“Somebody put up a sprig of mistletoe here.” Letter to Reader Title Page Dedication Letter to Reader Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight Chapter Nine Chapter Ten Chapter Eleven Chapter Twelve Epilogue Copyright

“Somebody put up a sprig of mistletoe here.”

Mikky raised her eyes to look at it. “You know, I hear it’s bad luck to go against tradition.”

“Guess this means I have to kiss you.”

“Guess so,” she whispered as Tony lowered his lips.

Feeling dazed, Mikky drew her mouth slowly away from his. For a man who was trying to keep his emotional distance, he’d certainly leapt over the chasm when he kissed her.

Mikky took a deep breath. “I don’t know about you, but that’s one tradition I think the world should really keep.”

“Michelle...”

“Shh.” She placed her fingertips to his lips to still them. “I’m not asking you for anything, just to enjoy the moment.”

“You really are something else, aren’t you?”

Mikky looked at him significantly. “Not better, not worse, just something else.” It was up to Tony to realize just what that actually meant to him.

Dear Reader,

The end of the century is near, and we’re all eagerly anticipating the wonders to come. But no matter what happens, I believe that everyone will continue to need and to seek the unquenchable spirit of love...of romance. And here at Silhouette Romance, we’re delighted to present another month’s worth of terrific, emotional stories.

This month, RITA Award-winning author Marie Ferrarella offers a tender BUNDLES OF JOY tale, in which The Baby Beneath the Mistletoe brings together a man who’s lost his faith and a woman who challenges him to take a chance at love...and family. In Charlotte Maclay’s charming new novel, a millionaire playboy isn’t sure what he was Expecting at Christmas, but what he gets is a very pregnant butler! Elizabeth Harbison launches her wonderful new theme-based miniseries, CINDERELLA BRIDES, with the fairy-tale romance—complete with mistaken identity!—between Emma and the Earl

In A Diamond for Kate by Moyra Tarling, discover whether a doctor makes his devoted nurse his devoted wife after learning about her past.... Patricia Thayer’s cross-line miniseries WITH THESE RINGS returns to Romance and poses the question: Can The Man, the Ring, the Wedding end a fifty-year-old curse? You’ll have to read this dramatic story to find out! And though The Millionaire’s Proposition involves making a baby in Natalie Patrick’s upbeat Romance, can a down-on-her-luck waitress also convince him to make beautiful memories...as man and wife?

Enjoy this month’s offerings, and look forward to a new century of timeless, traditional tales guaranteed to touch your heart!

Mary-Theresa Hussey

Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Please address questions and book requests to:

Silhouette Reader Service

U.S.: 3010 Walden Ave., P.O. Box 1325, Buffalo, NY 14269

Canadian: P.O. Box 609, Fort Erie, Ont. L2A 5X3

The Baby beneath the Mistletoe

Marie Ferrarella

www.millsandboon.co.uk

To

Mary-Theresa Hussey,

for reuniting me with

the Marino-McClellan Clan.

Thank you.

Bundles of Joy

Dearest Reader,

One of my very favorite photographs of my daughter Jessi is when she was five months old. She’s wearing her jammies and is sitting in her infant seat, right under the Christmas tree. She looks like a Christmas present. I thought of that photograph when I began writing this book. But with one change. Because babies are really more like something you’d want to find underneath your mistletoe—one look at their cute faces and you just want to cover them with kisses (at least I do). But like Christmas presents, you unwrap them, never knowing what you’ll find.

In writing this story, I revisited the family I used in my first family saga for Silhouette Romance. The Marino-McClellan family is a little unconventional, because it features a married couple who already had one son but went on to adopt a foster brother and sister. They’re like so many families these days. No longer are families just Mom, Dad, two and a half kids and a dog. What has resulted in all this is the understanding that, essentially, to be a family, all you really need is love. Once you have that, the rest is easy. At least, that’s what my protagonists discover.

Here’s wishing you love, now and always.

Love,

Chapter One

“She’s driving me absolutely crazy,” Tony Marino said.

Shad McClellan and Angelo Marino, two-thirds of Marino, MeClellan & Conrad Construction Company, exchanged grins at their cousin’s very vocal, very intense complaint. Tony, Angelo thought, finally had a little color in his face and more than a little emotion in his voice. It was about time and in his opinion, a very good sign.

Technically, Antonio Marino was only Angelo’s cousin, at least in terms of blood. But on that long-ago day when Angelo’s parents had thrown open their door and their hearts to two motherless children, Shad and his younger sister Dottie, Angelo had embraced both Shad and Dottie as his equals and his siblings in every sense of the word but legal. There were some things that transcended legalities and rules. Like love.

Heaven knew Tony could certainly use a little love himself right now. Or maybe a lot, Angelo amended, given what Tony had been through in the last year.

“Driving you crazy, huh? I take it you don’t mean that in a good way.”

“Good way?” Tony echoed with an incredulous, dismissive snort. That’ll be the day.

Trying to curb his temper, Tony ran a restless hand through the black mop of hair that stubbornly insisted on falling into his eyes, much the way it had when he was a boy. But that boy would never have thought his heart could have been so completely and painfully ripped out of his chest as it had been a little more than a year ago.

Lines about his mouth, mirroring the ones etched into his soul, deepened as he thought of the short, opinionated architect who could make herself heard above a hurricane. She had become, in an incredibly short period of time, the total bane of his existence. Tony didn’t need to be saddled with this problem. It was all he could do to remember to put one foot in front of the other. To get through each day. Overseeing the construction project was hard enough without having to deal with her.

“Good and Michelle Rozanski do not belong in the same sentence.” Tony rolled his own words over in his head. “Same sentence? Hell, they don’t belong in the same zip code.”

Wanting to show his cousins just what he was up against, Tony began rifling through the chaotic disorder on the tiny, scarred metal desk, looking for the blueprints that they were supposed to be using to build Bedford’s newest high school.

Shad glanced at Angelo again. This was the most emotion any of the family had seen Tony display since they had first coerced him to leave Denver and stay with them in Bedford. His sister had been right. Throwing Tony headlong into a brand-new project for the company had been the right thing to do. Dottie had known that he needed to have his mind on something other than his pain.

“It can’t be as bad as all that,” Shad commented.

