end up being like this,’ she said, jiggling the baby on her lap. ‘I thought he’d be a nightmare to share a house with. Fussy and demanding and annoying. But he’s actually OK, when you get to know him. He still has the social skills of a rhino, but I think that’s because nobody taught him, not because he’s too arrogant to care.’
Tyler cooed at her.
She laughed. ‘He’s better with you, too. I’ve heard him reading to you. Funny, he said he never wanted to be a dad, but he’s managing just fine with you.’ Her smile faded. ‘I can’t quite work him out. Why was he so adamant that he didn’t want kids? And why did his marriage break up?’
She jiggled Tyler still further. ‘Before we became your guardians, I would’ve said that Dylan was the problem. Nobody could put up with someone who’s that formal and stuffy.’ She frowned. ‘Except that’s not what he’s really like. Now we’ve managed to reach a truce, I think I actually like him. He’s got a dry sense of humour, and that smile...’
No. She wasn’t going to allow herself to think about his smile and how it made her feel. She needed to keep her head where Dylan Harper was concerned, and keep this strictly—well, not business, exactly, but co-guardianship meant being professional and letting her head rule her heart. Total common sense.
She couldn’t ask Dylan why he didn’t want kids or why his marriage had fallen apart, because she knew it would annoy him. Dylan didn’t like emotional stuff. Even if she did manage to push past that particular boundary, he was intensely private and she knew he’d give little away.
‘I guess I’m going to have to learn not to ask,’ she said, and Tyler gave her a solemn look as if he agreed.
The baby had started sleeping through the night again; clearly he was beginning to settle after the huge upheaval in his life. But when he began to wake two or three times in the night again, Emmy was at her wits’ end.
‘Lavender oil?’ Dylan asked when she suggested it as a solution.
‘A couple of drops on a hankie in his room. Apparently it’s relaxing.’
‘That’s so flaky,’ Dylan said. ‘There’s no scientific proof that it works.’
‘I don’t care. It’s worth a try.’ When he continued to look sceptical, she said, ‘We have to do something, Dylan. I mean, I know we’re taking alternate nights to go in to him—but when he wakes up, he’s yelling loudly enough to wake whoever’s not on duty.’
‘I guess so.’
‘I don’t know about you, but I feel like a zombie.’ She couldn’t help yawning.
‘Me, too,’ he admitted. ‘OK. Try the lavender oil.’
But it didn’t work.
The next day, Emmy made an appointment with the health visitor. ‘We might have a solution,’ she told Dylan when he came home. ‘Ally’s health visitor says either he’s starting to cut teeth, or he’s ready to start solid food.’
‘So what do we do now? Buy jars of stuff?’ Dylan asked.
Emmy shook her head. ‘We start with baby rice and mix it with his milk—so then the taste is quite near what he’s used to.’ She produced a packet of organic baby rice she’d bought at the supermarket on the way home from seeing the health visitor. ‘So let’s do this.’
Dylan read out the instructions from the back of the packet, and Emmy followed them.
‘It doesn’t look much,’ Dylan said doubtfully. ‘Are you sure you measured out the right amount?’
‘I did what you read out,’ she said, and sat down with Tyler. She put a tiny amount of the rice on the end of the spoon. ‘Come on, sweetie, just one little mouthful,’ she coaxed, and put the spoon into Tyler’s open mouth.
The result was baby rice spattered all over her.
Dylan smothered a laugh. ‘Sorry. But...’
‘I look ridiculous. I know.’
‘Let me see if I can persuade him to try it,’ Dylan suggested.
But he got nowhere, either.
He looked at Emmy. ‘So, Ally didn’t do any of this with him?’
Emmy thought about it. ‘She did talk about weaning him. She said she was planning to start—’ she gulped ‘—when she got back from Venice.’
But that moment was never to happen.
Dylan patted her shoulder briefly in sympathy, then grabbed a paper towel, wetted it under the tap, and wiped the spattered baby rice from her face.
She gave him a wry smile. ‘I’m glad you used water on that paper towel before you wiped my face.’
‘A dry towel wouldn’t have got it off.’
‘That’s not what I meant.’
He frowned. ‘I’m not with you.’
‘I mean, I’m glad that you used water and not spit.’
She saw the second the penny dropped. ‘That’s really gross!’ But he laughed.
‘It’s what my mum used to do,’ she said with a grin. ‘Didn’t yours?’
‘No.’ His tone was short and his smile faded.
What was Dylan’s issue with his mum? Emmy wondered. Was he not close to her? Was that why he kept people at a distance?
He switched the subject by tasting the rice. ‘I think I know why he’s spitting it out.’
‘Why?’
‘Try it.’
She did. ‘It’s tasteless. Bland.’ She grimaced. ‘But I guess it’s about getting him used to texture rather than taste.’
‘So we’ll have to keep going.’
* * *
They muddled through the next few days, and finally Emmy cheered. ‘Yay! He’s actually eating it.’
She put up a hand to high-five Dylan. He paused—but then he surprised her by high-fiving her. ‘Result.’
‘The Baby Bible says we should introduce one new food at a time, leaving three or four days in between, so we can spot any food allergies,’ Emmy said later that evening. ‘They say it’s good to start with carrots—so I’ll steam some and purée them for him tomorrow night.’
The carrots went down as badly as the baby rice had the previous week.
‘It’s a new taste. It took a couple of days with the baby rice, so we’ll have to just persevere,’ Dylan said. He scooped Tyler out of his high chair. ‘And I will clean up this little one while you, um...’ His eyes crinkled at the corners. ‘While you de-carrot yourself.’
‘I
