The Bad Boy's Baby (Hope Springs) (5 page)

Chapter Seven

Wow, he did a great job of leveling the road
, Emma thought as she pulled up to the cabin nearest the lodge. When she’d left work, Cam had been in a tractor, dragging the road from the turnoff to the Mountain Ridge property, and her car had made it over the smoothed-out rocks and dirt, no problem. If she’d gotten stuck again, she’d never live it down, even if the crew were long gone.

Emma reached into the backseat and undid the buckles of Zoey’s car seat. Zoey disliked being strapped down, so the second she was free, she launched herself out of the seat and into Emma’s arms. Emma kissed her cheek, carried her up the porch steps, and knocked on the door.

Cam answered, wearing jeans and a T-shirt that stretched across his chest and showed off his tattooed arms.

Emma’s heart skipped a couple of beats, and she told herself to focus. This night was about him and Zoey getting to know each other better, not for ogling and lusting after all those muscles. Then again, she’d always been a good multitasker. “Hey.”

“Come on in.” Cam stepped aside, and she walked into the living room. She’d expected it to look different from the last time she’d been inside, but he hadn’t added any personal touches. The place was also extremely clean, to the point of looking unlived in. She wondered if he made his bed so tightly you could bounce a quarter off it, if that was something they really made soldiers do anymore.

How do you even climb into a bed made so tightly?

Okay, no thinking about Cam climbing in bed, or how he probably sleeps shirtless.

Zoey wiggled down and went right for the fireplace.

“No, Zoey! Dangerous!” Emma scooped her back up, scanning the place for other safety concerns. “If Zoey’s going to be spending time here, the fire will need a grate. The outlets need to be covered, and if you’ve got any chemicals or cleansers under the kitchen sink, it’ll need to be childproofed, too.”

Cam glanced around the room. “I never thought about any of that.”

“Yeah, it takes some getting used to.”

“I’ll get right on it tomorrow.”

Despite the other night and the blips of polite conversation they’d had at work the past couple of days, awkwardness still crowded the air, and she wondered if she’d ever get used to this new development.

Speaking of, she supposed it was time to break the news to her daughter—it was part of the plan of attack they’d come up with, after all. “Zoey, you know how I’m your mommy?”

She nodded, her curls bouncing with the motion, and tapped Emma’s chest as she repeated, “Mommy.”

“Cam is your daddy.”

“Why?” she asked.

“You want to take that one?” Emma asked Cam, laughing when his eyes went comically wide. “I’m only teasing,” she said, then she turned her attention back to her daughter. “Because everyone has a mommy and a daddy. Sometimes mommies and daddies live separately, but everyone still has one.

“So, I’m your mommy…” Emma took Zoey’s hand, tapped it to her chest, and then guided it to Cam’s chest, tapping it there. “Daddy.”

“Why?”

“And you can call him Daddy.”

“Why?”

“Because that’s who he is.” Emma smiled at Cam, who had an expression between bewilderment and wonder on his face. “Two-year-olds really like asking why.”

“I’m starting to see that,” he said. Then he picked up the nightstand next to the couch, hoisting it like it weighed nothing, and placed it in front of the fireplace, blocking that hazard area.

“So how was that, soldier?” Emma asked as she bumped the hip not supporting Zoey into his, unable to resist teasing him a bit, slight awkwardness notwithstanding. He’d laid out the plan earlier today at lunch:
Come over at 1900 hours. Tell Zoey I’m her father together. We’ll see how that goes and then take it from there.

She could tell he was used to giving orders and not having anyone ask questions. Since she was still trying to atone for not telling him the truth before, she’d meekly nodded and said okay. But she refused to go back to the quiet, submissive person she used to be in high school, so from here on out, she’d insist on a two-way type of discussion.

Zoey demanded to be put down before Emma could get a good read on Cam’s reaction to her teasing, but as soon as she straightened, he leaned in and whispered, “Just fine, smart-ass.”

She bit back a laugh, but she wasn’t able to suppress the shiver that traveled down her spine at the feel of his warm breath on her neck.

No surprise, the first thing Zoey decided to investigate was how to undo being cut off from the one place she needed to stay away from—why was it kids were drawn to the most dangerous thing in the room? Emma really hoped the self-preservation instinct kicked in soon, preferably before she had an aneurysm worrying about the many ways her daughter could be injured.

