“Very responsible of you, but then I suppose a cop’s daughter would be careful.” He splashed another few sips of wine into his own glass. “I’m not driving, so I’ll live dangerously and have another half a glass. I somehow don’t think babysitting and alcohol mix, do you?”
“Definitely not. I once witnessed a mother smoking weed right in the presence of her baby.” Emily reached out and stroked her knuckle across Wyatt’s cheek. “A baby about the same age as Wyatt. Don’t you think someone like that is an unfit mother?”
“Me?” Nash inclined his head. “I thought you were the expert. Yeah, I suppose anything that alters your capacity to react quickly would interfere with taking care of a kid.”
“The courts usually award custody to mothers, but sometimes fathers make a better guardian.”
Her words had a lilt at the end, as if she were confirming her beliefs with him. Being a bachelor with not much contact with kids, he’d never given these issues much thought. Once Jaycee came back to get her son, he wouldn’t think about them again.
He lifted his shoulders. “I suppose when drugs and alcohol are involved, that changes the situation. Do you want any more to eat? We have leftovers.”
“I’m good.” She pushed away her plate of half-eaten pasta. “I’ll wrap this up and have it for lunch tomorrow...if I’m still coming.”
“I haven’t heard from Wyatt’s mother yet, so I hope so.”
“You can’t call her?”
“She doesn’t answer, or her phone is turned off.”
“You’d think she’d want to hear how Wyatt’s doing.”
“She trusts me.” If only he could trust Jaycee.
Emily jumped up from the table. “I’ll help you clear the dinner dishes and get Wyatt comfy. He’ll need another bottle before he goes to bed. Maybe that’ll make him sleepy.”
“I hope so. He’s been waking up in the middle of the night, and it takes me a while to get him back to sleep.” Nash stood up next to Emily and took the plate from her hand. “You go do nanny business and I’ll take care of the kitchen.”
She plucked Wyatt from his high chair and carried him off to the other room.
Nash put away the leftovers and rinsed the dishes to stack in the dishwasher. He’d feel a lot better if Emily and Wyatt moved into the guesthouse, but he felt selfish for asking. She’d been with the baby all day. Of course, he could offer her more money to stay the night.
If Jaycee spent another full day away, he’d propose the plan to Emily. She was getting suspicious about Jaycee, and he didn’t blame her. What kind of mother dropped her baby off with a friend and disappeared, refusing to answer her phone?
And he hadn’t even told Emily how Jaycee dropped off Wyatt—on his porch like a foundling. Emily would be horrified and might even threaten to call DCS. She’d already been attacking the court system that seemed to favor mothers over fathers, regardless of the circumstances.
Her vehemence surprised him. Had her father the cop told her stories? She didn’t seem eager to talk about him, even though she clearly had an interest in law enforcement. Maybe they’d had a falling-out. He knew enough cops to know they could be hell to get along with on the home front.
Border Patrol agents were no picnic, either.
Every woman he’d ever dated had seemed more interested in his family’s business than his own. It had made him suspicious, standoffish. His friend April called him superficial.
As Nash swept up the last of the crumbs from the kitchen table, Emily returned, bouncing Wyatt in her arms.
“He’s a little frisky, so he might need some playtime before his bottle and bed.” She pointed to a blanket folded on top of the coffee table. “I don’t know if you saw on your super-duper camera, but I had him out on the blanket on the floor with some toys around him. He practices rolling and getting up on his hands and knees. He can’t actually crawl yet, but he rocks back and forth, which is a precursor to crawling.”
“We’ll give it a try, right, buddy?” Nash poked Wyatt in his belly, which got a laugh out of him.
“I hope his mother doesn’t miss any of his firsts in her absence.” Emily sucked in her bottom lip. “You’d think she wouldn’t want to miss a thing.”
“If he starts crawling, I’ll capture it on my phone.” Nash patted the pocket of his shorts.
Emily seemed determined to attack Jaycee—not that she didn’t deserve it.
“I’ll leave my toy bag here for tomorrow, and I’ll even bring a swimsuit.” She winked as she turned Wyatt over to him.
He and Wyatt stood at the front door and waved Emily into her car.
Setting Wyatt in the middle of the blanket on the floor worked wonders. The little guy got up to all kinds of new tricks on his own, so Nash reached for his laptop and pulled it onto his thighs as he stretched his legs out next to Wyatt’s play area.
He entered his password and launched the web browser. He hovered the mouse over the history tab and then said, “Hell, you saw her in her bra and panties. Snooping into her internet searches is nothing.”
And it was nothing. She’d watched some music videos and a short documentary on Mount Everest. She’d even checked out a few baby sites. Must want to keep up on all the latest trends in childrearing.
He closed out of her browsing history. The woman deserved a little privacy. Had he been expecting her to read how-to articles on kidnapping or something?
He launched his email. He squinted at the new messages loading and then leaned back against the couch and crossed his arms. The new emails scrolled in from about three o’clock this afternoon even though he hadn’t launched his email program since last night.
He sat up. Emily had gotten into his email.
EMILY SWUNG BY a liquor store on her way back to the motel. She pulled into a space in front of the
