Maybe Baby Read online

  Babs shot out from behind the bar to intercept Nick. “Sorry, Nick. I, uh… I must have put the phone on do not disturb and just forgotten about it. Is there something you”—she glanced at Dana, then back at Nick—“you needed?”

  “Hmmm?” Nick pulled his eyes away from Dana and turned to Babs. “Yeah. I was on my way to this bird thing, but I couldn’t read your handwriting here.” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. “That a five or a nine?”

  Oh, God, oh God, Dana thought, glancing around, looking for escape. She could dart behind the big tree-ish plant in the corner next to the bar. Or she could toss herself over the bar and duck behind it, with any luck hitting her head on the mini-fridge and knocking herself out cold.

  Would have been a decent plan, if she could move, but she couldn’t. She was frozen in her spot, staring at Nick. Her Nick. Nicholas James Maybe, who even after six years still seemed as familiar to her as her own skin. He looked broader across the shoulders, although the straight-lined black leather coat could have been responsible for that impression. His dark blue jeans clung tightly to muscles she remembered too well. His hair was still the same chocolate brown, still kept short to keep the waves in check. His face was the same, all sharp edges that went soft when he smiled. Same deep blue eyes, only without the sparkle at the edges when he looked at her.

  She kinda missed the sparkle.

  He turned his head again and looked at her. She swallowed tightly, wiped her shaking hands on her jeans, and slowly lowered herself off the barstool. Part of her wished desperately that this was all a big nightmare, but since she wasn’t standing naked in Lincoln Center while being expected to conduct the Philharmonic through Carmina Burana, she knew the chances were slim. She wrapped her arms around herself and felt the worn-out spot on the elbow of her flannel shirt, and wondered what kind of God would allow her to go hobo-chic on the day she just happened to bump into her ex-fiancé.

  “Hey, Nick,” she said, her voice barely loud enough to register over the deafening silence.

  He continued to stare at her. Just when Dana thought she was going to break down if someone didn’t say something soon, he spoke.

  “You changed your hair,” he said. It seemed less a point of interest and more the only thing he could think of to say, but it was a start.

  “Yeah,” Dana said, her stomach flopping like a fish on dry land. Panic gripped her, and before she knew it, she added lamely, “It’s not natural.”

  “Yeah.” The slightest hint of a smile tinged the edges of his eyes, then they went hard again. “I remember.”

  She tried not to cringe at the sheer social pain of it all and glanced at the window. People had certainly thrown themselves from buildings for less than this. Who would blame her, really?

  Another long moment passed, then Nick turned his eyes to Babs.

  “So,” he said, his voice tight as he motioned toward the slip of paper he’d handed her. “Five or nine?”

  Babs glanced at the paper, then handed it back to Nick. “Five.”

  Nick nodded, folded the paper into exact quadrants, and shoved it into the inside pocket of his coat. Dana could see the muscles working in his jaw and knew he was as painfully conscious of her presence as she was of his.

  “I’ll call you in the morning,” Nick said tightly, “to coordinate the other stuff.”

  Not-so-hidden message: Make sure Dana isn’t here the next time I am. It had been a long time since Dana had seen Nick, but she could still read him like a kindergarten primer.

  Babs gave him a little smile. “Sure. Tomorrow.”

  Nick turned his face toward Dana, and with obvious effort raised his eyes to hers. “Dana.”

  She swallowed. “Nick.”

  He turned and walked purposefully into the still-open elevator. Dana didn’t release her breath until she heard the clunk of the doors closing, at which point the question her brain had been too frozen to form suddenly hit her.

  What the hell was Nick doing there in the first place?

  “I’m sorry,” Babs said. “Darling, you have to believe me, I would have warned you if I’d had any idea he was going to show up here like that.”

  “Of course you would.”

  “Are you okay?”

  “Never better,” Dana said. “But, hey, here’s a thing. What was he doing here?”

  Babs glanced back at the elevator door, then looked to Dana. “Nick and I are still in touch. You knew that.”

