Page 6 of This Baby Business
“You looked so sweet and innocent when you were asleep,” I said, near tears myself. “Your daddy fooled me.”
I tested the baby bottle on my wrist. At this point I’d settle for anything between arctic cold and the fires of hell and damnation. Good enough. I settled on the kitchen chair and offered Grace the bottle. She latched on to it like I would the last dress on clearance at Saks Fifth Avenue. I threw my head back in relief and sighed. Finally, blessed silence, other than the sucking sounds of Grace and her bottle. Amazing how much I had taken silence for granted. I never would again.
“Yes, that’s all it was. You were hungry. Sorry, I shouldn’t have been so slow, but I was lying about being a baby expert.”
Lying had started to come so easily these days, but that’s what happened when you were pretending to be someone else.
Or maybe it was what happened when you’d forgotten who you were.
Boy, Grace was sucking down this bottle of milk in a New York minute. I tensed, worried the silence would be over soon. And sure enough, Grace was eyeing me as she drank her milk, no doubt making plans to unleash the hounds of hell on me when she finished the important business of eating.
“Listen, this isn’t my fault. Your daddy was in a bind. Please don’t hate me.”
Grace got to the end of the bottle, first sucking down the last dregs, and then just air. I didn’t know much, but that couldn’t be good. I gently pulled the bottle away from Grace. She reacted by sticking out her bottom lip, scrunching up her pixie face, and letting go a wail worthy of a wounded animal.
And I was back to swaying, rocking and begging.
Mostly begging.
CHAPTER3
Levi
“Thank you forflying with Mcallister Charters,” Levi said to the businessmen he’d picked up in Las Vegas and transported to Fortune.
He glanced at his phone. No messages or missed calls, and no news would always be good news in his book. Still, he wanted to check in with Cute Girl and make sure everything was cool with Grace. It was true that she slept on and off most of the day, but her crying had been enough to drive one nanny away. He stayed seated in the plane as his passengers walked across the tarmac toward the hangar.
Carly answered on the fourth or fifth ring. “Hello?”
“Hey. How’s it going? How’s my baby girl?”
“Okay. She’s very sweet but, um, she cries a lot. Does she do that with you?”
“Yeah. What’s she doing right now?”
“She’s taking a nap.”
She did some of that during the day in between all the screaming. “Good. I had hoped she wouldn’t be too much trouble for you.”
“Well…no, she’s fine. So cute.”
Was that hesitancy in her voice? “Is it okay, then, if I stay until my shift is over?”
“Of course. You take your time. I’ll be here.”
Levi hung up, pretty proud of his baby girl converting Cute Stuck-Up Girl into a fan, and strode inside the hangar. He noticed he’d missed a call while on the flight, and checked his voice mail.
Another message from Sandy’s father, Frank, saying that no, they couldn’t come to see Grace in California. Did he have any idea how expensive plane tickets were to people who were not pilots? Why didn’t he just fly himself to Atlanta and stay with them for a few weeks? They wanted to see Grace. He fired off another email explaining that he was a working man and couldn’t take that much time off.
One thing appeared to be certain—they’d never be happy until he handed Grace over to them.
He headed toward Magnum Aviation’s offices to check in with Cassie. The older woman pretty much ran the show around here, even if she kept threatening to retire. She’d worked for Stone’s late father, and had stayed on the past few months to ease the transition. Levi guessed it was a consequence of this being a small, south county airport, but it did seem as though there were an awful lot of relatives working it.
Emily Parker was Stone’s fiancée and one of their regular pilots. Sarah, Stone’s sister and part owner of the business, was a local artist who occasionally worked at the Snack Shack . She also happened to be engaged to Matt Conner, one of Levi’s best buddies from the air force and also a pilot on staff. So if it seemed that there were about two degrees of separation from Stone and half of the people who worked for him, Levi would not be wrong. Basically, he, Jedd Taylor, the mechanic and Cassie were the odd ones out. They should form a club.
“Hello, darlin’,” Levi said as he approached Cassie.
“Hi, cowboy,” Cassie said with a wink. “How’s that precious baby girl this morning?”
