Yuletide Baby Bargain Read online

  She tugged down her sleeves. “I wanted to let you know that we’ll be leaving now.”

  If his what had been terse, his “No!” was a flat-out command.

  She lifted her eyebrows, unperturbed. “I’ll let you know when the hearing is scheduled with Judge Stokes.” She turned on her heel and disappeared from view.

  He shoved away from his desk and went after her.

  For a woman short enough to fit in his pocket, she moved fast, marching halfway up the stairs before he caught her arm. “Wait.”

  She looked pointedly at his hand on her arm and he released her. The second he did, she went up two more steps.

  He caught her arm again. And this time, ignored her pointed glare. “I said, wait.”

  “So?” She yanked her arm free. “I’m not one of your oil minions, Lincoln. Layla needs diapers and formula. And I have things to do.” She started to turn again, but stopped. “And don’t suggest that I leave her here while I go and do them.”

  That had been the last thing on his mind.

  He didn’t want to let Layla out of his sight, but he still didn’t welcome any notion that he’d have to take care of her himself. Not when the only thing he knew about caring for her had so far been learned from watching Maddie during the past eight hours.

  “I’ll pay you.”

  Her expression went from annoyance to fury to disgust. All in the blink of an eye. “Stooping to bribery isn’t going to win any points, Linc.”

  Bribery? He nearly choked on the word. “I’m not bribing. I’m just willing to pay for your time. Why not? I pay for everyone else’s.”

  “Well, not mine!” Her voice rose and her arms went out. “Get it through your head, Linc. For the next few days at least, Layla is under my care, by order of Judge Stokes. You started all of this by calling me in the first place. Now I’m going to do my job, whether you like it or not. The only thing you need to focus on is finding Jax!”

  “I don’t want you taking her out of the house.”

  “You’re not calling the shots this time, so that’s just too darn bad.” She stomped up the rest of the stairs.

  He followed her into the nursery where she scooped a very awake Layla out of the crib. “If you take her, I’m afraid you won’t bring her back.”

  The admission didn’t even make her hesitate. “You still keep talking as if I have some choice in the matter. Layla’s immediate future is going to be determined by Judge Stokes.” She carried Layla into the adjoining room. The bed looked pristine, as if Maddie’s long thick hair had never spread across the white pillows at all.

  “Even if I find Jax?”

  “Even if you find Layla’s mom!” She seemed to realize she couldn’t put on her boots and hold the baby at the same time, but rather than try to hand the infant to him, she just set her in the middle of the bed before yanking on her socks. “I knew from the get-go that this was no safe-haven situation. Layla isn’t a newborn, but even if she were, there would still have been protocols to follow when surrendering her. Appropriate places authorized to take a baby under those circumstances.” She zipped her boots over her narrow jeans, right up to her knees. “Layla’s too old. You heard my uncle. Considering her motor control and size, she’s more likely three months than two. Parents don’t get to just abandon their children on doorsteps without having some sort of reprisal. Layla’s mother could walk in your front door right this minute and she wouldn’t be allowed to bundle her up and truck on home with her! Even if she weren’t guilty of abandonment, she is certainly guilty of neglect!”

  “I don’t give a damn about Layla’s mother. As you’re so fond of reminding me, she left her own baby on a freaking doorstep!”

  Layla, apparently tired of their raised voices, got into the act, too, adding her own high-pitched wail.

  Maddie gave him a now-look-what-you-did glare and scooped up the infant. “Like I said. She needs diapers and formula. So if you wouldn’t mind moving out of our way, I’ll go take care of those little requirements.”

  “I’ll get you all the diapers and the formula you need. Just stay.”

  She lifted her chin. “You’re free to buy whatever the heck you want, Linc. But I’m not staying. And I’m taking Layla with me. If you don’t find Jax before the hearing, I can tell Judge Stokes that you’ve been helpful and supportive where the baby’s welfare is concerned.” She gave him a chilly, steady stare. “Or not.”

  So much for softhearted.

