Chapter Eleven
Magnolia
Iwas going to kill Vance. I was pretty sure the judge would rule it as justifiable homicide.
He left me alone with Rosalie, the coward.
Okay, we both had work to do, and Vance's timeline was more urgent than my own.
The centerpiece of his upcoming show, an enormous sculpture twice as tall as he was, was still not finished.
It looked finished to me. It looked finished to Sloane, his agent and the owner of the gallery hosting the show, but Vance insisted it wasn't done. Sloane had ordered him to have it completed by the end of the day.
Not that Vance paid any mind to Sloane's orders. We were used to that. She tried to boss him around. Vance ignored her. She ordered me to get results. Vance ignored me. Sloane yelled at me.
Then the whole cycle repeated all over again. She'd already called me three times.
I was ignoring her.
I wasn't answering the phone. Not yet. Sloane wanted to talk about the layout for the brochures for Vance's show, and they weren't finished. At this rate, they were never going to be finished. On a normal day, I had a pretty full schedule. It was flexible, but I still had to get the work done.
I did not have an open slot on my to-do list for a four-month-old. Apparently, infants were a full-time job unto themselves. With Vance downstairs, armed with a blow torch, I was on my own, just me and Rosalie.
For a while, I thought I had it made. Rosie was happily lying on her back in the floor gym we'd picked out for her, batting at the toys, bells, and rattles overhead, making cute baby sounds, and even falling asleep for a blissfully quiet half hour.
Sitting at my desk, a mug of steaming coffee at my side, the sleeping Rosie on the floor, I thought I could do this. I could take care of Rosie and get my work done.
Then she woke up. A diaper change, a bottle—mostly spit up on me—and endless tracks around the loft with me bouncing her and singing to her and begging her.
I was ready to scream.
Or cry.
We'd gotten another one of those musical swing chairs for the loft and had even put it together, but Rosalie was not a fan. To be honest, neither was I. It came with eleven different songs, and every one was annoying.
What she liked best was being held tightly against my chest while I spun in a circle and sang to her. I was glad I'd found something that stopped her crying, but much like bouncing her on my hip, I couldn't spin in circles all day.
I tried tucking her into my arms like a football, as Vance did, and offering the bottle again.
No luck. Rosie didn't like this position with me, maybe because my arms were a third the size of Vance's. Maybe she just preferred her daddy.
I could sympathize. I tended to prefer her daddy too. Even when I wanted to kill him.
I thought about storming downstairs and demanding he put away the blowtorch and take Rosie, but I didn't. For one, he needed to finish the sculpture. And two, I could handle a four-month-old.
Well, I wasn't doing such a great job with it so far, but I was determined. Rosalie had two people in the world she could depend on, Vance and me.
It was ironic that the party boy who never gave a thought to commitment or family was a natural with the baby, while I'd dreamed of having a family for years and I was completely at sea when faced with tiny Rosalie.
I put Rosie back in the floor gym for a minute, ignoring her brain melting screeches, and rummaged through the empty boxes and bags littering the loft for the nursing pillow I was sure we'd purchased.
While I wasn't nursing Rosie, the pillow helped me to prop her up in my lap at exactly the right angle to give her a bottle.
I never would've made it through the night before if I hadn't had it, but I'd left that pillow at home, sure I could find the one we'd bought for Vance's loft. I finally located it, shoved underneath the rolling bassinet in the kitchen, and I got Rosie in position to eat.
It took some singing and rocking to calm her down enough to get interested in the bottle, but once she started on the bottle, she ate happily enough and fell asleep.
Sleep. There was nothing as lovely as a sleeping baby. I had piles of work on my desk and brochures to lay out, but I sat in the armchair holding Rosie, watching her sleep. She was so tiny and so beautiful, especially when she wasn't shattering my eardrums or throwing up in my hair.
My heart squeezed. She wasn't mine. I would have to learn to live with that. She was Vance's, and someday, there would be another woman who would be Rosie's mom.
Not me. I was Vance's friend. I worked for him, but that was it.