The nightstand in front of the fireplace rocked a little, and Cam steadied it with a hand on top and pulled a Barbie, still in her plastic case, off the mantel. When he handed it to Zoey and said he’d bought it for her, she, of course, asked, “Why?”

“Because I’m your dad, and I wanted you to have something from me.”

“Why?”

Cam laughed, squatted lower, and then helped her tear it out of the package—when the doll didn’t break free of the cardboard after a minute or so of tugging, he swore.

Zoey copied, the way toddlers instinctively do whenever anyone anywhere swears, and Cam glanced up. “I’m so, so sorry. It just slipped out.”

“Don’t make a deal about it or she’ll say it a hundred times,” Emma calmly said, then she pointed at the doll and forced extra enthusiasm into her voice. “Is that Barbie doll wearing a ballerina dress? Just like you?” At least today she’d managed to get Zoey to wear a T-shirt and pants under the tutu instead of pajamas.

“Ball-in-a!” Zoey said, sufficiently distracted, although her frustration at not getting the Barbie into her hot little hands was mounting.

Cam held out his hand for the doll, promising he’d give it right back, and then he pulled out a pocketknife. He sliced the plastic ties and then carefully closed the knife and put it away before handing the doll over, despite Zoey’s bouncing up and down, arms waving wildly in the air.

He needs a bit of training, but he understands the safety basics at least.

Emma lowered herself onto the stuffed chair in the corner, watching on. Here and there Cam would glance up at her and rub his neck, clearly unsure how to proceed, but she held herself back, explaining what Zoey was asking instead of stepping in and taking over. Control wasn’t easy for her to give up, but she knew he needed to get more comfortable with Zoey to really bond with her, and she wanted nothing more than to figure out a way to do this coparenting thing. If that was what he decided he wanted after he saw everything it entailed.

Emma’s phone rang, and she glanced at the display, worry rising when she saw it was the Hope Springs hospital. “I should take this. Are you okay?”

“Yeah,” Cam said, so she stepped outside where she could talk.

“This is Nurse Welch, and there’s no need to worry,” the voice on the phone said, which sent another surge of worry coursing through Emma, because she wouldn’t call without a reason.

“Is my grandma okay?” Nurse Welch had called her the last time Grandma Bev ended up in the hospital, and they occasionally had discussions about Grandma’s health and the treatments she was supposed to be following, much to her dismay.

“She fainted at bingo.”

“Because I
actually got a bingo
,” Grandma Bev yelled into the phone. “No other reason.”

Emma tightened her hold on the phone. “And because she mixed her pills with Vera Mae’s famous punch?”

“That might’ve had something to do with it,” Nurse Welch said with a laugh. “She did hit her head pretty hard, though, and she lost consciousness for a minute, so—”

“That’s just what Judith said, because she wanted to break my winning streak. I’m fine. I told you not to call Emma and worry her over nothing.”

“We’re going to err on the side of caution and do a CT scan. From the sounds of it, we might have to hold her down…” Nurse Welch was mostly false threats, but she followed through with a look that made most people too scared to push their luck—even headstrong Grandma Bev, which was why Emma requested she be the one to treat her. “I just thought you should know.”

The words “just thought you should know” struck her as slightly ironic. She’d used them on Cam, and she saw now how ineffective they were at soothing frayed nerves.

“Can I talk to my grandmother for a minute?” Emma wanted to lecture her, but that’d never done any good, and more than anything she wanted to hear for herself that she was okay, so she figured she’d see how she sounded and then take it from there.

Apparently phrases were striking her right and left today, because now she was thinking about Cam again, and the way he’d told her, “We’ll take it from there,” all demanding, in a way that should bug her but seemed more like second nature to him.

She glanced toward the window of his cabin, thinking that maybe it was more that the guy was simply hard not to think about.

…

Zoey started dancing around, a dance that looked suspiciously like—

“Go potty,” Zoey said.

Cam looked to the front door, praying for Emma to come through it, but he could see her pacing outside the window, still on the phone. He didn’t want her to think he couldn’t handle a few minutes alone, even though he wasn’t sure he could.

I have no idea what I’m doing.
One thing was sure, he was definitely in over his head.

“Um, bathroom’s right there.” He pointed at the door.

She grabbed his hand and started toward it. Once they stepped inside the bathroom, she looked up at him like he’d know what to do.