A lot he knew, Tony thought darkly. Neither he nor Angelo had had any more to do with the feisty pain in the butt than exchange a few words at the initial meeting at city hall. They certainly hadn’t had to endure her incessant contradictions at every opportunity. Bad didn’t come anywhere near explaining the day-to-day work environment. He’d thought his association with the architect would begin and end with that brief meeting at city hall to accept the blueprints. He hadn’t realized the meeting would be only the beginning—the beginning of constant daily warfare in which his side appeared to be sustaining the most casualties. He never knew when she could come flying in through the trailer door with another bone to pick, another change to argue. He’d taken to locking it, just to claim a little peace of mind.

“It’s worse,” Tony snapped. Where the hell was that blueprint? The one of the second floor off the high school’s music-and-arts complex. He’d just had it. Tony shoved more papers aside. “She has an opinion on everything.”

“Most women do,” Shad deadpanned, trying to hide his grin behind his hand. This was looking very promising. When Tony had first arrived on his aunt Bridgette Marino’s doorstep a little over two months ago, he’d been a shell of the young man who had worked long summers beside them at one construction site after another. The light and laughter that had always been in his cousin’s green eyes had completely vanished.

Now at least there was something there. Granted, anger wasn’t the greatest emotion, but it was better than nothing. It meant he was coming alive again, beginning to react to things around him instead of just sleepwalking through each day.

Knocking over an oversize, red-bound book, Tony continued searching. “Not like this.”

Frustrated, he glanced up at the other two men. “She thinks she’s right—” Then Tony bit off a curse as another falling book narrowly missed his toe. He’d never been a very organized person, but in the past thirteen months he’d found himself facing nothing but chaos everywhere he turned. Which was just the way he felt inside.

“At the risk of repeating myself,” Angelo said amiably. “Most women do.”

Most women, but not Teri, Tony thought, the memory bringing with it the sharp, deep stab of pain. Teri, with her quiet, unassuming soul So quiet and unassuming that at times he’d all but had to coax responses out of her. She’d always been more than willing to bow to his wishes, uncontested.

He supposed in a way that had spoiled him. It certainly hadn’t prepared him to deal with a blue-eyed, sharp-tongued wrecking ball who was unshakably convinced that everything she said was etched in stone somewhere, residing on the same shelf as the Ten Commandments.

“Maybe,” Tony said. “But not like this.” Finding what he’d been searching for, shoved under the stained blotter, of all places, he pulled it out and made a futile attempt to smooth the long, curled paper out on top of his desk. “Have either of you taken a close look at these blueprints of hers?”

His patience in drastically short supply, Tony gave up trying to flatten out the paper on the cluttered surface and rounded his desk. Beckoning his cousins forward, Tony crouched down, placing the blueprint on the floor and spreading it out there.

Tony wasn’t sure just where to begin. Aesthetically pleasing, the proposed complex for the high school had more than one trouble spot. Several sections of the buildings appeared to, for all intents and purposes, simply defy the laws of physics. He stabbed a finger at what appeared to be the worst offense. He singled out the king post beneath the glass section of the roof.

“There, look at that. The woman actually thinks that’s possible.”

Shad and Angelo looked and saw the inherent flaw. Tony was right, at least to some extent. It would take a little compromising on both parts to work around the problem. But both men felt that Tony was up to it, given time. Relative or not, no matter how much their hearts went out to him in his time of emotional turmoil, neither Shad nor Angelo would have handed him the assignment if they hadn’t thought him equal to it. After all, he was a damned good civil engineer.

Since they had begun expanding their firm, merging with Conrad & Son when Angelo’s wife, Allison, came aboard, they’d had more new business than Salvator Marino could ever have conceived of when he’d originally started the small company. Then the company had been restricted to remodeling and upgrading bathrooms. Now there were no such restrictions on their expertise. More than one of the newer shopping malls in Southern California bore the stamp of their labor.

Nodding his head as if he were commiserating with Tony, Angelo looked at the man beside him and said, “Handle it.”

“I’ve been trying to handle it.” Tony knew he wasn’t the type to complain at the slightest provocation, but there was just something about this woman that seemed to set him off. Maybe it was how she looked at him—smug, determined, ready to cut him down to size. Or maybe it was just that he’d jumped in when he should have started out wading. Maybe this was too much of a project to take on, and he shouldn’t have agreed to do it.

He was tired, he told himself. Too tired to be reasonable tonight. Maybe things would look better on Monday.

“If I try to handle it anymore,” he said to his easygoing cousin, “my fingers will be wrapping around her throat.” Unconsciously he rubbed his thumbs along his forefingers. He had to admit the thought had some merit to it.

Angelo laughed. “I said handle it, not her.”

Tony’s frown deepened. “Handling it means handling her.”

Still squatting over the blueprints, Tony looked down at them again. Heading up an operation was nothing new to him. He’d been in charge of enough of them at his old company, and coming back to work for Marino, McClellan & Conrad was essentially like coming home again, at least for the most part. But he’d been at the top of his game before. Now he had trouble pulling his thoughts together for more than a few minutes at a time, trouble moving from the beginning of each day to the end of it.

It never seemed to get any better.

He’d returned to Bedford, to his roots, at the very insistent request of his aunt Bridgette. The rest of the family had been quick to throw in their support, each inviting him to stay with them. He’d agreed to come out because it had been an almost unconscious, lastditch attempt on his part to leave the land of the walking wounded and reenter the land of the living.

Turning down their offers, he’d leased an apartment for himself and tried to make a new start.

But it wasn’t working, not really. He didn’t belong here any more than he had back in Denver, his home for the past eight years.

He didn’t belong anywhere in this world, now that Teri and Justin weren’t in it.

Hopelessness began to spread long, icy fingers over him again, reclaiming him for its own. Freezing everything inside him.

He didn’t want to repay Angelo and Shad for their kindness by screwing up. It wasn’t right.

Tony sat back on his heels, talking to both of them, looking at neither. “Maybe you’d be better off if I just bowed out of this.” He sighed, feeling drained. “I have a feeling that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.” He was almost sure of it. He turned toward Angelo. “Maybe you—”

Angelo hated seeing him like this. Tony had always been equal to every challenge. But death had a way of changing all that. “Sorry, I’ve got the Carmichael project on my hands.”

Tony looked to the other man. “Shad?”

Shad already had his hands up, warding off the request Tony was about to make. “I’m handling the Gaetti development over at the north end of the city.”

Tony thought of the third member of the company. Emotionally shut off, he hadn’t really taken the time to get to know Angelo’s wife, but he knew her name wouldn’t be on the logo if she wasn’t first class. Which was why he didn’t belong here.

Raising a brow, he looked toward Angelo again. “Allison?”

Angelo shook his head. “Besides handling the triplets,” he said, pride and respect evident in his voice, “she’s working on that next phase of the Winwood homes south of here.”

