crouched behind her and dug through the fanny pack that held her water, keys and phone. “Got it.” She told him her password without a second thought and he dialed. “We’re at Buckingham Fountain and we found a baby in the trash,” Marcus said way too loudly into the phone.

“Shh, shh,” Liberty soothed as Marcus talked to the 911 dispatcher. “Here, let’s try this.” She dipped her finger into the water and held it against the baby’s mouth. He sucked at it eagerly and made a little protest when she pulled her finger away to dip it into the water again.

He latched on to her finger a second time—which had the side benefit of cutting off the crying. Liberty took a deep breath and tried to think. There’d been a baby at her second foster home. How had the foster mother calmed that baby down?

Oh, yes. She remembered now. She began to rock back and forth, the gravel cutting into her legs. “That’s a good boy,” she said, her ears straining for the sounds of sirens. “You’re loved. You can do it.”

Agonizingly long minutes passed. She couldn’t get the baby to take much more water, but he sucked on the tip of her finger fiercely. As she rocked and soothed him, his body relaxed and he curled up against her side. Liberty held him even tighter.

“Is he okay?” Marcus demanded.

She looked up at him, trying not to stare at his body. Never in the three years she’d worked for Marcus had she seen him even half this panicked. “I think he fell asleep. The poor thing. He can’t be more than a few days old.”

“How could anyone just leave him?” Now, that was more like the Marcus she knew—frustrated when the world did not conform to his standards.

“You’d be surprised,” she mumbled, dropping her gaze back to the baby, who was still ferociously tugging on her finger in his sleep. Aside from being hot and filthy, he looked healthy. Of course, she’d never seen William before he died in foster care, so she didn’t know what a drug-addicted newborn looked like. This child’s head was round and his eyes were still swollen; she’d seen pictures of newborns who looked like him. She just couldn’t tell.

“You’re just about perfect, you know?” she told the infant. Then she said to Marcus, “Here, wet your shirt again. I think he’s cooling down.”

Marcus did as he was told. “You’re doing an amazing job,” he said as she wrapped the wet cloth around the baby’s body. The baby started at the temperature change, but didn’t let go of her finger. Marcus went on, “I didn’t know you knew so much about babies,” and she didn’t miss the awe in his voice.

There’s a lot you don’t know about me. But she didn’t say it because it’d been less than—what, twenty minutes? If that. It’d been less than twenty minutes since Marcus Warren had said he trusted her because she was the one person who was honest with him.

She wasn’t—honest with him, that was. But that didn’t mean she wanted to lie outright to him. She hated lying at all but she did what she had to do to survive.