Читать книгу The Lawman's Baby - Patricia Johns - Страница 14
ОглавлениеPAIGE STOOD BY the kitchen sink shaking up a bottle of formula. Mike’s kitchen was neat—a pot in the farmhouse-style sink waiting to be washed, but other than that, the counters were wiped and everything looked in order. Paige could appreciate a neat kitchen. It was soothing.
The milk frothed in the bottle, and she paused, let it settle, then shook it again. The view from the kitchen window opened up into a backyard with a lawn that seemed to fade into some brush and forest. Trees flamed red and gold; the wind rippling through autumn leaves clung resolutely to the branches. Beyond the trees, the mountains loomed. A cape of evergreens mingled with a few deciduous trees that were in full fall display climbing up the mountainside toward the bare, rocky peaks that were obscured by cloud.
“It’s quite the view,” Mike said behind her, and she turned. The baby was still snuggled up under his chin.
“It really is,” she agreed, and she turned on the hot water tap to warm the milk in the bottle. “I’ve lived here my whole life, except for my college years, and I never get tired of that view.”
“Really?” Mike raised his eyebrows. “All your life?”
“It’s as good a place as any to grow up,” she said, turning off the tap and shaking up the bottle again. “I love this town. We have more than our fair share of eagles, which draws in a lot of tourists. Have you ever seen one up close?”
Mike shook his head. “Not yet.”
“It’s only a matter of time around here,” she said. “Most people want to come out this way for the wildlife.”
“Not me.” His voice was a low rumble.
“So why did you?” she asked.
“I didn’t have a whole lot of choice,” he replied. “My boss strongly suggested I transfer out, and Eagle’s Rest was the only place hiring.”
“What happened?” She eyed him for a moment, standing there with the baby in his arms and an irritable look on his face. “Never mind. I think I can guess.”
“Yeah?” He shot her an amused look. “Go ahead. Give it your best shot.”
“My brother’s a cop, and I’ve worked with police officers for a long time. The one thing you all seemed to share in common is a tendency to balk at authority—ironically enough. It takes a certain personality type to want to chase down bad guys...and that personality doesn’t like authority, either.”
He laughed softly. “You’re insightful.”
“I am.” She shot him a smile back. “So, I’m right?”
“Sort of,” he said. “I want to join the SWAT team, but that involves both a passing mark on the qualifying exams and a recommendation from my boss to even get into the Denver SWAT training. Chief Vernon wasn’t going to give me the recommendation. He said if I wanted to start fresh somewhere else, I was welcome to. There was an opening here, and I figured I’d take his advice and see if I couldn’t get a new chief to help me get there.”
“SWAT.” She eyed him for a moment. “That’s elite. Have you done the exams?”
“Yep. Just waiting on the results.”
“If the chief didn’t think you had what it took, why let you sit for the exams to begin with?”
“I think he was hoping I wouldn’t pass and he could shut me down for a while. I’m more stubborn than that.”
She could see it now—the cocky cop, the determination, the attitude... Now this officer was here in quiet little Eagle’s Rest with a newborn. He was going to hate this.
“You don’t plan to stay, do you?” she asked.
“Only as long as I have to, honestly,” he replied. “I know what I want. I know where I can contribute the most. And it isn’t here.”
Paige handed him the bottle. “Benjie’s going to be hungry pretty soon.”
The baby wriggled and opened his mouth like a little bird as if on cue. Mike’s confidence seemed to evaporate and he looked from the bottle to the baby and over to her with an expression of misgiving.
“How do I do this?” he asked.
“Here—” She took the bottle back. “Just tip him onto his back in the crook of your arm.”
Mike took a moment to get the baby into the right position, then she handed him the bottle again.
“Test it against your wrist,” she said. “There are a lot of nerve endings there. The milk should feel warm but not hot.”
Mike tapped the nipple against his wrist, nodded, then held it over the baby’s face. A drip of milk splattered across the infant’s forehead, and Benjie let out a squawk of annoyance. Paige chuckled, then stepped closer, put her hand over Mike’s broad one and guided the bottle to Benjie’s searching mouth. The baby latched on and started to suck.
“There you go,” she murmured.
