Maybe My Baby. Victoria Pade

woke up early the next morning and immediately rolled to his side to peer down at his youngest houseguest.

      He’d pumped up an air mattress and placed it between the bed and the wall as a makeshift crib, but he hadn’t been sure it was the safest way for the baby to sleep. Worrying about it had made for a restless night. But, as he had on every other bed check, he found Mickey sound asleep, peacefully making sucking noises as if he were practicing for breakfast.

      Even though it came as a relief to see once again that the infant was all right, Aiden didn’t hold out much hope of falling back to sleep himself. The sun wasn’t anywhere near rising yet, so he rolled to his back again, closed his eyes and tried to relax enough to maybe doze off.

      Except that now he could hear those sucking sounds and he just kept thinking, What the hell am I doing with a baby…?

      He’d thought he’d pretty much seen it all up here during the past seven years. But he had to admit that having a baby left on his doorstep was a new one. He delivered babies, he didn’t have them left with him.

      As he’d put his tiny charge to bed he’d tried to figure out if Mickey was one of the babies he’d delivered seven months or so ago, but he hadn’t been able to tell. A newborn and a seven-month-old didn’t look much alike. Even the eye color often changed. And it wasn’t as if he could remember specific, identifying features of each baby, because he couldn’t.

      And then there was the other possibility. The possibility he didn’t want to consider. The possibility he had to consider even if he didn’t want to.

      What if Mickey was his? What if that was the reason he’d been left with him?

      If it hadn’t been for one single night, he would have been able to say there was no way that it was possible that he was Mickey’s father. But there had been that one single night. And when he’d counted backward—seven months for what he guessed to be Mickey’s age and then another nine months gestation—he had to admit that that one single night could have, in fact, resulted in Mickey.

      That thought chased sleep further from his grasp, and Aiden opened his eyes to stare at the ceiling.

      One single night…

      One single night when his marriage had fallen apart, when Rebecca had left him, that he’d gone into town and drowned his sorrow in a whiskey bottle.

      And ended up sleeping with Nora Finley.

      But until now he’d thought sleeping was all they’d done.

      Even now he couldn’t remember anything beyond being in Boonesbury’s bar to tie one on and meeting up with Nora.

      He only knew that when he finally came to the next morning, there had been a note on the pillow beside him that said, “Thanks for a good time, Nora.”

      But since he’d still had his pants on he’d assumed the “good time” they’d had had merely been drinks and laughs and maybe sharing a platonic mattress.

      He’d been sure that nothing else had happened. He liked Nora well enough but she was a long—long—way from his type. To say she was rough around the edges was a kind description of the woman who had hacked out a place in the woods to build her cabin with her own two hands, and who made her living running dogsled races. And rough around the edges was not something he’d ever found attractive.

      But now he couldn’t be absolutely positive that nothing beyond drinks and laughs had happened. Maybe he had offered her more than a place to crash for a night.

      Mickey didn’t look like Nora, Aiden reminded himself, in an effort to find something to hang some hope on to. Mickey didn’t look like Aiden, either. Or like anyone Aiden knew.

      But the hope he derived from that was fleeting. Looks were hardly conclusive proof of anything.

      Which meant that he was going to have to do some investigating. Some testing. Some questioning.

      And all right away.

      Unfortunately.

      Because although this was not something he ever wanted to be faced with, having it happen now was phenomenally bad timing.

      He was grateful to Howard Wilson for submitting Boonesbury for the grant that Emmy Harris was there to consider them for. The money would be a huge help in updating the care he could give, and Aiden had planned to do everything he could to convince her to recommend that they get it. Only now he had Mickey and this whole situation to deal with, too.

      But there was nothing he could do about it. He just had to hope that Emmy Harris would be as understanding and patient as she was lovely to look at.

      That thought made him nervous the moment after he’d had it. On two counts.

      First of all, Emmy Harris had already not seemed patient and understanding about Mickey. Actually Mickey’s arrival had sort of pushed her over the edge, Aiden recalled, as he considered the end of last evening and the foundation’s director saying what she’d said about Howard setting up these complications, about this being a trial by fire.

      She hadn’t seemed patient or understanding then. She’d seemed agitated.

      And second of all, what was he doing thinking about her being lovely?

      That didn’t have a place in any of this.

      It was tough to ignore, though, he secretly admitted to himself.

      Because she really was a knockout. And a whole lot more his type than Nora Finley.

      Not that he was interested in Emmy Harris personally. But, purely on an empirical basis, she was a very attractive woman. How could he not notice that? How could he not notice that she had skin as flawless as Mickey’s? And high cheekbones that no plastic surgeon could have fashioned as well? And a small nose with the faintest hint of a bump on the bridge that kept it from being too perfect and ended up making it just plain cute? And lips full enough to inspire images of long, slow kisses…

      Fast—think about what you didn’t like about her, he ordered himself before his mind ventured too much farther afield than it already had.

      He hadn’t been wild about that bun her hair had been in—that was something he hadn’t liked.

      Although the hair itself was a great color—rich mink-brown all shot through with russet red.

      And her eyes were a fascinating color, too. Dark brown but with rays of glittering green all through them so that first he’d thought they were brown and then he’d wondered if they were green, before he’d finally sat across the kitchen table from her and been able to really figure it out.

      Plus there were those legs of hers. Terrific legs.

      Any woman in a skirt and nylons was a rare, bordering-on-nonexistent sight in Boonesbury. But even if it had been an everyday occurrence, her legs would have caught his attention. Long, shapely legs that made them a particular treat.

      A treat that only started there. It continued all the way up a great little body that was just curvy enough to let him know she was a woman underneath that stuffy suit and high-collared blouse.

      Oh, yeah, she was easy on the eyes.

      And smart.

      And she had a sense of humor, too—something he was really a sucker for in a woman….

      Aiden mentally yanked himself up short when he again realized the direction his thoughts had wandered.

      So much for thinking about what he didn’t like about her.

      But even when he tried to come up with something else, he couldn’t. The bun was about it in the negatives column. And he had no doubt one swipe of a hairbrush would take care of that.

      Which was probably why, even in spite of the mess with Mickey, he was looking forward to this next week more than he had been before he’d met Emmy Harris.

      This isn’t a social event, he reminded himself.