  “Is this your version of hardball, Maddie?”

  “Call it whatever you want.” She didn’t seem the least bit fazed as she brushed past him, carrying the baby in one arm and the car seat in the other. “It’s the truth. You’ll learn what everyone else learns sooner or later—don’t piss off a social worker. It doesn’t matter who you are or what you’ve achieved. We can be your best friend. And we can be your worst enemy.”

  He followed her back to the stairs. “You walked in the door last night already thinking of me as the enemy. You’re still holding a grudge because I told you to stay away from Jax all those years ago.”

  She didn’t even hesitate. “Don’t give yourself so much credit, Linc. I don’t think of you as the enemy. In fact, I really don’t think of you at all.”

  Chapter Four

  “No.” Ali was staring at her.

  “You actually said that to him?” Greer was staring, too.

  They were all sitting at the table in their eyesore of a kitchen. Layla—dressed in a diaper and nothing else—was lying on a blanket inside the portable play yard that Maddie had initially bought as a Christmas gift for her expectant sister and brother-in-law. The baby didn’t need any clothes besides her diaper for the simple reason that the furnace in their house wouldn’t shut off.

  As a result, even though it was about thirty degrees outdoors, they were all dressed down to summer-weight clothes as befitted the overly toasty ninety degrees inside. Ali was even wearing a bikini top with her cutoff denim shorts.

  “What else should I have said to him?” Maddie knew she sounded defensive, but couldn’t help it. “Just because Lincoln Swift runs Swift Oil doesn’t mean he runs everything else. He doesn’t need to think he can run me.”

  “Don’t you think you might be overreacting a little?”

  Maddie glared at Greer. “Whose side are you on?”

  Her sister lifted her hands peaceably. “Whose side are you on?”

  “Layla’s, obviously.” She leaned over the side of the play yard and tickled the baby’s tummy. Layla squealed and rolled partway onto her side, playing with her feet. “Who could leave such a darling like you that way?”

  “Someone who was pretty desperate.” Greer sipped her orange juice. She’d been working on case files when Maddie arrived, and a pencil was skewered through her hair, holding it off her perspiring neck.

  “Maybe she had a furnace gone berserk, too,” Ali said around the ice cube in her mouth. She was leaning back on two chair legs, her own bare feet propped on the corner of a sawhorse. “Lord knows it’s making me feel pretty desperate. But I’ve gotta say, if a hot, manly-man like Lincoln Swift wanted me to stay a few nights under his roof, I’d be hard-pressed to say no.” She raised a staying hand toward Maddie. “And I know he was supposedly awful to you back in the day, but the guy is hot.”

  “Supposedly?” Maddie made a face and refilled her own glass of juice from the pitcher Greer had set on the table.

  “Even if Jax is Layla’s daddy, she shouldn’t have been left alone the way she was,” Greer continued, as if Ali and Maddie hadn’t spoken. “But it’s all speculation until we learn more.”

  “I’m worried about Linc being able to find Jax anytime soon,” Maddie admitted.

  “Did he say that?”

  “He didn’t have to. He doesn’t know where Jax is
. And he wants a DNA test to prove he’s her uncle.”

  “Smart,” Greer said. “In the absence of her parents, it would give him a positive legal stance. And you know it’s a given that Judge Stokes will allow Layla to be tested considering the circumstances.”

  Layla let out a happy squawk when she managed to fit her toes into her mouth.

  “On the up side in this whole thing, you did get to tell off Linc,” Ali chimed in.

  “I didn’t tell him off.” Not exactly. “He could have been a perfect stranger and I wouldn’t have done anything differently.”

  Greer laughed softly. “So you’d have ignored your boss’s vacation edict altogether and spent the night in a perfect stranger’s house? Oh, Maude darling, I don’t think so. You always did have a soft spot for both of those Swift boys.”

  Maddie gave Greer an annoyed look. “Don’t call me Maude.” She grabbed the paint chips from the table. “You two need to decide on paint, if we’re going to get this room finished anytime soon.”

