Millionaire M.D. (5 page)

“Yeah, so you said this morning. So, then what?”

“Then, normally, she'd be turned over to Social Services,
and they'd find a foster-care arrangement for her.” Winona's arms tightened around the pillow. “The court will get more directly involved as soon as something more definitive is established about the parents. And that's my job. Finding the parents. Especially the mom. I have to find out what their story is, and why the baby was abandoned.”

“And how do you go about doing that?”

It seemed odd that she'd never told Justin any details about her job before, but then, there'd never been a reason for this kind of thing to come up in conversation. “There are lots of ways for me to pick up clues. Now that I have the baby's age pinned down—at least ballpark—I can start checking hospital records, see if I can get a lead into young women having babies at that time. Then I can check the papers, same reason. Check the 9ll calls, emergencies, abuse, deaths, anything called in around the time the child was abandoned, to see if there could be any obvious connection.”

“Uh-huh. What else?”

“Then…well, after that, I zoom straight for my at-risk kids. You know how it is in Royal. This is a wealthy community, so on the surface it'd seem we wouldn't have that many kids in trouble. But I keep finding that the very rich and very poor have a lot in common. In both types of families, there are kids raising themselves. Alone a lot of hours. Parents moving near an edge with drugs or alcohol. Divorces, absentee adults. Any way you cut it, it's the lonely kids who tend to sleep around—and look for trouble. So one of the things I always do is run a computer check for runaways.”

“And—?”

“And then I'll check the truancy lists. The arrest lists. Then I'll call the high schools and junior highs for girls with a high absentee record. Talk to the counselors about girls who were pregnant. I started some things in motion this afternoon, but it'd be pretty unusual to land answers overnight. It almost always takes some time.”

“Okay, Win…but what if you don't manage to locate the mother after going through all that?”

She frowned, suddenly aware that she was clenching and unclenching her hands—and that Justin was watching her. “That's not an issue. It's early days yet. Believe me, I'll find the mother. I've done it before.”

“But what if you don't?” Justin righted the baby walker again, and this time, it seemed to push along without lurching like a drunken sailor. He set it aside, heaved to his feet and shook his legs as if to shake out the kinks—but his eyes never left her face.

“Well, then, there are other possibilities. A girl in trouble is the most logical choice for the mother. And frankly, I'm about as qualified as anyone in this county to find that kind of girl.” For some blasted reason, her fingers were trying to clench into fists again. She folded her arms across her chest, aggravated that she couldn't seem to control the nervous movements. It wasn't like her.

“I know you are, Win.” Justin's voice was low, caring. “You know what it's like for a kid to be abandoned. I was never surprised when you aimed to work with juveniles when you decided to be a cop. But you can't possibly find the parents every time there's a problem with a child.”

“Well, no, of course not. And as far as Angel…possibly her mother is a married mother with an abusive husband—or that kind of story—which means that she isn't likely to show up on any record. In fact, someone like that can be almost impossible to trace. And another possibility…”

“What?”

“…another possibility is the kind of girl who's kept a pregnancy hidden for nine months. It seems impossible, but we all know that it happens—you've heard those stories surface on the news every once in a while. This one, though, had to do more than just hide the pregnancy, because the baby's already a couple months old. But the problem is the same. There has to be a record of something for us to be
able to trace it. And if someone is absolutely determined to keep a pregnancy secret—and has some enablers somehow, someway—we really may never know who the mother is.”

“Okay. So we've covered most of the possible scenarios, good and bad. But in the meantime, what's supposed to happen to our miniature princess here, while you're going through all those record searches and waiting?”

Instinctively her hand shot to her stomach, as if to quell the sudden churning going on in her tummy. Normally she could eat red-hot chili, follow it up with an O.D.-size hot fudge sundae, and never have a digestive problem. But all day, she'd been thinking about what “was supposed to” happen to Angel next…and making herself sick every time she let those fears surface. “Well, the court usually places her in foster care, through Social Services. Like I already told you.”

“I know what you told me, Win,” Justin said gently. “That's why I'm asking you for the details. So I can understand the situation better.”

