Millionaire M.D.. Jennifer Greene
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“You’re volunteering to change a diaper? Have you had these symptoms long? Are you suffering from fever? Brain tumor? A history of lunacy you never mentioned before?”
For those insults, he tousled her hair—as if it wasn’t already a royal mess—before walking off with the baby. The phone rang six times over the next hour, and two more neighbors stopped by bearing car seats and blankets. But somehow all the confusion and running wasn’t the same with Justin there. The terror factor had disappeared. Contrary to his claims of inexperience, he acted like a veteran with both diaper sticky tabs and burping. And Angel seemed to forget that she was ticked off at the world in general. At the first sound of his voice, she started blowing bubbles and drooling.
“Just like all the other women in town,” Winona muttered.
“Pardon?”
“I said the baby fell in love with you from the first instant you picked her up.”
“Yeah, I noticed she quit crying. You think she recognizes a good-looking guy, young as she is? Someone with class and taste and brilliance—hey!”
As hard as she’d tossed the couch pillow at his head, he just pushed it aside with a grin. By then it was around eight o’clock. Angel had not only been fed, burped and changed, but she’d settled down in the bassinet. Winona couldn’t quite remember when Justin had ordered her to sit on the cocoa couch and pushed a hot plate of food in her hands, but she finally seemed to have caught some dinner; she was slouched down like a lazy slug and one stockinged foot was keeping the bassinet-rocker in motion.
Justin—for the first and likely only time in the universe—was kneeling at her feet. She’d felt obligated to mention, several times, how much she approved of his kneeling position. “It’s really where all men belong. In a submissive position to their superiors—meaning we women, of course. Waiting on us. Obeying us. Working to please us—”
“If you don’t cut it out, I’m going to have to get up and tickle you. Then you’ll start laughing and screaming. Then you’ll risk waking the baby—”
“All right, all right. You’re so right. I don’t want to wake her up,” she agreed. Still, it was tough, not pushing his tease-buttons, when he looked so adorable. He was trying to bring one of the borrowed baby walkers back to life, which was why he was hunkered down on her peach carpet, surrounded by nuts and bolts and tools. She usually saw him flying around town in his Porsche, or looking like Mr. Drop-Dead-Handsome Doctor at some gathering. And maybe these were images that Justin chose to cultivate, but Winona had still had the feeling that finding a place where he could kick off his boots and just tinker wasn’t something Justin got to do often.
The TV was on in the background, but neither was watching the sitcom. They just wanted the chance to click up the volume if any further developments were reported on the Asterland plane emergency landing. Temporarily, though, they might as well have been on an island alone together—except for the sleeping baby.
“So…what’d your boss say about the Angel situation?” Justin asked her.
“Well, deserted and neglected kids generally come under my bailiwick, anyway, so Wayne didn’t have to give me permission to handle the problem. It was automatic. He did seem a little startled when I showed up at the station this afternoon with the baby in a front pack. But no one at the station right now has time to worry about anything but the plane crash. Everyone’s descended on Royal today, if not in person than through the wires—from state cops to feds, TV and press, the aviation safety folks, diplomats and state people—”
“I know.” Justin motioned toward the TV. In the hour they’d had the tube switched on, the local news had interrupted every few minutes to provide an update on the circus. “My Texas Cattleman’s group was especially involved with the citizens from both countries. We’ve offered to help, and I hope the authorities take us up on it. I realize that they have to sweep for evidence and prints and all first…but you can see how much this crisis is driving the town nuts. Everyone wants to know the same thing. What caused that emergency landing? Fine, if it was a mechanical failure, but could it have been terrorists or sabotage?”
“From what I’ve heard, that specific jet has an outstanding history for being one of the safest planes in the air. And she was deluxe to the nth degree, no expense spared for security or comfort. It’s pretty hard to swallow that it was just a plain old mechanical failure—at least if the problem was carelessness.” Winona pulled a couch pillow on to her lap, finding it hard to take her eyes off Justin. Last she knew, he’d long reached the multi-millionaire status…which made it all the more fun to watch him bumbling with a screwdriver.
“So what was the buzz at your station house? Your cops find any reason to think there was foul play connected to the emergency landing?”
“There was no evidence leading in that direction this afternoon…but really, it’s way too soon to say. They may have collected all the relevant evidence, but it will still take weeks of testing procedures before we have complete answers. The whole world knows how much tension there was between the two countries of Asterland and Obersbourg, though…and that Texas party was the first and only thing that brought those two countries together and talking in more than a decade. I really think you’re right, Justin. You and the Texas Cattleman’s Club guys should be brought in, both to question and get some advice, and I’ll be surprised if you don’t get that call.”
“I wasn’t as involved as some of the other members. But I still want to help, if there’s any chance. And I did know all of the people involved.” Justin righted the baby walker, pushed it around the carpet. Sighed. And then turned it upside down to work on it again. “Frightening. To think you could eat dinner with someone, shake their hand, make a joke and laugh with them…and that they could deliberately have had something to do with a near-fatal plane crash.”
“Or that someone could intend harm to so many good people.” She leaned forward to peer over the edge of the bassinet. She cared about the plane crash. She cared about her job. But at the moment—all day really—only one thing dominated her mind and heart.
“You’re not going to wake her up again, are you?”
Winona’s jaw dropped. “Are you out of your mind? I may have only been a mother for a day, but I learned that hours ago. Never wake up a sleeping baby. And if you do, I’ll have to kill you.”
His chuckle tickled her into a smile, but then he shot her a more serious look. “So, what’s the deal on your squirt there? What’s the legal process—what happens to her now?”
“Well, the first thing you already know. An abandoned baby starts out with a medical checkup, no matter how healthy the child appears to be. In this day of AIDS and drug use and all, there’s no placing a baby—even temporarily—without knowing the health picture. But that was a piece of cake. She couldn’t have gotten a cleaner bill of health.”
“Yeah, so you said this morning. So, then what?”
“Then, normally, she’d be turned over to Social Services, and they’d find a foster-care arrangement for her.” Winona’s arms tightened around the pillow. “The court will get more directly involved as soon as something more definitive is established about the parents. And that’s my job. Finding the parents. Especially the mom. I have to find out what their story is, and why the baby was abandoned.”
“And how do you go about doing that?”
It seemed odd that she’d never told Justin any details about her job before, but then, there’d never been a reason for this kind of thing to come up in conversation. “There are lots of ways for me to pick up clues. Now that I have the baby’s age pinned down—at least ballpark—I can start checking hospital records, see if I can get a lead into young women having babies at that time. Then I can check the papers, same reason. Check the 9ll calls, emergencies, abuse, deaths, anything called in around the time the child was abandoned, to see if there could be any obvious connection.”
“Uh-huh. What else?”
“Then…well,