Undeniably Yours (9 page)

“Drink?” Bo asked him, extending a juice box.

Jayden pushed it away.

“Diaper?”

Jayden swiped the diaper from Bo's hand and threw it on the floor emphatically.

“Wipes?”

Those, too, he hurled to the floor.

“Change of clothes?”

Cashew skittered under the sofa.

“Strange maze toy?”

Jayden turned his face away.

“Weird knobby ball toy I don't understand?”

Jayden's skin darkened to the color of a tomato.

“Well,” Bo said, “that's all the diaper bag has to offer.”

Meg walked Jayden around her living room, rocking and bouncing, trying to talk to him. Huge tears rolled down his cheeks in steady tracks.

Sympathy swelled inside her. Poor little guy. He hadn't exactly been born into the easiest lot in life. His young, single, working mother had been doing her best to simply scrape by. Now he'd been taken from everything he'd known in Lubbock, brought to Whispering Creek, and left in the care of people he viewed as frightening strangers. He had no way of understanding that his mommy had only left temporarily, or comprehending when she'd come back.

Meg clicked on her TV and found a children's channel playing a cartoon.

Still didn't help. He kept right on sobbing his heart out with no sign of slowing down. “Bo? I'm running out of ideas.”
And beginning to feel slightly frantic
.

He came out of the kitchen carrying two sugar cookies on a napkin. “Here, let me give it a try.”

Gratefully, she handed Jayden over. The little boy blinked up at Bo with worry and fascination.

“Look, dude. If I had to eat the food that's in your bag and watch this on TV, I'd be mad, too. Cookie?” He lifted the napkin. Jayden took a long moment to decide. He glanced at the cookie, at Bo, and back at the cookie before finally quieting enough to take the cookie and give it a tentative bite. Bo settled into a chair with Jayden on his lap and used the remote to change the channel to sports. “Basketball good with you?”

Jayden watched the screen and chewed.

“Cool. It's good with me, too. What do you say us guys just sit and relax awhile?” Bo leaned back in the chair, and Jayden nestled against Bo's chest. Jayden's tantrum hiccupped its way into silence.

Bo glanced at Meg, who'd frozen in place, almost too afraid to move lest Jayden start back in on the screaming.

“I'm winging it,” Bo said to her.

“You're a magician. Thank God you're here.”

Bo winked at her.

Saint Bo, a man christened with the miraculous ability to gentle horses, nervous women, and one-year-olds.

Jayden spent the next fifteen minutes watching basketball, then took a sharp turn from calm couch potato into Tasmanian devil. He tried to pull things off Meg's shelves, climb on her chairs and tables, open every drawer and cupboard door on the property, and seek and destroy anything breakable.

Meg brought out the coloring books and crayons she'd purchased for his visit. He spared them ninety seconds of interest. She brought out a brand-new set of Play-Doh. Ninety-five seconds of interest.

Meg and Bo took Jayden outside, and spent an hour and a half chasing him around the lawn, repeatedly detouring his desire to run headlong into the deep end of the pool, and averting his tendency to stick anything under the subheading of “nature” into his mouth.

They baby-wrangled him through just about every room and closet of the big house for another hour, before finally imprisoning him in his highchair for dinner. Per Amber's instructions, Meg made quesadillas and carefully cut them into bite-size squares before serving them to Jayden.

“Bo?” They were sitting on either side of Jayden at the table in the big house kitchen while he ate.

“Yes?”

“I have a new goal in life.”

“What's that?”

“To hire child care for Jayden.”

He chuckled. “As fun as this has been and all, I think that might be wise.”

“Best money I'll ever spend.”

Jayden started pitching quesadilla pieces over the side of his chair.

“I think he's done already,” Meg said with a trace of despair. She'd only been sitting down for what felt like five minutes and hadn't had a chance to drink even half of her bottled water.

“Don't see how that's possible,” Bo answered.

Jayden shoved away his plate and tried to heft himself out of his high chair. Then suddenly he stilled.

“Oh good. Maybe he's changed his mind.”

Jayden's gaze fixed on the middle of nowhere. He gave a muffled grunt. His face squeezed with strain.

