A Baby In His In-Box. Jennifer Greene

her hands in exasperation.

      “All right, all right. After that I’ll go shopping with you. I realize that’d be really hard for you to do alone, and with a baby in tow besides. But I’m warning you ahead, my advice is worthless. I don’t know anything! The best I can say is that between two adult heads, we should be able to handle picking out at least some basic baby supplies.”

      Well, darn it, she thought. That was what she thought he wanted—her offering help. Yet once she suckered in that far, he still didn’t look happy. Flynn invariably bellowed and barreled into most tricky life situations, but he still hadn’t budged, and his voice turned bass-low and careful.

      “You’re angry with me, aren’t you. You’re not looking at me the same way, talking to me the same way. She really upset you.”

      “Maybe you’d better call her Virginie instead of ‘she.’ If she’s the mother of your child, I think it might be appropriate for you to remember her name.”

      “I’m not a father,” he said quietly, clearly.

      “Look at the baby,” she said again.

      But he didn’t. “No matter what she said...no matter what you think...I’ve never been careless with a woman. Not once. Not ever. There are reasons why I’ve stayed unattached, reasons why I never wanted to be a father. I’m not saying I’ve been a saint, Molly, but I never knowingly risked a child. I’m asking you to believe me.”

      Molly fussed with her pencils on the desk. “Actually she blurted out rather clearly that she’d skipped some birth control pills—”

      “I heard what she said. I heard every damn word she said. But that has nothing to do with your believing me.”

      “McGannon...” Molly felt all tangled up, unsure what was so important to him, what he wanted her to say. “Look, trying to talk right now is nuts. You need to scoot. I don’t have a clue how long a baby naps, but every minute is borrowed time. Get whatever business cleared away that you can.”

      He seemed inclined to argue—but didn’t. Once he peeled out of that chair and left, Molly pressed two fingers to her temples, her gaze instinctively honing on the sleeping baby.

      She’d seen Flynn thrown plenty of times. He ranted and raved as a life-style, but that was just because he was boisterously emotional by nature. At a gut level, he thrived on challenges. The more impossible the problem, the more it revved his personal engines.

      But not this one. Any man would be shook up to have a baby suddenly thrown into his life, Molly realized, but Flynn...there was something more. His face had gone cold, his voice stone-harsh when he’d said there were reasons why he never wanted to be a father. Something painful had to be behind that She wished she knew what. The damn man could flirt all day and then some...but Flynn never revealed anything personal about himself, had never admitted anything painful to her before. For Flynn to express that kind of gut honesty was a vulnerable measure that he was seriously shook up.

      But so was she. Shook up—from the inside out. Her pulse was still rattling. She’d been falling hard and deep for him—painfully hard, dangerously deeply. And she had no idea before that moment that Flynn was stone-set against being a father. How could she love a man who didn’t want children, didn’t love babies, couldn’t even look at that adorable homely face snoozing on the carpet?

      She didn’t know him. The echo bleated in her soul. He’d bamboozled her hormones...and yes, she’d known he was wild and impulsive and full of the devil. The charm that made him downright irresistible as a lover never meant he was serious husband material. But she’d still never imagined that Flynn would pick up a strange woman for a one-night stand...that maybe he’d seduced dozens of women the same way he turned the charm on her. Making love to him would have been a land mine for Molly. For Flynn, sex could just be another three-letter word like fun.

      And in the meantime, there seemed to be a snoozing baby on her carpet that no one seemed to love—or want. Molly could too easily see herself getting roped into caretaking the little one. She recognized that Flynn honestly needed some help—some immediate help—but he had to have family, she told herself. Friends. Someone. She couldn’t let this be her problem.

      Her heart went out to the child.

      But only for the baby’s sake. Not for Flynn’s.

      Three

      “Flynn, that diaper package says Newborn. I think you need a size for a much bigger baby.”

      “You mean diapers come in different sizes? Oh. Oh, my God. You have to be kidding me. This is almost as intimidating as the aisle with the women’s stockings and trying to figure out what all those egg shapes mean.” However pitiful his joke, it earned him a roll of the eyes from Molly. They were making progress, Flynn thought. At least she was speaking to him again—even if the atmospheric temperature between them still hovered between freezing and subzero. “So, what’d you think? Toddler size?”

      “That’d be my best guess.”

      “Okeydoke.” He scooped up all the toddler-size diaper packages on the shelf and dumped them into the cart. Darned if that didn’t win him an outright chuckle.

      “McGannon, you nut, you’ve cleaned out their entire supply! You really think the baby needs quite that many?”

      “Listen. Mol, as far as I can tell, this kid’s a leaker. Put anything in one end, and thirty seconds later it comes out the other. I’m not risking running out in the middle of the night...what’s next on your list?”

      “Food.” Predictably Molly had a systematic list in one hand, a sharpened pencil in the other. “I’m not sure what to buy. Milk and cereal-type things are pretty obvious, but I think he only has two teeth. Whatever we get, it needs to be food that he doesn’t have to chew.”

      “Marshmallows,” Flynn suggested.

      “I had in mind something more nutritious,” she said dryly.

      “Well, yeah. But marshmallows are a staple of life. And how about hot chocolate? That’s a good kid thing, isn’t it?”

      “I’ll tell you what. You find the baby food aisle and I’ll take care of making the choices. And Flynn, for Pete’s sake! Take your keys out of the baby’s mouth!”

      “You can’t be serious. You heard him when we walked in here. Until I gave him the keys, I thought he was dying. I thought someone was stabbing him in the back with a knife. I thought we were gonna be arrested for noise pollution—”

      “I believe he was trying to clearly communicate that he was slightly bored. I also believe it’s possible that Dylan inherited that bellow from his father’s side of the family... but we won’t go into that again. I don’t think your keys are a good play toy—they aren’t clean.”

      “Not clean? On what planet is that supposed to be relevant? You’re talking about a kid who tries to pig out on paper and carpet lint.”

      “You think he’s getting hungry? We’re not even halfway through this list, and darn it! I didn’t even think of a car seat.” She started scribbling again. “You have to have a car seat for a baby this size. It’s the law.”

      “Mol?”

      “Hmm?” She was almost too busy penciling stuff on her list to look up.

      “Thanks,” he said quietly. “For coming with me. I know I’ve been making jokes, but I don’t want you to think I don’t seriously appreciate your helping me out.”

      For a few seconds the ice chips seemed to melt in her eyes.

      He caught a glimmer of a spring thaw...but it didn’t last. “You’d better wait until we’re done before you thank me. When you write out the check for this, you may have a stroke.”

      Holy kamoly, she filled four carts before calling it quits.

      Naturally