Again she pressed hard on her stomach, then met his eyes. “Potentially, down the road, she's adoptable. She's a young baby, healthy, and though it's not fair, her being blond and blue-eyed makes her extra desirable in the adoption market. But for that to happen, we have to find the parents—and find that they deliberately abandoned her, really don't want her and will legally sign off. Or we could find that the parents are dead. But otherwise…”

“Yeah. It's that ‘otherwise' that happened to you, wasn't it?” Justin had been standing, but now he plunked down on the couch next to her. His gaze prowled her face with the quiet, determined intent of a hunter. “You were in the foster-care system from the time you were six, right? But there was something about how you couldn't be adopted. I remember the families and neighbors talking when the Gerards brought you home. I just don't remember the details.”

“There weren't a lot of details. It was pretty cut-and-dried.” She glared at him, not in anger, but in self-defense.
At twenty-eight years old, it was about damn time she quit letting this past-history crap bother her. “I wasn't adoptable because my mother was alive and could have come back for me at any time. So I was basically stuck in the foster-care system until I was eighteen.”

“You never mentioned your mom before. Or anything about what you remember from when you were real little.”

She shrugged, but she could feel an old, aching sense of haunting from the inside out. “My parents' story was older than time. They were two young kids, hot in love—too hot to keep a lid on their hormones. When my mom got pregnant, they both dropped out of school. Two sixteen-year-old idiots with no money and no job skills—undoubtedly thinking they could live on sex and love. The fun part didn't last long. My dad died, some kind of car accident. I have no memory of him at all. But I was with my mom until I was six.”

“And that's when she took off.”

She shifted restlessly, not meaning to move closer to Justin. She just never liked talking about feelings or the past. “I keep thinking one of these days I could find her. I still run a search every once in a while. But the point is, back then, she couldn't handle me. I certainly didn't realize it then—but I do now. She was in trouble in every way a woman can be in trouble. Alone, broke, a small child to take care of, thinking a little drug here and a little alcohol there would take the edge off the worry, no skills, getting more desperate with every loser she took up with.”

Justin fell silent for a moment. “Win…why didn't you ever mention any of this before?”

“Because there's nothing to say. I work with girls like her every day—girls in trouble because they've gotten over their heads, made one mistake and watched the rest of their lives fall down like a stack of dominos. The only thing my mom ever really did wrong was fall in love—or should I say, fall in lust—too young. Cripes, Justin, you know all this—”

He shook his head. “No, actually, I didn't. I remember
my mom talking to my dad. I knew you'd been abandoned when you were a kid. And that your mom had left you with a note, that she'd be back for you as soon as she wasn't so broke, something like that. And I remember the Gerards being furious—”

That made her blink. “The Gerards were furious? About what?”

He lifted a hand. “I was seventeen, Win. I wasn't listening that much to neighborhood stories. But there was some story about when Sissy Gerard first saw you…I don't know what foster family you were with, but it was at a county fair, something like that. Something about the way the family treated you that infuriated her. She came home, told Paget that he was hiring a lawyer and they were getting you away from those people and bringing you home—and that it was going to be your last home until you were grown.”

“I didn't know that. I didn't remember any of it, either,” Winona admitted. “I just remember the Gerards. Sissy and Paget's faces in this sterile Social Services office. She just wrapped her arms around me as if she'd known me forever. God. They are such good people.”

“Yeah, they are.” Justin scratched his chin, his eyes suddenly lightening up. “And you were a pistol and a half back then. Clawed anybody who was nice to you. Spit at all the boys. Fought on the playground—”

She had to grin. “Hey, you dog, whose side are you on?”

“Yours. Always yours.” His tone turned so quiet that she had to quit chuckling and suddenly looked at him. Really looked. But he was already talking again. “So this baby is going into foster care? In fact, pretty immediately?”

“No.” The single syllable was out before she could stop it. “What's this No? Isn't that what you pretty much told me happens to an abandoned child?”

“The baby has to go somewhere—a place that's honored by Social Services and the court—until something is deter
mined about her parents. Whether they're around and fit, or whatever. And that place is usually foster care. But if the foster-care system is crowded—and right now it's disastrously crowded—then someone else can be assigned temporary guardianship, if they fit the criteria.”

“Win.”

“What?”

His voice wasn't a whisper, but melted butter couldn't have been softer. “You don't want to give her up, do you?”

“I don't want her going in foster care. Lost in the foster-care system, like I was.” Her own voice came out fierce and sharp. She couldn't seem to help it. “I fell for her the minute I laid eyes on her. I admit it. And I admit that's stupid. A good cop never gets emotionally involved. But whoever left her on my doorstep, Justin, must have known me somehow. It's hard to pretend that doesn't matter. It does, to me. I just want to know that if she goes back to her parents, they're in a position to take good care of her. And until then…”

“You want to keep her.”

