by Karen Booth
John did as instructed, neatly placing the bags on the table.
“Thank you so much for the help. I really appreciate it,” Sarah said to John.
He turned and looked at her as if she had a unicorn horn sprouting from her forehead. “It’s my job, ma’am.”
“Well, we came with a lot of stuff. I’m sure Mr. Langford doesn’t normally make you lug stuffed animals and diaper bags.”
“I’m happy to do it. But thank you. For saying thank you.” He smiled warmly.
Aiden watched the back and forth. “That’s it for now, John. I’ll let you know if I need anything else.”
“I’ll be downstairs, Mr. Langford.” John stepped onto the elevator and the doors slid closed.
“He’s really nice,” Sarah said. “We talked quite a bit while we were figuring how to get the car seat into the SUV. He told me all about his wife and kids. Good guy.”
“Of course. A very good guy.” Everything in Aiden’s voice said that he didn’t know the first thing about his driver, and that it quite possibly had never occurred to him to ask.
“Now what?” Sarah wanted Aiden to take the lead. His house. His baby.
“Tell me why a baby needs a stuffed animal this large.”
Sarah shrugged, unsubtly peeking ahead at what she could see of the apartment, which seemed to stretch on for days. “Kids love to have things to snuggle with. And eventually, Oliver will be bigger than the bear.”
“Ah. I see.”
“You’ll learn.”
“I have a feeling I won’t have a choice.” Aiden leaned her small suitcase against the wall and propped the bear up on top of it. “And how did you get all of this onto a train, then off a train and into the city, all by yourself?”
“Let’s just say that I relied on the kindness of strangers. And I’m a very good tipper. I managed.”
“You’re resourceful. I’ll give you that much.”
Sarah went to get Oliver out of his stroller, but decided it was time to start the learning process. “Aiden. Here. You unbuckle him and get him out.”
“You sure? I don’t have the first clue what I’m doing.”
“You have to start somewhere.”
Aiden crouched down and Oliver messed with his hair while Aiden tried to decipher the maze of straps and buckles. Sarah watched, not wanting to interfere. Oliver was doing enough on his own, tugging on Aiden’s jacket and kicking him in the chest.
Aiden sat back on his haunches, raking his hair from his face. “Is he always like this? So full of energy and into everything?”
“Unless he’s asleep, yes. Now pick him up.”
Aiden threaded his massive hands under the baby’s tiny arms, lifting him as if he might break him if he went too fast, then holding Oliver awkwardly against his torso.
“Bend your arm and let him sit in the crook of your elbow.” Sarah shifted Oliver into position. She straightened Aiden’s suit coat while she was at it. She stood back and admired the change. The strong, strapping man holding her favorite baby on the planet was awfully sexy. “See? That wasn’t so bad.”
Oliver leaned toward Sarah, holding out his arms for her.
“I think he wants to be with you.”
Sarah had to be firm. “He’ll be fine. He needs to be with you. Let’s start the tour so we can start planning the nursery. He’ll stay in your arms if we’re busy and there are things to look at.”
Aiden blew out a breath and they strolled into the modern, open apartment. The space had very high ceilings and was decorated almost exclusively in white, black and gray. Everything was meticulous and neat, just like Aiden’s office at LangTel. He was in for a big wake-up call when Oliver took over and there were toys everywhere. Best not to mention that, though. He’d learn.
To her right was a massive gourmet kitchen with an eight-burner stove and seating for six at the center island. Beyond the kitchen, she could see a hint of a dining room tucked away, then a staircase, and beyond that a room with a sofa and the beautiful windows she’d noticed on the front of the building. As a nanny, Sarah had seen grand displays of money, but nothing that hinted at this level of affluence. Although she was no real estate agent, the house had to be at least five thousand square feet if the other floors were the same size. By comparison, her Boston apartment probably could’ve fit inside the kitchen. When Aiden had said he needed his space, he wasn’t kidding.
