Seeking Happily Ever After (Ever After #8) - Elena Aitken Page 0,17
hitting her stuffed toy against the bar of her stroller in pure glee. He followed her gaze to see what was making Amelia so happy and reflexively, he, too, smiled.
Charlotte.
She couldn’t help it. The moment Charlotte saw the baby in her stroller, it was like a gravitational pull. Amelia smiled and when Charlotte stuck out her tongue, she giggled, and then…Charlotte couldn’t be stopped. Her need for caffeine forgotten, she moved closer to the stroller and started making faces at Amelia.
Every time Amelia laughed, Charlotte laughed, which caused the baby to laugh even louder. When finally Amelia let out a shriek in the small bakery, Char glanced up toward Nick at the counter.
Her eyes met his, and she shrugged, using a series of gestures to ask whether she could pick the baby up. Nick nodded with a grin, and it was the only invitation Charlotte needed.
“Aren’t you just the cutest little girl in the whole world?” she murmured as she unclipped Amelia and lifted her into her arms. The baby giggled and Char lifted her up so she could blow a raspberry on her belly, making her laugh even harder. “You are the sweetest thing in the whole wide world, aren’t you?”
Char could lose herself all day in the sweet sounds of a baby laughing. There was something so profoundly pure and innocent, as if nothing else mattered. It was quickly becoming her favorite thing to do. The idea boards, paint and fabric samples she’d tucked into her bag to show Stephanie Starz were all temporarily forgotten as she lost herself in the baby.
“Excuse me.”
The voice behind her jarred Charlotte from her focus on Amelia. She pulled the baby close to her chest and turned to see a large woman with an even larger bag draped over her arm, standing directly behind her.
“My name is Susan Johnson. I’m the caseworker,” the woman said, as if that were supposed to explain everything. “This must be Amelia.” She reached out and tried to tickle the baby’s chin, but Amelia immediately shied away and tucked her face into Charlotte’s chest.
Char glanced to the counter where Nick was watching, almost frozen in place with wide eyes, and all at once, everything fell into place.
The legal system is definitely not designed to make things easy for a single dad trying to secure custody.
She looked back to Susan, and then the baby cuddled tightly in her arms. She owed Nick a favor. A big one. And hadn’t he just told her without really telling her that he needed help?
“Yes. This is Amelia.” Char shifted the baby and extended her hand. “And I’m Charlotte.”
“Charlotte?” Susan shook her hand. “And who are you to baby Amelia? Are you a friend of Nick Newton’s?”
A friend? Yes. She was definitely a friend. A friend who owed him a favor.
Looks like I need a wife. You want to marry me?
She didn’t even know what she was agreeing to, or what she was doing. All she knew was that there was a little girl whose well-being depended on a lot of things going right. “I guess you could say that,” she heard herself saying as Nick joined them, coffees in hand. She put the biggest, brightest smile on her face that she could. “I’m Nick’s fiancée. I’m so glad you could make it out to meet with us.”
Fiancée?
Nick almost choked. Had she…what had she…
He glanced from Charlotte to Susan back to Charlotte.
He put the coffees down on the table to keep from dropping them—which, by the way his hands shook, was going to be a very real possibility—and extended his hand to the caseworker. “Hello,” he said as smoothly as possible. “You must be Susan. Thank you for coming out so quickly. And I didn’t realize you’d have a chance to meet…” He glanced to Charlotte.
“Your fiancée?” Susan finished for him and gave him a strange look.
“Right.” He recovered quickly. “Sorry, it’s still all so new, and you know…”
“I didn’t know you were engaged to be married.” Susan watched him with one eye while she pulled out a folder and scribbled something down. “I would have expected that would be in the file here. It’s an important detail.” She looked up at first Nick and then Charlotte, who was the first to recover.
“Like Nick said, it really is all still so new. We decided to just go for it and we’re so thrilled, but we haven’t been able to find a minute to even get a ring.”