Page 28 of Daring Lance

She lowered her head closer to the blanket and then jumped back. “Whoa, that smells horrible. I’m definitely out of here now. Good luck, Lance.” She pretended to push herself up from the floor, knowing full well that she’d never leave Lance in such a predicament, nor would he let her. As anticipated, Lance grabbed on to her upper arm before she had barely moved.

“What? No! You have to help me. I can’t do this, Willow. Please!”

She let out an exaggerated sigh and sat down on the floor next to him. “Fine, hand me the wet wipes.” Willow tickled the baby girl on the belly. Willow guessed the child was probably close to a year old, especially if her mother already had another little one on the way. Lance had managed to get the baby’s onesie off, which was a shock in itself to Willow, and it laid discarded next to the baby blanket he had spread on the area rug in the living room. Wet wipes, diapers, a variety of creams, and baby toys were spilled out on the blanket, as well as a diaper bag that laid upside down next to the couch.

Lance leaned over and placed a swift kiss on the side of her cheek. “Did I tell you that I love you today? Because I do. You are a lifesaver. Not even the dogs couldn’t stand the smell anymore, and those dogs have some wicked gas, so you know this is bad.”

Willow dared a glance at him. “Lance, I doubt it’s that bad. How much could a toddler possibly poop anyway?”

Willow undid the adhesive strips on each side of the baby’s hips and pulled the diaper down. “Whoa! You weren’t kidding, Lance. I’ll do what I can with the wet wipes, but I think we are going to need to give her a bath. There’s poop everywhere.”

Lance made a gagging sound beside her, and she rolled her eyes, making sure that he saw her do it. “You want to give the baby a bath? I shower in that tub, Willow. I don’t want poop all over the tub. I’ll never be able to shower in there again.”

Willow placed the dirty diaper in a plastic bag she’d found amongst the contents of the diaper bag spread on the floor and then tossed it next to Lance, laughing when he jumped back, horror reflected on his face. She then used several wet wipes to clean up as much as she could from the baby’s bottom. “Get over it, big guy. We need to put her into a warm bath to clean her off, and I don’t want to rub too hard with these wipes. How long has she been sitting in that dirty diaper anyway? Some of this stuff is dried to her skin, and she has a case of diaper rash that appears irritated.”

Lance shot her a look that said he was moments away from running to the bathroom to empty his stomach before he choked out a response. “About an hour.”

Willow planted a hand on each of her hips. “About an hour! Lance, are you kidding me? Why didn’t you change her?”

He had the audacity to look sheepish, and Willow was tempted to smack him on the head and would have if the baby hadn’t been watching the two of them, her bright brown eyes following each of their movements.

“I thought Andrew might be back in time to change her himself.”

Willow slanted her brows together. “Lance, his wife is in labor. That could take hours. It’s most likely that you’ll be watching the baby overnight.”

Lance’s eyes went so wide that Willow couldn’t help but laugh at him. His skin even looked a little pale. “What? Are you serious? It’s only seven o’clock. I’m sure he will be back to pick up… pick up—”

“Jessica.”

Lance swiped at a bead of perspiration that had begun to form at his hairline, and Willow could only sigh in response. Andrew must have been desperate if his only option had been to leave his infant daughter with Lance. Willow thought of Cameron and Antonio, who she assumed also worked with Andrew, and figured that Lance probably was the better choice of the trio, which wasn’t saying much for the new father’s circle of friends or reliable babysitters.

Lance looked at her, his gaze one of bewilderment. “Yeah, right. How did you know her name?”

Willow picked up the baby, grateful that she was now clean enough to hold upright, albeit at a distance. “It’s on her diaper bag.”

“Oh. Are you sure we need to give her a bath? She looks clean to me?”

Willow walked toward the bathroom without glancing back at him. “She has diaper rash, Lance. It will feel good and probably prevent her from keeping you up all night with her screams.”

Lance followed her into the bathroom without complaint, eagerly turning on the faucet while Willow managed to keep Jessica from squirming out of her hands. “Make sure the water is only warm and not hot. Run the water on your hand to test it.”

Lance turned his gaze toward her. “I thought you said you’d never babysat before? How do you know all this stuff?”

“I recently translated a family drama out of Spain. One of the couples had twins, and both had diaper rash, which was stressing everyone out because the babies constantly cried. I’m doing what the nanny did in the show. It turned out that the children weren’t twins because one of the babies had been kidnapped from the husband’s previous lover, who turned out to be the wife of his dying cousin, a billionaire who controlled the family fortune.”

Lance nodded absently. “Oh, right.”

Willow sucked back the laughter that was bubbling in her throat. Lance was clearly out of his element. He typically made several comments when she shared an outrageous movie plot with him. His words were always snarky and usually funny enough that she thought about them the next day at work. “I think I saw some baby bath soap on the blanket with the rest of the stuff you spilled out all over the rug. Can you go get that for us?”

Lance was gone before Willow finished her sentence. She’d bet he’d do about anything for her right now if it meant not having to give a bath to a squirming one-year-old. Willow set baby Jessica in the bathtub, and to Willow’s relief, the toddler splashed her hands in the water, her giggles echoing around the small bathroom.

“Here you go. I brought a washcloth too. We can throw it away when you’re done.” Lance squatted down, half behind her, one of his hands resting on Willow’s shoulders. For a split second she envisioned them doing the same thing with their own child and then immediately pushed the vision away. Lance planned to leave in a matter of days, and it would be officially over between them. Any fantasizing on her part right now would only make his leaving that much harder.

Willow swiped the washcloth from him, but not before she swatted him on the arm. “We do not need to throw the washcloth away, Lance. Didn’t you ever babysit any of your nieces or nephews? I thought you said Will has three children?” Willow wet the cloth under the faucet and then squirted a few drops of bath soap on to it before she used it on the baby.

“No babysitting. Nope, never.”

Willow turned off the water, which was now deep enough to cover no more than the baby’s lower bottom. Willow might not know much about caring for small children, but she had enough sense to be overly cautious with infants and water. “Why not?”

---