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 Flynn had experienced the inside of a grocery store before, but never with a shopping pro. Molly zipped and zoomed down the aisles, checking things off her list, cooing to the baby and muttering about prices at the same time.
Flynn didn’t have a stroke about the amount of the check, but a full-fledged panic attack hit him when they reached the parking lot.
Night had fallen faster than a stone, temperatures dropping just as swiftly. His black Lotus had a thimble-size trunk space. There wasn’t a prayer of stuffing all the baby loot into his car. Her more sensible Taurus was parked next to his, gleaming white under the parking lot neon lights. Molly’s face looked pearl-soft in the evening shadows, but her stockinged legs and suit jacket were inadequate protection against that crisp, sharp air and she was starting to shiver.
She was also busy. As if she didn’t trust him, she took charge of Dylan, and was organizing the baby in the car seat as if she were a general attacking a strategic logistics problem. “I don’t think baby car seats are meant for sports cars, but I do believe he’s finally secure...”
Finally she lifted her head. Finally—for the first time since this whole blasted store outing began—her eyes met his, but her gaze shifted away faster than the spin of a dime. “Getting all this stuff to your place, though, is another problem entirely. Unless you’ve got another suggestion, I don’t see we have another choice... we’re just going to have to fill my trunk, and then I’ll follow you to your place.”
“I hate to ask you to do that,” Flynn said, which had to be the biggest lie he’d told in a year.
“There just is no other way. But you’d better give me your address in case I lose you in traffic.”
Like a kid scared when the lights were turned off, he didn’t want Molly to leave him. The feeling of dependence was totally alien. He’d grown up stubborn, sweating out his fears of the dark alone, working his way through school, never asking for anything from anyone. Given his background, he’d learned young to count on no one but himself, but that kind of pride and independence had dominated his whole life.
Not now. Not tonight. At the moment he had the pride of a wilted turnip. He watched Molly’s headlights in the rearview mirror, checking every few seconds to make sure he hadn’t lost her on the whole drive to his place. Once past the traffic on Westnedge, the cars thinned out. For the last half mile, suburban busyness disappeared altogether and the only lights on the road belonged to the two of them.
Flynn wasn’t anxiety-prone. He liked chaos. Hell, he’d practically built chaos into a fife-style—and was damn content with his choice. But his heart had been beating to panicked drums ever since Virginie blew into his office that afternoon.
He hadn’t stopped moving since then. He’d needed a couple of hours on the phone—to call his lawyer, to call his doctor about blood tests,
