by Karina Bliss
“Didn’t you give her one an hour ago?”
Her head ached. She tried to think. He was right, Grace had fed an hour or so ago. “I’ll get myself a glass of water and we’ll try putting her down again. Don’t throw her in the pool.”
“I’ll try and control myself.”
Inside, she leaned against the countertop, feeling wretched, and swallowed two Advil with water. Every swallow was a razor slashing her throat. You’ve got this, she told herself. It didn’t help. Staggering outside again, she started to speak and sneezed instead.
“How about we stop pretending you’re coping,” Moss suggested. “I’ll manage tonight and we’ll sort out extra help in the morning. Go to bed before you fall over.”
She pressed her hands against her pounding skull. “I don’t think we should phone a nanny agency for a temp. Every outsider raises the possibility of a leak.”
Moss adjusted his hold on Grace and shuddered. “That word is permanently associated with diapers.”
“She can’t miss the pediatrician visit in the morning and you’re tied up.” Every task seemed insurmountable.
“I’ll ask Kayla to take her. Between us, we’ll sort something out. If I have to, I’ll bring in Consuela or Philippa. They can keep secrets.” They were Zander’s cook and housekeeper.
“But what about—”
“Lily,” he said firmly. “Go to bed. If you quarantine yourself, I’ll stay here. If not, you’ll force me to stay somewhere else. I have to protect my vocals.”
“That’s blackmail.”
His tone was implacable. “Take it or leave it.”
Conceding defeat, she returned to the house, pausing on the threshold. “Don’t give her away.”
“Not this week.”
And with that, she had to be content.
* * *
“Lily thinks she can convince me to keep you,” Moss said to Grace, “but we can do way better.”
His daughter ignored him to stare at the water. Illuminated by the pool lights, it was a giant rectangle of blue Jell-O. “I’ll find you someone you can rely on, someone who can help you navigate normal.”
On her belly she looked like a tiny turtle, all outstretched neck. When she struggled to keep her head up, he placed her on his chest, supporting her nape with one hand.
“It’s getting cool out. Let’s get you inside.” She started wailing the moment she lost sight of the pool. “Hey,” he said sternly. “Enough of that. We don’t want Lily dragging herself out of bed, worried I’m already screwing this up. You and I don’t have more than a passing acquaintance, but we both care about her, right?”
She stopped crying when he began talking. He’d noticed she liked men’s voices through watching Seth and Jared with her. Maybe males were a novelty, given she’d spent her short life around women. “I know Seth likes to make a fool of himself with baby talk,” he added as they entered the house. “Don’t expect that from me.”
He could see Jess in her wide-spaced eyes, though Jess’s had been a light blue and Grace’s were a misty blue-gray. She began to fuss again.
“Sorry, your highness, did I stop talking for too long? Only, talking for the sake of it isn’t my way.” Detouring to the garage, he scooped up her car seat and set it on the marble island in the kitchen, where it couldn’t fall, before strapping her in. He jiggled the car seat with one hand to stop her crying while he made up the bottle, double-checking instructions on the tin of formula.
Tonight it was more important for Lily to stay in bed than to extend the time between Grace’s bottles. “FYI, waking every hour or so and not being able to amuse yourself for two minutes are antisocial habits. I’m thinking we need to get you house-trained before we hand you over to adoptive parents. First impressions count.” He felt uncomfortable talking to a baby, but it was working so he persevered. “At least you’re a good listener,” he conceded, “and it’s not as if you’re going to blab our conversations to anyone.”
When the bottle was ready, he tested the temperature the way Lily had shown him, by squeezing a few drops onto his inner wrist. “Blood warm sounds vampire-ish to me. But then you babies are energy sucks.”
He fed her in the car seat, adjusting the angle of the bottle until she was happy. He might not have been actively involved in her care for long but he’d watched from a distance, seen how it was done.
Lily was likely to be out of action for a few days and he couldn’t look after Grace alone, which meant he had to ask for help—his least favorite thing.
