“No, and I intend to keep it that way.” Daisy stopped sucking and seemed content, so she slipped her out from under her shirt and pulled her clothes together before dropping the blanket.
“Here.” She stood and dropped the baby into Jake’s lap, the first time she’d done so willingly. “I’m going to call the agency. Maybe they can reach Carrie before she comes back here. The head of the agency should be the one to tell her she’s fired.”
“You don’t think that maybe we should … help her in some way?”
She turned back to Jake with a sigh. “I may have been naïve about Carrie’s injury, but as a reporter, I’m very much aware of the problem of abuse. You can’t help someone who isn’t ready to be helped, and my own life is much too complicated right now to worry about hers. We’re just lucky Daisy wasn’t hurt.”
When he didn’t reply and continued to make funny faces at Daisy, who was laughing from her belly, she went to the kitchen to make her call. Whatever Mr. Do-gooder thought, her child was her only concern, not the nanny.
Jake and Daisy weren’t in the living room when she got off the phone. She felt a momentary jolt of fear, until she heard him singing upstairs. She went up to the nursery where she was startled to find Jake, naked from the waist up, changing a very odorous and messy diaper. He was singing “Bicycle Built for Two,” which of course prominently featured his daughter’s name and made her smile.
“Is there a story to go along with what I’m seeing?” she asked when he turned his head and saw her in the doorway. His scattering of chest hair was blonde against his golden tan, and she could see now that although he was thinner, he was rock-hard solid. If that’s what yoga did for a man, classes should be mandatory.
“I forgot she just ate, and got carried away with the playing and bouncing. That’s why I’m no longer wearing a shirt. Then I realized we had an even bigger mess.”
“Would you like me to take over?”
He wrapped the soiled diaper and baby wipes up neatly and shot them into the disposal, never taking his left hand or his eyes off Daisy. Violet was impressed. Even Seth, an experienced father, handled diapers with the trepidation of someone cleaning up nuclear waste. And Richard turned puce if there was even talk of the baby needing a change.
“Mission accomplished.”
When he lifted the baby, who was wearing only the diaper, against his chest, Violet’s knees got weak. She felt a surge of desire to run her hands across his chest, to feel her own naked skin pressed against his.
“Is something wrong? Did I put the diaper on backwards?”
“No, of course not.” She forced herself to look into his eyes instead of at his naked chest, and to focus on her crisis. “But I have a problem. The woman from the agency called Carrie and fired her, and they’re going to send someone to pick up her things. But there won’t be anyone available for me to interview until Monday at the earliest.”
“You don’t have anyone else to take care of Daisy? You don’t have family here, or friends?”
She shook her head. “My mother and step-father live in Connecticut, my best friend lives in Wickham, and I don’t know anyone in Boston who can just take off from work to babysit for me. I’ll have to tell the station I need to stay home the rest of the week.” Because she’d taken maternity leave so soon after being hired, Violet hated to take time off without notice. The young woman who filled in for her, the weekend anchor, was hungry to take her place — Violet knew because she’d been there.
Daisy yawned, totally unconcerned by her mother’s problem.
“I can do it. All I ask in return is that you let me wash my shirt so I don’t have to leave here like this today.”
“You can …”
“Take care of Daisy while you’re at work. Don’t you think I can do it?”
He’d shown he was capable, and Daisy certainly liked him. Right now she was falling asleep in his arms. But she didn’t want him to stay overnight in Carrie’s room, even if it meant she got less sleep.
“We’ll take shifts, and I’ll leave as soon as you get home from work,” he continued before she could object. “I’ll even give up my Saturday visit this week. You’ll hardly see me at all.”
It wasn’t like she had a lot of other options. “We can try it. I should have a replacement for Carrie early next week. ”
She couldn’t believe she was allowing this. A week ago she’d been hoping to banish Jake from their lives completely; now she’d be happy if she could keep him from moving in.
• • •
“I have to call the doctor,” Violet blurted as she opened the door for Jake at noon on Thursday. Daisy had slept late, then fussed and refused to nurse after Violet snatched her from her crib in a panic. “Either she’s sick, or there’s something wrong with my milk. Although when I pumped for tonight’s bottle I seemed to have plenty.”
