Adrianne Byrd - She's My Baby

“Merry Christmas,” he said, and walked out.

The door slammed as soon as he crossed the threshold. Garrick looked back and shook his head. “At least Scrooge was sane.”

Samantha Owens sobbed behind the wheel of her fifteen-year-old beat-up sedan. Her guilt weighed down her shoulders while the hole in her heart expanded. It had been nearly thirty minutes since she’d left Emma at her sister’s house—the longest thirty minutes of her life.

“You did the right thing,” the devil on her shoulder repeated—or was it the angel? She was so mixed up, she couldn’t tell them apart anymore. Frustrated, she dropped her head against the center of the steering wheel, and then jumped when the horn blared.

She sat up and glanced around Leila’s quiet neighborhood. Leila’s front door jerked open and for a moment, Samantha feared the worst. Instead, a handsome stranger emerged and then jumped when the front door slammed behind him.

A classic Leila move.

However, the neighbor seemed more amused than angry as he strolled with a confident swagger across the street. He was quite a specimen and she wondered whether he and her sister were more than just neighbors.

Sam dispelled the notion and refocused her attention on Leila’s McMansion. “I did the right thing,” she concluded, starting the car. “Bye, Emma. Mommy loves you.”

Garrick returned home and made a beeline to the kitchen for a pot of coffee; but after a morning with the unforgettable Leila Owens, maybe he needed something with a little more kick.

“Was a simple ‘thank you’ too much to ask for?” He shook his head and reached for his favorite can of Santo Domingo coffee. “Come to think of it, she probably never said the words before.

“She’ll need me again,” he assured himself. “Undoubtedly needing help warming a baby’s bottle. Career women.” He shook his head.

The doorbell rang.

He stopped and turned with a smug smile. “Surprise, surprise,” he mumbled as he donned a sweatshirt. He headed toward the front door and opened it with a flourish. “And what can I do for you now, Leila?”

“Merry Christmas!” Orlando and his family shouted at him with armloads of wrapped gifts.

Startled, Garrick jerked back in surprise. “Oh, uh, Merry Christmas to you, too. Uh, come on in.” He stepped back and watched them enter one by one.

“Uncle Garrick, were you surprised?” his three-year-old niece, Omara, asked.

Garrick knelt down to her level. “I sure was, honey. I can’t believe you were able to keep a secret from me. It must have been hard.”

“Real hard.” Omara blinked her long, black, curly lashes and slid her arms around his neck. “I got a ’nother surprise for you.”

“You do?” He gathered her into his arms and stood. “What kind of surprise?” He closed the door.

“I gotcha a present.”

“Oh?” Garrick rounded his eyes as wide as he could get them. “I looovve presents.”

Omara giggled.

“Uh, who is Leila?” Tamara asked, sliding out of her coat.

“What?”

Tamara glanced at her husband. “Isn’t that what he said when he answered the door?”

Orlando shrugged. “I didn’t catch the name.”

“Well, I did.” She walked over to her brother-in-law and met his gaze with her hands firmly jammed onto her hips. “Who is she? And think twice before lying to me. You know I have my ways of finding the truth.”

Garrick chuckled at Tamara aka the human lie detector. “Calm down. It’s not what you think.”

“You don’t know what I’m thinking.”

“You don’t,” Orlando piped in. “Nobody does. Nobody wants to know.”

Tamara turned her narrowed eyes toward him.

“Just trying to help my brother out.” He shrugged and returned his gaze to Garrick. “You’re on your own, bro.”

“I just want to make sure there isn’t another woman in the picture before I send him out on a date with one of my best friends. That’s all.”

“Then you can relax.” Garrick led them out of the foyer and toward the living room. “Leila is just my crazy neighbor across the street.”

Tamara perked. “You’ve already met your neighbors?”

“Just the one…and I’m already regretting it.”

Leila was ready to pull her hair out by the roots. Who knew something so tiny could be so loud…for so long? “Give me a few more minutes and your bottle will be ready,” she reassured.

She practiced bouncing the baby and patting her back the same way Garrick had, but it wasn’t working. Neither were her sorry attempts to warm up a freakin’ bottle. She’d warmed one up in the microwave with disastrous results, and she quickly learned leaving a bottle to heat for more than ten minutes on the stove caused the milky stuff to separate from the watery stuff.

Now she was on the quest to discover the perfect time for a baby bottle to warm. Meanwhile, Emma hollered as though she hadn’t eaten since Philip had passed the bread at the last supper.

“Okay. Okay, Emma,” she cooed. “I think this is going to be it.” Leila removed the bottle. “So far so good.”

Belatedly, she remembered seeing Roslyn test a bottle by squirting milk onto the back of her hand to double check the temperature, and she followed suit. However, the top wasn’t screwed on tight enough and it popped off the moment she turned the bottle over on her hand.

“Damn it!” She jumped back and managed not to drop the baby.

Emma screamed and nearly pierced Leila’s eardrum.

“What? Why are you screaming? I’m the one scalded.”

Her niece didn’t seem to care as she sucked more oxygen into her lungs and let it rip a second time.

Tears welled in the back of Leila’s eyes as her frustration reached an all-time high. She simply wasn’t made out for this sort of thing, but what choice did she have but to trudge through it?

“Okay. Okay. Please stop crying. Auntie Leila is doing the best she can.” She bounced and patted her some more as she made her way back to the diaper bag. “I’m sure we have another bottle in the bag.”

She was wrong.

“Oh, no. No. No.” She searched every inch of the bag at least ten times. “Please, God. Say this isn’t happening.”

But it was.

“Okay. I have to think.” However, Emma’s screams made it impossible.

Maybe her next-door neighbor…

Leila shook the rogue thought from her head. She couldn’t go back over there after the way she’d behaved—and she’d behaved badly. She still held in her defense that she’d practically begged the man for help, but he’d been so damn determined to bolt out of there that she…Okay, so there was really no excuse for her behavior.

Exhaling, Leila dug back through the bag and found small glass jars of baby food. “Oh, thank God.” She exhaled. “Let’s see what we have in here.” She returned to the stove, but once again was plagued with how long it took to warm up food.

Her stomach rumbled and reminded her that she, too, needed breakfast. “One thing at a time,” she told herself. “Okay, we have some very interesting-looking chicken and beef here.”

Emma bucked in her arms and grabbed a healthy portion of Leila’s hair.

“Ouch, you little spoiled brat.” Leila dropped one of the glass jars and ignored it when it shattered at her feet. “Let go.” She tugged for Emma to release her hold. Instead, the child yanked harder and intensified Leila’s mountainous headache. With one last pull, she finally let go.

“Oh, I give up.” Leila spun around and marched out of the kitchen. “Pride be damned. I can’t do this.”

Now dressed in a comfortable pair of jeans and a T-shirt, Garrick returned to the sparsely decorated living room with a six-inch tabletop Christmas tree that easily made Charlie Brown’s worthy for Times Square.