Matt set the bag down on the floor and dug through it, wishing he'd never come home at all. He'd been looking forward to peace and quiet, some downtime after the stress of the last few days, but here he was right back in the middle of somebody else's mess. Relieved to find a disposable diaper in the bag, he pulled it out and handed it to her.
She cleared off the end of one couch and laid the baby down, then quickly changed her. She didn't seem to have any problem with the baby's flailing legs and arms or the shrill crying that continued until she fixed the last piece of tape.
"You look like you've done that before," he commented.
"A few times. I baby-sat when I was a teenager." She picked the baby up and offered her to him. "Do you want to hold her now?"
"No. No." He shoved his hands into his pockets and took a step back, almost tripping over a large spool of lace.
"Sorry about that." She gave the spool a nudge with her foot. "I'm on deadline."
"For what? Are you getting married in the morning?"
"I'm doing the alterations on a wedding dress. I have a bridal shop on Union Street. Devereaux's is the name. Do you know it?"
"I don't make a habit of knowing where the nearest bridal shop is."
She offered him the first genuine smile he'd seen all night. "I bet you don't."
"What is your name anyway?”
"Caitlyn Devereaux."
"So why isn't all this stuff at your shop?"
"Because Tiffany Waterhouse moved up her wedding date. It turns out she's pregnant, and she absolutely cannot go down the aisle looking like a watermelon -- her words, not mine. I brought her dress home to finish because she's getting married at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning instead of in four weeks as she'd originally planned. And her family is very well connected, so I don't want to disappoint her."
Matt looked at the yards and yards of material draped over the couch. "She must be really fat."
"That's just her train, a six-foot trail of lace that goes down the aisle after her," she added at his blank expression. Caitlyn moved the baby from one shoulder to the other. "She still isn't happy. I wonder if she's hungry."
"I wonder who she is."
"We should call the police."
"I suppose." Even as he agreed, he felt the same prickly uneasiness he'd experienced earlier. Why would anyone leave a baby in his hallway?
"She's so young," Caitlyn murmured, caressing the baby's head with her fingers. "She can't be more than two months old. How could anyone just put her down and walk away? Especially her mother." She shook her head in bewilderment. "How could they do that?"
Matt had a hundred answers, but there was something about Caitlyn -- an innocence, maybe -- that made him instinctively want to shield her. Hell, it probably had something to do with all the white lace in the room.
Before he could reply, Caitlyn walked up to him and pushed the baby against his chest. "Hold her for a second. I want to look through that bag and see if I can find a bottle or instructions or something."
Before Matt could protest, he found himself wrapping his arms around a tiny baby who felt so small, so fragile in his arms, he thought he might break her. And when the baby began to squirm and whimper, Matt awkwardly shifted his feet and patted her back. He looked to Caitlyn for relief, but she was still digging through the diaper bag.
"Hey, I could use some help here," he said.
"I found some formula... and a bottle," she added triumphantly, holding it up like a trophy. "A little water, and I think we can make her a lot happier."
Matt followed her into the adjacent kitchen. No way was she leaving him alone with the baby. He found her kitchen to be as chaotic as the living room -- cookie jars with faces on them, pasta noodles in colorful glass containers, magnets of every shape imaginable on the refrigerator, and a couple of potted plants on the windowsill, some looking half dead despite the freshly watered soil. Apparently, Caitlyn didn't like to throw anything away.
With the clashing bursts of color, the room felt warm and cozy, inviting. Probably too inviting, Matt decided. Definitely too inviting, he added silently as Caitlyn came over to him. As she put the bottle into the baby's mouth, her blond hair drifted against his chest and arm. She was so close he could smell flowers in her hair and mint in her breath, then her breasts grazed against his arm as she maneuvered the bottle in the baby's mouth, and his heart skipped a beat. Her femininity called out to him like a siren, and he felt his body harden, a completely unwelcome reaction considering the fact that he was holding a baby and Caitlyn was a perfect stranger. Perfect being a big part of the problem.
