at Greg.
“My friend,” Travis said, “just think about what you’ve done, and how out of sorts it seems with your usual actions. When we wanted to hire a new nurse for the practice, you refused to let the woman near the patients until we had three letters of recommendation from her previous employers. Three. Like Sloan said, you don’t know this Jane Dale.” He bit his bottom lip a moment. Quietly, he pointed out, “This is your daughter we’re talking about. Your daughter.”
A cold shiver clawed its way up Greg’s spine as revelation struck. “And I’ve left her with a complete stranger all day. A woman I know nothing about.”
Without another word, Greg snatched up his valise and headed for the front door.
Jane could not believe her good fortune. She’d actually lied her way into a job as Joy’s nanny. She was once again with the light of her life. Nothing could have made her happier.
When she’d arrived in town, she’d had no idea what she meant to do other than to throw herself on Greg Hamilton’s mercy, beg him for information about where Pricilla and Joy might be. During the days since her sister had disappeared with the baby, Jane had called every friend Pricilla had ever talked about. When a week had passed with no word from her sister, Jane felt she simply couldn’t hang around the apartment any longer. She wasn’t eating. Wasn’t sleeping. Couldn’t keep her mind on her work. She’d reached the end of her rope. She simply had to find Joy. However, when Jane had gone to her boss to ask for some time off to search for her family, she’d been told that if she walked out the door, she’d be walking away from her job. For good.
Jane had walked out the door without a backward glance.
She’d been that desperate to find her niece. She’d been that desperate to somehow heal the aching hole the baby’s disappearance had left in her heart. In her soul. She’d been that desperate to put to rest the worry she’d felt for Joy’s welfare. Pricilla had proved time and again during the past ten months that she wasn’t a good mother. Heck, Pricilla hadn’t wanted Joy. Who knew what her sister might do? Jane had been terribly anxious for Joy’s well-being.
Once she’d left her job, Jane had visited all Pricilla’s friends, hoping against hope that one of them had lied about harboring her sister and niece. Jane had questioned each of them. None of them had known where Pricilla might be. A few of them had told Jane that surely Pricilla would show up. Eventually.
Jane couldn’t take that chance. Not with Joy’s health and safety at stake.
It might have sounded strange, but little Joy always seemed to feel discomfited by her own mother’s presence. The baby would fidget and cry and reach for Jane. Jane suspected the child sensed Pricilla’s lack of mothering instinct.
To be absolutely honest, Jane loved Joy as if she were her own daughter. She felt like Joy’s mother. She loved the child to distraction. And that’s why she was willing to give up everything in order to find her.
And she had!
Jane had hardly believed her ears when the doctor mentioned needing a nanny for his daughter. She’d nearly toppled right off the examining table onto the floor.
Images of her appointment with Dr. Greg Hamilton this morning swirled, unbidden, into her brain like the heated waters of some tropic flood, invading and filling every nook and cranny of her thoughts. His hands had been so warm, so gentle on her skin as he’d listened to her heartbeat. She’d been certain that her pulse had accelerated. And she’d been utterly mortified when the silky touch of his fingers brushing her chest had caused her nipples to bud to life. However, she’d noticed that his gaze had been averted, and for that she’d been terribly relieved. Even now, as she thought about the way his mahogany hair fell in thick waves, the way his forest-green eyes studied her with concern, her heartbeat pounded, her face flushed.
“Stop.” She whispered the word aloud and Joy looked up at her from where she sat on the floor, gnawing happily on a teething ring.
How Joy came to be in Greg’s care, Jane couldn’t be sure. But there could only be one answer. Pricilla had given the baby to Greg.
Jane had no idea if Pricilla planned to return for Joy. Or if her sister simply meant to give Greg all parental rights to the baby.
The mere idea made Jane tremble with fear. She couldn’t imagine her life without this baby in it. She just couldn’t.
The lies she’d told Greg were wrong. She’d known that even as the grand stories had come rushing from her. However, she had good cause. And she reached for that cause, a big smile spreading across her face.
“Are you ready for a bath?” Jane asked Joy.
Joy chuckled, the dimples in her creamy cheeks deepening. The baby was so happy with any small amount of attention she received. Joy was an angel. She was Jane’s angel. It was true that Jane hadn’t given birth to this little girl, but she couldn’t love the child more even if she had.
“Let’s go have a tubby,” Jane crooned.
She’d have to tell Greg the truth. She knew that. But she’d win his trust first. She’d show him that she was the mother for Joy that Pricilla simply didn’t have it in her to be.
As she gathered together a towel, the baby shampoo and a washcloth, she felt her whole abdomen seize with icy dread. She had no legal claim on Joy. She couldn’t fight Greg for custody. Not when she was only the baby’s aunt. No court of law would side with her. And it seemed that Pricilla had lost all interest in helping her raise Joy.
Hot tears blurred Jane’s vision as she plugged up the drain of the kitchen’s big porcelain sink and turned on the spigot. Joy reached up and tweaked Jane’s bottom lip between her chubby fingers, seeming to sense her melancholy mood.
“It’s okay,” Jane said. And she didn’t know whether her words were meant more to assure the baby or herself. Then she whispered, “It really is going to be okay.”
She was with Joy. And for the moment, that was going to have to be enough.
Joy was still splashing in the warm water of the sink when Jane heard Greg come in through the front door.
“Hello? Jane? Where are you?”
The frantic tone of the doctor’s voice had her frowning. Something was wrong. Something terrible. Goose bumps rose on her arms as some kind of intrinsic proof.
Leaving the baby unattended wasn’t an option, so she called out, “We’re in here. In the kitchen.”
He literally burst through the doorway.
“What?” The anxiety pulsing from him frightened Jane and she reached for Joy with both hands, pulling her from the sink and clutching the baby’s wet body to her, heedless of the water dribbling down her clothing. “What’s the matter?”
The sight of them seemed to assuage the apprehension that darkened his green eyes.
“I was just…worried.”
She didn’t like his tone. Or his frown. Or the way he was looking at her. This morning—and then again when he’d come home at lunchtime—he had been so confident in her, so at ease with the idea that she was caring for Joy, so relieved to have her help.
“You
