The Baby Deal

“Um.” Now she had a really keen awareness of exactly how close Shay was and exactly how far away the door was. The clean freshness of his soap frayed her senses. It wasn’t what he used to smell like. “That was all I had to say.”

“Too bad. What should we do now?”

“Unpack.” Hadn’t she just said she could do that later? She took a step backward, hoping the movement would jar her brain into functioning again. “Then we can go over some basics.”

“Or,” he said, wrapping his tongue around the r in a thoroughly suggestive way, “I could put some Shay in your sway, baby.”

Her eyes shut for a brief, insane second. The first time he’d laid that line on her, she’d laughed and let him take her to dinner. After an appropriate period of dating, he’d sweet-talked her clothes off and she’d spent forty-eight hours in his bed losing all sense of time and place. His full-on masculine quicksand had sucked her under and kept her there. Pulling free had been the hardest thing she’d ever done.

“My sway is A-Okay, thanks.” Dr. Seuss instead of Dr. Cane. Shay yanked her out of academia, yanked her out of reasonableness. He had to stop. “We agreed it was best to have a professional association only.”

When he reached out and fingered a lock of hair, she almost jerked out of her skin. With a perplexed once-over, he dropped his hand, allowing her to breathe again.

“No. I said I was hiring you for your expertise. I did not agree to the distance between us. Feels wrong. That line worked once to get your attention. Figured I’d try it again.”

Distance. She wished she didn’t know precisely what he meant. In college, they’d talked about everything, joked and flirted without censor. There was a strange edge now that cut in ways she hadn’t anticipated. “Well, I’m not falling for it again.”

“Maybe I’ll find a different line, then.” When she cocked a brow, he shrugged and said, “It’s weird to be dancing around our past, trying to avoid land mines.”

“So you figured you’d step on one deliberately?”

“Hey, it’s easier to deal with an explosion you know is coming than one you don’t.”

Shay’s straightforward approach was a far cry from textbook psychology and he seldom followed conventions anyway. Her doctorate wouldn’t get much traction here and they did have to spend time together. “Let’s ditch the explosives and try something else, like really putting the past behind us. We’re different people now. Maybe this time around, we can be friends.”

His grin could have melted butter. “Can we have a sleepover and watch scary movies? I haven’t had a good midnight pillow fight in ages.”

She laughed. “Sorry, sport. Your future includes diapers and bottles. But I’ll gladly stay up late with you for that.”

The pages of Shay’s life were turning so fast, he barely had time to read the words, let alone absorb them. If everything slowed down, he might catch up.

He should be asleep. Instead, he was watching the digital clock. Mikey woke up between one-fifteen and one-twenty pretty much every night, like the kid’s stomach had an alarm. Shay usually woke in cold panic right before the witching hour, terrified he’d missed the opening wail, effectively forcing a helpless baby to lie there crying while Shay slept.

The video monitor on Shay’s nightstand showed an immobile lump in the middle of the crib. On cue, the lump stirred and let out a yowl. Shay hit the carpet and threw on a shirt before trudging to the connecting door between his bedroom and Mikey’s. He wanted to bond with Mikey and this was part of it, but some nights he wished they could bond through the mutual act of sleep.

“Shh. I’m here.” He scooped up the baby and gathered him against a shoulder. He carried the mewling bundle to the kitchenette he’d paid double to have installed in the corner of the nursery within twenty-four hours of the reading of the will. Murmuring nonsense words, he went through the rote motions of heating water and mixing formula for the hungry bottomless pit snuffling against his shirt.

A whiff of female filtered in underneath the strong sour of formula.

“Hey,” Juliana whispered behind him.

Every nerve lit up as if he’d crested a mountain in his Cessna and an endless valley fell away under the wings. It’d be nice to blame his reaction on lack of sex. Or sleep. But he’d gone without both many times and it had never caused spontaneous bursts of poetry and awareness.

She thought they should try to be friends. Screw that. She’d have to get used to the idea that he wanted her in his arms, naked and shuddering with pleasure.

