This Baby Business
Heatherly Bell
Strictly business…or is it?Air force pilot Levi Lambert has seen plenty of danger—but his infant daughter might be the death of him. Fortunately, Levi's found the answer to his sleep-deprived prayers: his next-door neighbor! Carly Gilmore is willing to be his nanny…until a small white lie turns their arrangement from business to very personal. The fake engagement was intended to keep Levi from losing custody of his baby girl, but is causing all sorts of new problems. Not only does Carly attract trouble like bees to honey, but there’s the little matter of Levi’s smokin’-hot attraction to her. The last thing he needs is to fall in love…
Strictly business...or is it?
Air force pilot Levi Lambert has seen plenty of danger—but his infant daughter might be the death of him. Fortunately, Levi’s found the answer to his sleep-deprived prayers: his next-door neighbor! Carly Gilmore is willing to be his nanny...until a small white lie turns their arrangement from business to very personal. The fake engagement was intended to keep Levi from losing custody of his baby girl, but is causing all sorts of new problems. Not only does Carly attract trouble like bees to honey, but there’s the little matter of Levi’s smokin’-hot attraction to her. The last thing he needs is to fall in love...
“You don’t have to worry...”
It occurred to Levi that he stood possibly a little closer than he should. Somehow that didn’t bother him at all as his eyes met Carly’s warm hazel ones. He was close enough to see every tiny speck of green. When his gaze slipped to her lickable lips, he knew he was in trouble.
She was sexy and pretty. Real. And she was one hell of a complication in his already chaotic life.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he wanted her.
With his hand on the nape of her neck, he pulled her close enough that they shared oxygen. Her eyes were warm and fluid, showing him all the things he wanted to see. An invitation. A welcome.
He kissed her, deep, long and lingering. When her tongue met with his, soft and tentative, he tugged her closer still. Took the kiss deeper and wilder.
She pulled back, a bit out of breath. “What was that?”
“I kissed you. And I think you liked it.”
And as if to acknowledge that, yes, she liked it, she kissed him.
Dear Reader (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21),
I confess. There’s something about a father and his baby that makes my heart stir. Given the popularity of male celebrity photos with their babies, I believe many of us feel the same way. A good-looking man plus a baby equals heart tug.
But Levi Lambert is no celebrity. He’s simply an everyday hero who is suddenly charged with the toughest job of his life: raising his child. Levi gives up his first love, the air force, and settles in Fortune, California, to fly for Magnum Aviation along with his two good friends, Stone Mcallister and Matt Conner. I love a good bromance, and Levi happily takes his place as the missing part of this trio of former air force pilots now flying out of a small southern-county airport.
Levi’s neighbor, Carly Gilmore, is struggling to save rockyourbaby.com, her mother’s company, and has put her own dreams on hold. When her new neighbor shows up at her doorstep in a babysitting bind, Carly has no idea she’ll be involved with them on a much deeper level than she’d ever anticipated. But before long, both Levi and Grace worm their way into her heart and home.
In this book, I give you a single dad, a baby, a clueless nanny and a fake engagement. Add two opposites who would have never expected to fall for each other and you’ve got This Baby Business.
I hope you enjoy.
Heatherly Bell
This Baby Business
Heatherly Bell
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
HEATHERLY BELL tackled her first book in 2004 and now the characters that occupy her mind refuse to leave until she writes them a book. She loves all music but confines singing to the shower these days. Heatherly lives in Northern California with her family, including two beagles—one who can say hello and the other a princess who can feel a pea through several pillows.
For Aliyah
Contents
Cover (#u4d3e8de6-2d36-5d92-8aa3-35db2a6b9863)
Back Cover Text (#u2b41c795-dc92-5528-926e-761f26896f2c)
Introduction (#uba832bce-a642-5ed2-9c7a-ed319b617291)
Dear Reader (#uc419d202-7d2d-5ee0-a336-d319185a7423)
Title Page (#ued115949-6db4-523b-9edf-ec7293aa80cb)
About the Author (#u73af9a73-51bf-5076-a98e-904dcf8c7e53)
Dedication (#u87a960e8-5c4b-5f6f-b8b1-3977ee2f44ef)
CHAPTER ONE (#u0bd13460-cce6-5978-a1e2-0e8421bf33f8)
CHAPTER TWO (#u56e318c3-014a-5fcb-a382-e37911a3c1cf)
CHAPTER THREE (#u67c79a09-3a9d-5233-810e-39f4a30fc5d0)
CHAPTER FOUR (#u8e31d94e-cddb-54a7-940d-7ec0d68167bb)
CHAPTER FIVE (#uebd11701-6871-541b-88d1-47862d6ed998)
CHAPTER SIX (#uede18c7a-9435-5325-9e40-85672a29977e)
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u2b8a7a7a-83e9-594f-9a9c-1e9475daf910)
CHAPTER EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ELEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWELVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FOURTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER FIFTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SIXTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER NINETEEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR (#litres_trial_promo)
EPILOGUE (#litres_trial_promo)
Extract (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
CHAPTER ONE (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
LEVI LAMBERT HAD piloted many birds during his service in the United States Air Force. He’d gone on missions he still regretted and some he never would. Made plenty of mistakes in his twenty-nine years. Some of them irreparable.
But this. Well. This might just kill him.
“Please. Please go to sleep.” Levi gently rubbed his six-month-old daughter’s back.
Moonlight spilled through the cracked blinds in Grace’s bedroom. It was two o’clock in the morning, and she wasn’t interested in sleeping. She didn’t need her diaper changed, had just had a bottle of formula—warm...he’d checked—and he’d located her pacifier under the blanket and stuck it in her mouth. She spit it out with a face that said, “Nice try, sucker.”
Levi was no stranger to zero dark thirty, but this was plain cruel. No sooner had he calmed her down and gently set her in her crib than she screamed bloody murder again. A few nights of that would have been fine, but after six straight weeks of it, he was beginning to feel the strain. Strange, but the only thing that kept her quiet was being held. Held and walked around the house, as if it were the middle of the day.
Weren’t babies supposed to sleep 24/7? What was wrong with his baby? She didn’t seem to like him very much. Still, he’d known she was his the minute he’d seen her blue eyes, so much like his own. Just for kicks he’d asked for a DNA test. Yep. His. No doubt, even if he’d had the pleasure of being with Grace’s mother, Sandy, only once. Only one night of mutual, temporary pleasure during a two-week leave in Atlanta, Georgia, he’d now officially never forget.
When he’d received the news of Sandy’s accidental death, it had taken Levi a minute to remember her. Talk about life changing and rearranging. He’d assumed he would die in the air force. His plan was to stay until he retired or was killed in action. It wasn’t like he didn’t have friends who’d left earlier than planned, among them his two best friends in the world, Stone and Matt. But Levi was a lifer. Supposed to be, anyway. He’d been raised for service. Until Grace had come along and changed all that. It would have been too much of a hardship as a single father piloting long missions. At the time he’d been located and informed of Grace, he’d been flying the U-2 spy plane and gone for months at a stretch.
She’d quieted down again with his swaying and rocking, so Levi tried to lay her down in her crib. Grace scrunched up her little pixie face and wailed, as if the very idea that she would go to sleep was an insult to her intelligence. He picked her up again. Definitely not suited for this, although some people had thought it would happen to him eventually if he didn’t settle down and stop sowing his wild oats.
The first thing his mother, Gemma Lambert, had said upon hearing that Levi had become a father was “Bless your heart. I told you so.” His father, retired General Lambert, had decided to address the situation in his usual way: he ignored it. Easy to do, since both of his parents were on their latest mission trip to save the children of the world. Didn’t matter, though, because Levi could do this on his own. Like he’d done so much else in his life.
Grace was now his responsibility, and he never shirked his duty. He’d followed the work, and one of his friends, Stone Mcallister, had a charter flight business and aviation school in Fortune, California. So he’d wound up in this little Podunk, bedroom community deep in the bowels of Silicon Valley. Everyone here gave him a patient look the minute he opened his mouth and out came the Texan drawl he’d grown up with.
Levi took a seat on the rocking chair he’d purchased from Buy, Baby, Buy—bye, wallet, bye, it should be called—and tried again. He’d been given most of Grace’s baby stuff by Sandy’s father, Frank, and stepmother, Irene, in a tearful exchange at the airport in Atlanta. It had helped, since he didn’t actually know a stroller from a wheelbarrow. A rookie, he’d basically had a crash course in all things baby related for the past few weeks. He realized he’d never be father-of-the-year material, but still, this shouldn’t be so hard.
“Is this personal?” he now asked Grace.
She had no response other than to blink twice and gurgle. Yeah, just his luck. She was wide-awake. At least it was better than all the screaming. Levi rocked because he didn’t know what else to do. He’d never thought of himself as a daddy. When he’d first told Stone and Matt about his situation, you would have thought he’d dropped a missile on them for the absolute silence in the room.
Levi was grateful that Sandy had trusted him. Or maybe she’d just done the right thing. Either way, he’d been named the father on the birth certificate. He had a daughter, and he couldn’t regret it. At least, not since the moment the social worker placed Grace in his arms, and she focused her wide, blue eyes on him. He was determined to raise her as a single father, even if Sandy’s parents had other ideas.
He stifled a yawn. The rocking chair was damned well about to put him to sleep. He’d have to get up in a few hours and Grace looked no closer to closing her eyes than she had an hour ago.
“I’m just going to close my eyes for a minute.” He snuggled Grace closer to his chest and leaned his head back.
* * *
LEVI WOKE WITH a start. It was morning, the first rays of early autumn sunlight flooding throughout Grace’s bedroom. She was fast asleep. He’d fallen asleep with her in his arms and by some miracle she hadn’t slipped out and landed on the floor.
“Are you a vampire?” he whispered, laying her in the crib. “Please don’t be a baby vampire.”
This time, of course, she stayed asleep. But Levi would still be late if he didn’t kick it into high gear. He took an enlisted man’s shower and dressed in the Mcallister Charters uniform of a white button-up and black cargoes within minutes. He hurried through his usual morning routine, prepping formula bottles like a pro and swallowing a Pop-Tart practically whole. He inhaled his morning coffee and glanced at the digital kitchen clock. Oh seven hundred and Annie wasn’t here. He hated being late and people who were late. And Annie was perpetually late.
She was his third babysitter since he’d landed in Fortune a month ago. Bobbie Ann had left when Levi had turned her down, explaining he didn’t date anyone under twenty. Ellen had left because of all the screaming, and Annie’s only fault so far was her unreliability. Which, given the situation, was huge.
He looked out the window. Nothing. Dialed Annie’s cell phone, hoping she’d be driving over and unable to answer it.
She answered. “Hey, Levi. I can’t make it today.”
“Why didn’t you call me?”
He should have never hired one of the former baristas from the Drip. Even if she’d come highly recommended by Emily Parker as being a generally kind woman who wouldn’t hurt a fly.
“I had a little trouble with the reception out here in Lake Tahoe.”
“What the hell are you doing in Lake Tahoe?”
Levi heard a distinctly male voice in the background.
