wasn’t here to fight, she was here to do a job, to see her project through to its completion. This was the first big contract she’d won on her own. Name calling wasn’t going to help her along toward her goal.
Even if it did feel good.
Arriving at her car, she unlocked the door and tossed her purse in on the passenger side before sliding in herself. Much as she hated the thought, what she did need to do was apologize to the big ape and do her best to seem congenial and sincere about it.
She started her car as she rolled the thought over in her mind.
Maybe if she got him to relax, she could handle him.
Yeah, right. Fat chance of that happening. The man could only be handled by an experienced lion tamer with a tranquilizer gun. Sighing, she began the slow, bumpy drive through the site, heading for the street in the distance.
Still, she didn’t want to take a chance on coming away with a bad reputation. All she wanted to do was get her damn design up—as close to its original conception as possible.
It wasn’t that she was being stubborn. She wasn’t so stubborn that she couldn’t be shown the error of her thinking—if there was an error—but it had to be done in a civilized fashion. She refused to be barked at.
Belatedly, she turned on her lights. Bright yellow beams cut through the encroaching dusk. Her father had always barked at her, she remembered. His grousing had made her reexamine her every move. Years later she’d discovered that, despite his outwardly gruff manner, her father had been that way with her to make her strong. In his own fashion he’d tried to prepare her for the world. Walter Rozanski firmly believed that life was there to bring a person to his knees, and he wanted none of his children to be forced into that position. Riding them was the only way he knew how to make them fit enough to meet the hardships along the way.
Maybe Marino reminded her of her father, Mikky thought with a sudden shiver. Or maybe he just reminded her of a bad-tempered bear. In any event it was up to her to get along with the man. Once this job was completed, if the fates were kind, she would never have to interact with Tony Marino again.
Mikky paused, hesitating just before she drove off the lot. She looked toward Marino’s trailer. The light was still on. Except for his car, and the guard’s beat-up truck, the lot was empty. Everyone else had gone home for the weekend. There would be no one to come in and interrupt her if she apologized to him.
Vacillating for a few moments, Mikky took a deep, cleansing breath and blew it out, then made her decision. Okay, it was now or never, before she thought better of this madness and changed her mind.
The things a person had to do for the sake of peace, she thought grudgingly. She wasn’t naive enough to think that any sort of real harmony could come out of this, but it would be nice if the sniping would stop.
Mikky guided her car along the uneven, freshly graded dirt toward the trailer. Reaching it, she pulled up the hand brake, put the car into Park and turned the engine off.
Nothing rankled her more than apologizing when she didn’t feel as if she was in the wrong. But she wasn’t selling out, she told herself as she got out. She was doing this so she could get on with the work. So her name could be associated with this brand-new high school, and hopefully with a lot of other new projects and developments as yet unplanned.
It wasn’t selling out, it was having good business sense.
The silent pep talk didn’t help. Walking up the three steps to his trailer, she knocked on the door. There was no immediate answer, and she almost left before forcing herself to knock again.
This time she thought she heard a cat mewling inside the trailer. Odd, she didn’t remember seeing a cat, and she was certain someone would have mentioned it to her if Marino kept a cat on the premises.
Actually, now that she listened, she thought the noise sounded more like—
“A baby.”
The incredulous words tumbled from her lips as Tony opened the door. In the crook of one arm, held awkwardly against his chest, was a baby. She judged it to be approximately nine months old. It was wrapped up in a faded, tom, blue blanket.
Stunned, Mikky raised her eyes to his. “What are you doing with a baby?”
Great, Tony thought, this was all he needed to add to the confusion he was already wading through. He leaned out again to see if there was someone lurking in the shadows, ready to capitalize on this practical joke they were playing. But the lot was as empty now as it had been five long minutes ago.
The sinking sensation that this was no joke was beginning to penetrate.
“Holding it.” Tony ground out the words.
“Besides that?” Mikky asked, shouldering her way past him into the trailer. As she moved by him, she took the baby into her own arms.
Though a protest initially leaped to his lips, Tony surrendered his burden willingly. One glance at Mikky forced him to admit that she had a far better feel for holding a child that size than he did. It had been a long time since he’d held a baby in his arms. The bittersweet memories holding it evoked was just about doing him in.
He didn’t need this on top of everything else.
Mikky knew for a fact that Marino had no other children. What was he doing with this baby? Turning to look at him, she saw that there was no explanation forthcoming. It figured.
“Well?” Opening her jacket, she cradled the baby against her, enjoying the warm feel of its small, rounded body. Maternal feelings that had long been sublimated leaped up within her. She wanted children. A whole house full of them. Unable to resist, she kissed the small head. “Where did it come from?”
His wide shoulders rose and fell. “I found it on the doorstep.”
Why did every scrap of information she got from him first have to be preceded by a tug-of-war? “No, I mean really.”
“Really,” he insisted. Tony gestured toward a beaten-up baby seat. “The baby was in that.”
Cooing soothing noises at the small invader, Mikky turned to look at the baby seat. It looked as if it had been in service a very long time. The baby was making sucking sounds against her shoulder that she recognized as hunger in the making. It was going to need baby food and milk and soon.
With one hand holding the child in place, she picked up the blanket from the baby seat and shook it. A creased envelope fell out.
Unable to open it herself, Mikky held the envelope out to Tony. She couldn’t help wondering if her initial sympathy for him was misguided. Maybe there was more to this man than she’d thought. Maybe this was his baby....
“Want to read it?”
Tony took the envelope from her before the tone of her voice registered. He looked at her sharply. “Why? You think it’s mine?”
“Is it?”
His laugh was short and completely devoid of humor. “Only in a parallel universe.”
He hadn’t looked at another woman since he’d met Teri, much less engaged in a liaison with one. And there had been no one since his wife’s death. He was completely dead inside.
Annoyed at her, he tore open the envelope, taking off a corner of the note with it. Ignoring Mikky, he shook the note out and quickly read it. There wasn’t much to read.
Curious, unable to see anything in his expression, Mikky stood on her toes to look around his arm at the note herself.
“Please take care of Justin. I know you can,” she read out loud. No help there. She looked at Tony. “Not much to go on, is it?”
Instead of answering right away, Tony dropped the note on his desk, letting it land on the blueprint, which, she noticed, looked far more crumpled now than when she’d left a few minutes earlier. That it was apparently smoothed out again indicated he’d obviously had a