  “I knew you’d seen him. At that wine bar where he works. Monkey’s.”

  “Murphy’s, dear.”

  “Whatever,” Dana said, swiping her glass off the bar and taking a swift drink. “And I knew you weren’t being actively mean to him. Like, you weren’t egging his door or anything, but I didn’t realize you guys were—you’re friends?”

  “Well…” Babs took a breath, then continued. “We sort of work together.”

  “You work together.”

  “It’s kind of a freelance thing. For charity.”

  Dana blinked. “A freelance thing. For charity.”

  Babs gave her a bright smile. “Yes. Understand?”

  “Sure,” Dana said. Of course she didn’t understand, but she was sure her heart would stop that skipping nonsense eventually, and probably faster if she just focused on the reason why she was here.

  To beg her estranged mother to rescue her failing winery.

  Dana lifted her empty glass. “I could really use another one of these.”

  “Of course,” Babs said, shuffling behind the bar.

  Dana settled on a barstool and leaned her elbows on the bar. “You know those moments when you think things can’t possibly get any worse, and then they do? They should have a word for that.”

  “They do,” Babs said as she splashed the gin over the ice in Dana’s glass. “It’s called life.”

  Dana let out a laugh. “I’ll drink to that.”

  Babs reached under the bar and pulled out the bottle of scotch. “Not without me, you won’t.” She poured her glass and lifted it in the air for a toast.

  “To life,” Babs said. “May we die before it kills us.”

  Five

  Nick made his way down Seventy-third Street and checked his watch: 11:48. He casually glanced up at the East Side town house and checked the number: 245 East Seventy-third Street.

  Right place. Almost right time. Twelve more minutes to kill. One more stroll around the block, and he could get the stupid bird, and move on with his life. Until then, he would circle the block again and think.

  About Dana.

  Some more.

  He’d been able to think of little else since he’d seen her. She was just as beautiful as always, the red in her curls making those blue eyes and freckled cheeks jump out and grab him with more intensity than he would have ever thought possible. He had imagined seeing her a thousand times over the years, and in none of the scenarios had he ever frozen up as he did. In his imagination, he’d always been cool, always unfazed. In reality, he’d been thunderstruck. For a moment, when their eyes first locked, he literally thought his heart had stopped.

  What the hell was wrong with him? He crumpled the paper with the address on it and stuffed it angrily into his pocket. Better question—what was wrong with her? What was she doing at Babs’s place, lying in wait to tear his gut into pieces with her presence? It wasn’t right, one person having that kind of effect on him. And why did she have to visit tonight? He would be gone in less than a week. She couldn’t have waited a few days? What the hell was wrong with her, anyway?

  Even as he had the thoughts, he knew they didn’t make any sense. How would Dana have known he’d be there? Babs didn’t even know he’d be stopping by, and it wasn’t like Babs and Dana were exactly gushing to each other with personal details, but still. He was pissed off about it, and he might as well just be pissed off with Dana.

  Old habits die hard.

  He reached the town house again, checked his wa
tch. 11:54.

  Screw it. He’d rather be a little early than think about Dana Elizabeth Wiley for one more minute. He pushed open the alley gate, which had been left unlocked as promised, and headed into the alley. His eyes took a moment to adjust to the muted darkness, but his hearing was just fine, and based on the ragged breathing that didn’t match his, he figured he wasn’t alone.

  And… what was that smell?

  “Umph,” he said, as something big smashed into his shoulder.

  “Sorry, mate,” he heard a man grumble as he rushed past him. Nick watched as the man, carrying a large cardboard box, walked out into the Manhattan street. Nick caught only the glow of a shaved white head and a flash of a denim jacket before the man was gone.

  Weird, but not his problem. He pulled a flashlight out of his back pocket and used it to illuminate the rest of the alley. Nobody. Nothing. He negotiated his way to the back, and there was the ladder, also as promised. It was hitched right up against the wall leading, Nick could only presume, to the window he wanted.

