Baby Vs. The Bar. M.J. Rodgers

I want that lump-sum donation for some EEG monitoring equipment. A research vet does not live by stethoscope alone.”

      * * *

      AS REMY CHARGED OUT the front doors of the Primate Language Studies Lab, Marc ducked down inside his Mercedes. He watched her glide quickly down the stairs on her way to Dr. Feeson’s office in the next building.

      She wore faded jeans and a bulky sweater today. Her long hair was braided down her back. He only got a glimpse of her, but he would have known that long, beautiful, sensuous sway anywhere. As soon as she was out of sight, he turned to the man sitting impatiently in the passenger seat.

      “Okay, Mr. Demerchant. She’s gone. But Dr. Feeson said he couldn’t guarantee how long he can delay her so we’d best move fast.”

      Louie Demerchant pushed open the passenger door. “I don’t understand why we’re pussyfooting around, Truesdale. I just got finished writing out a check for twenty thousand dollars to this Primate Language Studies Lab. You secured official permission for both of us to tour the place. We even got a key. We have a right to be here.”

      “Yes, but we don’t have a right to be viewing Dr. Westbrook’s son, and that, of course, is the real reason for this visit. Now, let’s just get in, let you have a look at the boy, get out and return Feeson’s key to him. Okay?”

      “Okay,” Louie Demerchant answered grumpily.

      Marc got out of the car and walked toward the front door with Demerchant right beside him. He hadn’t meant to be sharp with his client, but he was doing this under extreme duress. It was stupid. No one could take a look at a kid and know who its parents were. Yeah, this was really stupid. But it was the only way to keep Louie Demerchant from doing something probably even more stupid in order to see this child.

      And maybe, just maybe, a look would finally convince the old guy that Binick had fabricated this totally improbable story.

      Marc slid the key in the lock of the door Remy had exited only a moment before. He pushed it open and they went inside.

      The building was new. The lab was an expanse of gleaming white floors and a long corridor. As they walked down the corridor, Marc stopped at each door on either side and quickly opened it to glance inside.

      He found a couple of empty offices, a small kitchen and a large, vacant habitat room with an enormous skylight and sleeping quarters obviously designed to accommodate one or more chimps. Behind another door was an empty medical examining room. Then, at the far end of the corridor, Marc pushed open a door to a small room smelling of fresh-brewed coffee. It contained a table, a computer and a couple of chairs. Marc entered this room with Louie Demerchant on his heels.

      On the other side of a two-way mirror was a large, colorful play area, decorated with plastic furniture in wild splashes of orange and blue and yellow. A woman in a wheelchair, her short dark hair waving around her ears, was gesturing at a chimp, while a younger, muscular man sat and took notes.

      There was a chubby child in a blue sailor suit sitting next to the chimp. He had large dark eyes and a tuft of curly black hair at the top of his head. He was watching the woman in the wheelchair. He looked like he was trying to mimic the hand movements the woman was making.

      Marc instantly heard the deep sigh beside him. “That child doesn’t look like David at all,” Louie Demerchant said sadly. “He could be anybody’s.”

      The chimp got up and took a fake potted plant off an orange shelf and took it to the woman in the wheelchair. The woman shook her head and moved her hands again.

      “Well, that’s it, then,” Marc said, relieved. “Let’s go.”

      But just as they began to turn away from the scene on the other side of the glass, a toddler, who had previously been hidden from view behind the wheelchair, stomped sturdily over to the chimp, grabbed it by the paw and began to lead it to the bookcase.

      As soon as the second boy, wearing a tiger-striped outfit, came into view, Louie Demerchant grabbed Marc’s arm with a grip of iron and sucked in a shocked breath.

      Marc looked at his companion. “Mr. Demerchant, what is it?”

      “Truesdale, don’t you see? That toddler with the chimp. Look at the color of his hair, his bright blue eyes, his cocky little walk. By God, I’d know him anywhere! That’s David’s son!”

      Marc’s eyes swung to the sturdy little boy who was now carrying a book and leading the chimp back to the woman in the wheelchair. The woman was nodding and smiling and gesturing.

      Marc watched the boy as the woman in the wheelchair took the book from him. He immediately began to fiddle with the masking tape wrapped around the shoulder button of his tiger-striped outfit. In mere seconds, he had worked both it and the button free. He pulled off his clothing, diaper and all. Then, with a mischievous squeal, he ran around the wheelchair, just out of reach of the woman’s hands, in what was obviously a favorite game.

      Children, particularly ones this young, seldom looked like their parents. This one certainly didn’t look like Remy at all. But Louie Demerchant was absolutely right. He did look exactly, uncannily, like David Demerchant.

      Until that second—that very second—Marc had not believed it possible. But looking at that little toddler and his antics, he now had no doubt. This boy was his dead friend’s son.

      “What are you doing in here!” an angry voice demanded from behind them.

      Marc whirled around and came face-to-face with the golden flames in the cinnamon eyes of one very angry Dr. Remy Westbrook.

      He had absolutely no idea what to say to her. Louie Demerchant suffered no such hesitation. He bounded forward and wrapped his big arms around the mother of his great-grandson, crushing her to his barrel chest in an old-fashioned bear hug.

      “Thank you so much for having him! You don’t know what you’ve done for me!”

      * * *

      REMY PUSHED AGAINST Louie Demerchant’s chest, trying to free herself from the unwanted, exuberant embrace. But despite his seventy-five-plus years, the tall, silver-and-auburn-haired man proved to be as strong as an ox. She couldn’t budge him.

      She lifted her head, ready to demand he let her go, but found she couldn’t when she saw the tears swimming in his moist gray eyes.

      Damn.

      Louie Demerchant was crazy, of course. But he was obviously sincere. She could forgive this deluded old man who was so desperate to find a great-grandson. But his controlling, pushy attorney was another matter altogether. She deeply resented this impossible position he’d just put her in with Demerchant. Deeply.

      After a moment, Louie Demerchant released her and turned his head away, pulling an old-fashioned handkerchief out of his pocket to dry his eyes. Remy immediately faced Marc Truesdale, the real culprit in this awkward assembly.

      She kept her tone quiet and controlled, but it took a lot of effort. “If you are not out of here in one minute, I’m calling campus security to throw you out.”

      “We have a pass to tour the center,” Marc countered with all the polish of his brassy manner as he stepped forward and fished a paper out of his suit pocket. He grasped her hand and slid the paper into it.

      Remy took a deep, startled breath as she felt the bold insistence of his warm touch melting inside her like hot molasses. The physical reaction to his touch infuriated her, but it excited her, too. Very much. Too damn much.

      His eyes held hers until she tore them away to look at what he had forced into her hand. She snatched both the pass and her hand from out of his grasp.

      She looked at the pass, then at Demerchant, and finally back to Marc. “So now it becomes clear who the mysterious anonymous donor of twenty thousand dollars is and why Dr. Feeson kept trying to delay me in his office.”

      “Mr. Demerchant just wanted to see—”

      “You