Tony had forgotten about that. If he’d been in form, he thought ruefully, he would have remembered. Remembered everything. Still...

“Is there anyone else you can give this to?”

“Sorry, buddy. Ma and Dottie don’t do construction and Frankie’s too busy taking classes at UCI in between fighting off girls,” Angelo said, mentioning Shad’s stepson. It had been a disappointment when he’d discovered that Frankie, though incredibly adept at the work, had absolutely no interest in joining the family firm when he finally graduated from college at the end of this spring. “So there’s nobody left to helm this thing, but you. There’s no time to go scouting around for a new member.”

Shad clamped a hand on Tony’s shoulder. “I’m afraid the family honor and reputation are both in your almost uncallused hands.”

A very decisive knock on the trailer door tabled any further discussion among them. Shad felt Tony stiffen beneath his hand, a fatigued soldier suddenly going on the alert because he’d heard what he assumed was the approach of the enemy just outside his foxhole.

Tony wasn’t kidding about the fireworks between them, Shad thought. But fireworks could be either destructive or celebratory, depending on the way circumstances arranged themselves. A little guidance was in order here.

Being closest to the door, Angelo rose to his feet to open it. The smile that came to his lips was automatic. He had always appreciated beauty, whether in the lines of a well-constructed edifice, the multi-hued rays of a sunrise, or a striking woman. Which was now the case.

At five-one and barely a hundred pounds, Michelle Rozanski lit up any space she occupied and, at least in Angelo’s opinion, looked like an unlikely candidate to be a driven architect. In his experience most architects were bespectacled, slightly hunched men who spent a good deal of their time leaning over elongated desks and squinting at tiny white lines inscribed on blue paper. The computer had only changed the angle at which they squinted.

Mikky, as everyone called her, looked as if she should have a beribboned, noisy tambourine in her hand, a wide, colorful skirt swirling about her slim hips and an ankle bracelet made of entwined, fresh-cut flowers resting just above her bare feet. Despite the short, elfinlike hairstyle she wore, the word gypsy, sprang instantly to his mind when he looked at her. Architect didn’t even remotely venture into the picture.

But she was a good one, if he were to believe her reputation. Certainly good enough to catch the eye and the fancy of most of the members of Bedford’s city council. It was Mikky’s lofty design for the new fifteenacre high school that had won out over more than seventy-five other bids from far more prestigious firms.

Of course, just because the design, with its five very different buildings surrounding a gardenlike center, was aesthetically appealing, it wasn’t necessarily doable, he thought. He’d learned that more than once. What Tony had just pointed out to them was evidence of that. But that was a bone he figured his cousin was just going to have to chew on himself. As far as Angelo was concerned, it would undoubtedly do Tony good.

He needed to feel his blood rushing in his veins again, not have it all but congeal there.

Mixed signals assaulted Mikky the moment she stepped into the trailer. From the partners of the company, she felt an aura of genial accord. That, she had to admit, was a fairly new sensation. Accustomed to having to wage what amounted, at times, to a fierce battle to win respect on every project she undertook, she was surprised and pleased at Angelo’s and Shad’s reactions to her. But then, she’d heard they were fair men who knew their stuff. It didn’t hurt that the third member of their firm was a woman, either.

There was no question in Mikky’s mind that Shad and Angelo were men she could certainly work with. There was no macho challenge in their eyes when they looked at her, or worse, a feeling that she was being undressed and dissected. Even in this day and age, it wasn’t an uncommon thing for her to come up against this sort of sexual bias. And, though she had to admit that Tony Marino rankled her down to her very toes, at least he wasn’t guilty of that sort of insulting behavior, either.

The insults, both implied and vocalized, took another form. Tony Marino was blatantly in contempt of her intelligence. To Mikky that was a far greater offense. She’d worked hard to get to where she was, struggled every inch of the way for her schooling and to acquire a position with a prestigious firm. Once she’d gotten there, she’d had no respite. Even in these supposedly enlightened times, there were those who thought she’d slept her way to her position.

It was butting up against that lie that had finally given her the courage to hand in her resignation to Finch, Crown & Ferguson, a company that had been around for nearly eighty years, and begin her own company. The fact that her rendition of the new high school had won out over so many others told her that she had made the right decision in sticking to her guns and to her dreams.

And no sexy-looking, hard-bodied, small-minded construction boss in form-fitting jeans was going to make her believe otherwise, she thought fiercely, her eyes shifting to him now.

If Tony Marino wanted to fight her every step of the way to get “her” building up, well then so be it. She was up to the war. Thrived on it, even. Mikky came from a large family where fighting was as much a part of the day as breakfast.

Shad shook Mikky’s hand in greeting. “To what do we owe this honor?” Behind him, he heard Tony murmur something under his breath. Shad smiled to himself. Any reaction besides passive was a good one.

Mikky drew herself up to her full height, refusing to be intimidated by the fact that when Tony got to his feet, she was surrounded by three men who were almost a foot taller than she was. She felt her determination and talent made up the difference in physical stature.

“I came because I was summoned.” Her eyes shifted to Tony. “What is it now, Marino? I hope this won’t take long. I was getting ready to leave.”

Tony shoved his hands into the back pockets of his jeans. “Permanently?”

He’d been trying to get rid of her from the first. “For the weekend.”

“Pity.”

“Make you a deal,” she proposed. “You save your pity, and I’ll save mine.” She saw the blueprint spread out on the floor. Was he using it as a floor mat now? She wouldn’t put it past him. “Now, what’s your problem—other than the obvious?”

Tony squared his shoulders and grabbed the paper from the floor, all but holding it up before her nose. “Unless someone rewrote the laws of physics when I wasn’t looking, you’re still as wrong about this now as you were this morning when I brought it up.”

There was enough electricity crackling in the room to keep an entire city lit up for a year, Shad thought. Catching Angelo’s eye, he nodded ever so slightly. They were in agreement. Time to retreat. Shifting positions with Mikky, he backed up toward the door. Angelo was already there.

“Well, we’ll leave you two to your negotiations,” Shad said more to Mikky than to Tony.

Tony opened his mouth in protest, but never got the chance. Angelo was way ahead of him.

“We’ll see you at dinner on Sunday.” Rather than becoming a thing held only in childhood memories, dinner at his mother’s house was a tradition that had strengthened as the years went by and as their numbers had doubled and continued to increase. “If you’re free,” Angelo couldn’t resist saying to Mikky, “maybe you’d like to come, too. Ma always says there’s room for one more at the table. Tony can give you the address. Can’t you, Tony?”

