NINE
Curtis was waiting for Bambi to come back after her friend left, but it looked like she was avoiding him. Figured. The little bitch probably thought she could wait him out and he’d get tired and leave. No chance in hell.
He was going to hang out until she heard him out, then he would leave. His choice, not hers. Or maybe he was playing it all wrong and he should leave without a word, so she knew how she’d made him feel.
But she was cold as ice, apparently, so that tactic wouldn’t work either. He needed to be in her face, make her see and understand before he dropped her ass and made her eat his dust.
That Tina though… Taco almost had to laugh. She’d come out of that room looking like she wanted to either cut his balls off or jump his bones. The way she’d stared at him made him feel like a piece of meat, and if she’d been just a few years younger, he might have entertained it. What was she, forty? Forty-five? And she had a baby. Maybe—he was still debating that one. He was shaking his damn head. If she was a mom, she was almost a MILF. Almost. If she didn’t have a kid, and he’d met her at the club or one of the bars, he might have hit that.
But his attention was on that woman now hiding in the bedroom.
Taco stood up muttering, “If the mountain won’t come to Mohammed…” He started toward the closed door. What was she doing in there anyway, putting the kid to sleep? As he approached, he wondered, if the kid wasn’t hers, how often she babysat it. Everywhere he looked, there was baby stuff lying around. Toys, a laundry basket filled with baby clothes, a half-used bag of diapers. A glace toward the kitchen yielded even more: baby bottles, clean and dirty, lined up by the sink, bibs, some fabric cloth thing with little yellow ducks on them.
It was almost as if the kid lived there. Maybe he did.
Wait, maybe she didn’t live alone. Maybe that friend of hers was her roommate? Taco immediately dismissed that idea. If she’d lived there, she wouldn’t have knocked. So maybe Tina just had her kid there a lot. Was that Bambi’s job now, professional babysitter? That was assuming it wasn’t hers. This shit was confusing.
Man, he couldn’t imagine spending his days tending to a baby. The constant crying and diaper changing alone would drive him insane. Mother or not, Bambi definitely had more patience than he did.
He found himself standing in front of the bedroom door, hesitating. He wasn’t sure why he didn’t just barge right in, but something that was totally out of character for him was holding him back.
Taco stood there, listening to the silence on the other side of that door, imagining what Bambi could be doing in there. Again, he would normally just go on in and find out for himself, but he couldn’t seem to make himself do that this time.
So he knocked instead.
“Um…don’t come in!” Bambi called out, her voice almost nervous.
Taco was instantly suspicious. “I’m giving you to the count of three to come out, or I’m coming in.”
“Don’t you dare. This isn’t your house,” she said back, and he could tell she was deliberately trying to keep her voice down. He had trouble even making out the words, her voice was so low. Trying not to wake the baby?
Taco’s mind split, trying to reconcile the woman who’d been all about club life, to the woman he’d learned was FBI, to the woman who went rogue and was now playing the motherly figure.
A year ago—hell, a day ago—he would have said no way. Bambi wasn’t the mothering type. But now that he was standing here, under her roof, he was having trouble not seeing her in that light.
“Three,” Taco said, impatient and unwilling to wait any longer. He wanted his answers—now. Grabbing the handle, he twisted the knob and went inside.
Bambi was laying the baby down in a white, lacy bassinette beside the bed. When she looked over her shoulder at him, it was with pure malice. “I just got him to sleep. Don’t make a sound. Don’t even breathe,” she whispered.
Taco wasn’t sure what to do. He suddenly found himself out of his element. He’d been around kids before, of course. They were crawling around the compound like cockroaches every weekend, especially during the daylight hours. He always tried to steer clear of that chaos. He didn’t dislike kids, not at all. But he didn’t have an affinity for them either.
Bambi backed away slowly, as if she were trying not to detonate a grenade. She moved so slowly and carefully, Taco rolled his eyes in exasperation.
“We need to talk,” he told her.
The instant his voice hit the room, the kid started shifting around, and Bambi froze in place. Taco didn’t see what the big deal was. He stepped farther inside and took a closer look at the wiggling person.
Bambi’s arm shot out. “I told you not to make a sound.”
“What’s the big deal?”
