The baby looked up at Megan and started howling.

Megan jiggled the baby. “This kid’s loud. How do I get it to stop?”

Pat stood motionless, the spoon still in his hand. “Did she say she was leaving the baby with us? Oh, hell!”

He ran out to the sidewalk, looked up and down, jogged half a block down the street, but he couldn’t find the girl. He returned to the house and stared in astonishment at Megan, crying with the baby. “Good Lord, what’s the matter?”

“I can’t get it to stop crying. Just look at the poor little thing. It’s all red.”

He took the child from her and unwrapped it, slung the baby under his arm, and went back to stirring his applesauce.

“That was Tilly Coogan,” he said. “And this is Tim. One of my very first patients.”

“Are you related?”’

“Nope.”

“Are you… um, friends?”

“Nope.”

“Why did she give you her baby?”

Pat put a lid on the pot of applesauce and whistled “Taps.”

“I guess she thought I’d take good care of him.”

“You?The man who burns his applesauce and neglects his rabbit?”

“Yup. I’m a little disorganized, but I’m lovable.”

It was true, Megan had to admit, he was lovable. She could hardly keep from squeezing him. She guessed he must stand about six feet, but he didn’t look that tall. He had the wide shoulders, slim hips, and hard – muscled arms of an athlete, yet he didn’t look like a jock. He looked average. The casually sexy, slightly sloppy version of the boy next door, wearing battered sneakers and threadbare jeans and a gray sweat shirt with the sleeves cut short. And he looked great. He could probably wear his cannibalized sweat shirt to a black – tie dinner and pull it off. Still, pediatrician or not, she wouldn’t trust him with a baby.

“What about Tim’s father?” she asked.

“No father. Tilly Coogan hasn’t had an easy time of it. She’s an eighteen – year – old unemployed waitress living in an efficiency apartment over a garage, and I suspect she’s been evicted.”