The Littlest Stowaway

by Gina Wilkins

  The infant moved restlessly in the carrier, its miniscule fingers opening and closing. In deference to the heat, it was dressed only in a thin white cotton shirt and a diaper beneath the snugly buckled straps of the infant carrier.

  Casey continued to stare into the cockpit. “Steve, this baby can’t be more than a few days old.”

  “I...uh...” Shock seemed to have affected his ability to speak dearly; all he could manage was a stammer.

  “You weren’t expecting to find a baby here, were you?” she prodded. “Is this why you were in such a hurry?”

  He stared at her. “No, I wasn’t expecting to find a baby in my plane. What kind of a question is that?”

  “You mean someone just left it here? You don’t think—you don’t think it has been abandoned, do you?”

  “Who would abandon a baby in my plane?” he repeated, shaking his head in disbelief. If this was a practical joke, it was a sick one, he thought, looking around one more time in the hope of seeing someone who would claim the child and explain its presence there. But the hangar was still empty except for Casey and himself—and the baby in his airplane.

  “We should take it inside,” Casey said, her voice a bit uncertain. “It’s too hot out here.”

  “Inside?” he parroted blankly.

  “In your office. It’s closer than mine. We can call the police from there.”

  “The police?”

  Casey rolled her eyes. “Will you stop repeating me? Of course, we must call the police. That’s what you’re supposed to do when you find an abandoned baby. For all we know, the baby needs immediate medical attention—and it looks like it’s up to us to make sure it gets help.”

  Steve looked at the baby again, wondering why the thought of turning it over to the police bothered him so badly. But he supposed Casey was right. If someone really had dumped the child here—for reasons he simply could not comprehend—they had no choice but to notify the proper authorities. “Okay. You carry it.”

  “Me?” She hastily put her hands behind her back. “No, I’d better not I might drop it. You carry it.”

  He frowned at her. All of a sudden Miss I-Can-Do-Anything-You-Can-Do was going to play helpless? Seeing no alternative, he tentatively lifted the infant carrier, which hadn’t been buckled into the seat It was surprisingly light, he thought, balancing it by the molded carrying handle. The baby must not weigh more than six or seven pounds.

  Something fluttered to the ground when he lifted the carrier out of the plane. Casey bent to retrieve it

  “What does it say?” Steve asked, studying her face as she read the words printed on the slip of paper.

  Her voice wasn’t quite steady when she read the few stark words. “‘Please take care of Annie.’” Casey looked up at him then with a thunderstruck expression. “That’s all it says. No signature.”

  Please take care of Annie. The simple request struck Steve sharply as he looked down at the flushed face of the tiny, helpless infant. “You must be Annie,” he murmured.

  The child’s only reaction was to stir restlessly in her seat

  He looked up to find Casey gazing somberly at him. “Someone abandoned this baby,” she said, as if the reality of it was just beginning to sink in.

  Steve swallowed. “Let’s get her inside.”

  Maybe he could think more dearly once they were in his office. But he still didn’t think he’d have a clue what he was going to do with a newborn baby.

  CASEY BIT HER LIP as she followed Steve back into his office. He walked more slowly now than he had when she’d tried to catch him earlier, she noted. He carried the baby as carefully as if it were made of spun glass. Even in the plastic carrier, the baby looked impossibly tiny in Steve’s strong arms.

  She was still finding it hard to believe that someone had left an infant in Steve Lockhart’s plane. It made no sense to her at all. It was such a warm day. So much could have gone wrong. What if Steve hadn’t been going up in that particular plane? What if he’d locked the hangar without looking inside? Had the mother been watching from some hidden vantage point to make sure her baby would be safe? Pausing for a moment outside Steve’s office, she looked around, but no one seemed to be paying any particular attention to them. For all she knew, whoever had left the baby in Steve’s plane could be in another state by now.

