LITMIR.BIZ

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      Dana sort of chortled back, popping open the jar. “Carrots it is, then.”

      Except carrots, it wasn’t. It was like trying to shove a video into a malfunctioning VCR—it slid right back out.

      She opened another jar, held it up. “Peaches?”

      That got a slightly more forceful rejection.

      “O-kaaay … maybe orange stuff isn’t your thing. How about green?”

      Green beans went in … and green beans oozed out, accompanied by the quintessential “Get real, lady,” expression.

      Dana quickly discovered that baby food didn’t exactly come in a wealth of colors. Or tastes. But she gamely tried creamed corn, chicken (that, she couldn’t get past the baby’s lips), squash, pears and beets.

      Pears and beets went down. And down and down and down, until Dana wondered if babies, like puppies, would simply stuff themselves until they got so full they threw—

      “Oh, gross!”

      —up.

      At least four times more food came back out as had gone in. Krakatoa had nothing on this kid, she mused while frantically trying to catch the maroon-and-pear colored mess that kept spewing forth from those little rosebud lips.

      Three saturated napkins later, Ethan chortled again. Not seeing the humor this time, Dana did not. And she was hot and getting hungry herself. Not only that, but it was beginning to sink in with alarming speed that no one was going to come take this vomiting bundle of joy away in an hour or two. And what if he didn’t sleep through the night?

      With a little groan, Dana let her head clunk onto the tabletop, not realizing how close she was to a pair of enterprising little hands.

      “Ye-ouch!” Her own hands flew to her head, prying five tiny and amazingly strong fingers from her hair, which was now liberally infused with regurgitated Gerber 1^st Foods. Well, hell. Somebody, somewhere, probably paid big bucks for this look. She got it for free.

      Rubbing her scalp—man, the kid had a grip—she regarded her little charge, now in deep conversation with the Tiffany-style lamp over the table. She skootched over, out of Clutcher’s way, and laid her head down again.

      So many questions and thoughts swarmed in her brain, she couldn’t sort them out, let alone act on any of them. For tonight, her top priority was keeping the child alive. She was off all day tomorrow, and Ethan had to sleep sometime, right?

      Dana lifted her head far enough to prop it in her palm, reaching out to the baby with her other hand. Ethan grabbed Dana’s fingers and tried to stuff them into his mouth. The two little teeth on the bottom made their presence known really fast, but she felt ridges on top, too.

      “You getting yourself some new teeth, big guy?” she said with a tired smile.

      Ethan chortled.

      Dana’s heart did a slow, careful turn in her chest. She stood and scooped the baby out of his car seat, cuddling him on her lap. Ethan settled right in, tucking his head underneath Dana’s chin, and her heart flopped again, more quickly.

      This was all too unpredictable for her taste. Her cousin might change her mind, C. J. might want … actually, God knew what C.J. might want.

      She cursed under her breath, noting that more no-nos had slipped past her lips in the past several hours than in the entire thirty-two years that had preceded them. Insecurities and turmoil and all the unanswerables swirled and knotted together into a nebulous anger no less fierce for its vagueness. Her eyes stung as she realized how furious she was, at Trish, at C.J. (yes, even though he probably didn’t know about the baby), at fate.

      At herself.

      All her life, she realized tiredly, she’d let people push her around. All her life, she’d been the one voted most likely to say “sure” when she really wanted to say “I don’t have time” or “I’m not comfortable with that idea” or even, simply, “I don’t want to.” Suddenly, she was a kid again, hearing her mother’s gushing to some neighbor or teacher or saleslady who’d admired Dana’s impeccable manners. “Oh, Dana’s never given us a single moment’s worry,” she’d say. “Always does what she’s supposed to do, never gives us any lip. Just a perfect little angel!”

      “Just ask Dana—she won’t mind …”

       “You can always count on Dana for a job well done and a smile to go with it …”

       “You know, I’ve never heard Dana complain, not even once….”

       “Dana won’t be a problem. She’d go along with whatever we decide to do. Won’t you, Dana?”

      She pushed herself off the sofa, hugging Ethan, realizing there was nowhere to go. So she stood in place, jiggling the baby, fuming and muttering and cussing—but not so Ethan could really hear her—over the finches’ agitated twittering.

      Okay, that’s it—Dana Malone’s doormat days were o-ver. No more swallowing her anger when someone pissed her off. No more smiling when she really felt like popping someone upside the head. No more Ms. Nice Lady. She was mad, dammit, and God help the next person who got in her way—

      The doorbell rang.

      She marshaled all her newfound fury into one hopefully emasculating glare and marched to the door.

      The way her topknot hung by a thread over her right ear was C.J.’s first clue that something was very, very wrong.

      The baby slung on her hip was the second.

      Her voice mail had been short, and not exactly sweet. “Meet me at my place anytime after six,” she’d said, then left her address, finishing with, “And believe me, it’s not what you think.”

      “You … wanted to see me?”

      Wordlessly, Dana spun around and stomped back inside the apartment, which he cautiously took as permission to enter.

      His first horrified thought, when he saw the room, was that she’d been burgled. After he swallowed his heart, however, he realized the damage seemed superficial. In fact, it was all baby stuff. A swing and playpen fought for space between a peach-colored armchair, a glass-topped coffee table; diapers—both clean and dirty, from what he could tell—littered the pastel, Southwest design sofa; an infant car seat took up half the blond dining table, the rest of which was covered by no less than a dozen open jars of baby food and a mountain of dirty napkins or paper towels or something.

      She’d gone into the kitchenette, where she dampened a cloth to wipe off the squirming baby’s cheeks. Said child giggled, somehow snatched the wet rag out of Dana’s hand and tossed it with unerring accuracy smack into her face.

      A finely honed survival instinct told C.J. to proceed with extreme caution.

      “Babysitting?” he asked.

      “Funny you should say that.” Dana caught the cloth as it fell, slapping it onto the counter. Hot little flames sparked in her eyes. “Trish breezed back into town today.”

      C.J. literally felt the blood drain from his face.

      “Oh?”

      “Yeah. She brought me a present. Now, it’s a very nice present, to be sure, but heaven knows I wasn’t expecting anything like this. Nor did I realize I wasn’t going to be given any say in whether or not I even wanted this present.”

      He looked at the baby, who flashed him a wide, gummy smile, then back at Dana. Somehow, even her hair seemed redder. Okay, Trish in town probably equaled Trish told Dana. But she’d have hardly asked him to come over about that, for crying out loud. And what did the baby have to do with anything?

      “I’m sorry,” C.J. said, “but am I missing something?”

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