seemed determined to wake this time. He'd have to remember how inconvenient and intrusive children were. Perhaps he should be glad Maya had turned him down flat. Constance and the restaurant kept him busy enough. If he was bored with his orderly life, he could run for mayor.
He wasn't bored. He was lonely.
Leaning over to lift the infant, he grimaced at Alexa's soggy diaper. Another good reason to hope Maya didn't agree to his absurd argument. Babies were dirty and wet and he didn't know what to do with them. He could save his liquor license some other way. Constance might be better off with Sandra.
He wasn't accustomed to rejection, but Maya probably had it right. They'd never work out. What could he have been thinking? He couldn't run for mayor with a wife with purple hair and dragons on her shoes. He should be feeling relief, not this looming shadow of dread, as if the dry sands of the Sahara whispered closer.
Alexa blinked at him with big round eyes and grabbed his finger. The knot in Axell's stomach twisted tighter as they stared at each other.
"Hand her here. I've got dry diapers in the drawer. One of the mothers from the day school gave them to Selene. She would never have remembered on her own." Maya leaned over and produced a disposable diaper and waited patiently for Axell to hand over her daughter.
Her daughter. Just because he'd delivered Alexa and worried about her welfare didn't make Alexa his. Almost reluctantly, Axell handed over the whimpering infant. A tiny fist wouldn't let go of his finger. If Alexa were his, he'd have the right to continue letting her hold it as she nursed. If Maya were his... He was doing this for the kid, he reminded himself.
"Infant formula is expensive," he argued, unable to give up without a fight. "The stuff you brought home from the hospital won't last much longer." He'd spent too long studying this issue. It grated on his self-esteem to think he could lose an argument to a twenty-five-year old gypsy who didn't know where her next meal was coming from.
His mistake had been treating her as one of the empty-headed college students working at his bar for clothes money—like Angela. It was easier to work this out in his head by thinking of Maya as malleable, but that nonconfrontational attitude of hers hid a world of hard-earned wisdom. It would behoove him to remember that.
He watched as Maya efficiently changed the soggy diaper, dropped the soiled one in a trash can beside the bed, and turned her shoulder on him to place the child to her breast. "I haven't given up yet. And there are programs to help children from families of limited income."
Food stamps. She was probably living on food stamps. My God, a teacher with a master's degree, and she was living on welfare. How in hell did single women with only a high school diploma make it?
That wasn't his problem. Right now, his problem was providing a mother for Constance, a quality mother, not some socially ambitious, money hungry female. Maya was the only woman he knew who met the requirements as a mother for Constance, and who might conceivably fit into his life without constant demands and emotional upheaval. And she still wasn't accepting his offer.
"I'll get her bottle—just in case," he added when Maya threw him an annoyed look. The damned woman didn't know when to give up, but he didn't have a problem with perseverance. He just wouldn't let the kid starve.
When he returned with the warm infant formula, Alexa was fretting and beating her fists hungrily against Maya's breast. Hot lust shot straight to his groin at just the sight of a full ivory breast.
This was ridiculous. He'd seen women's breasts before. He wasn't a frigging adolescent. This had to be some possessive caveman reaction to the idea of acquiring a wife. But as Maya removed the infant and he caught a glimpse of an engorged nipple, he grew harder than a piling rod. Nervously, Axell dropped back to the chair and hid his lap with a Dr. Spock baby book from her nightstand.
In his experience, a good offense beat a tardy defense every time. Marrying Maya was the best thing for the children. Period. After they were married, if the school lost its license, he wouldn't have to worry about Constance losing Maya.
He was uncertain of Maya as a political wife, but the mayor's job in a