The Baby Wore a Badge

by Marie Ferrarella

  Corey laughed. “Not exactly, but close. You game?”

  “Sure, why not?”

  “That’s what I like to hear,” Corey declared, gunning his engine. And with that, they sped away.

  Lipsmackin’ Ribs turned out to be exceedingly popular. The restaurant was all but packed, despite the fact that it was a weekday evening.

  At least part of the reason, Jake was fairly certain, had nothing to do with the fact that the tantalizing aroma of the barbecued ribs were wafting into the parking lot, snaring unsuspecting passersby with the promise of a little bit of gastronomic heaven.

  Superior or not, the ribs came in a distant second behind the allure of the servers, every single one female with a capital F. They were slender, attractive women, and every last one of them had incredibly long legs no matter how tall or petite she was. Each woman wore four-inch heels, solid royal blue short shorts and either royal blue or white T-shirts cut short to reveal lots of belly, embossed with the restaurant’s logo: a pair of wide, smiling, satisfied lips. The results were that no testosterone-laden customer was really all that aware of the meal he was eating. Their attention was definitely distracted, to say the least.

  Gorgeous though the waitresses were, Jake found himself measuring the women up against the perky baby sitter with smiling eyes who had so recently come into his life. He found the other women taking second place. Whoa, he thought. Not the route to take.

  Searching for a distraction, Jake found himself all but mesmerized by the rhythmic sway of their waitress’s hips as she walked away after bringing them their order. She’d been a little flustered and had almost dropped the tray when she’d returned with their food. The server, an extremely pretty girl named Jeannette according to the name tag pinned to her chest, had explained with a nervous laugh that she hadn’t been at this too long.

  Jake found himself the one doing the talking. When he glanced toward his brother-in-law, he saw that Corey was deliberately not staring at the young woman.

  He waited until the woman had walked away and then said to Corey, “You know, it is all right to look.” His brother-in-law appeared to be the only breathing male whose eyes were not firmly fastened on one server or another. Several men at the various tables scattered around them were just sitting back, openly enjoying the local talent walking by. “You married my sister, you weren’t pronounced dead.”

  His attention focused on eating, Corey glanced up from his meal. “I meant what I said about checking the place out.”

  “Doesn’t that encompass more than just what’s on the menu?” Jake wanted to know.

  Corey knew what his brother-in-law was driving at. “Maybe they hired all these nubile, lovely young hostesses to distract customers from the fact that their ribs might be second rate.”

  Jake shrugged, open to any theory. But from what he’d just sampled, the ribs could stand on their own without that sort of help. “That’s one idea,” Jake agreed.

  After sampling a few more pieces, Corey was forced to admit the ribs were as “lip smacking” as they’d been advertised. With the barbecued meat all but falling off the bone, the ribs were incredibly delicious.

  And familiar-tasting, Corey decided after consuming most of his order.

  He looked at Jake, a note of vindicating triumph in his voice. “These ribs taste just like the ones that DJ makes,” he told his brother-in-law. Anger warred with indignation. “They must have gotten hold of DJ’s recipe somehow.”

  Although he wanted to be supportive, Jake saw no real reason for Corey to make that sort of an accusation. “Maybe it’s just a coincidence that they taste like the ones your cousin makes. I mean, just how many different ways can you really make barbecue ribs?” he asked his brother-in-law.

  Corey frowned slightly. Spoken like a man who obviously didn’t know his way around a barbecue grill, Corey thought.

  “A lot,” he answered patiently, cutting Jake some slack because he was new.

  He could hear Corey’s restrained annoyance. “I’m not trying to get into an argument here, Corey. But don’t you think there’s just the slightest chance that you’re reading too much into this?”

  “Maybe,” Corey allowed grudgingly, but he really didn’t think so.

  DJ needed to get out here, Corey decided. DJ was the only one qualified enough to know if this was just a coincidence, or if the ribs were an exact duplicate of the recipe that he’d come up with.