Most of his life, help had always come with conditions—not riling his father, accepting state care, or owing a favor to someone who’d either try to fuck him or fuck him over. Nothing came free, least of all love.
Grace finished the bottle and started fretting, so he picked her up and walked around patting her tiny shoulders.
Even as a grown man, safe from exploitation and persecution, he still thought of favors as debts that would sooner or later come due.
The baby burped and he felt the warmth of formula soak through his T-shirt. “Guess I should have put a bib on you first, huh, and a cloth over my shoulder.” Those muslin ones Lily used. “Now we’re both damp.” He stripped off her onesie and replaced it with a clean one, changing her at the other end of the house where Lily wouldn’t hear the wailing. Grace hated being changed. “And since we’re on a personality improvement program, you’re not going to charm your way into anyone’s heart if you don’t smile.”
His daughter frowned and spit up again. This time when he dressed her, he remembered the bib.
When she finally fell asleep, he put her to bed and crept into Lily’s room to swipe her baby monitor from the bedside table. He hadn’t been in her bedroom since the first night he’d woken her to drive for him. By the light of the bedside lamp, he saw she’d made it homier with a colorful quilt and cushions. The Spencer-Flemings had mailed her some of their kids’ finger paintings and Lily had bought frames and hung them on the walls in all their lurid glory.
The patient was out cold, huddled under the covers, her cheeks flushed and her breathing strenuous. She’d fallen asleep writing—a notebook lay open on the bed, and a pen was still caught in her fingers. Removing it gently, Moss picked up the notebook and saw a jumbled list of instructions, many beginning with ‘Don’t worry if…’ The pediatrician’s details and Grace’s appointment time topped the list.
Always looking after other people. Who looked after her? Fuck, no. He wasn’t thinking about Lily or that soft kiss on his temple. The want that it evoked. That was why he’d lashed out.
How did a loner end up with two females driving him crazy? He checked on Grace again and returned to the kitchen, where he made fresh lemonade with honey and ginger and dug out some old cold meds. Then he placed both on Lily’s bedside table, where she’d see them when she woke.
He hated having to ask for help but he was going to do it anyway. For Grace and for Lily.
He stood watching her another couple minutes before he caught himself. What had she said? I see your yearning. He’d always been that kid with his nose pressed to the glass. Lily didn’t want to want him. And with his plans to give Grace up for adoption, he’d killed any remote chance he might have had with her. Next life, he thought, then picked up her notebook and went to change his damp T-shirt before his tiny nemesis woke again.
After making himself a coffee, he sat down and cross-checked his schedule against Lily’s list, working out when he’d need child care. Come to think of it, Lily used a baby sling to carry Grace when she wanted to multi-task. Firing up his laptop, he found instructions on how they worked from some besotted dad on YouTube, and when Grace woke he tucked her in it while he prepared her bottle.
It was a hell of a lot easier than using the car seat and as long as he kept talking when they weren’t moving, she was happy. For years, he’d lugged his belongings around with him and he found her warm weight against his chest familiar and strangely comforting.
His confidence rose, only to plummet over the following hour when she refused to settle, and even his insomnia was ready to call a time-out. Glancing at his watch, he saw it was five a.m. Surrendering to the inevitable, he covered her small head with a woolly hat he’d found in one of her nursery drawers—with bear ears, what the fuck was that?—grabbed a blanket and went poolside. Angling one of the loungers so Grace could see the water, he draped them with the blanket. “Ten minutes,” he warned. “Then we’re both going to bed. I mean it.”
He woke in the cool dawn to a familiar laugh and his roommates’ dog licking his bare feet.
“I’ve taken a picture of you and Grace looking cute.” Dimity waved her cell. She wore a red cape with black knee-high boots and looked like a woman who’d just flown in from Manhattan. “If you decide to keep her, we’ll use it in the press release.”
