Baby Of Convenience. Diana Whitney

my company?” Frowning, he shook his head. “Staffing matters are handled by the personnel department. I don’t bother myself with those details.”

      Hope crashed, dragging the walls of her stomach down with it. “I misunderstood. I thought you had a position available.”

      “I do. Are you interested?”

      Now she was thoroughly confused, and more than a little suspicious. “That depends. Exactly what does this job require, and what do you expect of my job performance?”

      “The job requires you to marry me. The duties would be—” he looked her straight in the eye with only the trace of a smile “—wifely.”

      “What a pig.” Tucking a hank of stick-straight brown hair behind her ear, Wendy kicked a rock beside the park bench. “Honestly, Laura, I can’t figure out why you are such a magnet for egomaniacal lunatics with swollen checkbooks and heads to match. It must be that Cinderella complex of yours. You keep looking for your prince.”

      “I do not.”

      “Sure you do.” A screech from the playground across the lush grounds caught Wendy’s attention. “Danny, quit hogging the slide!”

      The youngest Wyatt, a mischievous six-year-old whose greatest joy in life was tormenting his older brother, grinned amiably, then slid down the slick curving loop, freeing it for use by his frustrated sibling, along with the impatient line of youngsters queued behind him.

      At the same moment, Jamie tugged on Laura’s hand. “Me wanna swing.” Grunting madly, he pointed to the apparatus in question, as if unsure his doddering mother could recall what a swing looked like. His tiny forehead furrowed with such intensity that Laura couldn’t help but smile.

      “Okay, sweetums, but all the swings are full now. You’ll have to wait your turn.”

      Jamie pushed out his lower lip, appeared to be considering the wisdom of a full-size tantrum when something even more exciting than the playground swing set caught his eye. “Mewwy-go-round! Wanna go on the mewwy-go-round, Mama!”

      The equipment to which he referred was not a colorful, musical carousel on which delighted youngsters straddled brilliantly carved animals. Rather, it was a flat steel pancake on which grinning children sat while indulgent parents used the tubular handholds to spin their offspring into a state of gill-green nausea. “Are you sure you wouldn’t rather wait for a swing? I’m sure one will be available soon.”

      “Mewwy-go-round,” the toddler chortled, clinging to her with both of his chubby hands and heaving himself backward until his small body was perpendicular to the ground.