The Littlest Stowaway Read online

  “I’m going to crush you, Lockhart.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Copyright

  “I’m going to crush you, Lockhart.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” Steve replied with a sexy grin. “Who knows? I might even enjoy—” His voice died when he opened the door and realized there was something in the cockpit of his plane.

  Casey flushed. “If you think... What’s that?”

  “It looks like...a baby,” Steve answered lamely, studying the tiny sleeping occupant of the molded plastic infant carrier resting on his seat.

  Casey gasped. “Oh my God, Steve. It’s a baby!”

  “That’s what I said.”

  “But whose is it? How did it get here?”

  Steve looked quickly around the hangar, but he and Casey were alone—a situation he would have delighted in under different circumstances. “I don’t know.” He shook his head. “It’s too hot to leave the baby out here. We better get it inside:’

  As he tentatively lifted the carrier out of the plane’s cockpit, something fluttered to the ground. Casey bent to pick it up, then showed it to Steve.

  He groaned. The note read “Please take care of Annie.”

  Dear Reader,

  One of the most common questions readers ask me is, “Where do you get your ideas?” Well, in this case, I can’t take all the credit. The inspiration for this particular story came from my own eldest “baby,” Courtney. I was struggling to come up with a story line that fit the BACHELORS & BABIES concept, when Courtney took pity on me. She said, “What if your hero finds a baby on an airplane?” and The Littlest Stowaway evolved from that suggestion. She even contributed to the title!

  Even though Courtney is a student at the University of Arkansas with the goal of attending medical school, she will always be my “baby”—and one of my most loyal fans. My husband and I consider Courtney, as well as our other extraordinary children, sixteen-year-old Kerry and ten-year-old David, our greatest blessings. The joy my kids have brought me is a large part of the reason children so often appear in the stories I write.

  I hope that some of that joy will rub off as you read about a very little girl named Annie....

  Gina Wilkins

  P.S. It looks like the South is rising again.... Don’t miss the secrets, the scandals and the seductions when I revisit the SOUTHERN SCANDALS miniseries—and those wild McBrides—next year....

  Gina Wilkins

  THE LITTLEST STOWAWAY

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM• ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN • MADRID

  PRAGUE • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  For Courtney and John,

  who are always willing to brainstorm.

  Love you both.

  1

  “LOCKHART! I WANT to talk to you.”

  Steven Lockhart grimaced, but didn’t slow down as he strode through the parking lot from his car toward his office. Maybe if he pretended he didn’t hear her, she would go away.

  No such luck. “Darn it, Lockhart, don’t ignore me,” she called after him. “I have some things to say to you.”

  He was aware that they had attracted attention—and amusement—from others headed toward their cars after work on this late afternoon in September. The standing feud between Casey Jansen and him was well-known—and widely appreciated—at the small, regional Arkansas airport in which their respective businesses were located. Usually, Steve enjoyed the sparring, if for no other reason than it gave him an excuse to spend time with Casey. But today, he was really in a hurry. No time for fun.

  He ducked into the lobby of Lockhart Air and hurried toward his private office. “Tell her I’m not here,” he told his impossible-to-ruffle assistant as he rushed past her into his inner sanctum, locking the door behind him. Even as he picked up the phone on his desk and dialed the number of his newest and potentially-most-lucrative customer, he could hear Casey’s raised voice through the door.

  “What do you mean, he’s not here? I saw him come in...”

  Steve was grinning when he turned his full attention to business.

  Half an hour later, he poked his head cautiously out of his office. “Is she gone?”

  Madelyn, his office manager and personal assistant, looked up from her work with her usual serene smile. “She’s gone. Someone paged her and she stormed out. But I suspect she’ll be back.”

  Of course she will. Steve would be seriously disappointed if she didn’t return. In fact, then he would have to find an excuse to go looking for her. The fierce business rivalry between them hadn’t stopped Steve from falling head over heels for Casey Jansen, or from making plans to do something about it as soon as the time was right But he’d like to avoid her until he had time to really enjoy the encounter.

  Putting his fiery competitor out of his mind, he stepped through the doorway to lean comfortably against Madelyn’s desk. “Any calls while I was out?”

  Brushing her straight hair away from her broad, pleasant face, his office manager handed him a stack of yellow message slips. “Nothing you can’t handle tomorrow.”

  “Good. I’m flying to Memphis this evening to talk to a guy about a used Beechcraft he’s got for sale. If I can get him to come down a few thousand, we might just have ourselves another plane for our fleet.” He said the last word a bit ironically, since Lockhart Air’s “fleet” consisted of only three planes.

  Madelyn nodded. “Sounds good. Don’t bankrupt us.”

  Steve chuckled, accepting her pragmatic warning the way she’d intended. He knew how precarious their financial situation was. New businesses often failed in the first year or two of operation, and Steve was still treading that dangerous line with his fledgling air charter service. Single, thirty-five-year-old Madelyn kept the books for his company, and she guarded the money as if it were her own. Steve liked it that way, being somewhat bookkeeping-challenged, himself.

