“I’ll help you babysit Madeline,” he said.
“No, indeed.”
“It’s what your brother wanted.”
“And I’m using my veto power against my brother’s wishes. I’ll be caring for Madeline on my own. Most definitively.”
“What if Theo has to stay overnight?”
“Then I’ll care for her overnight.”
“What if he has to stay here all day tomorrow?”
That gave her pause. She owned Polka-Dot Apron Pies, Misty River’s first and only mobile pie shop. Tomorrow was Saturday, and Saturdays were busy. She’d need to begin baking in her commercial kitchen at seven thirty in the morning so that she could deliver the first round of pies to the camper trailer by opening time, at eleven.
“What time tomorrow do you need to get ready to go to work?” he asked, reading her mind.
“Six forty-five.”
“Unless I hear from you or Theo between now and then, letting me know that something’s changed, I’ll take over for you with Madeline at six forty-five.”
“Do you have experience with babies?”
“I just spent a month with my two infant nephews.”
He was too polite to add,and that makes me more qualified than you, Penelope. Madeline was her first niece, which meant she had a sum total of a week and a half of aunt experience under her belt.
“If you end up staying with Madeline overnight, will you stay at your apartment or Theo’s house?” he asked.
“Theo’s house. May I have the baby seat now?”
He set it on the ground. Since she was too nervous to attempt to carry a mini-human in one arm and a car seat in the other, she carefully laid the sleeping girl into the seat.
Madeline had been born with downy, light brown hair that stuck up at odd angles like ruffled bird feathers. In the way of newborns, she was gorgeous and, at the same time, slightly homely. Her forehead seemed to take up too much of the real estate on her face. This meant her eyes, nose, and mouth (which all appeared to be a size medium) had to jockey for space on the bottom half of her size-small head.
As Penelope wrestled with the seat’s harness, Madeline stirred, her lips creasing with displeasure, her arms flashing outward. Penelope paused, biting her lip. Madeline, dressed in a lavender footed sleeper patterned with smiling panda faces, remained blessedly asleep. When Penelope finally slid the buckle into place it gave her finger a stinging pinch. She yelped and shook out her hand.
“Baby seat injury?” Eli asked mildly.
She had a wayward urge to push him and his handsome face and perfectly fitted shirt off the side of a waterfall.
“I can carry her to the car for you,” he offered.
“Thanks, but no thanks. We’re fine. Farewell, Eli.”Gah.As she walked away, she forbid herself from sneaking one last, greedy peek at him.
As she ventured into the parking garage, she suddenly could see herself from the perspective of a camera zooming farther and farther away. Twenty-something woman of average height with slender limbs and curly brown hair, in charge of a helpless, fragile newborn baby. She’d done her best to project moxie to Eli. But in her own mind’s eye, she looked intimidated and alone.
She shook her head to scatter the image. At the moment, she couldn’t afford anything but confidence.
Wandering through the parking lot, she clicked the unlock button on Theo’s key fob again and again until she finally pinpointed his car.
“Sorry about this, sweetheart, you adorable miniscule person you,” she whispered to the sleeping baby as she turned the car seat this way and that, trying to attach it to the base. “Don’t you worry. Auntie Penelope is going to figure this out and take good care of you until Mommy and Daddy come home. Ah.” It clicked. “There. We’re off.”
She hurried around to the driver’s seat and steered them toward Theo’s house.
Penelope had been enamored with Madeline since the moment the infant had been placed in her arms. She’d stopped by Theo and Aubrey’s house every day since. She’d wanted to be helpful, but so many grandparents had been on hand that showing up at her brother’s house had been like showing up for a church project alongside five other volunteers for a job that only required one. She’d handled the baby just enough to know the basics of her care.
This was the first time Penelope had been solely responsible for the well-being of a child since her short-lived career as a babysitter in middle school. Back then, she’d sometimes become so immersed in the activities she’d started for the kids—craft projects, watercolor painting, walking the backyard in search of flowers—that she’d continued the projects after the kids lost interest, only to abruptly realize she had no idea where the children had gone. For the safety of all involved, it had been averyshort-lived career.
