Chapter 12
“Turns out Zane needs diaper lessons. At four in the morning. Lucky me.”
Sloane
I collapse on the bed and Boozer immediately snuggles into me. I’m surprised he’s not repulsed by how bad I smell. But I refuse to shower at three in the morning. I won’t be responsible for waking Adele.
I wrap my arms around Boozer and fall to sleep.
“WAH!”
I groan. Adele has some lungs on her for such a small baby.
“WAH!”
I bury my head under the pillow. Zane is supposed to care for Adele in the middle of the night. Since it’s still dark out, he’s up.
“WAH!”
And now I’m up.
I crawl out of bed and stumble to the nursery. “What’s going on? Why is Adele screaming?”
“It’s fine. Go back to bed.”
I snort. It’s fine are words I learned to ignore when I was eight and Mom decided to bake hash brownies and serve them to the women at the PTA meeting for shits and giggles. It was not fine. Which is why we moved two weeks later.
“What’s the problem?” I push the hair out of my face so I can scan the room.
Adele squirms in Zane’s arms. Judging by the stain on his shirt, she needs changing.
“You need to change her.”
“I know. I’m trying.”
I lift an eyebrow. “By holding her in your arms?”
“This shit’s hard.”
I giggle. “Pun intended?”
He glares at me. “You’re not funny.”
“I’m a little bit funny.” I clear my throat. “But, seriously, how have you not figured out how to change her diaper yet? You’ve had her for a week now.”
His cheeks darken. “Mom’s been helping out.”
My eyes widen. “You let your mother change all of your daughter’s diapers?”
He shrugs. “She had six boys. She’s an expert.”
I didn’t expect to give a baby changing lesson at four a.m., but here we are, and here we go. I point to the changing table. “Lay the baby down.”
“She cries when I lay her down.”
“She’s going to cry until her diaper’s changed.”
“Fine.” He lays her on the table.
“Now, remove her onesie.”
He fumbles with the snaps.
“What is the problem? It’s a onesie. It’s not a NASA space suit.”
“She won’t stop squirming,” he mutters as he finally gets the snaps open.
“Good job. Now open and remove the dirty diaper.”
He peels back the diaper and recoils. “How can something this small make something this foul?”
“Ah, the joys of parenthood.”
He holds the diaper up in the air.
“Put it in the diaper bucket.”
He throws the diaper away and the smell in the room immediately improves. “Ah, this is why my family gave me a diaper bucket.”
“You’re starting to get it, daddy-o.”
He grabs a fresh diaper from the stack, but I stop him. “Hold up. You need to clean her first.”
“Clean her?”
I point to the baby wipes. “With those.”
He snags one and starts wiping from back to front. I stop him. “Don’t ever wipe from back to front unless you want her at the doctor’s tomorrow.”
He groans. “There are rules? There are rules for poop?”
Adele squirms and kicks the baby wipe container. It crashes to the ground. “You need to distract her before she poops all over you.”
His eyes widen. “Poops all over me? It’s possible for her to poop all over me?”
“Not only possible but pretty much a given. She’ll poop on you. Pee on you. Throw up on you. Think of a body fluid and she’ll manage to get it on you.”
“How is this my life?” he grumbles.
“Oh no. Do you need me to explain the birds and the bees to you? Can it wait until morning? I need to do some research and maybe buy a book and a puppet.”
“Funny girl, I don’t need you to explain sex to me.”
“Phew. I was worried there for a minute.”
Adele kicks and hits Zane in the eye. “Motherfucker.”
I wag my finger at him. “No swearing in front of the baby unless you want her first word to be fuck.”
I snag a stuffed mermaid from the toys piled on the rocking chair and shake it in front of Adele’s face. She giggles and reaches for it. “Who’s a pretty baby?”
I elbow Zane. “She’s distracted. Get a clean diaper on her.”
He digs a diaper out of the package and lays it on top of her.
“It’s not a blanket, genius. Lift her legs up, slide it under.”
He manages to get the diaper in place. “Good?”
His insecurity is adorable. He’s trying. He’s trying to care for this little baby who was dropped on his doorstep with no warning. Maybe I should give him more credit. Maybe I shouldn’t be so hard on him.
Adele yelps. Zane stuck the tabs to her skin instead of the diaper.
“She’s not a Christmas present you’re wrapping. Tabs to tabs. Be careful of her skin.”
He frowns. “Damnit. I didn’t mean to hurt her.”
“It’s okay.” I squeeze his bicep. Oops! Mistake. His bicep is hard. Reminding me of how strong this man is. Of how much he can handle.
Nope. Nope. Nope. I am not developing a crush on Zane Raider. He’s sexy and my body longs for him, but he is not the man for me. Player, remember?
“There,” he announces and I force thoughts away from all the dirty things I want to do with him. There’s a baby in the room, Sloane! A baby!
He starts to lift her from the table but I stop him. “She’s not dressed.”
“Oh, right.” He reaches for the onesie he removed from her.
“It’s dirty.”
He shakes his head as he grabs a clean onesie from the pile. “No wonder my family thought I needed two thousand of these.”
“Your family really stepped up for you.”
He grins. “The Raider brothers are always there for each other.”
“Must be nice,” I mumble.
“What?”
“Nothing.” I force a smile. “Get this little poop monster dressed and then everyone can go back to sleep.”
He contemplates me for a moment. Please don’t ask. Four in the morning, while changing a poopy diaper, is not the time to reveal all of my secrets.
Eventually, he drops his gaze to concentrate on the baby. My shoulders sag in relief. He struggles with the snaps on the onesie. “Does baby Velcro exist?”
“You’ll get used to it.”
He lifts Adele up and cuddles her close. “How does she smell this good now? After…” He motions to the diaper pail and his nose wrinkles.
I smooth a hand over her head. “Babies smell good.”
His lips turn up as he stares down at his daughter. “Nah. Adele smells good. Other babies are immaterial.”
Oh boy. Zane smiling at his baby is sexier than anything I’ve ever seen before. I need to get out of here before I attack him – baby and all.
But before I can escape, he sniffs. “Speaking of smells, why do you smell like a frat party?”
I groan. “Some out-of-towners decided to challenge a few locals to a drinking game.”
He chuckles. “I bet they regret challenging smugglers.”
“I warned them Smuggler’s Hideaway moonshine wasn’t the same as moonshine in other places, but they wouldn’t listen.”
“Do landlubbers ever listen?”
“When Trent yells at them to get out, they usually do.”
His brow wrinkles. “Usually? Are there customers who refuse to leave? They don’t attack you, do they?”
My heart warms at his concern for me. It’s been a long time since someone was concerned for me. I wave away his concern before my heart can get used to the feeling. This is Zane. He becomes nauseous whenever anyone uses the word relationship.
“It’s all fine. We have a baseball bat behind the bar, and Dave claims to know martial arts.”
“Dave? The bartender who used to hide in the boys’ bathroom at school to avoid gym class knows martial arts?”
“He…” I trail off when a yawn hits me.
Zane nudges me toward the hallway. “Go. Get some sleep. I promise to keep this little terror quiet until the morning.”
He says little terror, but the way he’s staring at Adele has my heart melting into a puddle of goo on the floor. Puddle of goo? There will be no puddles of goo where Zane is concerned.
I hurry to my bedroom before I do something I regret. Such as fall head over heels in love with the least available man on Smuggler’s Hideaway.