older sister than her mother. Didn’t mothers usually look a little worn, a little frayed around the edges? If anyone had a right to that look, she certainly did, given that she was Libby’s mother.
But this woman was fine, and the look in her eyes was sheer amusement At his expense. “Can I help you?” he asked coolly.
He’d all but snapped the words out at her. No doubt about it, the man was not a contender for the Mr. Congeniality award, baby or no baby in his arms. But Claire had to struggle to hold off an attack of the giggles. She doubted if she had ever seen anyone look more uncomfortable than he did. He was holding the baby practically at arm’s length, as if he feared any closer contact would make one of them self-destruct.
He didn’t like babies very much, she judged. For her part, Claire was a sucker for them, always had been. She loved the scent of them, the feel. She longed to take the baby in her arms, but refrained. No use getting worked up and mushy. After all, it wasn’t like it was her baby.
“No,” she finally answered, “but I think I can help you.”
He almost said Thank God out loud as he held out the car seat to her. But she took his keys instead and, with a minimum of fuss, unlocked the door for him.
With a sigh, he entered, still holding the car seat as if he expected the baby to begin throwing up with an eighteeninch projectile.
When he turned around, he narrowly avoided hitting Claire with the baby seat, but she managed to jump back in time. She nodded at the baby, seeing the resemblance. “I take it that’s your daughter?” She ignored Libby tugging urgently on her sweater, knowing a contradiction hovered on the girl’s lips.
Evan really didn’t feel like discussing his problem with this woman. He wasn’t even going to answer, then finally said, “Supposedly.”
“‘Supposedly’?” she echoed, stunned, taking another look at the fussing child. The baby certainly looked like him, right down to the wave in her hair. Just look at all that hair, she thought, longing to curl her fingers through it. She raised her eyes to Evan. This wasn’t making any sense. “Who’s the mother?”
Instead of answering, he turned his back on her, setting the baby seat down on the first available flat surface, the top of the two-tier bookcase.
“I don’t know.” As far as he knew, the child couldn’t be his. He’d always used precautions.
It took very little imagination on Claire’s part for her to see the baby seat plummeting from its perch. Was he crazy? She picked it up and thrust it back into his hands.
“If you’re not careful, she’ll fall off. And what do you mean, you don’t know?” How did he get this baby, then?
“Just what I said.” Evan stared at her, surprised, as his arms were suddenly filled with baby again. He saw where Libby got her pushiness from. “She was just left, on my doorstep, so to speak—actually, on my secretary’s desk at the office.”
He looked at his watch again. Damn it, time was growing short. Desperate—that was the only word to describe his mood—he decided to take a chance. “Look, are you any good with kids?”
Claire ran her hand along the waves and curls of her daughter’s hair, hair that was no mean feat to comb in the morning. “I haven’t broken the one I have.”
If that was a joke, he didn’t have time for humor. “Great. How would you like to earn some extra money?”
She frowned. Normally, she’d tell him what he could do with his money. Spend it on his “supposed” daughter. But this past month had been rough, and Claire was in no position to turn down work that fell into her lap. Any reasonable work, she amended for her own sake.
“Just what did you have in mind?”
There was amusement in her eyes. He didn’t have the luxury of being able to take offense. Right now, he needed to prevail upon the good graces of a woman he hardly knew, even by sight.
“What I have in mind,” he began, rewording her question, “is someone to take care of, um…” He was drawing a blank.
Stunned, Evan searched his mind and realized that, for the life of him, he couldn’t remember the baby’s name.
The woman’s amused expression was intensifying. Muttering under his breath, he shifted baby and seat over onto his hip and he dug into his pocket. Evan had taken the note he’d found pinned to the baby’s shirt with him to scrutinize later and perhaps somehow identify whoever was responsible for this dilemma he found himself in.
Pulling it out now, he looked down, scanning it. “Rachel.”
He looked up at Claire with a mixture of hope and expectation, waiting for her to agree.
Libby was at his side, peering at the note in his hand. Mama had taught her how to read a few words, but everything on that paper looked like scribbles to her.
“You have to write down your baby’s name? Don’t you know it?” Libby’s face puckered as she tried to puzzle out his behavior. “Everybody knows their baby’s name,” she stated with the confidence of the very young. “How come you have to write it down?” Compassion, learned at her mother’s knee, filled her expressive eyes as she continued looking up at him. “Doesn’t your remembery work?”
Claire affectionately passed her hand over the curls. “Memory,” she corrected.
“Memory,” Libby repeated, nodding in agreement. She didn’t mind being corrected. Mama had told her that was the way she learned, and she loved to learn.
He felt as if he was being ganged up on by a gang comprised of one and two-thirds women, if he counted Rachel in on it.
“My memory works just fine, and she’s not my baby,” Evan snapped. He didn’t know who needed more convincing of that, his neighbor, Libby or him.
Ingrained instincts had Claire’s hand tightening on Libby’s shoulder, moving the girl behind her in an age-old gesture of protectiveness.
“You don’t have to shout,” Claire admonished him, raising her own voice.
Why was she pushing her daughter behind her? Did the woman think he was going to strike her? Where the hell did she get that idea? He was just frustrated, but he wasn’t a monster.
“I am not shouting.” And then, because he was, Evan lowered his voice, struggling with exasperation. “I am not shouting,” he repeated. “It’s just been a very trying morning.”
She heard the weary note in his voice and saw the confusion in his eyes that he was trying to hide. Normally given to sympathy, Claire relented. He wasn’t as certain that he had no hand in fathering this baby as he was claiming, she thought.
“I can see that,” she said quietly.
Something within him reached out to the sympathy in her voice before he could think better of it. He didn’t need sympathy; he
