Scrambled Babies (10 page)

Madison
was confused.  “Mommy, are we going to live in a dog house?”

Paeton laughed understandingly and bent to take Madison’s hand.  “No, honey.  We are buying an Alice in Wonderland house.  Dog house is an expression grown-ups use for a house that hasn’t sold for a long time.”  She turned to Fred.  “I’ll do whatever you think we should do.  Please don’t lose this house for me, Fred.  I love this house.  Madison loves this house.  We’ll be heartbroken if we don’t get it.”

“Trust me, Paeton.  No one but us will make an offer on this house—forever!”  Fred chuckled some more.  “Eighteen months.  Ha!”

Bryce fidgeted with one of the gold chains around his neck.  “Well, I hope you’re right.  A full-price offer would be—”

Fred held up his hand again.  “Eight ninety, Bryce.  Let’s write it up.”

“Whatever you say.  Whatever you say.  Whatever you say.”  And they all got back into the Ferrari and returned to the real estate office.

Twenty minutes later, Paeton signed an offer of eight hundred ninety thousand dollars for her Hollywood dream house—the Alice house! 

The baby in the travelseat startled her with a cry.  The cry brought a pang to her heart.  Kelsey!  Fred’s phone remained painfully inactive.

She checked her watch.  She forced a cry of frustration back down her throat.  It was seven thirty in California!  It was ten thirty in Boston! 

Paeton was still not hungry!

#

Steve checked his watch for the hundredth time in the past five minutes.  He couldn’t get his hand to stop shaking.  Ten fifteen.  Doing the game was hard enough, but being so close to making contact with her and then getting a wrong phone number almost killed him! 

Speaking of killing someone, he could wring Sophia’s neck!  He had tried all kinds of variations of the numbers Sophia had given him, without success.  He finally gave up after calling ten and striking out.

But at least he knew bewitching-mouth was somewhere in the Los Angeles area.  He would figure something out.

He checked his watch. 
Pony should be here any minute.
  He knew he was grasping at straws, but maybe Pony could help. What a fluke that she was in town! 

Still, Steve was beginning to be sorry he had called Pony to come to his office.  He knew he was taking advantage of her devotion to him.  He knew she would interpret it as romantic interest on his part.  But the reason he had called her was he figured he needed a woman to talk to.  And Pony was the only woman who would come to see him in Boston on a moment’s notice.  She was the only woman, period.  He hadn’t exactly been making the rounds lately.  His guilt about taking advantage of Pony made him uncomfortably warm. 
Too bad!
  The unnerving circumstances demanded desperate measures. 

Steve left the door to the office open so he could see Pony get off the elevator.  The next time he looked up, there she was, breathless, coming down the hall. 

The baby was asleep on the desk.  He glanced at her on the way to greet Pony.  Blip!  His heart vaulted when he saw her little baby mouth.  That mouth that would someday mature and reduce men to blithering idiots.  Too bad Pony didn’t do that for him.  He prepared himself for Pony’s onslaught.  He could tell the way her face fell when she saw him that he was telegraphing his less than romantic mood.

“Yo, Stevie!”  She tried to kiss him anyway, but she succeeded only in placing a glancing peck to the cheek.  Immediately a pout began to form.

Steve smiled through his grimace.  “Yo, Pony!  Thanks for coming over so promptly.  Let’s go in here.”  Steve picked up the baby and led her into the chief editor’s office.  The editor let part-timers use it for privacy.

Pony sulked in after him, scraping her high heels deliberately.  “Promptly?  Stevie, you make me sound like a business appointment.  You know, Steverino, I’d beam myself to you anytime, anywhere!  That is—if you’d let me!” 

She went immediately over to the childseat.  The little girl was awake now.  “Oh, look at Ryan.  What a beautiful little boy.  Hi, Ryan.  How is my favorite baby?”

Christ, she can’t tell the difference either.

