Expecting the Boss’s Baby by Christine Rimmer Page A

notebook and marked the coordinates Dax had given her.
    She learned that they were in the Chiapan wilderness, miles and miles north of San Cristóbal. She stared at the small dot she’d made on the map for a long time, as if just by looking at it, she could figure out how to get them out of here.
    No magic realization as to escape came to her. She yawned and leaned her head against the seat and thought wearily that at last the adrenaline from all this excitement was wearing off. Even shaky, scared crash victims get tired eventually.
    She got up and changed the cold pack on Dax’s ankle again. He didn’t stir and seemed to be sleeping peacefully.
    Then, since she could think of nothing else that needed doing right that instant, she put the rear seat as far back as it would go and closed her eyes.
    Her sleep was fitful. She dreamed of a party in a big, rambling house. She roamed from room to room. Everyone was having a great time and she didn’t know anyone there.
    And then she started dreaming that she was at work, at Great Escapes. No one was there. The place was empty. But then she heard Dax. He was moaning, calling out, saying strange, garbled, things. Words she didn’t understand, nonsense syllables.
    In her dream, she looked for him. She called to him, but couldn’t find him.
    Slowly, she woke and realized where she was, lost in the Chiapan jungle somewhere, in a wrecked plane. And Dax was in the front seat, tossing around, moaning.
    It was dark out. She got the battery-run lantern fromthe box in back. Switching it on, she craned over the seats and Dax’s agitated form. She set the lantern on the floor in front. The powerful beam, focused on the ceiling, gave plenty of weirdly slanted, glaring light.
    She bent over Dax. He was moaning, tossing his head, scrunched down at a neck-breaking angle against the pilot-side door.
    He mumbled to himself, “No…tired…cold…hot…” And then a flood of nonsense words. He shivered, violently.
    And he was sweating—his face and chest were shiny wet. She was glad she’d wrapped the bandage around his head. If she’d settled for taping it on, so much sweat would likely have loosened it. She reached over the seat to try to ease him back up onto the pillows.
    The heat of his skin shocked her. He was burning up.

Chapter Six
    D ax was a little boy again. His mother was gone. She had been gone for a whole year now.
    She had “passed on,” his Nanny Ellen said. Jesus had taken her to be with the angels.
    Dax thought that was very mean of Jesus. The angels didn’t need a mother. Not like a little boy did. The angels were beautiful and they could fly. They wore white dresses and had long, gold hair.
    His father got angry when he heard what Nanny Ellen said about his mother going to the angels. His dad said Nanny shouldn’t fill the boy’s head with silly superstition—and then he got his briefcase and went to work.
    Dax’s dad was always working. Always gone. Dax had Nanny Ellen and he liked the stories Nanny told, about the angels, about the loaves and fish that werealways enough to feed the hungry people, no matter how many of them there were. He liked Nanny Ellen.
    But he liked his dad more. He loved his dad. Someday he would be all grown-up. He would go to work like his dad and his dad would talk to him because he would be a man, a man who worked, not a little boy who wanted his dad with him and missed his mother.
    There was a hand on his cheek, a gentle hand. The hand slipped around and cradled his head. A woman’s voice said, “Shh, now. It’s okay. You’re going to get better, Dax. Drink this…”
    He opened his eyes. Slowly, a woman’s face came into focus, a tired face, but a beautiful one. The woman had red hair and the bluest eyes.
    He thought that he wanted to kiss her, to touch the soft skin of her cheek. If only he weren’t so worn out.
    So weak.
    He