“I don’t know what Lily’s told you but I’m settled on adoption,” he snapped, shooing the Jack Russell away. His neck was chilled to the bone, his back was killing him, and Grace was sleeping like a baby against his chest. He was never going to be a morning person.
“You’ll get no judgment here,” she said unexpectedly. “I respect you for taking your responsibility to that little girl seriously. Bad parenting scars people for life. I’m a classic overachiever with control issues thanks to a narcissistic mother and absent father.”
He hadn’t known that. His life kept taking surreal turns.
She caught his surprise. “We all have our shit to deal with, Moss. Like you, I don’t talk about it.”
“I’m sorry I snapped at you.” He gave the dog a reassuring pat, then inched up the lounger, careful not to wake Grace, trying to ease his back. “Lily’s sick, Grace has been up most of the night, and my bladder’s about to explode.” He took a deep breath. “Help me. Please.”
She smiled. “That baby has given you humility. I like her. Your bladder will have to wait until Seth has unloaded my suitcases though. She scares the crap out of me.”
He started to laugh and the movement jolted Grace. He and Dimity froze. The baby slept on. “But she’s so small,” he replied. As though he wasn’t scared as shit of her either.
“Exactly,” she said darkly. “I might break her. A baby is so helpless, so trusting, so vulnerable, and they depend on you, totally. What if I inadvertently do something wrong? I’m trying to get over it because Seth wants kids, but—”
“What does Seth want?” The man in question came through the house at that moment and panic flashed across her face, which was interesting because those two shared everything.
“A Grace fix,” Moss answered. Carefully unfurling from the lounger, he unhooked the baby sling and handed his waking daughter to the eager drummer, who immediately launched into baby talk.
Rolling his eyes, Moss dug in his jean pocket for the lists, handed them to Dimity, and escaped to the bathroom, where he also took the opportunity to shower before changing into fresh clothes. When he rejoined his roommates Dimity already had a plan in place.
“Kayla will take Grace to the pediatrician, and she or her babysitter will look after her when we’re caught up in band business. The rest of us will help out where we can. But if Grace is up half the night maybe we should hire a night nurse as well?”
For a moment Moss struggled with temptation, then reluctantly shook his head. “I promised Lily I’d spend time with Grace, so I’ll do the night shifts.” If worse came to worse and she wouldn’t settle he’d make Seth drive them around until she fell asleep. “It’s gotta get easier than this, right?”
Chapter Twenty-two
Lily didn’t leave her bed for four days.
She spent them in feverish sleep or trying to find a cool spot on the sheets. When she was conscious, she worried about Grace and Moss, which made her head ache harder. Her bones felt as though they’d been disassembled and then put together again wrong. Every joint ached. Her throat eased but her nose clogged up. She blew it so often she went through half a tub of Vaseline trying to stop it being chafed raw.
Whenever people popped their head in—never Moss—she waved them away the second she discovered Grace was okay. Consuela sent chicken noodle soup and soft bread, and every morning Lily woke to a jug of freshly-made lemonade on her bedside table. Only once did she manage to stagger out of her room.
Grace was asleep and Moss, looking tired and grumpy, was squeezing lemons in the kitchen. “We’re coping,” he said. Handing her a jug of lemonade, he ordered her back to bed with the comment, “I don’t know how the fuck you managed the baby-who-never-sleeps on your own.” He didn’t sound like a man falling in love with his child.
She stayed in bed after that, rebuilding her strength. Clearly, she was going to need it.
On the third day, she started feeling human. By the evening of the fourth, she never wanted to see chicken soup again and burned with enough curiosity to kill several cats. After taking a long shower—using a perfumed body lotion to dispel the lingering scent of Vicks VapoRub—she dressed in fresh pajamas and a robe and checked Grace’s nursery. She was asleep in her crib and looked none the worse for Lily’s enforced neglect. She stopped herself from stroking her petal-smooth cheek. It was always better to let sleeping babies lie.
Someone on TV was waxing lyrical about fir beams and drywall. Following the sound, she found Moss sitting on the couch in the living room with a bunch of folders on his lap.