“Hey, Steverino, this kid’s as famous as you are.  The whole world—me included—heard him cry on TV.”  Apparently, she had quickly gotten over the missed-kiss blues because she suppressed a giggle.  Steve could feel the scowl on his face.  “Sorry.  I didn’t mean anything by it, Stevie.”  Steve could feel her searching his face.  “Uh, you bringing Ryan with you now?  I thought Greta took care of him when you traveled.”

Steve tried to be more hospitable.  After all, he was the one who called her.  “Well, I’m turning over a new leaf, Pony.  Remember how when I first got Ryan, I said I would do all the baby work myself?  Then I found out I wasn’t up to it and hid the fact that I hired someone else to do it?  I’m changing all that.  I’m going to do it all myself now.  Well, most of it.”  He laughed.  “You should have seen Vin’s face tonight when I brought the kid into the booth!  He didn’t say anything, but his expression sure said it all.”

Pony perched on the desk next to “Ryan.”  She peered into the childseat.  “God, beautiful boy, Steverino.”  She looked up.  “Uh, Stevie, you called me over here to tell me that?  I mean, it’s not that I mind or anything, but—”

“Okay, okay.  You’re right.  No, I didn’t bring you over here for that.”  Steve started pacing.  “Pony, here’s the deal.  You’re a woman and—”

“Wow, Stevo, I was kind of hoping you’d get around to that!”  She started to get off the desk, her arms extended.

“No, I mean, you know about babies.  You’d know how a woman would feel if she lost her baby.”

“Lost her baby?  Miscarriage?  You know I’ve never even been pregnant, Stevie.  But that’s one other thing I was thinking about.  Maybe you and I—you know.”  And she started to get off the desk again.

Steve turned his back on her for a moment.  He was impatient with his inadequate questioning.  “Okay.  Okay.  And no, not a miscarriage.  Uh, let’s pretend someone took your baby.”

“Someone kidnapped my baby?”

Steve swallowed hard.  “Uh, kidnapped.  Yes, I guess that’s the appropriate, uh, term.  Anyway, you’re a woman.  You have instincts about stuff like this.  Okay, here’s the picture.  Let’s say you have a baby.  You’re at a—a bus terminal.  You—you set your baby down next to another baby.  When you get on the bus, you take the wrong baby with you.  Then when you find out you have the wrong baby and—”

Pony looked at Steve warily.  “Steverino?  Uh, Stevie, you okay?  I’d do anything for you, you know that.  But—what the hell are you talking about?”  She cocked her head.  “And, Steverie, I wasn’t going to say anything, but your eye is twitching like a son of a bitch, you know that?” 

As Pony slid off the desk, her oversized, overstuffed purse fell to the floor.  “Damn!”  Pony knelt down to start shoving the contents back into it.  Steve came around the desk to help.

Pony held up one hand.  “It’s okay.  I’ve got it, Stevo.”

Steve bent down anyway.  He noticed a paperback book and picked it up.  “
The Sky Streaks of Black
?  What?  This is a romance novel!  Look at the cover, for god’s sake!  You read romance novels, Pony?”  He laughed gently.  “Pony, the mod, former Olympic women’s swim team captain, the tough, hard-boiled fight announcer?”  And this time he laughed harder.  “You mean to tell me she reads
girl
books?”

Pony stayed down on her knees, red-faced.  She looked up pleadingly.  “Stevie, don’t tell!  Please!  I beg you—Stevo—please!  They’ll laugh me out of the business!  I’ll be ruined!  Don’t tell, okay, Stevo?  Please?  I’ll do anything, Steverino!  Anything, if only you don’t tell anybody!”

Steve smiled broadly.  “Really?  Well, for openers, you can limit your names for me to Steve—that’s S-T-E-V-E!” 

