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With nothing else to do, I decided to run myself a hot bath and then watch some TV in the bedroom.
Later, when Lorenzo came up and joined me in bed, I switched off the TV and turned toward him, although I tried to avert my eyes as he stripped and pulled on a pair of sweatpants. “I’ve been thinking and I’ve decided that I’ll call Ma tomorrow and ask her for some child-rearing advice.”
Lorenzo scowled at me. “I don’t think your ma—”
“I know that she may not be your favorite person right now,” I interrupted, “but she has raised four children of her own and should be able to give me some tips. I’ll also call Fidella and get some advice from her too.”
Without saying anything further, he turned away from me and switched off his nightstand lamp, plunging us into darkness.
As I looked at his back, I thought that at least his bad mood meant that it looked like he wasn’t going to try to have sex with me tonight.
I must have been tired because I fell asleep in no time.
Sometime much later, I startled awake to find Lorenzo getting out of bed. “What's the matter,” I said sleepily.
“Clara’s awake,” he said, as I heard a soft cry.
Then another cry sounded, different in pitch to the first cry I’d heard.
“And she's woken up Clemente now as well,” Lorenzo sighed. “This is usually what happens every night at least once, if not twice.”
I couldn’t stop staring at his bare chest and the gray sweatpants that hung low on his hips. My gaze trailed over his defined muscles and the tattoos covering his upper body, making a languid heat spread through my veins. He was handsome when he was dressed in one of his dark business suits, but he was a hundred degrees of hot when he was half-naked.
“Should I get up?” I asked, not knowing what he expected of me.
“Don't bother,” he said sharply. “You have no idea what to do, so keep out of the way.”
I lay back against my pillow, watching the muscles in his back flex as he walked out of the room.
His words stung. I may not have known what to do, but I thought I’d made it clear to him that I was willing to learn.
A couple minutes later he returned, clutching Clara to his tattooed chest. He bent down and put her on the bed next to me.
“Is she going to sleep here?” I asked in confusion.
“Yes, that’s the only way she’ll get back to sleep. I’ll go take care of Clemente and get him back down. You look after Clara and get her back to sleep.”
He walked away before I could ask what I should do to get her to sleep.
Chewing on my lower lip, I gazed at the little girl in bed next to me. “What normally helps to get you back to sleep, Clara?”
I waited for an answer, but she didn’t say anything.
I wondered whether I should tell her a story. That had worked for Lorenzo earlier. We didn’t have any storybooks in the master bedroom, and I didn’t want to go back into the children’s bedroom and potentially disturb Clemente when Lorenzo was trying to get him off to sleep, so I decided just to make up a story myself and tell that to Clara.
After thinking for a bit, I decided to tell her a story about a little girl who got a pet cat, basing it on my own story of how I got Wilbur.
By the end of the story, Clara had listened intently to everything but did not look in the slightest like she was ready to go back to sleep.
“Do you think that maybe you want to try to shut your eyes and try to sleep now?”
She shook her head, and I noticed that she kept looking toward the door, just as she’d been doing while I’d been telling her the story. It was as if she were waiting for her father to come back.
We lay there next to each other, and I watched her, but she didn’t even attempt to close her eyes. Instead, she kept looking toward the bedroom door, tension obvious in her tiny shoulders.
When Lorenzo finally returned and walked back into the bedroom, I saw Clara visibly relax.
“Haven't you gotten her back to sleep yet?” Lorenzo said irritably. “It’s taken ages to get Clemente back to sleep, and I’d hoped that you'd have managed the same with Clara by now.”
