Slowly she turned to face him, her expression guarded, her arms overflowing with both baby and comforter.
“I haven’t seen you or Isabella in four solid days. There’s no point in you living here with her if I never get to see her.”
Lucy narrowed her gaze in a calculated manner, then gave a slight huff of indignation. “I couldn’t agree more. I’ll pack up our things and be out of here within the hour.”
“That’s not what I meant.”
A sigh deflated her chest. “I was afraid of that.”
“If this—” he gestured to spot in the living room where they’d been lounging “—is what you do with her during the day, then I’d like to—” he hesitated, looking for the right word “—participate.”
“How?”
He crossed to her, mincing around the comforter and taking it from her arms. “Let’s start by putting this back. And you can show me what you normally do with her.”
She frowned as he spread the blanket out over the floor. “It’s not complicated,” she hedged.
And he could see from the glint in her eyes, she was looking for an excuse to bail on him.
“But as you said, it’s important. Why don’t you talk me through it?”
He kicked off his shoes and settled down on the comforter with his back against the sofa.
“Well,” she began hesitantly. “She can’t roll over yet, but she’s close.”
“Okay.”
“So she needs a lot of belly time.” When he looked at her blankly, Lucy added, “To strengthen her neck and arm muscles.” She sat down a few feet away from him. “Here, like this.”
She placed Isabella on her belly on the blanket and then lay down beside her, so their faces were at eye level. Isabella automatically wedged her arms under her shoulders and levered herself up to get a better look at Lucy.
“That’s great, Isabella.”
Isabella grinned in delight at her success.
Once again feeling excluded, Dex lowered himself to Isabella’s other side. When he was at her level, she twisted to get a look at him, flashing him one of her adorable toothless grins. A band of emotion tightened around his heart.
He gazed past Isabella to Lucy, wanting to share the moment with her. For a moment, she just stared back, her eyes wide. Then she sucked in an audible breath and jerked to a sitting position.
“Well, looks like you’ve got that down pat.” She scrambled back toward the chair. “If you want I can just leave you two alone.”
“Aren’t you going to read?”
“Read?”
“Yeah. You were reading to her when I came in. Didn’t you say it would improve her cognitive abilities or something?”
“Um…yes. Something like that.” Lucy fumbled to pick up the worn copy of Emma before raising herself to the chair and tucking her feet under her self-consciously.
As she flipped through the book to the spot she’d left off at in chapter thirty-nine, she was all too aware of her heart pounding in her chest. She didn’t want to consider why it was beating so fast, though it seemed all too likely that Dex was the cause. The intolerable man was as sexy as he was annoying.
And what did he mean, coming home in the middle of a workday just so he could bond with Isabella? What was he doing, trying to be a real father? Ha! Likely story.
His appearance here just reminded her that she was living on borrowed time. What she needed was a plan of action. A surefire way to convince Dex that he should hand Isabella over to her. And maybe—just maybe—she knew just what needed to be done.
Seven
“I ’m sorry,” she lied. “There’s nothing I can do about it.”
Dex’s expression was grim, but he nodded. “No problem.”“Are you sure? You’ll be all alone with her for four, maybe five hours.”
His mouth tightened, but when he spoke he sounded more resolute than scared. “I’ll handle it. If you can’t get out of this business dinner, then I’ll watch her while you’re gone.”
It had been several days since he’d kissed her. In that time he’d made no further attempts.
She, however, had been very busy. She’d spent her time hatching a plan guaranteed to make him lose confidence in himself as a father.
It was ruthless. It was cruel. But it was for Isabella’s own good.
Massive twinges of guilt aside, it was a good plan. She was going to leave Isabella alone with Dex for the evening.
Sure, it seemed simple enough, but Lucy had spent enough evenings alone with Isabella to know they could be brutal. The hours from six to ten were often fraught with crying, colic, sleeplessness and general fussiness. Plus, Isabella hadn’t napped well today, so tonight was likely to go particularly badly.
As if to prove Lucy’s point, Isabella picked that moment to scrunch up her face and let out a wail.
Dex shot a look of grim determination toward Isabella, who had been lounging innocently in her bouncy chair on the living room floor.
“Is there a number where you can be reached?”