Paige was standing close, and when she looked up at him, she found his steely gaze locked on her. He smelled good—the wrong thing to be noticing right now.
“Thanks,” Mike said.
“Sure.” She shot him a brief smile, and his gaze moved back to the baby. He probably had no idea what that stare of his did to a woman. He was just so...male. It had been a while since she’d noticed a man in this way.
The bottle was dwarfed in Mike’s big hand as the baby drank, the milk in the bottle steadily disappearing.
“So, you’ve figured me out,” Mike said quietly. “What about you? How come you want to quit? You have that trouble with authority, too?”
“No, not me. I just...lost my faith in being able to make a difference.”
His eyes flickered up toward her again. “One case in particular?”
“It was a dad with two young children,” she said after a beat of silence. “He struggled with alcoholism and was doing well for a while, but then slid back down into it. I came by to check on the family and found the kids alone in the trailer. It was a mess. No food in the fridge, just a TV blaring to keep them company. I had to call in Children’s Services, and they were taken away.”
“Sounds like it was the only call you could make,” he replied.
“It was.”
“So what was the problem?”
“The dad came by my office a week later, sober again. He sat down and sobbed. His heart was just breaking. He said he loved his kids. This was the kick in the pants that he needed. He’d never drink a drop again.”
Mike was silent, watching her, and the memory came back with the force of a load of bricks. That heartbreaking sob torn from the chest of a broken man. The way he’d pleaded with her, begged for another chance. She couldn’t give it. She knew she’d made the right call...but somehow, that man’s desperation had sunk past all her defenses.
“I had his kids taken away,” she said, bracing herself against the memory. “And while I know I had to, I broke three hearts that day.”
“It was the right call,” he said.
“I felt it too deeply, though,” she said. “I didn’t have that professional glass between me and that man’s pain. I used to have it...”
“You don’t think you’ll get it back?” he asked.
“I don’t think I want it back,” she replied. “That’s my problem! When I think about getting professional reserve back, being able to protect my heart from other people’s pain... It’s kind of depressing. Maybe I don’t want to be tough again. Maybe I just want to be normal.”
“What’s normal?” he said with a short laugh.
He meant it as a rhetorical question, but Paige had a very good idea of what normal looked like.
“I want a regular life,” she said. “I want a job that doesn’t break my heart. I want a white picket fence and a view of the mountains. And that’s it. I want hobbies, and friends and work stories about Karen from Accounting.”
“You want to be a civilian again,” he said quietly.
“I really do.”
“No one likes Karen from Accounting,” he added, his expression deadpan, but she could hear the humor in his voice. “She’s awful. You might want to consider that.”
Paige chuckled. “I want regular, civilian annoyances. Including Karen. At least she doesn’t break my heart.”
“I suppose.”
“Don’t you see the appeal of that?” she asked, meeting his gaze. “I mean, after all you’ve seen...don’t you ever look at a regular Joe and think how lucky he is?”
“Nah,” Mike replied as the baby drained the last drop from the bottle. He pulled the nipple out of Benjie’s mouth with a pop. “I’d rather know the worst.”
“Really?” She eyed him for a moment.
“I missed out on what was really going on with my sister,” he said. “I just wanted to focus on my own stuff back then. I was only seventeen, after all. Same as her boyfriend. I liked cars and girls. But if I’d opened my eyes and actually recognized what was happening with my little sister, I might have been able to help her. So, no. I don’t want to shut my eyes to it again. I want to chase it down and toss it behind bars. I want to find out who’s to blame and make them pay. That’s how I feel better.”
She nodded. Sure. Faced with the tough stuff, he wanted to beat it up. But when she faced the same tough realities, she was left a heartbroken mess. He belonged out there in the middle of it all. She just didn’t think that she did.
The baby started to squirm, and Paige grabbed a dish towel and tossed it over Mike’s shoulder. “Time to burp.”
He took a moment to awkwardly reposition the baby up on his shoulder.
“Just rub some gentle circles on his back,” Paige instructed, and Mike did as she told him with the tips of two fingers. Benjie squirmed and lifted his head, then dropped it back onto Mike’s shoulder.
“Is he okay?” Mike asked, turning his head to look at the baby.
“He’s working up a burp,” she said.