“Steve—okay, Steve—got it!  Anything, anything, honest to god!  Okay, it’s Steve.  From now on, I swear to—”

“And you can—” Steve absentmindedly turned the book to the back cover.  There, bewitching back at him, was a photograph of Paeton McPhilomy!  He let out a yelp.  “Jesus Christ!  It’s her!  It is definitely her!  Son of a bitch!  That mouth—that son-of-a-bewitching mouth!  There’s no way I wouldn’t recognize that one-of-a-kind, man-killer mouth!”  And he made a sound as if he had sunk his teeth into a big bite of perfect prime rib.  “Paeton McPhilomy!  Romance writer!”  Then the revelation came.  “No wonder she—”
 Whoops!  Watch what you say, Steve!

Steve watched Pony’s wide eyes keeping him in her sights as she got up.  She kept her distance.  Nothing about his interest in Paeton seemed to be overriding Pony’s fear of being exposed as a closet romance reader.  “Steve, I swear to you.  I will never again call you—”

But the point was that Paeton McPhilomy didn’t want bad publicity either.  He laughed to himself. 
We both have been sitting on pins and needles waiting for the other to report the switch.
  He was safe now.  Just as Paeton was.  How amazing!

Steve tossed the novel on his desk and walked over to Pony with arms outstretched, stopping her in her tracks.  She backed away some. “Stevo is okay, Pony.  Stevie, Steverino, Stevisimo, Stevie-weevie, itty-bitty-pretty-Stevie—I don’t care, Pony.  I love you, Pony!  I love it that you read romance novels.”  She was finally pressed against the wall.  Steve grabbed her and gave her a big, fraternal kiss full on the mouth.

Pony stood motionless.  Her baffled expression betrayed her complete confusion.  Steve had kissed her, but he could see she knew he hadn’t really “kissed” her.  She appeared to be evaluating the kiss as she wiped the back of her hand deliberately across her mouth. 

Then she got back to the importance of protecting her tough reputation.  “Anyway, okay, I’ll call you anything I want.  I don’t get it, but okay.  But you won’t tell, right?  My secret is safe with you, right, Ste—vie?” 

Suddenly she put her hand to her mouth again.  “Hey, wait a minute—what’s wrong with
my
mouth?”  Her tone betrayed that she was hurt or insulted, or both.  “Wait a minute!  How the hell do you know Paeton McPhilomy has a—how did you put it—a bewitching mouth?”

Steve picked up the book and showed Pony the back cover.  “Here.  Tell me, is that a great mouth?”

“Christ, I don’t know.  I don’t go that way, Ste-vie.  You should know that.”  Pony paused thoughtfully.  She tilted her head at him.  “I can call you Stevie?”

Steve laughed warmly.  “Yes, you can call me Stevie.  And your secret?  Safe with me, Pony.  It might as well be locked up in Fort Knox.”  Then he walked over to Pony, grabbed her by the elbows, and ushered her out of the office.  “I’ll call you, Pony.  Maybe we can have dinner when I get back.”  He kept her moving through the cubicles until they stepped into the hallway.

“Dinner?  Back?  Jesus Christ, you just got here!  Where’re you going now?”

“I’ll call you, Pony.  And Pony—you’re the greatest!” 

Pony craned her head around as he gently prodded her into the elevator.  “I am?” 

“I’m going to keep the book for a while, okay?”

“Sure, Steverino.”

“Who knows, I may even read it.”

He watched her perplexed face disappear behind the sliding elevator doors.

As Steve walked back to his office, he found himself humming “Everything’s Coming up Roses.”  He got to his desk and looked at the book.  He picked it up and opened it.  He came upon the dedication. 

“To Kevin.  Darling, you left so suddenly.  Thank you for all your support over the years.  I hope you are watching as this book gives my readers joy.  Rest in peace, sweetheart.”

Her husband is dead!  Hmmm.
  He turned the book to the back cover again. 
What a mouth!  If the rest of her is anything like—

He opened the back cover.  There was a brief biography.  “Paeton McPhilomy, the mother of two girls, lives in New York City where she crafts her tales of romance.  She has been telling stories for years, but recently has joined the—”  Steve closed the book.