He grabbed the full bottle and shot her a smile over his shoulder. “Welcome to my world.”

She smiled back, tousled and gorgeous in her just-out-of-bed state. “Can I feed him?”

“Is the dark side of the moon cold?”

One eyebrow crinkled. “I’ll take that as a yes.”

He waited until she settled into the rocking chair and positioned the baby against her thighs, his fingertips tingling where he’d brushed her. The kid went after the bottle like an alcoholic with a fifth of Jim Beam.

Shay slumped against the wall and slid to the carpet. Tomorrow he’d order another chair. Should have already done that. It hadn’t registered there’d be two people in the nursery taking care of Mikey at the same time.

In record time, Mikey drained the bottle. She set the empty bottle on the low table beside the rocking chair and lifted Mikey up to burp him. Here came the really fun part.

Mikey cried. And cried. No matter what Juliana did, he cried more. Worry lines popped up around her eyes as she patted and rubbed Mikey’s back.

“Yeah, you might as well settle in and get comfortable,” he advised. “He’ll do that for about another hour.”

“Shay, that’s not normal. How many days has he cried more than a few minutes after eating?”

“All of them. Babies cry a lot, don’t they?” Unease trickled across his shoulders. Was something wrong with Mikey and he’d been too clueless to connect the dots?

Juliana shot off a round of questions, which he did his best to answer. If nothing else, he’d found the right person to help—she was something, asking things he’d never have considered, like if he’d spoken to Donna’s nanny about whether Donna used a different brand of formula or if she’d been breastfeeding. Yeah, that was a conversation he was dying to have. He scrubbed at his jaw, bristling the short hairs sideways. What kind of dad balked at saying breastfeeding out loud?

“He probably has reflux. We’ll get it fixed, won’t we, honey?” she murmured in Mikey’s ear and started humming, rocking the chair simultaneously. When that didn’t work, she laid him across her knees, facedown and rubbed his back.

“How do you know to do all these things? Your grad school professors must have loved you.” His professors had hated him, as they tended to when a student could ace a test without reading the textbook or showing up for lectures. Mind-numbing stuff. He and Grant had dropped out of MIT’s graduate program and started GGS Aerospace while Donna finished her PhD. Best move he’d ever made.

Second best had been hiring Juliana to turn him into a father. She was doing exactly what he’d hoped—making everything all right.

She stood and walked with Mikey, pacing around the nursery with swaying steps. Mikey was slung over her shoulder, head hanging down her back. Finally, he burped and quieted down.

“I didn’t learn about babies in grad school,” she said once she’d wrapped Mikey up in the blankets mummy-style. But when she didn’t elaborate, his curiosity was piqued. They’d split in their senior year at SMU and she’d had eight years’ worth of life since then.

“Watch a lot of baby videos online?” That’s what he’d done. Learned enough to get by and enough to know he needed far more help than five-minute snippets posted by internet wannabe-stars.

“I read a few books.” Mikey was nestled in her arms peacefully and she kept her eyes on the baby, then busied herself with placing him back in the crib.

Shay crossed his fingers. Sometimes the baby went to sleep and sometimes, the second he hit the mattress, he started screaming again. Tonight was a back-to-sleep night. Thank God.

Shay’s already lit-up nerves weren’t faring well with the dual punch of Juliana and screaming baby.

They tiptoed out of the nursery, parting to retreat to their separate bedrooms. And met again inside the nursery at 4:05 a.m., the second hour engrained in Mikey’s stomach.

Bleary-eyed, Juliana shuffled a step closer. “He’s still waking up twice a night?”

“That’s not normal, either?”

Man, was anything about this kid right? Genetically speaking, he should be well ahead of the curve. Maybe it was Shay’s fault—corrupting the baby with his lack of experience.

When he moved toward the crib, she tugged him back with a hand to his elbow. “We’ll let the baby cry it out this time.”

Let the baby cry on purpose? He eyed the bawling lump and then eyed Juliana. She nodded toward the door and left. Mystified, he followed her back into his bedroom, Mikey’s wails grating down his spine.