Crazy for Loving You: A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy(34)

“Does that thing have a prosthetic leg?” I ask aloud.

“Mind your own fucking business!” the parrot from yesterday morning squawks at me.

Christ.

Was that really just yesterday morning?

“I guess we’re not supposed to know,” Becca says with a forced cheer. “Do you think Daisy will be okay?”

“Yeah. She’ll be fine.”

She better be fucking fine, because I’m about done with the emotional roller coaster.

“This works out well, since I have all the baby stuff,” Becca offers. “I mean, the part where I’m giving you a ride. Not the part where Daisy had an allergic reaction.”

“Yeah,” I agree. I try to smile back at her, but it’s hard to smile when you’re gripping a phone so hard you can feel it in your molars. Not that I expect either of them to call me with an update, but I’d very much like to hear that Daisy’s okay.

Becca looks away toward the parking lot.

We manage to get most everything crammed in the trunk of her Corolla—which is easier than it was to cram it into Daisy’s Daisy Wagon—and we go out of our way to not accidentally touch while getting Remy’s baby carrier strapped in well enough without the built-in base that hooks into the car’s latch system. The entire ride to Daisy’s mansion, the only thing we talk about is which street to turn on.

As soon as the porte-cochère comes into view around the bend, and then the house itself, Becca gawks with undisguised lust. “Wow.”

She finds a house more sexually attractive than she finds me.

And I’m not as offended as I should be, but I still feel fucking awkward.

A woman I vaguely recognize—Daisy’s personal assistant, I think—bustles out the front door when we stop under the porte-cochère. “Daisy will be a few hours,” she tells me. “Which means you get to deal with Imogen. Congratulations and good luck.”

“That sounded ominous,” Becca says, but she’s still gaping at the house.

“It was. Let me know what I owe you for the diapers and formula.”

“Baby gift. I insist. Can I help you carry it all inside?”

“No.” I wince, knowing I sound like an ass.

But I’m feeling like an ass.

I don’t want to watch Becca ooh and aah over Daisy’s house. Nor do I want her to get scrutinized by the devil woman who thinks I’m an inconvenience at best, and a pain in the ass to be disposed of at worst. “She’s not a nice person. Imogen, I mean. I’ll get you the tour another day.”

She smiles again without meeting my eyes. “Sure. Great.”

“I really appreciate the help.” I’m a fucking retired Marine and I feel as smooth as a thirteen-year-old kid hiding from his sisters while drooling over the lingerie models in the JC Penney catalog.

“No problem. Thanks for lunch. It was fun. The first part, I mean.”

Yeah.

The part where I wasn’t talking and Daisy’s face wasn’t swelling like a red balloon.

I gesture to her trunk. “Could you…”

“Oh! Yes. Right. Sure. Of course. You bet.”

Ten minutes later, one of the security guys from the house and I finally get everything dragged through the front door. Remy fell asleep in the car halfway through a bottle, so he’s the easiest part.

The security guy is no help when we find Imogen Carter pacing the sitting room just beyond the foyer though. Dude up and disappears.

And I’m left standing there staring at a wily old lady with calculating blue eyes who couldn’t walk her ass thirty feet out the door to help drag in diapers and formula and baby gear.

It pisses me off even more than today already has.

I don’t like being pissed.

I like being happy that I’m alive in a world that’s not perfect, but does its best.

Yet since Thursday afternoon, very little is going smoothly.

I drop everything but the baby in a heap on the marble floor. Remy, I place down gently, since he’s sleeping in his carrier.

“What?” I snap.

She draws her shoulders back and glares at me with the kind of glare that could explain the dinosaurs going extinct all those millions of years ago, if she’d been around back then. “I’ve signed Remington up for music lessons, and—”

“No.”

“Mr. Jaeger—”

“He’s two fucking months old. Music lessons can wait.”

“You have a lot to learn about how children are raised in this family.”

“I’m his family. I say what he does.”

“Daisy is his family. You’d best learn your place.”

Christ. This woman knows how to piss a person off. “My place is right here. If you ever want to see this child again, you’re going to quit looking down your nose at me, quit issuing orders, and learn to say please. I don’t know where the hell you came from, but where I come from, a person’s character is determined by their actions, not their bank accounts. And I’m not raising a kid around people of questionable character who think music lessons are more important than making sure a kid knows he’s loved and safe. Now, you can either pick up a box of diapers and help get it to Remy’s room, or you can get the hell out of this house.”