"Here you go, sweetie," Caitlyn cooed. 'Take a sip. There's a good girl."
"Don't you want to hold her?" Matt asked, feeling more uncomfortable by the second.
Caitlyn hesitated, then said, "I don't think so."
"Are you sure you don't know who this baby is?" he asked her again as they returned to the living room.
"Of course I don't. Why would you ask that?"
"She seems to like you."
"Well, I'm a nice person. Babies can sense goodness."
"Then I must be a nice person, too. She's not crying anymore."
"We'll have to see how she feels about you when she's done sucking on her bottle," she said with a wry smile. She knelt down on the floor next to the diaper bag and began searching through it, much the way he had done a few minutes before.
"There's no note in the bag. I already looked," he told her.
After a minute, Caitlyn sat back on her heels and frowned. "What mother leaves her baby without even a note?"
Matt pulled the bottle out of the baby's mouth as she stopped sucking and appeared to be done. "What do I do with her now?"
"Put her over your shoulder and pat her back until she burps."
"I think you ought to do that."
"Fine. Let me grab her blanket. She might be getting cold." As Caitlyn pulled the baby blanket from the straps of the car seat, something fluttered to the ground.
"Oh!" She reached for the piece of paper, then looked into Matt's eyes. "There is a note."
Matt felt his body tense. "What does it say?" he asked shortly, having trouble getting the words out of his mouth. He had a bad feeling about this -- a very bad feeling.
Caitlyn read silently, the tension growing with each passing second.
"What the hell does it say?" he demanded.
She looked up at him through troubled eyes. "Someone named Sarah wants you to take care of her baby."
"Sarah." He breathed her name like a long-forgotten scent.
"Who is Sarah?"
He stared at Caitlyn, knowing she'd asked him something, but he couldn't concentrate, couldn't focus. Sarah? How could it be? He remembered the eerie sensation he'd felt walking up to the apartment building, as if someone was watching him. And the phone call, the woman's voice... had it been Sarah? My God! Had she actually been standing outside his apartment?
Matt strode across the room, thrust the baby into Caitlyn's arms, then dashed out the door.
"Hey, where are you going?" Caitlyn cried. "You can't leave me with your baby."
Chapter Two
"You can't leave me with your baby," Caitlyn repeated helplessly, but Matt was gone, and she was alone. She took in a deep breath and let it out, glancing down at the baby's cherubic face. "Well, this is something, isn't it? What are we going to do now?"
The baby smiled up at her, and Caitlyn felt her heart melt at its sweet innocence. A tightness came into her chest, making it difficult to breathe. This baby, this darling baby, reminded her of everything she'd ever wanted, and it was suddenly too much for her.
"Oh, God," she whispered. "You have to go home."
The baby squinted, her little mouth turning down into a pout just before she let out a wail.
"Okay, maybe not yet," Caitlyn said quickly. She put the baby up on her shoulder and patted her back, bouncing her up and down until she heard a small satisfying burp. Then all was qu
iet. She lowered the baby into the cradle of her arms and walked over to the couch to retrieve the blanket. By the time she wrapped the child up in a tight cocoon, the baby had drifted off to sleep. Setting her back in the car seat, Caitlyn picked up the piece of paper and reread the note that had sent Matt rushing out the door. The words were scrawled in a shaky hand, the ink not fully completing each letter.
Matt,
I can't believe I've found you again. When I read your name in the newspaper, I knew it was a sign. Please take care of Emily. I have no one else to ask, and I'm desperate. I'll call soon.
Sarah
Caitlyn sat down on the floor next to the sleeping Emily and leaned against the couch. Who was Sarah? An old girlfriend, an ex-lover? Matt had taken off in such a hurry. She'd never seen the blood drain out of anyone's face quite so quickly.
Matt must have loved this woman once. He'd looked stricken at the sound of her name, shocked to the core. It appeared that maybe Matt was the baby's father.
Caitlyn stood up and walked around in an aimless circle, wondering what she was supposed to do now. When was Matt coming back? She deserved an explanation. It was after midnight, and she was now baby-sitting for a man she'd met twenty minutes ago!