  Ali grabbed them back, shuffling them quickly. “I still want this one.” She set the stack in the center of the table as if that decided the matter. “Too bad y’all were so careless handling the note left with the baby. I could have had it checked for fingerprints.”

  “Would only matter if Mommy Doe were already in the system. DNA’s going to be the best bet.” Greer picked up the chips and reshuffled. “And I still want this one. Where is the note, anyway?”

  “Linc has it.”

  “The prosecutor’s office is going to need it if they open an investigation.”

  “That’s too dark. The kitchen’ll feel like a cave.” Ali quickly returned her paint choice to the top of the stack. “And we’re all assuming that Mommy Doe was the one to dump Layla on the doorstep. What did the note say again?”

  “Jaxie, please take care of Layla for me.” The words felt tattooed in Maddie’s mind. She took the paint chips and fanned through them. Greer wanted green. Ali wanted gray. There had to be a compromise they could all like. “I’ve dealt with a lot of strange situations, but this is one of the strangest.” She flipped the paint chips around, leaving her choice on top. Svelte Sage.

  “At least she’s physically healthy,” Greer murmured. She leaned over the edge of the play yard and offered Layla a finger. “You said Uncle David found no signs of malnourishment. No physical abuse.”

  “Thank God,” Ali muttered.

  “In fact, you’re pretty perfect,” Greer crooned, “aren’t you, sweetheart?” Layla gurgled happily in response, which seemed to be all the prompting Maddie’s sister needed to pick her up.

  The second she did, though, she wrinkled her nose and handed the baby to Maddie. “Squishy diaper.”

  Maddie abandoned the paint chips for the baby. “Your fingers suddenly broken?”

  “This is your job, hon. Not mine.” Unperturbed, Greer sat back at the table. “Fun stuff like feeding her a bottle? Give me a call. Otherwise—” she waved her hand in a shooing motion “—she’s all yours.”

  “Amen to that,” Ali agreed.

  Maddie grabbed a diaper from the package she’d picked up from the drugstore on the way home from Linc’s house, and took Layla into the living room where she could lay the baby on the couch. “What are the two of you going to do when Hayley’s baby is born and you have to babysit?” Their half sister was five months pregnant with her first child. “It’s just a wet diaper.”

  “Yeah, but you never know when a diaper is going to contain a surprise.”

  Maddie snorted, thinking of the massively messy diaper of the night before. “Trust me. This sweet girl gives you plenty of notice when that’s the case.”

  She finished fastening the fresh diaper in place and balled up the wet one. A motion outside the window above the couch caught her eye and she watched a car pull up in front of the house. “Dad’s here.” She picked up the baby and carried her back into the kitchen, which—as hot as it was—was still the coolest spot in the house, thanks to the windows they’d opened.

  “Thank God,” Ali said fervently. “We can’t afford a new furnace if Dad can’t get this thing fixed for us. I’m tapped out for the next few months. I can’t even afford to buy a new dress for Vivian’s Christmas party this year. I wish she’d get over the black tie business. Got anything in your closets?”

  “Don’t look at me,” Greer said. “Last thing you borrowed from me, you never returned. The only downside to asking Dad for help with the furnace is the number of times we’re bound to hear ‘I told you so.’”

  None of them could argue that point. They all knew Carter considered the house his triplet daughters had purchased against his advice to be an absolute money pit.

  Maddie threw away the wet diaper and put Layla back in the play yard, along with two brightly colored plastic cereal bowls from the cupboard. The baby immediately grabbed the red one and tried to fit it into her mouth. With the baby safely contained, Maddie washed her hands and went out to the living room where her sisters were already greeting their father.

  “Hi, Daddy.” She lifted her cheek for Carter Templeton’s kiss when it was her turn. “Thanks for coming.”

  “Good thing you warned me,” he returned, pulling off his jacket to reveal a short-sleeved T-shirt beneath. “Hot as a pistol in here.”

