"Those kids,' she muttered. "As flattering as all this is, I wish they'd get over their fascination with having me live next door." They were nice kids, she supposed, as far as kids went. Not that she knew a lot about children, in spite of the fact that they were the focus of her work. She knew even less about living in suburbia. But in the week she'd been here, her next door neighbors' two sons had disturbed her at work about twenty times a day. She was never going to get her current project completed at this rate, and then she'd be in trouble with the publisher who'd given her the job of illustrating the darned book. Oh, what the heck, she thought. Whoever had ever heard of a red-and-white zebra in the first place?

The bell was ringing again, a loud, irritating buzz instead of the nice, melodious chimes she'd had in her apartment. Maybe, she mused, she'd read those two little boys the story and threaten them with the same fate as its characters. That should put some distance between their visits.

She snatched open the door, ready to address her junior-sized neighbors, but instead her eyes met a pair of brown, bony knees. A large, over stuffed pink and-blue plastic tote bag was bumping again them, with a baby bottle sticking out of the top. Those knees were connected to a pair of darkly tanned, muscular thighs with curling dark hair covering them right up to the ragged edges of a pair of cutoffs--cutoffs that clung tightly to slim hips and flat belly. An expanse of bare skin extended above the faded denim shorts, terminating where the hem of cropped T-shirt covered it. An arrow of curling hair seemed to stitch the two garments together. A plump, pink baby sat perched astride that narrow waist, wearing a yellow sunsuit and happy grin. Elaina raised her startled gaze up and up and up until she encountered a pair of merry green eyes under dark brows. "Hi," said the owner of those eyes. "You Elaina McIvor?"

"Yes." She couldn't say anything else. The size of the man took her breath away. She was nearly six feet tall herself, and he towered over her. On his hip the baby looked ridiculously tiny. He smiled and said, "Oh, good. It's taken hours to track you down. I'm Dr. Bradshaw."

At her blank look, he added, "From the University Hospital? Margo Lawrence is my patient so I volunteered to bring the baby." He thrust the baby into her arms. "This is Betsy. She's wet."

That was a perfectly redundant piece of information Elaina discovered as her arms went instinctively around the child. The man put the bag down at Elaina's feet and leaped off the porch, ignoring the three steps leading down to the walk.

"Wait!" she called out. "What is this?"

"A little girl," he said, slightly impatient. "Betsy. She's eleven months old. Oh! Didn't they call you yet?" He smacked his forehead with the heel of one hand. "And here I almost forgot. You must think I'm nuts. This will explain things." He reached into the back pocket of his cutoffs and hauled out a folded envelope. Leaning over and stretching out an enormously long arm, he stuffed the envelope into the tote bag. Then he loped down the walk to the disreputable green van parked the wrong way at the curb.

"No! Wait!" Elaine called. "Come back here!" He slammed the driver's door and shouted out the window as the van began to roll. "Later. I can't stop now, I'll be back."

Then the van was screeching away, lurching as it shot over to the right side of the street, leaving only a little cloud of blue smoke. When that was gone, she could almost believe that the van and the green-eyed man had been figments of her imagination--except for one thing--twenty pounds of warm, wet baby were riding astride her hip.

"Well," she said faintly, "this is the weirdest thing that's ever happened to me!"

What was she supposed to do now? Call the police and charge the guy with child abandonment? Call the loony bin and have herself committed for believing that any of this was really happening? Or pretend that wasn't a man in a rusty van, but a stork? Some stork. He was almost gangly enough to be one, she thought before she shook her head. No. He had been tall, that was true, but not gangly. In fact, he had been extremely well built. She sighed, thinking about how well built he was. The baby patted her face with a warm, plump band and said, "Mama?"

"No way! Not on your life!" said Elaina, alarmed. "I'm not your mama, sweetie." The baby had the bluest of blue eyes and a light golden fuzz on her head. Since she looked nothing like the dark-haired, green-eyed man who had shoved her into Elaina's arms, chances were he wasn't her parent either.

So who was? And who was her mama? The baby smiled at Elaina, several teeth, as tiny and as white as seed pearls, shining wetly in her mouth. Elaina smiled back "That's something we're going to have to find out very soon, isn't it? Not only who your parents are, but where they are."