  With effort, Corey forced a smile to his lips and concentrated on just having a good time with his brother-in-law whose company he really did enjoy.

  And all things considered, it was rather nice being able to talk to the man without his having a crying baby on his arm, no matter how cute Erin maintained that baby was.

  Chapter Five

  Rose Traub stood looking at her reflection in the wood-framed, full-length, three-sided mirror in her sister-in-law’s master suite.

  The five-foot-five blue-eyed redhead knew that Erin had said she looked beautiful, but all she saw when she looked into the mirror was a scared, nervous-looking young woman staring back at her.

  And despite all the effort that had been put into her makeover in the last ninety minutes, she still wasn’t happy with what she saw.

  Her hair was too wavy, her eyes too blue. She’d been too much of a tomboy growing up, trying to hold her own with her five older brothers, and it showed, she thought in despair. She felt she didn’t have a feminine bone in her body.

  And she certainly didn’t look sexy.

  Even so, she was a born romantic and at this point in her life, she was desperate to find someone to love, desperate to find her very own happily-ever-after. Like Corey had.

  “You do look very pretty,” Erin told her again, breaking into the nervous silence that was all but physically emanating from her sister-in-law. Bright-eyed and eager, Rose still really had no self-confidence to speak of.

  “I’m thirty years old,” Rose lamented, giving voice to the mantra that kept playing over and over in her head. She met Erin’s eyes in the mirror. “Do you know what that is in dog years?”

  “Too old,” Calista replied matter-of-factly. Erin, in an attempt to build up Rose’s confidence, had asked Calista to join them. The younger woman all but radiated a positive, optimistic manner and Erin hoped that it would somehow rub off on Corey’s baby sister. “If you were a dog, you would have been dead by now. Instead, you’re a lovely, poised young woman who any man would be thrilled to be able to take out on the town.”

  “Thrilled?” Rose echoed, turning around to look at the woman who was almost a decade younger than she was. The way she said the word reminded Calista of a flower that was desperately seeking a life-sustaining drink of water.

  “Thrilled,” Calista repeated with conviction. Out of the corner of her eye, she saw Erin looking at her with noticeable approval. Rose, apparently, needed a great deal more encouragement. Calista went to work. “And why not? You’re young, beautiful and a very competent professional.”

  She’d heard that in public, when dealing with clients, Rose was the picture of confidence and competence. She was in charge of handling the public relations end of the family oil business. Just recently, she’d also taken on publicity and communications tasks for Cousin Bo in his capacity as the town’s mayor. It was the latter position that had allowed her to get to know Rose a little better.

  It also allowed her to see that there seemed to be a complete world of difference between the public Rose and the private one. It was almost as if they weren’t the same person. Calista was certain that it was because Rose wanted a relationship and all that it entailed so much that she was getting in her own way.

  “Listen, before Nick gets here, could you just—” Rose was about to ask Erin for some tips as to what to talk about on her date, but just then, the doorbell rang.

  “Too late,” Erin declared. She’d had Rose tell Nick Pritchett to pick her up at her brother’s house. Because it was such a showplace, Nick had readily
agreed.

  The doorbell pealed again just as a deer-trapped-in-the-headlights look sprang up in Rose’s blue eyes. Panicked, she looked from one woman to the other. “Oh God, he’s here. I’m not ready,” she cried, then repeated, “I’m not ready.”

  “Yes, you are,” Erin said firmly, her tone leaving no room for argument.

  Her sister-in-law was dressed to perfection in a hunter-green sheath that not only flattered her figure but her hair as well. The latter had been styled and left casually down rather than up. She really did look good, Erin thought with pride.

  “Take a deep breath,” Calista counseled. “Slowly. Then let it out. There,” she cheered the other woman on when Rose did as she advised. “Do it again and tell yourself you’re going to be fine.”

  “But I’m not,” Rose all but wailed.

  Calista looked the older woman directly in the eyes as Erin went downstairs to answer the door.

