by Ivy Layne
Not today. Neither of us felt much like talking with the specter of Amy's death and her child's unknown fate hanging over our heads. An hour later, we were back, splitting up at the top of the stairs. Magnolia headed for her shower, and I headed for the shower in the guest room.
Stephanie was waiting for us, Rosalie in her carrier, when we got to the loft. The infant was sleeping again, this time in a pink cotton one-piece thing with a matching hat on her head, a pink blanket with brown teddy bears wrapped around her. If all she did was sleep, the baby thing wouldn't be too bad. Unfortunately, I'd heard enough about exhausted parents to know I knew absolutely nothing about what I was getting into.
Magnolia made more coffee when we got upstairs, and she pulled out a box of muffins I hadn't known were in the pantry. She hadn't baked them, but they were probably okay. I ate two, my eyes flicking between the sleeping Rosalie and my silent phone. Magnolia picked the cranberries out of her muffin but didn't eat it. Stephanie paced in front of the plate glass windows overlooking midtown, stopping once to ask, "Is it okay if I smoke?"
"No," Magnolia and I snapped back in unison. I knew jack-shit about taking care of kids, but I was pretty sure you weren't supposed to smoke in front of them. Shit. I just wanted to know what we were dealing with. At ten twenty-seven, my phone rang. A short conversation, impossibly short, considering the magnitude of the information communicated, and my entire life shifted on its axis.
I was a father. Rosalie was mine. I had a little girl.
How the fuck was I going to manage this?
I didn't say anything. Magnolia and Stephanie watched me with anxious eyes as I set my phone beside my empty coffee cup and left the room. I returned a moment later with a check in one hand and a sheaf of papers in the other. As I'd expected, Stephanie reached for the check first.
I raised it above her head and said, “Wait."
"She's yours, right? That's what they said, right?" Stephanie bounced on her toes and tried to grab the check from my hand.
"Calm the fuck down. Yes, that's what they said. You'll get your money, but you're going to have to sign some papers first."
"Fine, whatever," she said, her eyes glued to the check. "What do you want me to sign?"
I spread the papers across the island, showing them to her as I spoke. "We don't really need these considering the blood test proved I'm her father and Amy put me on the birth certificate, but assuming Amy didn't have a will—" I paused, and Stephanie shook her head. "Then this just verifies that as her next of kin, you agree with my having sole custody of Rosalie. If you decide you want to see her, I have no problem with that. You're her family. But by signing this, you relinquish the right to sue for custody in the future."
"Fine, that's fine." Stephanie picked up the pen and began to sign everywhere I indicated. I looked at Rosalie, still sleeping in her baby carrier, a little pink pacifier between her lips, and wondered how Stephanie could be so willing to ditch her niece and run. Oh, yeah, the check. The shit people would do for money.
Five minutes later, Stephanie was gone, a check in her pocket, without Rosalie.
So far, my daughter showed no signs of waking up anytime soon. I had the odd feeling that I'd been left with a grenade, and Stephanie had walked out the door with the pin. As long as Rosalie was sleeping, I had this under control. I could be quiet and not wake her up. But eventually, she was going to need something from me. Food, a clean diaper, something. Stephanie had left a diaper bag beside the carrier.
As quietly as I could, suddenly terrified to set off the ticking bomb that was my new daughter, I picked up the diaper bag and headed for the office, grabbing Magnolia on my way.
"What?" Magnolia asked, looking over her shoulder as if worried to leave the baby.
"She's fine as long as she sleeping, but we have to figure out what the hell we’re going to do with her,” I said in a hushed voice. “I’m assuming there's stuff we need in this bag, like what the hell she eats and what kind of diapers we're supposed to buy."
"Oh, good thinking." Magnolia sat at her desk and helped me unpack the bag. Then, as if my words were still sinking in, she sat up straight and dropped a plastic bottle next to a pile of papers. “What do you mean, we?" she demanded.
"Do you think I'm going to do this by myself?" I asked. Was she crazy?
"Vance," Magnolia protested, "I'm not a nanny. I don't know anything about kids. How am I supposed to help you?"
