The Black Sheep’s Baby

from chewing on possibilities.

What could I give him if things were different? What might he like?

The fruitlessness of that mental exercise only served to remind her how little she really knew the man-Eric Lanagan, from Iowa. And how far apart they were. The gulf between them seemed enormous, unbridgeable.

How, then, to explain what had happened between them just now, down there in his mother’s kitchen? The memory of that slammed into her like a physical blow; her stomach gave a lurch and her heart began to race.

Pure unadulterated lust?

Oh, no. Lust didn’t begin to explain it-not as far as Devon was concerned. She hadn’t come by her reputation for being one of Los Angeles’s most unmeltable ice princesses by being lusty.

Not that she hadn’t enjoyed her share of relationships-even sex, in her own way. It was just that in both circumstances she preferred to remain…perhaps the best word was the one used most often by her bed-partners, usually shortly before a dramatic departure: Uninvolved. Her most recent relationship, with a senior member of the D.A.’s staff, had ended late last summer when he’d complained that he needed a bit more from a woman than “affectionate detachment, dammit.” Or had it been “detached affection”?

Either way, while Devon had been mildly distressed at his leaving, and in the months since had even thought of him once or twice with a fleeting sense of loneliness, frankly, she hadn’t missed the sex at all.

So, what had happened this morning, with Eric? She’d never felt like that before in her life. Never.

That quickly she was feeling it again-the flip-flop in her belly, the pounding heart, the surging heat, the trembling legs. Oh, man, she thought, hugging and rocking herself. Oh, man.

For the first time in her memory, Devon was afraid.

That in itself was enough to propel her up from the bed where she’d been sitting surrounded by the contents of her briefcase and overnighter, to begin an agitated and jerky pacing-across to the window-where she could look down on Eric’s “bunkhouse,” which she thought looked more like a dollhouse, or a cookie house decorated with spun sugar frosting-then to the door, and back to the bed again.

What was he trying to do? What was he thinking of, to kiss me like that? What is he up to?

She asked herself those questions and was suddenly angry…furious. He had to have done it on purpose, to upset her. She told herself he could not have actual feelings for her. Given the circumstances, even the possibility of lust seemed remote.

He hadn’t mentioned the court order or the mission that had brought her here since the first morning, but he had to have thought about it-how could he not? Just because they’d declared a Christmas truce, didn’t mean they weren’t still at war.

So, what was he up to? Could it be that- Oh, God. The truth hit her so hard she gasped and even buckled a little, as if from a blow to the belly. That was it-it had to be. Eric was deliberately trying to seduce her. Hoping she would then convince her parents-her clients-to drop their custody suit.

As if he could! (As if she would!)

If Eric Lanagan thinks he can get around me that way, he doesn’t know Devon O’Rourke!

With that thought resounding like a bugle call in her mind, she all but lunged across the room, flung open the door and surged into the hallway, intent on setting the man straight, once and for all. She had actually reached the stairs-had one foot on the top step-when she remembered.

Emily. She was baby-sitting.

With a groan of frustration, Devon tiptoed back the way she’d come. She hesitated at her own open doorway, then went on past it and down the hallway to Eric’s room. That door, too, stood open. No sound came from within- thank goodness Emily had slept through the racket she’d made, barging out of her room like that. Still, she supposed she ought to check, make sure everything was all right.

Holding her breath, she tiptoed closer and peeked into the room.

The smallest of movements caught her eye: a tiny pink fist, poking up from the mound of pastel-colored blankets. As Devon stared at it, the fist waved, jerked, punched the air like a miniature shadow boxer. Without a sound. Fascinated, she crept closer, until, by craning her neck, she could see into the nest of blankets. Her breath hiccupped, quivered, then stopped again.

Murky blue eyes gazed intently at the waving fist. The fist jerked, the eyes widened. Budlike lips drew together, forming a look of intense concentration on the round pink face.

Devon couldn’t help it-she gave a squeak of laughter. And tried to hold it back with fingertips pressed against her lips. Too late-the eyes jerked toward the movement and the sound, and the look of concentration became one of expectation.

Busted, thought Devon with an inward sigh. “Hello, little one,” she whispered aloud, and her heart did a stutter-step because that was what she’d heard Eric call her. “Hello, little girl,” she amended as she bent closer still, and daringly touched the baby’s chin with her forefinger.

It was startling to her-it seemed the most miraculous thing-when the baby’s chin abruptly dropped and her mouth popped open, then widened…and just like that, became a smile.

“Ohh…” Devon breathed. Something inside her chest-her heart?-grew huge and began to ache. Her eyes misted over.

How it happened, she didn’t know, but somehow, then, she was sitting on the bed in the midst of all those pink and yellow blankets, and the baby was nestled in her arms, instead. She was cooing to her and rocking, softly laughing, and didn’t know or didn’t care that there were tears running down her cheeks.

It was like stepping into a time capsule. From the moment Eric pushed open the door and switched on the light, he was fifteen years old again, coming home from school, getting off the bus and jogging up the lane, making straight for the bunkhouse. Throwing his backpack down on the narrow bed, reaching up to take the key to his inner sanctum, his darkroom, from its hiding place above the wall heater beside the door.

It had been his dad’s idea to turn the back half of the bunkhouse into a darkroom, the part that included the bathroom with its water supply and drainage system to accommodate the mixing and disposal of chemicals. It had been years since they’d actually housed a hired hand in the bunkhouse, Mike had pointed out, and besides, it would be a whole lot more comfortable-and less expensive-than trying to convert the old root cellar and tornado shelter under the house, which had been Eric’s initial plan.

Eric had insisted on paying for the renovations himself, out of the money he’d earned working summers for his mom and the sale of 4-H project animals, money that was supposed to have been saved for college. He’d been arrogant, he remembered, about the fact that he’d paid for it with his own money. It was only now, looking back, that he realized how much help on the project he’d gotten from his dad-and his mom, too. And that they hadn’t said a word about him spending his college fund. Had he ever even thanked them, for any of that? Probably not. The thought made him feel itchy with guilt.

The bunkhouse was cold as a meat locker. He turned on the heater, and while the shoebox-shaped bed-sitting room was slowly filling up with warmth and the smell of burning dust, he felt above the heater, without much hope, for the key. Incredibly, it was still there. He felt a knot take hold in his chest as he fitted it into the lock, turned the knob, opened the door, flicked on the light. Sucking in a breath, he slipped the key into his pocket and stepped into the murky red gloom.

It was all there. Everything too large and bulky to take with him when he’d left home the summer he’d graduated high school, the drying racks and counters and shelves he and his dad had built out of scrap lumber and plywood from the local builder’s supply store. There were even some packages of paper and chemicals, almost certainly long expired. And more than a few spiderwebs, not to mention dust, but not nearly as bad as he’d expected. Which made him wonder if his mom might have been keeping the place up all these years. That thought was another knot…another guilt.

Methodically then, he began to move among the racks and counters, waving away cobwebs, blowing off dust, sorting, counting, rearranging, setting to rights. And while he did that images paraded through his memory-mostly black-and-white; he hadn’t been equipped, then, to process color-images taken with his old Pentax, his first SLR camera, given to him by his mom and dad on his thirteenth birthday. Images of Mom on her tractor, Ellie feeding baby calves, Dad at his computer, Aunt Gwen-well into her nineties and still wearing jeans-with her apron full of the eggs she’d gathered. Caitlyn on the swing, sticking her tongue out at the camera. School friends, wild geese flying,