Beauty and the Baby

by Marie Ferrarella

  She raised her free hand in a mock oath. “I’ll behave.”

  He raised a skeptical brow aimed in her direction. “That’ll be the day.”

  Sandy was standing on her tiptoes with her face pressed against the large bay window. There were three long rows of bassinets displayed. “Can we pick out any one we want?” Sandy wanted to know. She shifted from toe to toe excitedly.

  “She’s not an ice-cream cone, Sandy,” Carson told her patiently. “Each of these babies already belongs to someone.”

  Sandy turned partway from the window, looking up at her father. “Which one belongs to us?”

  “The baby belongs to Aunt Lori, not us.”

  “We can share her,” Lori told Sandy with a wink. The girl looked up at her, pleased.

  Carson picked his daughter up so that she could have a better view. “It’s that one, over there.” He pointed out a pink cheeked baby in the third row, the second bassinet from the right end.

  From this distance, the name tags were hard to make out. Lori cocked her head as she looked up at him. “I thought they all looked alike to you.”

  Lori was grinning at him when he looked at her. Putting his daughter down, he shrugged. “She looks more familiar than the others do.” He set Sandy down. “Did I guess right?”

  Lori looked at him knowingly. “You didn’t guess at all.”

  He supposed there was no point in lying about it. “Yeah, well maybe I was here before. When they put her in her bassinet last night.”

  She wouldn’t have thought he would do that. But then, Carson was doing a lot of things she wouldn’t have thought him capable of as little as eight months ago. “You followed the nurse?”

  He shrugged. “Just wanted to be sure they didn’t lose the kid.” Was it his imagination, or did Lori’s arms tighten slightly through his?

  “Why is it that I never noticed how sweet you were before?”

  He didn’t have to look at her to know she was smiling. broadly. “Maybe because you were never delirious with pain before.”

  She took her case to Sandy. “Your daddy’s a nice man,” she told the little girl.

  In response, Sandy turned from the bay window with its large selection of babies that had kept her so fascinated and looked up solemnly at her father. She nodded her head vigorously. “I know.”

  In turn, Lori looked at the man at her side, her point won. “Out of the mouths of babes.”

  He raised a single eyebrow. “You talking about Sandy or yourself?”

  “Scoff if you must, Carson, that doesn’t change anything. You’re a lot nicer than you want people to know about.”

  He merely shook his head. Former lawyer or not, he knew better than to get into a debate with Lori. “Like I said, delirious.”

  The day nurse assigned to the rooms in Lori’s section peered into the room. “Are you all set?”

  More than set, Lori thought. She was going home. Barely two days after the delivery and she was going home to begin her life as a mother.

  The first step of an eighteen-year journey, she thought.

  She glanced down at the suitcase on her bed. Carson had brought it to her the morning after she’d delivered. Except for her nightgown, her robe and the slippers she’d bought expressly for her hospital stay, she hadn’t taken out anything. All three items were back in the case.

  “All set.”

  “Let’s not forget the most important item.” Pushing the door open with her shoulder, the nurse came all the way into the room. Lori’s baby was in her arms. “Can’t be a mom without one of these.”

  Nerves danced and retreated. Smiling, Lori took the baby into her arms. “No, I guess you can’t.”

  The nurse stood beside her for a moment. She patted Lori’s arm. “You’ll do fine.”

  She had her doubts about that, Lori thought, fervently wishing her mother was still alive. For a whole host of reasons. “Can I hold you to that?”

  “For as long as you’d like.” The nurse adjusted the baby’s receiving blanket around her. “Remember, any questions, Blair has a new mom hot line. Night or day, just call,” she instructed. “There’ll always be someone to answer your questions.”

  Lori knew that. It was something she told the women at the Lamaze classes. It was something for them to cling to. Now it was her turn, Lori thought. The baby books she’d read were all well and good, but nothing beat talking to someone who had already experienced what she was going through.

  “How long am I going to be considered a new mom?”

  The nurse smiled at her. “Just until after they go off to college.” Taking out a card, she tucked the telephone number into Lori’s purse on the table. “Remember, night or day,” she repeated. “Now then, who’s taking you home?”

  “I am.”

  As if he’d been waiting in the wings for his cue, Carson strode into the room, looking bigger than life to Lori. She smiled a greeting at him. “Hi.”

  He was running late and there was nothing he disliked more than being late. “There’s some kind of construction going on along Blair Boulevard,” he said by way of explanation.

  The nurse nodded, obviously familiar with the problem. “They’ve started widening the road.”

  Carson frowned. He was a firm believer in not fixing things that weren’t broken. “The road was fine the way it was.”

  Lori grinned. “Don’t mind him, he doesn’t like progress.”

  “I’ve got nothing against progress. It’s gridlock I don’t like.” He paused to look at the baby, then asked Lori, “You ready?”

  She looked around. “Let me see, suitcase, baby, yes, I’m ready.”

  Carson glanced toward the nurse. “Do I need to sign her out?”

  Lori answered for her. “You’re not springing an inmate from an asylum, Carson. You’re just taking home a very antsy new mom.”