Stunned at what he felt was an outright act of betrayal, Tony clamped his lips together. Why were his cousins bailing out on him this way, looking so smug about it? Didn’t they see that the last thing he needed now was someone like Mikky Rozanski?

Some family they were.

Mikky waited until Angelo and Shad had left and the door to the trailer was closed before turning toward Tony again.

The invitation from the man’s cousins had made her feel warm. In contrast, any exchange with Tony just made her feel hot. Hot under the collar and braced to go the full fifteen rounds of a championship fight in which she had to be the winner in order to survive in this field. She couldn’t afford to look as if she didn’t know what she was doing. Word spread too fast in the architectural community, and although the number of female architects was growing, there were still not enough to make her feel comfortable and at ease. Sometimes she felt as if she were carrying the standard for all women in the male-dominated field.

God, but the man did look formidable when he was annoyed, she thought, her eyes quickly sweeping over him. She couldn’t help wondering what his face looked like when it was relaxed, or when he was laughing. She had yet to see him even attempt a smile. Something told her that it would not be an unpleasant sight, but she doubted if she’d ever get to witness it firsthand.

It didn’t matter. She wasn’t here to make friends, just a good reputation.

Vowing to keep her own temper in check no matter what, she looked at Tony expectantly. She wanted to get this over with as quickly as possible because she didn’t want to be late for the movie she’d promised to catch with her brother, Johnny. “Well?”

Tony didn’t like her tone. She’d walked in on a meeting he’d had earlier with Mendoza, the foreman, taking him to task for changes she’d discovered he was about to make on her design. She’d had the nerve to all but order him to take another look before he struck out so much as a single line.

He’d been on the phone most of the morning, tracking down a shipment of conduit wiring that had mysteriously gone astray and hadn’t had time to go over their newest bone of contention at length. But he didn’t feel he had to. Right was right, no matter how thoroughly it was examined.

“ ‘Well’ nothing, you know what I have to say.”

He folded the blueprints back so that the design was showing on both sides and indicated the area they were coming at from opposite ends. How could she not see how obvious the problem was?

Talking as if he were explaining it to a slow-witted child, he said, “You can’t have the mezzanine sticking out this far. It jeopardizes the integrity of the floor joist here, not to mention the ridge beam.” Stopping, he began to deliberately point out the long, straight lines below the roof. “That’s this—”

Mikky curbed the urge to swat his hand away from the blueprints. “I know where the ridge beam is.” Mikky had no doubt that if she were a man, Marino wouldn’t have been talking down to her that way.

“Fine. Then you also know that if you eliminate the mezzanine—”

“I am not going to eliminate the mezzanine.” The man was nothing short of a shark, she thought, her temperature rising despite all her promises to herself. With unerring instinct, he was going for an area vital to her style. Mikky had worked hard to incorporate that into her design. The music-and-arts complex was the jewel in the five-building setting.

Blowing out an angry breath, he looked at her. “What do high school students need with a mezzanine?”

Now he was talking nonsense. “What does anyone need with pleasing shapes and sleek lines? Why five buildings? Why not just make everything into a great big ugly box?” Realizing her voice had gone up, Mikky stopped using hand gestures to underscore her words and attempted to rein in her irritation. “Because it’s more aesthetic this way, that’s why.”

Tony had no idea why, when she mentioned pleasing shapes and sleek lines, his eyes had been drawn to Mikky’s own form. They were talking—arguing—about a building. A building that wasn’t going to go up if it had to be according to her design.

There was absolutely no reason for him to notice that when her voice went up an octave, her breasts strained against the plum-colored sweater she was wearing. Who the hell wore colors like that to a construction site, anyway? he thought in irritation. “Aesthetic?” He spat out the word. “They’re there to learn, not philosophize.” He believed in solid, utilitarian construction, not gingerbread and sugar that melted in the first rain. And this kind of design was wasted on the audience it was to have. “Kids that age haven’t got enough in their heads to philosophize about, anyway. All they think about is having fun, nothing else.”

Memories clawing at him, Tony turned away to collect himself. Everything kept going back to that, to the moment his life had been irrevocably shattered.

Mikky watched his back, saw the silent struggle being waged, saw the tension in his shoulders. She knew his story. Had asked around after their first meeting. He’d struck her as a walking ice palace, and she’d wanted to know why. She’d had one of her brothers, an investigative reporter on the staff of the L.A. Times, nose around for her. Johnny had come across a story in the Denver Post. Marino’s wife and three-year-old son had been killed in a car crash, both dying instantly when a teenage driver, drunk and out joyriding with his friends, had slammed into their car. Marino had been away at an engineering conference at the time.

Sympathy was something that came as naturally to Mikky as breathing. Even sympathy for someone who kept biting her head off. She figured he had issues to work out. But she wouldn’t have him do it at her expense.

Her voice softened. “Look, I’m sorry about your wife and little boy—”

His head snapping up, Tony looked at her sharply, his eyes dark and dangerous. She’d jabbed a long, narrow pin deep inside an open wound. She had no business even approaching it.

“Thanks.” The word was covered with so much frost, Mikky thought she was in danger of losing all feeling in her extremities. “But I’d appreciate if you didn’t mention them. This has nothing to do with them.” He looked at the blueprint. “These are teenagers. They’re supposed to be attending school to learn. All they need are classrooms, not mezzanines or enclosed atriums or cascading waterfalls—”

She was trying to be understanding, but he was pushing her to the limit. This was her work he was criticizing so cavalierly. Like a mother coming to her child’s defense, Mikky felt her adrenaline beginning to rise. The whole point of the design was to come up with something that was in keeping with the larger scheme of things within the city. Bedford was on record as a planned community—a place where everything was a celebration of shapes and colors, that strove also for balance and harmony within the community. Was he determined to ruin that just for the sake of argument?

The Southwoed High complex was going to be the first building block to forge her reputation and as such was of tantamount importance to her. This was her first solo baby, and she meant to do right by it. And have it do right by her.

Maybe that made her a tad overprotective of the design. But she’d made absolutely certain she’d been right in her calculations—that there were no faults, no surprises—and she was going to stick to her guns come hell or high water.

Or a man named Tony Marino.

“Then, why don’t we just build a little red schoolhouse and be done with it?” she challenged.

“Don’t get sarcastic with me.”

Far from being intimidated, Mikky fisted her hands on her hips, anger bubbling inside of her at a breathtaking speed. Its very advent took her by surprise. While no one had ever accused her of being easygoing, she’d never been one to overheat quickly, either. But there was something about Marino that lit her fuse. “Then don’t get belligerent with me. I’m just trying to do a job, same as you.”