"Hey look, Miss Mclvor's got a baby!"

Elaina removed her fascinated gaze from the baby's delicate face and pinned it on the pair of grubby little boys who stood at the end of her walk, staring into the yard through the iron gate in the hedge.

"Can we come in and play with your baby, Miss McIby?" asked the smaller one.

"Her name's Miss McIvor, Petey," the older boy said, "and you don't wanna play with her baby. It's a girl"

"Oh. How do you know?"

"Look at it. it's got ruffles on its bottom."

Petey looked and scowled. "Oh, yeah." The two boys vanished, obviously having something much better to do than play with a girl.

"What a way to achieve peace," Elaina muttered. "Import one baby girl and the boys disappear like smoke."

She carried baby and tote bag inside determined to read whatever kind of explanation the crazy doctor had stuffed into the tote. She stood the child on her feet in the middle of the living room. The girl's legs collapsed under her and she sat down on that wet ruffled bottom and began to howl. Elaina stared at her, bewildered. Was there something wrong with her? Were her legs crippled? She had taken her own weight for an instant, then simply caved in. Or had she crumpled from sheer temper?

Harrison came to investigate the noise. The baby stopped making it. She reached for Harrison's tail, saying something that sounded like, "Lemme at him." But maybe, Elaina decided, it was merely the expression on the baby's face that said it. At any rate, Harrison wasn't concerned. He rubbed his neck and shoulder against her fat thigh and the child dug her little starfish hands into his thick white fur.

Elaina lunged forward to prevent certain disaster, but to her amazement, Harrison was purring. She backed off, taking the moment of peace to seek out the note she hoped would explain things a lot more fully. Maybe it even contained instructions on the care and feeding of an eleven-month-old child.

She stared at the familiar symbol on the corner of the envelope. "Huh?" she said as she withdrew its contents. "A phone bill?"

It was made out to Dr. Brent Bradshaw. Who had a Post Office box at the university, and was for the standard charges plus three long distance calls to the same number in Buffalo, one to a number in New Mexico, and another to a different number in Buffalo, and it provided absolutely no explanation whatsoever. Elaina read it through twice and checked the reverse side, only to learn that three of the Buffalo calls had been made during business hours, while the rates were highest. That explanation, while interesting, made nothing clear at all, and she was starting through it again when a horrific crash sent her whirling around. The baby was no longer in the center of the living room floor, but was over by the far window, hands full of greenery, hair full of soil, eyes full of tears, and mouth wide open, hollering again.

"Oh, no!" Elaina ran across the room. "Oh, darling, what happened to you? Easy, now, there ... Oh, thank goodness, you aren't too badly hurt."

She turned from the cactus to the baby. "Young lady, "Will you please stop that howling? And give me those. Oh, poor, poor Brahms. You tore off three of his fronds."

She set her wounded plant carefully back on its stand, then scooped up some of the loose soil from the carpet. She patted it around Brahms's roots and straightened the fronds as best she could. The torn ones would have to be rooted. Luckily, that wasn't difficult with a Christmas cactus. Brahms bloomed a lovely shade of crimson and, she would be happy to have several clones of him around. But she preferred to do the cutting herself.

The bellowing stopped and Elaina looked down, blinking, feeling suddenly like the lowest, most miserable excuse for a human being ever allowed to live. She had just given precedence to a plant over a little child! She had left it to Harrison to comfort the baby! What use was she?

"Betsy?" she said experimentally, trying the name out. The little girl looked around and smiled that rather infectious smile again. And most forgivingly, Elaina thought. She crouched and lifted the wet and now muddy baby into her arms, gently brushing Harrison aside. "Oh you poor little thing. I'm sorry, baby. Let's get you cleaned up, huh? We'll worry about the carpet and Brahms later."

Elaina put the plug in the tub and turned on the faucets, adjusting the water temperature. While the tub filled, she stripped the baby, enjoying the enthusiastic way in which Betsy accepted having her clothes removed. She squirmed and wriggled and kicked and giggled. "You really are a cheerful little thing aren't you?" Elaina said. "I mean, don't babies cry for their mothers when they're left with strangers?" Far from crying, Betsy crowed with glee when she realized she was about to be bathed. And when Elaina sat her down in the water, she promptly sank.