  The word caught his attention. “Antsy?” She’d already given birth, what was there to be antsy about? “Why?”

  “Just afraid I’ll do something wrong, that’s all,” Lori confessed.

  He tried to laugh her out of it. “That’s a first. It never stopped you before.” Carson grew serious. “This isn’t going to be any different than anything else you’ve ever done.”

  He was supposed to be the pessimist here, not her. “Since when did you get so blasé?”

  He’d done a little attitude adjusting these past few weeks. Circumstances had forced him to do some reassessing. “Since I found out that if life knocks you down, you just have to stand up again.”

  Taking her elbow, he helped Lori into the wheelchair and then waited until the nurse placed the baby back into Lori’s arms. Carson moved behind the wheelchair, taking control. He nodded at the other woman. “Okay, let’s roll.”

  The nurse picked up the vase of flowers that was still in the room. Lori had given away the other flowers, sending them on to the children’s ward and to the chapel on the first floor. But the pink and white carnations the nurse was holding had come from Carson. She wanted to take them home with her.

  Lori craned her neck to look at him as he pushed her out of the room. “Thanks for coming to pick me up.”

  “I had to. I was afraid you’d thumb a ride if I didn’t.” Coming to the elevator banks, he pressed for a car. It arrived almost instantly.

  His answer was typically flippant. “Why can’t you just let me say thank you?”

  He pressed for the first floor. “Had anyone ever been able to stop you from saying anything?”

  “You’ve tried more than once,” she pointed out. The passing floors flashed their numbers at them as they went down to the first floor without stopping once.

  “Don’t remember succeeding, though.”

  The elevator doors opened. Carson pushed the wheelchair down the long, winding hallway, hardly paying attention to the arrows that guided him to the entrance. He knew the way by heart now.

  His car was parked just ahead in the temporary zone. There was a valet standing
beside it. “By the way,” Carson began as he guided her through the electronic doors. “I’m spending the night.”

  Chapter Nine

  She’d stared at Carson in stunned silence as the nurse momentarily took the baby from her. She continued staring as he helped her out of the wheelchair and into the car. It wasn’t until the baby was back in her arms and they had pulled away from temporary loading zone that Lori regained possession of her tongue.

  “What do you mean you’re spending the night?” She had to have misheard him. “Spending what night where?”

  He’d thought he’d been clear enough. Carson glanced at her just before he merged to the left and entered the flow of traffic. “Are you on any medication?”

  “Don’t change the subject,” she warned. “What did you just mean back there?”

  Carson frowned as a sports car cut him off. “Same thing I mean here.” In deference to the fact that he wasn’t alone in the car, he swallowed the curse that rose to his lips. “I’m staying at your house tonight.”

  The offer had come out of nowhere and it wasn’t like Carson. She grinned, wondering if he was aware of how it sounded. “This is a little sudden, don’t you think?”

  Carson slanted her another look, certain she couldn’t mean what he thought she meant. Certain she couldn’t be feeling what he’d felt. She was a widow, she’d just given birth and he was the guy who was always just there, that’s all.

  Wasn’t her fault he’d been feeling things lately. That helping her deliver her baby had somehow placed a very different focus on their relationship for him. That her upbeat, warm personality had finally managed to cut through the corrugated fencing he’d kept around his soul. That was his problem, not hers.

  But he was more than willing and able to help her with what was her problem. Adjustment.

  He winged it. “Sudden? You’ve been pregnant for eight months. There’s nothing sudden about it. I just figured you might need help the first night.”

  He got that right, she thought. Still, he was the last person she would have thought would realize the fact. The man kept astounding her.

  “And you’re volunteering?”

  He queued onto the freeway ramp. There was some sort of traffic jam on the other side, but except for a few rubbernecks who slowed down to look, their side moved along at a good pace. “Don’t see anyone else in the car, do you?”

  Just when she thought he was being as nice as he was possibly able to be, Carson upped the ante. “Just the baby, but she’s a little too young to be changing her own diaper,” Lori said.

  His expression was impassive, unreadable. “Sounds like her mother might be a little too young to change her diapers.”

  He was covering, she thought. Making a flippant remark about how young she sometimes acted in order to hide something. She wasn’t sure what he could possibly want to hide. It couldn’t be what she hoped it was. Any excess feelings Carson O’Neill had were all sent special delivery to his daughter. There wasn’t anything else left over.

  No matter how she was beginning to feel about him.

  Because her own feelings were oddly vulnerable now, she retreated to the same flippant ground where he’d taken shelter. “Hey, I’ve taught men who were all thumbs how to diaper a baby.”

  She had book knowledge, he had something better. “A doll,” he pointed out, “you taught them how to change a doll. The real thing’s different.” For one thing, it moved a great deal more than a doll did, he thought, remembering his first time. That he’d changed his daughter’s diapers wasn’t something he’d ever advertised. The information went against the image he liked to project, the one he felt comfortable with. That of an unapproachable authority figure.

  But for Lori, he was willing to temporarily abandon that image.

  She studied his profile, trying to picture him with baby powder in his hand and a dirty diaper waiting for disposal in front of him. “And you’d know about the real thing?”

  His expression never changed. “I’ve got Sandy, don’t I?”