I would be Aunt Magnolia. That was okay. It was. It would have to be. Hoping for anything more would be foolish. I'd been left enough in my life.
Now that Brayden was out of the picture, I was done with risking my heart. This life I had was good enough as it was. Maybe I didn't need a family. What if I had married Brayden and we'd had children, and then I found out he'd been cheating on me? How much worse would that have been?
As it was, he'd hurt my pride more than my heart. My whole life, I'd wanted a family to make up for the one that had dumped me in boarding school and left, but maybe I was wrong. Maybe this—being Aunt Magnolia—was good enough. I couldn't lose her because she wasn't mine, and neither was Vance.
At that depressing thought, I stood, carefully, hoping I could tuck Rosie into her bassinet and get a little more work done before her nap was over. I'd only taken a few steps when the phone rang. I'd long ago silenced the ringer on my own phone. I'd forgotten about the landline to the loft office.
Dammit. As quickly as I could, I put Rosie in the bassinet and snatched up the phone before it could ring again.
"Yes?" I asked, trying to sound professional instead of annoyed.
"Why aren't you answering your phone?"
Sloane.
Of course.
Her shrill voice cut across the phone line, drilling into my head more painfully than the worst of Rosie’s screams.
"We're on a deadline, Maggie. Or did you forget the show? I did not hire you to play around over there. I need those brochures, and I needed them yesterday."
"You didn't hire me, Sloane," I said with exaggerated patience.
Sloane liked to take credit for my job with Vance. She might have provided the connection between Vance and myself, but that was it.
I'd learned over the last two years that Sloane took any excuse she could to insert herself into Vance's life. She had a reputation for collecting her artists in more ways than one.
I knew Vance had never slept with her—he'd admitted that her pursuit creeped him out—but Sloane refused to give up.
Vance would have found another gallery, but he liked Rupert and didn't want to explain his reasons if he fired Sloane. Besides, she was rude, annoying, and regularly sexually harassed him, but she was very good at selling art.
Vance didn't have the patience to take over promoting his work, so he stuck with Sloane, ignoring her rudeness and dodging her come-ons.
"Where are the brochures?" she demanded. "They need to go to the printer this afternoon."
"I'm aware of that, Sloane," I said with a sigh. "They're almost done. I'll have them this afternoon, or at the worst, tomorrow morning. You're just going to have to be patient."
"I don't do patient, Maggie. You know that. Get me the brochures, or I'll have to come over there. Put Vance on the phone."
"Vance is in his studio, Sloane."
"He'd better be finishing that piece."
"He is. He said it would be done by tomorrow."
"It was supposed to be done two weeks ago," she grumbled.
She wasn't wrong, but Vance didn't care. Neither did I. Not really. This wasn't our first show, and this wasn't the first time I'd been caught between the two of them—Sloane with her schedule and Vance determined to get the work right.
I paced across the office, trying to figure out what to say to get Sloane off my back, when I stubbed my toe on the chair, sending it rolling across the floor and into the side of my desk. Metal hit wood with a crash, and my heart sank.
A second later, Rosie started to cry.
Crap.
So far, almost no one knew about Rosalie, just Vance's doctor and his attorney. He hadn’t decided what he wanted to say, and I did not want to be the one to spill the beans.
Especially not to Sloane, who was as proficient a gossip as she was an art dealer.
"What. Is. That?" she screeched.
Double crap.
"Sloane, I have to go," I said. "I'll get you the brochures ASAP, I promise."
"Is that a baby? Is there a baby over there?"
"Sloane, don't worry about it. I have to go."
"Why is there a baby over there, Maggie? Answer me, or I'll close the gallery and come see what's going on for myself."
Oh, no. No, no, no.
That was not a good idea. I was contemplating snatching up Rosie and running for the hills. Rosie cried louder, and I ignored Sloane's questions for a second to peek into the bassinet.
Triple crap.