“I don't want her in foster care,” she repeated. A thousand memories were in her head. She didn't have the words for any of them. She only knew that they added up to one thing. She didn't want—she refused to think about—this baby living the childhood she had, flip-flopped between homes and people who neither wanted her nor had room or time for her. But damnation. Somehow, totally unlike her, she could suddenly feel so much emotion welling that her eyes were actually stinging. It was ridiculous. She never lost control like that—not with Justin, never with Justin.

Obviously she had to find an immediate way to lighten things up. She forced a grin—her infamous snappy grin—and cocked an eyebrow at him. Considering all the times he'd joked about marrying her, this should be a guaranteed way to get a laugh out of him. “Normally, the court wouldn't consider a single working woman to be a good bet for that temporary guardianship business. You wouldn't like to marry me, would you? It would really up my chances.”

J
ustin felt his heart stop, then start galloping at breakneck pace.

Winona wasn't
really
asking to marry him. He realized that. Completely. Marriage had become a ritual tease subject between them, because he'd asked her to marry him so many times. She'd always assumed he was joking, so it was perfectly natural that she would joke back with him the same way.

There were just a few tiny differences in these circumstances, though.

He'd always meant those offers.

And the sudden advent of the baby in Winona's life was obviously deeply affecting her. She'd never admitted that she needed help with anything—and for damn sure, she'd never given him the opportunity to come through for her in any way. Justin didn't quite comprehend all the emotional ramifications for her with this baby, but he was dead positive of
one thing. He'd been waiting for a chance—any chance—with her for years now. And he wasn't about to let it go.

“Okay, let's do it,” he said lightly.

For the first time all evening, the haunted tension left her eyes and she laughed. Really laughed. “Sure. Nothing to it, right? Just get a license and hit the Justice of the Peace. Just what you were dying to do this week.”

“Actually, it sounds like a lot of fun to me.” He leaned back, as if he could find nothing more important to do than stretch out his long legs.

She was still laughing. “I can just see the headlines in the social column on Sunday. Royal's Most Eligible Bachelor Finally Cuffed By A Cop. And I'm sure there'd be some comments about the bride having to give up her six-year-old Jeep and suffer driving your Porsche—not to mention having to face up to all the trials of suddenly being filthy rich—”

“Shut up, Win. I know you were joking, but why don't you think about it? You sounded really serious to me about wanting to keep this baby.”

“I was. I am…but holy mackerel, Justin, I never meant it about getting married. It was just a joke. It wouldn't even solve anything, because Angel's mother could show up at any time. Today, even. Or tomorrow—”

“And maybe she won't ever show. But even if she knocks on your door in a matter of hours, the courts wouldn't just let her have the baby back. Isn't that what you were just explaining? That it's not automatic that the mother would get Angel back—not after abandoning her the way she did.” It wasn't hard for Justin to fill in the blanks when Win's fears were right in her eyes giving him easy clues what to say. “So no matter what, Angel is going to be ‘housed' somewhere for a while—and that could be a long while. Long enough to make a difference in her life, if she's in a good situation. Or a bad one.”

“I know, I know. That's exactly what's driving me crazy.” She scraped a hand through her hair, making the
curls spring up in tufts. She faced him, her eyes so fierce. Soft-fierce. “I can't stand worrying that she'd be put in a bad place for her. All I really want is to be able to take care of her until we know for sure what's what in her life. I
know
that I'll love her. And that almost anything's better than being thrown into the limbo of foster care. The overcrowding. The never knowing how long you can stay in one place or another. I can't stand it. I know that's irrational and emotional and stupid, but I've
been
there, Justin. And I hate it that that could happen to Angel, to this baby. I know it's nuts, I—”

“Win, I don't really give a damn if it's nuts or not. If I understood what you told me earlier, they'd consider you for temporary guardian, if you were married. Is that true or not true?”

“True. Actually, it's true that they would consider me anyway—but I'd almost certainly get turned down right now. I don't know of any circumstances where a single woman's been allowed to foster. Not here. It's always a two-parent family—”

“So let's get married.”

She tried to answer and ended up sputtering on another bubble of laughter. She laughed harder. Then quit. Then hiccuped.