  Despite Steve’s parting instructions, Madelyn was still at her desk. She was chatting with a mountain of a man whose bushy red hair and beard clashed cheerfully with his shocking-pink shirt. Ragged jeans and green high-topped sneakers completed his ensemble. Casey shook her head in silent disapproval, as she always did when she saw B. J. Smith, who worked as a pilot and flight instructor for Lockhart Air. Her own pilots wore crisply pressed khaki shirts embroidered with the Jansen Charter Service logo. Professional appearances were important to her, as they had been to her father.

  And still she was losing longtime customers to Lockhart, she thought with a frisson of panic. Steve was steadily cutting into the narrow profit she’d been able to manage after her father’s long-undiagnosed illness had caused him to make disastrous decisions that had almost been the ruin of JCS. She vowed that George McNalley would be the last customer she would lose to Steve Lockhart. She was determined to prove that her father—as well as several others—had been wrong when they had predicted that she would lose the business her grandfather had founded so many years ago.

  Her attention was reclaimed by a deep bellow. “Hey, Steve, we thought you were—what the hell is that?” B.J.’s green eyes widened as he stared at the infant carrier in his employer’s hands.

  “It’s a baby,” Madelyn pronounced, just a hint of puzzlement in her matter-of-fact voice.

  “Madelyn wins this round,” Steve commented, carefully setting the carrier on her desk.

  “So...you and Casey’ve been busy, huh?” B.J. asked with a broad grin that made Casey scowl.

  “This is not funny, B.J.,” she said repressively. “Someone abandoned this poor baby in Steve’s plane.”

  That wiped the grin from the irreverent pilot’s face. “Abandoned?” he repeated. “Are you kidding?”

  His brown eyes dark with concern, Steve shook his head. “When I opened the door, there it was. No one else was in the hangar.”

  “We found this note,” Casey added, displaying the slip of paper so that B.J. and Madelyn could read the few words printed on it.

  “Whoa.” B.J. rubbed the back of his neck and looked uncharacteristically solemn as he eyed the restlessly dozing baby. “What are you going to do?”

  “We’re going to call the police, of course,” Casey answered when Steve hesitated. “They’ll send someone to investigate and take custody of the baby.”

  “No.” Madelyn’s quick interjection brought everyone’s attention to her.

  “What do you mean, no?” Casey frowned. “Of course we have to call the police. Abandoning a baby is a crime. And this child needs immediate attention. We don’t know how long it has been since she was fed, or how long she was in that plane.”

  Casey was suddenly worried that the baby’s sleep wasn’t natural. Shouldn’t the noise and movement have roused her by now? She and Steve had been stunned into near-immobility by finding the baby, but now it was time for someone to take action. Since everyone still seemed almost paralyzed by shock, it looked as though it was up to her. She reached for the phone on Madelyn’s desk.

  Madelyn’s hand covered hers on the receiver. “Wait ”

  “Madelyn, we really can’t wait any longer.”

  As if she’d finally realized that something momentous was going on around her, the baby chose that moment to awaken with a startled cry. Her blue eyes opened wide and unfocused, and her tiny hands and feet pumped the air. She began to cry in high, thin wails, surprisingly loud for such miniscule lungs.

  Steve tried rocking the carrier, speaking in soothing, nonsensical syllables that had no effect.

  “You should probably pick her up,” B.J. offered. “My si
ster’s babies usually stopped crying when someone held them.”

  “Uh...Madelyn?” Steve asked hopefully.

  Madelyn shook her head. “She’s too tiny. I’d be too nervous.”

  Steve turned to Casey. “I don’t suppose you...”

  “You try holding her,” she said quickly, terrified at the very thought of lifting that squirming, squalling infant out of the baby carrier. “She’s probably hungry. I’ll make the call.”

  She tried again to lift the receiver, but again Madelyn stopped her. “Don’t.”

