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Gabe stood in the doorway, his gaze fixed on Savannah. How could such a tall, muscular guy look absolutely terrified of a tiny baby?
“I need to feed her,” I said softly. “Want to help me give her a bottle?”
“Uh.” He scrubbed a hand over the top of his short, dark hair, then ducked his head. Everything about the man seemed spring-loaded and made of muscle but the move was a tell, a hint that maybe beneath the tough guy façade Gabe wasn’t quite the powerhouse he seemed to be.
Right now Gabe had a lost-puppy look about him, and I’d always been a sucker for that, so I gestured for him to follow me. We went back to the kitchen, and I pulled the can of formula and an empty bottle from the diaper bag. I would’ve handed him the baby to hold while I mixed it up, but I was afraid he’d pass out cold on me, and there was no way I could move him myself.
He towered over me, and it wasn’t like I was petite. The way that drab green T-shirt clung to his cut torso in all the right places was probably illegal in several states. Not overly sculpted, like a gym rat, but honest muscle, honed by hard work.
Oh God. Stop looking. Stop looking.
I focused instead on mixing up the formula, then heating it in the microwave.
“Your place is nice,” he said, for lack of anything better, I suppose.
“Thanks.” It wasn’t that nice. I’d bought it cheap and fixed it up when I could. It was better than when I’d bought it—the kitchen had been redone, and the hardwood floors gleamed—but most importantly, it was mine. The microwave beeped, and I pulled out the bottle, testing a drop on my wrist before turning back to Gabe. Savannah squirmed in my arms, already reaching for the bottle. She was probably starving, poor thing. Between the police station and the bar, it was way past her usual feeding time.
Gabe was still looking at us like we were from another planet, curious and cautious, but enough was enough. If he was going to be Savannah’s dad, he needed to get used to her.
I hiked my chin toward a stool at the granite-topped breakfast bar. “Take a seat, and I’ll hand her to you.”
“Oh, uh…” For a second, I thought he might bolt, but then he gave a curt nod and took a seat like I’d given him an order. Good man. I walked over and stood in front of him, setting the bottle on the bar.
“Okay. Have you held a baby before?”
“Yeah. But it’s been a while.”
“Okay. Well, pretend she’s a football, then,” I said, falling back on my foster mother training. “You want to cradle her body with your arm, supporting her neck and back. And you’ll want to keep her tilted while she eats. Otherwise it could all come back up, and nobody wants that. Trust me.”
Gabe gave a nervous chuckle, his eyes locked on Savannah. “Got it. I’m ready.”
“Good.” I waited until he’d moved his arms into position, then slowly transferred the baby to him. The look on Gabe’s face, the way it shifted from fear to fascination to wonder, nearly made me cry all over again, but in a good way this time. I stepped back a little and smiled. “Say hi to your baby daughter.”
* * *
I couldn’t stop staring at her. This tiny human. I’d made this. Maybe. There was still a slight possibility that she wasn’t my daughter, but… I looked at those ears again.
Nope. No way. Those were Kelley ears, and she was definitely mine.
Charlotte walked out into the living room and grabbed a throw pillow from the sofa, then returned to shove it under my arm for support. That helped. More comfortable. Not that Savannah weighed a lot. She felt like nothing in my arms. Nothing and everything, all at the same time.
A knot of panic clogged my throat again.
Oh God. The baby’s survival depended on me right now. In my mind, Savannah suddenly went from being a baby to being a live grenade—just as delicate and prone to explode at my slightest mistake. The bottle popped out of her tiny pink mouth, and her bottom lip quivered in the saddest pout I’d ever seen. A total punch to the heart.
“Put the bottle back to her lips,” Charlotte said. I did, and the pout disappeared beneath a barrage of noisy sucking. It was so cute, I couldn’t help but laugh.
“She’s a good eater,” I said.
“Yep. She is,” Charlotte agreed. “Her favorite is pancakes in the morning.” At my confused look—as far as I could see, there weren’t any teeth in that tiny mouth yet—Charlotte chuckled. “The frozen kind. Alexis used to buy the small ones at the grocery store, then tear them up into teeny pieces for her. They’re soft, so she doesn’t choke on them, and the coldness soothes her gums when they’re sore from teething.”
Ah. Right. That answered the teeth question. I nodded and looked back down at Savannah. “I’d like to see her eat them sometime.”
“Well, you should—” Charlotte started, only to stop when Savannah swallowed an air bubble and started to choke. We both moved at the same time, me more on instinct than anything, since I had little to no experience with babies. The last time I’d held one this long had been when Isaac was born. My stomach dropped, and I put Savannah over my shoulder, patting her tiny back to ease her coughing. Finally it stopped, and I looked up at Charlotte, who was watching us closely.
“You’re a natural,” she said.
I wasn’t. Proved by the fact that, the minute I tried to lower her back into my arms to feed her again, I was all thumbs. It was typical of me. Great in a crisis, not always so great at everyday life situations. Logistically, my problem was figuring out how to get Savannah from my shoulder to the crook of my elbow without dropping her. Then there was the fact that I’d set the bottle down and it had rolled out of reach. Shit. To top things off, the baby was pouting again, which quickly escalated to a full-blown, ear-splitting wail.
