by Whitley Cox
While in Aaron’s kitchen, she’d checked his fridge and pantry, and the guy had no food. Some beer, two onions, half a bag of carrots, some weird-shaped pasta and six packages of ramen noodles were all she could find besides eight different kinds of barbecue sauce and a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot. Had he been eating takeout all week since his sister passed? Had he been eating at all?
She decided that she’d take a detour on her way home and stop off at the grocery store to refill his fridge and pantry. Maybe she could cook him a nice dinner as well. Steak and baked potato with roasted veggies and maybe an apple pie for dessert?
The clock on her dash said it was only one o’clock. Plenty of time to grocery shop, pop home and then head back to Aaron’s house to whip up a pie.
Aaron’s house.
Her new home?
Her home away from home?
Her work home?
She shook her head, then turned on the radio to drown out her thoughts. She was turning into Tori, overthinking everything. She needed to just take this job day by day, hour by hour, minute by minute.
Aaron and Sophie needed her.
The fates had put them into her life for a reason.
They needed her help, and she had help to give.
Aaron’s massive chest flashed into her mind as she came to a red light. “Yeah, keep telling yourself that,” she murmured. “You’re doing this to help them, riiiiight. Not because you want what your sister has. Tori mixed business with pleasure and got the relationship of a lifetime. She’s doing her boss, and life is just peachy.” She caught her reflection in the side mirror. Her cheeks were flushed pink and her pupils wide. She exhaled as she hit the accelerator when the light turned green. “Just peachy.”
Anger coursed through him as he paced the living room in front of the big picture window, a screaming baby on his shoulder, inconsolable and nearly purple in the face.
Where the fuck was she?
She said she was going to be right back. How far away did she live? Canada?
He held Sophie away from him and gently turned her around in his arms to smell her butt for the millionth time. He’d changed her like four times since Isobel left. Then another two times after Liam left half an hour ago. Surely the baby didn’t still have more shit in her.
He grabbed the bottle off the coffee table and placed Sophie into the crook of his arm. “You hungry, Super Sophie?” he asked, unable to make heads or tails of his own thoughts from the incessant screaming and the thundering pulse inside his brain.
She refused the bottle and instead increased the volume and intensity of her wail.
He’d never liked loud noises, never been able to handle the sound of people screaming … not since Colombia anyway. Not since the fire.
He propped Sophie back up on his shoulder and bounced her, walking back and forth in front of the living room window.
“What’s wrong, baby?” he asked in the calmest voice he could muster. He pulled her away from his shoulder again and held her along his forearm.
Her entire face was scrunched up as if she were in agony, her eyes shut, tears streaming down her chubby cheeks, mouth open exposing her pink gums.
What the hell was wrong?
Why couldn’t he fix her?
He was used to fixing things.
A broken table? A cracked foundation? He could fix that.
Fuck, even a corrupt government he could fix … well, he and his team. His brothers. A couple of well-placed explosives, snipers on the roof and a sharp knife for those that managed to escape, and all was right with the world once more. The bad guys were gone.
Yeah, he was a fixer.
Yet he couldn’t fix Sophie.
Had he broken her?
Could you break a baby?
The sound of a car door slamming in the driveway had him racing to the front door. He flung it open just as Isobel was making her way up the path with her arms loaded.
“Where the fuck have you been?”
She lifted her head up, panic in her eyes as she took in the screaming Sophie and his obviously frazzled, near insane demeanor.
“I stopped to get groceries,” she said calmly. “You have no food.” She placed all her bags at their feet and took Sophie from him, cradling the shrieking infant against her chest, making cooing and shushing noises as she rocked and swayed her body away from Aaron and into the living room. “It’s okay, baby. It’s okay. Does your tummy hurt?” She laid Sophie down on the couch, unsnapped the three snaps between her legs and pulled her shirt up over her belly. “Is it gas, sweet pea?” Gently, she pressed the tips of her fingers over Sophie’s stomach, prodding and moving around. She turned to face Aaron, who was standing like an idiot in the foyer. “In that green fabric shopping bag is a jar of coconut oil. Please bring it to me.”
