Chapter Four #2
Foolish. Agustin was a grown, capable man. Perhaps he was not familiar with how to take care of a baby, but he could handle it for an hour. So she’d set up her laptop far away and gotten to work.
Once she had the plane and car situated for their approaching guests, she took a little time to pace and try to determine how best to approach the countess—email, phone call, message left with assistant?
In the end, she started with the assistant, who passed her off to a fuming countess.
“And he could not inform me of this himself?” she demanded.
Mara kept a smile on her face, even though the countess couldn’t see her.
She found the fake expression helped her fake cheer.
“He does send his apologies. If this was anything he could get away from, he would have done so and talked to you personally. Unfortunately, it is a very time-consuming and pressing matter.”
Mara was met with an icy silence.
“He absolutely still wants you to come,” she continued. “He just won’t be able to give you his undivided attention until next week. You can still come, of course.” Which was a bluff Mara hoped didn’t blow up in her face. “I could arrange some outings for you. The island is a bit rugged, but—”
“I will wait. You may make new arrangements with my assistant.” And then she was passed off to said assistant to make arrangements for next week. Mara maintained her forced cheer through the whole endeavor, not letting her fake smile fall until she hit End.
After she hung up the phone, she stood there for a moment, hoping against hope that everything with Julia was situated enough by next week for the countess to come. But it was hard to believe they could get an entire child sorted in a week.
“I hope you know what you’re doing, Agustin,” she muttered. Though if anyone could sort all these impossible things in such a short period of time, it was—
“Do you always talk to yourself?”
Mara stood stock-still as the sound of Agustin’s deep voice echoed in the room. Being caught talking to herself was nearly as embarrassing as her reaction to turbulence. But she could hardly let him know that.
She took a deep breath, willing her cheeks not to heat.
“I did not realize you were there.” She turned, a smile fixed on her face, but it became genuine at the sight of Julia.
Particularly in the arms of Agustin, who’d shed his suit jacket somewhere along the way and was only wearing the white button-down.
He still had his tie on, but it was askew.
It was the most disarray she’d ever seen him in. Still, he looked more comfortable already with the baby in his arms, and Julia was taking to them both without any distrust or suspicion or fussiness. She was a sweet little thing.
“Senor Silva has returned,” Agustin announced. “I must unload the supplies, as he is unable, so you will have to take her.”
Mara took the proffered baby, getting better at angling herself so her body did not brush her boss’s.
“Are you still pleased with your decision to not trust any staff?” she asked him, half teasing since unloading a truck was likely something he’d never done in his entire life.
He eyed the baby in her arms. “Yes, even more so. I can handle a little labor.”
She did not argue this point. Though the man kept himself in prime physical shape—something she wished she did not know—she had never seen him do any kind of manual labor before.
He left, and she bounced the baby on her hip, drifting toward the window that looked out over the front. There was indeed a truck parked out there—an old and dusty thing—but with a bed full of boxes and what was very clearly a crib even though it was wrapped in a blanket.
“Well, we will owe Senor Silva a debt, won’t we?” she murmured at the baby, still peering outside.
A few minutes later, Agustin appeared outside. He had lost his tie, and his sleeves were now rolled up to the elbows.
Mara made an involuntary kind of noise. This time heat did infuse her cheeks. How embarrassing. But it was just a little bit of muscle. A girl was allowed some vices, wasn’t she?
Ogling your boss isn’t one of them. But she watched as he opened the tailgate of the truck, hefted out the first box and began walking toward the castle.
Agustin Delgado hauling things out of a truck.
She wished she had the time to stand there and watch—from an amusement perspective, not an ogling one—but Julia needed a diaper change.
Something the very strong and very irritating man in question had no doubt left for her.
On a sigh, she turned her attention to the baby.
“But you are more important than a silly fantasy, aren’t you? ”
Julia gurgled a response Mara took as the affirmative, then went in search of the baby’s bag. She changed her, then because it had been about two hours and the baby was getting fussy, made her another bottle.
She didn’t eat as enthusiastically this time around, and her eyes began to droop.