“Oh, sorry. I meant Reno. I’m all turned around.” She giggled. “I’m getting married.”
“Getting married? Since when?”
“Since Drew asked me last night. I’m sorry, but I forgot to call you.”
Yep. Never should have hired her. “Great. Now what am I supposed to do about Grace?”
“I’m sorry. But hey, why don’t you ask your next-door neighbor? I’m sure she would do it.”
“You mean Cute Stuck-Up Girl?”
“Her name is Carly. I know her personally, so I’ll vouch for her. We used to work together, and then her mother died and left her a business. I hardly see her anymore she’s so busy, but I did see her last week when I was taking Grace for a walk. She came out to get a package and waved hello.”
Levi glanced out the window, and there was Cute Stuck-Up Girl, bending down to pick up another UPS package. About the only times he’d seen her she was either signing for a package or hauling diapers into the house by the box. A couple weeks ago, she’d glanced in his direction. He’d smiled and nodded. She’d looked right through him. Hence the stuck-up part.
“You think she’d do it?” He glanced at his watch. If he didn’t want to miss his flight this morning and risk looking like a damned fool who couldn’t handle both work and being a father, he’d have to leave in fifteen minutes.
“Carly is supersweet. I’m sure she would help you out for the day.”
“And after that?”
“Again, I’m sorry. But I’m getting married, and you really don’t pay me enough anyway.”
“Might have said something sooner.”
He was going to have to get a handle on this sitter business. Next time hire someone highly qualified and serious about the job, not just someone between gigs. Levi hung up and glanced at his watch.
“Okay. Plan B.”
A few minutes later, Levi had carefully and skillfully moved a sound-asleep Grace from her crib to her car seat. When the girl slept, she meant it. Too bad she couldn’t mean it at two in the morning. He carried the car seat by the handle to Cute Stuck-Up Girl’s front door. Probably should start calling her Carly from now on.
“Wish me luck,” he said under his breath. “Just keep right on being adorable. And quiet.”
Grace continued to snooze. He rang the doorbell. Once. Twice.
Levi was about to abort mission and launch into plan C when the door flew open. Cute—uh, Carly—stood behind it, blond hair sticking up in four different directions. She wore yoga pants, a pink-and-white Minnie Mouse T-shirt that fell past her hips and fuzzy slippers in the shape of the Tasmanian Devil. He tried not to laugh.
“You’re not the UPS guy.”
“No. Sorry.” She was a lot prettier up close. Her eyes were amber, warm, with tiny flecks of green in them.
Those eyes took him in, doing fast work of assessing. When she fixated on the car seat, she did a double take. “What’s that?”
Huh. Not too promising. He forced a grin and a wink and tried to relax, because he had approximately twelve minutes left to work his magic. “A baby. Ever seen one before?”
“I know what a baby is.” Her eyes narrowed, and she pointed. “Is that your baby?”
He was beginning to resent the way no one believed he could be a father. “Yep. Mine.”
She folded her arms over her chest. “Oh, I see. You must have heard about me, then. But all the advice is on my website. I’m thinking about adding Skype chats, but you’re a little early for that.”
“Excuse me?”
“Isn’t that why you’re here? You’d like some advice? Is she not sleeping through the night? Colic? Do you want to know the best diaper to use?”
He cleared his throat, because damned if he couldn’t use all of that and then some.
“No. I’m fine. Okay, let’s start over. I’m Levi Lambert, your next-door neighbor.” He stuck out his hand and shook hers.
“Carly Gilmore.”
“I’m in a bind this morning. My sitter, Annie, well, she ran off and got married yesterday and forgot to tell me about it. So...she’s not coming.”
“Annie. Yeah. That was not a wise choice.”
“You’re telling me. I’m new in town, and one of my friends recommended her.”
“Yes, she’s sweet but unreliable.” She shook her head. “I’m not sure how I can help you.”
A little worried that his cute neighbor might have been dropped on her head as a baby, and not encouraged by that possible fact, Levi took a deep breath. “Could you maybe just fill in for her today? I’m a pilot at Mcallister Charters, and I’m about to be late for a flight.”
“Me? You want me to watch your baby?”
“Don’t you hand out baby advice? So you have children, right?”
She had a ring on her finger, but that didn’t mean she had children.
At this, she went a little pale, then gave him a tight smile. “I...I know a lot about babies, yes, of course. I’m what you would call an expert.”
“Wow. This is my lucky day. If you could watch Grace just for a while, I’d be so grateful. I’ll try to come home early, too, right after my flight, if I can arrange it.”
“B-but where’s her mother?”
Levi always hated this part, and the pity that flashed across people’s faces. He didn’t want or deserve their pity. “She passed away.”
Cute Carly drew in a sharp breath, and sympathy flashed in her eyes right on cue. “I’m so sorry.”
“Thank you. It’s just the two of us.”
She shifted from one leg to the other. “Well, okay. I can help you, since I’m a baby expert and all. Plus, I don’t want you to think that I’m not neighborly, because I am. But just today!”
Levi let his shoulders unkink and carried Grace’s car seat inside. He set it down on the hardwood floor of the entryway and handed her the diaper bag he’d packed.
“Thanks. I owe you one.”
“Here.” She handed him a scrap of paper and a pen. “Write down your phone number so I can reach you.”
He gave her his cell phone number and also the number for Mcallister Charters and Magnum Aviation. And the local hospital. And poison control. He had all of them memorized. He also got Carly’s phone number, then with one last kiss on Grace’s sweet forehead, he headed out the door.
Levi climbed in his truck, where he studied his neighbor’s house for a moment. Like his rental, it was a small tract home. Unlike his house, she had rows of colorful flowers lining the front yard and several others in pots hanging from the eaves. Fit right in with this older residential neighborhood. He made a mental note that he should probably buy some of them flowers at some point if he was going to stay in the rental. Grace should grow up in a home that reflected some kind of femininity. Not that she wouldn’t play sports with the boys if that was what she wanted, and of course he prayed that she did, because he could help her with that.
Should he go back and get his baby and rethink this whole thing? He tended to reconsider every one of his decisions thanks to Sandy’s parents. One false move on his part, one mistake, and he might give them ammunition. The last thing he wanted was a long, protracted legal battle he couldn’t afford.
But the warmth in Carly’s eyes when she’d heard about Grace’s mother told him she was compassionate. Kind. Maybe he’d assumed too much and far too easily, but he had a good sense of people, and it hadn’t failed him yet. No. This was good.
He started his truck and headed to the airport.
CHAPTER TWO (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
FROM A SHORT DISTANCE, Carly Gilmore had definitely noticed her new neighbor. Once when she’d had the day from hell. But up close and personal, the way he’d been on her doorstep this morning, he was a blend of tall and rugged, with a bad-boy charm that scrambled with her brain. He had deep and dark blue eyes that promised the fun kind of trouble, sun-kissed dark blond hair and a cleft in his chin that made him ridiculously gorgeous. She was grateful for a small scar through his left eyebrow that at least kept him from being prettier than her.
She’d done a double take on the baby because, really? Some woman had tamed this dude and made him a father. Which proved, as one of her best friends, Zoey, believed, that miracles happened every day. They just didn’t happen for Carly.
But what kind of a father left his precious baby with a complete stranger?
Answer: one like her neighbor Levi Lambert, who had probably rarely heard the word no coming out of a woman’s mouth. He’d so easily trusted her on the whole baby-expert thing. An exaggeration on her part, of course, but she was trying. That counted for something. His timing couldn’t be better. She’d say that for him. Today, of all days, she could use his baby.
“You’re a good sleeper.” Carly carried the car seat and diaper bag into the kitchen.
The poor, motherless child.
Normally, hearing of such a sad situation, Carly would shed tears on a dime. But these days, she was all cried out. She bent down to get a better look at Grace. This must be the baby she’d seen Annie pushing last week in the newest Koolbaby stroller on the market. But until now she’d never had a good look at the baby. Her lashes were long and beautifully dark, and she had her father’s dark blonde hair. Did she also have his beautiful dark blue eyes?
“Your daddy is quite the looker,” Carly said quietly.
He had one of those rare and one hundred percent real Southern drawls that turned most women into limp noodles. Good thing Carly would not be one of them. She found the formula bottles he’d packed in the diaper bag and put them in the fridge. He owned some of the nicer baby bottles made by Just Like Mommy, the ones with the nipple that was supposed to most correctly resemble a human one. She’d given it a high rating last month on the blog and pretty much guessed at the efficacy. Maybe she’d ask Levi later, if she could ever bring herself to ask a man like him whether his baby liked the nipple. She shook her head. Nope, not going to ask him. She’d see how Grace liked it when she gave her a bottle later.
This TotLuv diaper bag was also a good choice, one she’d given a five-star rating to, leading her to wonder if someone had chosen these items based on her blog’s recommendations. It gave her a little dash of hope. Maybe, just maybe, her late mother’s dream wasn’t going to go down in flames with Carly at the helm.
A year ago, after Pearl had passed away, it seemed she would take her company with her. She’d built RockYourBaby.com from the ground up, a labor of love based on raising three children. Pearl had been the true baby expert. Her mother was the one who belonged at the helm of RockYourBaby.com, and Carly was merely the impostor.
Impostor or not, she now operated the company until they could sell it, because no one else wanted to run the company. Her father, who had retired from PG&E, had broken his hip and now lived in Maine with her oldest brother, Kirk, a civil engineer. The physical therapy bills were through the roof, Daddy wasn’t getting any better, and among the many reasons to sell the company, one was to help pay for his treatment. Her other brother, Allen, was a lawyer in Tempe, Arizona, and since Carly was the only one with double X chromosomes, her brothers left it to her to salvage the business and restore it to what it had been before their mother died so they could sell it for a tidy profit.
Carly’s laptop rang. “Shh.”
She picked Grace up by the car seat handle and carried the seat closer to her office—otherwise known as the kitchen table. She settled Grace on the floor near the entrance of the kitchen and flew to the laptop to stop the ringing before it woke her up.
“Hello? Carly?” Jill, her other best friend, had taken to Skyping Carly from locations on the outskirts of town. The reception wasn’t always the best.
Carly sat and turned to face the laptop camera. “I’m here.”
“What’s with your hair today?” Jill looked sideways through the screen.
Crap, was that what she looked like? And she’d answered the door to Mr. Hunk like this?
“I’ve had a rough morning.” Carly smoothed her hair down into place and reached for her hair clip.
She hadn’t even dressed. Last night she’d gone through the closet full of eBay fashion steals she’d accumulated over the years and set out her clothes for the next morning. She’d done that ritual every day for years. Her ribbed sweetheart-neck Urban Outfitters minidress paired with a cropped denim jacket and her Marc Jacobs Chelsea booties had been all ready for her this morning. But she’d taken one look at the supercute outfit and didn’t have the energy. What for, when she would be sitting in front of a laptop most of the day?
Jill’s face moved away from the screen and scanned her outdoor surroundings. “This could be the perfect location. It’s even got a little boat dock by the lake. Sure, it needs a little work, but the owner is motivated.”
A little work? Carly squinted. The boat dock seemed to be a wooden plank.
“Maybe you should keep looking.”
