Marion Lennox
Their Baby Bargain
The second book in the Parents Wanted series, 2001
For all my loopy friends, without whose love and laughter
this book would never have been written.
CHAPTER ONE
PEOPLE didn’t arrive at Bay Beach Orphanage driving fortunes on wheels. At least, they didn’t until now.
Wendy Maher cared for orphans, or for young children from broken homes with no money. Foster-parents tended to spend more on kids than on cars, and orphanage staff did the same.
Therefore Wendy shouldn’t even recognise this sports car-a gorgeous deep green Aston Martin DB7 Vantage Volante-much less know its worth. She watched the low-slung car purr into her driveway, and the fact that she could guess almost exactly what it cost was enough to make her blood boil.
Just as it always had at such waste…
She rose stiffly to her feet. A flutter of child’s clothes tumbled around her feet, but her attention was no longer on packing. Adam would have killed for a car like this, she thought bleakly. Adam-whose love for expensive cars and fast driving had destroyed more than just himself…
Good grief! What was she doing? She hauled herself back to the present with a jagged wrench. Thinking of Adam still led to heartbreak. She had better things to be thinking of than him.
Like-what on earth was this car doing here? Her Home-one of a series of Homes making up Bay Beach Orphanage-was on a dead-end road. Maybe the driver had turned in by mistake.
‘It’ll be someone asking for directions,’ she told Gabbie. Wendy’s five-year-old foster-daughter was also distracted from packing and was now staring out the window at the amazing car. Woman and child gazed at the car together. Then, as he emerged, they gazed at the driver.
The driver was certainly worth a good, long look. He seemed three or four years older than Wendy’s twenty-eight years-and he was drop-dead gorgeous! His blond-brown hair was attractively tousled and nicely sun-bleached. He was six feet tall, or maybe a little more. His skin was nicely tanned; he was expensively but casually dressed in cream moleskin trousers and an open-necked, quality linen shirt, and he was wearing the most superb leather jacket.
Or…it was superb if you were into statements of wealth, Wendy thought crossly. Which she wasn’t! This man and his car looked like something out of Vogue magazine. The cost of the jacket alone would pay more than a month of Wendy’s future rent, and the thought made her glower as he strode toward her front door.
Maybe she could charge him to tell him where to go?
The idea made her smile for the first time that day. She touched Gabrielle’s flaming curls in a gesture of reassurance, and then crossed to the hall.
‘Hello,’ she said, swinging the door wide and pinning a smile of greeting on her face that she didn’t feel like giving. ‘What can I do for you?’
‘I hope you can relieve me of a responsibility,’ he answered. ‘Is this the place where you leave babies?’
Silence.
Wendy stared. The man was smiling like a cover model, he was asking if he could leave a baby and he was talking as if he was delivering a parcel! His deep green eyes were twinkling engagingly, and his wide mouth was curved into a matching grin. He looked like a man used to getting his own way, Wendy thought. He had a wonderful smile-a smile to make you do things you had no intention of doing-and it made Wendy back a couple of steps in immediate mistrust.
‘I beg your pardon?’ she said blankly.
‘They told me this was an orphanage,’ His smile slipped a little, unsure. ‘The sign outside…it says Bay Beach Children’s Home.’
He was right. As if to emphasise his point, Gabbie now appeared at Wendy’s side. The little girl clung silently to Wendy’s skirt, put her thumb firmly in her mouth and stared.
The stranger looked enquiringly from one to another. Together, they were quite a pair-but they didn’t match.
Wendy had glossy black curls, twisted casually into a loose knot from which errant wisps were escaping at random. She was tall-five eight or so. She had olive skin, her warm grey eyes were widely set in her open, pleasant face and, although no one could ever call her plump, she was nicely rounded. She was cuddly, her kids decreed-and with her flowery skirt and her soft white blouse she looked as if she’d just stepped out of a mystical Celtic tale.
Wendy looked competent, kind and motherly-an image she’d worked hard to achieve and an image her children approved of very much. Especially Gabbie.
With Wendy assessed, the man looked down at Gabbie. There were few similarities.
Five-year-old Gabbie had startlingly red hair, tied into two short pigtails. Her snub nose was the complete opposite of Wendy’s, and her eyes were a deep, fathomless green. Her freckles stood out on her too-pale face; she was finely boned, and she couldn’t be any more different from Wendy if she’d tried to be.
This was not a mother-daughter relationship, the man’s expression said. He had come to the right place. His smile re-emerged as he faced the comfortable Wendy. This lady might not be his sort of woman, but she was who he needed right now.
His confidence had returned with his smile. ‘You are part of Bay Beach Orphanage,’ he announced.
‘Yes.’ Wendy’s hands rested on Gabbie’s shoulders as the child’s thumb shifted nervously from one side of her mouth to the other. This little scrap was fearful of everything, and Gabbie’s biggest fear was always that she’d be snatched from the Wendy she loved. Sadly, it wasn’t an unreasonable fear. ‘This is a children’s home. But in answer to your query…’ She took a deep breath. ‘You’re asking is this the place you leave babies?’ Her brows creased together in a frown. Her urge was to slam the door in the stranger’s handsome face, but if there was a baby involved then she couldn’t do that. ‘Do you have a baby?’
‘Well, yes,’ the man said as if he was apologising. He smiled again. ‘I’ll bring her in, shall I?’
She followed the man to his car and, with Gabbie still clinging to her side, she waited as the man extricated a bundle from the rear of his fancy car. The infant was in a carry-cot and at least she’d been properly strapped in. In this job she’d seen babies in cardboard boxes-bureau drawers-anything.
But this little one was no neglected waif. The stranger was lifting her-if inexpertly. He was holding her as if she was made of glass, and the baby was a miniature version of himself. She was just beautiful!
She was the most beautiful baby Wendy had ever seen, and Wendy had seen a lot of babies.
The baby had the same soft blond-brown curls as the man, and the same twinkly green eyes, creasing into delight now that she was being lifted. She was wrapped all in pink-there was no possibility of mistaking this little girl for a boy!-and she looked about five or six months old.
And…her eyes said it for her: this was indeed a wonderful world. She was plump and well cared for and happy. Wendy, accustomed to seeing the most awful things that people could do to their children, sighed with relief that at least this baby was healthy.
‘I’m leaving tonight-I need to be in New York by the weekend,’ the man was saying. He held the baby awkwardly in his arms, proffering her toward Wendy. ‘But you’ll take care of her, won’t you? After all, that’s your job.’
There was only one answer to that. ‘No,’ Wendy said softly, and her eyes met his. Steady and sure, Wendy’s were eyes that had seen the worst the world had to offer, and then some. She’d thought nothing could surprise her-but it always did. ‘It’s not my job. Caring for your baby is your job.’