Then the kid started squirming in earnest, little mewling sounds squeaking out here and there, gaining in frequency and momentum until it was outright fussing, verging on a full-on tantrum.
“He’s a light sleeper,” Bambi said, her voice thick with irritation as she went back to the bassinette and tried to soothe the baby with a gentle hand on his belly. It wasn’t working. The more she tried to soothe, the more it squirmed.
“I don’t think it’s working,” Taco told her helpfully. Except the look she shot him told him his input wasn’t appreciated.
That’s when the baby started crying in earnest. “Thanks a lot,” she snapped at Taco as she scooped the baby up into her arms. “Do you have any idea how long it takes me to get him down for his nap?”
“Should I?”
Her mouth opened, but whatever she was going to say, she didn’t. Instead, she stormed up to him and thrust the red-faced human at him. “Here, I need to go to the bathroom.”
Taco’s reaction was to step back several paces. “What the hell am I supposed to do with it?”
She came at him again, matching each of his steps until they were back in the living room. “You hold him. That’s what you do.” She shoved the kid at him again, forcing it against his chest, and the look in her eyes said she wasn’t going to relent until he did.
Hesitantly, Taco’s hands slowly rose and latched onto the baby’s waist. It was solid and squishy, squirmy like an earthworm, and it was very, very unhappy. “Is it supposed to look like that?”
“It is a boy, and he’s just upset. He’ll calm down in a minute. He just needs to be held.”
“I’m not sure about this. Can’t you just…take him with you?” The kid was looking at him, eyes all red and watery, lips pouty as he tried get a hold of himself.
“Well get sure. I’ll only be a minute.” Bambi stalked off, and for some reason Taco was pretty sure that she was going to take her sweet time.
When she was out of sight, he looked at the kid again. Held at arm’s length, they stared at each other, one stoic while the other did that sniffle-hiccup thing. “Yeah, I feel ya, buddy. I kind of feel like crying right now too. But ya know what? It looks like we’re stuck with each other for a few, so you gotta man up. This world isn’t made for criers.”
The baby just stared at him, but he was pulling it together, his face returning to its normal peachy color, eyes the same shade of blue as his own clearing.
“Glad to see we understand each other.” Taco glanced around, looking for Bambi, but there was no sign she was coming back anytime soon. Damn her. She’d done this on purpose. “Well,” Taco said with a deep sigh, “I think she’s ditched us. Should we sit and wait for her to come back then?”
Taking a seat on the couch, Taco tried to figure out what to do with the baby. He was still held out at arm’s length, but that wouldn’t work much longer. Even though he was small, he was deceptively heavy. Taco’s arms were starting to burn.
“Do you know how to sit yet?” The way his head lolled around, he guessed not. “No? So that means I have to hold you then…”
He brought the baby closer, trying to figure out how to do this. He wasn’t a natural with kids by any means. The closest he’d ever gotten to one was when a toddler latched onto his ankle once and he held his leg out while calling for its parents to come over and remove it. Generally speaking, Taco tried to stay away from anything less than one hundred pounds and under the age of eighteen.
It took a few tries, but Taco eventually just sat him on his knee facing him and did his best to balance his weight so his head didn’t weeble-wobble around on his shoulders.
“Yeah, okay, we got this, little dude.”
And that’s when it did the unthinkable. Face turning red once again, Taco thought for one panicked moment the baby was about to burst into tears again, but no, his whole body scrunched up instead…and then his diaper rumbled against Taco’s leg.
“Did you just shit on me?”
A crooked little smile erupted on little dude’s face, and he started squeezing his expression together again, following by more of the same rumbling.
Taco was dually revolted and humored by the moment. “You’re lucky you’re helpless. Normally, I’d gut a man for defiling me like that.” That tiny smile grew, and something about it just struck Taco square in the chest. He smiled back and gave the kid and little jimmy, bouncing him on his knee. “You think that’s funny, huh? You’re lucky you’re cute.”
As Taco continued to look at him, he felt something inside him click into place. He wasn’t sure what it was exactly, but it felt almost…familiar. Maybe it was the smile…or the eyes? Something…
He looked closer, his smile falling as he studied the little boy. He kind of reminded him of Bambi, with the way his right eye scrunched up when he smiled, and there was a deep groove in his left cheek—the same place as Bambi had her dimple.
