Slapping her hand over Tate’s mouth as he opened it, Lily nodded eagerly. “If you’re sure?” She didn’t even wait for a response from us as she stood up and tugged his hand to get him to follow. “Don’t taint this for me,” she warned him. “Just get up, follow me, and sleep.”
Giving us a last look over his shoulder as he was led out of the room, Tate went to say something – more than likely something insulting – but his wife yelled, “Move it, Townsend. Don’t you dare ruin my chance to get some sleep. I’m running on the emptiest that empty can be.”
Concern took over, and he jogged away from us. “Here, let me carry you, baby. And don’t think you’re not in trouble. I told you I’d do some of the night feeds, but you kept telling me it was ok.”
“You work with heavy machinery and technical stuff every day, Tate,” she mumbled, her voice only just audible the farther away from us they got. “I don’t want you being so tired you get injured.”
Sitting down in the chair Lily had just been in, Archer looked down at Rebel. “Aw, isn’t that sickening,” he cooed. “One day, when you’re a grown-up girl, you can puke on them when they talk like that.”
“I think she does that anyway,” I pointed out, knowing it was a fact. “And she doesn’t need them being all gross and shit for it to happen.”
Shrugging, he looked back down at her. “What do you do for fun then, kid? Do you wanna play on my phone?” he asked, sounding hopeful as he pulled it out of his back pocket and shook it next to her.
Holding my hands out to take her from him, I rolled my eyes at how relieved he looked when he passed her over. “She’s only a couple of months old, man. She doesn’t play on phones yet.”
“I call bullshit on that. Kids are born with the manuals of smart phones, tablets, computers in their brains nowadays.”
Looking down at the baby who was watching me with what I swear was an amused look on her face, I came up with an idea. “Wanna go see the nice nurse?”
My brother started to snort and say something smart, but then an idea hit him. “Yeah, that’s a great idea. We’ll take her to go see Charlotte at the hospital.”
Locking the door of the office, we made our way to our parent's house where there was a spare car seat for Rebel and Jamie, and then headed to see the pretty nurse.
I wasn’t blind about why Archer was so enthusiastic about going – it was the first Tuesday of the month, and that meant that Bonnie was going to be there at her monthly appointment with the geneticist. She saw him every month about her atavism, and they’d do scans and blood tests for him to take back to some big college to study.
The following month, they’d discuss the results, look at other cases she’d found, and look at other parts of her genetic makeup, hoping to understand why it happened. And Archer wanted the opportunity to catch her when she couldn’t run away from him, just like I was doing with Charlotte.
And what better way to get that to happen than with our beautiful niece in our arms.
Charlotte“I don’t know how you can work with him,” Ariana muttered, glaring at Parker’s back. “He’s such a… a… wank stain.”
I bit down on the corner of my lip to hide my grin as I put the Band-Aid over her ‘injury’. Apparently she’d scraped it when she was trying to get into her car – and far away from the Parker in question, but we’ll gloss over that – and he’d freaked out and brought her in.
He knew full well she didn’t need stitches, hell she didn’t even need the Steri-Strips he’d put over it to hold the wound closed. No, the truth was he was head over heels for the girl, but she had her walls built tougher than Fort Knox and he was trying to break them down.
Because of his feelings he was jumpy when it came to her safety, so his overreaction to this tiny injury was all of that rolled into one.
Feeling sorry for the guy, I pointed out, “At least he cares, Ari.”
Over the months since I’d met the Townsends we’d become good friends, and I loved the girl to pieces. She was like an M&M – a crispy coating, with a soft center, and once you got through that coating you got the sweetest surprise. But don’t ever forget the crispy coating because hers was reinforced.
Frowning at me, she looked around us like she was just realizing where we were. Had she hit her head, too? Parker hadn’t mentioned it, but it might account for why he was acting the way he was. “What are you doing in the ER?”