The Mommy Miracle (14 page)

An hour ago when they'd made love, she'd warned him seriously that it might not be pretty. It couldn't have been, with this body. How much had he taken in? Why did the idea of being naked in front of him now seem so much scarier than it had the other night, or just now? It shouldn't have been any different.

She'd just begun the climb into the tub when he called to her, “How's it going?” She heard a creak and a movement, as if he were about to come through the door.

Naked, she froze in place. She didn't want him to see her. The reaction didn't make sense but existed anyway. “Not breaking any world records on the timing,” she called to him. “Just climbing in now.”

“Tell me when you're ready.”

She sank into the water, wondering if the thick, mounded expanse of white foam was deliberate on
his part. If it was, she was grateful for it. Beneath the waterline, you couldn't see a thing. “Okay, I'm good.”

He opened the door. “Comfortable?”

“It's perfect.” She looked up at him. His expression was serious. Worried, even. Reluctant. Out of his depth. He didn't need to be. Not as far as her safety was concerned, anyhow, or DJ's. “There's this sloping section on the side that I can lean against, and a kind of step to prop my feet so I don't slip too far down in the water. I'll be able to hold her. It's so lovely and deep, I'm almost floating.”

He had his hand on the door handle, motionless, and for some reason the whole world seemed to echo his attitude. Everything went still and quiet. Beneath the water, her body tingled. “Uh, nice bathroom,” he said, pulling the words out of nowhere. “I mean, it's just right for this.”

“I know.” She tried not to notice his awkward attitude. “The big tub is perfect. It would have been difficult in a smaller one. Where is she?”

“In her bassinet, to give me a chance to set up.”

“What's she doing? She's not asleep? Please say she's not. I—I want this to happen, Dev. I'm not feeling patient, right now.”

“It's fine. Composing a sonata for creaking wicker and plastic rattle, I'm pretty sure. I'll go get her.”

A minute later he was back with DJ, who was wide-awake and happy, gurgling and cooing. He gave her a big squeeze and a fierce kiss on her tummy, then laid her on the bed and took off her clothing and diaper. “What a kick you got there, baby girl,” he crooned. “Daddy's little athlete, aren't you, sweet thing?” He picked her up and came into the bathroom, knelt on the tiled step, cleared his throat. “Ready?”

Jodie lifted her arms. “Ready,” she whispered.

Ohh.

DJ wriggled as she touched the water. Dev still held her firmly. She was tiny and soft and slippery, and she half floated as her little arms and chin came to rest on Jodie's front. She had no bottom whatsoever, just a series of creases and folds. “Got her?” he said.

“Yes. But stay.”

“Of course I'm staying.” Right there, he meant. He didn't move from beside the tub, just rested his forearms on the cold white porcelain and watched.

Watched, and belonged.

Ohh.

There were no words for it. DJ's little body. The warmth. The soft lapping of the water. The slipperiness. The tenderness. The way the water helped with Jodie's imperfect coordination and control.

“Can I…play with her, Dev?”

“Play with her?”

“Bob her around, float her from side to side. I mean, she's never been in a tub this big, has she?”

“Of course play with her.” He was still watching closely, his hair getting damp with steam from the tub, his shirt wet from the splash of the baby's legs. “As long as the water doesn't get into her mouth.”

So they bobbed around and floated from side to side, her little legs making trails in the foam. The foam began to melt away, which was good because then Jodie didn't worry so much about it getting in the baby's mouth and eyes, as Dev had warned.

“Oh, you're beautiful,” she crooned. “You're so beautiful.”

And something shifted and changed inside her. She let go of the doubt and fear and questions because the
moment was too huge and didn't leave any room for those things. She slid DJ a little higher and those pink starfish hands grabbed at Jodie's skin and suddenly it came.

A smile.

A big, sweet, soft-lipped, toothless, beaming baby smile.

“Ohh,” she crooned. “You're smiling. Oh, you darling girl! Why are you smiling? Mom says you never smile in the bath.”

