Be My Baby Tonight (41 page)

Jack Trehan pulled a face. “It isn’t as empty
as it was about an hour ago,” he said, then shook his head. Then he
looked at Keely, looked at her closely. “You really want this
job?”

Keely lifted her eyes heavenward for a
moment, then swallowed down hard. “Yes, Mr. Trehan. I
really
do want this job.”

He looked at her for long moments. “What do
you know about babies?”

Babies? Keely nearly swallowed her tongue.
She’d been asked a lot of questions by clients. Her background,
where she’d gotten her degree, names of other clients who could be
used as references... even if she was opposed to decorating around
small video cameras hidden in one stockbroker’s bedroom. She’d
declined that job, then kicked herself for her ethics, considering
she’d been two months behind in her rent at the time.

But never, never, had she been asked what she
knew about babies.

“Babies?” she repeated after a moment. “What
do I
know
about them?”

“Yes, Ms. McBride,” Jack said, looking back
over his shoulder, toward the open doorway. “Babies. What do you
know about them?”

Keely wet her lips. “Well... they come in two
sexes, pink and blue...”

“Okay, forget it,” Jack told her, waving her
off. “It was a bad idea anyway. Come back in a month, Ms. McBride,
maybe two. Maybe never.”

“Wait!”

Obviously Jack Trehan hadn’t had obedience
drummed into him by the Boy Scouts or anyone else in authority,
because he didn’t wait. He just kept going, heading back inside the
house.

Keely caught the door just before it closed
and barreled inside with him. “Why do you want to know if I know
anything about babies? If I said I did, would it make some
difference somehow?”

She stopped talking as Jack turned around and
grabbed her by her upper arms, holding her in place. She wanted to
look around, had caught a glimpse of a vast emptiness, but she had
a feeling now was not the time to start waxing poetic over chintz
and valances. “You’re hurting me,” she said instead.

Jack dropped his hands. “Sorry. I just didn’t
want you to... well, never mind. We can talk here.”

“Here being the foyer,” Keely said, looking
up at the chandelier. “Nice light. Pity you can’t sit on it. Where
do
you sit, Mr. Trehan?”

“The answer to that ought to be obvious, Ms.
McBride,” Jack said, a crooked smile making him look suddenly
boyish and not half so scary. “Now answer my question, please. What
do you know about babies?”

Keely got the sudden impression that her
answer would determine whether she’d be furnishing this house (and
making megabucks) or sitting on her own rump, twiddling her thumbs
while waiting for some suburban wife with more money than taste to
show up asking her to find a footstool in mauve satin for her
poodle, Fluffy.

“I know enough,” she answered at last. “I’ve
got a Girl Scout badge in child care.” Actually, she’d earned only
two badges, one for swimming and another for making some dumb
basket out of Popsicle sticks. She really hadn’t been a very good
Girl Scout. But there was no reason for Jack Trehan to know that.
“Why?”

Before he could answer, both their heads
turned at the sound of a loud wail coming from somewhere deep in
the house. “Damn it!” Jack exploded, turning to trot toward the
sound.

Keely followed, her eyes flashing left and
right as she passed along the wide hallway, looking at the
white-walled, empty rooms to either side. She actually stopped when
she saw the area definitely designed to serve as a formal dining
room, marveling at the snow-white pillars, the raised parquet
floor, the entire wall of windows looking out over the grounds.
What she could do with a space like this!

Another wail brought her back to her senses,
and she continued on her way, entering the enormous kitchen in time
to see Jack Trehan on his knees in front of a huge wicker wash
basket, saying, “Aw, come on. Don’t cry, M and M. Please don’t
cry.”

Her mouth closed, her tongue poking at the
inside of her left cheek, Keely tiptoed closer, then peered over
Jack’s shoulder to see the red-faced, really unhappy infant propped
in a seat that was stuck inside the basket. Now she knew why his
shirt was wet and lumpy, and why he smelled so bad. The baby was
just as soggy, and smelled twice as bad. “Just when you think
you’ve seen everything...” she said, shaking her head. “Yours?”

Jack’s head jerked around as he looked up at
her, his blue eyes flashing dangerously.
“No,
not
mine.
And stop smirking, because this isn’t funny.”

“Yes, it is,” Keely contradicted. “I mean,
trust me... this is funny. She’s got great lungs, doesn’t she? I’m
assuming it’s a girl. Pink blanket. Where’s her mommy?”

