Page 47 of Saving Summer
“I’m going too,” Jay said, and before Adam could spout off about the risks to his personal safety if something went wrong, he continued, “Finding Jamie and getting him to agree to come back will be quicker and smoother if I’m on the ground with the team. Less risk for everyone involved.”
Adam nodded sharply—once. “Chase, you good with a fourth?”
“The more, the merrier,” he replied, grinning like he couldn’t wait to hit the road.
“Alright. Let’s do this. As a reminder, every asshole with a badge is looking for us, so no cowboy vigilante shit. Stay off the radar. Find Jamie. Scrub any evidence of a plot against Johnson. Get his ass on the plane. And bring him home. Questions?”
“Yeah, can you bring me back some buñuelos?” Zander asked.
Grant snorted. “What the fuck is a buñuelo?”
“It’s like a little fried donut, except it’s stuffed with cheese.” Zander patted his rock-hard abs. “Super delish. Especially when you drizzle them with honey.”
“That sounds good,” Davis said, the promise of a sweet treat prompting him to speak up for the first time. “Can I get an order too?”
* * *
“Gross,”Gray said, and Summer grinned over the basket of baby clothes she’d been folding. “Halia just power puked about half a bottle of formula.”
Prone to exaggeration when it came to excretions, Gray couldn’t be trusted to make an accurate assessment of the baby’s projectiles. And with a quick glance across the Hubba Bubba-colored nursery, she confirmed her suspicions. “She did not.”
Unconcerned about the small amount of spit up on Halia’s sleeper, she placed the last of the clean laundry in the drawer and pushed it closed. The little girl had more clothes than a Baby Gap, with more arriving daily, thanks to her doting aunts and uncles.
Propped in her bouncy chair, the star of the impromptu photo shoot scrunched her face and let out a wet toot. Sitting cross-legged on the floor beside her, Gray’s face scrunch matched her subjects as she dropped her camera into her lap. “Okay. Nowthat’sgross.”
Summer laughed at her new friend. A hard-hitting photojournalist, Gray had been in any number of sketchy situations with grossness levels far exceeding those of a dirty diaper. But for whatever reason, when it came to Halia, a bit of poop pushed her over the edge.
“Don’t worry, I’ll change her.” She crossed the aggressively pink room, stopping to look at a picture on the Nikon’s display after Gray pressed a few buttons and lifted the screen. “Ooh, gorgeous. We should print a copy of that one and put it in a frame.”
“Yeah, good idea,” she replied, her long dark hair forming a curtain around the camera as she bent her head for a second look. “Let me play with it a bit, and I’ll—”
“Hey, sorry to interrupt,” Chase said, coming in through the open door as Summer unbuckled Halia and lifted her from her chair. He offered his hand to Gray before pulling her off the floor and kissing her quick when she reached her full height. “Jay managed to get a bead on Jamie’s location. A bunch of us are heading out to get him soon. Wanna help me pack?”
“Sure. Grant going with you?” she asked as he took her camera from her hand.
“Yeah, Cody and Jay too.”
“You think you’ll need that many?”
“Nah, just a precaution.” He looked at his watch. “We gotta get a move on. See you in a couple of days, Summer.”
“Good luck,” she replied as the couple made for the exit hand in hand.
“Meet you downstairs for dinner at six,” Gray called over her shoulder, and with a quick wave, she disappeared into the long hallway.
With their departure, she got her own butt in gear and changed the diaper on the poop machine, and because she had an abundance of washed sleepers to choose from, she put a fresh one on Halia and snapped it closed.
Hands sanitized and the baby back in her arms, she disposed of the rolled diaper in the Genie and sent the dirty sleeper into the hamper before cutting through the closet to get to the main bedroom.
On her way by, she pulled a juice box out of the fridge, and as she passed into Jamie’s bedroom to lay the baby down for her nap, her heart clutched. She’d been curious about the man for almost a month now, and while she was happy Halia would be getting her daddy back, she couldn’t help but worry about what his presence might do to their routine.
Silly and selfish.
Halia Snow wasn’t hers. Yes, since the day she’d arrived, she’d been her primary caregiver, but that’s what she’d been hired for in the first place. She was the nanny, which reminded her, she needed to talk to Adam about her salary.
After only two paychecks, her bank account, or at least the numbered bank account Jay had set up for her, had over five grand in it, and only because she’d already sent eight hundred bucks to her mother to make up for missing December and January’s offerings to Oshram.
There had to be a mistake. A big one.
