Chapter 4: Arianna
I lead Dell to the supply closet. Surely someone like Dell has a staff member who can pick up some necessities this afternoon. Until then, I load up the storage net beneath the bed with whatever I can spare. I guess I'll be babysitting for a billionaire today. I can't leave her.
Only when we exit the child spa and turn right back into the main entrance of the building do I realize he lives upstairs. He nods at the doorman, who keys in his floor automatically. I know this because I live here too.
“There’s a back way into our facility from the inside,” I tell him.
“You mean I could enter from the rear?” he asks, his eyebrow raised, his intention clear. He thinks he can rattle me with a sexual innuendo.
“Only if you pull my hair,” I shoot back.
His startled expression is priceless. He didn’t expect that from me.
My heart hammers for saying this to him, but I don’t run a facility like I do without having a comeback for most things. A lot of the wealthy fathers are used to scouting for their next ex-wife. I’ve been propositioned a lot of ways.
It’s jaded the hell out of me, truth be told. Their wives have just had a baby and they’re already bored. There is no bond. No cuddles in bed with the three of them. Just another line item on their tax return. One more dependent. And eventually, another divorce decree.
We ride the elevator in silence. We pass my floor. I don’t think I’ll let him know I live downstairs. The child spa will run fine without me for a few hours. Surely by then, Taylor will have come up with some options for Dell.
Dell Brant. Right here in this elevator with me.
I peer into the carriage. The baby is sleeping now, her hand curled against her cheek. She’s beautiful, every perfect feature you’d expect. Fat cheeks. Nubby nose. Fine down hair.
Dell looks down at her too. “How old do you think she is?” he asks. “I have no experience in these matters.”
“I’d say about three months,” I tell him. “She’s filled out. Newborns tend to be scrawny. And she has some muscle tone in her neck.”
He nods. “So almost exactly a year ago.”
I assume he’s trying to figure out the mother. “She didn’t leave a note?” I ask.
“Just one that said to do the DNA.”
“You have any ideas?”
Those perfect lips purse together, and my heart skips. I’m annoyed by this feeling and squash it immediately. Here is a man in a ridiculous predicament, no doubt caused by his own crappy behavior.
But there’s an unexpected intimacy in the moment. It’s just the three of us in the elevator. We’re gazing on one of the sweetest sights there is. A sleeping baby.
“I’ll have to refer to my message history,” he says. “What are the parameters? The margin of error?”
“What do you mean?”
“If it was born prematurely, would it still look like this at three months?”
“She’s not an it!”
The elevator glides to a stop. “Never mind,” he says. “I’ll hire an expert. I suppose I will need to find a child doctor for her.”
I don’t even respond to this, still angry that he called the baby an “it.” I push the carriage into the hall.
There is only one door. As we approach, it opens. An elderly man stands to one side. “Welcome back, sir,” he says. Then his eyes fall on the carriage. He frowns. Then they lift to me. “I see you found some assistance for your problem.”
“She’s a baby, not a problem,” I say. Seriously, what is wrong with these men?
I’m instantly blown away by the size and elegance of Dell’s home. I grew up with the rich and famous myself, but this is right up there. The entire back wall is filled with bay windows looking out on Central Park.
I have a trust fund that is nothing to sneeze at, but my apartment’s view is to one side, with another building just feet away from the glass.
Everything gleams in variations of black and gray. Marble floors. Black leather furniture. An occasional red accent breaks the monotony. A rose in a vase. A small pillow.
A woof sounds from farther back.
I turn to Dell. “You have a dog?” He doesn’t seem like a pet person.
“Yes, a greyhound,” he says.
“Greyhounds aren’t good with small children,” I say. “You’ll have to monitor them carefully until you know how he will behave.”
“She’s not going to be here that long,” Dell says.
“The dog or the baby?” I spit out.
He sighs. “The child.”
“What if she’s yours?”
The man who opened the door looks horrified.
There’s another woof.
Dell turns to the man. “Maximillion is out of control. Can you please quiet him?”
The man heads out of the room.
“Out of control? Two woofs to let you know he’d like to see you?” My anxiety is rising by the minute. How will he manage a crying baby if two woofs by a dog is “out of control”?
I look down at the sleeping child. Her arms fly out, startled by her own dreams. Poor little bub. She really has nobody.
“She has to have a name,” I say. “Every hospital requires all the paperwork to be filled out. Name, parents, application for a social security number.”
He pulls out his phone and scrolls through screens.
I wait for an answer, but he provides none. I don’t even know what he’s looking at. Probably work.