He'd never seen Winona undone before. Had no idea she could be—at least by him.

When he lifted a hand, he knew he intended to kiss her. When his fingers touched her cheek, pushed back, so gently, into her hair, cupping her head toward him…he knew what he was doing then, too. Sort of. He sure as hell knew how to kiss a woman.

But he'd never kissed Winona before. Any kind of kiss. Any way. Possibly because he'd known that even one small kiss was never going to be simple. Not with her. Not for him.

She wasn't expecting the kiss, because her forehead puckered in a frown and her eyes widened in surprise and confusion when he kept coming closer. But when his fingers
laced in her hair, she didn't move. When his mouth honed in on hers, she didn't pull away. She went as still as a statue.

But nothing about Win resembled a cold statue. She tasted fragile. Soft. Warm. Alluring.

She made a small sound when his mouth touched hers, tasted, came back for more. Win rarely wore perfumes, yet he suddenly felt surrounded by her scents. Her tongue still carried the echo of the vanilla cappuccino he'd made her. Her hair was a tumble of springy, unruly curls, threaded with that hint of strawberry shampoo she used. And she was always slathering cream on her face and hands because her skin was so dry, and that was the other scent. Almonds. Vanilla. Strawberry. All edible stuff.

Like her.

She made another sound, and her fingers suddenly clutched his arm, as if to push him away. Only she didn't push him away, and beneath his mouth, her lips were suddenly moving, trembling like a whisper, her eyelashes swooshing down as if the light in the room were suddenly too bright. The TV flashed on a news interruption, which technically they'd both been rabidly interested in earlier. Now, he didn't look up, and neither did she.

Those first exploring kisses turned deeper, silkier, sexier. The fingers clutching his arm suddenly wound, tight and hard, around his neck. Tongues tangled, tangoed. He kissed and kept on kissing, but now he could feel her skin heating, feel her body yielding, bowing to his on an angry groan of a sigh. He heard the anger in that groan, and a thousand years from now—when he had time—he'd want to smile. Win had had no idea she'd feel desire with him.

Neither had he. He'd been pretty sure, for years now, that his panting after her had all been one-sided. Yeah, there was a kind of love. The way you could love a brother at the same time you smacked him upside the head. The way you loved an old friend who knew your childhood secrets. It was good love. All love was good love. But it wasn't man-woman love.

It wasn't heat like a volcano, and a hurricane rush, and wanting that could claw you from the inside out, if you let it.

He wanted to let it. He wanted to peel that big sweatshirt off her and bow her back into the couch cushions, into the shadows, and dunk her in sensuality so deep, so hot, that neither of them could get up until it was over. He wanted to see her naked. To touch her naked. To have her naked.

But there was a sleeping baby only three feet away. And these few potent kisses were suddenly raising questions that Justin never thought he'd get the chance to ask. Fire or no fire, need or no need, he was afraid of losing the answers he wanted if he moved too fast.

So he eased up on that last kiss. Tried to remember how to breathe normally. Smoothed his hand back up above her neck. Pressed his forehead to her forehead, eyes closed, loving how she was huffing like a freight train, too.

And that helped him relax. And smile. “Hey, Win…I'm richer than Croesus. You did know that, didn't you?”

Her eyes were still more liquid than a lake, but she gave him a short frown, expressing confusion. “Am I supposed to care about that?”

“Yeah. Because it matters. It matters because I can put a marriage together faster than most people. And get those temporary guardian papers going through the legal system. You want this baby? We can make it happen.”

“Justin…” She swallowed, hard, when he lurched to his feet.

He'd already heard the baby stir. He pushed into shoes, glanced around for his jacket, but then he met her eyes again. Those soft, liquid-as-a-lake-blue eyes. Liquid for him. For the first time in all these years, liquid for him. “I don't know about you and me. But we've known each other forever, Winona. And again, I've got the money, the resources to put this together fast. The resources to make it easy for both of
us—to get in, to get out, to do whatever we both want to do. There's no woman in my wings. Is there a man in yours?”

She blinked. “No.”

“Come on. I need you to be frank with me. There has to be some guy—”

“No.”

Well, hell. He couldn't hold back a grin. He ruffled her curls, grabbed his jacket and let himself out. And yeah, he'd left the proposal hanging between them. But there was no way Winona Raye would ever—in this life—give him a yes on the spur of the wild moment like that.

