“Look, I know it’s late and you’re probably tired, but I need to borrow you for a few minutes.”
I flush, heat climbing up my neck and cheeks and no doubt turning me red as a beet. “B-borrow me. Why?”
“Yes, I—” The loud yell of a baby tears into the air and my head whips around when I realize the sound is coming from his apartment. “I’m sorry, my daughter has been a little fussy all day. I’ve tried everything I’ve read on the internet but nothing seems to work. I even played music similar to what you play at night, but I can’t get her to sleep.”
Daughter?
Like, a live child? A real one? Surely I heard the man wrong.
I blink at the mammoth of a man standing in front of me. The man who has starred in all my fantasies for the better part of a year, and now he’s telling that…he has a child? A daughter.
“I…I don’t know anything about babies.”
I have so many questions. Where is the baby’s mother? And have I really been lusting over a taken man? Oh God, I’m going to be sick.
“She likes it when you play your violin. It lulls her straight to sleep, but you didn’t play tonight.”
“I was out,” I say in a daze. Something crosses his expression at the words before it’s quickly gone.
“I’m really sorry to ask this of you, but can you please play her something? I’m afraid she’ll make herself sick crying.”
I have questions and…concerns, but the sound of the baby’s cries tugs at something in me, so I nod. I grab my violin from where I left it earlier before locking my door behind me and following Hawk to his place. It’s not until we’re inside that I realize I’m practically naked, walking into the apartment of a man I am wildly attracted to.
It doesn’t matter. It shouldn’t matter.
He’s taken.
My neighbor is a father…good God!
“I had no idea you had a family,” I say, surprised by the splash of pink in his place, tastefully organized. The homey feel and the way everything is arranged could only be the work of a woman, as I can hardly imagine this giant of a man handling most of these toys without breaking them with his large hands.
But then again, I’m proven wrong when those same large hands lift a small, angry bundle from a bassinet and turn her for me to see. Peeking out from under a soft pink blanket is the red face of a furious baby. She’s so adorable in her ire that I smile despite myself.
“This is Wren. My fussy little girl,” Hawk says, moving closer so I can see the baby, and those blue eyes…oh yes, that’s his baby, alright.
“Hi there, baby Wren,” I coo. Dammit, I can’t help myself. She’s just too adorable. I offer her my finger, which she wraps in her tiny fist, and the cries dial down a bit but don’t stop completely. “Since you love my music so much, how about I play you a tune my dear old granddad used to love?”
My hot neighbor walks to the rocking chair and settles down with his daughter, so I take the sofa, sitting up straight as I tune my violin before resting it on my collarbone, stabilizing it with my chin. “It’s not the easiest tune to play, but my grandad loved to play it for me as a little girl. Lovely Wren, I present to you…‘When Sunny Gets Blue.’”
I keep my eyes on the tiny bundled-up baby as I start to play, but soon I’m transported to a moment years ago, after I lost my mother and was sent to live with my grandparents. I used to cry myself to sleep, but then one night, while Grandma was trying to calm me down, my grandfather walked in with his violin, stood by the door, and started playing.
‘When Sunny Gets Blue’ was the first tune he played for me. Over and over again for hours. For weeks and months, and after Grandma passed away I think he was playing for himself as much as for me. And then I stopped begging him to play for me and instead begged him to teach me.
Hawk doesn’t stop me, letting me play freely for nearly ten minutes, and when I open my eyes, I’m surprised by the sudden quiet. The baby is indeed asleep in his arms, but there’s something about the way he stares at me that makes me nervous. There’s more than just gratitude in those gorgeous blue eyes that send heat skirting over my skin.
“I…um, I guess I should leave now that the baby is asleep,” I say, getting up, keeping my voice low so as not to wake her. “I’ll show myself out and—”
“Wait here,” Hawk says just as quietly, and I watch as he gracefully gets up from the rocking chair before disappearing through a door down the short hallway. He’s gone for at least five minutes and all the while, I stand awkwardly in his living room with my violin, wondering why I don’t just leave. I’m considering doing just that when he comes back and dammit, he has a shirt on this time. “They told me that contact with the skin can help calm the baby, but that was just another theory that failed.”
Yeah, contact with his skin would most definitely calm this raging need burning through my body, and…that’s my cue to leave. I can’t be thinking like this! Not about someone with a newborn.
“I should go—”
“Five minutes,” he says, stopping me before I can make a quick exit. “I woke you in the middle of the night to help with a baby. I think you deserve to know why I have a kid out of the blue. And honestly, I’m a bit desperate for some adult conversation.”
As much as I would like to point out that it’s none of my business, I know I’ll only spend the night tossing and turning trying to make sense of it all, so I nod. “I guess I could stay for five more minutes.”
“Can I offer you something to drink?”