  He looked down the alley in the direction the bald man had gone as a bad feeling rumbled in his gut. Babs’s friends were all pretty much nuts, so this kind of strangeness wasn’t exactly unusual, but something was off about this one.

  He tucked the flashlight into his breast pocket, put on his leather gloves, and started up the ladder. When he got to the window, it was slightly ajar.

  Hmmm. Didn’t Babs say Vivian wanted him to break glass? Maybe she’d changed her mind. It wasn’t unusual for Babs’s friends to do that. Nick climbed into the room and was hit instantly by the same aroma he’d smelled in the alley, sweet and earthy and strong as hell.

  Well, crap, he thought. Looks like I got to this party a little late.

  He moved back toward the window to inhale some fresh air and think. Before he got a chance to do either, the door burst open and a woman—blond, late thirties, braless in a flowing satin negligee—hurried in. Nick blinked. He thought women only wore lingerie like that in the movies.

  “Oh, thank God!” she said, shutting the door quietly behind her. In the moonlight, Nick could see the large room, accented with the random feather, and the empty birdcage, door wide-open, behind her.

  “Ow!” she said, then stepped back and leaned down to pick up a tiny syringe on the floor. She glanced at it for a minute, then smiled.

  “Oh, that’s how you kept it quiet, huh? You drugged it. Clever.” She walked over to the window. “But we don’t want the police to track you, now do we?”

  She tossed the syringe out the window.

  Nick recoiled. “Hey. You don’t know what’s in that needle. You can’t just—”

  “Oh, hell,” she said, looking at the window. “I thought I told you to break the glass.” She sighed, put her hands on her hips, looking around the room. She grabbed a poker from the set of fireplace tools and smashed it into the glass. Nick jumped back. She calmly put the poker back and smiled up at him.

  “So, where is it?”

  Nick glanced at the window and back at her, not sure how to respond. Her smile widened and her eyes lit up.

  “You threw it out the window?” She laughed, then stopped. “You do know it’s flightless, right?” She glanced over the edge of the window down into the yard below, then pulled her head back in and sighed. “Drugged it and threw it out the window. Sick bastard. I just wish I had been here to see it.”

  A man’s voice called from another area of the house. “Vivian?”

  “Argh!” she grunted. “Six vodka tonics, you’d think the man would sleep through a little breaking glass!”

  She put her hands on Nick’s shoulders, nudging him toward the window as she prattled on at him. “If there are any remains, clean it up. It’s a valuable bird; no real bird thief would throw that thing out the window when he can get a quarter mil for it on the street.”

  Nick’s gut dropped. A quarter mil? What the hell kind of bird was this, anyway?

  “Oh, and tell Babs I’m a little strapped for cash right now, but I’ll give her the money in a couple of weeks.”

  “What?” Nick asked. “Wait—”

  “Vivian!” The man’s voice was getting closer.

  “Just go!” Vivian said, practically pushing him over the window’s edge. Nick shook his head and started negotiating his way down the ladder. A moment later Vivian’s head poked out of the window above him.

  “And don’t forget to take the ladder down.”

  She disappeared again. Nick’s feet hit the ground, and he pulled the extension ladder away from the house and condensed it down to its original length. He glanced around, saw a small shed, and leaned the ladder against it, then headed down the alley.

  At least tonight was weird enough to get my mind off Dana, he thought, then paused.

  “Shit,” he grunted, irritated with himself. He might as well just pass her a note in study hall and get it over with. NM Loves DW 4-Ever, Even If She Yanks His Heart Out Of His Chest And Does A River Dance On It. Pathetic.

  He’d reached the gate when something on the ground caught his eye. He turned on his flashlight, knelt, and picked up two pieces of paper crumpled together. One, a yellow sticky note, had bullet points on it.

  Break in around 11:30-midnight.

  Bird will be in cage. Unlocked.

  Gate is open.

  Ladder is by the shed.

  Alarm is disabled.

  A sticky note. Presumably left out where any old someone could find it.

