Barbara Freethy - Some Kind Of Wonderful Read Free

swatches of ribbons on the floor
in a discarded heap. It was a single man's nightmare. Maybe that was
it. Maybe he'd fallen asleep on his feet. Maybe he was dreaming.

"I have to wake up," he said. "Just wake up."

She stared at him uncertainly. "Have you been drinking?"

"No."

"Really? You look like you have a hangover."

"I haven't had much sleep the last three days. I've been too busy
pulling a city official's hand out of the till. You can
read about it in the morning paper, by the way."

"Oh, I don't get the newspaper," she said with an offhand toss of her
head.

"You don't get the paper?" Everyone got the paper. It was part of life,
a ritual as important as eating
and drinking and sleeping. "Why don't
you get the paper?"

"The news depresses me. Can you see if there is a diaper in that bag?"

"The news may be depressing, but it's important. How can you manage
your life if you don't read the paper, if you don't know what is going
on in the city you live in, the world that surrounds you9"

She cleared her throat. "Okay, I lied. I read the paper every morning."

"Now, you are lying. What is wrong with you?" He didn't understand how
anyone could not read the newspaper.

"Right now I'm holding a stinky baby. That's what's wrong with me. Did
you find that diaper yet?"

Matt set the bag down on the floor and dug through it, wishing he'd
never come home at all. He'd been looking forward to peace and quiet,
some downtime after the stress of the last few days, but here he
was
right back in the middle of somebody else's mess. Relieved to find a
disposable diaper in the bag,
he pulled it out and handed it to her.

She cleared off the end of one couch and laid the baby down, then
quickly changed her. She didn't
seem to have any problem with the
baby's flailing legs and arms or the shrill crying that continued until
she fixed the last piece of tape.

"You look like you've done that before," he commented.

"A few times. I baby-sat when I was a teenager." She picked the baby up
and offered her to him.
"Do you want to hold her now?"

"No. No." He shoved his hands into his pockets and took a step back,
almost tripping over a large spool of lace.

"Sorry about that." She gave the spool a nudge with her foot. "I'm on
deadline."

"For what? Are you getting married in the morning?"

"I'm doing the alterations on a wedding dress. I have a bridal shop on
Union Street. Devereaux's is the name. Do you know it?"

"I don't make a habit of knowing where the nearest bridal shop is."

She offered him the first genuine smile he'd seen all night. "I bet you
don't."

"What is your name anyway?" he asked, realizing he couldn't keep
thinking about her as "that woman."

"Caitlyn Devereaux."

"So why isn't all this stuff at your shop?"

"Because Tiffany Waterhouse moved up her wedding date. It turns out
she's pregnant, and she absolutely cannot go down the aisle looking
like a watermelon—her words, not mine. I brought her dress home to
finish because she's getting married at eleven o'clock tomorrow morning
instead of in four weeks as
she'd originally planned. And her family is
very well connected, so 1 don't want to disappoint her."

Matt looked at the yards and yards of material draped over the couch.
"She must be really fat."

"That's just her train, a six-foot trail of lace that goes down the
aisle after her," she added at his blank expression. Caitlyn moved the
baby from one shoulder to the other. "She still isn't happy. I wonder
if she's hungry."

"I wonder who she is."

"We should call the police."

"I suppose." Even as he agreed, he felt the same prickly uneasiness
he'd experienced earlier. Why would anyone leave a baby in his hallway?

"She's so young," Caitlyn murmured, caressing the baby's head with her
fingers. "She can't be more than two months old. How could anyone just
put her down and walk away? Especially her mother." She shook her head
in bewilderment. "How could they do that?"

Matt had a hundred answers, but there was something about