Page 4 of This Baby Business
But what kind of a father left his precious baby with a complete stranger?
Answer: one like her neighbor Levi Lambert, who had probably rarely heard the wordnocoming out of a woman’s mouth. He’d so easily trusted her on the whole baby-expert thing. An exaggeration on my part, of course, but I was trying. That counted for something. His timing couldn’t be better. I’d say that for him. Today, of all days, I could use his baby.
“You’re a good sleeper.” I carried the car seat and diaper bag into the kitchen.
The poor, motherless child.
Normally, hearing of such a sad situation, I would shed tears on a dime. But these days, I was all cried out. I bent down to get a better look at Grace. This must be the baby I’d seen Annie pushing last week in the newest Koolbaby stroller on the market. But until now I’d never had a good look at the baby. Her lashes were long and beautifully dark, and she had her father’s dark blonde hair. Did she also have his beautiful, dark blue eyes?
“Your daddy is quite the looker,” I said quietly.
He had one of those rare and one hundred percent real Southern drawls that turned most women into limp noodles. Good thing I would not be one of them. I found the formula bottles he’d packed in the diaper bag and put them in the fridge. He owned some of the nicer baby bottles made by Just Like Mommy, the ones with the nipple that was supposed to most correctly resemble a human one.
I’d given it a high rating last month on the blog and pretty much guessed at the efficacy. Maybe I’d ask Levi later, if she could ever bring myself to ask a man like him whether his baby liked the nipple. I shook my head. Nope, not going to ask him. I’d see how Grace liked it when I gave her a bottle later.
This TotLuv diaper bag was also a good choice, one I’d given a five-star rating to, leading me to wonder if someone had chosen these items based on my blog’s recommendations. It gave me a little dash of hope. Maybe, just maybe my late mother’s dream wasn’t going to go down in flames with me at the helm.
A year ago, after Pearl had passed away, it seemed she would take her company with her. She’d built RockYourBaby.com from the ground up, a labor of love based on raising three children. Pearl had been the true baby expert. My mother was the one who belonged at the helm of RockYourBaby.com, and I was merely the impostor.
Impostor or not, I now operated the company until they could sell it, because no one else wanted to run the company. My father, who had retired from PG&E, had broken his hip and now lived in Maine with my oldest brother, Kirk, a civil engineer. The physical therapy bills were through the roof, Daddy wasn’t getting any better, and among the many reasons to sell the company, one was to help pay for his treatment. My other brother, Allen, was a lawyer in Tempe, Arizona, and since I was the only one with double X chromosomes, my brothers left it to me to salvage the business and restore it to what it had been before our mother died so they could sell it for a tidy profit.
My laptop rang. “Shh.”
I picked Grace up by the car seat handle and carried the seat closer to my office—otherwise known as the kitchen table. I settled Grace on the floor near the entrance of the kitchen and flew to the laptop to stop the ringing before it woke her up.
“Hello? Carly?” Jill, my other best friend, had taken to Skyping me from locations on the outskirts of town. The reception wasn’t always the best.
I sat and turned to face the laptop camera. “I’m here.”
“What’s with your hair today?” Jill looked sideways through the screen.
Crap, was that what I looked like? And I’d answered the door to Mr. Hunk like this?
“I’ve had a rough morning.” I smoothed my hair down into place, and reached for my hair clip.
I hadn’t even dressed. Last night I’d gone through the closet full of eBay fashion steals I’d accumulated over the years and set out my clothes for the next morning. I’d done that ritual every day for years. My ribbed sweetheart-neck Urban Outfitters minidress paired with a cropped denim jacket and my Marc Jacobs Chelsea booties had been all ready for me this morning. But I’d taken one look at the super-cute outfit and didn’t have the energy. What for, when I would be sitting in front of a laptop most of the day?
Jill’s face moved away from the screen and scanned her outdoor surroundings. “This could be the perfect location. It’s even got a little boat dock by the lake. Sure, it needs a little work, but the owner is motivated.”
A little work?I squinted. The boatdockseemed to be a wooden plank.
“Maybe you should keep looking.”
“I’m meeting with the owner later today. It couldn’t hurt. I hear they’re desperate.”
Sounded familiar.
Soon both of my best friends would be firmly entrenched in pursuing their lofty dreams. Jill with her long-held dream to restore an outdated inn, and Zoey as the owner and operator of Pimp Your Pet. They were both moving forward with their lives and dreams, while I was stuck. RockYourBaby.com was definitelynotthe best use of my fashion design degree.
I would never be able to move on to my own future if I didn’t sell and get out from under RockYourBaby.com. But we kept losing sponsors, the real bread and butter of my mom’s company. I feared I had a tiny authenticity problem. Namely, the entire RockYourBaby brand was now a bald-faced lie. I was at the helm of a company with a brand that was trusted and regarded for baby knowledge.
Ideally, I needed to create an image that would resonate with the RockYourBaby audience. Then we might be able to sell to a larger company. I had already decided I’d give most of my share of the money from the sale to Kirk, to help care for our father. Our dad, Jerry, needed almost constant care these days. Therapy and medications were not cheap, and health insurance helped with only a small part of it. The sooner I could get this company’s value up and sold, the quicker my father could get adequate care.
No pressure.
“I say you keep looking.”
Grace squirmed. She opened up wide blue eyes and blinked a couple of times. Uh-oh. Thethingwas awake now.