“I’m meeting with the owner later today. It couldn’t hurt. I hear they’re desperate.”
Sounded familiar.
Soon both of her best friends would be firmly entrenched in pursuing their lofty dreams. Jill with her long-held dream to restore an outdated inn, and Zoey as the owner and operator of Pimp Your Pet. They were both moving forward with their lives and dreams, while Carly was stuck. RockYourBaby.com was definitely not the best use of her fashion design degree.
She would never be able to move on to her own future if she didn’t sell and get out from under RockYourBaby.com. But they kept losing sponsors, the real bread and butter of her mom’s company. Carly feared she had a tiny authenticity problem. Namely, the entire RockYourBaby brand was now a bald-faced lie. She was at the helm of a company with a brand that was trusted and regarded for baby knowledge.
Ideally, she needed to create an image that would resonate with the RockYourBaby audience. Then they might be able to sell to a larger company. Carly had already decided she’d give most of her share of the money from the sale to Kirk, to help care for their father. Their dad, Jerry, needed almost constant care these days. Therapy and medications were not cheap, and health insurance helped with only a small part of it. The sooner she could get this company’s value up and sold, the quicker her father could get adequate care.
No pressure.
“I say you keep looking.”
Grace squirmed. She opened up wide blue eyes and blinked a couple of times. Uh-oh. The thing was awake now.
Jill’s face appeared on the monitor again. “And how are you doing? What did your mom’s accountant suggest?”
Carly didn’t want to talk about it. Patsy had suggested it was all a matter of perception and it occurred at every major firm when there was a change at the helm. RockYourBaby.com was simply no longer relevant.
Ouch.
Still, the suggestion was that though they’d lost some footing in the market, recovery was feasible. Her mother had created a solid brand. In other words, all was not lost. Yet.
Grace let out a piercing wail, and Carly stood and walked out of the camera’s view to unbuckle the baby from her seat. She picked her up carefully, like she was fine china, and carried her to the table slowly so neither one of them would fall.
“What was that?” Jill was saying. “Did you get a cat?”
“Sorry.” Carly propped Grace on her lap and resumed the Skype chat.
Jill stared, jaw dropped. “Um? Care to explain? What are you doing with a baby?”
“Oh, this is my neighbor’s baby. Grace. His sitter cancelled last minute, so he came over and begged me to watch her for a day. Can you believe it? He doesn’t even know me. Rookie dad.”
“What are you thinking, offering to babysit? Like you don’t have enough to do.”
“First, I didn’t offer. He asked. And I’ll be able to finish my blog post with some real honest research and not just the Watch-Me-Tinkle baby doll.”
“This is not your brightest idea. You should stick with the dolls.”
“That’s not real research. I need to own this baby-expert thing.”
“Well, I hate to be the one to tell you this, but that baby is about to blow. She’s puckering up for a good, loud scream.”
Carly turned Grace so she could see her face. Sure enough, she had a stiff bottom lip and her tiny, angelic sleeping face had turned a frightening shade of mauve. She took one look at Carly and out came an earsplitting wail.
“Oh, no!” Carly stood up with her. “How did you know?”
“I worked as an au pair the year I lived abroad,” Jill shouted. “I don’t remember much, but I know that look.”
“What do I do now? Help me!”
“In order to really help, I’d have to rewind to the minute you agreed to help Hot Dad out!”
“How do you know he’s hot?” Carly swayed and rocked with Grace on her hip. She didn’t know if that would help, but it felt like the right thing to do.
“Just a guess.”
Grace continued to screech, a wild and guttural sound that scared Carly. Grace’s mouth was wide-open, so Carly could see down to her tonsils, and she was sure they were vibrating. Was that even normal? What if she was hurt? She’d never forgive herself!
“Okay. I’ve got to go. I’ll call you later.”
“No! Wait.” Carly danced back to her monitor. “Are vibrating tonsils a thing?”
“I can’t hear you.” And then Jill, Carly’s one connection to the outside world, was gone.
Gah!
Carly searched through Levi’s diaper bag one-handed, silently praying he wasn’t one of those parents that thought pacifiers were the devil. She found one, thank God, and stuck it in Grace’s mouth. She promptly spit it out.
Why did Grace have to be one of the babies who didn’t like pacifiers?
“Please stop crying, little baby. Oh, please.” Carly danced around the kitchen, but that did absolutely nothing except perhaps burn a few extra calories. “Maybe you’re hungry. Yes! Why didn’t I think of that?”
How could such a little thing let out a scream worthy of the lead singer in a hard-core metal band? How could her lungs be big enough?
Carly reached for a baby bottle from the fridge. Let’s see. She remembered reading about this in her mother’s baby bible before she’d done a blog post on “Bottle or Breast? Which Way Is Best?” Of course, in a million years she hadn’t implied that a mother should do it one way or another. No idiot, just like Mom, Carly vowed to stay clear of titty politics. She’d simply listed options. The bottle way was to warm one in a pan of hot water. No microwaves!
Time slowed to a snail’s pace as she filled a pan of water and waited for it to simmer, then stuck the bottle in, while simultaneously holding a baby who was screaming so loudly Carly wondered if she’d ever regain her hearing in the left ear. She did all of this while dancing and swaying and begging. But Grace seemed immune to all the begging.
“You looked so sweet and innocent when you were asleep,” Carly said, near tears herself. “Your daddy fooled me.”
Carly tested the baby bottle on her wrist. At this point she’d settle for anything between arctic cold and the fires of hell and damnation. Good enough. She settled on a kitchen chair and offered Grace the bottle. She latched on to it like Carly would the last dress on clearance at Saks Fifth Avenue. Carly threw her head back in relief and sighed. Finally, blessed silence, other than the sucking sounds of Grace and her bottle. Amazing how much Carly had taken silence for granted. She never would again.
“Yes, that’s all it was. You were hungry. Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so slow, but I was lying about being a baby expert.”
Lying had started to come so easily these days, but that was what happened when you were pretending to be someone else.
Or maybe it was what happened when you’d forgotten who you were.
Boy, Grace was sucking down this bottle of milk in a New York minute. Carly tensed, worried the silence would be over soon. And sure enough, Grace was eyeing Carly as she drank her milk, no doubt making plans to unleash the hounds of hell on Carly when she finished the important business of eating.
“Listen, this isn’t my fault. Your daddy was in a bind. Please don’t hate me.”
Grace got to the end of the bottle, first sucking down the last dregs and then just air. Carly didn’t know much, but that couldn’t be good. She gently pulled the bottle away from Grace. She reacted by sticking out her bottom lip, scrunching up her pixie face and letting go a wail worthy of a wounded animal.
And Carly was back to swaying, rocking and begging.
Mostly begging.
CHAPTER THREE (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
“THANK YOU FOR flying with Mcallister Charters,” Levi said to the businessmen he’d picked up in Las Vegas and transported to Fortune.
He glanced at his phone. No messages or missed calls, and no news would always be good news in his book. Still, he wanted to check in with Cute Girl and make sure everything was cool with Grace. It was true that she slept on and off most of the day, but her crying had been enough to drive one nanny away. He stayed seated in the plane as his passengers walked across the tarmac toward the hangar.
Carly answered on the fourth or fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Hey. How’s it going? How’s my baby girl?”
“Okay. She’s very sweet, but, um, she cries a lot. Does she do that with you?”
“Yeah. What’s she doing right now?”
“She’s taking a nap.”
She did some of that during the day in between all the screaming. “Good. I had hoped she wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”
“Well...no, she’s fine. So cute.”
Was that hesitancy in her voice? “Is it okay, then, if I stay until my shift is over?”
“Of course. You take your time. I’ll be here.”
Levi hung up, pretty proud of his baby girl converting Cute Stuck-Up Girl into a fan, and strode inside the hangar. He checked email from his phone.
Another message from Sandy’s father, Frank, saying that, no, they couldn’t come to see Grace in California. Did he have any idea how expensive plane tickets were to people who were not pilots? Why didn’t he just fly himself to Atlanta and stay with them for a few weeks? They wanted to see Grace. He fired off another email explaining that he was a working man and couldn’t take that much time off.
One thing appeared to be certain—they’d never be happy until he handed Grace over to them.
He headed toward Magnum Aviation’s offices to check in with Cassie. The older woman pretty much ran the show around here, even if she kept threatening to retire. She’d worked for Stone’s late father and had stayed on the past few months to ease the transition. Levi guessed it was a consequence of this being a small, south county airport, but it did seem as though there were an awful lot of relatives working it.
Emily Parker was Stone’s fiancée and one of their regular pilots. Sarah, Stone’s sister and part owner of the business, was a local artist who occasionally worked at the Short Stop Snack Shack. She also happened to be engaged to Matt Conner, one of Levi’s best buddies from the air force and also a pilot on staff. So if it seemed that there were about two degrees of separation from Stone and half of the people who worked for him, Levi would not be wrong. Basically, he, Jedd Taylor, the mechanic, and Cassie were the odd ones out. They should form a club.
“Hello, darlin’,” Levi said as he approached Cassie.
“Hi, cowboy,” Cassie said with a wink. “How’s that precious baby girl this morning?”
He rested a hip against her desk. “It’s not the mornin’ that’s the problem. It’s the middle of the night.”
“Ah, she’s still not sleeping through the night?”
“Any advice for me?”
“Well, it’s like that advice they give to parents about sibling rivalry. You know the best way to avoid it?”
This was not his problem, and the way things were going with his love life, Grace would never have a chance at a sibling. “Tell me.”
“Have one kid. So if you’d like your baby to sleep through the night? Fast-forward a few years.”
“Aw, hell’s bells. Not helpful. And I’m going to need me a new sitter, too.”
“What happened?” Emily asked as she walked out of Stone’s office.
“Annie got married. She called me from Reno this morning.”
Emily slapped a file on Cassie’s desk. “What? No heads-up or anything?”
“What did you do with Grace?” Cassie asked, a little squeak in her voice.
He stuffed his hands in his pockets. “I left her with my next-door neighbor.”
“Carly, I hope.” Cassie nodded.
“Yeah. How’d you know?”
“I know everything,” Cassie said.
It didn’t surprise Levi much, since Cassie was pretty much the senior-citizen oracle of Fortune, California.
“I was in a bind. Annie quit on me, no notice.” Levi relaxed and took a seat near Cassie’s desk. “I have a good sense about people. She’s obviously got a few rug rats of her own running around. Said she’s an expert.”
“Um, not exactly,” Emily said, coming around to her desk.
“What’s that supposed to mean? She lied to me?” His spine stiffened. If she’d lied, he’d have to get out of here now and go pick up Grace. He did not deal with liars. Period.
“I doubt she lied to you. Her mother died last year and left the family a baby company, and Carly’s running the show now. So that’s probably what she meant by she’s an expert,” Cassie said.
She’d never said she had children of her own. He’d just assumed, and she hadn’t corrected him. Not quite the same as lying, but he still didn’t like it. Maybe sleep deprivation had his senses off-kilter. Wouldn’t surprise him any.
