Crazy for Loving You A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy - Pippa Grant Page 0,13

but I don’t want to. He’s a tiny little thing. Can’t be more than twelve, maybe fifteen pounds.

My parents’ cat is bigger than this child.

More loved too. Not a single other person has tried to take him from me.

Daisy’s face is morphing as I bounce in place with the sleeping baby, and I don’t like it.

It’s not lust exactly, but it’s not not lust either. It’s dark-eyed, heavy-lidded interest warring with body language that says stay back, danger, danger, and this isn’t the first time that look has taken over her face tonight.

If life has taught me anything in twenty-plus years of dating, and then reinforced it tonight, it’s that dating single mothers doesn’t work.

Time might heal all wounds, but the one poking me tonight needs more than six years, apparently.

“Why’d she name you as a guardian?” I ask Daisy.

“Either she had a sick sense of humor, or she thought she was just as immortal as The Dame and that it would never actually be an issue.”

I lift a brow.

“Gramalicious. The Graminator. Gram-grams. Grammykins. My grandmother. Call her a Gramogenarian if you really want to get her panties in a twist. She says she’s eighty-two, but I suspect she’s actually the original Dracula.”

My eyeball is twitching. If she keeps talking, it might never stop. “And you do…what, exactly, for your grandmother?”

“Apparently whatever she tells me to do.”

She flashes a billion-dollar smile again, but I’m well aware that Imogen Carter just put a fuck-ton on her shoulders. The Carter family matriarch doesn’t strike me as the type to trust anyone else to fill her lawn mower with gas, much less raise a child she has vested interest in.

“So I could google you, and that’s what it’d say? Daisy Carter-Kincaid is an heiress who asks how high when her grandmother says to jump?”

“Oh, no. Google says I’m a partying heiress with a penchant for causing the occasional scene and getting into sticky situations.”

“And your grandmother is trusting you with…the first in the next generation of the Carter family?”

“You’re here too, Mr. Jaeger. My grandmother is doing what she legally needs to do to make sure Julienne and Rafe’s final wishes are carried out.”

“Before she removes me from the situation once the Rodericks are dealt with.”

She winces. “You could take her a sacrifice of the still-beating heart of her enemy in a crystal goblet forged in the fires of hell, and she might go easy when she has her lawyers chew you up in court. But…do you actually want to raise a baby right now?”

“Do you?”

“Westley.” She winks. “What kind of question is that? I have ovaries and mammary glands, don’t I? Obviously I’d want to raise a baby anytime.”

In other words, no. Possibly with a side of, this is a conversation for not tonight.

Am I going to raise this kid?

No.

But am I going to leave him with someone who doesn’t have a fucking clue what she’s doing?

Also no.

“Do you have a crib?” I ask.

Her whole face transforms into pure joy. “Yes! We just redid the butterfly lounge and turned it into this epic—oh. Baby crib. Not party crib. Sorry. No.”

This is going to be the longest night in the history of long nights, and I once pulled a forty-eight-hour shift in the desert kicking in doors looking for a terrorist.

“Flat surface?” I ask. “For sleeping?”

She tosses the dirty napkins into a trash hole in the white wall, then bites her lip while her darkening gaze travels down the length of my body again.

“Knock it off,” I growl.

She doesn’t flinch, which is probably a testament to how often she and her grandmother go at it. “Do you know much about babies? Like, does he need to sleep in a cage, or can he just sleep on a bed?”

“A cage?”

“That’s what a crib is, right? A caged bed? So they can’t…crawl away?”

“He’s too little to crawl.”

“You’re sure?”

“He can’t even lift his head by himself. I’m sure.”

She eyeballs the baby. Then lifts her eyes to me again. “Why are you still here? Not that I’m not grateful for the help, but…you’re not related to any of us. Julienne left you an asshole review for a new business. New, yes? And I doubt Rafe was any nicer. You know I can afford any help necessary so I can raise Remy on my own. You’ve also gotten a taste of what we both know my grandmother will throw at you to get you to leave, because she’s very protective of family when they’re still young enough to