The hell she was. There was nothing the same about them, and there never would be. Tony felt as if the trailer had somehow grown even more cramped than it already was. “No, what you are trying to do is challenge everything I say.”

He made it sound as if Mikky enjoyed beating her head against his stone wall. Maybe that was Marino’s idea of a good time, but it certainly wasn’t hers. “When you’re wrong—”

He slapped the blueprint down on his desk, underlining his point. “There, you just did it again.”

Mikky opened her mouth, then clamped it shut again. This wasn’t getting them anywhere. This was going to escalate until they were both shouting at each other, and she didn’t want to wind up saying things she couldn’t take back.

She held up her hands, not in surrender but in a gesture calculated to make him back off. “Okay, why don’t we go back to our corners and wait for the bell to sound on a new round?”

Tony didn’t have patience with analogies. On the outskirts of his mind it occurred to him that he didn’t have much patience with anything lately. She just seemed to bring it out more radically.

“Meaning?”

Trying not to grit her teeth together, Mikky spelled it out for him. “Meaning, why don’t you—why don’t we,” she amended, knowing that to leave the suggestion in the singular was asking for trouble, “take the weekend to cool off and start again—fresh—Monday morning?” She figured that was only fair. Given the hour, he couldn’t take exception with that. “I’ll think about what you said and you—” picking up the blueprint from his desk, Mikky took out her pen and drew a few lines beneath the offending mezzanine on the upper right-hand corner “—think about this.”

What she had drawn in, in her estimation, should do the trick to offset the stress problem he had pointed out to her. Though she hated to admit it, it had been an oversight on her part. An oversight that any normal construction manager would have realized and remedied easily, without any dramatic denouncements and billows of fire coming out of his nostrils every time he spoke to her.

“There.” She thrust the paper back at him, then went to the door. “I’ll see you Monday. And don’t worry, nice though it would be to meet the saner members of your family, I have no intention of taking Angelo up on his invitation for Sunday dinner at your aunt’s house.” Mikky pulled open the door, more than ready to leave all this behind her for the space of two days. “I have trouble swallowing when daggers are being flung at me.”

The door closed behind her with a resounding slam before Tony had a chance to say anything.

He stared at the blueprint. Muttering a curse that was aimed at him rather than her, he crumpled the paper between his hands and tossed it aside. She was right, damn her. About more than one thing. Which annoyed him even more.

But annoyed or not, it didn’t negate the fact that he was acting like a jerk, he thought reproachfully. He just couldn’t help himself. He was trying to get on with his life, he really was, but he kept tripping over his own feet while looking for the right path.

There didn’t seem to be one.

He knew they meant well—Angelo, Shad and the others. Maybe even that aggravating woman who had just sauntered out of here swinging those sleek, tight hips of hers meant well, though he doubted it. But all the good intentions in the world weren’t working.

Moving around to the other side of his desk, he yanked open the bottom drawer and took out the half-pint of whisky he’d purchased. He’d brought it with him on the first day, leaving it in the drawer for when he needed it. Hoping he wouldn’t. But he felt as if he’d reached the end of the line right now. Coming here had been his last hope, and things were just not coming together. Instead, they felt as if they were unraveling. He was losing his temper more frequently, ready to fly off the handle over things he should have been able to take in stride. His life was spinning out of control, and there was nothing he could do to stop it. But at least he could anesthetize himself to it for a while.

Taking the bottle out, he held it in his hand, staring at the amber liquid. He had to get away, go off somewhere by himself and work this out. He’d been wrong to come here, wrong to put everyone through this with him.

Unscrewing the cap, he brought the top to his lips. It wasn’t their problem, it was—

The slight rap on the door made him freeze. Thinking maybe he’d imagined it, Tony listened closely. He heard it again. Though it was completely different from her earlier knock, he immediately thought of Mikky. The woman had probably decided to have another go at him despite all her talk about their taking a breather. Obviously the scent of blood drew her in, just like a scavenger.

Capping the bottle, he put the untouched half-pint back in the drawer and closed it. He knew he should apologize to Mikky for the way he lost his temper, but he wasn’t feeling very apologetic as he crossed to the door.

With a yank, Tony pulled it open. “Look, if you want to continue this fight, then—”

His words had no audience. Mikky wasn’t standing on his doorstep. No one was. Leaning out, he looked around, but he didn’t see anyone. Darkness blanketed everything.

And then a gurgling sound caught his ear. A gurgling sound coming from just about his shoe level. Puzzled, he looked down.

It was then that he saw the baby.

Chapter Two

Why do you let him get to you like that? Annoyed with herself, Mikky locked the door of the small trailer that housed her drawing board and all the miscellaneous paraphernalia she’d brought with her. Absently she slipped the key ring onto her finger and then, pulling her jacket closer, she strode toward where she’d left her car parked.

In the distance she saw the lone security guard looking her way. She waved. The German shepherd he kept with him barked once, acknowledging her movement in something less than friendly tones. Mikky dropped her hand.

It wasn’t as if she wasn’t versed in verbal combat. She was and she was damn good at it. Hadn’t she grown up with four brothers and three sisters? Didn’t she know how to hold her own, even when it was against more than one of them at a time? And wasn’t she the one who always struck a blow for common sense and common ground?

Because it was cold, even for a Southern California December, she shoved her hands into her pockets as she hurried along. All right, maybe not every time, she amended, but enough times to really count.

So why did she feel as if a match was being struck to her every time she found herself talking to that—to that pompous, foul-tempered—

Mikky let the thought go, knowing that pasting a label on Marino would only make things worse in her mind. She wasn’t here to fight, she was here to do a job, to see her project through to its completion. This was the first big contract she’d won on her own. Name calling wasn’t going to help her along toward her goal.

Even if it did feel good.

Arriving at her car, she unlocked the door and tossed her purse in on the passenger side before sliding in herself. Much as she hated the thought, what she did need to do was apologize to the big ape and do her best to seem congenial and sincere about it.

She started her car as she rolled the thought over in her mind.

Maybe if she got him to relax, she could handle him.

Yeah, right. Fat chance of that happening. The man could only be handled by an experienced lion tamer with a tranquilizer gun. Sighing, she began the slow, bumpy drive through the site, heading for the street in the distance.

Still, she didn’t want to take a chance on coming away with a bad reputation. All she wanted to do was get her damn design up—as close to its original conception as possible.

