“Don’t apologize.” I stepped inside and kicked off my shoes, then held out my arms, waving with one. “Hand him over.”
“W-what?” She shied away, putting a shoulder between me and her baby.
“I’m not going to hurt him. I just want to help.” Maybe what that kid needed was another pair of arms. Another voice.
She blinked. “Huh?”
“Listen, if he sleeps, I sleep, you sleep. Can we just . . . try something other than this? Let me walk him around for a while. Probably won’t matter but at the very least, you can take a breather.”
Memphis’s shoulders fell and she glanced down at her crying son. “He doesn’t know you.”
“There’s only one way to fix that.”
She hesitated another moment, but when Drake let out another wail and kicked his tiny feet, she shifted my way.
The handoff was awkward. Her arms seemed reluctant to let him go, but finally, when I had him cradled in the crook of an elbow, she inched away. Her shoulders remained stiff as she wrapped her arms around her middle and barely gave me enough room to breathe.
“I won’t drop him,” I promised.
She nodded.
I stepped past her, walking the length of the loft. My bare feet sank into the plush carpet, and it wasn’t until I’d made it across the room that I finally took a good look at the kid in my arms.
Christ, this was a bad idea. A really fucking bad idea. What the hell had I been thinking? He kept crying, because yeah, he didn’t know me. And it was too similar. It was too hard.
The only thing that kept me from bolting was his hair.
He had his mother’s blond hair.
Not black, like Jadon’s. Blond.
This was not the same child. This was not the same situation.
I swallowed hard, past the ache, and walked toward the door. “Drake.”
Blond, baby Drake. It was a great name. He was a solid kid. That was different too. Drake seemed strong. Like Hudson, he had a good weight. And Memphis had been hefting him around on her own every night.
“All right, boss,” I told Drake. “We need to tone this down.”
His chest shook as his breath hitched between a cry.
“I need sleep. So do you. So does your mom. How about we quit the night shift?” I set out for the opposite end of the room again, passing Memphis, who still hadn’t moved. I hit the wall and turned, going to the door again. All while Drake cried.
“You’re okay.” I bounced him as I walked, patting his diapered butt. He was in a pair of footed pajamas, the blue print fabric full of puppies. “When I was a kid, I had a dog. Her name was Scout.”
I kept walking, slow and measured strides, to the door, then the window. “She was brown with floppy ears and a stubby tail. Her favorite thing in the summer was to run through the yard sprinklers. And in the winter, she’d jump in the biggest snowbanks, burying herself so far down we weren’t sure she’d make it out.”
Memphis finally unstuck her feet and walked to the couch, perching on an arm. She was in a thin black night shirt with sleeves that draped to her elbows and a neckline that scooped low. The hem ended at her thighs, riding up as she sat.
She wasn’t tall, but damn she had some legs. I tore my eyes away from the taut, smooth skin and shifted Drake so he was propped up on a shoulder. Then I patted his back, my hand so long that the base of my palm was at the top of his diaper and my fingertips brushing the soft strands of hair at his nape.
It took one more trip to the door and back before the crying changed to whimpers. Then it vanished, swept away through an open window.
The quiet was deafening.
Memphis gasped. “It usually takes me hours.”
“My brother Griffin has a kid this age.”
“He’s married to Winslow, right?”
I nodded. “Yeah. I was over there tonight and Hudson was not about his mom. But Griffin took him and it settled him down. Probably just a different voice.”
Memphis dropped her chin, her blond hair falling around her face. But it couldn’t hide the tear that dripped to her lap.
“Do you need me to carry you around too? Pat your back? Tell you about my childhood pets?” I teased.
She looked up and smiled, wiping her face dry. “I’m just really tired.”
Drake let out a squawk but didn’t start wailing again.
“I can take him,” she said.
“Go lie down. I’ll walk him until he’s asleep.”
“You don’t—”
“Have to do that.” I finished her sentence. “But I’m going to. Go. Rest.”
She stood and trudged to the bed, sliding beneath the covers. Then she clung to a pillow, holding it close to her chest. “How did you become a chef?”
“That’s not sleeping.”
“Tell me anyway.”
I walked to the wall and hit the light switch, bathing the loft in darkness. “My mom is a fantastic cook. When I was growing up, my dad was always so busy on the ranch. He’d take Griff with him a lot but I was too young, so I’d stay home with Mom and my twin sisters when they were babies. She’d cart us to the hotel with her during the day, and then in the evenings, she’d put them in swings or a play area and set me on the counter to help make dinner.”
My earliest memory was from when I was around five, the summer before I’d started kindergarten. Mom had been pregnant with Eloise. The twins had been little and were always chasing me around. Griff had been learning to ride and I’d felt left out.
Mom had been busy with something so I’d told her I’d make dinner. She must have thought I was kidding because she’d agreed.
It wasn’t so much the plates of chips and crackers that I remembered, it was the shock on her face when she’d come into the kitchen from wrangling the twins and found me sitting on the counter, attempting peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.
“I had other interests. Sports. Horses. I spent my summers working on the ranch beside Griffin and Dad. But I always gravitated back to the kitchen. When I finished high school, I knew college wasn’t for me, so I enrolled in culinary school. Learned a lot. Worked at some amazing restaurants until it was time to come home.”
Memphis hummed, a dreamy, sleepy sound.
And her son was totally out on my chest.
It was probably safe to put him down, retreat to my own bed, but I kept walking. Just in case.
“Why is it named Knuckles? The restaurant?” Memphis’s voice was no more than a whisper, muffled by the pillow.
“It was my nickname in culinary school. My first week I tried to impress an instructor. Got cocky. I was grating some carrots and not paying attention. Slipped and grated my knuckles instead.”
“Ouch,” she hissed.
“Had a bunch of cuts and made a fool of myself.” A few scars still remained on my hand.
“And earned yourself a nickname.”
“When we did the restaurant remodel, I sat down with the architect and he asked me about a name for a sign. Knuckles popped into my head and that was it.” I drifted off my path and carried Drake to the crib in the corner, bending low to set him down.
His arms instantly rose above his head. His lips parted. His eyelashes formed half-moons above his smooth cheeks. He was . . . precious.