“The living room is at the front of the building, overlooking the park.”
“Beautiful. Absolutely stunning.” Sarah followed as Aiden led them in the opposite direction.
“This is the library.” He nodded to his right, where black, open-back bookcases delineated the room. The shelves were packed with books. “The room with the French doors at the back of the building is my home office.”
Aiden did a one-eighty and Sarah trailed behind him, past the dining room and stairs, to the living room. It was a grand and comfortable space with charcoal-gray sectional couches, a flat-screen TV above a stacked stone fireplace and a massive glass coffee table. “Another beautiful room.”
“Thank you.” He shifted Oliver in his arms, seeming ever-so-slightly more comfortable with holding him.
“Unfortunately, we’re going to need to babyproof in here like nobody’s business.”
“Why? What’s wrong with it?”
Sarah didn’t know where to start. “There are outlets everywhere. The coffee table is a disaster waiting to happen. I can just see Oliver bonking his head. You’ll probably have to put up a gate to keep him away from the fireplace. As for the rest of the house, that’s going to need an overhaul, too. Those stairs will need a gate, too.”
“Isn’t that how children learn? By making mistakes?” There was no misconstruing the annoyance in his voice.
“Not on my watch, they don’t. At least not the kind of mistakes that put a child in the emergency room.”
A low grumble left his throat. “Talk about turning my entire life upside down.” He shook his head and took what seemed like his hundredth deep breath. “I’ll need you to make a list. We’ll tackle it that way.”
“Not a normal nanny responsibility, but okay.”
“I thought you weren’t a nanny anymore.”
“I’m not.”
“Well then. This is part of our business arrangement. You need my expertise. I need yours.”
“Fine.” Sarah walked over to a long, dark wood console table against the wall, plopping her handbag down to dig out a piece of paper. A handful of framed photographs were directly above—one taken from the viewpoint of someone skydiving, one looking straight down the side of a cliff with a waterfall and jungle in the periphery, and another of a group of men and donkeys on a narrow path carved into a mountainside. Each looked like something out of a movie. “Nice pictures. Are these from National Geographic?”
“Remembrances of my adventures.”
“Wait. What? These are yours?”
Aiden nodded, fighting a smile. He joined her, Oliver in tow. Aiden was doing well with the baby, and she was happy to see him master his first few moments of dad duty. “I enjoy pushing the limits,” he said.
Goose bumps cropped up on Sarah’s arms. A man with a dangerous side held mysterious appeal, probably because it was the opposite of her personality. She’d fallen for a few guys who liked to live on the edge over the years. None of them was good at flexing their bravado in the realm of relationships.
“You’re going to have to set aside your daredevil escapades for a little while. Skydiving is not an approved activity for a toddler.”
He scowled. “I’m not enjoying this part, in case you’re wondering. The part where you tell me how I have to construct my life around someone else’s needs.”
She patted him on the shoulder. “Welcome to parent
hood. It’s good for you. It’ll remind you that the world doesn’t revolve around you.”
“Jumping out of an airplane reminds me that I’m still alive,” Aiden countered. “And that I’d better find a way to enjoy my time on this planet.”
There was a somber hint to that last string of words, but she was still piecing together who and what Aiden Langford truly was. It struck her as sad that he lived all alone in this big house, however much it was a showplace. Despite his protestations, Sarah couldn’t imagine Oliver as anything less than a blessing in Aiden’s life, quite possibly his salvation.
Oliver reached for the pictures, pointing to the skydiving snapshot. Aiden stepped close enough for him to touch it.
“Pretty cool, huh? I took that picture. I jumped out of an airplane. Maybe you and I can do that someday. Someday when Sarah isn’t around to tell us what to do.”