  “Which is why I’m hoping you brought your toolbox.” Ali was looking pointedly at their father’s empty hands.

  “In the car. I know between the three of you, you can’t seem to keep track of a hammer, much less a pipe wrench.”

  Ali whooped and immediately darted out the front door, not even stopping to get a sweater or shoes.

  Carter just looked resigned. “How long’s the furnace been running like this?”

  Maddie led the way down the stairs to the basement. “It was running full blast when I got home this morning.”

  “This morning?” Carter’s voice went tight with paternal overprotectiveness.

  It didn’t matter that she and her sisters were thirty years old. Carter took his fatherly duties very seriously.

  “I had a case come up last night.” Halfway down the stairs, she started feeling a little relief from the heat.

  “A case.” He sounded disbelieving. “Your mother told me you’re on vacation for the next couple weeks.”

  She looked over her shoulder at him. “Some things interrupt a vacation, Dad. You know that better than anyone.” He’d been an insurance agent and she couldn’t recall a single time growing up when he hadn’t dealt with one emergency call or another from one of his clients. “I’m taking care of an abandoned baby for a few days until we can get her situation resolved. Needless to say, it would be nice not to roast her out while she’s staying with me.”

  “If I can’t get this thing fixed, I’ll have to get it cut off. Then you can start worrying about her freezing instead. What’re you going to do for heat? You and your sisters will have to come home.”

  “This is home. I appreciate the offer—and I’m sure they would, too—but the fireplace is sound. We can manage if we need to.” They may not be able to agree easily on paint color, but she knew her sisters would feel the same.

  He made a grunting sound and moved past her when they reached the bottom of the stairs, heading toward the ancient furnace squatting like an antique behemoth in the middle of the room. “I warned you about buying a house with fifty-year-old plumbing and heating. But none of you would listen.”

  Ali had skipped down the stairs behind them. She set the toolbox on the cement floor, giving Maddie a wry look.

  Carter bent down to open up his tools. “Go on,” he said. “You know I hate someone watching over my shoulder.”

  It was a good enough excuse for both Maddie and Ali, and they retreated to the main floor, where they relocated the portable play yard
to the living room. With Layla occupied with the colorful bowls, her fascinating toes and the monkey mobile hanging above the play yard, Maddie and Ali started unpacking the brand-new artificial Christmas tree.

  More than an hour later, the furnace was still blasting hot air. They’d opened up more windows, their father had gulped down a glass of tea and gone to the hardware store for a part, and she and Ali were still trying to decipher the instructions for the tree. Even Greer had taken a break from her case files to assess the situation.

  Maddie was pretty sure the opportunity to feed Layla her bottle was the real draw, though. She’d had to use the last of the powdered formula to prepare it, which meant another trip to the store was imminent. She couldn’t just swing by the corner drugstore where she’d gotten the diapers—the small spot on the shelf for formula had been cleaned out of product.

  But at least the errand would give her a break from the hot house.

  “I don’t care what the diagrams look like.” Ali tossed aside the single sheet of paper. “I’m telling you, we’ve got the whole bottom section upside down.” She waved her hand with a flourish. “Just look at it!”

  Maddie glanced toward their third sister. “What do you think?”

  Greer barely looked up from Layla at the strangely box-shaped half tree. “I think this sweet girl is falling asleep on me.” Her voice was soft. Crooning.

  “I think someone’s biological clock is ticking,” Ali muttered sotto voce.

  “Please,” Greer said, obviously overhearing. “Speak for yourself.”

  “Trust me. I don’t even own that clock,” Ali assured her. She started dismantling the half-built tree. “Screw the directions. I’m starting over.”

  “We could have just had a live tree,” Greer pointed out once Maddie took the sleeping baby and carefully transferred her back into the play yard. “It’s a little more obvious whether they’re upside down or not.”

  “Be glad we don’t have a live tree,” Ali retorted. She rebundled her hair in a messy knot and swiped her damp forehead with her arm. “It would be dried out in two days with the way the furnace is going full bore. You want to chance a fire—”