“Oh, no you don't,” Bo threatened.

Meg started to laugh. A poopy diaper. The cherry on top of the sundae of challenge and exhaustion that was the job of baby-sitting Jayden Richardson. And she'd imagined running Cole Oil to be difficult! She didn't know how in the world Amber did this work—alone—on a daily basis. Over the past few hours her respect and awe for the woman had skyrocketed. Forget Superman and Batman. Single mothers were the real superheroes. If she hadn't already pledged her support to Amber, this gig watching Jayden would have motivated her to do so ten times over.

Jayden finished doing his business and tried to hoist himself out of the chair again.

“I guess,” Meg said, “a dirty diaper was inevitable.”

“Actually, it's a bullet I'd been hoping to dodge.”

“Any interest in changing him?”

“None.”

“Me neither.”

Bo tilted his head. “Want to flip a coin?”

“I'd rather you just do it.” She tested a cajoling smile on him.

“You're not going to like my terms.”

“Lay 'em on me.”

“If I change him, then you have to go horseback riding with me.”

He was right; she didn't like his terms. Toddler poop. Or horse phobia. Choices, choices. Toddler poop offered torture of much shorter duration. Maybe she'd go with that. . . . But then the smell hit her. Rank beyond belief. “I'll take you up on your offer,” Meg said.

“You'll come out and ride.”

“Yes.” She'd brought Jayden's diaper bag with them when they'd come to the big house and now fished out the wipes and a diaper and handed them over. Bo tucked them in the waistband of his jeans. With a pained expression, he extracted Jayden from the high chair.

Meg fought to hide her grin. Bo's expression alone was almost worth the price of the horseback riding.

Bo held Jayden extended out in front of him, his big hands under Jayden's little arm pits. He paused in the doorway of the kitchen, the toddler dangling. “Should I just lay him down on the floor of the bathroom and change him there?”

“I guess.”

They left and were gone for what seemed like an unusually long time. Meg finished her water and straightened the kitchen.

When they returned, Jayden was riding on the palm of Bo's hand and smiling widely.

“How'd it go?” Meg asked.

“I managed to come through Iraq and Afghanistan okay, but I'm going to need therapy after that.”

“I'll foot the bill.”

“I'm not sure if I got the diaper on forwards or backwards.”

“Hopefully it'll work either way.”

“Since you don't have a hazmat bin, I tied the bag from the bathroom trash can around the diaper and walked it to the outside trash.”

“Very wise. Thank you.”

“Then I washed my hands three times in burning hot water. I'm surprised there's still skin on them.”

“Am I going to have to pay for therapy
and
worker's comp?” Meg accepted Jayden from Bo with a smile.

“Yes, and the bill's going to be more than you can afford.”

“I don't know about that.”

The two of them took Jayden upstairs for his bath. They hadn't yet started to undress him when he went through the whole grunting, straining, stinky thing again.

“No way,” Bo said. “Not possible.”

But it was.

Bo looked Meg straight in the eyes. “Two horseback riding lessons,” he growled.

“Two lessons,” she agreed.

He toted the boy into the bedroom Jayden shared with Amber. A few moments went by. “There's only one wipe left!” Panic and revulsion tinged his voice. “Gee, thanks, Amber.”

Meg hurried in, trying to ignore both the stench and the sight of Bo holding Jayden's legs in the air while the kid did his best to perform a twist. She opened drawers until she located a fresh supply of wipes, tore some free, and placed them where Bo could reach them. Fighting not to burst into impolite laughter, she fled the room.

Once Bo had cleaned Jayden up, Meg plopped him in the tub and Bo made his second trip to the outside trash. It turned out
that the bath contained Jayden and made him happy, so Meg and Bo let him play in the sudsy water until he finally grew irritable.

“I better start rounding up all of his bedtime stuff,” Bo said.

“Sounds good. I'll get him dressed.”

Toweling him off proved to be no problem, but forcing him into his jammies carried a medium-high level of difficulty. Meg kept trying to capture squirming limbs, and Jayden kept trying to roll off the top of the chest of drawers, which was serving as a temporary changing table.