"Oh, my gosh!" Elaina cried, grabbing frantically at the baby. She missed, grabbed again, and hung onto an incredibly slippery little body. Betsy sputtered and gasped and giggled, bobbing up and down in the much too deep water. She seemed unharmed, to say nothing of unconcerned. Elaina dried her face with the corner of a towel and pulled the plug, letting water run out and not stopping it until only a few inches remained in the bottom of the tub.

"We live and learn," she said, gently splashing water over Betsy's back. "I only hope you live through my learning. At least the dirt is all washed out of your hair, though that wasn't the way I had intended to go about it." She looked at the baby splashing happily in the shallow water, sucking on the washcloth. "You sure didn't mind getting dunked, did you? I suppose if I had to have a baby dumped on me, I'm lucky it turned out to be such a good-natured one."

And Betsy was good-natured--until the time came to take her out of the tub. She screamed. She kicked. She waved her arms, hands flailing, catching Elaina in the face and neck with her fists until she got smart and wrapped the child in a towel, arms, legs, wet, slick body and all, then held her close, rocking her. It didn't help one bit. Pacing, almost running back and forth, Elaina weighed a hundred different possible solutions to the problem and rejected them one by one, up to and including simply putting the baby onto the floor and letting Harrison take over.

"What do you want?' she asked. "What can I do for you?" Suddenly, she remembered the bottle. She pulled it from the tote bag, snapped off the lid, and shoved the nipple into the gaping mouth. Like magic, the noise stopped and Betsy reached up to pat Elaina's face, her tiny hand soft and warm from the bath, gentle and tender, and immensely moving. Biting her lip, Elaina sat down on the sofa, one leg curled under her and resting against the arm of the couch as she cradled Betsy close.

"Hey. little girl," she said softly. "I don't know who you are or why you're here, but I think I could get to like you." It was true, and the thought amazed her. When she had been younger, she had, of course, expected one day to have children. She had wanted them, but Kirk had not. At least not for a long time, he'd said. He didn't think they'd make good parents.

She'd gone along with his belief. It was easier, she had learned early in her relationship with him, not to try to force her views on him. He'd held them in such contempt. Elaina sighed. Maybe he'd been right. No instinct, not even common sense, had told her not to make the tub too full, had it?

When Betsy finally fell asleep, Elaina whispered. "Now what do I do with you?" The answer presented itself almost at once: Put a diaper on her. The towel and Elaina's lap were both soaked. The bag in the foyer contained a small selection of things Elaina presumed were baby necessities. She pulled out the various contents, and smiled at one. A cloth book--a very familiar-looking cloth book. With Betsy still sleeping against her shoulder Elaina flipped open the limp, well-chewed book. Her smile deepened at the line that read Illustrations by Elaina McIvor. She had literally lost count of the number of children's books she had illustrated, but it still thrilled her to see those words especially in a book that some child was enjoying.

With the baby changed and stuffed--not without difficulty--into a terry-cloth sleeper, Elaina stood looking down at her sleeping on the bed, still not quite sure she believed what was happening. Now that she had time to think, the worries came sweeping back.

What if the phone bill man had kidnapped Betsy? What if she was an unwitting accessory to a crime? What if he wasn't a doctor at all but was a patient--probably from the psycho ward--and had snatched Betsy? Things like that happened all the time. He could even have stolen the phone bill to give his story credence.

She had to call the police. She picked up the phone on her bedside table then set it down again. It wasn't connected yet. Maybe tomorrow, the telephone company had said, and maybe not until next week. The man hadn't looked like a criminal, had he? she asked herself. That was, if kidnappers had a certain kind of look. If they did, his didn't qualify.

Her mind had absorbed his appearance like a photographic plate, she now realized. In addition to being tall, he was broad in the shoulders, narrow in the waist and hips, and powerful in the legs. And good-looking. Not classically handsome as Kirk had been, but there was something about him that appealed to her on a very personal level, which was odd, because since Kirk, she hadn't felt attracted to anyone. She hadn't wanted to. What had happened with Kirk had been too painful to risk repeating. But still, she couldn't get Dr. Bradshaw's face out of her mind. Or the memory of his hard, tanned body. He was quite different from Kirk. Could that be what made him so attractive to her? She hoped he'd come back soon.