I’m out of patience, but I can’t leave. He won’t have the least idea of what to do with her when she wakes up. I push the carriage close to the windows and settle on an armchair next to it.
“I’m trying to get a time of conception,” he says. “I need to narrow down the possibilities.”
My gaze stays on the beautiful view outside. It’s the height of summer, and hundreds of people mill around the park. I can see the pond and one of the arching bridges.
“Are there that many possibilities?” I ask.
"Can we assume there are legitimate papers somewhere but the mother didn’t want me to see them because I’d know who she was?”
“Probably. But she won’t file the baby as missing.”
“Somebody has to know she had this baby.”
“That somebody has to speak up.” My body shifts in the chair. Dell shrugs off his jacket and lays it across the back of the sofa. Almost instantly, the man who opened the door slips in to whisk it away.
“Is he watching everything you do?” I ask.
“He pays attention.”
“Who is he?”
“Bernard, my butler.” Dell sits on the black leather sofa, still scrolling through his phone.
I watch him for a moment. “Maybe you should have kept a spreadsheet,” I say.
“Would have come in handy,” he says absently.
I make a disgusted noise and turn back to the view. I’m not sure I can stand being in his presence another minute.
But the baby stirs, her body shuddering a little as she stretches. Her eyes open and she watches me quietly a moment before drifting back to sleep.
My sympathy surges again. What will happen to her? If Dell is her father, she’s doomed to a life of caregivers and boarding school. If he isn’t, she goes into foster care.
I reach into the bassinet and feel around. There is a pacifier, as Dell mentioned. Mouth plug indeed. He has to be an intelligent man. He should know these things, or at least figure them out. He must have been desperate to simply bring her downstairs. The image of how panicked his face must have been as he pushed the stroller to the elevator makes me laugh with a little snort.
“I’m glad you find my predicament amusing,” Dell says.
I straighten my expression, still feeling around the edges of the bassinet. There’s nothing else. Just the cushion and a cover, and the pink swaddle blanket.
I finger the soft cloth, looking for a tag. Interestingly, there is none. No indication of manufacturer, and no evidence of one being cut off. Maybe it is handmade.
I check the elaborate blanket draped across the top. It is festooned with an outrageous amount of bows and ruffles and frills. My fingers run along the edges. No tag here either.
I drop it on my lap. The baby still wears the Del Gato Child Spa bib, so I can’t examine her outfit without removing it. I roll the stroller out a little and bend down to sort through the side pockets. The mother left a bottle, a canister of formula, and a few disposable diapers. All of those could have been picked up at a store nearby.
Otherwise, the pockets only contain what I placed in them. No change of clothes. No note. Nothing for the child to keep or remember her mother by.
I shift the carriage back and the baby stirs again. This time, her forehead crumples. She’s about to cry. Rather than let that happen, I pick her up.
“Sweet baby girl,” I say, lifting her to my shoulder to pat her back.
She presses her head against my neck. This warmth flows through me, peaceful and calm. I close my eyes, relishing the feel of her, the weight of her body against my chest.
“I’ve narrowed it down to twenty-five,” Dell says, startling me.
“Twenty-five women?”
“Once we speak to a doctor, I bet I can get it into the teens.” Dell pockets his phone. “Do you know one who can see her?”
“Taylor has a list.”
“Could he administer the DNA test?”
“I don’t know about that,” I say. That’s one thing that hasn’t come up at the child spa. Paternity is established by the time they arrive at my door.
Dell stands and paces the room. “I’m not going to let her do this to me,” he says, his voice hard. “You can’t just dump something like this on a doorstep.”
“You should give her a name, at least for now,” I say. “Stop calling her it and this.”
“Sure. Fine. My grandmother was Grace. She was a good woman.”
“That’s lovely,” I say. The baby shifts and I bring her down to rest in my arms. “Hello, Grace. You are a precious baby girl.”
Her eyes are open again. She seems worldly and wise, looking into my gaze.
I know how important this position is, this eye contact. I won’t have her miss important developmental moments. Not if I have the choice.
Damn. I’m already involved. I can’t stop looking in the baby’s eyes. Will he do that? He didn’t even know how to hold her.
Although he did give her the bottle. The image of him with the baby in his arms is etched in my brain. When I think of it, another part of my body heats up.
And this feeling is definitely not the same as the other.
It’s uncomfortable and alarming that I have even the smallest soft spot for that womanizing jerk who got himself in this mess and can’t narrow the candidates below twenty without a doctor’s help.
So I do the only thing I can. I tell him exactly how I feel.
“I don’t trust you with her. Let’s call CPS now.”