But maybe he was just looking for something that wasn’t there, his mind playing tricks on him because he was the naturally suspicious sort. What reason would she have to lie to him, after all? Then again—
“Good to see you two are getting along,” Bambi said as she came into the room.
“I think he shit his pants.”
Bambi’s brows popped up, but she didn’t say a word, so he wasn’t sure if she was ignoring him or what. She rounded the couch, and as soon as the kid saw her, he couldn’t take his eyes off her.
Yeah, I know how you feel, kid, Taco thought to himself. Bambi was a stunner, always. She’d changed her clothes, he noted. She was wearing jeans before, but now she was in a pair of those body-hugging pants women liked to wear these days and an off-the-shoulder sweatshirt that revealed a hot-pink bra strap holding up tits that were definitely bigger than he remembered. That little strip of skin and tantalizing hint of underwear coupled with that firm, round ass as she bent down to rummage through a vinyl bag with Winnie the Pooh stamped on the front was enough to make Taco’s dick get hard.
He’d never had a problem getting up around her. Even when he was mad at her, she could still affect him that way.
“Here, I’ll take him,” she said when she turned back around, and like he wasn’t a delicate thing that could break easily, she snatched him right out of Taco’s hands and swung him around, laying him down on the carpeted floor.
Taco sat forward, elbows on his knees and hands clasped as he watched her get to work setting out a clean diaper and a pack of wipes like a seasoned pro. When she knelt down in front of him and started unsnapping all the little buttons that ran from his ankles all the way up to his crotch, Taco figured it was as good a time as any to start talking.
But where did one start? He’d had very specific questions coming in. Now he had so many more…
“You live here alone?”
Bambi was busy holding up the kid’s ankles with one hand and snapping off baby wipes from their container with the other.
“Yes.”
“So you watch the kid for your friend then.”
She just blinked, not answering the question right away. Taco wasn’t sure what to think about that, so he pressed on.
“How long have you been looking after him?”
“Since he was born.”
“And you like taking care of him?”
“Yes, he’s great.” She smiled at the baby, then slid a fresh diaper under him.
“What do you do for work now?”
She sighed. “I have a part-time position at the gas station down the road.”
“And that pays the bills?” he asked with a small measure of surprise. The house was nice, and for the area, he knew it didn’t come cheap. It was also too nice to be a rental, so he figured she had to be buying it.
“I made good money with the FBI. I saved a lot.”
So that must mean she was well off and didn’t need to worry about work? “So the gas station is just, what, busy work?”
She shrugged. “You can say that.”
Taco didn’t like it. Gas stations were as bad as twenty-four-seven carry-outs. They attracted the trash of society, and he’d been to enough stations at night in his travels with the club to know that there was usually only one attendant working the night shift in either instance. An attractive woman like Bambi working alone was a prime target.
“You need to get a different job.”
“Why? I like my job,” she scoffed.
“It’s not safe. If you want to work a register, then you should find something in retail.”
She scowled at him. “Gee, thanks, Dad, for the advice, but I like my job.” Gathering the dirty diaper and wipe container, she got to her feet. “You know, if you came here just to tell me how to run my life, you can go. I don’t ask for your input and I don’t want it.”
“What’s with the attitude?” Taco raised his voice, realizing too late that it was a bad idea when a baby was in the room. The kid started crying again, legs and arms windmilling on the floor. Bambi was off in the kitchen, so Taco stood up and picked the boy up, tucking him against his shoulder and supporting his butt like he’d seen women do sometimes.
“Why don’t you just tell me why you came here in the first place so we can get this over with,” Bambi was saying as he joined her in the kitchen. She was pouring a bag of what looked like milk into a baby bottle.
“I wanted to know why you walked out on me without a word,” Taco said, laying it out there. “I wanted to know if you really thought so little about me that I didn’t warrant even a simple fuck you.”
“It wasn’t like that,” Bambi said, her voice shaky with emotion that Taco wanted to believe but didn’t dare buy into. He’d made that mistake once already.
“Then how was it?” he demanded to know over the baby’s incessant crying.
Bambi spun around, eyes red and watery. But her obvious distress wasn’t what caught and held his attention. It was the two wet circles around her nipples.