“He doesn’t like this towel,” Mike said, and he pulled it out from under the baby. “Do you, buddy?”
“You might not want to—” Paige began, when Benjie came up with a resounding, wet burp. The dribble of milk ran down Mike’s uniform, and the baby stopped squirming, settling down into comfort. Mike looked from the towel to the baby, then over at Paige.
“That’s why we use a cloth,” she said with a small smile. “Live and learn.”
She picked up the towel again and came over to wipe up what she could. Mike’s breath brushed the top of her head as she wiped, the heat from his chest emanating against her. He felt comforting, and she knew that had very little to do with who he was and very much to do with her current state of mind. She was feeling vulnerable, and a big, strong guy was comforting on a DNA level. Who didn’t want to be protected by a man like this? Except the reality was, this bulky cop was filled with attitude and misgivings and was hip-deep in the life she was running away from.
“You’re going to need a bassinet for him to sleep in,” Paige said, stepping back and tossing the towel onto the counter. “And a few other things I can pick up for you. If I keep the receipts, you can reimburse me. I won’t be long.”
“Wait...what?”
And the tough cop seemed to evaporate, leaving behind a slightly panicked man with a stain on the front of his uniform. His hand on Benjie’s rump covered the baby almost up to his little shoulders, and those gray eyes softened to charcoal as he met her gaze in dismay.
“You’ll be fine,” she replied, forcing herself to smile. “I’ll make up another couple of bottles for you before I leave, but this will be good for you. I promise.”
And Paige would be even better once she got out of here for an hour or two and could think straight. Maybe what she really needed wasn’t a muscular cop or a job that could let her get her feet wet again...but a nunnery. She needed some solitude and then some bracing older women to tell her what to do.
But that wasn’t likely, and she’d already taken the job.
* * *
PAIGE WAS GONE longer than Mike had anticipated. He didn’t have anywhere to put the baby down besides the car seat. Funny, he hadn’t thought of that before—where to put the baby. The car seat was by the door, and he moved it over to the couch and tried to get Benjie settled inside it again, only to have Benjie’s little mouth turn down. Then his eyes welled up and that plaintive cry erupted from deep inside his tiny chest. So Mike picked the baby back up and paced through the living room to the front window, then across again to the kitchen, all the while wondering what he was supposed to do with himself. If nothing else, he was getting his steps in on his fitness tracker.
Mike glanced toward the TV as he headed back into the living room, and that seemed like a good idea, so he sank into the couch, the baby on his chest, and flicked through some channels, keeping the volume low. Benjie wriggled a little bit, but when Mike put a hand over his back, he settled down and fell asleep. Twice, Mike tried to sit up to get Benjie into that car seat, but Benjie woke up each time, and that cry would start up again, so he’d lean back again and flick through a few more channels.
An hour passed, and Benjie woke up, his little mouth searching against Mike’s shirt, so he got another of the bottles Paige had prepared from the fridge and warmed it under the tap like she’d shown him. Feeding the baby was a little easier this time because Mike didn’t have an audience, and he sat down on the couch, a talk show keeping him company, the baby propped in his lap. Benjie’s eyes were wide open as he slurped back on that bottle, and Mike couldn’t help but smile.
“You’re cute,” he murmured as milk dribbled down Benjie’s chin. He was so tiny yet so solemn as he went to town on that bottle. And in the baby’s face, Mike thought he could see a little bit of his sister.
Jana had always been overly solemn, too. He would tease her when she was little. And when she’d get upset about something at school—some mean girls making fun of her clothes, a teacher telling her off for not trying hard enough—he’d counsel her to just ignore it. It was what he did, after all. He always blocked out the stuff he didn’t want to see. He’d been just as abandoned as she was, after all, and he didn’t let it get him down.
Looking back on it, he wished he could change some of those reactions. He hadn’t been helpful. But then, he’d been a kid, too, and it wasn’t fair to expect him to know how to fix problems that adults struggled with. Jana hadn’t needed him to tell her that the things that made her sad shouldn’t. She’d needed...what? Maybe just to be understood. And he hadn’t even managed that much for her. She’d run away from home...and from him.
