Milo stops to takes charge, and does a lot of things in quick succession. He spreads the blanket on the ground, opens the diaper bag, finds the changing mat, and lays it out on the blanket, along with the baby wipes, clean diaper, and hand sanitizer.
“Better to be a little cold for sixty seconds than get diaper rash.”
I laugh. “Sixty seconds. Right.”
He kneels down and reaches up. “Hand me the kid.”
What happens next utterly floors me. Milo has the soiled diaper off in seconds, but he lets me do the deed of wiping. He then has the entire dirty business wrapped up in a tight ball and a clean diaper on her so fast I’m astounded.
Her little body shivers as she cries, but soon she’s bundled up tight and back into the harness. Milo sweetly wraps the blanket around the baby and me and ties it at my back.
He even finds the little washable pouch inside the diaper bag to stow the soiled one until we return to the cabin.
“We don’t have time for this, but…” I stand up on my tiptoes and curl my arm around Milo’s neck, and he responds by kindly leaning down to meet me in the middle. His nose is cold, but his lips are warm, and our kiss heats me all over.
“Thank you,” I say, my relieved sigh coming out in clouds around us.
He smiles and only replies with another kiss. “Lead the way.”
Chapter Fifteen
Milo
I’m such a city boy that I’ve been quietly freaking out. At one point, I take the baby off Cecily’s hands so she can move more quickly up the trail.
My nerves settle when I see Cecily jump up and down ahead of me, pointing to the left. Her scarf is there where she left it.
We cheer as we begin to mount the hill and then laugh as Freya mimics our cheering.
All our laughter and relief dissipates when we crest the hill, however, at the sight of a sheriff deputy Jeep parked in the cabin’s driveway, blocking in my car.
“Oh shit,” I say. “I hope everything is okay.”
Cecily picks the pace up, and when we approach the scene, an officer comes into view. My stomach twists into a knot. The officer appears to be taking notes and talking to one frantic woman and a stone-faced older man who seems to be trying to keep the distraught woman from collapsing. The other four women are chattering with the three other men, and it looks as though they are conferring on some emergency.
The oldest man speaks up. “I’m sure they’re all fine, nobody panic. Everyone calm down.”
“My brothers can get a helicopter and be here in an hour to help with search and rescue.”
A taller, slender man, about the same age as the man who must be Cecily’s dad, says, “Listen, I know this area like the back of my hand; I’ll lead the first search party.”
The dark-haired man disagrees, “But you’ve never led a search party. Let my brothers handle it; they’ll know what to do first.”
The patriarch insists, “I think what we do now is let the police tell us what to do. No disrespect to your family, Leo, but I feel like the police should be in charge.”
“All I’m saying is—”
r />
The one who looks like the group’s matriarch suddenly makes eye contact with me as my feet crunch in the snow. She screams, holding her hands to her cheeks. Everyone spins around and gapes at me, a look of complete shock on their faces, mixed with anger, amusement, understanding, and relief.
Oh. Shit. I think I know what this looks like. It’s me, a giant bear of a man who’s known to be harassing their daughter, holding a thought-to-be-missing baby, tromping through the woods, hand in hand with the woman I’m sort of stalking.
It’s now that I notice the man who must be this baby’s father is charging toward me. In the most surreal turn of events, I know this man. Phillip Wildwood, that English guy from that baking show I watched once and never again. I think we met once or twice at a public television fundraiser. I would not be surprised if he deadass punched me in the face.
As he approaches, he seems to know who I am as well.
“You!?” The look on the man’s face is part incredulous, part rage, part confusion, and part relief.