“This time I suggest you take a little more time finding a sitter.” Cassie frowned in his direction. “You need someone who has the time to do it. Someone like Carly, reliable and dependable, but with the extra time to give attention to a baby.”
He shrugged. “Annie said I didn’t pay her enough, but I was paying all I could afford.”
When the landlord had told him how much he wanted for rent, Levi had thought the man was kidding. Levi had made a joke about the Kardashians, which the landlord hadn’t found funny. Levi hadn’t thought it funny, either, once he’d realized the rent figure was actually considered a deal for the area. Back home in Lubbock, he’d have land at those prices. But he had steady work and benefits as a pilot in Fortune, and Stone had promised him a raise as soon as possible.
“Sandy’s parents still want me to bring Grace back to Atlanta. I don’t want to give them any reason to think I can’t handle raising her and working.”
“Millions of women and men do it every day. Why can’t you?” Emily said.
“Exactly.”
While he’d like to believe he had nothing to worry about with the Lanes, nothing in life was one hundred percent certain. Least of all when it involved people and their emotions. Not everyone had mastered mind over matter. Sandy’s parents, for one. They were somewhat hysterical people who were still operating from raw emotion. He’d tried to be understanding, given that they’d lost their daughter. But while he was sure they understood that Sandy’s death had nothing to do with him, he’d become a convenient scapegoat for their pain. He got an email from Frank Lane every day, and they were never kind.
As far as Levi was concerned, he would raise Grace on his own. It didn’t matter where. At the moment it happened to be in the small town of Fortune, where he had a good job and a community of friends. But he’d go where he had to go in order to make ends meet. To create a life that worked. No need to get sentimental and emotional about one particular place when there were so many all over the country. If there was one thing he’d learned in the summers he’d spent with his grandfather on his ranch while his parents were traipsing all over the world, it was to rely on himself.
For now, he’d stay in Fortune. It was what he told himself every time his boots got too itchy about the idea of settling down in one place for too long. The stability of a small town would be good for Grace. With the Sierra Nevada Mountains and snow just hours away, the beach a forty-five-minute drive and San Francisco only an hour away, both location and weather were near perfect. And despite being south of the larger Silicon Valley, he’d found a small community of like-minded people here, in a place where he could see himself raising Grace.
A few hours and flights later, Levi headed home to Grace. This had already become his routine, and it had become comfortable. On some mornings, he smelled garlic wafting from the closest town, the garlic capital of the world. He drove down Monterey Road toward his residential development on the other end of Fortune. When he’d landed here weeks ago, he’d discovered a three-stoplight town. A bedroom community just south of San Jose. Even so, here in Fortune, Levi had immediately noticed a strong sense of community, reminiscent of a small town.
It was no Lubbock, even though there were still a few small mushroom farms hanging on for dear life. This was the mushroom capital of the world, after all. The smell of fertilizer didn’t faze him at all. Instead, it was the high cost of living. The price of gasoline. The heart attack–inducing price tag on ownership of a single family home. He could go on, but why depress himself?
He definitely felt squeezed like an orange, but it wasn’t as if he wasn’t familiar with sacrifice. One way or another, he’d find a way to make it work.
CHAPTER FOUR (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
A THOUSAND OR so years later, Carly had changed Grace’s diaper about five hundred times, give or take, and fed her all three bottles. Levi had better get his cute ass here on time, or someone was going to blow a gasket. At this point she really couldn’t say whether it would be her or Grace. Possibly both.
Oh, yes, because Carly had cried at times right along with Grace. Turned out to be kind of cathartic. It had been a while since Carly had had a good cry. She’d always been guided and driven by her emotions, despite her attempts to think with her head and not her heart. She was a full-grown, twenty-six-year-old woman who’d always struggled in school, seen her career go up in flames, lost her mother from a sudden heart attack and had her father nearly confined to a wheelchair due to a hip injury. Carly considered herself a survivor. But today she’d been reduced to sobs because of a helpless baby.
As it turned out, Grace did sleep. Occasionally, that was, and only when the spirit moved her. It seemed to move her every half hour for about forty-five minutes, give or take. Carly had tried to get work done during that time, but she was so tense and exhausted that all she could do was sit and stare at the blank screen. Where to begin? Practice safe sex. Don’t have a baby until you’re ready to be tortured by a fifteen-pound human with a set of lungs that should belong to a six-foot-three male. But probably her audience wouldn’t appreciate that. All of her readers were already stuck—correction, blessed—with babies.
Regardless, Carly had made it through the day, and she couldn’t help believing she deserved an award for that. A badge or a trophy. Something. She’d certainly received an education. This baby business was so much harder than it appeared from a distance. Right now her living room looked as if someone had stood in the middle of the room and thrown everything she owned up in the air. She hadn’t had a shower yet. She’d barely eaten any breakfast, much less lunch. In fact, she hadn’t even managed to change out of the clothes she had on since this morning.
“When your daddy gets here, if he so much as thinks about judging me...I’ll—I don’t know what, but it won’t be nice.”
The good news was she’d narrowed down her favorite brand of diaper with Grace’s help. The bad news? She still had to write the blog post, because they didn’t write themselves. The fact that she’d struggled all her life with the written word, fighting and working around her dyslexia, meant that it would take her twice as long as it had ever taken her mom to write a simple blog post.
Interesting. Carly had dared to set Grace down on the activity blanket that a brand-new baby start-up had sent her for a review. She hadn’t made a noise in about five seconds. Might be a record. She kept blinking as if she couldn’t quite trust her eyes. She seemed fascinated by the plastic mirrors sewn to the blanket, as if she’d just found a friend she wasn’t sure she liked or hated.
“I guess that makes two of us.”
Carly wasn’t sure that she liked Grace. She was way too loud, for one thing, and had the manners of a chimpanzee. Once today, she’d looked Carly straight in the eye and spit up all over her shirt. Carly thought for sure Grace had been aiming for her eye and missed. She’d been changed twice and now wore a red velvet dress that a new baby fashion company had sent Carly.
But Carly had learned something significant today when she’d pulled out Mom’s baby bible during one of Grace’s power naps and tried to get through some of the entries in it. Crying wouldn’t hurt a baby. Grace would still be in one piece when her daddy came to pick her up.
And because Carly wasn’t actually Grace’s mother, just the babysitter, in a few minutes, her clueless dad would pick her up. Carly would be able to give her back. She’d take a shower, clean up her house, write her blog post and go to bed, where she would sleep without interruptions. She had an end in sight.
Maybe, just maybe, Grace could help her a little bit longer. Just until she got Mom’s company in the black. Because Grace could go a long way toward solving her authenticity issue. She could turn Carly into a serious baby expert.
She wasn’t sure Levi would be interested in her proposition, but why couldn’t Carly just fill in until he found a new babysitter? She was right next door. Easy. And good grief, if Levi even went through half of what she’d been through today, he needed her help. She would suggest—no, demand—that he allow her, a bona fide baby expert (in training), to help him.
Incredible. It had to have been four whole minutes and Grace was still on her belly, blinking into the mirrors. She gurgled, reached out with her chubby hand and tried to grab it.
“You like that, don’t you? It’s something new. I think I’ll give it a five-star review, since it’s kept you quiet.”
The doorbell rang.
Levi. Right on time. Great. Carly shot up from her chair, but she didn’t know if she should take Grace with her to answer the door. What if something happened to her in the two seconds Carly would be out of the room? And what would Levi think? But if she picked Grace up now, she risked opening the door with her crying again. That also wouldn’t look too good.
The doorbell rang again. Impatient man!
Carly picked Grace up off the blanket again like a delicate china plate, taking the blanket along.
“Please don’t cry, baby. I need to make a good impression. You don’t know this, but you and I could be partners. I know you don’t like me, but to be fair, the feeling is mutual. You threw up on me and I know you were aiming for my eye. Don’t even try to deny it.”
So far not a peep from Grace, who had a piece of the blanket in her mouth and seemed to be gumming it. She was going to write a glowing review for this blanket and title it Lifesaver.
Carly opened the door to Levi, as suspected, and watched as his gaze went immediately to Grace. The way those blue eyes lit up gave Carly a little smackdown right in the chest, but then he noticed the dress.
“You changed her?”
“Do you like it?” When he didn’t answer, she waved him inside. “It’s a new dress and my gift to you both. And also, she spit up on two other outfits.”
“Uh, thanks. And sorry. Welcome to my world.”
Grace’s little legs kicked and pumped double time with some serious action at seeing Levi, and Carly handed her over.
“Hey, baby girl.” His love-struck smile was quite a sight.
Carly cleared her throat and got ready to tell a big fat lie. “She was perfect today.”
“Yeah?” Levi checked Grace out from head to toe as if to make sure she wasn’t missing any parts.
Carly tried not to feel insulted. “Do you like the dress?”
“Sure, it’s...nice.”
“But?”
“Not too practical.”
This was interesting information she could use, so she walked to the kitchen to get a pad of paper and pen from the counter. “So how would you rate it, say, on a scale of one to ten? If you were going to judge the dress, for instance?”
His eyes narrowed slightly. “I appreciate the dress. I’m not judging it.”
“No, of course not. I...didn’t mean to imply that.”
She made a note on the pad of paper. Appearance: ten out of ten. Practical use? She needed Levi for that, because at the moment he had more experience with babies than Carly did. When it came to her own clothes and sense of fashion, Carly always erred on the side of appearance versus practicality. She’d once lost the feeling in her feet for a day because of a gorgeous pair of paisley-patterned five-inch-heeled Louis Vuitton boots, but it had been worth the agony.
She could see it would be different with a baby.
“It’s just that she looks uncomfortable.” He shifted her from one hip to the other.
“You’re so right. There was something bothering me about the dress, but I couldn’t quite put my finger on it.”
Liar. She was completely useless. Practical use: five out of ten. Six out of ten? She didn’t want to be unfair. “No one makes cute, stylish and comfortable clothes for babies, do they?”
“But...she really seems to like this blanket.” He removed a corner of it from Grace’s mouth and handed it to Carly.
If this all worked out, she would need the miracle worker again tomorrow.
Levi picked up the car seat and diaper bag from the foyer. “Thanks again. We should get going.”
“Wait!”
She’d pretty much shouted the word, but rather than appear startled, he seemed slightly amused by her, his mouth twitching in a half smile. “Right. Sorry, I forgot to pay you.” He set the car seat down and, impressively juggling Grace, pulled a wallet from his back pocket.
“No.” She put out her hand to stop him. “Today was a freebie.”
Slow down, you don’t need to scare the man off. Take your time and do this right.
“Freebie?”
“How about... How about a drink of water before you go?”
“I’m just next door.” Levi tucked his wallet away.
“This will only take a minute. How about a beer?” She led the way to the kitchen, hoping with any luck he’d follow.
He did. And stood in the framed opening of the kitchen entryway, holding Grace with an easy assurance she envied. Like a real pro. “Actually, do you know any babysitters you could recommend?”
Sometimes, when opportunity knocks, you shouldn’t just open the door. Open the door, go make a pot of coffee and bake some cookies. Maybe it will stay awhile.
She swallowed and gave him what she hoped was her best, most dependable babysitter smile. “Me.” She twisted off the top, then handed the beer to him.
