A Baby on His Doorstep
Автор
Leigh Riker
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CHAPTER ONE
ONE MORNING, a week after New Year’s, Maxwell Crane found a surprise on his porch.
He’d been getting ready for work when he heard a pair of resounding thumps from outside before someone rang his bell, then a car drove off. Max had put on his boots and opened the door. He hadn’t ordered anything from Amazon—his go-to retailer—and saw no carton with the company’s signature logo. Max had never been first in line at some big-box store on Black Friday either, fighting over bargains, and in small-town Barren, Kansas, there wasn’t any such place. Besides, he’d been, as he was every season, one of those Christmas Eve shoppers. He was glad to have the holidays behind him.
Puzzled, he stared down at the basket at his feet then scanned the area. On Cattle Track Lane in December many of the houses had sported blow-up snowmen and reindeer on their lawns. Blinking lights had outlined roofs, and even now a few decorated trees still twinkled in windows, but in the steadily falling snow he didn’t see a single car on the quiet side street. White had already blanketed the lone set of tire tracks. He didn’t see any fresh footprints.
Who had left him a present? A late one, at that.
Max stamped his feet to keep warm. Many area ranchers, being land rich but cash poor, sometimes traded in kind for his veterinary services. A smoked ham, or a dozen eggs. They tended to drop off presents at his office, though.
Was it Miss McGillicuddy, who taught English at Barren High, and often supplied him with home-baked cookies? For his thirty-fifth birthday, she’d gone overboard and baked him a massive cake with sparklers on top. It had taken him days to finish it.
But she’d left town a month ago to spend the holidays with her family. Her elderly Brittany spaniel had been boarded at Max’s clinic and she would pick him up tomorrow after she reached home.
The basket, covered with a blanket, made a sudden mewling sound.
Max startled. Kittens?
But again, why be surprised? He was always getting live gifts from people who thought surely, as a veterinarian, he had room in his heart for a pet of his own.
Max had learned the hard way that matters of the heart were not for him, and that included animals living in his home. After sharing the house with his sister and her dog, he was now, blessedly, alone again—or soon would be. From inside, he heard Rembrandt whine. Max had agreed to pet sit today while Sophie and her husband, Gabe—Max’s best friend—moved into their new home at last. He hoped the old border collie, a rescue that had spent most of his life outdoors, didn’t leave another treat for Max on the living room carpet. Remi was mostly house-trained by now but...
The noise repeated then a third time.
Max shivered. He’d only been outside a minute or two without his coat, but it was freezing. Who else, then, had left him a gift? After her cat had kittens, Mrs. Higley had tried to leave an adorable pair at the clinic, but Max had caught her sneaking back to her car. He’d placed the kittens instead with another of his clients.
This time the noise was more of a snuffle, then a whimper. The basket began to wriggle.
Max spent his days taking care of animals, large and small, and only last night he’d helped to deliver a dozen goldendoodle puppies that would soon need homes. Hadn’t he made himself clear that he wasn’t looking for a pet? His love for animals stopped at his clinic’s door. He’d even resorted to putting up a sign in his waiting room. No, I do not want a companion. Thanks, the doc.
Because pets weren’t the only thing. Half the women in town were trying to fix him up with someone.
“Not going to happen,” he muttered. Before last March any gift might have come from Averill, yet their relationship, after much back-and-forth, had finally ended then. He’d been knitting himself together like an old sweater full of holes ever since. And—the most important part—the rest of his heart. The townspeople were wasting their time. Max would never fall for another—any—woman.
If he’d briefly thought about marriage once, a family of his own...
But his lone New Year’s resolution had been to avoid any further entanglement, a promise to himself that he meant to keep.
The basket moved again. Max stuck out a foot to stop it from tipping over and the blanket slipped to expose—
What seemed to be a newborn baby! Unable to believe what he was seeing, he reeled back. This was no sweet kitten or puppy from a well-intentioned yet misguided client. Someone had made a serious blunder.
Wearing a tiny snowsuit, he/she blinked up at him with milky-blue eyes. Probably all it could see this soon were light or blurry shapes. Despite his vow not to get involved, even briefly, Max hunkered down to pluck a note from the folds of the pink blanket.
Obviously, this “gift” had been left at the wrong address. Okay, read the message, genius. Then call...whom? He could phone Travis Blake, the town’s latest sheriff. But who would leave a baby on his snowy front porch—anyone’s porch—then run? His truck was still in the drive and whoever it was had rung the bell, but he didn’t want to think what could have happened if he hadn’t been home. What if he’d left early for work?
The callousness on someone’s part made his blood boil.
Then suddenly, without reading a word of the note, he knew. The calculations, the months, flipped through his head like the calendar pages in an old movie, and his stomach dropped. This was far more personal, the handwriting all too familiar, and Max’s battered heart turned over. He didn’t need the missing signature now.
Dear Max. I can’t take care of her. Too much going on right now. She’s yours.