  Any old bald someone, maybe, he thought. He scoffed. He never understood how some people got so rich while being so unbelievably stupid. He uncrumpled the next piece of paper.

  A receipt for an order of curly fries and two mugs of Guinness at Bleeker’s Pub, a place in the middle of a seedy neighborhood on the Lower East Side.

  Nick stood up. By all accounts, everything seemed fine. Vivian got rid of her bird, St. Jude’s got its donation, and the thief got away with something. Still, it didn’t sit right with him. He tucked the papers into his pocket, just in case.

  Then he made his way to the street and tried with minimal success to keep Dana Wiley out of his head as he started the long trek home.

  ***

  Babs fired up the computer, its blue light giving her office a dull glow. It was two in the morning, but it wasn’t like she was going to sleep, anyway.

  Dana needed her. For the first time since she could remember, her daughter actually needed her, and Babs would be damned if she was going to let Dana down. Again. She had to find a way to save that winery. Co-signing a loan didn’t seem like a good idea, considering the whole microscope-up-the-nether-regions thing. That sounded very uncomfortable, and Babs’s finances, such as they were, would never make the cut.

  After tossing and turning for hours, the solution had finally struck her. She went into the office to see if it might work.

  She clicked on a search page and typed in Kakapo. She leaned forward, her face closer and closer to the screen as she clicked on the links before her.

  There were only eighty-six Kakapos known to be in existence, making them extremely rare.

  They were illegal to keep outside of the conservation habitats in New Zealand.

  Her heartbeat quickened. She went back to the search engine and typed in bird black market. That wasn’t nearly as helpful, mostly articles written about the black market. Perhaps the Internet wasn’t the place to find out how much she could get for the bird.

  But it was a plan. She could call Nick tomorrow and have him drop off the bird (it would only be a few days, and what the board didn’t know wouldn’t hurt them), then connect with this black market (and really, she was in Manhattan, markets were everywhere, how hard could it be to find a black one?) and locate a buyer.

  Easy as pie.

  She smiled, turned off the computer, and went back to bed, where she fell quickly into a deep sleep.

  Six

  Dana pulled her robe on over her T-shirt and trudged into the ki
tchen. She’d given up the ghost of getting any sleep hours ago, but now that the sun was starting to come up, she figured she could get away with making the morning coffee and starting the day.

  After finishing the drink with Babs, Dana had made her excuses and gone to bed. Before letting her go, Babs had wrestled a promise from Dana that they’d talk more about the winery in the morning, after they’d each had a good night’s sleep.

  Unfortunately, there’d been no good night’s sleep for Dana. She tossed and turned in the guest room, unable to get Nick out of her head. Every thought she had—of the winery, of Babs—brought her back to Nick, and the hollowness in her chest expanded with every breath she took. By the time the sun started changing the blackness of night into the blue shadows of morning, she thought there’d be nothing of her left.

  How could one man affect me like that? she wondered as she padded into the kitchen. It was just rude, is what it was. The one night in years when she was at Babs’s, and he had to barge in unannounced. Dana didn’t care what kind of freelance charity work they were doing—and since when is volunteer work considered freelancing?—it simply wasn’t right.

  At the same time, she knew it wasn’t his fault. He would have had no way of knowing she’d be there. She rarely was. And, based on the look on his face, she’d taken just as large a chunk out of him as he had out of her. She knew she didn’t have any right to be angry with him.

  Not that a little thing like reason was going to stop her from doing just that.

  She opened the freezer and smiled as she pulled out the pound of Dunkin’ Donuts coffee. No matter that Babs could probably afford to buy her own personal coffee plantation, she still knew there was only one acceptable brand of coffee for the discriminating palate. Dana spooned the beans into the grinder, pushed the button down, and inhaled the magnificent smell. She stopped grinding and perked her ears up for sounds of Babs stirring. On a typical morning, it would take a nuclear bomb to wake Babs before ten, so Dana doubted the coffee grinder, loud as it was, would do it. When she heard nothing, she poured the grinds into the filtered basket and turned the machine on.