Crazy for Loving You A Bluewater Billionaires Romantic Comedy - Pippa Grant Page 0,56

cries for two hours straight after West leaves. He doesn’t want a bottle. He doesn’t want tummy time. He doesn’t want to read a book or take a nap or rock or go in a baby carrier or the stroller or sit on my lap.

It’s not until I change his diaper again and see the red marks on his little waist that I realize I wrapped his diaper too tight around him, and I break down in tears knowing that I hurt him, which makes him sob harder too.

We both get through it—him with a bottle, me with frozen yogurt since the baby books say you shouldn’t drink while alone with a baby—and I manage to get a little work done, as well as interview three nannies, none of whom I like.

They’re all perfectly lovely, but apparently I’m having some control issues, and I’m not ready to trust anyone else with my baby if I don’t click immediately.

Which is another conversation I need to have with myself. Or perhaps a therapist.

Remy and I also don’t get out to stroll through the village and visit with Steve the Alligator and see people, because I’m weirdly too exhausted to contemplate packing up his stroller and how I’ll handle it if he poops in public.

Also, he spends the last two hours of the evening fighting a bottle, then fighting a nap, and generally wailing his heart out. Lucinda comes in to check on us, points out that the nipple’s plugged on the bottle, tells me I’m doing a good job, and disappears like perhaps my grandmother has threatened to fire her on my behalf if she doesn’t make me learn this motherhood thing myself.

I’m going to freaking put a wooden stake through her heart and end this undead hypnotizer of the world thing she has going on.

When West gets back early evening, I somehow find it in me to force a smile and tell him we had the most fabulous day together, and wait until he sees what Remy picked out during our shopping spree.

Which didn’t happen, but it’s what West expects to hear, right?

Plus, it makes me sound like a vapid shopaholic with no redeeming qualities, which I’m sure helps him immensely since he’s tilting his head the way he does when he’s concentrating and looking at me like he’s concerned about me as a person, and we can’t have that. He and I need to get along on superficial terms.

Not on Are you okay? terms.

Are you okay? terms are dangerous for the heart. And connections. And he’s made it clear I’m not welcome in the heart region.

Fine by me. I don’t let anyone in my heart region either.

He was completely and totally right when he said we needed to not get involved, and I owe him this much.

Besides, I have a bigger issue to worry about.

Namely, how the fuck I’m going to actually do this mothering thing.

As soon as West and Remy disappear, I fly up the stairs to my room and change into body armor.

Also known as my ivory business suit.

I hate the ivory business suit. It’s so…so…so much like what The Dame wears every day.

But it’s necessary. So are the pearls. The diamond brooch from my paternal great-grandmother. The pantyhose. Pantyhose. I’m wearing fucking pantyhose and the boring-ass please-don’t-ever-fuck-me pumps.

Seriously.

They’re more effective than a chastity belt.

I also call Emily and beg her for Derek to do my hair. She declines—politely, which of course I expected, since Derek only does her hair—but she also gets me an emergency last-minute appointment with Maxim, her other favorite stylist who’s actually a real stylist, and not just a trained-at-home dude who uses his skills to seduce his woman.

My friends’ significant others are all super hot in super weird ways that I never would’ve expected, and I love them all, which I can do, because it’s friend-love, and not love-love.

I take a selfie and send it to Cam—queen of the business suit, whose ass I will never be able to compete with—and she assures me that once I’ve had my hair done, I’ll look so professional that even the professionalist professional wouldn’t realize my favorite pastime is doing body shots off baseball players.

I text Luna just because there’s something about her that always makes me feel one with the earth, and I need to borrow some of her pure, awesome Luna energy.

And two hours after I hand off Remy, I’m strolling across the velvet carpet lining the marble floor of the high-windowed gallery in