What the fuck was she going to do with the coconut oil?
But he didn’t question her. Like a good soldier, he snapped into action. He grabbed all the bags that had groceries in them and lugged them into the kitchen, finding the oil and bringing to it her.
She had Sophie’s tiny feet in her hands and was doing a bicycle motion, pushing her knees up toward her stomach. “Can you open the jar for me, please?”
He knelt down next to them and opened the jar, watching as she scooped out a small amount onto her fingers and then proceeded to rub it into the baby’s stomach.
She smiled. “Ah, there’s the bubble.”
Bubble?
She turned to face Aaron. “She’s gassy. Probably the formula. It might take a bit for her tummy to adjust to it if she was getting donor milk at the hospital. I’m massaging out the gas bubbles.” She did another slow sweep of her hands over Sophie’s stomach, and the baby farted. Isobel smiled again. Sophie stopped screaming. “Pushed that one right out.”
“That’s all it was?” he asked, mesmerized by her magic hands and the sudden silence in the house.
She shrugged, continuing to massage the baby. “Yeah, maybe. I mean, she is a month old, and the whole witching hour or purple crying thing can start at this age too. Might have been that. But my money is on it being gas.”
“Purple crying? Her face did go purple. I thought I was going to have to give her CPR.”
Isobel’s giggle made everything inside him loosen and relax. “That’s not quite it. I’ll send you the link. Some babies just scream bloody murder at a certain time every day for a few weeks after they’re born. Nobody knows why. Apparently, my sister was one of those babies.” Her grin warmed him. “I wasn’t. You?”
He shook his head stiffly. “No clue.”
And he had no way of ever finding out either. He had no idea who his parents were, let alone what kind of a baby he’d been.
“Get a bit of oil on your fingers,” she ordered. “I’ll teach you how to do it.”
He did as he was told, watching as she swept her fingers gently over the baby’s stomach. Sophie had calmed now and was just watching the both of them with curiosity.
“I love you,” Isobel said softly.
What? His head snapped up from where he’d been watching Sophie, only to see the side of Isobel’s face. She wasn’t fazed a bit by her slip-up.
Had he heard her correctly? Was he losing his mind?
Wouldn’t surprise him if he was.
“It’s called the I love U baby massage. Now watch my fingers. Down on the left side, like the letter I. Do this a few times. Then across the top of the tummy and down, just like an upside down and backward L.” She did the L a few times. Sophie stopped kicking, and she splayed her legs out, locking her knees, watching Isobel with the same fascination as Aaron. “Then lastly, the upside down U for the U part of I Love U. Up one side on the right, through the ascending colon, over the top of the tummy or the transverse colon, and then down through the descending colon on the left. Up, over, down.” She reached for his fingers and placed them on Sophie’s soft stomach. Her fingers landed on top of his. “Not too hard. Just enough pressure. Up, o
ver, down.”
His hands were huge beneath Isobel’s small, dainty ones and even bigger over top of Sophie’s belly. But he did as she instructed as she guided him, and using the pads of his fingers, he massaged Sophie’s stomach. He swept down the side of her stomach, and she farted.
Aaron chuckled, lifting his eyes to Isobel’s. She was smiling too. She had a beautiful smile.
“Good job, Uncle Aaron. Farts are good.”
“Farts are good,” he murmured, continuing to work Sophie’s belly.
Isobel pulled her hands away from his and sat back so he had more room. “You’re doing a great job.”
He let out a rattled breath. He didn’t feel like he was doing a great job. He felt like he was fucking up this whole parenting thing right out of the gate. Sophie hadn’t even been out of the hospital twelve hours, and already he was probably traumatizing her for life.
“She likes it. See how her limbs have stopped flailing and she’s just lying there still, watching you? It’s because she trusts you.”