  “You diapered Sandy?”

  He could hear it in her voice, she was going to start teasing him any second. “What, am I talking a foreign language?”

  “Apparently.” She knew he wouldn’t have revealed this to just anyone and was truly surprised that he trusted her with this information. It touched her. “I just can’t picture you diapering a baby, that’s all.” Her voice became more serious, more thoughtful. “I guess I really don’t know you as well as I thought.”

  He’d never liked the idea of being thought of as an open book. Open books had no privacy and privacy was of paramount importance to him. “There’s a lot about me you don’t know.”

  “Apparently,” she murmured again.

  But she was willing to learn, Lori added silently. More than willing.

  The door was open, but Carson knocked anyway. He didn’t feel right about just walking in. After all, it was her bedroom and he didn’t belong in it.

  When Lori turned her head toward him, he told her, “I think the baby’s hungry.”

  Giving in to Carson’s insistence, she’d lain down for a few moments. Until she had, she hadn’t realized just how exhausted she really felt. This first day was taking more out of her than she’d imagined.

  A few moments had easily stretched out into twenty minutes.

  Lori sat up, dragging a hand through her hair. She felt guilty about being so inactive. This was her baby and for the past hour, Carson had been the one taking care of her.

  Still standing in the doorway, Carson avoided looking in her direction as he explained, “I can’t warm up her meal for her.”

  She was breast-feeding Emma. Lori smiled to herself as she rose. A lot he knew. He’d been warming up the vessel that contained the baby’s meal since he’d brought her home. Longer.

  Did he even have a clue about the way he’d been affecting her? Would it scare him if he knew? “I’ll be right there.”

  “No need.” He walked into the room with Emma. “I brought Mohammed to the mountain.”

  She laughed, opening the top button of her blouse. “So now I look like a mountain?”

  Carson slipped the infant into the crook of her arm, being very careful not to brush his fingers against anything they shouldn’t be coming in contact with. “Figure of speech. You don’t look like a mountain. You look terrific.”

  A compliment. Was he even aware he was paying it? She raised her eyes to his. “Really?”

  Carson flushed. “I don’t say anything I don’t mean.” As if aware of how close he was to her, he took a step away from the bed. “Just sometimes I say too much.”

  Her eyes met his. That would be the day. Clams were more talkative than he was. “I don’t think so, Carson. God knows no one is ever going to accuse you of being a chatterbox.”

  He took another step back, then stopped. “I leave that to you.”

  With the baby pressed against her breast, Lori opened another button on her blouse, and then another. “Thanks a lot.”

  With effort, he tore his eyes away, although this time it wasn’t easy. Noble intentions only extended so far. “Um, I’ve got some…stuff to see to.”

  She saw the pink hue creeping up his cheeks. “Are you embarrassed?” Lori stopped unbuttoning her blouse. She’d never thought that anything could embarrass Carson. “You were there at her birth.”

  “If you recall,” he addressed the wall above her head, “I was positioned at your other end.”

  The man was positively adorable. “And you didn’t look?”

  “Nope. Figured you needed your privacy, even at a time like that.”

  She didn’t know of any other man quite like him. “You really are amazing, you know that?”

  “Like I said,” he jerked his thumb toward the hall and beyond, “stuff.”

  With that, Carson pivoted on his heel and withdrew, moving a little quicker than Lori thought the situation warranted.

  The sound of her soft laughte
r accompanied him out into the hall.

  He was an early riser. He always had been. When he awoke at morning, he was surprised that the baby hadn’t interrupted his sleep. Newborns woke up every few hours and made their presence known. He’d fully intended to spell Lori. Instead, he’d slept like a dead man.

  Some help he was, Carson thought, disgusted with himself as he made his way into the kitchen. He had every intention of making breakfast for them both.

  Entering, he discovered that Lori had gotten there ahead of him. Her back to him, she was just opening the refrigerator.

  “What are you doing out of bed?” He wanted to know.

  Hurrying, she’d almost dropped the plate of butter she was taking out. She set it on the counter, taking a deep breath to steady her pulse. “I believe it’s called making breakfast.”

  He glanced toward the stove. There was more than enough in the frying pan for two people. This wasn’t working out the way it was supposed to.

  “I didn’t stay over for you to make breakfast for me.”

  He made it hard to say thank you, Lori thought. “No, you stayed over to see me through my first night and I appreciate that more than you’ll ever know.” She divided the contents of the frying pan between the two plates she had waiting on the counter. Scrambled eggs filled each. “Now, I can’t carry you to a hospital, I can’t help you give birth and I can’t be your moral support in a time of muted crisis.” Placing the frying pan into the sink, she ran hot water into it, then shut it off. “The very least you can do is let me make you breakfast.”

  He was accustomed to lukewarm breakfasts eaten at his desk at the center. Even when he’d been a lawyer, he’d eaten in his office. “I was thinking of picking up something at a drive through.”

  Fat, served up medium warm, she thought. The toaster gave up its slices. Moving quickly, she buttered two for him. “Is that how you eat?”

  He shrugged. Food was something to sustain him, not something to look forward to. “Most of the time.”