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moved into my room and scratched the back of my neck as I surveyed the rustic space. I wanted her to have something to sleep with. That was what my dad had done with me. He’d given me this ratty bear I still had in my closet.
Duh.
Mr. Bojangles was right there on the top shelf when I opened the door. Spots were worn in his patchy brown fur, and his bow tie was stretched out and dangling, but overall, he was in decent shape. Good enough for a baby to clutch and cuddle.
I hurried back downstairs to find the kid whimpering again. The sound made me grip the bear that much tighter as I kneeled beside the boat.
“Look here—” I frowned.
What was her name? Why hadn’t her mother mentioned that in her note? I needed to know what to call her. What she liked and what was familiar.
Had her mother not even bothered to name her, realizing she wouldn’t have her long?
I shut my eyes and took a deep breath before I forced them open again. I would let myself rage in the privacy of my shower once Gina was here, and I could take a moment away.
God knows I wouldn’t trust anyone else with her tonight but my best friend.
“Look here, sweetheart,” the word sounded creaky to my ears, “I have something for you. He used to be mine, but now he’s for you. You can have him as long as you like. He’s really good at helping to keep the monsters away.”
I held him out to her, and she stopped making her soft sounds of distress to stare unblinkingly at the bear. Encouraged, I tucked the bear at her side in the pillowcase, and she plucked at his fur and his ears and his eyes until I wondered if his good run of survival was about to end.
And then her rosebud lips curved into the tiniest smile as she clutched him closer and shut her eyes with a flutter of dark eyelashes.
Still on my knees, I let myself look at her. To really see.
Her hair was a shock of straight dark like mine. It wasn’t all filled in yet, but she wasn’t bald. Her skin was pink and still kind of wrinkly, but she wasn’t a newborn. Thank God for that. I knew her approximate age from when I’d been with her mother last year, though she could have been premature. She surely had to be underweight. She seemed so freaking miniscule. So easy to break.
Man, I needed to read up while she was sleeping. There was so many things I’d have to get. We’d have to go shopping in the morning. Or I could go shopping and Gina could watch her—no, I needed Gina to help me. I was supposed to work tomorrow, and as sheriff, I wasn’t the easiest to cover for. It could be done if necessary. Whatever I had to do to make this work, I would.
Her eyes had been blue. Like mine. But I knew animals didn’t always keep the eye color they had as babies. Was that the case with humans too? I’d Google that too.
I dug out my phone. I had to make a list of my lists.
So much was whirling through my head. Was she really my kid? The age lined up, more or less. She didn’t have any obviously disqualifying factors, like red curls. Although with genetics, that was a crapshoot. You never knew what gene might be recessive.
She seemed to look like me enough, and even if she didn’t, could I turn her away? Obviously, her birth mom wasn’t worth the paper her birth certificate had been written on. But if I wasn’t her real father, I should probably find out, if only to let her true dad know.
And risk that she ends up with another lackluster faux parent?
I rubbed at the headache brewing behind my eyes. I needed to contact my lawyer to see about a paternity test, just to be safe.
To be sure.
First, I had to establish Preston was still my lawyer, as we hadn’t been in contact for years, not since Mrs. Peabody had sued me for selling a piece of lawn equipment she’d left on the property during its sale. Since she was not the party actually selling the cabin and only lived next door—roughly the distance of a city block away—she’d taken offense to the sale. I’d taken offense that her good-sized acreage wasn’t enough to store her own damn lawn tools, but she’d won the suit and ridden off on her John Deere.
I’d ended up having to return the cash I’d made to one very peeved Bob Clancy.
Preston was a divorce attorney and had only agreed to represent me in that one-off suit because we’d gone to Syracuse University together. A paternity issue might necessitate finding another lawyer.
But before I got to lawyers and logical next steps, I had to make it through the night without accidentally harming this baby from ineptitude.
Maybe I should call the police. That was a different matter when you were the police, and you knew as much as they did about standard procedure with this sort of thing. Not that finding a baby was standard in any way. But if that note was to be believed, she wasn’t some random drop-off.
She was mine. My flesh and blood. That I hadn’t known about her didn’t make her any less real.
Besides, I wasn’t ready to share this information. Not yet. Telling Gina would be hard enough. She was my closest friend, and normally, I felt comfortable telling her just about anything—except for that one random dream I’d had about her painting my boat in really short shorts and a sports bra. It had been a scorching hot day, so her outfit had seemed appropriate.
The raging erection I’d had upon waking had not been.