“Because you're right in there with her,” Dev said, “and you're smiling right at her.”

“But I've tried that before and it's never worked. She's never ever smiled at me till now. Oh, baby girl!” She just couldn't take her eyes away.

“Tried it.” He slid closer, along the side of the tub. “That was the difference. Now you're not trying, you're not thinking about it, you're just smiling.”

“Oh. Oh.”

No words. Just kisses. On DJ's tender shoulders, her forehead, her wet baby hair, her chubby cheeks. Jodie cradled her against her shoulder and almost swam with her, floating around the generous-size spa tub, bobbing and bouncing DJ through the water.

The sense of rightness coursed through her with as much warmth and vitality as the blood in her veins.
Oh, my baby girl, oh, my sweet precious angel.
It was a part of her, this new feeling. It wasn't like the short-lived flicker of feeling that had come two days ago at Oakbank. That had only been a glimpse. This was real and powerful and bone-deep, an utter, beloved certainty.

The water was getting too cool. Dev turned on the faucet and a blast of warmth jetted in, bringing the temperature back up. They stayed in there until Jodie
and DJ were both wrinkle-skinned and even then, as she lifted the baby to pass her to Dev, she didn't want to let her go.

“You can have her for now,” she warned him, making it a tease so that she didn't cry instead. “But watch out, because I want her back as soon as I'm out of here.” It had been so precious and wonderful. She felt as if she'd recaptured something she hadn't known until today had been lost.

And it would last, this time. She believed it. Knew it. Knew that the overwhelming sensation of love had been real and true and deep enough not to ebb or fade. It was what Dev had. It changed everything.

“Careful, she's so slippery,” she told Dev, and there was a wet, drippy tangle of arms and movements as he bent down to take her.

“I've got her,” he said gruffly. “I know she's slippery. It's fine.” He captured her in the big, fluffy towel and dressed her in a fresh outfit—lilac, this time—right there on the glass vanity while Jodie lolled in the water and watched him with their daughter. When she was dressed, he stepped into the next room and laid her on the bed. Jodie heard the sound of pillows being plumped and settled to keep her safely in place. “That's the way,” he sang to her. “Not going anywhere like that, are you, sweetheart angel?”

DJ cooed at him.

“Now let me pass you a towel,” he said, back in the bathroom. “Do you need help getting up?”

“No, there's enough to hold on to.” But she slipped at her first try and slid back into the tub, her feet squeaking across the porcelain. The water churned. She gritted her teeth. Why was it so hard? How did such a
clumsy episode follow so quickly from some of the most precious moments of her life?

I won't let the clumsiness spoil what I feel,
she vowed, and made another effort, pulling herself from the water and into the towel Dev had waiting for her.
I couldn't let it spoil that, because it was too strong.

“Everything okay?” he said.

“Like a miracle. Oh, Dev, I can't tell you…I can't describe it. I can't even think about the difference it's already made.”

“Good. Good. I'm so glad.”

She thought he was going to kiss her. She was sure of it, after the way they'd made love so recently, after the emotion unleashed by her holding DJ in the bath. His eyes had pooled with glinting darkness, half-shielded by a sweep of lashes, his mouth was so soft, his lips had parted and he was looking at her. She swayed closer, and her hands loosened on the towel. It would drop to the floor in another moment, and she didn't care.

As long as Dev kissed her.

But it didn't happen.

He took a long, harsh breath and stepped back, pressing his lips together, turning his head. “Better not leave DJ on the bed for long,” he said. “I'll put her on the floor, with her baby gym. Time to think about dinner, too. It's been a big day.”

“A great day.”

“Yes.” He left, picking up the baby on his way out.

Wrapped in the towel in the steaming bathroom, Jodie felt abandoned and hated the ebbing of that glorious feeling of love and relief that had made her so complete and so happy just moments ago.

The change in his mood was as stark and apparent as the sun vanishing behind a dark cloud. The air felt
colder. The light seemed different. It no longer streamed like gold through the thick greenery as it had when she'd first climbed into the bath. The sun had almost set, and the bath water had taken on a greenish tinge from the sachet of bath salts Dev had poured in.

