Part 7 (1/2)

Libby's hand in hers, she half led, half dragged the girl out the door.

Evan remained rooted to the spot, wondering if he was losing his mind. Wondering if wondering about it meant that he had already lost it.

And wondering what it would be like to kiss her in earnest instead of by mistake.

He didn't stand there wondering for long. As soon as the door closed, Rachel's mouth opened. A l.u.s.ty cry emerged, made that much more powerful because she'd rested up for it It snared Evan's attention immediately, banis.h.i.+ng everything else to the background.

”Oh, G.o.d.”

Claire heard the cries through the door. She heard Evan's response, as well. For a long moment, she wavered, torn between coming to his rescue and sticking to her guns.

She did have things to do, she reasoned sternly, and she couldn't spend all her waking hours holding Evan's hand.

Not that holding his hand would exactly come under the heading of unpleasant hards.h.i.+ps.

Upbraiding herself, Claire kept walking. She'd put in a long day on the heels of an endless night. She needed her rest, too. Besides, she couldn't get involved with a man who might or might not be involved with another woman who in turn was the mother of a child who might or might not be his.

It was too complicated to sort out tonight.

Libby looked over her shoulder at Evan's house the entire way. ”Aren't we going to help him?” she asked mournfully.

Almost as mournful, Claire thought, as Evan probably was right now.

”We are,” she said firmly, unlocking her door. ”By letting him help himself.” She ushered Libby in and closed the door. Claire tossed her purse on the side table. ”He's not going to learn how to take care of Rachel unless he does it by himself.”

Libby wasn't convinced. Mr. Q. had looked funny when they left Like his tummy hurt or something. ”What if he breaks her?”

”Then he'll call.”

That made sense to Libby.

Evan wanted to call. A dozen times or so, he had wanted to call. He had even gone so far as to punch in six of the seven digits of Claire's telephone number on two different occasions before he let the receiver drop back into the cradle.

No, d.a.m.n it, he wasn't going to break down. He wasn't going to give that woman the satisfaction of calling her and asking for help. He had two master's degrees, for heaven's sakes, gotten simultaneously-while working. Better than anyone else, he knew what it meant to be under pressure. h.e.l.l, he thrived on pressure.

He could do this.

He couldn't do this, he thought miserably several hours later.

Pressure was one thing, but none of the pressure he'd ever been under had meant being knee-deep in diapers. Evan felt like a man sleepwalking through a nightmare.

For lack of a changing table, and with a sense of horror as to what any leaks might do to the polished finish on his antique desk or his coffee table, Evan had Rachel lying on a blanket on his bed when he changed her diaper.

”Doesn't any of this stuff stay inside of you?” he asked as he took off yet another soggy, misshapen wrapper. He'd lost count as to how many.

There was no pattern to it, either. Rachel needed to be changed before she ate, after she ate and when she didn't eat at all.

He set the bottle of talc.u.m powder aside and looked at her accusingly. ”You spit up, you discharge-are you sure you're not hollow?”

Rachel responded by kicking her chubby little legs so hard, the tab on the diaper ripped off just as he was trying to close its mate. It hung there at her hip, useless.

”Great.”

Force of habit had him looking at the clock on his night- stand. It was a little past four in the morning. By his reckoning, he'd gotten in about five and a half minutes of sleep since Claire had, with malice aforethought, cruelly abandoned him.

”We're down to our last four diapers. You'd better learn some bladder control, young lady-or I'd better get smart and start investing in the company that makes these things.”

As he spoke, Rachel stared at him with mesmerized eyes. If he didn't know any better, Evan would have said that she understood every word.

Which was absurd.

Absurd, huh? So what did that make him? He was the one talking to her as if she understood.

With a frustrated sigh, he slipped one of the last remaining diapers under her bottom. He tossed the useless diaper into the corner, on top of the others. Hidden beneath was a wastepaper basket long since full. He meant to throw it out when he got the chance. Probably sometime in the next month.

This was becoming old hat to him, he realized dully as he fastened the tabs in place again. At least he was getting faster at it.

Mercifully, Rachel refrained from executing any high kicks, and the diaper held.

”There, try to keep it dry for more than five minutes, okay?”

Picking her up again, he made his way back into the spare bedroom. The one that had been turned into a makes.h.i.+ft nursery. As gently as possible, Evan laid Rachel down in the crib, then backed away.

He made it all the way to the threshold before Rachel began to cry.

Evan cringed, but remained where he was. ”I don't care,” he told her. ”Hear me? Cry all you want, I'm leaving.”

To demonstrate, he shut off the light and closed the door firmly behind him.

Rachel continued crying.

With the determination of a man who knew in his heart that he was right, Evan went to his room, shut the door and crawled into bed.

The sound of her cries followed him, seeping through the crack under the door.

Desperate for some sleep, Evan pulled his pillow over his head and tried to think of something, anything, that would help him block out the noise.

His mind was a blank.

And then he thought of Claire. Of the sweet sting of her lips as they'd suddenly touched his. He could almost feel them now as he lay there in the dark. They were soft, silky, as light as a b.u.t.terfly as they pa.s.sed over his mouth.

This wasn't any good.

He tried to think of something else.

And couldn't.

One way or another, that Walker woman was going to kill him, he thought grudgingly. Muttering a barrage of choice words, Evan threw off the blanket and stormed back into the hallway.