Oh, cut it out, Elaina! Even if he was attractive to her, that didn't mean he was attracted by her! Why, then couldn't she stop thinking about him, about his laughing green eyes? Along with that laughter there had been a deep intelligence in his eyes, as if he were examining everything around him, sorting the input through a sharp mind, and assessing what he saw. He looked like a man she would enjoy talking to. A man who would have a lot of interesting things to say. Did she really want to call the police on a man who had such intelligent eyes? No, she didn't. Not right away, at any rate. The best thing to do was wait a while. He had said he'd be back. And it wasn't as though she didn't know who he was. After all, she had his address and his telephone number, not to mention his telephone bill. Also, the baby was sleeping so soundly it would be a shame to disturb her by having police officers and social workers come storming in here just because she had reported Brent Bradshaw for abandoning Betsy when she wasn't at all sure that was what he done.

"Haven't they phoned you?" he had asked. That meant someone should have done so, likely would have done so, except her phone wasn't connected. So someone had given Brent Bradshaw her name, but not her address. He'd said it had taken him hours to track her down. With her recent move the address listed in the telephone book was wrong.

She stretched out on the bed beside Betsy, kicking off her shoes and wiggling her toes. She undid her hair and let it fall loose and comfortable. She cuddled the baby close so she wouldn't roll over in her sleep and fall off the bed. The warmth of that little body curled next to her, the sweet baby scent of Betsy, and the sound of the child's soft breathing, combined with Harrison's purring were soporific. Elaina drifted into a sleep as deep as the baby's, not even moving until the scream of her doorbell jarred her awake. Feeling disoriented, she wondered why the room was so dark. Betsy stirred, sat up and beamed at Elaina.

"You stay put," she admonished the baby. "That's probably your doctor come to get you." She snatched open the door in response to the third impatient screech of the bell and staggered back as something made of wooden bars fell in on her. She grabbed it and lowered it to the floor, then gaped at the man standing in the doorway.

He had a folded mass of chrome and plastic under one arm, and looked as if the burden might pull him down any minute. "That's the crib," he said, nodding to the object she'd laid on the floor. He gave it a shove with one foot, moving it so he could step inside with his load and shut the door.

Elaina stared him. His green eyes were no longer merry. His face was gray with fatigue. His mouth drooped and his shoulders hung wearily. He returned her stare somberly. Suddenly, ridiculously, she wanted to cradle him close as she had done with Betsy. She wanted to rock him in her arms and tell him to go to sleep. He really, really needed to go to sleep, she thought. Shocked, almost frightened by the intensity of her feelings, she stepped back from him, lifting a hand as if to ward him off. He didn't try to come any closer; though, even when the words, "What's wrong?" were dragged from her by his look of utter desolation.

He gazed at her as if she could make thing better, as if she were some kind of miracle worker and he was desperately in need of a bit of magic. "I'm not sure she's going to make it," he whispered. shaking his head. He set down the object he was carrying then strode back out the door. He didn't leap off the porch this time, but plodded down the three steps with fine precision, as if the placement of his feet required great care lest they be set wrong and trip him up. He was wearing gray slacks now, and a long-sleeved yellow shirt with a tie loose around his neck and the top two buttons undone.

In the light from the street lamp Elaina watched him slide open the door of the van and drag out a stroller with a plastic bag and a teddy bear in it. He carried the stroller to the porch and gave it a shove so it rolled toward her. She stopped it with one foot and started to ask what was going on, but he was trudging away again. He leaned into the van, then backed out, dragging something with him. He swung it up and placed it flat on top of his head, arms supporting it on either side. It was a mattress, she realized. A crib mattress, and she knew without asking what was going on. Brent Bradshaw was moving Betsy in.

"Oh no, you're not!"

"Huh?" He kept on coming, backing her right into the house. He leaned the mattress on the wall, then leaned himself on it, closing his eyes. She thought he might fall asleep standing there and grabbed his arm to give him a shake. His arm was as hard as steel, and too big for her to reach around even with her long, slender fingers. His skin was warm over the ropy muscles. Something twinged inside her, a deep elemental response that jolted her.