He accepted it. “But you said just for today.”
She waved a hand in the air, in a pay-no-attention-to-me-before-noon move. “That was before. Okay, here’s the thing. I can help you, and let’s be honest here, you need me.”
He studied Carly, took a swig of his beer, but didn’t say a word. Maybe Rookie Daddy had finally wised up and decided he shouldn’t leave his baby with a complete stranger. He got points for that.
Carly chose her next words carefully. “I kind of have this baby advice website.”
“I heard.”
Of course. If he worked at the airport, he worked with Cassie. And Cassie was an old friend of the family. Carly let out a breath. “I’m running the baby website RockYourBaby, but I don’t have any kids of my own.”
“Heard that, too.” He quirked an eyebrow, and in that single move Carly realized he was less than thrilled with the fact that she hadn’t come out with the whole truth this morning.
But she hadn’t exactly lied. What did her mom’s accountant say? Emphasize the positive, ignore the negative. Sell it! “But I’m still a baby expert.”
“Uh-huh.” He didn’t sound too convinced.
“Look, all I’m saying is that I can watch Grace until you find a new sitter. If you’re not sure about me, I’d be happy to give you references. I’ve lived here in Fortune all my life, and I’m extremely reliable. I’m always home. Besides, I’m right next door.”
“And how will you watch her and run your company?”
This suddenly felt like an interview, and she wished she’d prepared better. She’d done too much assuming that Levi would immediately take her up on this idea. But she’d become better at selling in the past few months, out of sheer necessity. If she told a little white lie every now and again, no one was the wiser.
Balance. It was all about balance. She’d do it as mothers all over the country did. Like the readers of her blog did. Like her mother had.
“I can handle her. I’m great at time management.” Boy, the lies kept coming, didn’t they? Getting easier, too. “And also, Grace—and babies everywhere, in fact—happens to be a big part of my career. Because babies are my business.”
She did a chin lift on that one, as she’d noticed Jill do on a number of occasions when she wanted to make the point that she was hot shit.
Levi seemed to notice and maybe even appreciate the new confidence. His shoulders lowered, and he gave her another one of those slow, sexy smiles. “It would be a big help to me. I’m out of the air force recently. Originally from Texas.”
Hence the drawl. She pictured hot and humid plains, oil, ranches and cowboys. Levi didn’t look like a cowboy, even if he sort of sounded like one. And something told her that it was just a matter of time before Levi knew a lot of people in the area—mainly those of the female persuasion.
“I know a lot of people in Fortune,” Carly said. “I’m practically a fixture here. And I can try to find you the perfect babysitter.”
“A grandma type?”
“Sure, if that’s what you want.”
“I want someone who really likes kids. Someone who will stick around for a while. I don’t need a whole lot of help, except for when I’m at work. But maybe she needs a woman’s touch.”
When he threw another one of those protective glances at Grace, and this time rubbed his jaw against her little semibald head, Carly’s knees went weak. “Yes,” she managed to squeak out. “Good idea.”
“There’s another problem.” Levi shifted Grace in his arms. “I can’t pay you much right now. That seemed to be an issue for Annie.”
“No worries. Pay me what you can, when you can.” In fact, any money at all would be welcome.
Maybe she should pay him.
“Are there any grandparents nearby?” she asked conversationally and got herself a beer.
“No one nearby. My parents are out of the country right now, working with the World Health Organization.”
“Impressive. How long have they been doing that?”
“All my life, really, but there’s more time for it now that they’re retired.”
“If I can ask, how did you lose your wife?”
He cleared his throat. “You must mean Grace’s mother. Car accident. And we were never married.”
“Oh. I guess I...misunderstood.” Not a sad widower, then.
“No more than most people do. I guess I should wear a sign or something.”
She laughed and brought her hands together. Mentally cracked her knuckles. Maybe she’d asked enough questions, and it was time to move in for the pitch. “So here’s my offer to you. I’ll watch her for you during the week and a few nights, too, if you’d like.”
“Really?” His eyebrows went up on that one.
“Sure. Why not?” She set her beer down. “I just want most of the nights free so I can catch up on any work I can’t get done during the day. But maybe you want to go out sometime with the guys. Or your girlfriend.”
He smiled. “Are you sure? She’s kind of a...handful.”
“She’s adorable.” She threw what she hoped was a loving look in Grace’s direction. At least she seemed to be happier in her father’s arms. He didn’t even have to walk around the house and pace and jiggle to keep her quiet.
“What about your husband? Will he be cool with a baby around some of the time?”
She caught Levi staring at her lucky ring. Oh, damn. She’d nearly forgotten. She’d had the ring all through high school and design school and wore it as much as a week before a major test for the extra good juju. It wasn’t anything fancy, a simple gold ring that she liked rubbing and twisting around her finger like a worry stone. But these days it fit on only the ring finger of her left hand.
“I’m not married. This is just my lucky ring.” And lately, she needed the extra luck.
He set his half-finished beer on the counter. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t we both take the weekend to think about it?”
Seriously? He didn’t want to jump on this opportunity to have the owner of RockYourBaby babysit his daughter? How had she failed to sell this to a desperate man?
You have to apply yourself, Carly. Try a little harder. I know you’re not stupid.
The words of every teacher she’d ever had growing up reverberated in her mind. This was a challenge, like RockYourBaby was a challenge. Like reading and writing had been for so many years when it felt like no one understood how hard she did try. All she had to do was work harder. Smarter. It might take her twice as long as someone else, but she’d get it done.
“Sure, sure. I understand. Why don’t you check out my website over the weekend and tell me what you think?”
“It’s a deal.” Levi smiled one last time, then he and Grace were out the door.
CHAPTER FIVE (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
THAT EVENING LEVI fed Grace dinner, cleaned up her mashed potatoes and high chair mess, bathed and powder-puffed her, dressed her in one of those so-called sleepers with a bazillion snaps, then laid her on a baby blanket in the living room. It was eight o’clock and he had no delusions Grace would be ready for bedtime, but at least she wasn’t wailing.
He took a seat on the floor near Grace and pulled out his laptop. He was about eighty percent sure he would take Carly up on her offer to babysit, because he had no other choice. She seemed determined to look after Grace until they could find someone else and it made sense. But this time he hadn’t wanted to jump as quickly, because he’d been in reactive mode since he arrived in Fortune. And frankly, he’d been a little too intrigued by Carly to just accept outright. More curious and drawn to her than felt comfortable despite her being single.
If she ever got it in her head that she wanted a date with him, it wouldn’t be as easy to turn her away. And it probably wasn’t a good idea to date his babysitter, anyway, whether under twenty or someone like Carly, who definitely appeared to be his age. While he couldn’t put his finger on what it was about her, she drew him in with those soulful hazel eyes. And they had something in common, too.
They were both desperate.
He did a Google search for Carly Gilmore and came up with a Facebook profile, mostly filled with photos of her with friends. She was linked to a business page and the RockYourBaby website. He clicked on the link and a busy website came up with the slogan The Place Where Babies Come First. A buddy of his had started a paddleboard business a while back, and Levi had firsthand knowledge of the cost of a professional-looking website. Carly’s looked like a top tier–priced website, and he noticed several popular baby product companies advertised prominently on the landing page. There were several photos of Pearl Gilmore, obviously the image behind the company. A grandma type if there ever was one, she had short salt-and-pepper hair, a wide and toothy smile, and a regal and distinguished air about her that said, “You can trust me with your baby.”
And he would trust this grandma type. Carly, he wasn’t so sure about. She had the baby company, so he didn’t understand why she’d take on Grace, too. He wanted to believe she was simply being kind and neighborly, but that didn’t ring true on some level. She wanted something from him.
There were a few photos of Carly on the website, and a clear indication that she had taken over in Pearl’s place. What would it feel like to be called a baby expert and have no children of your own? His guess was that she might feel like a bit of a fraud.
It takes one to know one.
He’d been the only child of parents who were overachievers and had instilled the same values in him. Study hard, work hard and give back. He’d spent summers at his grandfather’s ranch in Texas because Levi’s own parents didn’t seem to have time for him if it didn’t involve quizzing him on his studies. He’d had to make the honor roll every semester or suffer a long sermon about wasted opportunities. Pop’s ranch had been the only place Levi could be himself and unwind. Have fun for a change.
He’d gone straight to the Air Force Academy after high school and received his degree, going into the service as an officer. His good friends, his AF brothers, were the only ones who understood Levi Lambert could be impulsive at times. Wild. He’d carefully compartmentalized his life to be two people: the officer and the playboy. A bit of a cliché, but hey, he’d paid his dues.
Then Grace had come along. She had brought out the very best in him, but he’d had such a wild past that anyone who could see him now would be stunned. Spending nights alone with his daughter, looking forward to nothing more than a full night’s sleep. If he got lucky. There again, getting lucky had taken on a whole new meaning. It used to mean a night of uninhibited, balls-to-the-wall sex with a woman who didn’t want much in return other than a couple of orgasms. He could give her that but not a whole lot more. The whole love, marriage and kid thing had never been on the agenda.
Grace rolled over, squealed and kicked her legs out, reminding him that a kid was now on his agenda, like it or not. Then she went knees up and elbows out again and did her rocking thing. She squealed her delight at having managed to roll over to her back again, bringing an end of the blanket with her in her chubby little fist. The corner of the blanket was now in her mouth.
Levi pulled the blanket closer to him, taking the edge of it out of her mouth. He handed her a pair of plastic keys to chew on. He’d try keeping her up late tonight, then maybe she’d be too tired to wake up much during the night. Logically, it should work.
It was the way he liked to tackle any problem in his life. Logic always won over emotion, hands down. He’d been taught to never make knee-jerk decisions. Emotions tended to cloud good decision making. Contrary to what some of his friends believed, he hadn’t chosen to raise Grace out of emotion. Out of overwhelming love and devotion. No, that had come a little later. His had been a logical decision, based on responsibility and doing the right thing. Not abandoning his child, the way his parents had abandoned him. Sure, they’d done it for the greater good. But it had still left him feeling unwanted. Expendable. They could go ahead and save the world’s children. He would start with his child.
Of course, it was always better to make life-changing decisions on your own. He hadn’t had that luxury.
Still, Sandy’s parents clearly didn’t see Levi as a shining example of a father, saying they’d never even heard of him. At first they’d tried to claim that Grace’s father was Sandy’s boyfriend, a man who had died in the same car accident. But thankfully the birth certificate stated Levi Lambert as the father. The DNA test had confirmed it.
He assumed Frank and Irene were grieving, and he got that. He understood the grieving process. But he wasn’t the enemy. If they had been logical about it, he would have agreed that, of course, they could be involved in Grace’s life. Instead, they’d come out guns blazing and demanded that he give her back to them. Even tried to file a motion in family court to bar him from leaving the state of Georgia. Hadn’t worked. They continued to insist that Sandy had meant to leave them in charge, but she’d died suddenly and without a will. Frank, who loved to hurl insults via email, had once referred to him as “the sperm donor.”