  Madelyn was short and broad and no-nonsense, intimidating to some people, but she had the kindest heart and most even disposition of anyone Steve knew. He had begun to think of her almost as a sister during the two years they’d worked together, and he respected her competence, her intelligence, and her deeply-buried dry humor.

  “Has B.J. checked in yet?” he asked her.

  Madelyn wrinkled her nose. “No. He’s giving a lesson to Mrs. Hood.”

  Steve groaned sympathetically. Avis Hood had been taking flying lessons for almost a year now and was still the scariest student pilot in all of central Arkansas. B.J. had the patience of a saint to keep working with her, even though others might have already tried to convince her she should keep her dainty feet firmly planted on solid ground. Fortunately, she enjoyed the lessons and was willing to pay well for the service, so Steve hoped B.J.’s patience didn’t run out too soon. Avis’s cash would come in handy if they bought that fourth plane.

  An overflowing wastebasket beside Madelyn’s desk caught his eye. “Still no word from Janice?”

  His office manager’s usually serene face creased with a frown. “Nothing. I’m very worried about her.”

  Steve shared her concern. “I’m worried, too,” he admitted. “But I don’t know what else to do.”

  The young woman who had cleaned their offices every afternoon for the past six months hadn’t been seen
since Friday evening. Janice was in her early twenties, single, and claimed to have no family. She was also at least eight months pregnant.

  When Janice hadn’t shown up Monday, they had tried calling her, but there’d been no answer at the only number she’d provided them. Since she had always been completely reliable, calling if she was running even a few minutes later than usual, Steve had been worried enough by Tuesday to drive to the tiny, run-down trailer park in which Janice lived.

  There’d been no answer when he’d knocked on her door, and he’d looked in every window, finding no sign of anyone in the dilapidated mobile home. The trailer park manager had informed him that Janice’s rent was paid through the end of the month, but he hadn’t seen her lately. Not that he saw her often, he’d added, remarking that Janice spent a lot of time alone in her trailer, never received visitors and always paid her rent on time. He wished all his tenants were so little trouble, he’d added, lazily scratching his sagging belly.

  And now it was Friday again, and there hadn’t been a word from Janice. Madelyn had been doing the basic cleaning, but Steve was worried about more than the dust collecting on the furniture.

  “I should have insisted she give us an emergency number,” Steve grumbled. “Surely there’s someone who knows or cares where she is.”

  Before Madelyn could reply, a familiar voice spoke from the doorway. “There you are. Don’t even try to run away from me this time, Lockhart.”

  His mouth quirking into a wry smile, Steve turned to face Casey Jansen. As always, the sight of her filled him with both pleasure and bemusement. She was dressed professionally, as usual, looking as if she’d just stepped out of a meeting in her blue sheath dress with sensible navy pumps. There was no question that she was a striking woman, her heart-shaped face framed by light brown hair that fell to the middle of her back, her eyes a dark, smoky blue, her mouth full and soft.

  Steve had developed a near obsession with that pouty mouth of hers; he was growing increasingly impatient to find out exactly how it tasted. Even though she would probably knock him senseless if he tried. He was well aware that she wasn’t ready to even acknowledge the simmering attraction he’d sensed between them from the first time they’d met—much less to do anything about it

  He wasn’t exactly her favorite person, but at least he suspected she thought of him often. Just as he thought of her during most of his waking moments—and all too many of his sleeping ones too, lately. She’d played a prominent part in more than a few recent uncomfortable dreams.

  Though he knew what she wanted to talk to him about, he sidetracked her with a question of his own. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard from Janice?”

  Casey blinked. “Janice?”

  “You know, the woman who cleans your offices every evening, right after she does mine?”

  “Yes, I know who she is. I think it’s obvious that she quit.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “She gave you notice?”

  “No, but neither did the last one.”

  “The last one got busted for growing the wrong kind of ‘herbs’ in her kitchen garden,” Steve reminded Casey dryly. “Madelyn and I are worried that Janice is in trouble. She’s been acting very nervous lately, and it isn’t like her not to call. No one has seen her at her trailer all week.”

  “She must have gone back to her family. Or her baby’s father,” Casey suggested. “I wondered how much longer she would be able to work. I asked her last week if her doctor approved of her doing manual labor so late in her pregnancy, but she said he told her she could work as long as it was comfortable for her.” She shrugged. “I guess it stopped being comfortable.”

  Steve frowned at her. He knew Casey’s management techniques were different from his own—he was a people person, she was into bottom-line numbers—but he’d never believed her to be truly cold. “You’re not at all concerned about her?”

  Her expression changed, letting him see the genuine worry she’d been trying to hide behind her brusque words. “I’ve been concerned about her since I found out she was twenty-two, alone, unmarried and pregnant,” she admitted. “But every time I asked if I could help her, she made it very clear it was none of my business. I would say she has sent the same message to all of us by quitting without a call. As much as I hated to do it, I’ve instructed my secretary to call a janitorial service to clean our offices this weekend, and then we’re going to hire someone new to start next week. I suggest you do the same.”

