LITMIR.BIZ

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      The old woman threw back her head and laughed, her bosoms shaking. “Sì, last year we had three turkeys and two hams, and enough enchiladas to feed half of Albuquerque. Done?” she asked, when Dana stood, whisking away her empty plate before she had a chance to carry it to the sink.

      “Well, this little guy and I better hit the road,” she said, moving toward the seat, which Guadalupe had set by the patio door in a patch of filtered sunshine. But the old woman touched her arm.

      “I know I am a stranger to you, but I have worked for Mr. C.J. for many years, I am good with children, you could leave el poco angel with me….”

      “Oh … I’m sorry, I can’t. Not because I don’t trust you,” she hastily added at the woman’s hurt expression, “but my mother would kill me. Because it’s very possible that Ethan’s as close as she’s going to get to a grandchild. At least for the foreseeable future.”

      Confusion clouded the dark eyes for a moment, replaced by an understanding sympathy so strong Dana was glad for the excuse to squat in front of the baby’s seat. Steve shoved himself against her calves, mewing for attention.

      “Hey, guy,” Dana said softly, crouching in front of Ethan, who gave her a wide, trembly smile when she came into focus. “Ready to go? You are?” she said, laughing, when the baby started pumping his arms. “Well, come on then, your Auntie Faye’s waitin’ on you….”

      Just like that, the unfairness of it all squeezed her heart so tightly, she could barely breathe. Clutching the sides of the seat, waiting for her lungs to get with the program, she heard behind her, very gently, “What will you do when your cousin comes back for her niño?”

      Dana stood, hefting seat and baby into her arms. “There’s no guarantee that she will.”

      “But if she does?”

      “Then I suppose we’ll cross that bridge when we get to it.”

      “And if the bridge is one you do not wish to cross?”

      Balancing the seat against one hip, Dana grabbed her purse off the counter and slung it over her shoulder. “Thanks again for breakfast, it was great,” she said, making herself smile. “Will you be here this evening when we get home?”

      Heat flooded Dana’s cheeks at the slip. We and home in the same sentence? After one day?

      A little presumptuous, yes?

      Guadalupe’s eyes narrowed, but all she said was, “I usually leave at three, there is not much to clean in a house where only one person lives. But anytime you need me to take care of this precious child,” she hastily added, “I will be more than happy to stay. You have a good day, Miss Dana, okay?”

      Yeah, well, Dana thought as she lugged His Highness out to her car, she’d do her best.

      During a lull between appointments, C. J. brought Val into his office, shut the door and told her about Ethan. Not surprisingly, the further into the story he got, the higher went her eyebrows, until he half thought they’d crawl off her face altogether.

      “The Trish who worked here?” she said at the appropriate point in the narrative. “What the hell were you thinking, boy?”

      “Could we please not go there, Val? The past is past.”

      “Actually, it looks to me like the past just came up and bit you on the butt, if you don’t mind my sayin’ so.”

      “If I did, I wouldn’t have told you. But wait. There’s more.”

      There went the eyebrows again. “You mean, you can top a six-month-old son you didn’t know about?”

      “I don’t know about topping, but …” His desk chair creaked when he leaned back in it. “You remember Dana Malone? The woman who was in here a couple of weeks ago?”

      “Sure do. Cute little thing. Big eyes. What about her?”

      “Trish is her cousin. And she kind of … left the baby with her. Granted her guardianship, actually. In writing. So she’s kind of … living with me. Well, they are. Dana and the baby.”

      Three, four seconds later, Val blinked at him, then lifted her hands in an I-don’t-even-want-to-know gesture. Then she sighed. “I knew there was somethin’ goin’ on, I just knew it, the way you were acting mush-brained all last week. And didn’t I tell you I’d find out?” When he didn’t answer—because, really, what could he say?—she finally sank into the chair across from his desk, her eyes brimming with concern. “So what are you going to do?”

      “Find Trish. Solidify custody arrangements. After that …” He shrugged. “Take it day by day, I guess. Although I guess I’ll be cutting back my hours, so I can spend time with … with my son.”

      “Boy, those are two words I never thought I’d hear come out of your mouth.”

      His mouth stretched. “You and me both.”

      “Couldn’t you get one of those au pairs or something?”

      C.J.’s stomach turned, even as he grimaced. “I suppose I’ll have to look into it eventually. But it has to be the right person. And I have to get the idea past Dana’s mother first.

      “And what about the gal? Dana? How’s she fit into all of this? Long-range, I mean?”

      “Hell, Val. Right now, I’m doing well to plan out the next ten minutes. I can’t even begin to wrap my head around ‘long range’.”

      Any more than he’d been able to wrap his head around that bantering business this morning. Because bantering was not something he did, as a general rule. Oh, he could hold his own in a serious discussion with the best of ‘em, as long as the conversation stayed on safe topics. Like politics or religion. And as long as it was conducted from behind nice, thick impersonal walls.

      But Dana had no walls. Dana, in fact, was the antiwall.

      Dana not only made him banter, she made him want to banter. To indulge in playful, affectionate exchanges, like some happy couple on a sitcom.

      And all this after less than twenty-four hours in his house.

      He started at Val’s touch on his arm. “There anything I can do?” she asked gently.

      “Other than promise me you won’t start sending out your résumé?” He shook his head. “Nope. Not a damn thing. I’m all on my own with this one.”

      For the rest of the day, work crowded his thoughts, albeit with an occasional detour into the personal when he spoke with Elena (no, she hadn’t found anything yet, but it had only been a day, after all), and when the papers his father had promised finally arrived, prompting C.J. to realize he should probably tell the old man he was a grandfather, at some point. Not yet, though. Not until he’d come to terms with the whole thing himself. And one by one, he told the other agents he’d be turning over more clients to them. And why. If they were shocked, none of them let on. Not too much, anyway.

      At six, he left. Just like that. Packed his briefcase and walked out the door. Not to see a property, or a client, but his own child.

      And Dana, he thought with a tingle of anticipation that made him frown. It was okay to like her, he reassured himself as he steered the Mercedes across town, thinking how strange it was to be heading home while it was still this light, this early. But was it okay to look forward quite so much to being with her, to hearing her laughter, to being the brunt of her gentle teasing? Wasn’t it cheating, the one-sidedness of it?

      It had been wrong, and selfish, to bring her here, he thought as he parked his car beside hers, already in the driveway. Even more wrong to have put her in such a tenuous position, he chided himself as he walked into the house, heard those silly birds of hers, then her laughter, blending with the baby’s from several rooms away.

      He found them in Ethan’s room, where

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