“Out of missile range, unfortunately,” Jack
grumbled, trying to insert a pacifier in a rosebud mouth that was
open wide enough to play garage to a Mack truck. “Damn it! I held
her, fed her. What’s her problem?”

Keely’s experience with children wasn’t
extensive. It wasn’t even close to extensive. She’d been orphaned
young, an only child, and raised by her Aunt Mary, who hadn’t
married until two weeks ago, at the age of fifty-seven. She’d
baby-sat a time or two, years ago, but never for an infant.

“Maybe...” she said, dredging her brain for
an answer. “Maybe she’s...
wet?”

“Yeah, well, I tried to find a bib or
something, but I couldn’t, and she kept trying to eat the paper
towels.”

“No, not that kind of wet. I can see that her
little dress is wet—and why would anybody dress an infant in dark
purple? I meant her
other
end.”

“Her other—? Oh.” Jack, still holding the
pacifier, sat back on his haunches, looked like he might be getting
ready to make a break for it, head for the hills. “Oh, well, isn’t
that
great?” He looked up at Keely. “How bad do you want
this job, Ms. McBride?”

Keely already had a feeling this question was
coming, and she was prepared to lie her head clean off if that was
what it took. “Let me see if I have this right, okay? Are you
saying, Mr. Trehan, that you’re going to judge me on my child care
techniques, rather than on my résumé?”

His closemouthed grin and raised eyebrows
answered her question even before he added, “Yup. That’s what I’m
saying.” He stood up, stepped away from the basket. “This is my
cousin’s baby, Magenta Moon... I’ve been calling her M and M, which
is pretty bad, but nothing’s as bad as Magenta Moon. She just
arrived about an hour ago. I’m... I’m going to be taking care of
her for a while—am taking care of her.”

Keely winced as M and M began howling once
more. “Taking care of her, are you? You could have fooled me.”

Jack’s tanned cheeks turned a remarkable
brick red, an angry red, as if he was considering joining M and M
in a tantrum duet. “You know what, Ms. McBride? You’re a wiseass,
and I don’t think I like you. So forget about it. I withdraw the
offer. I’m just going to go call some... some
service
or
something.”

“No! Don’t do that,” Keely said, quickly
bending down to unstrap M and M from her seat, then pick her up
before she could regain her sanity, before she could remember that
she was, by and large, deathly afraid of babies. “Look, see... I’m
taking care of her,” she said, bouncing up and down with the
infant, holding M and M at arm’s length. “Aren’t I, baby?” she
asked, exactly one second before M and M smiled, burped, then
upchucked all over Keely’s suit and legs. Even her shoes.

Keely gaped at Jack Trehan, horrified. “Look
what she did!”

“Yeah, I see it. Great aim, huh?” He grinned.
“A guy could get to like this kid. Welcome to my world, Ms.
McBride. Clean her up—and yourself—and you’re hired for the
duration.”

Keely sat M and M back in her seat and began
looking around for some paper towels, finding a roll next to the
sink. “Define duration, Mr. Trehan,” she urged, wetting a wad
consisting of about six feet of towels under the tap.

“Until the house is furnished, and until I
can find someone else to take care of M and M. I’m sure I can find
somebody, but for now, Ms. McBride—you’re it.”

“Oh happy day,” Keely muttered under her
breath, swiping at the front of her suit with the wet towels. “Oh,
yuk! I got some under my fingernails. Yukka, yukka,
yuk!”

“Yeah, that pretty much says it. Have fun,
Ms. McBride. I’m off to take a shower. I’ll bet you want one, too,
but I live here, so I get to go first. Life’s like that, not fair
at all,” Jack said, then turned on his heels and left the room.

“Jack Trehan? Jack
ass
is more like
it,” Keely muttered under her breath as she watched him go, knowing
he wouldn’t be any help if he stayed, and then looked down at M and
M, who was crying again. “If you think that’s going to make my
heart break for you, you’re
way
wrong, kiddo,” she warned
the child. She spread her arms as she approached the basket. “This
is—was—my best suit.”

M and M stopped crying, looked up at Keely.
Smiled.

“And don’t be cute,” Keely warned, wagging a
finger at the child. “Being cute won’t help you one bit, little
girl, not when you smell so bad. Trust me, I’m not a soft touch
when it comes to cute.”