It wasn’t that she was being stubborn. She wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t be shown the error of her thinking—if there was an error—but it had to be done in a civilized fashion. She refused to be barked at.

Belatedly, she turned on her lights. Bright yellow beams cut through the encroaching dusk. Her father had always barked at her, she remembered. His grousing had made her reexamine her every move. Years later she’d discovered that, despite his outwardly gruff manner, her father had been that way with her to make her strong. In his own fashion he’d tried to prepare her for the world. Walter Rozanski firmly believed that life was there to bring a person to his knees, and he wanted none of his children to be forced into that position. Riding them was the only way he knew how to make them fit enough to meet the hardships along the way.

Maybe Marino reminded her of her father, Mikky thought with a sudden shiver. Or maybe he just reminded her of a bad-tempered bear. In any event it was up to her to get along with the man. Once this job was completed, if the fates were kind, she would never have to interact with Tony Marino again.

Mikky paused, hesitating just before she drove off the lot. She looked toward Marino’s trailer. The light was still on. Except for his car, and the guard’s beat-up truck, the lot was empty. Everyone else had gone home for the weekend. There would be no one to come in and interrupt her if she apologized to him.

Vacillating for a few moments, Mikky took a deep, cleansing breath and blew it out, then made her decision. Okay, it was now or never, before she thought better of this madness and changed her mind.

The things a person had to do for the sake of peace, she thought grudgingly. She wasn’t naive enough to think that any sort of real harmony could come out of this, but it would be nice if the sniping would stop.

Mikky guided her car along the uneven, freshly graded dirt toward the trailer. Reaching it, she pulled up the hand brake, put the car into Park and turned the engine off.

Nothing rankled her more than apologizing when she didn’t feel as if she was in the wrong. But she wasn’t selling out, she told herself as she got out. She was doing this so she could get on with the work. So her name could be associated with this brand-new high school, and hopefully with a lot of other new projects and developments as yet unplanned.

It wasn’t selling out, it was having good business sense.

The silent pep talk didn’t help. Walking up the three steps to his trailer, she knocked on the door. There was no immediate answer, and she almost left before forcing herself to knock again.

This time she thought she heard a cat mewling inside the trailer. Odd, she didn’t remember seeing a cat, and she was certain someone would have mentioned it to her if Marino kept a cat on the premises.

Actually, now that she listened, she thought the noise sounded more like—

“A baby.”

The incredulous words tumbled from her lips as Tony opened the door. In the crook of one arm, held awkwardly against his chest, was a baby. She judged it to be approximately nine months old. It was wrapped up in a faded, tom, blue blanket.

Stunned, Mikky raised her eyes to his. “What are you doing with a baby?”

Great, Tony thought, this was all he needed to add to the confusion he was already wading through. He leaned out again to see if there was someone lurking in the shadows, ready to capitalize on this practical joke they were playing. But the lot was as empty now as it had been five long minutes ago.

The sinking sensation that this was no joke was beginning to penetrate.

“Holding it.” Tony ground out the words.

“Besides that?” Mikky asked, shouldering her way past him into the trailer. As she moved by him, she took the baby into her own arms.

Though a protest initially leaped to his lips, Tony surrendered his burden willingly. One glance at Mikky forced him to admit that she had a far better feel for holding a child that size than he did. It had been a long time since he’d held a baby in his arms. The bittersweet memories holding it evoked was just about doing him in.

He didn’t need this on top of everything else.

Mikky knew for a fact that Marino had no other children. What was he doing with this baby? Turning to look at him, she saw that there was no explanation forthcoming. It figured.

“Well?” Opening her jacket, she cradled the baby against her, enjoying the warm feel of its small, rounded body. Maternal feelings that had long been sublimated leaped up within her. She wanted children. A whole house full of them. Unable to resist, she kissed the small head. “Where did it come from?”

His wide shoulders rose and fell. “I found it on the doorstep.”

Why did every scrap of information she got from him first have to be preceded by a tug-of-war? “No, I mean really.”

“Really,” he insisted. Tony gestured toward a beaten-up baby seat. “The baby was in that.”

Cooing soothing noises at the small invader, Mikky turned to look at the baby seat. It looked as if it had been in service a very long time. The baby was making sucking sounds against her shoulder that she recognized as hunger in the making. It was going to need baby food and milk and soon.

With one hand holding the child in place, she picked up the blanket from the baby seat and shook it. A creased envelope fell out.

Unable to open it herself, Mikky held the envelope out to Tony. She couldn’t help wondering if her initial sympathy for him was misguided. Maybe there was more to this man than she’d thought. Maybe this was his baby....

“Want to read it?”

Tony took the envelope from her before the tone of her voice registered. He looked at her sharply. “Why? You think it’s mine?”

“Is it?”

His laugh was short and completely devoid of humor. “Only in a parallel universe.”

He hadn’t looked at another woman since he’d met Teri, much less engaged in a liaison with one. And there had been no one since his wife’s death. He was completely dead inside.

Annoyed at her, he tore open the envelope, taking off a corner of the note with it. Ignoring Mikky, he shook the note out and quickly read it. There wasn’t much to read.

Curious, unable to see anything in his expression, Mikky stood on her toes to look around his arm at the note herself.

“Please take care of Justin. I know you can,” she read out loud. No help there. She looked at Tony. “Not much to go on, is it?”

Instead of answering right away, Tony dropped the note on his desk, letting it land on the blueprint, which, she noticed, looked far more crumpled now than when she’d left a few minutes earlier. That it was apparently smoothed out again indicated he’d obviously had a change of heart about his feelings. He was a hard man to figure out, she thought.

“No,” Tony answered, his voice very still, “it’s not.” He felt as if someone had just dropped an anvil on his chest.

Moving into the light so she could get a better look at his face, Mikky saw that his olive complexion had grown almost pale. “What’s the matter?”

His eyes averted, Marino refused to even look at her. “Nothing.”

Mikky was tired of having him bite the hand she kept offering in friendship. She took the same tone she took with one of her brothers on the infrequent occasions when their moods turned nasty.

“Don’t ‘nothing’ me.” When he began to turn from her, she butted her hand against his shoulder and pushed him back around so that he was forced to face her. He looked at her in mute surprise. “I was raised in a house full of brothers, and I know when a man’s trying to hide something. Now what’s wrong? You turned pale when you said the baby’s name.”

She was going to harp on this until he caved, Tony thought angrily. It was none of her damn business, but he told her anyway. “Justin was my son’s name.”

