An Unexpected Christmas Baby (The Daycare Chronicles 2)

“Yes.”

“Yes, it’s up to you now?”

“Yes, I’ll marry you.”

She was done with letting her past prevent her future.

They made love a second time and still didn’t fall asleep afterward.

Maybe he was waiting for Diamond’s next feeding. A couple of hours had passed. She had too much on her mind to let sleep take over.

“I want to try again,” she said, feeling sick to her stomach even as she said the words. “Not right now. Not anytime soon, but I want to have your baby. Our baby.”

“We have our baby, Tamara,” he told her, sitting up and pulling her against him. “Biologically she has two other parents, but she’s all ours. And if at some point, we’re sure you’re ready, then we’ll face whatever happens together.”

Whatever happens. Because you couldn’t control life. You could only control what you did with what you were given.

Which was why Flint had grown out of an environment of crime into a remarkable man.

Diamond’s whimpers came over the baby monitor. Slipping into a pair of shorts, Flint went in to change her.

“I’ll get her bottle.” Tamara, wearing an oversize T-shirt of Flint’s, was already on her way to the kitchen. She was the bottle-getter when she was in the house.

But when she went to the door of the nursery to drop it off, she didn’t let it go.

She wanted to hold the baby. To sit in the rocker and know she could be a mom.

She started to shake.

“Bring her in with us,” she said. “Just while she eats. I’ll sit up to make sure we don’t fall asleep.”

Without saying a word, Flint did as she asked, setting the baby down in the middle of the bed, half lying beside her and reaching for the bottle. Tamara still didn’t give it to him. Kneeling on the mattress, keeping her distance, she leaned over. Diamond Rose looked at her—that little chin dimpled, lower lip jutting out—and started to cry. With the baby watching her, needing what she had, expecting Tamara to give it to her, there was no thought. From her distance, Tamara guided the nipple to that tiny birdlike mouth as though it was the most natural thing in the world.

Because it was.

For a mom.

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