Levi could take a lot of shit and not blink, but when they insulted him, they were insulting Grace’s father, too, so he got a little more sensitive. To his mind, how she’d been conceived was nobody’s business. The way he raised his daughter would be his business and his alone. He’d be there for her—present, not absent like his own parents had been, although the distance his parents had created wasn’t one he or anyone else could blame them for. They’d been concerned for the poverty-stricken people of the world, and Levi wasn’t one of them. As a child, he’d had the added weight of guilt for missing his parents. They were off saving the world. And him? At least he’d had his grandfather.
But something had gone right for him today when he’d knocked on Carly’s door. He’d found himself an expert. If nothing else, maybe her heart was in the right place. Not to mention her legs. Her ass. Okay, he was going to try not to notice that again.
She’d offered to babysit nights, which meant he could have a social life again.
He hadn’t seriously dated anyone in years. Grace had reformed him overnight, but the stiff boots still didn’t quite fit. He’d need to stretch them out, wear them in. Carly was just the kind of girl he never would have approached in the past. Nice girl. Good girl. Pretty and sweet, but wouldn’t want to get too dirty or anything.
* * *
LEVI WOKE WITH a start. The midafternoon Saturday sun slid through the cracked blinds of his bedroom, almost blinding him. It was official. Grace had turned him into a vampire. He’d fallen asleep with the baby monitor in his hands when he’d only meant to close his eyes for a second.
Since he was off the clock, he’d fallen asleep when Grace went down for her nap. And dreamed of sweet Carly, which made no sense when he could dream about a Playboy centerfold, Katy Perry or anyone else in his wild fantasy life. But the girl next door was kind of smoking hot up close. Unapologetically curvy, with legs that went on for a country mile. Sensual, full lips. He’d been dreaming about licking those kissable lips of hers and more. Much more.
The doorbell rang and Levi groaned, rolling out of bed. He rubbed his eyes and quickly looked in on Grace to see that she was still sleeping in her crib—it was daytime, after all, what else would she be doing—then went to open the front door.
Carly stood there smiling until her eyes locked in somewhere around his pecs. As if she could see right through him again. She wasn’t smiling any longer but seemed something more like transfixed. He checked to see if Grace had spit up on him again, and that was when he realized he wasn’t wearing a shirt.
“Crap. Come on in.”
Levi dipped into his bedroom to grab a T-shirt and pulled it over his head, meeting Carly in the foyer. “Sorry about that. I fell asleep.”
A smile had become frozen on her face. “Am I interrupting...anything?”
It took him a minute, because sue him if he was beginning to forget what a sex life resembled. Lately when he took off his shirt in the middle of the day, it was because there was regurgitated baby food on it. But Carly had just reminded him of how much he missed sex. This was not helpful.
He rubbed his prickly chin. Hadn’t bothered to shave this morning, when the only girl he had to impress didn’t have any of her own teeth. “Nah, I was sleeping when Grace sleeps.”
Smile back full force. “That’s smart.”
“You doing okay?” He felt a smile coming on. She seemed so...enthusiastic.
“I could use some help if you have a little time. No worries if you don’t.”
“What’s up?”
“A manufacturer sent me a crib to review that’s supposed to be the easiest to assemble, and I thought I’d put it together and test that out.” Her hands were in the air, as if trying to reenact the process. “And then if you decide I can babysit her, she can take naps at my place, instead of in the car seat. But—”
“Too many moving parts?”
She sank her teeth into her lower lip. “The diagram makes no sense to me.”
“That’s okay. I put together Grace’s crib in a few minutes. It’s not a problem.” He went to his bedroom to grab the baby monitor handset, then followed Carly to her house.
Carly led him to the spare bedroom, where he set the handset on a nearby dresser. The room had a sewing machine in one corner, piles of fabric on the chair and a dummy wearing half a dress. In the middle of the room stood random parts to the crib. The rails, headboard, baseboard and screws and nuts were scattered all over the floor. A screwdriver lay near the diagram and instructions wrinkled enough to appear as though they’d been through someone’s fist. So it looked like she’d tried, really tried, to understand the instructions. Made him smile. She was winging it. In many ways, he could relate. Oh, hell, who was he kidding? Lately, in all ways.
And for someone who had gone through his life with a plan set in stone, sue him if he felt like the ground underneath him was constantly shifting these days. But this, assembling a crib, he could do. It was mechanical. The parts fit together and made sense. What’s more, they’d stay together after he was done.
He went to his knees and took a quick look at the instructions. Simple. But when he grabbed the screwdriver, Carly stopped him.
“You should teach me how. Let me do it.”
“Seriously?”
“Sure. I mean, if I’m going to rate how easy or how not easy it is to assemble for moms, I think I should be the one to do it.” Her amber eyes fixated on his, hand held out for the screwdriver. Waiting.
He handed it over after a beat. Reluctantly. It was her house and her crib. Next door, he had a tool kit with power tools, including a screwdriver. But hey, this could be a lot more fun.
He did, in fact, enjoy working side by side with her for the next few minutes and surely could be excused for taking a whiff of her hair when she leaned close to grab a screw. Smelled like coconut.
“Here,” he said, handing her another screw and nut. “You’ll need this next.”
She took it from him, her hand bumping into his briefly. Her skin was silky soft. Smooth. And all this talk of screws and nuts had made him as horny as a bear after a long damn winter. It had been a while since he’d felt this attracted to or this pulled in by any woman. But why did it have to be this woman?
After a few more minutes, Carly successfully attached one side rail—while he held it up for her—and smiled at him with such obvious pride that his heart pinched.
“Hey, you’re pretty good at this,” he lied. He’d have been done with this crib twenty minutes ago, but maybe that part didn’t matter as much as the look on Carly’s face.
“Well, I don’t want to brag, but I know my way around a sewing machine. Mine breaks down a lot.” She nodded in the direction of the machine in the corner.
She leaned forward to reach in front of him and her low-riding jeans slid down just enough to reveal a beautifully curvy patch of smooth skin rounding out to a perfect ass. He swallowed hard, his mouth suddenly parched. If she kept this up, he would soon tease himself into oblivion.
Finally, after what seemed like an hour of torture, she’d put together the crib. She then checked the sturdiness by tugging on the rails several times, making him smile again.
“Hey, look, I did it.”
“You did.”
“With your help.”
She left the room and came back a few minutes later, a pad of paper and a pen in hand. “I need to write some thoughts down.”
“Is this for your blog? Because if it is, I agree with you that this diagram looks like someone on crack drew it.”
She laughed at that, scribbling something down. “So glad it’s not just me. Sorry, Cribs for Mommies, I’m going to say it’s a two-person job.”
“So does it work?” He stood up to stretch his legs. “Do they take your advice when they read your blog?”
“I don’t really know. They used to take my mom’s advice.”
“But not yours?”
She lifted a shoulder. “My mother was the real baby whisperer.”
“Baby whisperer. I could use me one of those.”
“I do have her baby bible. But it’s incredibly disorganized, and sometimes it’s hard for me to understand. Of course you need to put a baby on a schedule, but it doesn’t say what to do when your baby is too tired to stay awake because they’ve been up all night.”
“Exactly.” Finally, someone got it. “I have it on good authority she’ll sleep through the night. When she’s a teenager.”
He wasn’t going to be one of those parents who wouldn’t let their teenager sleep till noon. Figured she’d have a lot of catching up to do.
Carly jotted something down on her pad while he checked the baby monitor. Grace slept peacefully. Still, he should get out of Carly’s house right now before he had any more random thoughts about kissing her. Because at the moment, it would be nice to find out if the rest of her was as soft as her rosy pink skin. Like her lips. For starters.
Carly met his gaze and caught him staring at her lips. He didn’t bother trying to hide it. She smiled and looked away first. Back to her notes.
He understood. That was a lot safer than dealing with...whatever this was. There was a definite pull between them, and he didn’t know what to do about that. Acting on it would probably be stupid. But face it, stupid was pretty much his calling card when it came to women. Still, the appeal didn’t make sense to him. She’d normally not be his type at all, but he felt a magnetism that had to do with a lot more than her looks. Even though she was incredibly pretty. Naturally beautiful. Yeah, that was the thing about it. She didn’t try very hard. It was just...there.
He took a step closer, telling himself he wanted to see what she’d written down about the crib. “What are you writing?”
Her eyes narrowed. “Why?”
But his height gave him an advantage. “Because from here it looks like a doodle.”
A floor-length dress, which had pretty much nothing to do with the efficacy of the directions to this crib. Unless he was missing something.
“It’s a sketch.” She pulled it away from him.
“Cool,” he said. “You don’t have to be shy about it.”
She blushed again and gnawed at her lower lip. “I’m not shy about it. It’s just not... Never mind.”
“Already forgot all about it.”
She folded up the piece of paper. “Let’s talk about you. Have you decided if you’re going to retain my services yet?”
He quirked an eyebrow. “Your services?”
“My baby help.” She put her hands on her hips. “I don’t offer any other...services.”
Shame. “You’ve got the job. You didn’t realize it, but this was your interview. And you passed.”
“I did?” She smiled, clutching the folded paper against her chest.
“I like to make sure that my nannies can put together a crib. Just because. I’m weird that way.”
“That is weird.”
“Yeah. You’ll do just fine.”
“You won’t be sorry.” She traced the edge of the crib rail with one finger. “I’ve got a lot of baby knowledge.”
He took a step closer, just to make sure he’d chosen the correct three-point level for the mattress rise, he told himself. “When they’re infants, you use the highest level. This adjusts for later, you know.”
She came up beside him. “Good to know.”
It occurred to him that he possibly stood a little closer than he should. Somehow that didn’t bother him at all as his eyes met hers. He was close enough to see every tiny speck of green. When his gaze slipped to her lickable lips, he knew he was in trouble here. She was sexy and pretty. Real. Not at all stuck-up as he’d previously assumed. And she was one hell of a complication in his already chaotic life.
But he’d be lying if he didn’t admit he wanted her.
He reached out to tug on a lock of her hair. Silky soft, too. Her eyes were shadowed with lust, making him feel like a superhero for the first time in a long while. He couldn’t actually remember the last time he’d seen a woman look at him that way. This was good, because damned if he didn’t want to be alone in this...whatever this was. With his hand on the nape of her neck, he pulled her close enough that they shared oxygen. Her eyes were warm and fluid, showing him all the things he wanted to see. An invitation. A welcome.
He kissed her, deep, long and lingering. When her tongue met his, soft and tentative, he tugged her closer still. Took the kiss deeper and wilder.
She pulled back, a bit out of breath. “What was that?”
“I kissed you. And I think you liked it.”
As if to acknowledge that, yes, she liked it, she kissed him this time. Her hands were on him, clutching his T-shirt, hanging on. He clung, too, one hand dropping to her hip, where he pulled her closer. The other he used to grab a handful of her wild hair in his fist.
From the monitor, Grace wailed. And every good part of him froze.
Carly tensed under his fingertips and he lowered his forehead to hers. “I should go.”
“Yeah. Y-you should.” She stepped away, an unreadable gaze in her eyes.
Relief?
Disappointment?
He didn’t know which one of them was more frustrated, but he’d lay bets in Vegas on himself.
