Maggie sighed. “I tripped over a stupid rug and my own feet this morning and I fell. I wonder if you’d give me a ride to the hospital.”
“The hospital?” Yiannis felt as if he’d been punched. “Are you all right?”
“Of course,” Maggie said briskly. “Just having a little trouble with my hip,” she said. “I called. They said I should get it x-rayed.”
“I’ll be right there.” Even as he spoke, he was pulling on his old Yale sweatshirt. Then he yanked on a pair of jeans and stuffed his bare feet into a pair of worn deck shoes. Less than a minute later, he was pounding up the steps to Maggie’s apartment and letting himself in.
She was sitting on the sofa with a disgusted look on her face. Her white hair was pulled up into a neat bun at the back of her head. “Sorry about this. I don’t like to trouble you.”
“Not a problem. Can you walk?” He crouched down beside her.
“Well, I don’t expect you to carry me!” She pushed herself up, wincing as she did so.
“I can carry you,” Yiannis said. She weighed about as much as the decorative fishing net she had hung on one wall.
“Nonsense,” she said, but when she tried to take a step, she gave a little gasp and would have fallen if he hadn’t grabbed her.
“We should probably call an ambulance,” Yiannis said grimly. But instead, he swung her up into his arms and carried her down the stairs to the garage where both his Porsche and her Ford sedan were parked side by side. He stopped.
Maggie sighed. “We’d better take my car,” she said, a note of regret in her voice.
Yiannis grinned. “You don’t want to show up at the hospital in the Porsche?”
“I’d love to,” she said. “But you don’t have room for a car seat.”
He almost dropped her. “What?”
“We’ll need the car seat. I’ve got Harry.”
“Harry?” Who the hell was Harry?
“Misty’s baby,” she explained. “You remember? You’ve met him.”
He remembered Misty. She was Maggie’s late second husband Walter’s granddaughter. No real relation to Maggie at all, but as far as Maggie was concerned, Misty was “family.” Mostly, though, she was a flirt and a flake and, now that he recalled it, an unwed mother.
An airy-fairy surfer girl with long blonde hair, a deep tan and wide vacant blue eyes, Misty was beautiful but irresponsible. Age-wise, he figured she was about twenty—except emotionally, where she seemed more like seven. The world always revolved around Misty. Yiannis was appalled when he’d heard she had a child.
“Who’s raising whom?” he’d asked Maggie.
She’d rolled her eyes at the time. “Maybe he’ll be the making of her.”
Yiannis hadn’t thought it likely. But he did remember a scrap of a human wrapped in a blanket from one of Misty’s visits a few months back.
“What do you mean, you’ve got Harry?” he said now.
“He’s asleep in the bedroom. Don’t worry. You can wake him. He won’t fuss. Much,” she added, and gave him a look that was, he was sure, meant to be reassuring. It merely looked hopeful.
“That’s comforting,” Yiannis said drily. He cast a look of longing at the Porsche as he edged past it and carried Maggie to the passenger side of her own car. “Where’s Misty? Or shouldn’t I ask?”
Now as he opened the door and tried to settle her in the passenger seat without hurting her, she said through gritted teeth, “She went to talk to Devin.”
The baby’s father. Yiannis remembered that name. He had never met Devin. Didn’t think much of his taste in women certainly. But all he really knew was that Devin was in the army.
“There. I’m fine now,” Maggie said, giving a little shudder. She looked white around the mouth, and Yiannis was worried.
“You’re not going to faint,” he told her. It wasn’t a question. It was halfway between a command and a plea.
“I’m not going to faint,” Maggie assured him. “Go back and get Harry. My car keys are in the rooster bowl on the kitchen bookshelf.”
Yiannis took the stairs two at a time, snatched the keys out of the bowl and then went into the bedroom where Misty had apparently set up some sort of traveling crib affair for her sleeping baby. Yiannis supposed he should give her some credit for that—a car seat and a crib.
He’d have expected Misty to just dump the baby on Maggie for the day without any provisions at all. Maybe she was growing up.
The baby was stirring as Yiannis approached the crib. His dark head bobbed up and he looked around. Yiannis didn’t know how old he was. Under a year, he thought. He remembered Misty being big as a whale and grumpy about it at the beginning of last summer. So Harry must have been born in the middle of it.
“Hey there, Harry old man.” He made his voice cheerful as he peered over the top of the crib.
Harry pushed himself to a sitting position and looked up. When he didn’t see whomever he’d been expecting, his little face crumpled.
Oh, God, tears.
“None of that,” Yiannis told him firmly, snatching the boy up before he could even begin to emit a wail. Harry looked at him, startled, his blue eyes wide but, fortunately, tearless. “Let’s go find your grandma,” Yiannis said and wedging the baby on one hip, he locked the door and pounded down the stairs.
Harry didn’t utter a sound—until he saw Maggie, whereupon he let out a warbling sound and held out his arms to go to her.
“Oh, honey, I can’t take you.” Maggie looked as distressed as Harry. “Did you change him that fast”
“What?” Yiannis had opened the back door of the car and was trying to figure out the logistics of getting Harry into the car seat.
“He just got up. He’ll be wet.”
Yiannis believed that. “We have to get you to the hospital.”
“I can wait,” Maggie assured him. She gave him a sweet hopeful smile.
Yiannis returned a glare. But he backed out of the car and studied her through the window to the passenger seat. She had her hands folded in her lap.
“You’re enjoying this,” he accused her.
Maggie gave a little sniff. “I’m not enjoying my hip hurting.”
He grimaced guiltily because, of course, that was true. But still he scowled. “Making the most of a bad situation then.”
She dimpled. “Something like that.”
“You think I can’t change a diaper?”
“I think you can do anything,” Maggie said blithely, which was of course the right answer.
It was also true—and he’d prove it. “C’mon, Harry. Give us a minute,” he said gruffly to Maggie and headed back toward the apartment.
It wasn’t that he’d never changed a baby before. Hell, he’d changed a thousand of them. Well, maybe not that many, but when you came from a family the size of his—despite the fact that he was second youngest of his parents’ children—you didn’t escape babysitting. There were always cousins and nephews and nieces to be fobbed off on the unsuspecting—not to mention, unwilling—bystander.
Now he made short work of Harry’s damp diaper and redressed the boy quickly. Apparently changing babies was like riding a bike. You didn’t forget,