Stroke of Fortune. Christine Rimmer
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the question of no one in particular. He took off after Spence. Flynt and Michael fell in right behind.
Midway between the carts and the squalling infant, all four men slowed. The baby cried louder and those tiny fists flailed.
The men—Texans all, tall, narrow-hipped, broad-shouldered and proud—stopped dead, two in front, two right behind, about fifteen feet from the yowling child. Three of those men had served in the Gulf War together. Each of those three had earned the Silver Star for gallantry in action. The fourth, Michael O’Day, was perhaps the finest cardiac surgeon in the Lone Star State. He spent his working life fighting to save lives in the operating room—and most of the time, he won. Flynt’s own father, Ford Carson, was a living testament to the skill and steely nerves of Dr. O’Day.
Not a coward in the bunch.
But that howling baby stopped them cold. To the world, they might be heroes, but they were also, all four, single men. And childless. Not a one knew what the hell to do with a crying infant.
So they hung back. And the baby cried louder.
Flynt and Michael moved up on the other two, so that all four of them stood shoulder to shoulder. The men exchanged the kinds of looks bachelors are likely to share when a baby is wailing and there’s no female around to take charge and defuse the situation.
“Maybe the mother’s nearby,” Spence suggested hopefully.
“Where?” demanded Tyler, scowling. “Crouched in the bushes? Hiding in the shed?”
“Hey. It’s a thought.”
Another several edgy seconds passed, with the poor kid getting more worked up, those little arms pumping wildly, the fat little face crumpled in misery, getting very red.
Then Tyler said, “Spence.” He gestured with a tight nod to the left. “I’ll go right. We’ll circle the shed and rendezvous around the back. Then we’ll check out the interior.”
“Gotcha.” The two started off, Tyler pausing after a few steps to advise over his shoulder, “Better see to that kid.”
Flynt resisted the urge to argue, No way. You deal with the baby. We’ll reconnoiter the shed. But he’d missed his chance and he knew it. He and Michael were stuck with the kid.
Michael looked grim. Flynt was certain his own expression mirrored the doctor’s. But what damn choice did they have? Someone had to take care of the baby.
“Let’s do it,” he said bleakly, already on his way again toward the car seat and its unhappy occupant.
As his shadow fell across the child, the wailing stopped. The silence, to Flynt, seemed huge. And wonderful, after all that screaming.
The baby blinked up at him. A girl, Flynt guessed—the blanket, after all, was pink. Her bright blue eyes seemed to be seeking, straining to see him looming above her. And then she gave up. She shut those eyes and opened that tiny mouth and let out another long, angry wail.
Flynt dropped to a crouch. “Hey, hey. Come on. It’s okay. It’s all right….”
She might be hungry, or need a diaper change. She definitely needed comforting—and he was going to have to provide it. There was a note, a plain white square of paper scribbled with blue ink, pinned to the blanket. He went for that first.
It was damp. Water had dripped on it from the sprinkler-wet leaves of the hedge. The first part of whatever had been written was smeared beyond recognition.
But it did give him a name. Lena. “Hey, Lena. How are you?” The baby stopped in midwail, hiccupped—and wailed some more.
“Let’s see that note,” Michael said from right behind him.
Flynt pulled it free of the pin and handed it over. Then, while Lena howled and kicked her legs and waved those tiny fists, he went to work getting her out of the car seat.
The blanket had fallen away enough to reveal the seat belt apparatus, which didn’t look all that complicated: a shoulder harness that veed to a single strap over the tiny torso and hooked to the seat via a button latch between the legs. She went on flailing as he popped the latch and, gently as possible, lifted the strap to free her from the restraint.
He talked to her the whole time, trying to sound soothing, probably not succeeding. “Hey, Lena. We’ll get you out of here. It’s going to be all right. Hey, now. Hey…”
Damn, she was so tiny. Small as Wild Willie, the runt barn cat he’d been fond of as a kid—and a hell of a lot more defenseless. He slid one hand behind the downy black curls to support her head. He’d done a little studying on the subject of baby care a couple of years ago. That was back before the accident, when Monica was finally pregnant and he’d thought he would be a father, even dared to imagine he might learn to be a decent one, the kind his own father had been. He’d remembered reading that you had to support a baby’s head. A baby didn’t have much control of it, couldn’t hold it up by herself.
Lena quit flailing as he lifted her. She was blinking again, zeroing in on his face. Hadn’t he read that, too—that they could only see close up, that they bonded, by sight, with the faces of the adults who held them?
She was looking at him. She really was. “Lena…” He breathed the word softly, liking the sound of it. Then she burped—a big one—and made a funny, scrunched-up face.
Carefully he raised her to his shoulder. She moved against him, getting comfortable. She was so warm and small and soft. She felt good, her tiny body curled into his chest. And she was blessedly quiet. For the moment, anyway.
He stood from his crouch and turned to Michael, who said, “I think you’ve got a knack with babies, Flynt.”
Flynt didn’t reply. What was there to say?
The other half of their foursome emerged from the bushes. “Nothing,” said Spencer. “If the mother was here, she’s not now.”
Tyler frowned. “Wasn’t there a note on the blanket?”
Michael held it out. “Right here.”
Tyler took it and read it aloud. “‘I’m your baby girl. My name is Lena…”’ He passed the note to Spence. “Well, great. Whose baby girl?”
Spence studied the square of paper. “Looks like there was some kind of salutation, somebody’s name. But now it’s water-smeared to nothing but a blotch.”
Tyler shook his head. “So. Great. We’ve got no idea who left her here—let alone who was supposed to find her.”
No one spoke for a moment. At Flynt’s shoulder, Lena hiccuped again, then sighed. He felt her tiny chest expand, felt the warm huff of air against his shirt.
Michael broke the silence. “Whoever left her, I’d guess one of her parents was supposed to find her. After all, the note says ‘I’m your baby girl.”’
Spence was nodding. “It also reads as if whoever it is doesn’t know the baby exists in the first place, doesn’t know he or she has a child.”
Michael grunted. “That’d be a pretty neat trick for a mother—to have a baby without knowing it.”
Spence shrugged. “So more than likely, it was the name of the father on that note.”
“The father,” Tyler added, “who very likely has no clue that he’s a dad.”
Michael raised an eyebrow. “You three meet at the clubhouse every Sunday, right? You tee off at six-fifteen and by eight or so you’re always right here, at the ninth tee. Luke Callaghan, too.”
There was another silence, a heavy one. Flynt hardly noticed it. He had no idea what the other three were thinking. And he didn’t care.
His mind had started racing.
Damn. Could it be?
Blue eyes, black hair…
That