Designated Daddy

by Jane Toombs

  “A football?” He sounded incredulous.

  “Whatever. Just do it.”

  Scowling, Steve bent over the cradle and hesitantly eased his arm under the crying baby. His fingers curled around her tiny head, he cautiously lifted her and held her against him.

  “If you’ll carry her to that little table over there that I’ve padded with a blanket, I’ll help you change her,” Victoria said.

  “Help me?” Outrage roughened his voice. Heidi wailed louder.

  “Look, I’m not going to be able to use my left arm for a few days. I’m sorry, but that’s the way it is. You’ll have to learn to care for your daughter until I can take over fully again.”

  The fact Heidi wasn’t his daughter didn’t make any difference at the moment. His problem was that she was so little, he was afraid of hurting her. Plus having to handle a messy diaper. He’d been forced into a lot of frightening and dangerous situations in his life but never had he expected to be faced with this.

  With exaggerated care, he walked across to the changing table and awkwardly deposited the baby onto it. “Now what?” he muttered.

  Victoria told him. In minute detail. When he finished, she said, “Credible, but the clean diaper is so loose, it won’t stay on her. Tighten the tabs.”

  Hesitantly he did, worrying he might get them too tight and injure the baby. Heidi, who’d continued crying throughout his performance, eased into whimpers when he lifted her again. With Victoria’s encouragement, he arranged the baby up against his shoulder and then even the whimpering stopped.

  “She likes to be held,” Victoria pointed out. “It’s a characteristic need in all humans that we never quite outgrow.”

  Despite his acute distaste for diaper changing, a glow of satisfaction enveloped him. What he’d done had made the baby stop crying. He hadn’t, as he feared he might, harmed any of her vital parts, and now she was content to have him hold her.

  “I can warm a bottle of formula one-handed,” Victoria said. She nodded her head toward an old oak rocker. “That seems to be the best place to feed her.”

  He frowned. “Surely you can feed her with one hand.”

  “If I have to, yes. But I think it’s important for you to learn basic infant care here and now so that if anything happens to me, you can take over. Though my fall was caused by my own carelessness, it may have been a blessing in disguise, showing us why you need to be able to do what’s necessary for your daughter.”

  Her logic was inescapable. Since he’d taken the responsibility for Kim’s baby, whether he wanted to learn or not, basic care of Heidi went along with the deal.

  Easing into the rocker, he said resignedly, “Bring on the bottle.”

  While he fed Heidi, without intending to he gazed intently into her face. At first her blue eyes seemed to focus on him but, as she sucked on the mpple, they gradually drooped shut No longer did she seem merely a blob to him but emerged as a tiny person. He decided she had Kim’s chin as well as her blue eyes and red hair.

  “Did Kim see her before she died?” he asked abruptly.

  Victoria nodded, her expression conveying sympathy without words. It made him feel like an imposter. While he regretted that Kim had to die, he didn’t grieve for her as a man would for a wife he’d loved and lost. Their marriage had been over even before she left him for Malengo, though that had been the impetus that propelled the divorce.

  But there was no way he could explain all this to Victoria. In any case, their contact was only temporary. She’d be better off believing what she did now until she left him. Left his employ, he corrected, dismissing the uneasiness that infused him when he thought about Victoria being gone.

  “The nipple’s fallen out of her mouth,” Victoria pointed out.

  “She’s asleep. That’s why.”

  “Time to burp her.”

  “She’ll wake up,” he protested.

  “Remember what I told you about air bubbles?”

  He did. They went with colic. Setting the bottle aside, he slowly lifted Heidi to his shoulder, trying not to rouse her, all the while cupping her head protectively. He grinned at Victoria when the baby cooperated by burping audibly.

  “Oops,” she said. “Forgot to give you a protective cloth.”

  He realized then the damp warmth on his shoulder must be spit-up formula.

  Later, after Heidi was asleep in the cradle, he and Victoria retired to the kitchen for lunch. He found he enjoyed helping her with the simple meal.

