“Beau isn’t mine. I didn’t even know I was on her birth certificate until CPS showed up at my door with her.”
Juliet arched a brow at the baby. She didn’t look like him at all, but that didn’t mean anything.
“If she’s not yours, why did you take her?”
“My ex . . .” He paused, swallowed. “She died.”
Her stomach twisted. “Oh God. I’m sorry.” She said it half to him and half to the baby she was holding. The poor little girl had lost her mother? Emotion lodged in her throat, and she felt her eyes prick. God, she couldn’t even wrap her head around the idea that someday she’d lose her own mother, and she was an adult.
“They came to me with the baby and what was I going to say?” He sat heavily in the chair behind his desk. “I don’t have a lot of faith in the foster care system.” He face set in a grim mask. “Then again, maybe strangers would have taken better care of her than I am. I didn’t know how hard this was.”
“There’s no other family?”
“Just me, and we’re not even related.” His lips flattened into a grim line. “Poor kid.”
There was no other family at all? No aunts, uncles, grandparents . . . not even a distant cousin? The idea was inconceivable to her. And so horribly awful. If anything—knock on wood—ever happened to Sadie and Scott, a million people would step up to raise the twins, including Juliet. The idea of any baby being all alone in the world was just horrid.
“So you’re not going to raise her?” she asked, her voice thick.
“I . . . No. What the hell do I know about babies?” He was watching the little girl with something that looked a lot like regret. “She’d be better off with a family.” He watched her slip the baby into a sleeper she’d found in the diaper bag. This one still fit, at least. “You’re good at that.”
She got her empathy under control and smiled faintly. “I have fifty-two younger siblings. I’ve literally been changing babies since before I was born.”
He chuckled, but his beautiful green eyes showed his fatigue. It reminded her of Sadie when she had been overwhelmed with the boys early on and felt like crying all the time.
She held Beau against her shoulder and rubbed her back. The baby went droopy and boneless within about a minute. The poor little thing smelled like stale formula.
“Fifty-two younger siblings?” he asked, as though he might be tired enough to believe her.
“Yeah. We moved into a boot when the shoe got too small.”
He stared at her for a moment, then snorted when he got the reference.
“It’s the running joke in our family.”
“So are you going to have fifty-two kids, too?”
“Nooo. None for me. I’ve raised enough kids in my lifetime, and I’m ready to skip parenting and go straight to grandparenting.”
He chuckled. “So you were an empty nester as soon as you left home?”
“Oh God, you have no idea. If I never have to change another diaper or step on another stray Lego, it’ll be too soon.”
“Sorry.” He held out his arms for the baby. “Thanks for the help.”
She handed the baby back to him, and she started to fuss almost immediately. Instinct won out and she moved up to him.
“Are you the kind of guy who has trouble with taking advice?”
“Not about this,” he said, grimacing. “I’m out of my element. I keep trying to help the kid out, but I seem to make her uncomfortable.”
“It’s all the muscle,” she said, winking. “You make me uncomfortable, too, but in an entirely different way.”
She wasn’t sure why she’d said it, even though it was true, but for a moment he flashed a wolfish smile that made her toes curl.
“So show me what I’m doing wrong, sunshine.”
She repositioned his hands and the height he was holding the baby on his chest. After a couple of unhappy fusses, the baby settled against him with a sigh. Juliet had to look away from the sight of the man holding a contented baby—the sight was doing something weird to her ovaries.