As if he had felt the same jolt, he opened his eyes. Looking down at her, he lifted his free hand and covered hers. For endless moments they stood there with sensations pulsing between them, her fingers sandwiched between his hand and his arm, her gaze locked with his. Silent, indecipherable messages darted from him to her and back again until she was dizzy with confusion unlike any she had ever experienced.

She sucked in a deep, steadying breath and managed to pull her gaze and hand away. "Come on," she said. "Get this stuff out of my house! You can't do this to me! There's been some crazy mistake. I don't know anything about--"

There was a dull thud from the direction of her bedroom, a moment's silence, then an outraged howl. The latter had the effect of snapping Brent Bradshaw out of his standing doze and stopping Elaina's flow of words. Both leaped toward the noise.

Elaina got there first. Betsy was sitting on the carpet near the bedside, head back, mouth open, bellowing, and Harrison was making circles around her, his tall puffed straight out, his ears down, his back arched. He gave Elaina a golden glare as she approached the screaming baby and spat at her when she lifted the child and cuddled her close.

"Harrison!" she gasped. "What's got into you? It wasn't my fault she fell off the bed! I told her to stay put."

She chose to ignore Dr. Bradshaw's sarcastic repetition of her words. "'Told her to stay put'? An eleven-month-old kid and she 'told her to stay put?'"

To the baby, she crooned, "There, there. Don't cry. Let me see if you're hurt." She laid the baby on the bed and began running her hands over her arms and legs.

"What are you doing?" Bradshaw asked.

"Checking for broken bones." Surely that was obvious, she thought, as well as being the obvious thing to do. The child had fallen, for heaven's sake. It was just as she'd suspected: He was an imposter. Any doctor would know about checking for broken bones!

"I see," he said. She wasn't sure he did. "What," he asked, "does a broken bone feel like?"

Some doctor! She had no idea, but was sure if she felt one, some miracle would occur and she'd recognize it. "Like--like a broken bone, of course."

"And what happens if you find one?" There was a definite thread of amusement running through his voice. Elaina was not accustomed to being laughed at. She stopped checking and glared at him, thinking quickly. "I'd call an ambulance." Sure, Elaina. With no phone you call an ambulance. At least Bradshaw didn't know she didn't have a phone. She took some comfort from that.

For want of something better to do, she resumed checking Betsy's extremities. Betsy continued to yell. Elaina found nothing that might be a broken bone.

"All right, Betsy," she said briskly, speaking to the child as her mother would have spoken to her under the same circumstances. "That's enough. Get hold of yourself."

Behind her, she heard a distinct snicker and scowled over her shoulder at him. He was standing near the foot of her bed, taking up far more space than seemed his rightful share. This was a big room, with a big bed, but with him in the room the king-size bed didn't look all that big anymore. When he crowded right in beside her and sat down on the edge of the mattress, Betsy rolled toward him. So did Elaina. Swiftly, she caught herself before she swayed against his shoulder. He lifted Betsy high above his head and made a raspberry that shut off her bellows as magically as stuffing a bottle into her mouth had.

"Wait! Don't do that!" Elaina cried in alarm. "What if she has a spinal injury?"

"She doesn't," he said confidently. "And if she did, you'd have crippled her for life the way you scooped her up off the floor. Don't worry, babies bend easy. They don't, as a rule, break." He tucked Betsy in the crook of his arm, and swung himself to his feet, carrying her with him. "Feelin' better, Bitsy-Bet?" He buried his face in her neck and blew, making a weird noise that she found hilarious. At least while it was going on. As soon as he quit, she began to cry again, this time a shrill, plaintive sound that cut right into Elaina's heart.

"Oh, she is hurt! She's in terrible pain," Elaina said, not far from tears herself.

"She's hungry." Bradshaw said with great authority. When Elaina didn't move, only covered her ears to block out the increasing screams, he lifted a brow. "I said, she's hungry. Warm up some food, why don't you? She's starving. Look at her. Every time she opens her mouth, she squirts. That's her salivary glands in action. Means she needs food, so feed her, woman."