She'd spit up in her crib and all over herself, and the stink of a loaded diaper wafted up to greet me. I knew I should've burped her after that bottle, but she'd been so sweetly asleep that I couldn't bear to risk waking her.
Now I really did have to go.
At the moment, I had two responsibilities in my life—my job and Rosie. There was no question which was more important. The job could wait.
Since I was absolutely positive my boss would agree that his daughter was more important than designing brochures, I decided the easiest way to get rid of Sloane was a lie. I was not a good liar, but I had to risk it.
"Sloane, I'm sorry. I have to go. I'm helping a friend out by babysitting. It's her baby, she's crying, and I have to figure out what's wrong."
"You don't have time for babysitting, Maggie. You have a job to do, and if you don't want to get fired, you'd better get your ass back to your desk and—"
I missed the rest of Sloane's threat. She did not have the power to fire me. I hung up the phone and went to Rosie. Ugh. Everything within a foot of her needed to be washed.
It turned out little Rosalie loved taking baths. She was a slippery little bug, and even with the plastic bathtub set in the sink, I was half terrified she was going to slip and hit her head or get too much water in her eyes.
But I managed to get her cleaned up, freshly diapered, and in a new onesie. We won't talk about the mess in the kitchen or the fact that my clothes were soaking wet. I was focused on the clean, dry, happy baby.
I was fastening the last snap when the elevator rumbled and Vance entered the loft.
"What happened to you?" He asked, the words concerned, but laughter danced in his eyes.
I made a face and looked down at myself. I'd started the day reasonably put together. I'd put my hair up, so at least that was still okay, but my navy dress was a disaster, wet down the front, speckled with baby powder and smeared on the shoulder with formula and drool.
I hadn't thought to pack a change of clothes. We had diapers and extra outfits for Rosie. I had spare running clothes at the loft, but that was it. It looked like it was leggings and a tank top for the rest of my workday.
Annoyed that Rosie was clean and happy just in time for me to hand her off, I deposited her in Vance's arms and left the room to change.
When I came back, I said, "Did you get it done? Sloane just called, and she's on the warpath. By the way, she heard Rosie crying and I told her I was babysitting for a friend. I didn't think you were ready to tell everyone about Rosalie."
"Not yet," Vance agreed, rubbing his nose against Rosie's. "I need to think about what we're going to say. But I got the piece done. Can you call Sloane and tell her someone can come pick it up?"
I shook my head. "Not right now. If I don't finish the layout for those brochures, she's going to chew me a new one. Again. I've had enough of being yelled at today, thank you very much. Rosie is the only one who's allowed to scream at me."
Vance's eyes narrowed. "What did Sloane say? I told her to watch the way she talks to you."
"I appreciate the thought, Vance, but she talks that way to everyone except for you. She's just a bitch. I can handle her. But you need to take Rosie for at least two hours so I can get these brochures done, or Sloane is going to come over here, and neither of us wants that."
"No," Vance agreed. "Hold her for just a sec while I change, and then we'll get out of your hair."
I took Rosie, and she settled into my arms, laying her head against my shoulder and drooling on my collarbone. She smelled of lavender and lemons. I almost didn't want to give her back when Vance emerged from his bedroom in a long-sleeved T-shirt and a pair of athletic shorts.
"Where are you going? Are you taking her down to the gym?"
"Up on the roof," he said, rummaging through the bags on the couch and coming up with an adorable pink fleece-lined sweater and matching hat. "It's almost sixty degrees and sunny. We both need some fresh air."
I didn't argue, just helped him get her bundled up. We were probably being overprotective. It wasn't that cold out.
I wondered if I should go up there with them, then I remembered I had work to finish. I liked my job, but I'd rather be outside in the sun with Vance and Rosalie.
Vance tucked Rosalie against his shoulder and scooped up the baby bouncy in his other hand before disappearing into the elevator.
I settled myself back at my desk and dove into my project. The loft was too quiet without Rosie and Vance.
It was hard to believe that an hour before, I'd wanted nothing so much as peace and quiet.
Now that I had it, I wanted Vance and Rosie to come back.