Aaron snorted and reached for more coconut oil. “It’s because I’m relieving her gas. I’d stare in awe at someone too if they cured my indigestion.”
“No, it’s not just that. Look at the way she’s looking at you. There’s love in those eyes. Trust.”
He didn’t realize it until that moment, but he’d been resting his elbow on Isobel’s knee. He sure as hell realized it now and hastily removed it, clearing his throat as he scooted away from her and that floral and feminine scent that she’d filled his home with the moment she stepped inside.
“How do you know all this shit?” he asked, starting back at the beginning and doing the letter I on Sophie’s belly. The baby’s eyelids were becoming quite heavy. Was he actually massaging her to sleep?
Isobel shifted on the couch but thankfully not closer to him. “I’ve been a nanny for a while now. You pick up on this stuff. I also signed up for this infant care program after I completed my CPR training. Figured it would come in handy, and it has. I’ve always loved kids, always wanted to be a mom someday, so why not learn the basics before you’re sleep-deprived and in the trenches of parenthood?”
“Why not indeed,” he grunted.
“A little gentler,” she instructed, placing her fingers back on top of his and guiding him along Sophie’s belly again, helping him ease up on his pressure. “They’re durable but not indestructible.”
He grunted again, the slippery feel of her fingers intertwined with his slippery fingers making a dull ache form in his chest.
The woman was sweetness incarnate. Long dark hair, piercing, bright blue eyes, rosy cheeks, heart-shaped face, soft, full lips. She was what wet dreams were made of.
She pulled her hands away and stood up. “You got this. I’m going to go put the groceries away.” Then before he could mutter something along the lines of you don’t know where anything goes, she abandoned him to his now sleeping niece and sauntered her fine ass into the kitchen. Leaving him to wonder how he was going to do this with such a gorgeous and intriguing woman living under his roof but also knowing, more than anything, that he couldn’t do it without her.
5
After the feel of his fingers beneath hers, and the warmth of his big body so close, his elbow on her thigh, Isobel needed some space, and she needed it pronto. Extricating herself from her tight spot on the couch, between a sleeping Sophie and a nervous, kneeling Aaron, she made her way into the kitchen to begin putting away all the groceries she’d bought.
She made a point of not really paying attention to what was going on in the living room. The man was too distracting, and she had work to do. Out of the corner of her eye, she caught him heading down the hall with a sleeping Sophie on his shoulder, but then he didn’t return.
Probably for the better.
It gave her a chance to collect her thoughts as well as figure out where everything was in his kitchen. She also had dinner to prepare.
It’d taken her longer than she anticipated to get all her stuff from home and then go grocery shopping, so by the time she arrived back at the house, it was nearly four thirty.
Aaron’s face when he’d flung the front door open and demanded to know where she’d been had been both laughable and pitiable. The poor guy was in over his head, and he knew it.
Her heart went out to him. Which is why she hadn’t taken his snarky tone personally. He was just frazzled and scared. She’d known that the moment she walked into the house. Not only was he grieving the loss of his sister—something Isobel wouldn’t wish on her worst enemy—but he was also coming to terms with the fact that he was now a parent.
A single parent.
To a little girl.
A little girl who would need the world from him.
That had to weigh on a person. No matter who they were. She couldn’t imagine what Aaron was dealing with at the moment, and although she didn’t know the man, she had this visceral pull, this deep desire to help him. To help Sophie.
The moment Liam had told her their story, she knew she needed to help. She knew she needed to be there for them. Her heart had ached all week from when Liam had called her, until Aaron had called her asking her to meet him at his house when he brought Sophie home. She’d cried several times over the week at the thought of Sophie not having her mom in her life.
Isobel loved her mother. She loved both her parents equally, but she had a special bond with her mother and sister. She couldn’t imagine growing up without either of them.
