It Takes a Family by Victoria Pade

Author:Victoria Pade
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Silhouette
Published: 2006-10-14T16:00:00+00:00

Chapter Eight

Amy was still peeved at Karis for denying her more cake and more time being fawned over by the Northbridge Pratts when Luke and Karis got her home. The baby wouldn’t let Karis take her from Luke, hanging on to his neck every time she tried.

Just as he had at the emergency room, Luke found that funny.

“Sorry,” he told Karis with no remorse whatsoever, “you’re the heavy again.”

“Think so, huh, wise guy? Then who’s going to give her her bath and put her to bed? You?”

“Guess I am,” he said, surprising her.

Karis motioned to the stairs. “This ought to be something to see.”

“I did it for the five weeks I was her father before, you know,” Luke said, as he took the challenge and headed for the second floor with Amy.

“Uh-huh,” Karis said, following behind and keeping to herself the fact that bathing a newborn was easier than bathing Amy at fifteen months.

“Mo cake?” Amy suggested to him as he took off her coat in the nursery.

“No, no more cake. We’re gonna have a bath now,” Luke answered as Karis looked on.

“Bubs?” the baby asked.

Luke looked to Karis. “Bubs?” he repeated.

“She wants bubbles.”

“Ah.” He said to Amy, “You can have all the bubbles you want.”

Karis merely smiled.

More cake crumbs flew as Luke undressed the baby, leaving on only her diaper. Then Karis tagged along to the bathroom, where she leaned against the closed door while he set Amy on the floor and filled the tub.

He did test the temperature of the water and put plenty of bubble bath in, but what he failed to do was keep an eye on Amy while he was at it. Or put the toilet seat down.

When he turned to get her, Amy was happily splashing toilet water everywhere.

“No, no, no!” he exclaimed, snatching the baby away from the water and scowling at Karis as she smiled even bigger.

Luke sighed, removed Amy’s damp diaper and put her in the bathtub. The fifteen-month-old started splashing all over again, hitting at the bubbles and the water and giving Luke a good sprinkling of both, which sent him rearing back and squinting against the onslaught.

Karis grinned but offered no advice. Instead, she merely enjoyed the spectacle as Luke soaped up a washcloth and used it to bathe Amy while Amy painted his nose, his chin and several spots on his shirt with bubbles, even after he’d repeatedly asked her not to.

“Don’t forget her ears,” Karis said when he seemed to be.

Amy did not like her ears washed and made that clear, raising a loud—and watery—fuss that ended with the front of Luke’s T-shirt wetter still.

That was when he shot Karis a forlorn-looking glance and said, “Hair?”

“There are cake crumbs there, too.”

“Mo cake?”

“I don’t think you can have cake again until you’re twenty,” Luke muttered, making Karis laugh to herself.

Luckily the shampoo was tear-free, because both lathering Amy’s curls and rinsing them was fraught with its own perils—suds running down her face, her spitting them out of her

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