air warm on legs left bare by her cotton shorts and matching short sleeved pajama top. Heart picking up speed as she looked at the beet-red face of the baby, she softened her voice. “Hey, little man, what’s up?”
With arms trembling—from lack of sleep, she told herself—Ellie reached down to scoop up the hot bundle. He wasn’t only hot, he was soaked. And not just from sweat and tears, though there was plenty of both.
The initial bout of crying stopped the moment Ellie picked Cody up out of his crib. His tear-drenched eyelashes blinked as he stared up at her. As well he should. He’d have no idea who this stranger holding him might be.
In spite of his soggy state, Ellie stopped and stared right back at the miniature Maitland. She’d never been this close to him before.
From the moment he’d shown up on the doorstep of the clinic, and Megan had announced she would be taking temporary custody of him, Ellie had entered a new goal in the log book in her mind. She wasn’t going to hold him the way her sister Beth kept doing. She couldn’t. Ellie was much more intense than Beth. She’d never learned to live for the moment the way her more outgoing sister had done since birth. And it made no sense to grow attached to a child who was in their home only temporarily.
There was no point in torturing herself with something she knew she would never have. Which was also why she never visited the nursery at the clinic unless she was there on official business. She’d learned a long time ago that the way to be happy—or at least successful—was to avoid distractions.
It went without saying that in Ellie’s book a virgin with no prospects at the age of twenty-five would likely never have a baby.
Ellie stared, frozen. The baby’s warmth seeped through her pajamas, along with other things, until his little face screwed up with displeasure once again. “Okay, hold on,” she said urgently as she rushed him over to his new change table. “I’m fairly certain I can figure out how to change a diaper.”
Actually, she knew she could. She’d changed hundreds of them during her teens when she’d filled her dateless nights with baby-sitting jobs and dreams of having babies of her own. Babies that would love her in spite of her quiet personality and drab looks.
Amazingly enough, her voice seemed to have a calming effect on baby Cody. As long as she was speaking, his howls stopped, and he stared up at her. Ellie kept up a stream of senseless chatter while she went to work on the baby’s wet diaper.
“I don’t know which one of my brothers—or cousins, for that matter—is responsible for you, little man, but I can promise you that we’ll find out eventually, and when we do, I’m going to choke the life out of him with my bare hands.”
The wet sleeper and diaper came off effortlessly. Ellie reconsidered what she’d just said in lieu of the baby’s sensibilities and the frown on his scrunched up little face.
“Okay, we’ll let him live, but only because you need a daddy to teach you how to play baseball,” she amended. “But I get to at least yell at him first, okay?”
Cody’s legs flailed as Ellie cleaned and powdered him before expertly applying a dry diaper and sleeper.
There were bottles of formula already made up in the refrigerator in one corner of the nursery, and a bottle warmer on the counter beside it. With the baby lodged in one arm, Ellie used her free hand to prepare Cody’s late-night meal.
She hated to think of one of her beloved older brothers being guilty of fathering this abandoned child. Which was maybe another reason why she’d refused to acknowledge the baby’s presence in their lives as little more than an administrator’s public relations problem.
“The truth is, little guy, that when I think about it, almost any one of them could be responsible.”
After testing the warming formula on the inside of her wrist, Ellie settled into the rocker her mother had had brought down from the attic. Until that night, Ellie had been hoping Cody wasn’t really a Maitland at all, but rather a scam on the part of some sick woman to tap into the Maitland fortune.
But holding the baby close to her breast, taking in features that were distinctive even at such a young age, she knew in her heart what Megan must have known from the minute she’d first unwrapped him in the doorway of Maitland Maternity a month ago. Cody could very well be a Maitland.
Sucking greedily, the baby ate, innocently unaware of the commotion his existence was causing in the lives of so many people. Ellie had only thought about the damage the baby’s sudden appearance was doing to the Maitland family and, by extension, the clinic. Now, as her heart and body warmed at the noisy sounds of the baby eating, as his little fist came to rest intimately against her breast, she couldn’t help but think about the damage that could be done to this innocent little child.
Was he to live with the stigma of his abandonment for his entire life? Was it going to remain like a dead weight, creating feelings of unworthiness that would follow him into adulthood?
Getting angrier, and more possessive, by the moment, Ellie gently burped Cody and rocked him long after he’d fallen asleep in her arms. Who, in her right mind, could hold this precious bundle in her arms and then abandon him? How could one of her relatives have slept so irresponsibly with such a woman?
And who was the baby’s father? R.J.? As Maitland Maternity’s president, he’d certainly have reasons not to come forward if he were responsible. But would his personal integrity allow him to stay silent? Of course not.
And what about Mitch? Ellie couldn’t believe he’d lied when he’d so sheepishly admitted that he hadn’t been with a woman in over a year. He was a fertility specialist. He’d know that eventually the baby’s paternity could be proven, once their mother approved the testing. He’d know it was useless not to come forward. Unless he’d donated some of his own sperm to his experimental bank and didn’t know it had been used…
Then there was Jake. A tear splashed against the sleeping baby’s face, and Ellie started guiltily, wiping the wet drop away. Jake was the most likely suspect of her three brothers. And the one she least wanted it to be. She adored all of her brothers, but Jake was special. He was different. He was her hero. He’d never have fathered this helpless child without knowing it. And he’d never have allowed the baby to be abandoned. No matter what lines Jake crossed in his life, he’d never cross that one.
Ellie rocked the baby until her muscles were cramped. An hour passed, then two, and still she wasn’t ready to give up her burden. It was a night out of time. A secret night, when Ellie could be Ellie, and no one would ever know; a night that would never ask questions.
Finally, when she was afraid her tears would wake the baby again, she laid him gently in his crib, covered his diaper plump rear with a light blanket and tiptoed back to her room. She’d hoped the stark familiarity of her room would shock her back to normalcy. Wiping the tears away, she wanted to pretend that they’d never fallen. That the tiny body in the other room hadn’t opened up a door she’d thought rusted shut years before.
Changing her stained pajamas for a clean pair, she climbed between her sheets, trying to soothe herself back to sleep using numbers, the way she’d been doing for most of her life. She started with smaller figures, afraid her concentration would be overstimulated by the larger ones she more commonly used these days. But even the smaller ones wouldn’t line up. They danced around on the stage in her mind. Changing colors. And form. Trying to escape, to get away from her before she could force them into their logical places.
And as
