Making her tend to dirty diapers and waking up with baby puke on her neck might not be the best way of talking her into giving this all a try, though.
James concentrated on the baby in his arms rather than the woman who was tending to the dirty diapers. It would be easy for her to slip across the landing and shower in her own apartment. She could get dressed, make coffee, a whole bunch of stuff that would make her more prepared to face all this before she had to go to work.
Or she might not come back over here at all.
Ever.
He wouldn’t blame her. This was a strange—at best—situation and not one of her making. This wasn’t an olive tree or a bearded dragon. This was… big.
With his hand over the baby’s head, blocking his face from the direct spray, James moved back a little farther into the water, letting it run over the baby’s back. He squirmed but didn’t seem unhappy. James turned, so the water would clean the dirty parts and miss the little one's face. He ran his hand up and down the baby’s back, trying to help remove the mess, but as the kid got wetter, he also got slipperier. The baby squirmed, and James tightened his grip. He couldn’t hold him too firmly, and he couldn’t let go of his head, so he couldn’t really move his hand away from his lower back and butt. He hoped the spray would get all the stuff that needed to wash away.
A moment later, Harper was back in the bathroom, shutting the door behind her. “Is he warm enough?” she asked.
She had her phone out.
“Are you Googling how to give a baby a shower?” James asked.
“Well, I just thought—” She’d pulled the shower curtain back and stopped midsentence, staring.
James lifted his eyebrows. “Harper?”
“Uh.” It took her a second, but her gaze found his... “Yeah?”
“Everything okay?” He looked down.
“I just…” She swallowed. “I didn’t think that those could get any clingier.”
He looked down again. To his boxer briefs. They were black, so they hadn’t turned see-through in the water like white might have, but the water had definitely caused them to mold to his body like a second skin. He looked up at her and grinned. “I guess you could have just taken them off of me after all.”
She pulled in a breath through her nose, not even pretending not to take a good, long look. “All of this is just so…”
“Huge?” he supplied. Helpfully. Kind of. If he hadn’t meant it with every single ounce of innuendo he was sure she could hear it in his tone.
She snorted at that. And James fell a little harder for her. This side of Harper, when he knew the polished, sophisticated side was so much more natural for her, was fucking sexy as hell. It was intimate. She was vulnerable here, not put together, in no way on her usual turf. This was stuff she didn’t show most people. He loved it.
“I was going to say unexpected,” she said. She lifted her eyes to meet his gaze. “But yes, huge does apply.”
He gave her a wicked grin. Then the baby decided to stretch and wiggle.
James felt his hand slip slightly, and he instantly focused back on the slick bundle in his arms.
“Oh my gosh!” Harper’s hand came out instinctively, and she pressed it over James’s on the baby’s back.
“He’s slippery,” James said. “I was just trying to figure out to actually wash him and hang on at the same time.”
Harper paused for a moment, then she muttered, “Well, dammit,” and stepped over the side of the tub.
James was sure his surprise showed on his face. But he was also sure it was instantly replaced by delight.
She looked up at him. “So you got me in the shower with you.”
“That was actually pretty easy.”
She gave a soft laugh. “All you needed was a baby.”
“You think I didn’t notice that it happened after you’d fully ogled me, Professor?” he asked.
Her cheeks got a little pink, but her lips still curled. “A gentleman would have never mentioned that.”
“Who the fuck said there was a gentleman here?” he said, dropping his voice to a husky near-growl.
She was in his shower. After having been in his bed overnight. And he’d yet to really touch her. This was testing him in ways he’d never imagined, yet he was having a hell of a good time.
Baby poop aside.
Her eyes widened. “You can’t swear in front of the baby.”
James looked down. “If this kid’s first word is fuck, I’ll give you fifty bucks.”
She smiled. Her hand was still on top of his on the baby’s back. “You hold him, and I’ll wash him.”
Okay, that was going to be torturous. Her hands were going to be brushing all over James’s chest and torso too as she did this. There would be no real way to avoid that. “Or you could hold him, and I could do the washing,” he said.
Harper looked up at him, and he saw a glint of mischief there that shot an arrow of heat straight to his cock.
“You think I don’t realize that to wash him I’ll be getting you pretty soapy, too?” she asked.
James shook his head slowly. “I’m going to have to take that to mean you’re good with that situation?”
“Maybe.” Her gaze slid over him again.
Maybe, his ass.
James had no hope of hiding his erection, but he was totally fine with that.
Suddenly the buttoned-up, gorgeous, too-good-for-him professor from Apartment 3B had turned into a vixen. Who was standing in his shower in her pajamas. With baby spit-up in her hair.
“Well, Professor, you’re not going to hear any complaints about you soaping me up,” he said. “Especially as you get wetter and wetter.”
Her eyes flew to his, and he gave her a knowing grin. So she was wet. Very, very good to know.
“What?” she asked, her voice a little choked and her cheeks a lot pinker.
He looked down at the front of her pajama top. She wasn’t directly in the shower spray—yet—but the front of her shirt was getting wet all the same. And it was thin. And a light green color. That wasn’t quite as good as white would have been, but he could see skin and the darker pink of her nipples. The nipples that were nice and tight. From the water or the situation or his gaze, he didn’t know, or care. The fabric was every bit as clingy as his briefs were, and she looked like a hot coed who’d just been doused at a fund-raising car wash rather than the linguistics professor handing out term papers in a lecture hall.
Harper glanced down, too, and her eyes went wide. She covered herself with her hands instinctively, and James chuckled. “You’re gonna need those hands for soaping.”
She drew in a quick breath, squeezed her eyes shut, then dropped her hands.
His body reacted, but he forced himself to focus.
“Soap’s behind me.”
“We need to get baby soap,” she said absently, as she attempted to reach past him without leaning in.
Because if she leaned in, she’d touch him.
Of course she couldn’t reach, and she had to not only lean but take a step forward.
“We can do that later,” he said of the baby soap. He didn’t use anything too crazy, though. Nothing with major perfumes or anything in it, so he thought for one bath they’d be okay.