Gently, as I stand up from the sofa, I ease Maria off my shoulder and place a pillow under her head. But when that doesn’t feel like enough, I snag a white blanket out of a basket-thingie that every woman I’ve ever known seems to have and place it over her still-sleeping body.
“Okay, Miss Izzy,” I whisper toward the baby as I lift her out of her chair and into my arms. “What do you say we take this little powwow into your nursery so your mommy can sleep?”
Izzy’s big blue eyes stare back at me, and since she’s not crying or fussing, I take that as my cue that she’s on board with the plan.
Into her nursery, I shut the door behind us and lay her on the changing table across from the crib that Maria says she hates sleeping in.
“How many hours has it been since I last fed you?” I grab a fresh diaper and start unbuttoning her sleeper. “Three? Four, maybe?”
She lets out a wail once her bare legs are exposed, and I almost want to laugh at how quick she is to give me an earful when she’s not happy about something.
“You’re the kind of girl who doesn’t take any shit, huh?” I tell her while I make quick work of cleaning her up. “I can respect that. It’s a good quality to have in this world.”
Izzy cries some more, but I know the score. All she needs is a clean ass and the promise of a bottle, and she’ll be good to go.
“You know, it feels like forever ago I was doing this exact same thing with my niece Lexi,” I say and finish buttoning her sleeper back up. “She’s much older now. Almost eleven, to be exact. But man oh man, she’s something special. Crazy smart. Hilarious. Lexi is one of my favorite people in the world. You’d love her.” I lift Izzy into my arms and cuddle her close to my chest.
A few more cries leave her little lungs, but eventually, she settles down and appears content with just staring at me, her blue eyes looking almost too big for her face as she tries to understand the world around her.
“Don’t worry, Busy Izzy, you’re something special too. I know we’ve only known each other for a very short time, but trust me, you are.”
I stare down at her and take in all the little details that make up this tiny human being. The way her nose has a little rounded curve at the end. The way her lips are so full and so adorably pink. And the way her little brow furrows in the center and the hint of a dimple appears in her cheek.
Just like Maria’s.
My mind drifts to the almost-kiss in the kitchen.
Fuck me. How did that happen?
It was like one minute she was hugging me, and the next she was staring up at me with those pretty brown eyes of hers, and a rush of feelings I haven’t had since I was a rowdy teenage boy consumed me. Between one breath and the next, I’d thought of a hundred different ways to kiss her, touch her, lick her, fuck her.
And if it weren’t for Izzy belting out her need for a bottle, I don’t know what would’ve happened.
“You have some seriously interesting timing, little lady,” I tell her and sit down in the rocker beside her crib.
I honestly don’t know what would’ve happened if we hadn’t been interrupted.
It goes without saying that I still care about Maria, but I don’t think you ever stop caring about the first person you fell in love with. And young Remy Winslow was obsessed with Maria Baros. Consumed by her. In love with her. At one point in my life, she was everything to me.
All of that mixed in with the now makes it hard to distinguish my current feelings.
“Izzy girl, sometimes in life, things don’t turn out how you expect.”
She just blinks her big eyes at me.
“It’s not necessarily a good thing or a bad thing, though, just…the reality of life.”
I reach out to caress my thumb over the soft skin of her cheek, and she reaches up with her tiny hand to wrap her fingers around mine.
“Damn, you’re cute, you know that?” I grin at her, and she starts to suck on her bottom lip. “And probably hungry too, huh?”
I stand up from the rocker and hold Izzy secure in my arms as I toss her dirty diaper in the diaper pail. “Now, before we go out into the kitchen to grab your bottle, you have to make me a promise, okay? We need to stay as quiet as possible so your mom can keep sleeping. No offense, but you’ve been a bit of a handful lately.”
Izzy wiggles her little legs.