Lucy sighed, as if it were a huge imposition, before rattling off her cell-phone number. “But this is a very important meeting for me. Call only if it’s a true emergency.”
He nodded as he typed the number into his own cell phone. “Got it. Only in an emergency.”
And she felt only a teeny tiny bit guilty about leaving him alone with Isabella. He wanted to be a father? Well, here was his chance. This was what being a parent was all about. Making it through the rough times. Learning how to do it on your own.
She’d had plenty of nights when Isabella hadn’t stopped crying no matter what she’d tried. Plenty of nights she’d wanted to pull out her hair. Or had wanted to just shoot Jewel for blithely going about her own life while she left Lucy to care for her daughter.
The simple truth was, this parenting gig wasn’t for pansies.
And if she didn’t leave now, she might not have the strength to put him through this ordeal, even though it was her last chance to convince him to give her Isabella.
She grabbed her purse and headed out. She turned one last time at the door. Dex stood under the imposing arch doorway leading from the foyer to the living room. His hands were on his h*ps as he stared down at the tiny crying Isabella.
“You going to be okay?” But she wasn’t one-hundred-percent sure if it was a question or meant to be reassurance.
He looked up at her, his gaze steely and focused. “We’ll be fine.”
She nodded, but as she closed the door behind her and headed for her car, she knew they wouldn’t.
Dex stared at Isabella for a long minute before letting panic settle over him. What kind of diabolical scheme was Lucy up to now?He could hardly protest when she’d asked him to watch Isabella for a couple of hours tonight. After all, she’d been caring for her nonstop for a full week. Well, who was he kidding, for the past five months. Who was he to complain about just one night?
After all, he could do this. He’d been alone with her before and nothing bad had happened. Sure, she’d cried a lot and he’d ended up with a headache, but he could do this.
He could, he repeated to himself as he bent down, unlatched the straps from the seat and picked her up.
If possible, her cries grew even louder. She swung her fists toward his face like a tiny boxer, her lovely face turning red from exertion.
He held her at eye level to scope out the situation. Assess the damage. This was just a problem like any other. He could solve it. He just needed the right approach.
But man, was it good for her to be crying like this?
Great sobs shook her body and finally she had to pause to suck in a shuddering breath, before letting out another howl of outrage.
“Okay, there are only a few things that could be wrong with you to make you cry like this.”
At the sound of his voice, Isabella’s crying slowed. She opened her eyes to glare at him. She snuffled as if waiting to hear his opening offer.
“You could have a dirty diaper.” He shifted her in his arms to peek through the leg of the tiny pink jumper she wore. “Nope. Not it. You could be hungry.”
Except he’d seen Lucy feed her a bottle just before leaving.
“You could be tired. In which case you’ll fall asleep before long.”
Except he knew there were plenty of times he’d been traveling all day when he was just too tired to fall asleep. Hopefully that wouldn’t be the case here.
Dex rattled off the next few options quickly, feeling less and less optimistic about them.
“You could miss Lucy. You could know that you’re in the hands of an amateur. You could be panicking because you know I don’t know what the hell I’m doing.
“And if that’s the case, then we’re both screwed.”
Unfortunately, he’d been right.Two hours later, after countless diaper changes, several warmed and then tossed bottles of formula, and what he was sure were ruptured eardrums, Dex could finally imagine why Lucy had left Isabella on his doorstep. Five months of this, and he might be willing to do the same.
In the end, he’d resorted to doing what he’d seen Lucy do to soothe her. He’d held her close to his chest, hummed in her ear and waltzed around the living room. By the time she started to calm down, his own pulse was returning to normal. After a solid forty-five minutes of waltzing, he was ready for a break. Since she seemed nearly asleep, he danced toward the sofa and sank to the edge.
Her eyes immediately opened and she let out a mewling protest.
“Come on, Izzie. Don’t look at me like that. You just quieted down.”
Remarkably, instead of howling her outrage, she cocked her head to the side, blinked her impossibly wide blue eyes at him and seemed to listen.
As soon as he settled back on the sofa to relax, she screwed up her face again and looked ready to scream, so he kept talking.
“I had no idea babies were this much work. Sure, you see little kids wreaking havoc at restaurants and stores, but those are the older ones. By then, they’re mobile. They can get into trouble. Play with matches, that kind of thing.”