She realized she was babbling about her breasts to Jake and flushed to the tips of her ears. Although she wanted to discourage any desire he might still have for her, and surely she’d just done that?
“Did I miss the big news while I was out of the country?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Unless they discovered a cure for the common cold, there’s no point calling her doctor. See how she’s rubbing her nose? You said you were afraid she’d catch Carrie’s cold, and she has.”
He dropped his knapsack and placed a palm against Daisy’s forehead, very close to Violet’s right breast. Which — along with the left one — felt enormously prominent, either because they were engorged with milk or because of her jabbering about them.
After what seemed like a very long time, he removed his hand. “She doesn’t have a fever, so I think we can handle this ourselves for now.”
Violet had followed the recommendations in her baby care book and purchased a thermometer, bulb syringe, and cool-mist vaporizer. She just hadn’t imagined using any of them. “I won’t go to work today.”
He laughed. “She’ll be sick for a week or more, and get up to a dozen colds a year. Can you miss that much work?”
“She won’t have a cold every month. This isn’t some Third World country!” This time the man was flat-out wrong, and she’d be happy to prove it.
“Go ahead, check your book.” He tipped his head in the direction of the baby care manual on the coffee table, and then took the baby from her. Using the soft cloth diaper Violet had draped over her shoulder, he gently wiped the baby’s nose. Even so, she didn’t like it and complained with a weak cry that wrenched her mother’s heart.
Verifying Jake’s facts didn’t seem all that important at the moment. “I’ll go, but I’m coming home between broadcasts to check on her and see if she’ll nurse.”
“Whatever makes you feel better. But the bottle will probably work better for her. The smaller nipple won’t block her breathing.”
There had been far too much discussion of Violet’s breasts for her comfort. “I’m going to get ready for work, if you can manage with Daisy for a while.”
He just grinned in response.
By the time Violet got home that night, he’d set up the vaporizer and the nursery was full of cool mist. He showed her how to use the syringe to clear the baby’s nose before she ate. Daisy didn’t seem much worse than she had that morning, but she woke up during the night and didn’t go back to sleep until Violet had sung to her, rocked her, and walked the floor for over two hours.
The next day, Friday, was more of the same. Jake insisted Violet take a nap before she went to work, but she still felt rocky when she got home at midnight. She wasn’t sure if she was relieved she wouldn’t have to go back to work until Monday afternoon, or terrified at the prospect of spending the next two days tending to a sick and miserable child all by herself.
She found Jake in the living room. Daisy was on his lap, frowning at the television.
“Don’t you think she’s a little young for late-night movies?”
“Hey, it got her to stop crying.”
They exchanged a weak smile.
“She didn’t eat much,” he said. “I think if we suction her nose first, she might want to nurse. She needs the comfort as much as the nourishment.”
“I’ll change out of these clothes and meet you in the nursery.”
As she removed her skirt and blazer and hung them in her closet, replacing them with pajama pants and her short robe, she could hear Jake in the next room, talking and singing to Daisy. The baby’s sudden angry cry told her he’d done the nasal suctioning, and the thought of it made her wince. She hadn’t been able to do it without getting snot all over Daisy’s face, and she wasn’t sure the baby had been able to breathe any better when she was done.
The nursery was lit only by the pale glow of Daisy’s night-light. Violet sat in the glider and slid the baby inside her robe without worrying about Jake watching, for once. She was too darn tired to even care, and assumed he felt the same.
“You can go,” she told him. “We’ll be fine.” Daisy latched on to the nipple right away, and, despite the snuffling and wheezy sounds she was making, soon was sucking steadily. Violet closed her eyes and felt herself drifting away.
“I’m not leaving tonight.”
Her eyes flew open. “But …”
“You need a good night’s sleep. No arguing.”
It only took Jake a few seconds to remember where he was when he woke up, a skill he’d honed over many years of waking up in strange places. He was on Violet’s sofa with a stiff throw pillow under his head and a knitted afghan covering him. Sunlight poured through the sheer window curtains, and he heard Violet’s voice over the baby monitor as she talked to Daisy.
