The Baby Project / Second Chance Baby: The Baby Project. SUSAN MEIER
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winced. “Am I ever going to get the hang of this?”
“Eventually.” She caught his gaze and smiled. “And just when you do the rules will change.”
Darius’s face fell. “What rules?”
Settling Gino on her lap to rock him, Mrs. Tucker laughed again. “Not exactly rules, but the things you’ll need to do. He’s a baby now. In a few months he’ll be a toddler. Then there are the terrible twos—”
“Terrible twos?”
“You don’t want to know about that yet.”
He did but he also didn’t. Because right now, falling asleep in Mrs. Tucker’s arms, Gino looked like an angel. Darius swallowed. Strong, protective feelings rose up in him, feelings more intense than anything he’d ever felt.
He pushed them down. He might intend to be a part of this kid’s life, but these feelings were weird. They had to be wrong.
Mrs. Tucker rose from the rocker and settled the sleeping baby in the crib. “Better go back to bed. Morning comes quickly when you have a baby.”
Darius headed for the door. “Good night.”
Heading for the opposite door, Mrs. Tucker whispered, “Good night.”
In his room, he crawled back into bed. He didn’t like the idea that Mrs. Tucker had to do double duty, as his estate manager and the temporary nanny, so he set his alarm for six, hoping he’d get up before the baby.
When it went off a few short hours later, he didn’t balk or linger. He quickly pulled on the jeans from the night before and a fisherman-knit sweater and, paying no mind to his bare feet, raced to the nursery.
“Good morning.”
Dressed in jeans and a pretty blue sweater that brought out the blue of her eyes, Whitney stood on the far side of the crib, watching Gino, who was still asleep.
“Do you want to learn how to feed him this morning?”
He took an instinctive step back. He and Whitney had shared a powerful few minutes at her bedroom door the night before, but she didn’t appear to be any the worse for the wear. Like him, she seemed to want to ignore their chemistry.
And he did want to feed the baby. But before he could say that, Gino’s eyes fluttered open. He yawned and stretched and then let out with a yelp.
“That’s your cue,” Whitney said with a laugh. “Change his diaper, while I get a bottle.”
Whitney calmly walked to the small fridge in the room and retrieved a bottle, which she put in the warmer.
Not wanting to jeopardize the peace between them or have Gino wake poor, sleeping Mrs. Tucker, Darius carried Gino to the changing table and simply did the things he’d done the night before when he changed the baby’s diaper and put him into a clean sleeper.
Gino wasn’t really happy about the arrangement and he began to scream. Darius noticed that Whitney was preoccupied with staring at a bottle warmer that seemed not to need her attention. It confused him that she didn’t react to Gino’s crying, but he wanted to learn how to care for this kid. He also wanted Whitney’s help. He wanted them to get along, be a team. He couldn’t complain about the tasks she gave him to do. He had to do them.
When the light on the warmer went out, Darius was already on the rocker, holding screaming Gino over his shoulder.
Whitney winced. “Do you still want to feed him?”
In spite of Gino’s screaming, Darius casually said, “Sure. But you’re going to have to tell me what to do.”
“Arrange him across your lap so that his head is supported by your forearm.”
Peeling crying Gino off his shoulder wasn’t an easy task. He stiffened his limbs and refused to settle on Darius’s lap.
Whitney handed him the bottle. “Here. Take this. Let him see the bottle is coming and he’ll calm down.”
With both hands busy with the baby, Darius didn’t have a clue how to take the bottle, but he secured Gino as best he could with one hand and managed to get the other free to take the bottle.
He would have criticized Whitney for not helping, except as soon as he had the bottle in his hand, Gino began to calm down.
“Now, just press the nipple to his lips and he’ll do the rest.”
To Darius’s complete amazement, as soon as he nudged the nipple against Gino’s lips he not only stopped crying, he also started suckling loudly.
He laughed with relief. “Wow. That was different.”
“Babies are different. They can’t talk so you have to understand their crying and sometimes watch their body language.”
“There’s a lot to learn.”
As Gino greedily gobbled his milk, Whitney walked away from the rocker and paced the room. Darius watched her for a few seconds, confused. She was in the room, but detached. Not like someone who didn’t want to help, but like … well, a stranger. That was when he realized she might not know Gino any more than he did.
“So why did Missy make you guardian?”
She faced him, her expression rye. “You mean aside from the fact that she wanted to make sure her baby had a female influence?”
He laughed. “Yes. Why you?”
“Missy and I were very close from university until the day she met your dad.”
“Really?”
“Her dad had left her mom before Missy was six, and her mom was an alcoholic who went in and out of rehab. Because she had money enough to have a maid, somebody who by default took care of Missy, no one ever realized how alone Missy was. So after we met, she began to come to my parents’ house with me on weekends and holidays.” She shrugged. “We were like sisters.”
“And then she met my dad and none of us saw either one of them again.”
She laughed sadly. “Missy really loved your dad.”
“And he loved Greece.”
“And that’s where they lived.”
They fell silent again. When the baby was done eating, he showed Whitney the empty bottle. “Now what?”
“Now you have to burp him.”
“Burp him?”
“You hold him like this,” Whitney said as she lifted Gino from Darius’s lap up to his shoulder. “And pat his back.”
As she said the words, she demonstrated by patting the baby’s back. He burped noisily.
Whitney smiled and set Gino on his lap again. “That feels better, doesn’t it, little guy?”
This close, her smoky, sexy voice curled around Darius and he nearly squeezed his eyes shut. That voice would be trouble if he heard it for several weeks with her living under his roof. Even the way she’d refused dinner the night before had been breathy and sensual. And then there was that tub. And the look that had passed between them.
He bounced out of the chair. “So do we take him down to breakfast with us or what?”
“Is there a high chair by the table?”
He nodded. “Yes.”
“Then I think we should keep him with us.”
“Okay.”
After all the time he’d already spent with the baby, Darius didn’t feel uncomfortable holding Gino, but that in itself was odd. The powerful feeling he’d had the night before came back full force. Sacred, reverent, it squeezed his heart and made breathing difficult.
Since his father’s