Oliver turned to Aiden, concentrating hard on his face. He flattened his palm against Aiden’s cheek. Aiden reached up and covered Oliver’s hand with his, a fascinated smile crossing his face. A sweet and tender moment, it left Sarah on the verge of tears. For the first time since she’d gotten off the train that afternoon, she was less worried about Aiden accepting fatherhood. They weren’t out of the woods, but he was already showing signs of folding Oliver into his life. Which meant one step closer to Sarah being out of it.
Oliver needs his father. His new family. “For now, I still get to tell you what to do, at least when it comes to Oliver. I say it’s time to find him a bedroom in this massive house of yours.”
* * *
Aiden walked Sarah and Oliver up to the second floor, holding the little boy. He was slowly growing comfortable with this tiny human clutching the lapel of his suit coat, keeping him warm and reacting to the world Aiden walked through every day without giving it a second thought. It all was new to Oliver—sights and sounds, people and places. He didn’t play the role of stranger though; he played explorer, full of curiosity. Aiden had to admire that disposition. He was cut from the same cloth.
They reached the top of the stairs and the hall where all four bedrooms were. At the far end was his master suite. There was only one other room furnished, for guests. The other two remained unused and unoccupied. With most of his family in the city, visitors weren’t common, nor would they likely ever be. His friends, small in number and much like him in that they preferred to roam the globe, were not prone to planning a visit. No, the apartment with arguably too much space for a confirmed bachelor had been purchased with one thing in mind—breathing room.
He fought the sense that Sarah and Oliver were encroaching on his refuge. He made accommodations for no one and doing so put him on edge, but it was about more than covering electrical outlets and putting up gates. He hadn’t come close to wrapping his head around his newfound fatherhood, even if he did accept that with the arrival of Sarah Daltrey, everything had changed.
He was counting on the results of the paternity test to help it all sink in. He’d already made the call to his lawyer. It would mean a lot to know that Oliver was truly his. Aiden had lived much of his own life convinced that Roger and Evelyn Langford—the people he called his parents—had lied to him about who Aiden’s father was. Roger Langford’s death nearly a year ago had made the uncertainty even more painful and the truth that much more elusive. He wasn’t about to badger his mother, a grieving widow, over his suspicions. But he would confront her, eventually. He couldn’t mend fences with his family until that much was known, and there was a lot of mending to be done. Aiden had made his own mistakes, too. Big, vengeful mistakes.
“I was thinking we could put Oliver in here.” Aiden showed one of the spare rooms to Sarah. “It’s the biggest. I mean, he is going to get bigger, isn’t he?” Talk about things he hadn’t considered...life beyond today, when Oliver would be older...preschool, grade school and beyond. No matter what, Aiden didn’t need to think about where Oliver would go to school. He would be wherever Aiden was. There would be no shipping him off as his parents had done to him.
“Is it the closest room to yours?” Sarah asked.
“No. The smallest is the closest.”
“That’s probably a better choice for now.” Without invitation, she ventured farther down the hall. “In here?” Sarah strolled in and turned in the small, but bright space—not much more than four walls and a closet. “This is better. It’ll make it easier on you. He still gets up in the middle of the night.”
“And I’ll need to get up with him.” He stated it rather than framing it as a question. He was prepared to do anything to feel less out of his element, as if any of this were logical to him, which it wasn’t.
Oliver fussed and kicked, wanting to get down.
“Let’s let him crawl around,” Sarah said.
Aiden gently placed the little boy on the floor. He took off like a bolt of lightning, scrambling all over the room on his hands and knees.
Sarah pulled a few toys out of her bag and offered them to Oliver. “Yes. You’ll need to get up with him and comfort him, especially when he’s teething like he is now.”
Aiden leaned against the door frame, acting as a barrier in case Oliver decided to escape. “Is that why he drools so much?”
Sarah smiled and sat on the floor with Oliver, tucking her legs beneath her, her dress flounced around her. “My mother used to say that’s not drool. It’s the sugar melting.”
