Page 52 of His Princess Brat
“But it’s the scuttlebutt,” she protested. “I never get to hear the scuttlebutt anymore, I’m always stuck in this room! And besides, everyone says they’re so good together.”
“I’m sorry,” Mazi told me, pushing back his chair.
“No,” Norah said when he came around to her side of the table. “No, Mazi...”
But he bent and took the baby out of her arms.
“I’ll take him,” I offered, pretty sure someone was about to get her butt warmed. She obviously knew it too.
“Traitor,” she told me sulkily when Mazi gave me his wide-eyed son and then took Norah by the wrist and led her from the room.
“Please don’t...” was the last faint plea I heard from her before their voices became too faint for me to make out.
“Don’t worry,” I told the baby, offering him a tiny bite of my own potatoes. “Mommy was being a little naughty, but your daddy knows how to iron that out.”
I bounced him on my knee, surprised to realize that I couldn’t hear the sharp cracks of bare hand meeting bare skin or pleading cries of queenly distress. They must have good soundproofing. I wondered idly if the guest suites were the same.
I thought of Pita, missing her intensely.
The baby opened his mouth and I fed him a little more potato, wiping his lips with the spoon, because he was more mashing than eating at this age.
The homesickness now drilling into me was painful. I didn’t even have a good reason for it, since I’d never had anything like this. I wasn’t a father. What right did I have to miss something I’d never had, and yet, holding Ona-Azid felt like holding my own son. I only needed Pita here beside me to make this feeling of family complete.
It might actually be complete, the censuring voice whispered in my head.
And how ridiculous was that, because the likelihood of her being pregnant from our brief associations was beyond remote.
Was it possible? Sure.
Was it likely? No.
But the argument between possible and likely took an immediate backseat when it came to thoughts of my leaving. I couldn’t, not if there was even the slimmest chance that Pita might be carrying my child.
I couldn’t marry her, but I wouldn’t abandon her either.
I don’t even know where the hell Bahar was, but any place in Africa would be closer to her than New York.
I stared at the coffee service tray in the middle of the table.
I love you! Pita had cried.
I couldn’t have her, but as I stared at the service tray, I found myself beginning to think.
I don’t know how long I sat there, but the wheels in my head were definitely turning when Mazi reentered the room alone. “Norah needs a few minutes in the corner to think some things over before she joins us. I’m really sorry about that.”
I looked at him, and he must have seen something on my face because he stopped abruptly where he was.
“What?” he asked cautiously. “Did the baby pee on you? I’m sorry, we’re using cloth so we don’t leave as big of a carbon footprint—”
“I need to see your map,” I told him.
Blinking, he came to take the baby. “Right now?”
“Right now.” I jumped up, grabbing the coffeepot, and hurriedly following him from the dining room.
He gave the baby to Norah, still standing in the corner, rubbing her skirted bottom and sniffling. “We’ll be right back,” Mazi promised.
“You suck,” she sniffled.
