Her Lost And Found Baby. Tara Taylor Quinn

as anyone other than Johnny Brubaker, top legal counsel for his father’s holdings until the old man retired, if he ever retired, at which point the holdings would belong to Johnny. It had all been loosely mapped out before his birth.

      “I think what we need to do first is fill out that application and see if we can get Chrissy enrolled at The Bouncing Ball.” Legal pitfalls bounced all around him. Over him.

      “Don’t we need a two-year-old girl to do that?”

      “She’s not the one who’ll be looked at. We will be.” He’d already perused the application. It was general stuff. Their jobs. Addresses. “We can use your home address and then the address of the commissary I rented here for the week...” Food truck laws in California required a street address for the business, one that passed health code regulations for storing and preparing food, and included a place where the truck could be parked. “I’ll rent it for the rest of the month. We can explain that we’re moving here and that Chrissy’s at home with...my mother.”

      For the first time that day, Tabitha’s features relaxed. She looked like herself. Because they had a plan.

      He thought about his mother...and Tabitha...and started to squirm inside again.

      Tabitha knew his family had money, that he and Angel had gone to private school with limousine transportation to and from. She knew he’d been legal counsel for his father’s business. She didn’t know how rich they were and that he’d been groomed to be lead counsel for a team of about twenty. And his parents had no idea how or where he was currently living. There was no way he was inviting them to the little place he’d bought. They’d worry about him more than they already were. They’d agreed to give him his year to grieve Angel, to leave him alone as long as he called regularly.

      And he couldn’t very well just show up at the mansion with Tabitha, unless he gave her some kind of heads-up.

      It wasn’t like his family owned a business that she could just look up on the internet and learn all about them. More like, his father invested in many diverse interests, from patents to oil rigs, but only with his own capital. He wasn’t an investor for others. Sometimes he invested in failing companies and brought them around. It was always about the next challenge to him. Just as it had been for his father before him.

      “I don’t know how to thank you, Johnny,” she said, “But if you need me to wash your clothes for you for the rest of your sabbatical, I’m game.” Her grin was like a hundred others she’d given him over the months and the world righted itself.

      Then he caught a glimpse of a random drop of moisture on her top lip. He couldn’t look away. And knew he’d pay a high price for what that minute drop of wine made him want to do.