  “I don’t cook for myself,” he admitted as they sat down to eat.

  “No food to speak of in your refrigerator at the town house gave me that clue,” she said. “But you’re not alone. Many single people don’t like to cook for themselves, especially men.”

  “I’m not home all that much.”

  “Your job requires travel?”

  He nodded without elaborating.

  Victoria didn’t pry any further. Steve had taken her injury in stride, not saying a word about her downright stupidity in not looking where she was stepping. She was plain lucky she hadn’t fallen off a cliff instead of that short drop. This was as amiable as she’d so far seen him and she didn’t intend to do anything to make him retreat into his silent shell again.

  “Willa Hawkins seems friendly,” she offered cautiously. “I really appreciated her help.”

  He grunted instead of replying. So much for that. Victoria wondered what he’d say if she told him Willa called him the secret man. Probably another grunt.

  They ate in silence until he suddenly said, “Tell me about Kim. I know you said some things about her and the accident when we first met in the hospital but I wasn’t really listening. Start from the beginning, will you?”

  Victoria began with the ambulance bringing in Kim as an accident victim. “She had multiple injuries and we might have transferred her to Washington Hospital Center for specialized trauma care but as soon as we saw she was in advanced labor that wasn’t an option. The baby was on the way and needed to be delivered then and there.”

  She went on relating in layman terms what had happened, avoiding too-realistic descriptions. “So after Kim had signed the papers, she closed her eyes and I knew she was going. I was still holding her hand and she mumbled your name and then something I couldn’t quite catch, even though I leaned close to hear.”

  “What do you think she said?” The tenseness in Steve’s voice troubled Victoria, making her wish she had something comfortably concrete to tell him.

  “What it sounded like was ‘unfair day’ and then ‘cold.’ These are only the approximate words, her voice was pretty indistinct by then.”

  She saw by his puzzled expression that he could make no more sense of the words than she had. Of course it certainly had been an unfair day for Kim and she may well have felt cold.

  “Nothing else?” he asked.

  Victoria shook her head. “I know how you must feel.”

  His gaze held hers. “I doubt that. The truth is, there was no chance Kim and I would ever get together again and we both knew it. Her death was a shock but not the kind of shock it would have been if we’d still been close.”

  She stared into his hazel eyes, gone hard and cold, and tried to determine what he might be hiding behind that icy gaze. Denial?

  “I should have mentioned it before,” he added, “but I didn’t realize you’d be with me this long.”

  “I didn’t, either,” she said. “What I’m wondering is if the reason you told me about you and Kim is because it bothers you to accept sympathy.”

  He blinked. “Blunt to a fault, aren’t you? Let’s say I don’t care to accept anything under false pretenses.”

  “So you’re asking me to withdraw my sympathy?”

  “Yes.”

  Victoria shrugged and immediately regretted it when pain settled into her left shoulder. Damn, this injury was going to be a bother. As for sympathy, if he didn’t want it, she wouldn’t waste any more on him.

  “Shoulder
bothering you?” he asked.

  The man didn’t miss much. “Now and then.”

  “When you need help, ask.” He offered a half smile. “I have unexplored talents.”

  She decided she’d be better off not asking about them.

  Throughout the rest of the day and evening, he assisted her with Heidi and with household tasks unasked. It wasn’t until she was ready to go to bed that she realized there was no way she was going to get her T-shirt off without causing herself more pain than she wanted to experience. The alternative—to leave it on—wasn’t viable. Sooner or later the shirt had to come off.

  Steve was sprawled on the couch in the main room reading by the light of a kerosene lamp. He put down the book and looked up when Victoria said, “Excuse me.”

  She stood beside the couch looking distressed.

  “What’s wrong?” he asked, sitting up.

  “My arm—that is, I’m going to need some help with this shirt.”

  Rising, he assessed the situation, resolved to treat it with detachment. “The shirt will have to come off the injured arm last,” he said.

  “I realize that.” Her tone was tart.