By his leaving right then, he'd given her no chance to say no.

That wasn't just progress. As far as Justin was concerned, it was damn close to manna from heaven.

 

Snuggling the baby more securely on her shoulder, Winona paced the house from window to window. Justin's satin-black Porsche had disappeared from her driveway an hour ago, but she kept looking out anyway. Maybe his visit had been a mirage. Or maybe he'd put a drug in her coffee—because something had dropped her off in Oz for a few hours, for darn sure.

Angel let out a sleepy burp, making Winona smile. Still, she kept on pacing and patting, pacing and patting. Really, her brief sojourn into Oz was downright funny. She'd actually imagined Justin seriously asking her to marry him. Not joking this time. But low-down serious.

Boy, was that funny.

So funny that even after the baby fell asleep big time—for the night, she hoped—Winona still couldn't think, couldn't breathe, couldn't sleep. She was as tired as a worn-out hound, yet still pacing the floors in the dark.

He'd asked if there was a man in her life. And simply couldn't seem to credit her avowal that there wasn't.

At midnight, she prowled to the refrigerator for some
milk—poured out a half a cup, all she had in the house—and carted it back to her bedroom. She climbed in between the cobalt-blue sheets and mounded the pillows behind her head, sipping, staring out the windows at a lover's moon and a sky full of stars.

There'd been men. But not in a while. Once she'd realized that she'd been the one screwing up the relationships, she'd backed off from trying. She wasn't any good at getting close—not in the sack or out of it. Sex wasn't the only problem, but it was a nuisance of a big one. She had no objections to intimacy, getting naked, big inhibitions, nothing like that.

She'd just figured, a long time back, that her sweat with intimacy was about abandonment. Being abandoned once in a lifetime was enough. If you had your soul ripped out once, most sane people didn't volunteer for a repeat experience. But when that translated into a relationship…well. She could lie there beneath a guy. Smile. Make the right movements. Make the right groans.

In fact, she had.

Frankly, she thought she was pretty good—if not downright outstanding—at faking it. But there didn't seem much point. She wasn't that unhappy alone. She liked her job, her life. She had friends, respect in the community. She
liked
feeling contained. Safe. So maybe she had a hard time trusting others at a gut level. So what?

But she hadn't liked that kiss from Justin. Her lips still felt bee-stung, her nerves sharp-stung even more. She didn't let go like that. Ever. She never went loopy, dizzy, spinning high with any man—and certainly not for a few ridiculous idiot kisses.

What the Sam Hill did Justin think he was
doing?
Kissing her? Offering to marry her?

Something was wrong with him, she concluded. Bad wrong. Seriously wrong. The idea soothed her. She set down the empty milk cup and curled up under the covers, immediately starting to relax. She simply should have thought this
through earlier. If Justin was acting bananas, there had to be a reason for it. Whatever it was, she'd talk to him. Help him. Like the friends they were.

And she'd reassure him, of course, that she realized he'd never meant that offer of marriage.

 

Two mornings later, as Justin drove to the site of the Asterland plane crash landing, his mind was on Winona, not business. Weddings, not plane crashes. Love, not problems. But the closer he got to the scene of the accident, the faster his mood turned grave.

As of hours after the crash landing, the sheriff had set up a roadblock, both to protect the evidence and to discourage strangers and gawkers. The cop immediately recognized Justin's black Porsche, though, and waved him on.

The road ran out within yards, and turned into a desertlike hard pan surface. After spring rains, possibly the land was more forgiving, even decent grazing ground, but right now it definitely wasn't the most hospitable spot in Texas. Most vehicles could undoubtedly traverse the hard surface, but with his baby, Justin had to slow to a crawl. Finally, the plane loomed in sight. And when Justin finally stopped the car and climbed out, a witch-bitter wind bit his cheeks and stung his eyes.

“Justin!”

He'd already recognized the other two members of the Texas Cattleman's Club—and their practical, sturdier vehicles—but for a second, the look of the private jet had stunned him into staring. At the sound of his name, though, he promptly pivoted and hiked toward his friends. Typically, Dakota Lewis didn't seem to notice that the January morning was mean-freezing; his jacket was gaping open. At least Matthew Walker had a red nose and cheeks like his own.

“I'm sorry to be late,” he grumped. “I started out early enough, but the Porsche does what the Porsche wants to do.
One of these days, I'm going to turn into a grown-up and get a serious car.”