She took a tentative step back toward him. “Why do you think that is?”
“Because for once you’re right.”
“No.” Mikky tried not to lose her temper. “I meant about rubbing each other the wrong way.”
Now she wanted to analyze things? Tony put no faith in that kind of nonsense, even if Dottie was a psychologist. Just a lot of words flying around as far as he was concerned. And he wanted none of them flying his way. “They include psych 101 in with your architect courses?”
“Just trying to find a way to get us to work better together.”
Coming closer, Mikky leaned against his arm as she looked at the baby. She made a teasing face at Justin and was rewarded with a gurgle that was very close to a laugh. The sound went right through her, settling in her heart. He really was adorable, she mused.
The unintended brush of her breast against his arm evoked memories and aroused responses that were best left shut away. “You could start by butting out of my private life.”
She raised her eyes to his. “Is this your baby?”
Why was she playing that same refrain over again? He’d already told her once that it wasn’t. That should have been enough. “Just for the time being.”
She should go, Mikky thought. Get in her car and drive home. There was a weekend waiting for her and friends she could be getting together with if she wanted. And a brother to meet by a movie theater.
But she remained where she was, held fast by a conscience that had never learned how to sleep.
Very gently she pulled the edge of his sweater out of Justin’s mouth. The baby seemed determined to eat whatever was handy. “You know anything about babies?”
“I know they don’t have to be in inane conversations if they don’t want to be.” He moved, murmuring something to the baby, turning so that his back was to her.
She moved right along with him. “Neither do grouchy, stubborn men.”
“If we, if I,” he corrected, “turn Justin over to the police, the mother, when she comes back,” he emphasized, unable to believe that any woman would willingly abandon a baby this way, “will be treated like a felon.”
“There’s a reason for that. Leaving your baby in a construction site is a felony. It’s called abandonment.”
He tried to think of the men who worked for him. The names and faces were still jumbled in his mind. He hadn’t made a real effort to keep them straight. Did Justin belong to one of them?
Who could have been desperate enough to turn his back on a baby?
“Sometimes things aren’t always cut-and-dried,” he said, more to the baby than to her. “Sometimes they’re confused.”
Soft brown eyes turned to look up at Mikky as Justin turned his head in her direction. She could feel herself being drawn in. Feel herself growing angry at a woman she didn’t know. “That doesn’t mean you jettison a baby out of your life like extra baggage,” she said, barely suppressing her anger.
“What makes you so hot under the collar about this? Justin wasn’t left on your doorstep.”
No, Mikky thought, he wasn’t. And Tony hadn’t had his mother walk out on him when he was a boy, leaving him to care for a squadron of brothers and sisters while nursing a broken heart. Her mother had left, no explanations, no excuses. She’d just taken a single suitcase of clothes and disappeared one day. And scarred an entire family with her departure.
Growing up fast hadn’t been an option for her, it had been a necessity. Her older brother had falsified his birth certificate and enlisted in the Marines at seventeen. Her older sister had run off to get married at eighteen. She’d been left to look after the five younger ones.
Mikky shrugged carelessly. “I just don’t like to see babies given a bad break, that’s all.”
There was something more to it, but Tony didn’t feel like delving into it. Unlike Mikky, he respected boundaries.
He shifted the baby in his arms, nuzzling his neck. The sweet scent of sweat and powder nudged other memories to the fore, galvanizing his resolve.
“That’s why I’m going to keep him with me.”
She laughed shortly, shaking her head. “Like I said, I don’t like seeing babies given a bad break.”
If she wasn’t going to leave, he was. He placed Justin back into the baby seat and began to redo the straps. They were worn and shredding in places. “I don’t know why I’m even talking to you about this.”
With a quiet sigh, Mikky moved him out of the way and proceeded to tighten the straps herself. “Because you need help, and you don’t know how to ask.”
The way she just came in and elbowed him out of the way galled him no end. Just what gave her the right to think she could take over like this? “If I needed help, I wouldn’t ask you for it.”
“I know.” Finished, she smiled at him. “Lucky for you I can read between the lines.”
What the hell was she talking about now? “Lady, there are no lines.”
“What do you feed a baby?”
The question, when he’d been expecting more barbs, caught him off guard. His mind went blank. “Stuff. Food. Milk.”
He was just picking things out of the air, Mikky thought. Left alone long enough, even monkeys eventually typed out the encyclopedia. “Would you like to go on to iron filings?” she asked sweetly. Mikky lowered her face next to the baby. “See, he doesn’t know the first thing about feeding you.”
Straightening, she made up her mind, knowing she was probably going to regret this. “All right, you’ve talked me into it.”
Like a man in a cartoon, Tony felt like looking behind him to see if there was someone else there. Someone else with whom she was carrying on a conversation. Because it certainly wasn’t him. “Talked you into what?”
She pushed the strap of her purse up on her shoulder. “Helping you.”
“When did I say that?”
The smile on her lips had to be upgraded just to be called patronizing, he thought darkly. “You didn’t have to, the look on your face says it all.”
“If it did, we wouldn’t be having this conversation—Not that it’s much of a conversation, more like a monologue, and I just seem to be feeding you your cues.”
It was getting late. If she worked this right, there still might be time to take in the last show with Johnny. She knew her brother wasn’t going to be happy about that, but it couldn’t be helped. “Let’s get going before I change my mind.”
Did she think that was a threat? Tony wondered. Okay, maybe he wasn’t up on baby care, but how hard could it really be? “Oh, like it doesn’t rotate 365 times every minute.”
Stopped at the door, she raised her eyes to his. “If you’re going to insult me—”
He had to stop short to keep from walking into her. At this proximity, looking down into her eyes, he found that they were an extremely dark shade of blue. It seemed as if nothing about her was in half measures. “Yes?”
Mikky thought of telling him off, of saying something curt in response, but where would that lead? Better that one of them kept their sense of humor, and since she seemed to be the only one who had one, it was up to her.
“Never mind, let’s just go.” Holding the door open, she waited until he stepped through with Justin. “There’s a supermarket not too far from here. We should be able to get what we need there. At least for tonight. I’ll lead, you follow.”
He