"I'm not asking you to be her nanny," I said, all of a sudden terrified Magnolia might walk out and leave me alone with Rosalie. "I know that's not your job. I'm asking as your friend, please fucking help me. Please. At least until I get on my feet with this. I can’t do this by myself."
"What do you expect me to do?" she asked, her eyebrows knit together in confusion. I shrugged helplessly.
"Just help me. From now on, you're working twenty-four seven. I'll double your salary. I'll give you whatever you want. Just . . . just stay with us until we get this figured out. Please."
"You want me to move in with you? And Rosalie?" Magnolia looked doubtful. I thought about it. My loft was not ideal for a baby. The space was huge, but I'd only designed it with two bedrooms, mine and the one we were currently using as an office. I couldn't ask Magnolia to work twenty-four seven and then sleep on the couch. Sadly, she wouldn't be sleeping with me. Now was not the time to shake up our relationship.
"No," I said, the answer suddenly clear. "We’ll move in with you. You've got plenty of room, and the yard is much better for Scout."
I could see her thinking, running over the options and evaluating the risks. I was asking a lot. I knew that, but I was desperate. I was not ready to be a father. I'd only gotten my own shit together in the last year. But it didn't look like I had a choice. Rosalie and I were stuck with each other, and I knew in my gut that if Magnolia was with us, everything would be okay.
Finally, she said, "You guys can move in with me, and we can go back and forth to the loft during the day. You do realize that means we'll have to get double of almost everything, right? Two cribs, two changing tables, two of all the stuff we don't even know we need yet."
I grinned in relief. "Who cares? I'm loaded. We’ve got a lot of problems right now, but money isn't one of them."
"We need a list," Magnolia said. She pulled over a notebook and grabbed a pen. At the top, she wrote Crib x2. After that, she wrote Formula, Monitor, Diapers. "What kind of diapers are in that bag?" she asked.
I finished unpacking the bag onto the desk and looked at the diapers. They had cartoon characters on them and the number two. Magnolia wrote it down.
"I have no idea what else we need," she said. "Did Stephanie leave clothes?"
"There's one change of clothes in this bag," I said. "That's it. We have a plastic bottle, one change of clothes, a half-empty package of wipes, a can of formula, four diapers, some dirty rags, and a baby." I hung my head and scrubbed my fingers through my hair. "Fuck. We really have no fucking clue what we're doing. How could she leave Rosalie with us when she knows we have no idea what we’re doing? We don't even have a car seat," I said in a near shout.
"Shh," Magnolia said. "Don't wake her up. The thing she's in is a car seat, I think. The bottom part straps into the car. That's why it looks bigger today than it did yesterday. But we’re going to have to figure out how to get it in the car. I don't even know where the store is to buy all the baby stuff."
She got up and left the room. A minute later, she was back with her phone in hand. "Okay, I found the baby store, and the directions for installing the car seat thing are on the side of the base. We can probably figure that out, but we’re going to end up waking Rosalie up."
She looked terrified at the thought. I was pretty sure the expression on her face was a mirror of my own. Sleeping baby, no problem. I could handle Rosalie when she was asleep, could marvel over her rosebud mouth and soft cheeks. That didn’t mean I was ready to face my daughter when her eyes were open.
CHAPTER NINE<
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MAGNOLIA
* * *
We woke up Rosalie when we tried to put the car seat in the back of the Range Rover. She screamed for a solid five minutes while we drove around trying to find the big box store packed to the rafters with baby stuff. I'd probably passed it a thousand times and never even noticed it was there. I had a feeling I'd be visiting it often.
By the time we got Rosalie back out of the car, her carrier strapped into a shopping cart made to hold it, we both felt like bumbling idiots. A family of five passed us in the parking lot, their infant twins cozily arranged in their shopping cart with a toddler walking beside them, all smiling and laughing as if they hadn't a care in the world. Clearly, they'd figured this out.
"She's screaming," Vance said, watching Rosalie, his vivid blue eyes a little panicked. "What are we supposed to do?"
I looked down at Vance's daughter, her sweet little face bright red, eyes squeezed shut, rosebud mouth wide open and screeching her rage at the world. Or, possibly, rage at her incompetent caretakers. What Vance and I knew about babies wouldn't fill a postcard, and Stephanie had taken off the second she had her check in hand.