Aiden wasn’t prone to smiling, let alone laughing, at things that were quaint and homey. But he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to. He drank in the vision of Sarah. She was so different from every woman he’d ever known. She was beautiful, but not made up. Eloquent, but not pretentious. There was no hidden agenda, nor did she seem concerned with impressing him. She just came right out with it, but didn’t mow people over with her ideas. She simply stated what she found to be best, in a manner that made it seem as if it were the only logical choice.
Sarah again looked around the room. “We should probably order a crib online and see how quickly we can have it delivered, along with some other necessities. He’ll need a dresser, a changing table. You should probably invest in a rocking chair for this room.” She began counting on her fingers. “Then there’s clothes, diapers, formula, bottles, toys, bath supplies, baby laundry detergent.”
“Special laundry detergent?”
Pressing her lips together, she nodded. “When he’s crying in the middle of the night, you don’t want to be wondering if it’s because his skin is irritated. One less thing to worry about.”
Just when he thought he was getting a handle on things, a new spate of information came down the pike. “Like I said before, it’d be great if you could make some lists. You can use the computer in my home office and get a lot of that ordered.”
“We need to call the nanny agency, too. They probably don’t take calls after five on a Friday. Sounds like we have a busy night ahead of us. Oliver’s going to need a bath, too.” Oliver crawled over to Sarah with a stuffed toy in his hand and showed it to her.
Aiden’s cell phone rang with a call from his sister Anna. “Excuse me for a minute. I need to make sure this isn’t anything important.”
“Sure thing. I’ll call the nanny agency and Oliver can play. Avoiding outlets, of course.”
“Right. The outlets.” Gotta deal with that, ASAP. He accepted the call and stepped out into the hall. “Anna, hi. Everything okay?”
“I was calling to ask you the same thing. Is everything going well with Sarah and Oliver? I can’t believe it, Aiden. A baby. It’s so amazing. Are you just bursting at the seams?”
Aiden wandered into his room and sat on the leather bench at the foot of the bed. “More like my brain is about to implode. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. At least you’ve had time to get used to the idea of becoming a parent. It’s only been a few hours for me.”
“I’m sure it will take some time, but I’m so excited for you. You know, the minute I looked into Oliver’s eyes, I knew he was yours. He looks just like you. It’s going to blow Mom’s mind when she sees him.”
Oh no. The one thing he hadn’t yet taken into account. “Please tell me you haven’t said anything to Mom. Or Adam for that matter, but especially not Mom. I need to figure out how best to deal with this.”
“I haven’t said a peep.”
He exhaled a little too loudly, if only to make the weight of dealing with his mother subside. “Good.” His mind often raced at the mere mention of his mom, thoughts quickly mired in bad memories and sad stories. He couldn’t fathom the moment when she’d meet the son he hadn’t known he had. Would he feel better about his suspicions, a misgiving he’d shared with no one other than Anna? Or would he feel worse? Either way, his mother’s reaction to Oliver would be telling. If she accepted him unconditionally, he’d always wonder why she hadn’t treated him the same way. If she rejected him, he’d have a hard time not blowing up at her.
“When are you going to tell her?” Anna asked.
“Tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday. I need time to get us settled.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “Sarah’s calling the nanny agency, we have an entire nursery of furniture to order and I’m apparently in Daddy School after that. I have to learn how to change a diaper and give him a bath.”
Anna tittered.
“What’s so funny?”
“I like the image of you bathing a baby. It’s sweet. And unlike anything I ever imagined you doing.”
“You and me both. I never thought I’d have kids.” Not after everything with Dad.
“Sometimes life gives us unexpected gifts. I felt like that when I got pregnant.”
Anna was carrying a miracle baby. Her doctor had told her it would be nearly impossible to conceive and even more difficult to carry a pregnancy to term, but she was doing great. “I hear you. I’m still getting used to it.”
“Well, promise me you won’t keep Oliver to yourself. I want to see him, too. I could even come over and take care of him if you need help. I could bring Jacob. It would be great practice for us.”
