Hush, Little Baby by Judith Arnold

Author:Judith Arnold
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: fatherhood, single woman, fiction about women, romance adult contemporary, daddy school, judith arnold
Publisher: Judith Arnold

Chapter Nine

D.J. WAS A MESS. His hands were sticky from the banana, and everything he’d touched with them—his cheeks, his T-shirt, his shorts, his left knee, his hair—was sticky, too. But he’d gotten through an entire meal at a restaurant without pitching a fit or soiling his diaper. Levi supposed he couldn’t complain about a bit of smeared fruit.

Maybe Levi was selfish. Maybe he was undeserving of the honor and responsibility of being D.J.’s surrogate father—because he really wished he’d been able to leave the kid home. The meal might have been more pleasant, more sophisticated, more relaxing if D.J. hadn’t accompanied them. Levi would have had time alone with Corinne, time to find out why she’d returned to Arlington. Time to see if the attraction he felt toward her was reciprocated. Time to see if six weeks as a full-time daddy had diminished his ability to think and act like a full-time man.

Last Tuesday, unable to scare up a babysitter, he’d brought D.J. with him to his friend Evan’s house for their regular Tuesday night poker game. It had been the first poker game he’d attended since coming home from California with D.J.—and all his poker buddies had insisted that women loved daddies who included babies in their activities. They’d implied that if he wanted to impress a woman, he ought to do just what he’d done tonight: spend an evening with that woman and let D.J. chaperone them.

He wouldn’t have guessed Corinne was the kind of woman who got turned on by little babies, though. Unlike the women he met in the supermarket when he and D.J. went shopping, she didn’t make goo-goo noises, didn’t turn misty-eyed and pinch D.J.’s chubby little cheek and coo to him about what a good boy he was. Not once had she ever gushed, “He’s so cute!”

In fact, although D.J. had been seated at their table at Moise’s, just inches from her right hand, she’d all but ignored him while she’d somehow gotten Levi to tell her more than he’d ever told any other woman about his childhood, his parents, and sister Ruth.

Carrying D.J. carefully so as to prevent the kid’s banana-smeared parts from touching him, he led Corinne from the garage through the mudroom and into the kitchen. He settled D.J. in his walker, and D.J. scooted off like an Indy-500 contender, ricocheting around the room and screeching gleefully. En route to the sink to scrub the stickiness from his hands, he nodded toward the refrigerator. “Just make some space on a shelf,” he invited her.

She carried her dinner leftovers to the fridge and found a spot for the container inside. As she closed the door, D.J. zoomed past her and she flattened herself against the broom closet to keep from getting run over. “This child will never be allowed to drive, if I have any say in the matter,” Levi vowed.

Corinne laughed. “You’ll hand him the keys to your Porsche the minute he’s old enough.”

“Are you kidding? By the time he’s old enough, my Porsche will be an antique.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.