  “Janice wouldn’t just quit without calling,” Madelyn said stubbornly. “She’ll be back when she can.”

  “Yet our trash cans are filling up and our bathrooms need scrubbing. We can’t just put everything on hold until she decides to return,” Casey retorted, running a slender hand through her hair in a gesture that struck Steve as rather weary. He’d often accused her of working too hard to keep the business she had recently inherited more successful than his. His concern for her hadn’t softened her, of course; she’d implied that he wanted her to slow down so he could make even more headway in their professional competition.

  She didn’t give him an inch. Casey was fiery, stubborn, prickly and a bit paranoid when it came to him. And he was certifiably crazy about her. When the time was right, he reminded himself, he would try to convince her of that

  In the meantime, he thought with a glance at his watch, he had business to attend to. “I’ve got to be on my way. Madelyn, go home. It’s nearly six. You’ve put in enough hours today. I’ll see you Monday. If you hear from Janice, tell her I’ll help her any way I can. Casey, it was a pleasure to see you, as always.”

  Her eyes widened. “Now, wait a minute. We aren’t through. I need to talk to you about...damn it, Lockhart, don’t you dare walk away from me again.”

  He was already halfway out the side door on his way to the plane he’d left prepped. “Sorry, darlin’, but I’ve got an appointment Maybe we can talk next week.”

  She was on his heels as he stepped into the slowly cooling early-evening air. The heat from the day had built up in the asphalt and now radiated upward through the soles of the boots he wore with his jeans and cotton shirt. He was glad he’d left the plane in the fan-cooled hangar rather than out on the tarmac, where the cockpit would be as hot as Hades by now.

  A hand clutched his arm. “I hate it when you ignore me this way,” Casey complained.

  He grinned and patted her hand with his. “I know you do, Casey, darlin’. But you’ve got to admit it gives you a great excuse to chase after me.”

  She jerked her hand from his, her eyes flashing blue fire. “In your dreams.”

  “Frequently,” he agreed, thinking of one particular dream involving the two of them and a tropical island...

  She eyed him uncertainly, looking disconcerted as she always did when he hinted at his attraction to her. He wanted to think she even looked a bit tempted to return his flirting occasionally—not that she had ever allowed herself to do so. Yet.

  And then she shook her head, obviously assuming he was merely taunting her again. “I want to know what you did to steal George McNalley from me,” she snapped, getting to the subject he’d known was on her mind. “He’s been a satisfied JCS customer for five years. And now I find that he’s suddenly working with you, instead. What did you tell him? What promises did you make him?”

  Moving into the hangar with Casey right behind him, Steve put a hand on his airplane, lovingly caressing the gleaming white wing. He couldn’t help looking forward to a peaceful, solitary flight. “I promised him dependable, reliable service at an excellent price.”

  “I’ve been giving him that,” she protested.

  “Face it, Casey. I underbid you. And besides,” he added a bit smugly, “he likes me.”

  She made a sound that was somewhere between a growl and an oath. “You pulled your good-ol’-boy routine on him, didn’t you? Did you make him believe a man is more qualified to run a charter service than a woman? He’s one of the customers who worried that I wouldn�
�t be able to keep the business running after my father died, isn’t he? Did you play on that archaic sexism?”

  Steve moved his hand to the door handle of his plane. “Casey, I think you are entirely qualified to run Jansen Charter Service. You’ve been doing so quite efficiently for a year now. You’re a damned tough competitor—but so am I. As far as business is concerned, you being a woman makes no difference to me at all. I won’t underestimate you because of it, and I won’t give you any breaks because of it. I’m going to keep offering outstanding service at bargain prices and if that cuts into your business—well, that’s life.”

  After a momentary pause, she muttered, “I’m going to crush you, Lockhart.”

  “You’re welcome to try,” he replied equably. “Just as you’ve been trying for the past year. But I have no more intention of being crushed now than I did when you started. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have to...”

  His voice died when he opened the door and realized there was someone sitting in the pilot’s seat of his plane.

  “If you think I... What’s that?” Casey’s attention, like his, had been abruptly captured.

  “It looks like...a baby,” Steve said lamely, studying the tiny, sleeping occupant of the molded plastic infant carrier resting on his seat. A baby that was so small, so still, he wondered for a moment if it was a doll.

  And then it moved, its little mouth puckering in apparent discontent

  Casey gasped. “Oh, my God, Steve. It’s a baby!”

  He sent her an exasperated look. “That’s what I said.”

  “Whose is it? How did it get here?”

  He looked quickly around the hangar, but he and Casey were alone. Even Ralph, his mechanic, had left for the day. Whoever had left the baby in the plane had to have done so within the past half hour to avoid being seen. “I don’t know.”