CHAPTER SIX (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
WHEN THE PAPER airplane hit Levi’s forehead on Monday, he was awake, though definitely not firing on all cylinders. So what else was new?
He crumpled the paper in his fist. “Which one of you ladies did this?”
His bet was on Matt, who sat a few feet away from him in Stone’s office, making no effort to conceal his smile. “Wouldn’t need to ask if you were paying attention.”
Levi would grin like that, too, were he engaged to Sarah Mcallister, spending nights wrapped in those mile-long legs.
Damn, he was horny. It had been so long. He wouldn’t mind a sweet woman lying under him or on top of him. Just...not Carly.
This morning when he’d dropped Grace off at Carly’s, she’d been wearing a short dress that showed off a pair of wickedly curvy legs he couldn’t have even imagined. Her hair wasn’t pointed in different directions like it had been the first day she’d watched Grace. She’d put some effort into her appearance this morning, maybe to reassure him that he’d made the right choice.
So he had a new nanny, and he wouldn’t kiss her again. Levi didn’t need someone like Carly in his life. She had the power to draw him in and suck him dry when he had so little left to give these days. Right now he needed easy, casual and definitely no more life-altering situations.
The three of them, Stone, Matt and Levi, were having one of many meetings to work toward the achingly slow progress of turning a small county airport into a regional one. Even if all his synapses were optimal, he had nothing. He was a pilot, not an administrator. But when Stone needed help, a friend didn’t say no and live to tell about it. So Levi had come to the meeting and nodded in what he hoped were all the appropriate places. A regional airport would mean the pain of TSA but also more traffic, more flights and, most important of all, more money. He sure as shit could use more money. He could also use at least one decent night’s sleep. Just one, please.
Levi squashed a yawn.
“Hey, I can’t have you up there if you’re not on track,” Stone said. “Fresh as a daisy.”
“No worries, boss.” Levi saluted. “I’ve got this. I was with the air force. You may have heard of it?”
“You’ve got to fix it, bro.” Matt leaned back in his chair and studied Levi.
“What am I supposed to do? Order her to go to sleep? It doesn’t work that way.”
“Hell if I know,” Matt said with a shrug. “But you can’t do this on your own. You know that, right?”
“Why the hell can’t I?” There again, he resented the fact that no one seemed to have the slightest bit of faith in him as a father.
While he told himself that they were all trying to help, when Matt and Sarah or Emily and Stone showed up on the occasional weekend and shoved him out the door for some R & R, he fought it every time. Grace was his deal, his responsibility, and not theirs. And he did not fall down on his responsibilities. Plus, he could handle it, lack of sleep included. He already had enough of the lack of confidence in him from Sandy’s parents and didn’t need his buddies questioning him, too.
“You’re a guy.” Stone slid him a look as if those three little words explained everything.
“Wake up to the twenty-first century. There are single dads doing this every day, and doing it well.” He tore off a piece of paper from the airplane and wadded it up between his fingers.
“Maybe so, but it wouldn’t hurt you to think about settling down now. With a good woman.” This was from Matt. “And I don’t mean the beach babes you normally hang with.”
“What the hell? That’s my favorite kind.”
Matt quirked an eyebrow. “You need a woman with an IQ bigger than her tits.”
Levi scoffed. “This is about what I expected from you whipped fools. Never would have thought I’d see both of you settled down like a couple grandpas.”
“Hey, life is good.” Matt crossed his arms behind his head, his I-got-laid grin full throttle.
Stone gave Matt a censuring look, and Levi took that time to wet his spitball.
“You going to see Lily again?” Matt said. “Who knows. Maybe this could be the one.”
Lily did seem nice, so too bad he didn’t believe in the one. She worked events at the ranch Emily’s family owned, and they’d been introduced a week ago. They’d had coffee at the Drip, talked for a couple hours. Levi was supposed to call her next week to set up dinner. He didn’t expect much. In fact, he’d had more chemistry with Carly while bonding over a baby crib, which said something.
“I’m never getting married. It’s the single life for me.” Levi scoped out his aim and best shot. It was looking like Matt for the win, which was perfect.
Most of his friends wanted him to slow down. And he understood the reputation he had, though much of it had been greatly exaggerated. For instance, it wasn’t true that he’d taken two women home after a bar fight in Yonkers, New York, two years ago. The bar fight part was true, since some jackass had been slapping a girl around. But the rest of it? Levi had never found out how that particular rumor started.
Matt opened his mouth as if to add something when the spitball Levi aimed hit him square in the nose and fell to his lap. “Well, shit.”
The conversation went downhill from there.
A few minutes later, Emily opened the door and caught all three of them in the middle of Spitball War Z.
“Not again.” She shook her head. “You’re cleaning that up.”
“Enough.” When Emily shut the door, Stone threw his last volley, which Levi caught in midair.
After the meeting in which they’d discussed the planes that most needed work, picking up more plane inventory and how they might best accomplish that with little or no money, Levi had a flight lesson scheduled with a retired software CEO from the valley who’d recently purchased his own plane. Before that, he grabbed his phone to check in with Carly.
When he heard Grace crying in the background, it was all he could do not to run out like a jet at Mach speed. “Something wrong?”
“She’s okay. Okay, that’s okay, baby,” Carly said, sounding a little frantic herself.
He got that. Grace’s wailing could even make him break out in a trickle of sweat when she carried on for hours.
“I’ll get her down for a nap now,” Carly said. “Don’t worry. She’s fine.”
He hung up and found a desk to check his email. As anticipated, another one from Frank Lane. God forbid he should pick up his phone even one of the many times Levi had tried to call him. This one suggested that Levi retain a lawyer, because Frank would sue for custody if it came to that. To pile on the guilt, he mentioned that Grace’s grandmother cried for her daily. He hoped Levi felt good about that.
Levi felt like a pile of dog shit.
Of course, he couldn’t afford a lawyer. Levi fired off a response, inviting both of them to visit him in Fortune yet again, but clearly stating that he would never give up his daughter.
Maybe this time the message would get through.
* * *
SO FAR, ALL was not going according to plan for Carly.
Why was Grace always crying? That couldn’t be normal. Carly consulted the baby bible section on teething. Grace had gone through no fewer than five cold rags she gnawed until they were no longer cold. They entertained her but did nothing to stop the crying.
She had growing sympathy for Hot Dad. If he had to deal with Grace all night, he had to be working on fumes. A girl wouldn’t know that, though, if she went by the way he kissed. That kiss had scared her a little bit, given that she’d been hot and bothered within seconds. Not the reaction she’d expected. Loneliness and desperation had weakened her. That, and the way Levi had checked her out, his heated gaze sliding over her as if he’d seen a cookie he wanted. As if he’d die without a bite.
But she needed to stay away. After months of juggling nothing but responsibilities and heavy commitments, she would sell this baby business and pursue her own dreams. Her life. Besides, she and Levi both had people who depended on them and who needed to be put first. She had her father, and Levi had Grace.
They’d settled into a bit of a routine after that hot kiss, one that didn’t include any more of those kisses. Every afternoon Levi picked Grace up right on time, threw her up in the air, then caught her. Grace would squeal and laugh for the first time that day. Carly would pretend it didn’t scare her to see Grace airborne. They’d talk a little bit about his search for a permanent babysitter—which, frankly, was not going well—and about Grace’s day, then go to their respective corners. He and Grace to his house. Carly to her sewing machine, where she had a little fun before hitting her business chores after dinner.
Interestingly, he’d not taken her up on her offer to babysit evenings. She supposed that meant he wasn’t dating anyone yet. Thank God for that, because she’d offered in a moment of over-the-top selling of her idea. She didn’t want to facilitate his getting laid. Carly was the one who needed to get out more. She missed her clothes. Marc Jacobs, Kate Spade, Louis Vuitton and all their cool friends were sitting in her closet collecting dust.
Carly sat at her laptop to do what she did best. Also known as stalling. In the background, an old but favorite episode of Never Wear This played. On one hand, she wasn’t sure why she bothered with the blogging. The posts took forever to compose, and her post on the best diaper for babies’ skin had a whopping one comment. It was from someone who claimed to know the secret to making a million dollars, tax-free. Not one comment from a weary parent looking for advice. Or hope.
As usual, she squeezed the words out one by one. She’d put a sentence together, living by spellcheck, and hoping her grammar was decent. It was never simple, not for her, and felt like being in high school again. Insecure. Inadequate. This wasn’t what she should be doing with her life anyway. She’d always wanted to pursue graphic arts or fashion design. That was in her blood and, though hard work, was something she could do well. She’d gone away to school to the Fashion Institute of Technology in New York City. Everything had been going so well there, too, but then even that had blown up in her face. Something she didn’t want to think about right now.
Giving up on the words after a few minutes, she padded into the spare bedroom and her sewing corner—the place where dreams went to die. The half-dressed mannequin wore part of the design she’d been working on before Pearl passed away. Despite her failure, she’d kept at it, the pleasure at creating never completely leaving her. Only her confidence had been shattered. And unfortunately, her fashion prowess, should she manage to get it back, would not be of much help when it came to the world of baby products. But frankly, if she had to choose between an empty screen and playing on her sewing machine, the choice was a no-brainer.
It had been far too long since she’d torn something apart and put it back together again. Levi had been right in that the red baby dress was beautiful but impractical. She’d seen a lot of that in the months since she’d taken over RockYourBaby. Carly held up another one of the baby dresses from the lot that had been shipped to her.
She cut into the dress, ripping seams and removing sleeves. Found a piece of a soft white cotton with a flowery print that she’d bought at the fabric shop in town the last time she’d been in there. Seemed like ages ago. She could replace a velvet sleeve with a cotton one. Carly went to work cutting out pieces and holding them up. Okay, weird. But somehow it worked. She held it up and admired the juxtaposition of solid red velvet and flowery cotton print. It still needed...something. Maybe ribbon or lace.
She’d always loved this part of fashion. Seeing something in a brand-new light. Satin and denim...leather and lace. She had no doubt it was what she’d be doing right now if she had a choice. She could do it all right here from her sewing machine. One thing for sure—she didn’t want to run RockYourBaby.com. That was her mother’s dream, and Carly couldn’t hang on much longer.
Finally, Carly finished and forced herself away from her sewing machine to trudge to the computer screen. She leafed through the baby bible for almost an hour but found nothing inspiring to give to her readers. Nothing to turn their boring, mundane lives into something interesting, or even to remind them that what they were doing was important. She imagined that when it came down to it, raising a baby was all about routine and not much about fun.
What was that saying about a picture being worth a thousand words? A thousand words were really all she needed for this post. Grabbing her high-resolution camera, Carly took photos of the baby outfit she’d just sewn together. Not bad. She downloaded them to her laptop and uploaded them to her blog. It looked okay, frankly, even without any words. She hit Publish.
Grace wailed, awake from her nap. When Carly reached the crib, Grace had rolled over onto her stomach from her back. What’s more, she looked immensely pleased with herself, her chubby little legs kicking.
“Daahh...dah,” Grace said, then blew a raspberry. “Bff.”