“Oh, you’re just tired, poor thing,” Mara muttered. Hopefully Agustin had found a suitable room to put Julia’s borrowed crib in. She watched as the baby’s mouth stopped moving, eyes fully closed, then removed the bottle.
Carefully, she adjusted her hold and brought Julia up onto her shoulder. Julia didn’t so much as stir, so Mara rubbed the baby’s back, heard the soft burp she’d been waiting for, then just sat there, enjoying the warm weight of another human on her chest.
She wasn’t sure how much time had passed, but Agustin strode in eventually—still in the dress shirt from before, now streaked with dust and dirt, the sleeves still rolled up, and two buttons undone at the top.
They really needed a staff. She did not know what she was supposed to do with all…this. He was easy to ignore when he was in his usual business attire.
Is he?
Okay, maybe easy wasn’t the right word, but she’d learned all the tricks for keeping her mind focused on work, not how he filled out a suit.
Putting all that aside, she lifted a finger to her lips. Agustin nodded, then gestured for her to follow him.
She looked down at the sleeping Julia, hoping the baby would stay asleep while she followed Agustin to whatever he wanted.
He led her away from the kitchens and the cold, empty-feeling hall into a carpeted one. Lights gleamed, portraits lined the walls—all well dusted and cared for. This must be the royal wing.
The carpet runner was soft under her heels, and she followed Agustin until he stopped at an open door and ushered her in.
Mara peeked her head in and couldn’t quite hold back a sigh of pleasure.
The room was spacious, beautiful. There was a giant four-poster bed in one corner, delicate stained-glass windows along the outer wall, and beautiful prisms of colored light danced on the plush carpet. Everything was soft and felt, once again, like walking into a fairy tale.
And in the corner was the crib from the truck. In this room, it didn’t look too terribly secondhand, or maybe that was just the addition of the mattress and the pretty pink bedding.
It was absolutely beautiful—peaceful and luxurious. Mara could easily imagine waking up here every morning. The silence, the pretty light. Made for a princess.
Which Mara was not, and neither was Julia for that matter, though she would no doubt be treated as one if she was a Delgado. Mara would ensure it herself.
She moved over to the crib, carefully shifting Julia’s weight in her arms so she could lean over the edge and lay the baby on the mattress. Everything looked as it should. Well-used, but clean and not very old.
Once Julia was settled on her back, still fast asleep, Mara took the blanket out of the crib.
She’d have to do more research, but when her sisters were little, you weren’t supposed to keep any bedding in the crib at this age.
She held it in her hands, the soft, pink fabric like some tether to reality.
Then she glanced back at Agustin, her other tether. She stepped carefully away from the crib to where Agustin stood at the other end of the room, her heels faint thuds against the lush carpet under her feet.
“This was to be the countess’s room,” Agustin said quietly when she approached. “It will be yours while we figure out our next steps for Julia.”
It was the first time he’d said the baby’s name. It sounded weighty when he did in that low voice. It tugged at something in her heart.
Luckily, the rest of the sentence penetrated. “Agustin, I am not—”
“Yes, I know. You are not a nanny. I am aware.” He moved over to an interior door and opened it. “Through this en suite is my room. The crib is on wheels. We can take turns.”
Turns. Their bedrooms separated by a bathroom and a hallway. That felt very intimate, and she could not let her mind linger on that. So she focused on the irritating part of what he was saying.
“But I get the first shift.”
“You know what you are doing. I am still learning. This is only sensible.”
Sensible. More like he was hoping that by tomorrow night this would be settled, and Julia would be elsewhere.
Not on her watch. Maybe this baby was nothing to her—not blood or hers in any way, but she would ensure the child was settled. Never treated as disposable. Abandonable. No, that sweet little life would never be allowed to fill the sting of that.
And yes, perhaps that spoke of some of her own issues, but so be it.
“If you bring me my laptop, I can get some work done while she sleeps,” she told Agustin a little primly. “But you will need to handle—”
“Meal arrangements. Yes, I know. It is handled. I will let you know when dinner is ready.” And with that, he strode away, leaving her with a sleeping baby and a beautiful room.
And quite a few complicated feelings about babies and attractive bosses than she didn’t know what to do with.