“Oh.” Where did she go from here, hobbling the way she was with her foot in her mouth? Mikky thought. She caught her lower lip in her teeth. “I’m sorry.”

His scowl grew darker. “I don’t need you to be sorry.”

The war was on again. It figured. His type didn’t know how to show any emotion other than growling. “Okay,” she said tersely. “Moving on. Did you see anyone?” The baby was beginning to leave a very wet spot on her shoulder where he was sucking on her blouse.

Tony shook his head, frustrated. Why had someone singled him out? There had to be a reason, didn’t there? What was it?

“There was a knock on the door. I thought maybe it was you, coming back to apologize. When I opened the door, there wasn’t anyone there, except for him.” He nodded toward the baby.

It was exactly what she was coming back to do—apologize—but his thinking she had reason to suddenly threw a fresh log onto the dying fire of Mikky’s anger.

Her eyes widened as she looked at him. “Why should I apologize?”

“Because—”

But before he could continue, she held up a hand, waving away whatever it was he was going to say that would undoubtedly launch them into another round.

“Never mind, forget I asked. That isn’t important now.” She moved the baby into the crook of her arm. The smile that was on the rosebud mouth threatened to completely melt her heart. “But this baby is. What are you going to do about him?”

“Me? You’re the one who’s holding him. Possession is nine-tenths of the law, remember?”

There had to be more to this. Some kind of connection he wasn’t admitting to.

“Whoever left him on your doorstep,” she pointed out, “obviously thought you could take care of him.” She consciously avoided using the baby’s name, though she thought of it as an odd coincidence.

Take care of a baby? Tony thought. That was laughable. He could barely take care of himself right now, much less anyone so helpless. It was all he could do to function in the morning.

He wasn’t answering her, she thought. Was he just ignoring her, or didn’t he know? Mikky tried again. “So what are you going to do?”

Tiny fists opened and closed, catching air. Tony watched despite his effort not to. “I have no idea.”

Chapter Three

Confronted with his indecision, Mikky gave the situation only a moment’s thought and passed the baby to Tony. One of her brothers was a police detective. He’d take it from here. “Well, the right thing to do is to turn him over to the police.”

Without realizing it, Tony held the baby closer to him. The whimper told him he was holding Justin too tight. “For what, loitering?”

“If you’d stop being antagonistic toward me for a minute, you’d realize that—”

“I’m not turning him over to the police.”

Why was he being so vehement about it? A minute ago he’d been ambivalent. The answer had to be because she’d been the one to make the recommendation. “They won’t put him in a lineup. He’ll go to social services and—”

The very word nudged forward memories. He remembered listening with disbelief as Shad had described what life had been like for him and Dottie after their parents had died. Tony could remember how grateful he’d felt, knowing he had two parents who loved him and were always there for him.

“And what...be shunted around from place to place until someone gives him a home? If they give him a home?” He thought of how he would have felt if this were his Justin facing these alternatives. There was no way he would allow something like that to happen to the boy.

She had no idea why she was trying to talk sense into him. The man had a head like a rock. She doubted even a state of the art explosive could made a dent in it “He’s a foundling—”

“Yes, and I found him.” He looked down at the small, round face. Several teeth underscored a half grin. Tony realized that he was already lost. “As you said, whoever left him thought I could take care of him.” New resolve filled him. This wasn’t about him right now. This was about a small, helpless human being. “And I’m going to.”

He didn’t know what he was letting himself in for. And Mikky didn’t know why she didn’t just say goodbye and go. Or why she should care what he did one way or the other. Maybe because she’d always been a sucker for the underdog, she thought. Even if the underdog insisted on snapping at her every word.

“Very noble.” She nodded at the baby. “You could start by keeping his head up a little better.”

Frowning, Tony realized that he’d let his hand slip. That was because she got him so irritated, he couldn’t think straight. It was like hearing nails being run along a chalkboard. He was the board, she was the nails.

“I know,” he snapped, moving his hand up. “I’m not a complete idiot.”

“No, not a complete one,” she allowed. “More like an idiot under construction.”

“Look—”

“No, you look. The longer you hang on to the baby, the more attached you’re going to get.” And she could tell by the look in his eyes, he was halfway gone as it was. The little boy was nothing short of adorable.

What did it matter to her what he did? Tony wondered. And why did he feel called upon to justify himself to her? He owed her no explanations. And he’d given her more than the measure of courtesy she deserved.

“I’m just looking to doing the right thing,” he heard himself saying.

“And the right thing is to turn the baby over to the police. They get cases like this all the time.”

Tony snorted. “So they won’t miss one if I don’t hand him over to them. Look, the mother may have a change of heart—”

The dark, somber look that slipped over Mikky’s fair features made Tony stop talking. “If she gave it up, she didn’t have a heart—”

He was too tired to go around about this, or even wonder why her expression had hardened the way it did. “Why did you come back here, anyway?”

Initiated at Tony’s lack of understanding, at his total pigheadedness, Mikky shouted her answer at him, momentarily forgetting that this had been his initial guess. “To apologize.”

“Fine.” His tone matched hers as he snapped back. “Apology accepted, now get out.”

Turning on her heel, she stormed to the door. But then she stopped. Mikky blew out a breath and silently upbraided herself. She couldn’t just leave him if he was determined to take the baby in.

With renewed determination to hang on to her temper, she turned around again. “We certainly rub each other the wrong way, don’t we?”

Tony didn’t even bother looking in her direction. His attention was focused on the baby, who had begun fussing at the sound of their raised voices. “Well, at least we agree on one thing.”

She took a tentative step back toward him. “Why do you think that is?”

“Because for once you’re right.”

“No.” Mikky tried not to lose her temper. “I meant about rubbing each other the wrong way.”

Now she wanted to analyze things? Tony put no faith in that kind of nonsense, even if Dottie was a psychologist. Just a lot of words flying around as far as he was concerned. And he wanted none of them flying his way. “They include psych 101 in with your architect courses?”

“Just trying to find a way to get us to work better together.”

Coming closer, Mikky leaned against his arm as she looked at the baby. She made a teasing face at Justin and was rewarded with a gurgle that was very close to a laugh. The sound went right through her, settling in her heart. He really was adorable, she mused.

The unintended brush of her breast against his arm evoked memories and aroused responses that were best left shut away. “You could start by butting out of my private life.”

She raised her eyes to his. “Is this your baby?”

Why was she playing that same refrain over again? He’d already told her once that it wasn’t. That should have been enough. “Just for the time being.”

She should go, Mikky thought. Get in her car and drive home. There was a weekend waiting for her and friends she could be getting together with if she wanted. And a brother to meet by a movie theater.