  “Yes,” she insisted in an authoritative voice, raising it slightly so she could be heard above the fussing noises that Marlie was making, “you are. Now hold it together and go downstairs. Just remember, he’s lucky to be going out with you.”

  Rose looked at her uncertainly. “Come with me?” It was more of a plea than a request.

  Calista smiled and nodded. She didn’t believe in being a fifth wheel, but in this case it was obvious that Corey’s sister needed all the moral support she could get. Funny how things evolved. Growing up with a bunch of brothers had built up her confidence, Calista thought. Obviously it had had the exact opposite kind of an effect on Rose.

  After a less than warm greeting from Nick, the couple left for what seemed to be another of Rose’s doomed first dates. Once the door was closed, Calista exchanged looks with Erin.

  “I don’t have a good feeling about this,” she confided to Erin.

  “Neither do I,” Erin admitted. “But I wasn’t the one who arranged the date.” She frowned, shaking her head as she stared toward the closed door. “I’m going to see if I can get Corey to come up with a list of his single friends. Rose really wants to get married and start a family. She’s a sweet woman who deserves to be happy.”

  “Then she shouldn’t be going out with Nick,” Calista commented. And then she felt she couldn’t ignore Marlie’s unhappiness any longer. Within the span of ten minutes, the baby had grown steadily more and more unhappy. Fussing had now turned into wailing. “Speaking of happy, someone definitely isn’t,” she observed, swaying now to try to soothe the infant. It wasn’t getting her anywhere. “I’m going to go change the princess and give her her bottle and hopefully get her to settle down,” Calista told Erin. She began to head back toward the stairs. “Maybe I can get her to go to sleep before your brother gets home from his big night out,” she said.

  “I know he’d really appreciate that,” Erin told her. “He loves that little girl more than anything, but I think he’s beginning to be a little punchy. She barely lets him get two hours of sleep at a time. “I’m afraid he’s going to wind up falling on his face.”

  And that would really be a crying shame, Calista thought. “I’ll see what I can do,” she promised, going up the stairs, back to the bedroom that Jake shared with his daughter.

  He’d needed that, Jake thought two hours later as he turned the doorknob in practically slow motion to not wake up his daughter. He adored the little girl, would do anything to keep her, but going out with Corey and just kicking back for a few hours reminded him that he sorely missed being part of an adult world.

  At first, when he took custody of Marlie, he thought he’d just continue with his life the way it had been. But adding a baby to his life was not a simple matter of addition. Concessions had to be made. Changes instituted. The advent of eleven extra pounds in his life had turned that same life completely upside down. She’d invaded every single facet, every single inch of his life.

  He knew that other people managed to work things out when a baby came along, but that was because there was usually two people working out the logistics. He still needed to figure out how he was going to juggle being a father to a baby and earning a living to provide for that baby.

  Any thoughts that Marlie was sound asleep were dashed the moment he walked into the bedroom.

  The first thing he saw coming in was Calista, pacing the floor with Marlie in her arms.

  “I didn’t think you’d still be here.” Rose was obviously gone and he’d just assumed that Erin would put Marlie down for the night—or whatever part of the night Marlie intended to stay down.

  The batteries that he’d just recharged felt a bit weaker.

  Calista noticed that Jake looked a little bewildered and wondered why. After all, he’d left the baby with her. Why would he think that she’d just up and leave before he returned? Did she strike him as irresponsible? “Erin asked me to babysit, so I figured I’d just wait until you came home.”

  Something in her tone caught his attention. “Why, is something wrong?” He was tempted to run his hand along his daughter’s downy head, but her eyes were shut and she was breathing evenly, which he took as a sign that she was either asleep or almost asleep. In either case, he didn’t want to risk rousing her. She needed her sleep and God knew, so did he.

  “No, not anymore.”

  “Not anymore,” he repeated uncertainly. That meant that something had been wrong. “What was wrong?” he wanted to know.