M and M grabbed at her bare toes, caught one
foot, and aimed it toward her mouth as she watched Keely with her
huge blue eyes.

“Okay, so I’ll admit it.
That’s
cute.
I sort of like that. But it’s not adorable, so don’t get a big
head, all right, because you have a long way to go before I forget
about the suit. This is just a job, and you’re nothing more to me
than a means to an end,” Keely said, sighing as she knelt on the
floor, looked at M and M, and tried to decide which
end
to
clean up first.

* * *

Jack stood under the pulsating spray from the
shower—all six jets, randomly placed on three tiled walls—and swore
until he’d run out of cuss words. That took at least three minutes.
A man didn’t ride a bus in the minor leagues for a year and spend
the next seven seasons traveling the country with professional
baseball players and not grow his vocabulary. Jack could swear in
English, in Spanish, and, thanks to the new reliever, Samo Akita, a
fair bit of Japanese.

The cussing, unfortunately, didn’t help.

How could Cecily have done this to him?

No, scratch that. Of course Cecily could have
done this to him. She was Cecily. She was the child who’d never
grown up, Bayonne’s answer to Peter Pan, but with an unlimited
trust fund left to her by her daddy, king of Bayonne’s dry
cleaners.

She’d been married at seventeen, to a polo
player from Brazil, divorced at eighteen, in drug rehab at
nineteen, and a hopeful noviate at a Carmelite nunnery at twenty.
At twenty-two she’d financed her lover’s internet company—selling
Jersey tomatoes by mail, a plan that never had a chance of getting
off the ground—and, the last Jack had heard from her (after the
Creative Pyrotechnics fiasco), she’d been “finding herself” in that
commune.

Now she was Moon Flower, on her way to Tibet
with Blue Rainbow, leaving behind Magenta Moon, the inner child who
had become the child outside—the child being yet another little
experiment in life that just hadn’t turned out the way she’d hoped.
And it probably all made sense to her.

Jack wondered if strychnine didn’t taste too
bad, or if he should just go up to the roof and jump off.

He slammed his hand against the knob
controlling the shower and banged open the glass door, heading for
the rack that held his two towels. Both were still damp. “Damn!
First thing on that dame’s list—towels.”

Mention of “that dame” started Jack thinking
about what he’d just done. He’d hired an interior decorator—a
smart-mouthed interior decorator—to play nanny to Cecily’s kid.
This was probably not a smart move, but he’d been desperate, beyond
desperate.

Well, it would only be for a day or two. He’d
figure out something else, somewhere else to put the kid. Sadie
would be no help; she’d never had kids of her own, slept until
almost noon every day, and would probably only like M and M if she
had a key in her back and could be wound up to play “Edelweiss.”
Other than that, Sadie would expect the kid to sit in a corner and
shut up until it was time to play again.

Cecily had mentioned her brother, Joey. If
Jack knew nothing more about Cecily than that she’d gone to Joey
for help, it would have disqualified her for anything that required
more thought than breathing.

Because Joey was a flake. Joey was an idiot.
Joey thought he should be in the Mafia, thought he
was
in
the Mafia, or at least acted like he was, dressed and spoke as if
he was. He even wanted everyone to call him Joey “Two Eyes”
Morretti. Probably so the idiot could remember how many he had.

See what happens when you die and leave your
kids five-million-dollar trust funds? Better his aunt and uncle had
spent it all on tango lessons, and maybe their very own platinum
card at QVC.

Jack laughed silently at the thought,
remembering that Aunt Flo and Uncle Guido had been pretty powerless
to control their two offspring from aboveground. If they’d missed
heaven and gone to hell, their punishment must be watching daily
videos of Cecily and Joey on the loose with their hard-earned
martinizing money.

So Joey was out. Jack couldn’t send M and M
to Uncle Two Eyes and still be able to look at himself in the
mirror.

Sadie was out. Definitely out—usually
hovering about five miles into the ozone.

Tim? Jack hesitated as he pulled on his
slacks. What about Tim?

“Yeah, what about Tim,” Jack said, walking
over to the mirror to look at his bare chest, at the surgical scars
along his left elbow, riding low on his shoulder. “Tim’s still at
the big dance, Jack,” he reminded himself bitterly, hating himself
for feeling sorry for himself, almost as much as he hated himself
for feeling jealous of his twin.