There was no more foam, Jodie realized. She and DJ had stayed in the bath for so long that it had gradually disappeared, and she'd been so absorbed in the baby that she hadn't noticed.

Dev would have seen everything. Not just the shape of her body lying there, but the awkwardness of it in movement, and somehow this left her more naked and vulnerable than she'd been the other night when they'd made love, or just now on the couch, because both those times it had been dark, or at least dim, and their need for each other had wrapped both of them in a kind of protective blanket. She'd felt a lot of things, but she hadn't felt exposed.

Now, she did, because Dev's mood had changed so suddenly, it seemed, and this had to be the reason why.

 

Jodie took a long time to reappear. DJ had grown bored on her blanket, even with the baby gym positioned above her. There was only so much rattle-whacking a four-month-old could tolerate, apparently. Dev picked her up and propped her on his hip while he attempted to put oven fries on a baking tray, toss a salad and grill steaks with one hand.

He'd cooked that way before.

“Wouldn't put you in your bassinet even if I thought you'd stay happy there, would I, baby girl?” he murmured to her, heart lurching in his chest at the stark thought of losing her.

Not losing her.

He couldn't lose her.

Jodie wasn't like that. No matter how strongly her bond with the baby kicked in, today and in the future, she wouldn't punish him with it, would she?

Not deliberately. She surely wasn't like that.

But the punishment could happen anyway, because he wanted too much. He'd been kidding himself so stupidly right up until tonight, thinking through all these plans about shared custody and generous access, about making it work even when he was in New York or Europe, not understanding that the bond he had with DJ was so much stronger because the baby hadn't had the chance to build a bond with her mom.

Just now, in the bath, when they'd smiled at each other, gotten lost in each other for minutes on end, forgotten about him so completely, both of them, and then Jodie had seemed so glowing and different after she stepped out of the tub, so much freer and more full of life, he'd seen it in the look on her face, felt it in the way her body moved.

The shutting out.

Like the slamming of a prison door, with himself on one side and Jodie and DJ on the other.

He felt sick at himself, a miserable wreck of selfishness and blindness and jealousy. Did he
want
to see Jodie go on floundering the way she had been, purely so that she would leave the best of the parenting to him? That was horrible. He was appalled about it.

But he felt it anyway, this sense that he was shut out and that it was a conspiracy coming from both of them.

He didn't understand why it had such a grip on him or what it meant.

Couldn't do a damned thing about it.

Here she was, at last. She was wearing a pair of
stretchy cream long johns and a flowery camisole top—amongst the more useful contents of her underwear drawer, he guessed—and she was wrapped in the gypsy shawl her sister had given her, that he'd laid on the bed. Strangely enough, the outfit almost worked. “Cold?” he asked, pushing his dark, unwanted feelings aside.

“From the bath.”

“Right. DJ felt cool, too. You'll both warm up soon.”

“Mmm.”

“Dinner's nearly on the table.”

“Thank you.”

“DJ won't last much longer. We can eat, then I'll put her in her sleep suit and give her her last bottle and she'll go down. Can usually count on a good eight hours after that. With luck it'll be getting light before she wakes up. That's mostly how it works with her now.” He sounded as if he were giving a lecture, and knew it came from his need to assert his own role.

I'm the one who took her home from the hospital. I'm the one who saw the sonogram and felt her move in your belly, when you knew nothing about it.

He'd told Jodie all that stuff himself, just a few hours ago, and it had changed everything, along with DJ's smile and Jodie's tearful smile back, and now he wanted Jodie's glow to fade? He was despicable.

Despicable, and lost.

The steaks were almost done. She helped him serve up and they ate without saying a lot. He talked about what they might do tomorrow—go visit the nearby lake, go back to the store to fill more of those gaps in her dad's packing—but it was all on the surface and they both knew something was wrong.

“May I feed her and put her to bed?” Jodie asked, after she'd finished eating. “Would you mind?”