  Calista continued swaying ever so slightly as she talked and answered his question. “You know the way Marlie’s been fussing and crying so much?”

  He hadn’t mentioned that to her, but from the way Calista was talking, he assumed that Erin probably had. “Yes?”

  “Well, it turns out that’s because she has a really bad case of diaper rash.” When she’d arrived to take care of Marlie, the baby had just been changed. There hadn’t been any need for her to change the little girl’s diaper until she’d taken her upstairs after Rose had left on her date. That was when she’d made her discovery. “When I took off her last diaper, I saw that her bottom was really, really red and she was starting to get a few pockmarks.”

  Guilt crept in. Was he responsible for that? Had he been doing something wrong? “What can I do?”

  “Well, for starters, change her more frequently—check her diaper the moment you suspect it’s wet—and that’s especially true whenever she makes a ‘deposit.’”

  Jake’s guilt grew tenfold. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he confessed.

  Calista shrugged dismissively, absolving him of direct blame. “No reason you should. You’re a first-time dad. Everything about babies is fresh and new for you. Marlie is your learning curve.”

  He looked at his sleeping daughter, recalling what her little bottom had looked like the last time he’d diapered her this afternoon. It had been an ugly color red. He’d tried to soothe it with medicated baby powder, but had a sinking feeling it wasn’t helping. “Do you think I should take her to see a doctor?”

  He’d yet to find a pediatrician in Thunder Canyon for his daughter. It was on his to-do list. A list that kept growing longer instead of shorter. Life was getting away from him again, he thought in mounting concern.

  “You don’t really have to,” she told him cheerfully. “I whipped up a salve for you. My mom showed me how years ago. She told me it as something my grandmother came up with. Apply the salve to Marlie’s red areas each time you change her and the rash should clear up in about a day or so.”

  “Just like that?”

  “Just like that,” she promised, a wide smile on her lips.

  He breathed a long sigh of relief. “How do you know so much?”

  “Like I said, my mom taught me that. But you start to pick up things as you go along. Don’t worry, you will, too,” she promised. Calista looked down at the baby in her arms. Success. “I think your little princess has finally fallen sleep,” she told him in a voice that was only slightly above a whisper.

  Turning, she crossed back to the crib t
hat Erin told her Jake had set up just this morning, replacing the portacrib he’d transported with him when he’d driven here with the baby.

  Very slowly, she lowered Marlie onto the mattress. She took extra care to leave the infant lying on her back. The night was too warm to cover her with a blanket, so she left it hanging on the railing, just in case.

  Pausing a moment to make sure the baby was still asleep, Calista then turned on her heel and made her way over to the changing table.

  “This is the salve,” she told him, holding up a small plastic container.

  He took a tentative sniff. If anything, it smelled like a sugar cookie. Puzzled, he looked at her. “What’s it made of?”

  “A little bit of this, a little bit of that,” she answered evasively, then assured him, “things you can readily find in a pantry.” He looked a little skeptical. “The point is that it works.”

  “And you’ve already put it on her?” He knew it was probably a rhetorical question, but he felt bound to ask it.

  “Absolutely, the second I saw how red and raw her little bottom was.” Calista grinned. “I think I heard her sigh gratefully.”

  Any lingering doubts he had about leaving his daughter with a stranger evaporated. “I guess Erin knew what she was doing when she told me to hire you as Marlie’s babysitter. I feel like an idiot,” he confessed. This was completely new territory for him. “I know what to do out in the field. I’m a damn good cop.” And he had the citations to prove it. “But I’m a pretty lousy father,” he said with a derogatory sigh.

  She hadn’t meant for him to beat himself up. “The main thing that makes a good father is love and anyone can see just how much you love your daughter. As for everything else, that can be taught,” she assured him matter-of-factly. “You give that little girl love and you’re going to wind up with a happy kid on your hands.”

  For a moment, Jake felt as if the young woman before him was the older one, not him, despite the fact that he had about ten, twelve years on her.