time, and no, of course Angel wasn’t hers and wasn’t likely to be for long. Winona was trying her best to be completely realistic about that. It was just…carrying the little one around had seemed as natural as breathing. There’d been a thousand things to do, starting with taking the baby to the hospital for a checkup, then carting her back to the station, talking to Wayne, then claiming some computer time, then calling some moms in the neighborhood before stopping at a store for supplies. The busier she was, the more the baby seemed to love it. But then they’d come home.
Alone.
And Angel had lived up to her name tag all day until, it sure seemed, the point when Winona realized she
The doorbell rang. Winona whipped around, thinking, please, God, not another car seat or another well-meant baby blanket. Hunger was starting to set in. Exhaustion.
A nightmare-strength panic.
Before she could reach the front door, the knob rattled and Justin poked his head in. Her pulse promptly soared ten feet. There was no stopping it. So typically, even after a long workday, he looked as revved as the satin-black Porsche in her drive. He stepped in like a vital burst of energy, his face wind-stung, his eyes snapping life, his grin teasing her before he’d even said a word. “Win? Are you there-well, I can see you’re there. And a little on the busy side, huh?”
“I never thought you meant it about coming over! Come in, come in!” She wished she’d had a chance to brush her hair and put on lipstick, but what was the difference? It was just Justin. And no matter how mercilessly he ended up teasing her, she was thrilled to see him. “What do you know about babies?” she called over the caterwauling.
“Nothing.”
Never mind. She didn’t care what he knew or didn’t know. She closed the door with him firmly on the inside. He was still another body. She wasn’t alone. “You’re a doctor, you have to know something-”
“Yeah, I’ve been trying to tell my patients that for a long time.” He peeled off his sheepskin jacket, took a step toward her living room and froze. “Holy cow. Did you have a cattle drive in here this afternoon?”
“Very funny. It’s just baby gear. Loans from the neighbors. Now listen, Justin, whether you know anything or not-you could hold her for a second, couldn’t you? I just need a minute. Time to get some dry diapers and fresh clothes and a bottle warmed up-”
“Okay.”
“It won’t take me long to do any of that stuff-”
“Okay.”
“Don’t panic because she’s crying. She’s really a darling. I just have to figure out what’s wrong. That’s all there is to it. You figure out what’s wrong, you fix it, she quits-”
“Hey, Win. Could you try and believe it’s okay? I really did come over to help.”
It’s not that she didn’t believe Justin. It was just that his offer to help seemed so unlikely. The town may have labeled Justin a devil-may-care bachelor, but Winona had always known better than that. Something had happened to him in Bosnia, because he’d come back a different person-quieter, more closed in, and he’d left his once-loved trauma medicine specialty in favor of plastic surgery. But his reputation as a surgeon spanned the southwest. His participation with the Texas Cattleman’s Club was another unrecognized involvement. And she’d never forgotten meeting him back when she was twelve, on the first day she’d been fostered with the Gerards. To her, he’d been the best-looking teenage guy in the universe. Even that young, he’d had the sexiest eyes. The laziest drawl in Texas. A way of looking at a woman. And a way of picking up a little girl-and her bike-from the sidewalk, and somehow making her skinned pride feel better in spite of impossible odds.
Most of their relationship, though, he’d been an inescapable, nonstop tease. He’d shown up to check out the guy who’d taken her to the senior prom, had a conniption fit when she sunned in a bikini, regularly asked her to marry him as if he thought that was funny, taught her to drive stick shift, and damnation, held her head when she’d come home from a party after her first (and last) experience with rum-and-colas. Short and sweet, he’d been a friend in her life forever-when he wasn’t being insufferable. And it was forgetting that “insufferable” adjective that was tough for her.
“What do you mean, you came over to help?” she asked suspiciously.
“Just what I said.” He scooped the baby out of her arms. “Right now, though, we don’t have a prayer of talking over the sound of Ms. Bawler. Go. Do the bottle thing. And I’ll try and figure out the diapers if you’ll steer me toward the supplies.”
Her hand shot to her chest. A mere twenty-eight and she was almost having a heart attack. “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