At least Carly had the diaper changing routine down. It hadn’t taken long to figure out as it wasn't exactly rocket science. She’d done her share of babysitting younger cousins years ago. And some baby care, she had come to realize, was so routine that it could be a little mind-numbing at times.
Maybe they needed a change of scenery. She could take Grace for a walk. Not exciting, but at least it got her outside the house after months of nearly hibernating. Jill and Zoey, her two best friends, had tried to get her to go out more, but Carly hadn’t much wanted to go out and celebrate being young and alive when she’d still been grieving.
But today, she needed a diversion. Carly rummaged through her closet and pulled out her distressed short overalls. She rolled them farther up at the hem and paired them with a white T-shirt and her broken-in flat brown leather boots. A long-brimmed black fedora completed the look.
“There.” She felt like a new woman, or more like her old self.
Carly then spent the next two hours taking Grace for a stroll around the neighborhood and to the nearby park in the lightweight umbrella stroller rated as the most portable and functional by Baby Today. They were the standard in the industry, and Carly hoped they would consider buying RockYourBaby for top dollar. Time was running out.
Last night, she’d checked in with Kirk and asked to speak with Dad.
“He’s having a bad day,” Kirk had warned.
That was always code for “He’s not talking to anyone and being a pain in the ass. He won’t do his exercises.”
“I’ll try back tomorrow.”
Mom’s death had hit them all hard, sure, but none harder than their father. He regularly fought with the therapists who were trying to get him to rehabilitate his hip and wasn’t the man Carly remembered anymore. He’d always been her biggest supporter. Her protector. When Carly had wanted to go to New York City and study design, instead of something far more practical as her mother had suggested, it was Daddy who had supported Carly’s decision. He’d smoothed things out with Pearl. And he’d smoothed again, double time, when Carly had returned from the Big Apple a big fat failure.
Grace squealed. She seemed happiest outside, distracted by the outdoors. Entranced by flowers, trees, dogs and children playing. Carly stopped to pull out her phone and take several photos of her. She was a cute baby. Long dark lashes and blue-gray eyes. Toothless smile. Maybe Carly could ask Levi for permission to use Grace as a baby model for the website. Holy cow, she was totally rocking the great ideas today. She could dress Grace up in cute outfits she created and post photos of her on the blog. Another way to avoid actual words.
Grace fell asleep on the way home, and she was still asleep when five thirty rolled around and Levi pulled up outside. A person could set a clock by the guy.
She met him at the door. “She’s still sleeping. Want to come in and wait?”
“Yeah.” He stepped inside. “Might as well let her sleep.”
How exactly did he manage to look like sex on a stick at the end of a long day? He had this whole badass look going on, late-afternoon scruffiness over his jawline, making her want to rub against him like a cat.
Bad, bad Carly. “I wanted to talk to you about something anyway.”
“Oh, yeah. I haven’t had a whole lot of luck finding another sitter. I’ll make a few calls tonight.” He followed her into the family room.
“That’s not it. I need a favor.”
“Done.”
“You don’t even know what it is yet.”
He gave her an easy smile. “Doesn’t matter.”
“Be careful, Levi Lambert. You never know what I might ask.”
“Bring it on.” His eyes filled with obvious male appreciation.
She was reminded of her bare legs. The look he slid her was so full of heat that she thought her panties might spontaneously burst into flames. Focus, Carly, focus.
“I want to put photos of Grace on my website. I took some cute ones today.” She took her phone out and showed them to him. Shots of Grace staring with delight at a tree as if she’d just discovered them. Smiling as she watched a child playing ball, staring wide-eyed at a woman walking her poodle down the street.
“You took her to the park. She loves it there.” Levi didn’t take the phone from her but instead held her wrist and brought the phone up closer.
Her stupid wrist tingled as if it thought it might be about to have a good time. She cleared her throat. “I know. Just look at this one. I think she noticed a cloud for the first time.”
He grinned, still holding her wrist. “Nah, she saw one last week.”
“Right. So...is it okay if I put her photos up? She’s an adorable baby.”
“Fine with me.”
“Don’t worry. I’ll never share her real name with my readers. And no one has any idea that the company is based in Fortune. My mother took great precautions to protect our privacy.”
“I trust you.” His big, rough hand slid from her wrist to her elbow, and the tingle traveled.
“Thank you.” She stared at his lips, willing him to kiss her. “The trust is...important.”
“Extremely.”
That talented hand now settled on her waist and pulled her closer. And somehow her hands were squeezing his biceps and she went up on the balls of her feet to get closer still. He kissed her long and deep, his hot, wet tongue insistent. It got wild and crazy as her hands fisted his shirt and his hands palmed her ass.
“Levi.” She broke off from the kiss, breathless. “We probably shouldn’t do this. It’s not...a good idea.”
He pressed his forehead to hers. “You’re right.”
Great. He agreed with her. “It’s stupid.”
“Yeah.” He tugged her in tighter and kissed her again. And again.
She threaded her fingers through his hair and moaned into his mouth.
And they continued to be crazy stupid for the next hour.
CHAPTER SEVEN (#u67794f6a-04ed-5b54-b705-d09e131f9b21)
A FEW DAYS LATER, the blog post with the photos of the outfit Carly had created went viral.
It had been reblogged over a thousand times. Someone, possibly one of her readers, had created a Pinterest board named Fashionista Baby. The hashtag #fashionistababy was trending on Twitter, with mothers posting photos of their own favorite baby outfits. All wanted to know where they might find similar clothes to the one Carly had made.
Patsy, her mother’s accountant, phoned to tell Carly that whatever she’d been doing, she should keep it up. They’d received renewed interest from some of their lost sponsors. Companies were calling and asking questions. She didn’t think it would be long now. They’d get an offer, Carly would sell the company and Daddy would have the money he needed for the extensive physical therapy ahead of him. And Carly would finally find...something to do with the rest of her life.
Definitely not this baby business.
While Grace took a nap, Carly finished her latest blog post—“How to Handle a Teething Baby”—then dialed her father to give him the good news. This time Kirk gladly handed him the phone.
“Hi, Daddy. How’s the hip?”
“Still hurts like hell, honey. But that’s hardly your problem. These physical therapists out here don’t know shit.”
“Are you doing your exercises?”
“Yeah, yeah. It’s like I told my PT guy—I spent half my life on my feet. Climbing, lifting. Never had a fall or a broken bone. Not one. Come out east to visit with Kirk, and a piece of ice does me in. But now that I have a new hip, those people won’t let me take it easy for a minute. I tell them to let me rest the hip, but no one listens to me. I’m just an old man, so what the hell do I know?”
Dad was a retired PG&E lineman and had worked physically hard all his life. At sixty-five, he didn’t like anyone telling him how to spend his time. When he’d once been asked what he’d planned to do in his retirement, Daddy said he had plans to surf. From his couch.
“Well, I’m glad I called, because I’ve got great news,” Carly said.
“Could always use some of that.”
“RockYourBaby is doing much better. I had a blog post go viral, and now we’re getting all of our sponsors back.”
“What’s viral? That’s a good thing? Let me get Kirk back on the phone. I don’t want to talk about that company.”
Daddy still sounded bitter, even if “that company” could be a part of his retirement if they played their cards right. If Carly could get any real help from her family, it would be so much better, but she had long ago realized she was in this alone.
“No, that’s okay. We don’t have to talk about the company. Just know that soon I’ll be able to sell it and send you and Kirk some money to help with the physical therapy bills.”
Too late, Carly forgot it had been the wrong thing to say to Dad.
“No, I don’t want any of that money coming to me. I told you and your brothers. Your mother meant that to be for our children. Not me. I’m an old man.”
“But Da—”
“I want you to take your part of the money and go back to New York City, honey. Finish school. I know your mother could have been more supportive, but she was worried about you. She liked having you nearby, you know that.”
But if she hadn’t been home, she would have missed out on the last year of Mom’s life. It had all worked out for the best. “I sometimes think I’d like to go back.”
“Maybe the timing was off. You can’t give up.”
“Okay, Dad, you’re right. I’ll think about it.”
It was the only way she’d get him off the subject. Agree. It wasn’t like she didn’t think about it every single day. It would be nice to get a second shot at her dream of life in the Garment District. But that wasn’t likely to happen until she grew a little more confidence in herself. In her own abilities. They’d taken a hit, and even if she was pissed that she’d let one person derail her dreams, she couldn’t go back until she felt sure he was dead wrong.
* * *
LEVI WOKE IN a good mood. To put a real stamp of approval on the morning, Grace had gone to bed at ten o’clock the previous night and had woken him up only once. A record.
While he waited for his coffee to brew and Grace to wake up, he checked email on his phone. There was a new email from Sandy’s father stating that he’d asked for an emergency child custody screening in California family court because he now feared for Grace’s safety.
Feared for her safety.
Levi was her father and would sooner light himself on fire than hurt a single hair on her head. Not much fazed him anymore, but that lone email managed to piss him off royally. Sandy’s parents were methodically chipping away at him. It took everything in him not to throw his cell phone across the room. They were never going to give up—he should have realized. Should have dealt with the situation early on and maybe he wouldn’t be in this mess.
He woke Grace, changed her diaper and put her into one of the many outfits Carly had given him. No sooner had he turned his back to lob the diaper in the trash can than Grace spit up all over and he had to change her again.
Monday went FUBAR fast after that.
He’d dropped Grace off at Carly’s, where even seeing her open the door in her Tasmanian Devil slippers didn’t manage to cheer him up.
Later in the day, two delayed and entitled Silicon Valley VIP passengers did not help his piss-poor mood. He was still exhausted. Hell, he’d been tired for weeks. Now, seeing Carly day in and day out—and playing tonsil hockey with her—had him horny as all get-out, too. If anyone so much as looked at him the wrong way today, he might have to kill them. Matt and Stone were avoiding him, because they were the only two people who would sense he was on the edge and ready to snap. They were both smart enough to know he could kick their collective asses with one hand tied behind his back. If the past was any indication, they were going to avoid him for a while and let him simmer. Then they’d stage a sneak attack.
If they could find him.
The fact was he couldn’t risk losing Grace. Ever. He’d been taught to make decisions first with his brain, not his heart. This one required little thought. She was his daughter, not theirs. All he wanted was to be left alone to raise his daughter in peace, but that clearly wasn’t going to happen. Another serious talk with Sandy’s parents would be his next logical move. Actually, it was long overdue. It would be even better to meet face-to-face, and since he figured they’d be in California to attend the sham hearing, maybe he could meet with them first. He couldn’t afford a lawyer, so he guessed he’d represent himself.
An emergency screening. This had to stop. Worse, they almost had him doubting himself.
Was he being selfish in raising Grace on his own? Maybe she’d be better off with a grandmother to raise her and a female influence in her life. It was logical, his left brain said. A woman’s touch for a little girl. But in this one instance, his brain wouldn’t cooperate. The idea couldn’t take root. Because even if he’d never had much of a sense of family other than summers with his grandfather, he wanted that kind of stability for Grace. His friends had become a sort of family for him—getting up in his business all the time for one thing—but he wasn’t sure that would be enough. They would soon have their own children to raise. Their own families.
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