That would explain why she hardly ever saw him. His shifts at the hospital would be very different from her own hours teaching at the local high school. But most of all Amy felt relief that she wasn’t going to have to deal with this completely on her own. Where babies were concerned, she was totally clueless, and Josh seemed to know how to deal with them. ‘All right. Thanks,’ she said.
‘I’ll be quick,’ he promised.
‘Should I pick the baby up?’ she asked when the crying started again.
‘Movement usually helps settle a crying baby. If you walk up and down—obviously avoiding the area where whoever left the baby might’ve trodden—the baby will probably stop crying.’
That sounded like experience talking. Better and better: because Amy was very used to dealing with teenagers, but her dealings with babies had been minimal.
Especially since Michael had ended their engagement.
She pushed the thought away. Not now. She needed to concentrate on helping this abandoned baby, not brood over the wreckage of her past.
‘What about supporting the baby’s head?’ she asked.
‘Just hold the baby against you, like this,’ Josh said, picking the baby out of the box and then holding the baby close to him to demonstrate, with one hand cradled round the baby’s head so it didn’t flop back.
‘OK.’ Carefully, Amy took the baby from him.
His hands brushed briefly against hers and it felt as if she’d been galvanised.
Oh, for pity’s sake. Yes, the man was pretty—despite the fact that he needed a shave and she suspected that he’d dragged his fingers rather than a comb through his wavy dark hair—but for all she knew he could be in a serious relationship. This was so inappropriate. Even if he wasn’t in a relationship, she didn’t want to get involved with anyone. Because then eventually she’d have to admit to her past, and he’d walk away from her—just as Michael had. And then that would make their relationship as neighbours awkward. Amy knew she was better off on her own and keeping all her relationships platonic. Josh Farnham might be one of the most attractive men she’d ever met, but he wasn’t for her.
Hoping that he’d mistake her flustered state for nerves about dealing with the baby—which was partially true in any case—Amy murmured something anodyne and started walking up and down the lobby with the baby.
Josh came back what felt like hours later but could only have been five minutes, carrying several tin cans, a pile of bandages, safety pins, a marker pen and a spiral-bound notebook.
‘Are you OK to keep holding the baby?’ he asked.
No. It was bringing back all kinds of emotions that Amy would much rather suppress. But she wasn’t going to burden a near-stranger with her private misery. ‘Sure,’ she fibbed.
Josh swiftly wrote out some notes saying, Please do not touch—waiting for police, then marked off the area where Amy had found the cardboard box. When he’d finished, he held out his arms for the baby. ‘My turn, I think,’ he said.
‘Thanks,’ she said, grateful to be relieved of her burden. Though again her hands touched his as they transferred the baby between them, and again she felt that peculiar and inappropriate response to him, that flare of desire. She picked up the box. ‘I’d better bring this.’
He nodded. ‘Your flat or mine?’
‘Mine, I guess,’ she said.
She let them into her flat, then called the police and explained what had happened while Josh examined the baby. She couldn’t help watching him while she was talking; he was so gentle and yet so sure at the same time. He checked the baby over thoroughly before wrapping the infant in the soft blanket again.
The baby wasn’t wearing a nappy and had no clothes. They definitely had a problem here. And what would happen once the baby got hungry? Amy had absolutely nothing in her kitchen that was suitable for a newborn, let alone any way of feeding a baby.
‘The police are on their way now. They said they’ll contact Social Services and meet them here, too,’ she said when she put the phone down. ‘How’s the baby?’
‘Doing fine,’ Josh said. ‘Our doorstep baby’s a little girl. Definitely a newborn. But I’d say she’s a couple of weeks early and I’m a bit worried about the mum. She clamped the umbilical cord with one of those clips you use on packaging to keep things fresh, and my guess is she’s very young and didn’t tell anyone she was having the baby, and she didn’t go to hospital so she had the birth somewhere on her own.’
‘And then she put the baby in a box and left her in our lobby with no clothes, no nappy, no milk—just the blanket,’ Amy said. She winced. ‘The poor girl must’ve really been desperate. Do you see that kind of thing a lot at the hospital?’