But she remained where she was, held fast by a conscience that had never learned how to sleep.

Very gently she pulled the edge of his sweater out of Justin’s mouth. The baby seemed determined to eat whatever was handy. “You know anything about babies?”

“I know they don’t have to be in inane conversations if they don’t want to be.” He moved, murmuring something to the baby, turning so that his back was to her.

She moved right along with him. “Neither do grouchy, stubborn men.”

“If we, if I,” he corrected, “turn Justin over to the police, the mother, when she comes back,” he emphasized, unable to believe that any woman would willingly abandon a baby this way, “will be treated like a felon.”

“There’s a reason for that. Leaving your baby in a construction site is a felony. It’s called abandonment.”

He tried to think of the men who worked for him. The names and faces were still jumbled in his mind. He hadn’t made a real effort to keep them straight. Did Justin belong to one of them?

Who could have been desperate enough to turn his back on a baby?

“Sometimes things aren’t always cut-and-dried,” he said, more to the baby than to her. “Sometimes they’re confused.”

Soft brown eyes turned to look up at Mikky as Justin turned his head in her direction. She could feel herself being drawn in. Feel herself growing angry at a woman she didn’t know. “That doesn’t mean you jettison a baby out of your life like extra baggage,” she said, barely suppressing her anger.

“What makes you so hot under the collar about this? Justin wasn’t left on your doorstep.”

No, Mikky thought, he wasn’t. And Tony hadn’t had his mother walk out on him when he was a boy, leaving him to care for a squadron of brothers and sisters while nursing a broken heart. Her mother had left, no explanations, no excuses. She’d just taken a single suitcase of clothes and disappeared one day. And scarred an entire family with her departure.

Growing up fast hadn’t been an option for her, it had been a necessity. Her older brother had falsified his birth certificate and enlisted in the Marines at seventeen. Her older sister had run off to get married at eighteen. She’d been left to look after the five younger ones.

Mikky shrugged carelessly. “I just don’t like to see babies given a bad break, that’s all.”

There was something more to it, but Tony didn’t feel like delving into it. Unlike Mikky, he respected boundaries.

He shifted the baby in his arms, nuzzling his neck. The sweet scent of sweat and powder nudged other memories to the fore, galvanizing his resolve.

“That’s why I’m going to keep him with me.”

She laughed shortly, shaking her head. “Like I said, I don’t like seeing babies given a bad break.”

If she wasn’t going to leave, he was. He placed Justin back into the baby seat and began to redo the straps. They were worn and shredding in places. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you about this.”

With a quiet sigh, Mikky moved him out of the way and proceeded to tighten the straps herself. “Because you need help, and you don’t know how to ask.”

The way she just came in and elbowed him out of the way galled him no end. Just what gave her the right to think she could take over like this? “If I needed help, I wouldn’t ask you for it.”

“I know.” Finished, she smiled at him. “Lucky for you I can read between the lines.”

What the hell was she talking about now? “Lady, there are no lines.”

“What do you feed a baby?”

The question, when he’d been expecting more barbs, caught him off guard. His mind went blank. “Stuff. Food. Milk.”

He was just picking things out of the air, Mikky thought. Left alone long enough, even monkeys eventually typed out the encyclopedia. “Would you like to go on to iron filings?” she asked sweetly. Mikky lowered her face next to the baby. “See, he doesn’t know the first thing about feeding you.”

Straightening, she made up her mind, knowing she was probably going to regret this. “All right, you’ve talked me into it.”

Like a man in a cartoon, Tony felt like looking behind him to see if there was someone else there. Someone else with whom she was carrying on a conversation. Because it certainly wasn’t him. “Talked you into what?”

She pushed the strap of her purse up on her shoulder. “Helping you.”

“When did I say that?”

The smile on her lips had to be upgraded just to be called patronizing, he thought darkly. “You didn’t have to, the look on your face says it all.”

“If it did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation—Not that it’s much of a conversation, more like a monologue, and I just seem to be feeding you your cues.”

It was getting late. If she worked this right, there still might be time to take in the last show with Johnny. She knew her brother wasn’t going to be happy about that, but it couldn’t be helped. “Let’s get going before I change my mind.”

Did she think that was a threat? Tony wondered. Okay, maybe he wasn’t up on baby care, but how hard could it really be? “Oh, like it doesn’t rotate 365 times every minute.”

Stopped at the door, she raised her eyes to his. “If you’re going to insult me—”

He had to stop short to keep from walking into her. At this proximity, looking down into her eyes, he found that they were an extremely dark shade of blue. It seemed as if nothing about her was in half measures. “Yes?”

Mikky thought of telling him off, of saying something curt in response, but where would that lead? Better that one of them kept their sense of humor, and since she seemed to be the only one who had one, it was up to her.

“Never mind, let’s just go.” Holding the door open, she waited until he stepped through with Justin. “There’s a supermarket not too far from here. We should be able to get what we need there. At least for tonight. I’ll lead, you follow.”

He went down the steps, his eyes on the baby he was carrying. “What do you do when you’re not being a drill sergeant?”

“I work on compiling a directory of polite men,” she deadpanned. “So far, I’m not having any luck finding any.” He was parked on the other side of the lot. She wondered if he was actually going to wait for her to pull her car around.

The night air was cold and the lot had an aura of isolation about it, even though Tony could see the headlights from passing cars just down the road. They were moving like tiny white jewels rolling down the road. “That’s because they probably all hide when they see you coming.”

She stopped at his car. Without waiting to be asked, she took Justin, baby seat and all, from him and let him fish out his car keys unencumbered. “Enough foreplay. We’ll go shopping for a few essentials and then go to your place.”

“My place?” He hadn’t thought of her coming over. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. This was getting way out of hand. “Be still my heart.”

With the car door open, she handed Justin back to him. The next moment she was already sprinting back to her car. “To have your heart be still,” she called out over her shoulder, “you would have had to have one beating in the first place.”

He watched her go for a second, a moth watching the flame that was destined to kill it gain breadth and depth. “Touché,” Tony murmured, fastening the baby seat in the rear passenger position. He always believed in giving the devil her due.

Shopping with Mikky, Tony quickly discovered, was not unlike trying to find evidence of footprints in a snowstorm. Just when he thought he saw her going down one aisle, she’d be heading for another. He had half a mind to leave without her, but in his heart he knew that she probably did have more experience at this than he did. The female of the species, he grudgingly allowed, had a better feel for this kind of thing. Even wolverines.

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