"Okay so she's not tired," I said, basing that assumption on the hours she'd napped. "So I'd guess that leaves hungry or she needs a diaper change."
I eyed Rosalie doubtfully, hoping it was option number one. I'd never changed a diaper in my entire life, and I wasn't quite ready to start. Not in a parking lot. Vance opened the back of the Range Rover and set the baby carrier inside, the diaper bag beside it.
Fortunately, Stephanie had left an already mixed bottle of formula in the bag, along with a canister of the weird smelling powder she'd used to mix it up. She'd mentioned that Amy had been nursing, and the formula was a new addition to Rosalie's life. She also mentioned that it was causing some stomach distress. I did not want to know what that meant. I had a bad feeling stomach distress in a three-month-old was not good.
For a guy who didn't know what he was doing, Vance figured out the bottle pretty quickly. He got the seal off and the nipple screwed on, handing it to me to hold while he carefully unbuckled Rosalie and picked her up for the first time. His eyes soft with wonder, Vance tucked her into his arm like a football, cradling her against his chest, her head propped up on his bicep, and held his other hand out for the bottle. Wordless, I handed it to him.
As if he'd been doing it forever, he popped the nipple into her screaming mouth. At the first touch, she tried to turn her face away, too furious to realize what was going on. Vance gave the bottle a little shake, and a drop of formula hit Rosie's tongue. That was all it took. Her mouth closed around it, and she began to suck with a vigor that was both reassuring and alarming.
"Hey, there," Vance said as his daughter's eyes focused on his face. "You were just hungry. It's okay, Rosie. I get cranky when I'm hungry too."
There was a good chance my ovaries were about to explode. Vance was hot enough on his own. He would've been hot wearing a trash bag. In faded jeans, a T-shirt stretched tight around his biceps, and Rosalie's little baby head resting against the dark lines of his tattoos, he was too much. When you added in the look on his face, he brought tears to my eyes—tears and a raging case of panty-melting lust.
This was going to be a nightmare.
Vance was even more off-limits than ever. Since the day we'd met, up until a month before, I'd been engaged. Vance had been eye candy, then a close friend, and always my employer. He was not a romantic prospect. Ever. Not even now that I was single. The kiss I refused to discuss was proof enough that I was vulnerable to him. It didn't matter how swoon-worthy he was.
I tore my eyes away from the sight of Vance adoring his daughter and rummaged through the diaper bag, pulling out a plastic lined pad, a package of baby wipes, and a diaper. I had no idea when Stephanie had last changed Rosalie, but I knew we hadn't dared to see what was underneath her pink onesie.
Rosalie drained the bottle, and Vance tried to burp her by leaning her against his shoulder and patting her back. Nothing happened. Hmm. We could figure out burping later. First, we had to get her changed. Together, we lay her on the changing pad and confronted the dreaded diaper.
I don't want to talk about it. Let's just say that Rosie was capable of creating a mess that smelled like it had died a week ago. Yuck. It's safe to say we used way too many baby wipes and complained excessively. I found a diaper disposal bag, sealed away the toxic waste bomb, and threw it out on our way into the store.
By that time, Rosie was fussing again, and we had no clue what to do about it. She'd been fed, she'd been changed, and she wasn't tired. I was out of options, and so was Vance.
We pushed the cart down the aisles of the store, trying to ignore Rosie screaming inside her carrier. We had no idea exactly what we needed. Vance's answer to that problem was to buy everything. I mean everything. A nursing pillow—to hold her on while we bottle-fed her—and bottles, nipples, formula, diaper cream, diapers, wipes, a baby bathtub, baby bath gel, and lotion. We pretty much cleaned out the first-aid aisle, Rosalie wailing all the while. That was only the first third of the store.
By the time we hit the back of the store, I'd gone in search of a second cart. I returned to find Vance standing in front of the baby carriers. Was he going to wear the baby? He answered that question pretty quickly, opening a box with an olive-green baby carrier. Of course, he chose the most expensive one there, though I have to admit it looked pretty comfortable, though a little more hippie than Vance's usual style.