When she finally succeeded, sweating, she checked her watch. Was it really possible for time to move so slowly? She felt like they'd been taking care of Jayden for decades, but they
still
had thirty minutes before the bedtime Amber had suggested. He seemed sleepy, though, and Bo had already warmed up a sippy cup of milk for him. So Meg decided to send up a hope and prayer and attempt to put Jayden down anyway.

“You got this?” Bo asked her.

“I think so. Did we do everything Amber said?”

“Yep, I put the sound machine on ‘waterfall,' pulled the curtains, turned on the night-light, and checked to make sure his monitor was working. Just to be on the safe side.”

“Then I should be good.”

He stepped out, closing the door to Amber's room behind him. She clicked off the overhead fixture, then settled them both into the rocking chair Lynn had found in the big house's attic.

Amber had written on her page of instructions that Meg was now supposed to sing.

Single adult women weren't typically lullaby specialists.

She handed Jayden his green frog and his sippy cup, then rocked, searching her memory for anything that might suffice.

“Hush little baby,” she sang softly, “don't say a word. Meggie's
gonna buy you a mockingbird. If that mockingbird don't sing, Meggie's gonna buy you a diamond ring. If that diamond ring don't fit, Meggie's gonna buy you . . .” She couldn't remember any more of the lyrics, so she made something up. “A catcher's mitt. If that catcher's mitt don't catch, Meggie's gonna buy you a . . . doorway latch.” She racked her brain for more rhymes. “If that doorway latch don't hold, Meggie's gonna buy you some ice cream cold. If that ice cream don't taste sweet, Meggie's gonna buy you a phone that tweets.”

Fresh out of creativity, she stopped singing and simply hummed the melody. She gazed down into Jayden's little face, and he gazed up at her in the dimness, his eyes large and shiny. Trusting.

A silent communication passed between them in that moment, deep and heartfelt.

She understood, suddenly, why everything that mothers went through—the work, the weariness, the sacrifice—was worth it to them. Her throat swelled and tears rushed to her eyes. Her humming choked out, but she kept up the smooth motion. Back and forth. Faint creaking. Back and forth.

“I'm going to help you,” she whispered to him, her words almost inaudible in the hushed, waterfall white noise of the room. “You and your mom came to the right place because I'm going to help you. You're safe here. I'm going to make sure that you both have every opportunity. Okay?”

His eyes held innocence and a sort of uncanny wisdom. His little fingers gathered his frog snug under his chin, next to the yellow duck pattern on his jammies, and he went to work sucking his thumb.

“I promise you,” she whispered.

They continued to look at each other for a long stretch.

Tears blurring her vision, she finally carried him to his small portable crib and leaned way down to place him inside. She braced for screams, but stunningly, he simply turned onto his side and cozied down into the softness of his crib sheet.

She tiptoed out and closed the door soundlessly behind her. Bo stood leaning against the wall in the hallway, watching her.

“You waited,” she said.

“I did.”

She'd spent ages putting Jayden down. “Thank you.”

His eyes narrowed. “You crying?”

“Just a little.”

He reached into a front pocket of his jeans, brought out a couple of neatly folded travel-sized tissues, and handed them to her. “I told you I'd have them ready.” He grinned crookedly.

In response, her insides gave a hot, insistent tug.

Wh—what?!
It had been so long since she'd experienced physical desire that she hardly recognized it. So very, very long. Years. But the tug turned into an aching pull, unmistakable to her even after all this time. Dazedly, she took the tissues from him and dabbed under her eyes.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes.”

She led him along the hall and down the central staircase. She'd noticed his handsomeness the first day they'd met, of course. But it had been more of a scholarly notation. Like the way she'd assess a painting: “Hmm. Handsome.” It hadn't affected her . . . until now. Huge uh-oh.

In the great room, she checked the baby monitor. She could hear waterfall, but nothing else.

“Sadie Jo's going to take over for you soon, right?” Bo asked.

“Yes. She insisted on doing something, so she's going to sleep
in the room with him tonight, and then she and Lynn are going to watch him in the morning until Amber gets back. She wanted to do even more, but she's eighty years old. He's too much work for her.”