“Oh, nevermind. I was just joking.”
“Chief, come on…” Jordan said.
While they argued, I stared at the baby, and he stared right back at me. Jordan had brought me here because they needed help. The problem was that I didn’t have any experience with kids. Hell, I didn’t even feel comfortable around them. I don’t know why—I just didn’t have that maternal gene. I was holding Baby Anthony in front of me like he was a bomb that might go off at any moment.
I was the last person who should be helping the firemen.
I opened my mouth to say as much, then hesitated. These guys were helpless. If I didn’t help them, someone else would. I liked Jordan—Ireallyliked him—and wanted an excuse to keep seeing him. I wanted to be useful.
And beneath all that, I couldn’t shake the feeling that the baby sharing a name with my deceased father was the sign I had been looking for…
“I can watch him!” I said.
All three men turned toward me.
“Are you sure?” Jordan asked. “We don’t want to impose…”
“Absolutely,” I lied. “I know what I’m doing, and the three of you clearly need help. I’ll take him back to my house and watch him until Social Services has the budget to give him a proper home. That’s only a month or so, right?”
Sitting next to me on the bed, Taylor suddenly enveloped me—and Baby Anthony—in a big hug. He was leaner than the other two men, but still covered with corded muscle.
“Thank you,” he whispered into my hair. “You’re such a sweet person, Clara.”
“You guys are sweet for making sure he goes somewhere good,” I replied. “It would be easier to turn him over now.”
Taylor pulled away and looked awkward about the hug. Baby Anthony blinked in confusion as well.
“You can’t take him back to your house,” Derek said. “There are legal complications.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
“First of all, we’re doing this off the books. We’re required to turn in any surrendered child immediately. Every day wedon’tdo that, we run the risk of getting in bigger trouble.”
“I understand, but doesn’t that mean you want himawayfrom the station? So you don’t get caught?”
Derek grimaced. “One would think so, but no. I spoke with a lawyer friend of mine about the situation. She says that if we take the baby to one of our houses, and we get caught, it might appear that we intended to abduct the child for ourselves. However, if we have kept him at the firehouse for the majority of the time, then we can make the case that we still had the child’s best interests at heart. That we always intended to turn him in when the time was right. My lawyer friend is adamant that we keep the baby here, that it will be much easier convincing a judge of our good intentions. We don’t need to keep him hereone hundredpercent of the time, necessarily, but a majority of the time.”
“Okay. I might be able to make that work. Let me talk to my mom…” I winced. Mom was relying on me to work at the restaurant. I might have been able to scrape by if I could bring the baby to the restaurant with me, but if I had to be at the firehouse…
“Is there a problem?” Jordan asked. “Because if you can’t do it, we’ll understand.”
“No problem at all,” I said without hesitation. “I just need to rearrange some things on my schedule.”
Derek nodded slowly to the group. “All right. It appears we have the beginnings of a plan. The most important thing is that we don’t tell anyone else about this.Especiallynot Billy Manning.” He turned to me. “He’s the bald shitbag on second-shift…”
“I had the pleasure of meeting him already,” I replied.
“Billy has a beef with the Chief,” Jordan explained. “He’s looking for any excuse to get Derek fired.”
“And the last thing we need is to hand him the ammunition he needs,” Derek said dryly. “We’ve managed to keep the child’s presence a secret all weekend, thanks to the soundproofing in my bedroom. But I don’t know what we’re going to do next weekend. The last thing I want is to stay locked in my bedroom all weekend with an unhappy baby.”
“The other shift didn’t get suspicious about the three of you staying here?” I asked.
“We crash here sometimes, when we don’t feel like going home,” Taylor said. “The soundproofing is great when I need to study for exams.”
“But if we do it two weekends in a row, it’ll raise some eyebrows,” Jordan said.
“We’ll worry about that problem when we come to it,” Derek said. “For now, we’re grateful to have your help, Clara.”