When Isobel got her first period, Tori and her mother had celebrated as though Isobel had won the lottery. Isobel and her sister were allowed to skip school, their mother called in sick to her job at the mayor’s office, and all three of them went and got mani-pedis, facials, and massages. Then they grabbed lunch at the Elliott Bay Social Club, went to the Emerald Bay Mall and bought new underwear, bras and a period positive outfit, which was an outfit you felt good about yourself in while you were at your most bloated and gross-feeling during your period. So for most women—day two.
And poor little Sophie would never have that in her life. She would never have her mother taking her to celebrate such a momentous occasion. Her mother would never help her get ready for her wedding or hold her grandchild if Sophie decided to have children of her own. These were all things Isobel couldn’t wait to experience herself with her own mother, and Sophie would never have that.
She stood over the counter peeling carrots, hot tears streaming down her face at the thought of Sophie growing up without a mother. And poor Aaron, losing his sister, and in such a horrific way.
It would destroy her if something ever happened to Tori. She was her best friend.
Once she had the baked potato wrapped in foil, made up an herb medley for the vegetables and a dry rub for their steaks, and put her apple pie in the oven, she wandered down the hallway to go and find Aaron. She needed to know how he liked his steak cooked.
She was a medium kind of girl, but if he was anything like her father, he’d be a medium-rare or even rare man.
Earlier, he had kindly taken her bags to the room that was designated for her, but she hadn’t had a chance to check it out or put anything away. She had time though, and the soft sound of a rumbling snore drew her farther down the hall toward the bedroom next to the bathroom, the one he was going to turn into a nursery for Sophie.
The door was slightly cracked open, so she just gave it a gentle nudge, and what she saw made her ovaries damn near explode and her heart quadruple in size.
Aaron, splayed out on a queen-size bed, asleep, snoring, with a sleeping baby on his chest.
Be still my heart.
She swallowed, her mouth suddenly full of saliva and her panties equally damp.
Had she ever seen anything sexier?
No. She could confidently say she hadn’t.
Sophie’s cheek pressed over his heart, and her eyes were glued shut. Her little mouth formed the perfect rosebud pout. Aaron looked more relaxed than sh
e’d seen him all day. A sense of peace surrounded him, a sense of calm. But at the same time, she could see that he hadn’t allowed himself to completely let his guard down. Whatever those dog tags represented, the man was used to sleeping lightly and always remaining aware of his surroundings and potential threats.
He probably knew she was standing there, probably felt the air in the room shift or heard her heart racing.
Because it was certainly racing.
She allowed herself to watch them for a moment more, studying the one bicep she could see and the tattoos that peaked out beneath his sleeve. It looked like initials or cursive words in a beautiful black script, but she couldn’t make out what it said. She wanted to get closer, lift the hem at the sleeve and see how far up the ink went. Trace her tongue over it …
She shook her head as if that would bring her clarity and then retreated before her thoughts turned into actions and she was kicked out on her ass for sexually harassing her boss. She closed the door behind her and headed to the room that would be hers.
She began emptying her duffle bag into the dresser drawers and setting her toiletries and makeup on the nightstand. Might as well get comfortable. There was no sense living out of a suitcase if she didn’t have to.
Her new bedroom was nice. Sparse, but nice. There was no art on the walls or superfluous furniture, but the bed seemed comfortable when she sat on it and bounced a few times, and there was a nightstand and dresser. What you would expect for a guest room in the home of a bachelor. The sheets were white, the quilt on top dark blue. There were no throw pillows and no extra blankets or throws stashed in the closet. And why would there be? This was the home of a man who probably knew how to survive on the bare minimum. He could probably stretch an Oreo cookie for a week, sleep in mud and blood, in the extreme cold or sweltering heat, and all for the mission. The last thing on Aaron’s mind was comfort.
She blew a strand of hair off her forehead. She’d have to grab some comfort items from home the next time she was there.
Home.
It was so weird that she wasn’t going to be sleeping in her own bed tonight. Wasn’t going to be leaving work, only to return when the sun was up.
