Mail-Order Matty. Emilie Richards
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came out even in any exchange. That way he knew Kevin would stay on Inspiration, and he could continue to keep an eye on him. He didn’t know how much of this Kevin understood, and he didn’t even care. So far it was working, and that was all that mattered.
“I’m putting Matty’s suitcases on your bill,” Damon said.
“Why? She’s still got ‘em, doesn’t she?”
“We’re going to have to have them cleaned professionally. And it won’t be cheap.”
“You ever heard of child labor laws?”
“You ever heard of juvenile detention centers?”
Kevin sank into a sullen silence.
Damon ran his fingers through his hair. “Look, Kevin, you’re very good at making your point. You don’t want her here. We all know that. But give her a chance. Please? She’d like to be friends.”
Kevin made a noise that was every bit as descriptive as the profanity that Damon insisted he eliminate from his vocabulary.
“All right. You don’t have to be friends,” Damon said. “Just don’t make her life miserable. Got it?”
“I’ve got work to do.” Kevin swung Heidi forward, and Damon was left with no choice but to take her. Kevin ambled off, both hands deep in his pockets and his back hunched defiantly.
“He don’t stay, I don’t stay,” Nanny said.
“He’ll stay. And this is not a contest. It’s not you and Kevin versus Matty. For Pete’s sake, Nanny. Give her a chance.”
“Don’t know no Pete. Don’t want to.” She went back into the house and slammed the door behind her.
Heidi wiggled in Damon’s arms, and he noticed for the first time that she was wearing a diaper and nothing else. “You cold, sweetheart?” He lifted her so that she was hanging in front of him. “Is Daddy’s little sweetheart cold?”
She gave a toothless grin, and his heart kicked into overdrive. The day she had learned to smile had been the best day of his life. He clasped her close and wrapped his arms around her, noisily kissing the soft top of her head. She was going to have dark hair like his, despite the fact that Gretchen’s hair was nearly—and naturally—white. Her eyes looked as if they were going to stay blue, but he didn’t know enough about babies to tell anything about the final decision on her coloring. Whatever the details, he knew for certain that she was going to be the most beautiful little girl, teenager and, finally, woman in the entire world. He could tell that much, and the rest didn’t matter one bit.
“Let’s put some more clothes on you,” he said with that peculiar timbre in his voice that he’d developed since their first meeting. He couldn’t seem to talk to Heidi as if she were an adult. She wasn’t, after all. She was so tiny, so fragile, so unbelievably…cuddly. He was certain there was a biological reason why babies evoked baby talk. Something about pitch and decibels and the fragile auditory system of infants. He was certain that he was just playing along with Mother Nature, who couldn’t always be understood, but who always seemed to know exactly what she was doing.
Inside the house he started upstairs to find Heidi more clothes. It wasn’t really cold outside. She was probably perfectly comfortable just as she was, but he had an ulterior motive. She was charming in diapers, charming any way, for that matter. But dressed in one of those ridiculous outfits that grandmothers the world over seemed to favor she was absolutely…perfect. And he wanted Matty to see just how perfect she was.
In Heidi’s room he settled her on the change table and set her mobile of fuzzy yellow ducks spinning so that she could bat her fists in their direction as he chose something else for her to wear. The room was tiny, just large enough for a crib, the table and a rocking chair. The house had eight bedrooms, and he was welcome to make a nursery in any of them that weren’t in use, but he had chosen the old dressing room because he could enter it directly from his bedroom.
He had never allowed Heidi to cry at night and never intended to. Until she was old enough to need more space, he wanted her nearby, where he could hear her when she wriggled or sighed or laughed. He had never realized just how short childhood was, but he was all too aware at the end of each day how swiftly it had passed and how much his daughter had changed.
He was a hopeless sap.
In the bottom drawer of the change table he sorted through sunsuits and dresses, T-shirts and overalls. Gretchen hadn’t wanted custody, but she sent their daughter clothes as if that would somehow make up for her lack of maternal instinct. Arthur Sable, the man who owned Inspiration Cay, seemed to have bought stock in a baby boutique and was taking his dividends in merchandise, and even Nanny and Kevin had pooled their funds to buy Heidi whatever caught their eye among George Town’s meager baby supplies. Damon wondered what Matty would think when she saw how packed these drawers were.
He wondered what Matty would think, period.
The subject of Matty stilled his hands, and for a moment he stared at the heap of baby clothes and tried to imagine what she must be feeling. He couldn’t imagine a worse beginning for them all. He had dragged Matty through hell yesterday. Even he had felt queasy after the boat trip in from George Town, and he was an experienced sailor. He could so easily have made the day easier for her, but he hadn’t thought it through well enough. He wasn’t good at putting himself in anyone else’s shoes. He had always found it easier to concentrate on ideas, on theories, on statistics, rather than on people and what they were feeling. Feelings confounded him, his own included. He suspected that was why he’d never had any serious thoughts about marriage or parenthood.
Until he’d been presented with Heidi.
He supposed something valuable must have come from yesterday’s experiences. He had observed Matty under the worst of conditions, and he had seen that she was a trouper. She had taken Nanny and Kevin in stride, and struggled gamely with her own physical discomfort. She hadn’t uttered a word of complaint, not even this morning, when she’d had plenty to complain about. Everything had to feel strange to her, insecure and overwhelming. Yet she had managed to stay cheerful. She hadn’t blamed anyone else; she hadn’t insisted he apologize.
In every way Matty was a surprise. He had believed that he knew everything important about her. The retired police detective who had investigated her had been thorough. But no one could have prepared Damon for how guileless she was, how completely feminine, how trusting. She had sat at the kitchen table last night drinking Nanny’s outrageous tea as if it were something rare and delectable from the choicest fields of Sri Lanka. She must have suspected that Nanny was up to no good. But she hadn’t been willing to hurt the old woman’s feelings. She was tactful and funny and…
She was more than the sum of her good qualities.
Despite himself, Damon remembered the way Matty had felt in his arms as he’d carried her upstairs to her bedroom. He had tried to wake her. He’d had no desire to play Rhett Butler after all they’d been through getting to the cay. But Nanny had done her work well, and there had been no hope of Matty waking before morning. So he had lifted her in his arms, which had been easier than he’d expected, and carried her through the hallway with a satisfied Nanny trailing behind.
At the top of the steps he’d shooed Nanny away and taken Matty to her room. The room hadn’t been readied, as he’d requested. The windows had been closed all day, and the stale air was smothering. The linen was clean enough, but not fresh, and the bed was heaped with blankets. He’d been forced to prop Matty in a chaise longue while he opened the windows to allow the fresh sea breezes to chase away the heat and at least rattle the cobwebs that Nanny and Kevin had left in place like ghoulish welcome streamers.
He had folded the blankets, leaving just one at the foot of the bed, then pulled down the spread and the sheets. And at that moment, as he’d realized that he was ready to move her to the bed, he’d realized something else.
There was no one else on the island who could undress her. Either she was going to sleep in a bulky cotton sweater and thigh-hugging pants,