Baby in His Arms. Linda Goodnight

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      She did her best to ignore him while she read part of the note out loud. “Please find the perfect family for my baby. Don’t look for me. I won’t take her back. I can’t. I prayed at Whisper Falls, and this was the answer. Tell her I’m sorry and I love her.”

      “The mother sounds very young and frightened,” the social worker said. “I hope she’s all right.”

      Creed’s feet shifted against the tile, a tense, masculine presence Haley found unsettling. She was here now. He could go.

      “Will you look for her?” he asked in a voice Haley could only describe as dark, rich chocolate.

      “Have to,” the chief said with a sniff. “She broke the law.”

      After reading the note, Haley wanted to protest. The girl, whoever she was, wasn’t a criminal. Nor was she anything like Haley’s mother. The girl sounded hopeless and alone, two emotions Haley understood very well. She’d broken the law a few times herself when she’d been young and stupid and under the spell of her crazy mother.

      Before she could say anything, though, Dr. Ron and Wilma, the doc’s bun-haired assistant, appeared from the back carrying an infant. Wilma held a bottle of formula against the tiny face. Every adult in the waiting room turned in their direction. Creed Carter’s expression, Haley noticed with interest, went from cocky to concerned...and bewildered.

      “She appears healthy and full-term,” Dr. Ron said.

      The only doctor in Whisper Falls, the forty-something physician handled anything that came his way from delivering babies to setting bones. Issues outside his abilities he sent to Fayetteville or Little Rock. Haley liked the youthful-looking doctor with his freckles and cowlick and affable bedside manner. She’d committed more than one foster child to his efficient care.

      “Does she need to go to the hospital?” Haley asked.

      Creed stepped up beside Haley, bringing with him the scent of woodsy aftershave and pressed cotton. She tried not to notice but she liked scents. She liked them a lot.

      “I can fly her there.”

      Haley shivered at the thought. No way was she going up in his death machine with a baby. Or with anyone else for that matter.

      “Thanks, Creed,” Dr. Ron said, “but no need at this point. Right now, the baby looks good. Not very big, but at six pounds two ounces and eighteen inches long, she’s big enough. Formula and diapers and a lot of love should fix her right up. If anything medical presents, Haley will let me know. Right, Haley?”

      “Absolutely.” She reached for the baby. Too late, she saw the grass stain on her fingers.

      “You’re not taking her, are you?” Creed’s voice was incredulous.

      Haley bristled. As Wilma transferred the baby to Haley’s arms, she said, perhaps a bit stiffly, “The social worker called me. I am a certified foster parent. Taking care of displaced children is what I do.”

      So she sounded defensive and more than a little testy. The man’s attitude ticked her off.

      His doubting gaze drifted from her frizzy hair to her stained hands and down to the chipped polish on her toenails. A flare of nostrils indicated he’d seen the dirt on her feet, too. “You do?”

      With those two words, he made her feel about an inch tall. The jerk.

      “I was working in my garden,” she said hotly and then wondered why she felt the need to defend herself to him. A helicopter pilot. Ugh.

      “Haley is an excellent foster parent.” Melissa’s gracious comment mollified her some, though not completely, after Creed had insinuated the opposite.

      Creed still didn’t seem convinced. “You’ll take good care of her, won’t you? She’s really small.”

      The man was hovering. She wanted to dislike him. She wanted to tell him to get lost, but he had found the child. Maybe he actually cared.

      She softened a bit. That was it. Perhaps he wasn’t criticizing her. He was genuinely interested in the baby’s welfare.

      “She’ll be fine.” Haley jiggled the infant for effect, noticing how avidly the little girl sucked at the bottle.

      “Right. Okay.” Creed stepped back, but his gaze remained on the nursing child who was now dressed in an oversize yellow drawstring gown.

      Haley was forever amazed at the supplies Wilma stocked in that small clinic. “I can assure you, she will be well-cared for until the authorities decide what to do with her.”

      Creed’s lips twisted beneath flared nostrils. He gave her a searing, squint-eyed look she couldn’t begin to comprehend. Then to the chief, he said, “You’ll keep me posted.”

      “Will do. Thanks, Creed.”

      With one last troubled glance at the infant in Haley’s arms, Creed Carter strode out of the clinic.

      He had insulted her, but Haley had the inexplicable feeling that she’d somehow offended the handsome flyboy.

      Chapter Two

      Creed had no idea what he was doing. None whatsoever. If the guys could see him now, they’d bust a gut laughing and he would never live it down.

      With a grunt, he wrestled the giant pink teddy bear from the backseat of his black Jeep and picked his way along a series of odd-shaped stepping stones through a mass of flowers and plants that led to Haley Blanchard’s house. She had plants everywhere, most of which he didn’t recognize. Plants in pots. Plants in half barrels. Plants shooting up around the pavers to brush at his cargo pants. They all seemed to be blooming, the array of scents so vast, he smelled them all and recognized nothing but the pungent odor of dill pickles.

      If the plants weren’t enough to affirm his first impression of Haley, the porch did the trick. She was a tad on the flakey side. Out there. A throwback flower child. A wood nymph who’d lost her way.

      The front porch was cluttered with an array of stuff. A pair of wicker chairs bracketed the front door; a bright blue front door with a wooden purple-and-yellow fish hanging smack in the middle. Running the width of the white framed house, the porch was crowded with a painted milk can, a wrought-iron cart loaded with more plants, various yard ornaments and, to top it all off, there were plaques and signs and an old Coca-Cola thermometer nailed to the siding. In fact, there were so many items jammed in the small space that his eyes couldn’t take them all in.

      Yes, sir, Haley was a flake.

      He asked himself again: What was he doing here?

      Rather than answer his own question, Creed sought a doorbell, and finding none, rapped at the side of the house with his knuckles.

      No answer.

      He knocked again, this time with the outside of his fist.

      The sun was warm, hanging over the edge of the mountain like a giant egg yolk in a bowl of faded blue jelly. A bird of some sort scolded from the huge chinquapin oak in the front yard.

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