“Damn!” He rubbed the sleep out of his eyes and bounded up the stairs to the nursery. “I was going to get up with her so you could sleep in,” he said when he reached the open door to Daisy’s room.
Violet was standing over the baby at the changing table, snapping up her onesie. She turned to him, smiling. “Daisy had other plans.”
Her hair was disheveled, and the robe she’d been wearing when he guided her to bed last night was belted snugly at her slender waist. Although he knew the studio had provided her with a personal trainer to help her regain her figure after Daisy was born, she’d made the kind of progress that required self-discipline and determination — traits Jake believed they had in common. He just wished she didn’t also have that annoying hardheadedness.
Daisy sneezed, sending snot flying into the air. Violet calmly grabbed a cloth diaper and cleaned off her face. The baby squirmed but didn’t cry.
“I don’t know why I didn’t hear the baby monitor,” he said.
“It isn’t instinctual for you yet.” She picked Daisy up and took a step toward him, still smiling. Her words had stung him, although he knew she hadn’t meant them to. “Her cold seems better today.”
“Great.” That meant she wouldn’t need him to stay, which was good. He had plenty of things he needed to do this weekend, although he couldn’t remember exactly what they were at the moment.
“Would you take her for a minute while I get dressed? She already ate.”
As they made the exchange, he saw the outline of her breasts through the cotton robe, and remembered the previous night. Violet had fallen asleep holding Daisy in the glider, and when he took the baby from her arms he’d had to pull her robe over her exposed breast. He had to admit he hadn’t done it as quickly as he should have. Now he was experiencing the same physical reaction he had then, and grabbed a blanket from the crib to cover him and the baby.
“It’s cool downstairs, I accidentally left a window open,” he explained.
She just stared at him, biting her lip, and he remembered the first time he’d seen her on television at his Uncle Matt’s — he’d thought she was the typical female talking head, coiffed and made-up and reciting the news in an unaccented, well-modulated voice. Not his type at all. But he’d felt compelled to keep watching, and discovered she wasn’t as blandly perfect as he’d first thought. A wisp of her dark hair was out of place, and a shadow of grief crossed her face as she reported on a local tragedy with a slight quaver in her voice.
“Jake, I want you to know I appreciate all you’ve done for us this week. I couldn’t have managed without you.” Her brilliant blue eyes shone with emotion.
No, she was not an automaton. She was warm, caring, and vulnerable. He’d never seen anything more beautiful than this woman and her child.
His
child. Violet had been hurt and neglected by her own father, and he understood now why she’d kept her pregnancy a secret from him. If you don’t care about someone, you can’t be hurt. Those bright eyes belonged to someone who was starting to care.
“You’d have managed just fine without me,” he told her, his voice gruff. “You’re a terrific mother.”
She sighed. “Being a single mother is harder than I expected.”
“Well, you won’t be one for much longer.” He shifted Daisy to his shoulder, where she let out a moist burp.
Violet seemed confused for a moment. “Umm, about that …”
“Listen, I have to be somewhere, so why don’t you shower and get dressed before I go?” He didn’t want to hang around and talk about Richard the Clown and their marriage plans. “I’ll put Daisy on her play mat and make you some breakfast.”
The light seemed to go out of her eyes. “Sure. But don’t worry about breakfast, I don’t want to hold you up.”
• • •
Violet showered and dressed at top speed, as eager to be rid of Jake as he was to leave. She’d been so relieved to have help with Daisy that she’d let down her guard, forgotten she had to be careful not to encourage Jake to get overly involved in Daisy’s life — and hers. She’d been on the verge of telling him the truth about her relationship with Richard, when he’d given her a blunt reminder of her reason for wanting to keep him away. Because, of course, he’d always want to
be
somewhere else. Just like today. Last night he was tender and caring, but today he had something more
important
to do than spend time with his baby, or with her.
There was a mug of coffee waiting when she walked into the kitchen with no makeup and her hair still wet. Jake was bouncing a fussy Daisy in his arms, and there was the furrow of a frown on his forehead. He turned his warm amber gaze on her, and she felt her heart flip. When, exactly, had she relinquished control of her internal organs? Jake was getting to her, and it had to stop. Now.