Baby Of Convenience. Diana Whitney
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able to support Laura and her two sisters, let alone keep hungry animals well-fed and cared-for.
“Animals are like children in fur suits,” she’d once told a sobbing Laura, who’d brought home a puppy she wanted desperately to keep. “They are a big responsibility. Yes, they make us happy. But unless we can make them happy as well, it’s not fair of us to keep them from a good home where they’ll have enough to eat and a big yard to play in.”
Laura had understood. Kind of. But she’d never forgotten the agony of carrying that sweet, warm bundle from house to house until a kindly older woman took the puppy in, promising to give him a good home.
It had been the first time Laura had experienced the exquisite pain of a broken heart. It had not been the last.
As she slid a gentle finger down Cary Grant’s sleek black fur, a peculiar tingle warmed her spine. Beside her, Jamie issued a gleeful squeak, followed by a tickled laugh. She knew before she turned what she would see at the top of the stairs.
She wasn’t disappointed.
He was standing there, magnificently silhouetted by the spray of daylight from the upstairs foyer. Outlined, the perfection of his form was even more evident. The strength of his shoulders, the taper of hips that were obviously slender beneath the concealing shape of his expertly tailored suit.
Perhaps it was the angle of her gaze focused upward that made him seem taller than she’d realized, with the top of his head appearing to be only inches below the crest of the doorway.
But it wasn’t what she saw that affected her so deeply. It was what she felt, a radiating heat that she instinctively knew was emanating from his gaze. The aura was as tangible as a touch, and just as stirring. She didn’t have to see his eyes to know that they were focused on her with an intensity that seemed to penetrate every molecule in her body.
She was frozen in place, unable to move, to speak, to tear her gaze away. From what seemed a great distance, she was aware of sounds in the room. Her son’s laughter. Maggie’s proud purr. Mingling mews from the nest of kittens. All were overshadowed by the pounding of her own heartbeat, the frantic swish of her own pulse.
Something pulled on the strap of her tank top. An insistent tug, then another. “Mama, Mama!” Jamie’s voice broke the spell, releasing her from the mesmerizing presence at the top of the stairs. With some difficulty, she turned toward the toddler whose eyes were huge with exuberance. “Daddy’s home!”
Her heart seemed to wedge itself at the base of her throat, nearly choking her. The child was so desperate for a father that he consistently claimed any man who looked at him with kindness. “No, sweetie, that’s not your daddy.”
“Uh-huh,” he insisted with a smug grin, his glowing gaze riveted upward. “My daddy.”
A coolness swept her shoulders, as if a draft had slipped down the stairway. When she looked back, the doorway was empty. Royce Burton was gone, leaving nothing in his wake but her son’s sparkling grin, and a residual tingle along her own spine.
It was happening all over again, she realized. And it terrified her.
Chapter Three
Laura arrived at the Burton home later than usual, dressed in a mortifying serving uniform and armed with a fresh bag of kitty kibble.
Embarrassed by the silly attire required by her new job at a fast-food restaurant across town, she was relieved that Marta didn’t respond to her knock at the back door. Too bad the job at Quick ’n’ Good Food Mart didn’t work out. It was bad enough she had to board a public bus looking like a barn-dance escapee. The last thing she needed today was another run-in with a prune-faced shrew who treated Laura with veiled contempt at best, open hostility on her bad days.
And any day Marta laid eyes on Laura was a bad day.
Presuming the grumpy housekeeper was preoccupied elsewhere, Laura used her key to let herself into the immaculate kitchen.
Over the past few weeks, her life had disintegrated from merely chaotic to a crowded pressure pot of panic. Wendy’s tiny mobile home seethed with noise, with frustration, with the stress of too many humans crowded into too little space. Jamie, who’d always been a happy, cheerful child, had become cranky from lack of sleep, since his nap times were routinely interrupted by the shrieks of his boisterous roommates, and the cacophony of a blaring television through paper-thin walls.
These twice-daily trips to care for Maggie’s increasingly active brood served only to stir the melee, disturbing Laura on more than one level. Maggie’s enigmatic landlord, for example. Laura had yet to figure the guy out. He was a thoroughly unpredictable sort whose myriad moods both perplexed and fascinated her.
On the one hand, Royce Burton segued quite nicely into her perception of the rich and privileged with an aloof arrogance she recognized from having lived among the elitist Michaels clan.
On the other hand, he seemed oddly concerned about the health and well-being of not only Laura and Jamie, but the animals he professed to despise as well.
He complained about the kittens’ incessant mewing, yet had carpeted the entire basement to protect the tiny animals from the dampness of an increasing autumn chill. He seemed mightily irked by Jamie’s insistence on calling him “Daddy,” yet inevitably appeared in the study doorway to watch the child play with the shiny new toys that appeared like magic in the otherwise sterile mansion. He scowled at Laura as if her presence presented the world’s biggest annoyance. Yet he made certain a veritable buffet of refreshments was available during her visits, despite his housekeeper’s obvious distress at the additional effort required.
Apparently much of his business was conducted from his study, so he was frequently at home during the kitty-care visits Laura had managed to sandwich between employment interviews, child-care duties for Wendy’s two boys and her own frantic quest to find a lawyer who didn’t care about pesky details. Like being paid, for example.
The meager salary from the second-shift serving job she’d finally landed was a mere pittance compared to her debt.
Sighing, Laura juggled the five-pound bag of cat food under her arm, vaguely aware of a peculiar warm-wood scent that reminded her of the old lumberyard down the street. A glance around the spotless food preparation area revealed that the oven wasn’t in use, nor was anything bubbling on the cookstove.
A peculiar whirring sound also caught her attention, along with a series of shuddering scrapes, thumps and other ominous noise emanating from deep within the house. She had no time for idle curiosity or speculation. She had less than fifteen minutes in which to feed the cats, head to the corner and catch her bus.
As she reached the foyer, the floor began to vibrate, and the strange whirring sound grew louder. The high-pitched hum was penetrated by a male voice shouting over the din. There was tension in that voice, and an unnerving sense of alarm.
And all the disquieting noise was coming from the cellar.
Instantly alarmed, Laura rushed forward to the open doorway just as a shadow from the stairway exploded into human form, blocking her view.
Marta’s eyes were huge, frantic. “You see what you’ve done?”
Laura could see nothing beyond Marta’s horrified expression and the frenzied fling of her arms.
“Everything is ruined, completely ruined!” A metallic shriek like a buzzsaw chewing steel horrified her. Marta jumped as if shot, then jittered around to shake her finger in Laura’s face. “This is all your doing!”
Stunned, Laura could only press a palm to her chest and stammer, “Mine? How…why…?”
“Trouble, that’s what you are. I knew it the minute I laid eyes on you.” Her face contorted more with fear than fury, Marta bit her lower lip. Casting a woeful glance down at the pandemonium below, Marta pressed her knuckle against her quavering mouth. Her chin crumpled like crushed paper. Stifling a sob, she pushed past