He certainly wasn't what she had expected when she'd heard a newspaperman was moving in across the hall. She'd pictured someone older, with glasses and a serious expression, wearing loose suits and ties that didn't match. She certainly hadn't expected a sexy hunk of a man in tight-ass black jeans and a leather jacket. He looked like someone who'd be more comfortable out of an office, maybe on the back of a Harley or in a smoky nightclub someplace where men drank Scotch and no one asked for last names.
Caitlyn shook her head in derision at her own wild imaginings. Her curiosity and overly active imagination had gotten her into trouble plenty of times before. But she couldn't seem to stop herself. Dreaming and drawing were as vital to her as eating and breathing.
Instinctively, she reached for the sketch pad on the table, and within seconds, her fingers flying over the page, she had sketched the face of Matt Winters. She studied it for a second, tilting her head in critical analysis. No, it wasn't quite right. His jaw was strong and square, his features more ragged. His wasn't a traditionally handsome face, but rather an interesting one, with the lines of life etched in his forehead and around the corners of his eyes. And those eyes, a deep, rich brown that reminded her of semisweet chocolate. But whoever had said the eyes were the window to the soul hadn't met this man, for Matt's eyes hadn't revealed one tiny clue to who he was or what he was thinking.
No, his eyes had guarded every last secret of his heart. Yet despite his wariness, his expression had changed when she'd placed Emily in his arms. He'd softened, as if something untouchable deep within him had been touched, some long-forgotten core of tenderness perhaps?
As Caitlyn stared at her sketch, she realized it wasn't nearly good enough; it really didn't resemble him at all. And she was once again confronted with her inability to get it right. Why couldn't she put down on paper what she saw so clearly in her head? In the past few months there seemed to be a short circuit in her brain between the thought and the execution, a block she couldn't hurdle or climb over or even push aside.
She started to erase the sketch, then quickly tossed down the pad as heavy footsteps drew her attention to the doorway. There would be time to have a heart-to-heart conversation with her muse a little later. She got to her feet as Matt entered the room. His face was still ashen, his eyes bleak.
"I couldn't find her," he said heavily. "God dammit, I couldn't find her."
"Maybe tomorrow," Caitlyn said uncertainly, not sure how to react to the intense pain in his expression.
"No, not tomorrow, not ever! I can't ever find her. I've been looking for years, everywhere I go."
"Who is she?" Caitlyn asked in confusion. "An ex-girlfriend?"
He shook his head. "No. She's my sister."
"Your sister?" It wasn't the answer she'd been expecting. Caitlyn sat down on the arm of the couch. Not having siblings, she had no idea of the intensity of a brother-sister bond, but Matt's emotion seemed unusually deep. "Well, maybe someone else in your family knows where she is," Caitlyn offered when Matt remained silent.
"I have no other family." He paused for a long, tense moment, then said, "Where's the note?"
"Here." She picked it up off the coffee table and handed it to him, watching him read each word at least twice.
"The newspaper," he murmured, looking at Caitlyn with a new light in his eyes. "She must have read my byline in the paper. That's how she found me." His mouth turned grim. "But I'm still no closer to finding her. Why didn't she just knock on my door? Why didn't she ask me to help her?"
Caitlyn shook her head, because she couldn't imagine what had driven this Sarah to leave her baby unattended in the middle of the hallway. "It's a good thing you were home."
"The phone call." He snapped his fingers. "I thought it was a wrong number, but she said my name. That was her. That was her," he said again. "Sarah. She spoke to me."
"But you didn't know it was her?"
"No. She hung up. But I wrote down the number." Once again he was out the door before she could stop him. He returned almost as quickly, a piece of paper in his hand. "Can I use your phone?"
She waved her hand toward the phone on the table by the door. "Go ahead."
Matt dialed the number and waited. After a moment he hung up. "No answer, no answering machine. I'll have to see if I can trace the number."
"You can do that?"