  Was she embarrassed about him seeing her brassiere? He tried to keep from wondering if it was one of those lacy confections that showed as much as it concealed. This was no time to let his imagination run riot. Especially since he’d probably have to unhook it for her. Would it have a back or a front closure? His groin tightened.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said gruffly and reached for the bottom of her T-shirt.

  She backed away. “Uh—could you do it with your eyes closed?”

  “If I have to.” He tried not to show his amusement. “Let me take hold of the shirt first.”

  “I wish I could be more practical about this,” she muttered. “After all, it has nothing to do with sex.”

  From his point of view she was about as wrong as she could be. “Here goes,” he said, grasping the shirt bottom with both hands and easing it up, belatedly remembering to close his eyes—so belatedly that he caught a glimpse of one bare breast. She wasn’t wearing a brassiere.

  “Careful,” she warned.

  Much too late, as far as he was concerned, though he did his best to control his instinctive reaction.

  With his eyes still closed, he let her movements guide the way he pulled the shirt. When at last she said, “Okay, you can let go now,” he obeyed.

  As his hands dropped away from her, his fingertips accidentally grazed a soft swelling that he knew was one of her breasts. Fighting an impulse to open his eyes, he swallowed and turned away.

  “Let’s hope you heal quickly,” he said hoarsely.

  Shaken by Steve’s touch, Victoria hurried into the bedroom. The entire disrobing had been too distractingly intimate to ever be repeated. Painful shoulder or not, she’d manage to dress and undress herself from now on.

  Heidi’s hungry wail roused her at three in the morning. Steve, too, obviously, because he came barreling down the spiral staircase as she bent over the cradle. He was, she noted absently, still wearing the same seen-better-days pajama bottoms.

  “I’ll change her,” he announced. “You warm the formula.”

  After Steve fed and burped the baby, she whimpered when he tried to put her back in the cradle. “Now what?” he asked.

  “She isn’t ready to go back to sleep.”

  “I am,” he grumbled. But despite his gruff words, he sat down in the rocker again, still holding the baby, and set it in motion.

  Amused and touched, Victoria said, “Know any lullabies?”

  To her surprise, he began humming a plaintive, singsong tune. “Talal’s,” he said. “He sings it to Yasmin in Arabic. Something about the cool desert breeze bringing the gift of sleep.”

  This was the first time Steve had voluntarily offered anything at all about his personal life. She would have liked to ask who Talal and Yasmin were but didn’t want to break the spell cast by the intimate coziness of the night, dark except for the beams of their two flashlights crossing each other as they rested side by side on the kitchen table.

  Whatever the song was, Heidi quieted, seeming to like Steve’s humming as he rocked back and forth.

  “At camp,” Victoria said softly, “I remember waiting for sleep while listening to the wind sighing through the pines. One moment we’d all be chattering and then one by one my cabin mates would fall asleep. I was always the last, I guess because I wanted to savor every moment.”

  She went on reminiscing until she realized the creak of the rocker had ceased. Peering closely at Steve, she saw he was sleeping as soundly as the baby in his arms.

  Much as she hated to disturb him, she knew that, relaxed as he was, if he moved in his sleep Heidi might roll off his lap.

  Rising from her chair, she leaned over the rocker, careful not to touch him. Experience had taught her some sleepers reacted violently to being touched. “Steve,” she whispered. “Steve, you need to wake up.”

  To her shock, he bounded out of the chair, only his last-minute instinctive grab saving the baby from a fall. Heidi let out an indignant wail.

  “It’s all right,” he said to the baby, cuddling her to him. “I’d never do anything to hurt you.”

  “I didn’t mean to startle you,” Victoria told him. “You certainly have a hair-trigger reaction time.”

  “Something like that, yeah.”

  “Heidi likes to be rocked. Maybe if you put her in the cradle we can rock her to sleep in that.”

  When he did as she suggested, she thought he might let her take over and go back to bed. Instead, he began swinging the cradle gently back and forth, once again humming the Arabic lullaby. When Heidi slipped back into sleep he mouthed a silent good-night and headed for the stairs.