  After drawing a deep breath, Steve unbuckled the safety straps of the carrier and awkwardly slid his big hands beneath the baby’s head and hips. He lifted her carefully into his arms, cradling her against his broad chest. Watching him, Casey realized her throat had tightened, for some reason. There was just something about watching a big, strong man holding a tiny, helpless infant—especially a man as ruggedly handsome and potently sexy as Steve Lockhart, qualities she’d been reluctantly aware of for longer than she wanted to admit

  She quickly turned her attention to Madelyn, raising her voice a bit to be heard over the baby’s cries. “Why don’t you want me to call the police? Surely you know it’s the only thing we can do.”

  But again, Madelyn shook her head. “What if it’s Janice’s baby?” she asked simply. “What if she’s brought her to us because she needs our help?”

  2

  MADELYN’S QUESTION made Casey go still. She hadn’t even considered the possibility that this was Janice’s baby. She glanced at Steve, who was still futilely rocking the unhappy infant. He didn’t look particularly surprised by the possibility, she realized. Had it already occurred to him?

  “Janice’s baby isn’t even due for another couple of weeks, is it?” she asked hesitantly.

  “The baby’s not very big,” B.J. mused. “That would you say it weighs, Steve? Six pounds?”

  “Maybe,” Steve conceded, studying the little body in his arms. “No more than that”

  “So it could have been a week or so early,” B.J. concluded. “And it doesn’t look more than a few days old. No one has seen Janice for—what?—a week? I guess it could be hers.”

  Casey’s head was starting to hurt. “Why would Janice have left her baby in Steve’s plane? That’s just crazy.”

  “I told you she’s in trouble,” Madelyn murmured.

  “If janice is the mother, then she left the baby with us for a reason,” Steve said, motioning toward the note on the desk. “She thought we would help her.”

  B.j. nodded somberly. “She must be desperate.”

  Casey looked at all of them in open disbelief. “You really think Janice left her newborn baby in Steve’s plane?”

  “You have to admit it’s possible,” Steve said.

  Considering everything, it was possible, Casey thought. “Maybe,” she said grudgingly. “But that doesn’t change the fact that we have to contact the authorities.”

  B.J. frowned. “You’d call the cops on Janice?” he asked, his tone accusatory.

  She immediately went on the defensive. Couldn’t these people see that she was worried about the baby—and now about Janice, as well? “B.J., if the baby is Janice’s, she’s obviously in trouble. She needs help.”

  “The police won’t help her,” Madelyn murmured. “They’ll arrest her for endangering the welfare of a minor. And then they’ll take her baby away from her.”

  “What makes you think she wants the baby?”

  “Because she asked Steve to take care of her. She’ll be back when she can.”

  Casey shook her head. “You can’t know that.”

  “I know that if she’d wanted to give the baby away, she wouldn’t have left her with Steve.”

  “Madelyn, if she’d only wanted a baby-sitter, this is hardly the way she’d have gone about it.”

  “I’m going to look around the hangar,” B.J. announced abruptly, moving toward the door. “Maybe I’ll find something that will give us an idea of what’s going on here.”

  Casey put her hands on her hips, looking from Madelyn’s stubborn face to Steve’s harried one as he rhythmically jiggled the still-fussing baby. “Steve? Surely you agree we have to report this.”

  He grimaced ruefully. “I don’t know, Casey. If this is Janice’s baby, it seems she’s asking for our help.”

  Had they all lost their minds? “Steve, this is a baby, not a puppy she’s asked you to watch while she’s on vacation for a few days. Are you actually considering taking this child home with you? How are you going to take care of it? How long are you going to wait before calling the authorities—until the kid starts school?”

  He sighed. “I don’t know,” he admitted. “I just don’t feel right about calling the police now.”

  Casey threw up her hands in exasperation. “I can’t believe you’re even hesitating. Have you considered the possibility that you’d be breaking the law by not reporting this? Do you want to go to jail?”

  “It’s not against the law to baby-sit for a friend,” he said defensively.

  She was getting very dose to grinding her teeth. “This isn’t baby-sitting. This is abandonment. Reckless abandonment Do you know how many things could have gone wrong before you just happened to find the baby in your plane?”

