Quinn throws her head back, rests it on the cushion and stares at the ceiling. “Thank God.”
“She never even once looked at Daisy, or asked about her,” I say.
“Once she saw you, I think she went brain dead.”
I laugh at that. “Star-struck. It happens.”
“If that’s what you want to call it. If I wasn’t here, I’m sure she would have handed you her panties.”
With Daisy asleep in my arms, I move to set her in the bassinette. “Yeah, but your panties are the only ones I want,” I say, my mind shifting.
“I think you have that wrong. You don’t want me in panties, remember? I’m not even sure what you did with the ones you stripped off me the other day.”
“Maybe I’m keeping them.”
“I didn’t know cross-dressing was another one of your things.” Standing up, she holds her hands up, palms out. “Hey, I’m not judging. To each their own, right?”
I can’t help but grin at her. “That’s right, to each their own, which brings me back to this morning. Do you remember what I said to you this morning, what else was my…thing?”
She gulps, and I step up to her, pull her against my body. “I believe you said something about my mouth.”
I laugh. “Can’t say it?”
“Oh, I can say it,” she says with a lift of her chin. “I can say a lot of things. I just don’t want to do it in front of the baby.”
“How about we put the baby to bed?”
“We need to bathe her, remember.”
“Shit, right.” I remove Daisy from the bassinette. “But don’t think this gets you off the hook. Later, you’re going to talk dirty to me.”
She laughs and rushes up the stairs. When I get to the top, she’s in the bathroom, running water. I follow her in, and she has her hand in the stream, testing it. “Can you run into her room and get her little bath tub?”
I go to her room, grab the pink tub and carry it back. “So much pink,” I say.
“Get used to it. You’ve got a little girl.”
“Do you think I should paint her room? Make it more girly for her?”
“Yeah, and if you like, I could help. I would love to decorate her room. I mean, if Zander is her uncle, that makes me her aunt, right?”
“Yeah, I guess I never looked at it like that, Aunty Quinn.”
Working as a team, Quinn fills the tub, and I sit on the edge of it and undress a sleeping Daisy. My big fingers work the snaps, and I carefully pull the onesie over her head. She fusses a bit, but then settles. Little wisps of hair lift from the static, and I run my hand over them.
“I think she’s going to be blonde like you.”
“That’s just baby hair. She’ll probably have dark hair like you.” She tests the water again. “You can set her in.”
I go to my knees on the floor and carefully lift Daisy over the edge of the tub. Her arms go out wide, and her lids open, but only briefly, because once Quinn starts sprinkling her with warm water, she falls back to sleep and I swear to God she’s smiling.
Quinn unwraps the soap and starts lathering up a cloth. She hands it to me.
“I don’t know what to do.”
She chuckles softly. “You wash yourself, don’t you?”
“Yeah, but…”