“Who’s that?” she asks warily.
I wet a kitchen towel and wipe Hayley’s mouth and hands clean. She hasn’t gotten it on her dress yet, but I know it’ll happen any second. Her mother will shit a brick if we send her back with dirty clothes. I tickle Hayley’s tummy and she giggles, her belly clenching as she arches into my hands. “This is Hayley.”
Hayley looks a little confused, and I pick her up, putting her on my hip. She wraps around me, and one hand covers my mouth. I kiss her palm and make noises at her. She wiggles in my grasp. She’s probably confused about the noises coming out of my mouth. I’ve never talked in front of her before.
“How old is she?”
“How old are you Hayley?” I ask her, jostling her on my hip.
She holds up three fingers.
“Three?” Kit says, like she’s amazed. “Such a big girl.” Kit looks at me. “Does she talk?”
“I don’t know,” I admit. Her lips are really hard to read, so I don’t know if she talks or if she’s just making noises. She knows how to sign simple words like food, milk, bath, water, and other things she needs. She and I do pretty well together. Most of it is just me trying to figure out what she needs, but Hayley doesn’t seem to mind. “She might.”
Kit bends down to her level and asks, “Do you talk?” Kit smiles and she’s so damn pretty making faces at Hayley that I want to kiss her. I grab Kit quickly around the waist and jerk her into my side with a hand on her hip, and she laughs, looking up at me. I kiss her on the forehead and Hayley bats the side of my face with her open palm. “I don’t think she likes that,” Kit says, backing away from me.
“She’ll have to get used to it.” Kit’s eyes meet mine, and then they skitter away.
“She’s adorable,” she says, but she’s not looking in my eyes. We’ll have to talk about that later.
“What happened to the apartment?” I ask, a grin tugging at my lips. She looks unsure of herself as she brushes her hair back from her face. That streak of dirt is still across her forehead and I reach out to wipe it away with my thumb.
She wrings her hands together and doesn’t look me in the eye. “I did a little cleaning.”
I take her chin in my hand and tip her face up to mine. “I’m glad you’re still here.”
“You’re not mad, are you?” she asks. She bites her bottom lip.
“That you’re here?” I ask softly. “I’m f**king ecstatic.”
She scowls and looks at Hayley. “Language,” she says. “And I meant about the cleaning. I started it this morning and… well… I couldn’t stop.”
“You shouldn’t have.”
“I know,” she says with a shrug. “I wanted to. And I sort of feel like I owe you guys for letting me stay here.”
“You don’t owe us anything,” I try to explain. I tug her to me again. I like the feel of this girl in my arms so much more than I should. “I like having you here.”
She smiles up at me, and then Hayley starts to jump in my arms. She’s excited, and reaches over my shoulder. I look back and Paul’s coming in the door. She gets so excited to see Paul.
Kit starts smiling beside me, and then she grins, and air escapes her in one big relaxed breath. I’m not sure what that’s about.
“You met Hayley, I see,” Paul says to Kit. She nods as Paul takes her from me. “See, Hayley,” he says to his daughter, “now you won’t be the only girl in the house.” He dances around in a circle with her. I’m reading his lips, because it’s really hard to sign when your hands are full of baby. I can’t see what he says when he dances around in a circle, but whatever it is makes Kit smile.
Kit points a finger at Paul and smiles. “She’s yours?” she asks.
Paul looks from me to her. “You’re not trying to use my daughter to score with chicks again, are you?” Paul asks, punching me in the shoulder. “I can’t let him take her to the grocery store. He gets too much attention from the ladies.”
Paul looks around the apartment and grins. “What the f**k happened here?” he asks.
Kit scowls at him, too. “Language,” she says, looking toward Hayley. She’s smiling now, though, and she looks like she’s taking deep breaths, which she wasn’t doing when I first walked into the house.
“Who cleaned?” Paul asked. He wipes a spot on Hayley’s cheek with his thumb and says, “And who gave you chocolate?” He scowls at me. I shrug my shoulders and grin.
Kit cleaned up. I pull her into my side, and she wraps an arm around my waist, lays one hand on my chest, and looks up at me. Isn’t she amazing?
Paul looks from me to her and back again, sticks his finger down his throat like he’s going to hurl and walks away with Hayley toward his bedroom. He looks back at me long enough to say, “You’re going to be late for work if you don’t hurry.” He looks down at Hayley. “Tell Uncle Logan he’s going to be late.” He shows her the sign for late and she does it. She’s adorable when she signs. They disappear into his bedroom and I look down at Kit. I bend my head and touch my lips to hers. I don’t want to pull back, but I do have to hurry. “I have to go out,” I say.
Her brows raise, and she looks wary. “Out?” she says.
I nod. “I have to work tonight. Do you want to go with me?”
She looks down at her wet shirt, and brushes a lock of hair from her forehead. “I haven’t even had a shower today.”