“You watch this?” she said, surprised. House and garden shows seemed an odd choice for a guy who didn’t do homey.
“Yeah.” He closed the folders, his green eyes searching. “How are you feeling?”
“Ravenous.” If anything he looked worse than she did, and yet she soaked up the sight of him. He hadn’t visited—when she was awake—but the daily lemonade conveyed its own message. They were friends again. More importantly, he hadn’t deserted his post.
“There’s leftover curry in the fridge.”
“Hallelujah. Want some?”
“I’ve eaten. And I should nap while I can.”
“I’ll do tonight. I missed her and I’m wide awake. Is she sleeping for long?”
“Hit and miss. I fed her an hour ago so maybe we’ll get lucky tonight. I’ve stopped giving her a bottle every time she wakes up but she’s still taking a while to settle.”
Listen to him, all domesticated. She knew what it cost him. “Thank you,” she said softly, “for not giving up.”
He dropped his gaze to the files in his lap. “You were right, I needed to spend time with her, but—”
Her stomach grumbled loudly, interrupting him. “Let me heat some food before you bring me up to speed.”
“Yeah, you should eat first.”
When she rejoined him on the couch with a bowl of fragrant curry, she caught him frowning at the television screen. “Someone’s chosen the wrong wallpaper?” she joked.
“No.” He hesitated. “Do you think Grace is traumatized by Jess’s death?”
Wow, talk about a sucker punch. She cradled the bowl, absorbing its heat. “At some level I’m sure she misses her mother,” she acknowledged, “but babies are also open to being loved.” Anxiously, she looked at him. “What makes you ask?”
“She never smiles.”
On this, she could reassure him. “Some babies smile around six weeks, others take another month.” Relieved, she began eating. “They’re all different.”
“And she frowns,” Moss added. “A lot.”
She choked on a mouthful, swallowed, and burst out laughing. “Gee, I wonder where she gets that from?”
He turned up the volume on the television, which made her laugh more.
Moss ignored her and she left him in peace while she ate. On the screen, a young couple were crying with joy over a renovation reveal.
I want that one day, she thought. A home of my own, someone to share it with. Her shame around the sex tape had lessened in the past couple weeks, partly because helping the teenage runaway, Tania, had given
her perspective—other people faced tougher challenges—and partly because using her childcare expertise to help Moss and Grace reminded her how much she’d achieved. For the first time since Travis first called her, she felt optimistic. I can get past this.
Come to think of it, the guy on screen fit her criteria perfectly. Cute but not so cute that his wife would be beating off other women; emotionally expressive…hmm, maybe a little bit Labrador-like but clearly doting on his wife, who was patiently telling him to settle down…boy.
It was Moss’s fault that normal was losing its appeal. I can get past this. “Has the shelter given you another update on Tania?”
“She’s seen her father and has agreed to a visit from her stepmother.”
She wanted to ask what the teenager had decided about her baby but the question felt too loaded. “So, what did you want to tell me earlier?”
Moss glanced at her plate. “Finish your meal first.”
And suddenly she knew. “Those files…” She put down her fork, all appetite gone. “They’re dossiers on prospective families, aren’t they?”
“Did you really think I’d change my mind?”
“I hoped you would.” She twisted on the couch to face him. “You have more to offer than you believe, Moss.”
Gaze on the TV screen, he shook his head. “I need to give her to someone who can give her stability.”
Reaching for the remote, she turned off the TV. “Why can’t that be you?”
“C’mon, do you even need to ask?” His jaw set, his gaze remained on the blank screen. “For a start, I’ll be touring soon.”
“Jared tours.”
“He has Kayla. I’ll be a single dad.”
“You could take her with you while she’s this small and hire a nanny to travel with you.”
Surprise flickered in his eyes. “But not you?”
Lily started playing with the remote. She’d thought about this when she’d been tossing and turning on her sick bed. “That wouldn’t be a good idea,” she hedged.