“I’m going to do better by you, buddy,” Mike murmured, and he felt his throat tighten with emotion. Somehow, even with all his failure when it came to his sister, she’d still chosen him to take care of her little boy.
Did she think he’d do better now that he was grown, or was she simply desperate?
And where was she now? If he knew, he’d find her, bring her here. He’d keep her safe at long last. But his only connection to his sister was her tiny baby.
Benjie finished off his bottle, and Mike dropped it onto the couch next to him. He looked around for a cloth, found one and put it up on his shoulder. He wouldn’t make that mistake twice.
Mike’s cell phone rang, and he glanced down to see the station’s number. Work—that was actually a good thing right now. He flicked off the TV and hit the speaker button, then lifted Benjie up to his shoulder for that burp.
“Officer McMann,” he said.
“Hi, Mike, it’s Ellen.” The receptionist at the station. “How are you?”
“Not bad. You?”
“I’m fine.” He could hear the smile in her voice. “The chief wants to know if you’re free Sunday afternoon.”
“I don’t think I’m scheduled to work,” he said. Benjie squirmed and let out a little whimper, and Mike kept doing those circles on the little guy’s back with his fingertips.
“Good, because we want to throw you a baby shower,” she announced.
“What? No.”
“Yes.” She sounded so matter-of-fact.
“Ellen, I appreciate the thought, but I’m not really a party kind of guy. Besides, I’m not...a mother...”
“We’re having a baby shower,” Ellen said. “If you don’t come, it’s going to be a really awkward party.”
Mike sighed, and shut his eyes. Benjie let out a loud burp, and Mike looked down at the little guy, who looked rather pleased with himself.
“Sunday,” Ellen said when he hadn’t replied. “This is coming from the chief.”
Great. It was an order from the one man he needed to impress. If he’d come to Eagle’s Rest without family complications, he would be spending his time at the firing range and doing physical training. How was he supposed to prove to the chief he was SWAT material when he was being mollycoddled at the precinct?
“Thanks, Ellen,” he said.
“No problem,” she replied cheerily, and hung up.
The very last thing he needed right now was some stupid baby shower. This wasn’t funny—some joke played on the muscle-bound cop who now had a baby to take care of by himself. Hilarious. He hardly knew these people.
It was then that he felt a rumble in Benjie’s diaper. It started out small, and then started to grow. Mike looked down at the baby in surprise and saw that Benjie’s face was scrunched up in a look of intense concentration. The smell came next, and Mike held Benjie out in front of him like an unwanted Christmas fruitcake.
“Better out than in,” Mike said. He felt the obligation to say something encouraging, and he waited until the rumbling stopped. “Done?”
Benjie blinked a couple of times, and then there was another rumble.
“Wow. Kiddo. This is really something,” Mike said, looking around the room. Some leaks were starting to seep into the sleeper, and Mike quickly realized he was in a bind. This baby needed a new diaper—heck, maybe two, at this rate—and he had a very faint idea of how to make this happen.
“Benjie, you and I have a problem,” Mike said, pulling the baby back against his body again. There was going to be a smell, and probably some leaking, but he couldn’t just walk around for the next ten minutes, holding a five-pound newborn like an offering to the gods. He’d have to survive a little baby poop.
The diapers were in the box in the kitchen. So he headed in that direction. There would be wipes, too. He knew that much. He rummaged around, past bottles, soothers, some plastic doodads he didn’t recognize...and emerged with a small package of diapers. He tossed them overhand toward the couch, then snatched up the tub of wipes.
He was feeling better already. This wasn’t so bad. He’d been a little freaked out when Paige took off to run those errands, but maybe she was right—he was doing okay.
There was a sweatshirt hanging over the arm of the couch, and he tossed it onto the floor to give a bit of padding. Then he sank to the floor next to it, lowered Benjie onto the sweatshirt and started undoing snaps on that little sleeper. Getting him out of the soiled sleeper was easy enough, but the diaper was a whole new challenge. He couldn’t figure out how to get it off Benjie, and it was more than full—it was overflowing. Mike eyed it for a moment, considering his options. He briefly considered just using some scissors and cutting the kid out of the diaper, but pointy scissors and a tiny, squirmy baby were a bad combination.