  “You really think we should call the police?” he asked, turning the question back to her. “You think we should give them Janice’s name and turn the baby over to child welfare services?”

  He made it sound so cold, she thought with resentment Just because she was the type who believed in following rules, obeying the law, that didn’t mean she had no feelings. She could only imagine the desperation that would compel a woman to abandon a newborn, but she couldn’t condone the action, or allow it to go unreported. Someone had to be rational and responsible here. As was so often the case, she was the logical candidate. “I can’t see that we have any other option.”

  Madelyn frowned in disapproval.

  Steve hesitated a moment, then caught Casey completely off guard by suddenly depositing the baby in her arms. Her arms tightened reflexively, automatically cradling the baby’s head.

  “Okay,” he said. “You turn her in. I don’t think I can do it”

  Oh, this wasn’t fair. Aware that Steve and Madelyn were watching her closely, Casey glanced down at the fretting baby, who gazed tearfully, blearily back up at her. For some reason, Annie suddenly stopped crying and snuggled more securely into Casey’s arms, as though in search of security and reassurance. And Casey melted.

  She’d never held a baby this tiny before. She had never realized quite how good it would feel. Or how simply holding such a helpless little one would bring out protective, undeniably maternal instincts Casey had never even known she possessed.

  She tried to remind herself that she had the baby’s best interest at heart by calling in the authorities. There were people trained to deal with situations like this—and no one in this room fit that description. Annie needed to be with people who knew how to take care of her.

  “Janice cleans your bathrooms,” Madelyn murmured as if that argument should carry some weight in Casey’s decision.

  The baby whimpered and clutched at Casey’s clothes with her tiny, unsteady fingers. Casey’s heart lodged firmly in her throat.

  “Give me the weekend to find Janice,” Steve said, watching her as if sensing her sudden weakening. “If we haven’t heard from her by Monday, we’ll call the authorities.”

  “We could all be in big trouble for not reporting this immediately,” Casey was compelled to warn them, even though she had to force her voice past the lump in her throat.

  “I’m willing to take that chance if it will help Janice,” Steve answered steadily.

  “So am I,” Madelyn agreed.

  “Count me in.” B.J. entered the office carrying a brown paper bag. “I found this in the plane. It’s full of baby bottles and disposable diapers, but there was nothing else useful and no sign of Jan
ice.”

  “Casey? She didn’t have anyone else to turn to,” Steve reminded her. “She’s trusting us to help her.”

  Casey didn’t bother to point out that technically she hadn’t been included. Janice would have had no way of knowing that Casey would be with Steve when he found the baby. Janice had rebuffed her offers to help her before. Maybe she would have suspected that Casey’s first impulse would be to call the authorities, whereas Steve and his associates would be more likely to follow their hearts?

  She bit her lip. It wasn’t easy for her to break the rules. She wasn’t the type who took reckless risks or played life by ear. Her well-honed common sense was reminding her impatiently that she knew what she was supposed to do in a situation like this, and she should be doing it. But she kept picturing Janice as she’d last seen her—young, pregnant. Alone.

  Annie stirred again in Casey’s arms, making funny, kittenish sounds that almost sounded like pleas. Casey sighed, surrendering for once to her heart. “Okay,” she said, speaking primarily to Steve. “We’ll probably all go to jail, but I won’t call anyone at the moment. We’ll give Janice a chance to come to her senses first. But if we haven’t heard from her by Monday, we’ll have to notify the police.”

  He nodded, his eyes gleaming with approval at her decision. The way he looked at her made her swallow hard. She had never really known how to take his incessant flirting and teasing. She’d never known whether he really was attracted to her, or simply enjoyed mocking her even as he tried to put her out of business. Even if the attraction was real, she couldn’t allow herself to trust him, she reminded herself. Her very livelihood, as well as that of her employees, depended on her keeping a cool head when she was around this dangerously charming male.

  “We’ll give it until Monday,” he agreed.

  Casey gulped, wondering what on earth she’d just gotten herself into.