“How quickly can you get ready?” I ask, looking at my watch. I have thirty minutes before I have to be there.
Emily
Warm water sluices over my body, and I force myself to hurry up. Logan is probably dancing from foot to foot in the living room waiting for me so he won’t be late for work. Apparently, he’s a bouncer at some club around the corner on Friday nights. And he wants me to go with him.
I hear the door to the bathroom open and I freeze. “Matt?” I call. He’s the only one who might come into the bathroom with me, and that’s only if he’s sick.
I open the bath curtain an inch and look out. Logan is standing there, looking at me. He changed clothes, and now he’s wearing a pair of jeans, his boots, and a blue t shirt that says “Bounce(r)” on the front of it. It strains across his broad shoulders. His eyes are a startling shade of blue against the azure shirt, and he looks at my face as I poke my nose through the curtain. My hair is full of suds, and soap is burning one of my eyes. “Is something wrong?” I ask.
He shakes his head and smiles at me. He doesn’t say anything else, but he stands there with one shoulder against the wall with his arms crossed. “I have a question,” he finally says.
I lean back and wash the soap from my face and hair, and then poke my head back through, blowing water from my lips. “Ask it,” I say.
“It bothered you when you thought Hayley was mine,” he says. His face doesn’t change. He’s still appraising me closely. But he’s not leering, or trying to look at my nak*d body. He’s totally respectful, just like always.
It did bother me when I thought Hayley might be his. They have the same deep blue eyes, and their hair color is similar. And he was so familiar with her. But then she’s called Paul Daddy, and everything was suddenly all right. I know he can’t read my lips unless I stick my head out of the shower. “What makes you say that?” I ask.
He snorts. “I read people every day, all day, and I have to tell how they feel by the way they hold themselves, rather than the inflections in their voices. And something tells me that you didn’t like thinking that Hayley was mine.”
He looks closely at me, and I know he’s still appraising my reactions.
“Either you don’t like kids, or you didn’t like the idea of me having a kid.” He shuffles his feet. “I just wanted to tell you that I might not be able to hear, but I’m fully capable of taking care of a child. If I wasn’t, Paul wouldn’t leave her with me.”
He heaves a sigh, and then he turns to walk out of the door. I call his name, but he doesn’t hear me. So, I jump out of the shower and grab for the towel, letting it fall open in front of me, but I don’t have time to wrap it around me. I clutch it to my chest, and grab his arm. He turns back toward me, one eyebrow rising as he looks at me.
“It wasn’t that I don’t think you’re capable of taking care of her,” I say. “It wasn’t that at all.”
“Then what was it?” he asks.
It’s so hard to explain, but if I don’t tell him the reason it bothered me, he’ll go on thinking it’s because I think he can’t do the kid justice with his disability, and that couldn’t be farther from the truth.
“I thought she was yours,” I say with my eyes closed. He tips my chin up with an insistent finger.
“What?” he asks.
“I thought she was yours,” I repeat. This time, I make sure he can see my lips; although that’s the last thing I want him to see me say. “I thought she was your daughter.”
He grimaces. “Again, I’m fully capable of taking care of a child. I can watch the lights on a monitor just like anyone else. And changing diapers doesn’t require my ears.” He’s irritated. And I can tell it. “She cries, and I can figure out what she needs.”
“It’s not that.” God, I’m so stupid. I bury my wet face in my hands and he urges them down, watching my lips. “I was jealous,” I admit. There. I said it.
“Jealous?” he asks. “Of Hayley? She’s three, for Christ’s sake.”
“I know.” I don’t know how to tell him. “It made me wonder what kind of a stupid woman would ever let you go.” And made me realize someone else has had him. Probably a lot of someone’s. A lot of someone’s I can’t compete with.
He chuckles, the air in the room lightening. “That’s all it was?” he asks, his voice incredulous. That’s not really all it was. I also wondered how in the world I would do sharing him with someone else. But he’s not mine to share, is he? Not really. Not at all.
I nod. “That’s all. It’s not because you’re deaf. I was just jealous.” I shrug. “I’m sorry. Really, really sorry. I didn’t mean to offend you.” I want to tell him that I want him all to myself. But I’m not free to do that.
“I don’t have any kids,” he says. “In case you were wondering.”
The thought hadn’t even crossed my mind until I saw Hayley. “All right.”
“I want kids someday,” he says. His voice is soft and he’s looking into my eyes. “Do you?”
“I don’t know.” The idea of trying to help a kid of my own with homework, and spelling, and school is sometimes overwhelming to me. “I don’t think I’d make a great mother.”
His lips press against my forehead and he lays his hands on my nak*d hips. I draw in a breath. My h*ps are bare and his hands cover them completely as he pulls me toward him. The towel that was draped in front of me gets sandwiched between our bodies.