Scowling darkly, he took Poppy under her armpits and carried her into the bathroom at arm’s length in front of him. She seemed to think it was a game and kicked her feet joyfully. Which, as it turned out, made putting her down and taking off her shoes an ordeal in its own right.
“What temperature should the water be?” he called out.
“Warm but not hot,” Chas called back. “Comfortable for you will be comfortable for her. She’s a human being, after all.”
Gunner heard the TV go on in the other room. The bastard was enjoying abandoning him with Poppy. Fine. He could do this. How hard could it be to give a little kid a bath?
After chasing her around the bathroom a couple of times before getting her out of her clothes, he finally scooped her up and plopped her the tub. She settled in and played with a couple of floaty toys he now understood Chas buying. Gunner sat on the toilet and watched her play. Okay. This wasn’t so bad—
Whoosh.
The little squirt had swung her arm across the surface and sent a sheet of water arcing all over him. She giggled tentatively, as if unsure of his reaction. Remembering Chas laughing last night at the antic, he forced a smile onto his face.
Whoosh. A bigger wave smacked him. Resigned to getting soaked, he reached into the water and threw a little water back at her. That earned him a squeal of laughter. He did it again. Her joy was contagious, and before long he was sitting beside the tub, his arm hanging over the edge, making balloons of washcloths, submerging them, and blowing all the air out of them in cascades of tickly bubbles under Poppy’s feet. She howled with laughter.
Chas eventually called in, “You’d better let her wind down a little or you’ll never get her down to sleep. My kindergarteners never go down for nap time right after recess. Try shampooing her hair. That knocked her out last night.”
Shampoo. Right. He grabbed the bottle of baby wash and dumped out a big handful of it. Suds went everywhere. Which, of course, Poppy thought was fantastic. It took him several minutes of emptying the tub and running more water to corral the suds, but eventually, he got the mess under control, the kid rinsed off, and the tub emptied.
He picked her up—who knew a human being could be so slippery?—and got her wrapped in a towel without dropping her on her head. He mimicked Chas’s drying her hair last night and stepped out into the bedroom.
Chas held out a white rectangle without saying a word. Diaper.
Oh God.
He took it without comment, laid Poppy on the floor, and unfolded the bath towel. She flipped over and took off crawling like a shot, and he had to dive after her. He happened to glance up and caught the unholy amusement on Chas’s face.
“Not a word,” he bit out.
Chas made a zipping motion across his lips and threw away an imaginary key.
Scowling, Gunner unfolded the diaper, chased down Poppy again, and eventually got the thing taped around her lower torso. Whether it was on backward or not, he had no idea.
A hand appeared in front of his face with the bunny onesie dangling from it. He snatched the thing out of Chas’s hand and wrestled it onto Poppy, who, to her credit, was relatively cooperative with his awkward efforts. She was so tiny and soft. And she felt so breakable. He snapped the last snap and scooped her up in his arms as an odd burst of protectiveness filled his gut. He just wanted to wrap her up and keep her safe from harm.
He glanced up and was shocked at the warmth glowing in Chas’s eyes.
“Parenthood looks good on you, Gunner.”
Gunner snorted inelegantly.
Chas handed him a bottle already made up with warm water and formula. Frowning in concentration, Gunner carefully tipped her onto her back in his right arm and poked the bottle at her mouth with his left hand. Poppy reached up and guided it into her mouth, bless her.
Her dark eyes drifted closed as she sucked on the bottle. She was so warm and relaxed in his arms, it started to rub off on him. He sat down gently in an armchair and propped up the bottle as she started to fall asleep. Sucking lazily, she mostly finished the bottle before she passed out.
Gunner rescued the bottle from falling and looked up at Chas. He mouthed, “What do I do now?”
Chas answered quietly, “I’d hold her for a few minutes to let her get good and asleep. Then, very gently, I’d lay her down in the crib.”
Gunner nodded and settled in with Poppy. Even in sleep, she moved a little bit. So alive, she was, and so vulnerable and trusting. He’d never felt anything remotely as peaceful as it was to hold her. And he had to admit, it was kind of magical.
He ended up sitting with her in his arms for close to an hour before he was willing to risk putting her down in her crib. At least that was his excuse, and he was sticking to it. Holding her for that long had nothing to do with the sense of calm that came over him as he stared down at her tiny, perfect face and watched her sleep.
When he finally turned away from the crib, Chas was holding out something else without comment—this time a glass with ice and what looked like whiskey from the refrigerator’s stock.
Gunner sipped at it as he sat down on the bed beside Chas and put up his feet. “Yep. I’m definitely Daddy Number One,” he said with relish.
Chas grinned. “I’ll hold you to that when she’s screaming her head off in a massive tantrum and refusing to stop.”
“Poppy? Never. She’s a sweet princess.”
Chas’s grin widened. “I work with kids all day, remember? Even the most angelic child has demonic moments.”
“Kind of like adults?” he asked cynically.
“Yeah.”
Chas had on a news channel, and Gunner asked him, “Any mention of Misty Falls?”
“Not a word.”
“Spencer said Homeland Security had shut down the press.”
“Can they do that?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Are we going to keep moving indefinitely?” Chas asked quietly.
“I hope not. Ideally, Spencer will figure out what happened in New Hampshire and that Poppy has nothing to do with it. Then we can turn her over to the authorities and they can work at finding her family.”
Except even as he said the words, he got a strange, painful pang in his gut.
Without comment, Chas turned off the lights and crawled into the king-sized bed, and Gunner followed suit. Sleep eluded him as he tried to figure out the source of that pang.
After about an hour of staring up at the ceiling in the dark, Gunner was startled when Chas rolled over and flung an arm and a leg across his body. He froze. All the years’ worth of fantasies tore through his head. He’d imagined sex—all kinds of it in every conceivable way—made up pillow talk conversations that they might have had in his head, even envisioned simply snuggling with Chas. Like this. Exactly like this.
To be here now, with Chas draped all over him, warm and lithe and relaxed, was more than the universe could possibly have paid him back for stealing his career out from under him.
Gunner’s right arm happened to be over his head when Chas rolled against his side; he’d been stretching out an old shoulder injury. Now he eased his arm down, sliding it carefully under the pillow Chas was lying upon. It was a tense few seconds, but at last, Chas’s head was resting on his shoulder beneath the thin pillow. It would be so easy to flex his forearm and embrace Chas, drawing him closer and holding him there all night long—an event ranked much higher on his life’s bucket list than he’d admitted to himself until this exact moment.