  Once in her own bed, despite an occasional twinge from her shoulder, Victoria dozed off feeling a warm glow of accomplishment. Maybe her fall hadn’t been so foolish after all since, as a result, Steve had begun to act like a father.

  The next morning she was amazed to see how late it was when she woke. Bounding out of bed, she checked the cradle. Heidi lay in it happily waving her arms.

  “She’s been fed and changed,” Steve said from the kitchen area.

  “Did she cry? I didn’t hear her.”

  “I was already up when she began to whimper so I took care of things.” He held up the pot. “Coffee’s ready. Need any help dressing?”

  . Belatedly conscious of her short sleep-T, she began to retreat. “I think I can manage,” she told him firmly, determined to do so or die trying.

  Underpants and shorts were fairly easy to manage. A bra was impossible, but then she often went without one. As she’d been forced to reveal to Steve last night, to her dismay. Keeping in mind she needed to be able to remove all her clothes by herself tonight, she chose a shirt that buttoned up the front, though fastening the buttons one-handedly proved to be a struggle. Her shoulder was definitely improving, though.

  Steve watched Victoria emerge from the bedroom fully dressed and told himself it was just as well he didn’t have to get involved in that again. So far, taking care of the baby had proved to be a breeze, but taking care of the baby’s caretaker could start up a storm.

  He caught himself admiring the graceful curves of her legs revealed by the shorts, and deliberately looked away.

  “After breakfast we’ll give Heidi a bath,” Victoria said, “so let’s put some water on the stove to warm now.”

  “There’s already warm water in the reservoir.” Seeing her puzzled expression, he added, “It’s at the far end of the stove, away from the fire.” As he spoke, he walked over and, with the metal lifter, opened the hinged lid of the reservoir.

  Victoria peered in and poked a cautious finger at the water. “Great. Plenty here to use for the baby. Now if only we could find a way to get a warm shower for grown-ups out of this.”

  “I’m hunting for a wood-fired hot-water tank for the bathroom. I know
they’re made but haven’t had time to locate one.”

  “Ah, well, cold showers are supposed to be good for mind and body according to some health freak.”

  Deciding it wouldn’t improve his health any to imagine her in the shower—warm or cold—he changed the subject. “When your shoulder’s better we’ll pack up Heidi and hike down the trail to Hanksville, the little community I told you about on this side of the mountain. Tiny place. One general store, a post office, gas station, a few houses and a church.”

  “Maybe the day after tomorrow? I’m healing rapidly, just as you hoped.”

  After breakfast, Victoria perched the plastic baby tub she’d bought on the kitchen table and Steve filled it with a bucket of water from the reservoir. Once he was convinced the wet baby wouldn’t slip out of his grasp, the bath went well.

  “Old Steve didn’t drown you, after all,” he told Heidi as he patted her dry. “Might be a tad clumsy but I’m a fast learner.”

  Her tiny lips curved up and, pleased, he turned to tell Victoria, “She’s smiling at me.”

  “More likely to be gas. It takes about three to six weeks for babies to work up to smiling on purpose.”

  “Don’t listen to her,” he told the baby. “We know what we know.”

  Victoria rolled her eyes. “I won’t say another word.”

  At some level, Steve was aware it was ridiculous to be talking to Heidi as though she was already a rational person, but at another, basic level, he enjoyed doing it. No one could have convinced him of this a couple weeks ago, but there it was.

  He’d undergone some metamorphosis from being more or less indifferent to the baby into becoming Heidi’s protector. She needed him in a way no human being ever had. “Old Steve’ll take good care of you,” he murmured while fastening the tabs of her diaper. “He won’t let anything hurt you.”

  Glancing up, he saw Victoria’s grin of approval and shrugged. So he was acting like the protective father he wasn’t. But it was no act. He’d begun to care what happened to this little girl. And, somehow, mixed up in the process was the realization he also cared what Victoria thought about him. When he shouldn’t give a damn.