The light in his eyes dimmed. "Well, not right this second, unfortunately. Damn." He let out a sigh. "Do you have anything to drink?"
"Lemonade, diet Coke, some tea?" she offered.
"I was thinking more along the lines of a good bourbon."
"Sorry. I'm not much of a drinker. Why don't you sit down?" She jumped up and swept a pile of fabric off an armchair. "Relax for a minute and think about what you want to do next."
Matt did as she suggested, resting his elbows on his knees as he stared across the room at the baby. "Sarah's little girl," he murmured. "It doesn't seem possible."
"Why not?" Caitlyn asked, reclaiming her seat on the arm of the couch.
"Because Sarah was nine years old when I last saw her."
"How long ago was that?"
"Thirteen years, four months, three and a half -- well, it's been a long time."
For a few minutes the only sound in the room came from the slight snores issued by little Emily. Caitlyn didn't know what to say -- or what to do, for that matter. The baby was obviously meant to be in Matt's care. A quick glance at her watch told her time was passing quickly and Tiffany's wedding was only hours away.
"Do you want me to help you carry Emily's things over to your place?" she ventured.
He looked taken aback by the suggestion. "What do you mean?"
"It's late. I have work to finish, and Emily is asleep."
"What if she wakes up?"
"There's more formula in the bag and diapers, too."
"I can't take care of her by myself." He jumped to his feet, running a hand through his hair. "Why the hell did Sarah leave me with a baby?"
"I don't know the answer to that, but I do know that she's your responsibility, and you need to take her home now."
He stared at her, his hands on his hips. "Maybe... you could watch her tonight?"
She immediately shook her head. "No."
"I'll pay you."
"It's not the money."
He thought about that for a second. "I'll write an article about your wedding shop. I'll get you publicity."
"No."
"You must want something. You must have a price."
"You think everyone can be bought?"
"Yes."
Her jaw dropped open at his blunt answer. "Well, I can't be bought."
He stared at her for a long moment, his gaze so intense she had the feeling he could see right
into her head, and she didn't like it.
"Would you do it just to be nice?" Matt asked. "To be a good neighbor? Because I really need your help. I don't know how to take care of a baby."
Caitlyn licked her lips, feeling a stab of guilt. She could help him, probably should, and it was those words that always drove her into turmoil -- could, should, ought to. Matt was smart enough to see that if money didn't work, guilt probably would. But this time she held on to her resolve.
"She'll probably go to sleep now. Just change her and feed her when she wakes up. I'm sorry, but I have to finish this dress, and you have to go back to your apartment. Frankly, you look like you could use some sleep, maybe even a shower."
He snapped his fingers. "I can't leave her alone while I take a shower. What if she woke up? What if she was scared or hungry? What if she somehow got out of the car seat and hurt herself?"
Caitlyn sighed, sensing the battle was not yet over. "Is the word pushover written that clearly on my forehead?"
"It's not there yet, but I'm still hoping."
"Emily can stay here while you take a shower, a quick shower. Then you come back and get her. Understand?"
"Thirty minutes," he said.
'Ten."
"Fifteen."
"Not a second more, or I'll be knocking on your door."
"Deal." He paused, looking into her eyes. "Thanks."
"No problem. Just come back soon. I really can't take care of your baby."
"Stop calling her mine. She's not mine." He closed the door firmly behind him as he left Caitlyn's apartment. For a brief second, he was tempted to run, but deep down inside he knew he couldn't.
* * *
Ten minutes later, Matt stood under the shower head, hoping the hot water would ease the tension in his shoulders. Unfortunately, the knots kept tightening every time he thought about Sarah standing outside his building, taking the elevator, walking down the hall. He'd been just a few feet away when she'd left her baby by the door. Just a few damn feet away. And he hadn't known it, hadn't sensed her presence. Why? Why?
The question screamed at him again and again and again. He'd searched for Sarah for so long. Why couldn't she have knocked on his door? Looked into his eyes? Asked for help?
Some Kind of Wonderful Page 2