“Need help?” he asked and she nodded, handing him the doll. Tucking it under his arm, he helped Zoey get her pants down and lifted her onto the toilet. She smiled at him, kicking out her legs and looking toward the ceiling for a moment. Then she was done, and he exhaled a relieved breath.

But as soon as he got everything back into place and her hands washed, she demanded candy.

“I don’t have any candy,” he said.

She pointed at the toilet. “Go potty. Candy.” When he simply continued to stare, she wrinkled her face up, and he could tell she was about to cry, the way she’d done after he’d stopped her from climbing on the nightstand earlier. But that was when Emma was still inside, and she wasn’t now.

“All right. I’ll find…something.”

Zoey followed him into the kitchen, and he opened the pantry and eyed the sparse contents. He had several leftover MREs from his army days, but he figured she’d be as unimpressed with the ready-to-eat meal contents as he was after a week straight of choking them down in the field.

The bag of marshmallows he’d bought for hot chocolate caught his eye. He glanced at the door again, feeling like he was about to get into trouble for reasons he wasn’t even sure of. So he quickly opened the bag and handed Zoey a marshmallow. She shoved the entire thing in her mouth and smiled at him, one cheek popping out.

Emma walked inside, and he could immediately tell something was wrong.

“What happened?”

“Vera Mae’s punch,” she grumbled, then she pinched the bridge of her nose and let out a long exhale. “My grandma mixed it with her meds, and she passed out at bingo. She was adamant that she was fine, but she sounded a bit loopy, and long story short, she’s going in for a CT scan and I need to head over to the hospital. So Zoey and I have to go.”

Cam glanced at the time—they’d only been here for a little over a half hour, but it was getting late, nearing the cutoff of usual hospital visiting hours. In the past few minutes, he’d also witnessed how busy Zoey was. The girl never. Stopped. Moving. He couldn’t imagine she’d be still in a hospital, with all its climbable items and machines to check out, and he had a vision of her yanking out cords that definitely shouldn’t be yanked out. “Wouldn’t it be easier if you didn’t have to bring Zoey with you?”

“It would,” Emma said, picking Zoey’s discarded jacket off the floor, “especially since I’ll probably have my hands full with my grandma. But I don’t have anyone to take her.”

He glanced from Emma to Zoey, who was happy with her marshmallow at the moment, then back to Emma. “I could…I could keep her for a bit.” He tried to put conviction behind his voice so it didn’t come out as a question, even as he was questioning himself.

Emma’s movements slowed. “You’re offering to watch her? Alone? She’s going to get tired, and I don’t have her pajamas—for once she’s not already wearing them, and everything else she needs for her bedtime routine is at my house.”

He’d survived boot camp and had been on missions in endless stretches of desert in 110-degree weather. And if bedtime was around the corner, then he could definitely handle a toddler for an hour or so.
Buck up, Brantley.

“So I’ll take her to your place. Or I’ll keep her here until you can get back. Whatever you need. I…want to help.”

Okay, maybe “want” was a strong word, but he could hardly leave Emma to deal with it all herself when he could practically feel the stress radiating off her.

He could tell she didn’t know whether to disagree or to thank him, and he got the feeling that not many people offered to help her. Or maybe she never let anyone help. If that were the case, he’d have to take the option away. He could outstubborn anyone.

“She’s potty training, too,” Emma said. “I’ve got her in pull-ups, but she’s done so well, and I don’t want her to get out of the hab—”

“She already had to go, just a few minutes ago. I took care of it.”

“You did?”

He tried not to be offended by her incredulous tone. He supposed he shouldn’t be, considering how out of his league he’d felt during the potty incident. “She demanded candy, but I didn’t have any, so I gave her a marshmallow. I hope that’s okay—I figured since she eats Lucky Charms she could have one.”

“Lucky Charms!” Zoey yelled, clapping her hands.

“Rookie mistake,” Emma said, but she said it lightly, a hint of teasing. Then she put her hand on his arm, and while he knew she needed to go, he wanted her to keep standing this close, close enough he could smell her vanilla perfume and see the various shades of brown that twisted through her wavy hair. “If you go to my place, all you have to do is put on
F-R-O-Z-E-N
. She’ll fall asleep and then you can carry her to bed. As far as pajamas go, if it causes a fight, she can just sleep in what she’s got on—even the skirt.”