But then it occurred to him that he could just slide the baby out of his diaper like a pair of shorts. The whole diaper, now that it was overflowing, was hanging rather loose and low, anyway, so he gave it a little shimmy, and his plan worked...for the most part.
He now had a dirty diaper, and a baby dirty from the waist down, since he’d pulled Benjie through the diaper to get him out of it. He left the diaper where it was on top of the sweater and carried Benjie out in front of him, thumbs under his arms and fingers supporting his tiny head from behind, and headed for the kitchen.
He needed the sprayer nozzle on the tap, but before he could do anything with the sprayer, he needed a hand free. That meant the dirty baby went back up on his shoulder, and one hand went over the dirty bottom. He grimaced. There was an easier way for all of this, he was sure.
Once he got some warm water, Mike rinsed off his hand under the tap, then lowered the baby into the empty sink and sprayed him off, too. He was being gentle, but Benjie scrunched up his face and started to cry.
“Hey, buddy...it’s not so bad. You’ve got to be clean. I’m sorry, okay? I’m sorry...”
Behind him, Mike heard the front door open.
“I’m back!” Paige’s voice filtered over to the kitchen. There was a pause. “Oh, my God! What happened in here?”
“I’m in the kitchen,” he called, and he turned off the water, then scanned the room for something to wrap the baby in. Benjie’s plaintive wail made him feel bad—no one liked being hosed off, even if the hose was warm and gentle.
Paige appeared in the doorway, her eyes wide as she took him in.
“There is baby poop literally everywhere,” she said.
“Except on the baby,” he said, lifting up Benjie as proof. He was feeling rather proud of that achievement. He snatched a dish towel off the handle of the stove and wrapped it around Benjie, who stopped crying the minute he was wrapped up again. “Would you mind holding him?”
Paige stepped forward and took the baby without complaint, staring at Mike with a look of bewildered shock.
“I’ll just...change,” he said, looking down at his now smeared uniform. “This comes out in the wash, right?”
Paige didn’t answer, and he headed for the bedroom to find something else to wear. The smell of the diaper followed him, and he wrinkled his nose.
“So what did you pick up?” Mike called as he grabbed a pair of jeans and a T-shirt from his dresser.
“A bassinet, some burp cloths, a few preemie sleepers, since he’s pretty tiny still,” Paige called back. “Mike, what did you do to that diaper?”
“Nothing.” Mike emerged from the bedroom fully dressed. He went over to the sweatshirt protecting the carpet, picked it all up with one swoop and headed for the garbage. Whatever—he wasn’t attached to that sweatshirt, anyway.
“I think we need some diaper lessons,” she said. “Grab me a diaper, and I’m going to run through the basics.”
Mike passed a diaper over, and she held it up in front of her one-handed, the baby in the other arm. “This is the front. This is the back. These little tabs work like stickers.”
And for the next five minutes, Paige gave him a brief overview of diapering and dressing a baby—Benjie getting buttoned into a sleeper in the process. So, yeah, there had been an easier way, but in his defense, he’d panicked. Looking over at Paige’s sparkling blue eyes as she gave her super-detailed explanation of diaper duty, he realized that he was more than glad she was here to help him out—he was deeply grateful.
“They’re throwing me a baby shower at the precinct,” he said when she stopped talking.
“Good.”
“I don’t think so.”
“You need baby things,” she said, rising to her feet and cuddling Benjie close in her arms.
“What about that box in the kitchen? And you just bought baby things, I thought.”
“I got a few necessities,” she said with a small smile. “Trust me, Mike, you need a whole lot more baby stuff than you already have, and baby showers are a great way to get it.”
“I don’t like this,” he said.
Paige shrugged. “You’ll survive. You also might end up with something really useful, like a stroller, so...”
He found her lack of pity annoying, but he shot her a grin, anyway. “I take it the baby stuff is in the car still?”
She rummaged in her pocket for her keys and tossed them over to him. He caught them and headed for the front door. “I’ll write you a check.”
He was a lot more comfortable carrying boxes out of the car than he was dealing with his infant nephew, but when he glanced back at Benjie snuggled up in the crook of Paige’s arm, already fast asleep, he felt a wave of tenderness. Funny how an explosive diaper could be so bonding.
He and Benjie would be okay. Eventually.