I checked the directions while he unpacked it. Between the two of us, we got it strapped around his waist and over one shoulder. Carefully, I unsnapped Rosalie from the car seat and picked her up. She immediately stopped crying, blinking up at me with blue eyes identical to her father's.
"Oh," I said. "Hi."
She smiled at me. I've heard people say babies couldn't smile, but they were wrong because Rosie smiled at me. "She just wanted someone to pick her up," I said.
"Hand over my kid," Vance said, and I turned to tuck her against his chest, pulling the other shoulder strap of the carrier into place and securing it behind Vance's back. Rosalie squirmed against his chest, gave him a long, measuring look, then settled her head against his T-shirt and promptly fell asleep.
"I feel like we just brokered world peace," Vance whispered. "Did we get to the book section yet? We need books about babies."
"We're getting there," I said. "But at least we figured out the formula, the diapers, and one way to make her stop crying."
Vance cradled her bottom in his strong hand, holding her secure even though the carrier was more than enough to keep her safe. I have to admit, I was surprised at how well he was taking all of this. Vance was a good man. I knew that already, despite some of his earlier behavior. Still, I would've expected a bit more resistance to having a baby suddenly disrupt his life.
Maybe, once the shock had worn off, he'd be resentful. Watching him walk through each aisle of the baby store, his daughter nestled against his chest, I doubted it. He couldn't stop touching her. Stroking a finger down her soft cheek, pink and flushed with sleep and the warmth of his body. Tucking her wisps of black hair, so like her mother's, behind her shell of an ear.
He evaluated each purchase seriously. It took us thirty minutes to choose a baby monitor before he ended up just grabbing the top-of-the-line video option, muttering under his breath, “This is just for now. I'll get Evers to wire everything up. One monitor isn't enough."
I shook my head. I was going to have to keep an eye on him. At the rate we were going, Vance was going to buy the whole city for his daughter, and she couldn't even sit up by herself. I didn't think. By the time we read all the books we'd thrown in the cart, I was sure I'd know exactly what stage of development she was supposed to be in.
I didn't miss the glances Vance got from the other women in the store. I couldn't help the stab of jealousy. It was ridiculous. He was my boss, not my boyfriend. But I knew what he looked like; ta
ll, broad-shouldered, his Viking's face, the roguish blond ponytail, the muscles and tattoos, tenderly cradling an infant. I would've bet every pair of panties in the store was wet at the sight.
By the time we were done, we had two associates trailing us and six shopping carts. There was no way we could fit all of that in the Range Rover, but for an absurd additional fee, the store was willing to deliver on the spot. It took almost two hours to drop half of our loot off at the loft and then the other half at my house.
A part of me was deeply uneasy at playing house with Vance and the baby in my own home. Logistically, it made sense. If I was going to help Vance with Rosalie twenty-four seven, the loft would not work. We needed privacy. I needed privacy, and the loft was too open. Not only was my house huge, but I had the perfect setup to handle both Vance and Rosalie.
My bedroom, the bedroom I'd claimed as an eight-year-old on summer vacation from my English boarding school, was tucked in the back of the house, over the kitchen. I'd stayed there after my grandmother died, unable to face changing bedrooms, despite Brayden's complaints that we were wasting a perfectly good master suite.
A few months before, I'd finally cleaned out my grandmother's bedroom, donating what I didn't want to keep and packing away what I did. It had been painful, and I'd resented every second of it. I was still angry that she'd died on me. Sometimes, I think grief is the least rational emotion. Now, with Vance and Rosie moving in, I was grateful the task was behind me.
The master suite consisted of six rooms in total—separate his and hers bedrooms, a connecting sitting room with a fireplace, a couch, and an enormous bay window that looked out over the gardens, plus a dressing room-slash-closet for each bedroom and an expansive shared bathroom.
The two deliverymen from the baby store set up the crib in the sitting room while I moved my things from my bedroom to my grandmother's. It was easier than I expected. When I'd cleaned out her room, I'd redecorated. Not enough to erase her presence—her favorite quilt was still on the bed, family pictures on the dresser—but I'd switched out one of the armchairs and some of the paintings. Just enough so that I didn't expect my grandmother to come walking back in.