“What...? Why...?”
“I have to wash my hands,” she said, moving into the powder room, pretending she didn’t notice that the whites of his eyes were showing. “I can’t leave him on the sofa. He might roll off,” she called back, taking her time like she was scrubbing for surgery, glancing in the mirror to ensure her most innocent expression was firmly in place.
Enrique was just over a week old and barely keeping his eyes open for longer than thirty minutes. He wasn’t going to roll anywhere for a while yet.
She came out to see Cesar wearing an uncomfortable expression. He held Enrique cradled in his two big hands, suspended in the air as though the infant was a dripping mess of sod or something equally cold and unpleasant that should be kept at a distance to avoid staining his clothes.
Her heart sank, but she reminded herself that his family wasn’t like hers. His sister had come to their wedding because it was on the way. Had he ever held a baby in his life?
Moving across, she ignored the way he offered the boy to her and gently pressed his hands closer to his own body. “Keep him warm while I change. And watch his neck. He’s holding his head up really well, but just in case. Talk to him.”
“About what?” Now he held Enrique against his shoulder like he’d grabbed one too many items in the grocery store and really wished he’d picked up a handbasket.
“He’s been listening to my voice for nine months and it makes him feel safe when he hears me. He needs to associate your voice with safety, too. Use Valencian. You don’t want me to teach it to him. I have an accent.” She headed for the bedroom.
When she glanced back, he was staring at her the way he looked when she gave him backtalk he didn’t like.
“Pretend he’s Corm. At least he won’t contradict you over who the best goalkeeper really is.”
* * *
Sorcha swung the door mostly closed and Cesar knew she was undressing behind it. That he was willing to help with. This...
He had held kittens as a child, when the mouser in the vineyard had had a litter, but never a human baby. He’d never even picked up a young child and this... This baby was so new and fragile, his skin so delicate, Cesar thought he’d tear him if he moved wrong.
And talk to him? He carefully eased Enrique into a more secure position in the crook of his arm and looked at the boy’s unguarded expression. He hadn’t needed the DNA report to believe this was his son, but he still didn’t see himself in that soft, round face.
“She’s crazy,” he said under his breath, wanting to ignore Sorcha’s ridiculous suggestion, but what she had said about Enrique finding security in the sound of his voice niggled. It’s not as if he wanted the opposite, for Enrique to fear the sound of his voice, but he hadn’t put together that his son would look to him for reassurance or, well, anything but basic needs and material items when he was old enough to ask for them.
What was he supposed to say? The kid was ten days old, barely able to control the wander of his gaze. He wouldn’t understand a word.
Blue eyes the same shade as Sorcha’s searched the ceiling with surprising alertness. So much like Sorcha’s, Cesar noted with fascination. Clear and such an undeniable blue and— Oh, hello. Direct. Enrique’s eyes found Cesar’s and stuck.
Cesar found himself lifting his brows in a silent “what now?”
Enrique’s tiny forehead furrowed with faint lines. His miniature brows climbed, reflecting the same query.
“Are you mocking me?” Cesar asked, astonished. A grin tugged at his mouth.
Enrique’s little mouth pulled in what looked a lot like a wavering attempt at a smile.
What the hell? Cesar looked up, something rising in him that was not unlike an unexpected discovery in the lab. Sorcha was still in the bedroom. It was just him and...
There was a word...
He searched for it and found it. Anthropomorphic. The attribution of human qualities to an animal or object. But that’s not what this was, he acknowledged as he waited with held breath for Enrique’s gaze to find his again. There was a person in there, he saw, as they looked into each other’s eyes. A brand-new mind trying to make sense of the world. Cesar saw beyond the lack of cognition in Enrique’s gaze to the desire to get there and an unexpected thump of empathy squeezed his heart.
“I know exactly how you feel,” he muttered, recalling his own awakening in the hospital to a world he didn’t recognize.
He found himself touching the boy’s closed fist, amused to see he was already a fighter.
Enrique opened his hand and grasped Cesar’s finger in a firm grip. He might as well have closed his tiny fist around Cesar’s lungs. Something happened in that moment, something uncomfortable. Cesar trusted no one, never left himself open, never gave his loyalty without a thousand tests. Yet this boy waltzed straight inside him and left a vulnerable opening behind.