His Forever Family(9)

"Oh, God, yes. He's okay," she said as if she still couldn't believe  it. The baby exhaled heavily and turned his head away from the window.  Liberty gasped and flung out a hand in his direction and Marcus took it.  He gave her a squeeze of support and she squeezed back. "Look at him,"  she said in awe.

"Is this place okay for him, do you think?" Marcus looked around the  room again at the worn, battered furniture. "They said it was one of  their best homes..."

"No, it's really lovely." Marcus stared down at her, but she was still  looking at the baby. "And it seems like she only has him right now. This  is amazing."

There was something in the way she said it, the way she meant it, that  struck him as odd. But before he could ask about it, Hazel said  brightly, "Here we are."

He dropped Liberty's hand and stepped out of the way. Hazel handed him a  bottle and he took it, even though he had no idea how to feed a baby.

"Does he have a name yet?" Liberty asked Hazel.

"Oh, no. He's still Baby Boy Doe." As if on cue, the baby began to lift  his little hands and scrunch up his eyes. "I suppose he should have a  name, shouldn't he?"

"William," Liberty said without hesitation. "He's William." She said it  with such conviction that again, Marcus found himself staring at her.

"Oh, that's lovely. My husband was Bill. That's a good name." The baby  began to fuss and Hazel deftly carried him over to the dresser and laid  him out on the pad. She unzipped his blanket-thing-a blanket with arms?  Was there a name for that? Hazel began to change his diaper with the  kind of practiced motion that made it clear she could do this in the  dark, in her sleep. Marcus wondered how many babies she'd changed just  like that.

"We never had children," Hazel went on as she got out a clean diaper  from the top drawer, all the while never taking her hand off the baby's  belly. "But I loved babies so... I was offered an early retirement from  my teaching position back in 1988 and I decided that I was going to be a  grandmother one way or another."

"All babies?" Liberty asked.

"Oh, yes. I just love this age. They're such little angels. I can't  keep up with them when they start crawling and walking, though." Hazel  shook her head. "Babies are just my speed."

Marcus watched as Hazel changed the diaper. She made it seem easy but  the mostly naked infant was squirming and then there was the cleaning  part and...

Suddenly, he was terrified. It wasn't the same kind of terror he'd felt  when he'd opened the box and found this child-that had been stark  panic, with a life hanging in the balance. That danger was safely past,  thank God. But when Hazel got the diaper on and asked Liberty if she  wanted to help re-dress William, and Liberty still looked as if she  might start sobbing with relief at any moment, the whole scene was so  far outside his realm of experience that he might as well have landed on  Mars.

Liberty got his tiny little feet back into the blanket contraption and  zipped him up. "Here we go," Hazel said in a singsong voice as she  picked William up. "Dear, why don't you sit in the rocker?"                       
       
           



       

Liberty sat and Hazel laid the baby in her arms. In that moment,  everything about Liberty changed; it was as if he were looking at a  different woman. This wasn't his take-charge assistant-this was Liberty,  the real woman.

Hazel took the bottle from Marcus and showed Liberty how to hold it.  The older woman got a little pillow that had been next to the rocking  chair and used that to prop Liberty's arms up. "There we go. He's been  eating quite a bit, poor dear." For the first time in a while, she  seemed to notice Marcus. "Oh-would you like a chair?"

"I'm fine," he insisted. He couldn't take his eyes off Liberty and  William. There was something about them-something he'd seen that first  time in the park...

"You're amazing with him," he told Liberty and he meant it. Yeah, he'd  found the child, but it was Liberty who'd cooled him down and got him to  stop crying. It was because of Liberty that Marcus had used his clout  to make sure the baby got into the best home.

It was Liberty who'd named him.

Then she looked up at him and smiled and everything that Marcus knew to  be true about himself was suddenly...not true. Not anymore.

He was Marcus Warren. A trust-fund billionaire, gossip column fodder  and a potential reality-television star. He had a business and a  reputation to manage. He had to carry on the Warren family name.

And quite unexpectedly, none of it mattered. What mattered was seeing  Liberty rock that tiny baby and smile at him with that silly joy on her  face, as if she'd been waiting her whole life for this exact moment.

What mattered was knowing he'd made this moment happen. Because he  wanted that silly joy on her face. He wanted to be the one who made her  smile, who gave her everything her heart desired. Not because it would  give him leverage, but because it made her happy.

His entire life had been about accumulation. Things, power, favors-more and more and more. Never enough.

What if...

William's mouth popped off the bottle and he squirmed. "Oh, is he okay?" Liberty asked Hazel.

The two of them fussed over the baby and Liberty got him burped. Then  Hazel took William back and turned to Marcus. "Would you like to hold  him?"

"Sure," he said, sitting in the rocking chair. Liberty propped the  pillow under his arm. He tried to position his arms the way she had.

She looked down at him skeptically. "Have you ever held a baby before?"

His face got hot. "No?"

Liberty sighed, but at least she was grinning as she moved his hands  into approximately the right position as if it was no big deal to  physically rearrange him. But it only made that nearly out-of-body  experience he was having that much worse.

What if...

"Here we are," Hazel said, handing William to Marcus. The baby sighed and scrunched up his nose.

Marcus was dimly aware that Hazel and Liberty were still talking, but  he didn't really hear them. Instead, he stared down at the child in his  arms.

William was so small-how was this human going to grow up and be a  regular-sized person? "Hi, William," Marcus whispered as the baby waved  one of his hands jerkily through the air.

Without thinking about it, Marcus shifted and held one of his fingers  up against William's hand. The baby grabbed on at the same time his  little eyes opened up all the way, and in that moment Marcus was lost.  How could anyone have walked away from this baby? This must have been  what Liberty had felt when she'd held the baby in the park.

They couldn't lose this baby. He'd thought he'd done his part, getting  William into one of the best foster homes-but now that Marcus had seen  Liberty with him, now that he'd held William himself, how could he walk  away from this child?

He looked around the room again. Hazel was a good foster mother for a  baby, he decided. But the stuff she had to work with was ancient. Marcus  eyed the baby swing William had been in when they got here. The thing  looked like a deathtrap of metal and plastic.

His phone buzzed in his pocket, which startled the baby. William began  to fuss and Hazel swooped in and plucked him from Marcus's arms. "There,  now," she soothed.

"Sorry," Marcus said as he dug out his phone. The missed call had been  from his mother. This couldn't be good. It was already past five.

"We should go," Liberty said. "Hazel, thank you so much for letting us  visit William. This was wonderful. I'm so glad he's got you."

With William tucked against her chest, Hazel waved the compliment away.  "You're more than welcome to come back. Just give me a call!"

"Could we?" Liberty glanced at Marcus, her cheeks coloring brightly. "I mean, I'll do that."                       
       
           



       

"We can come back," he agreed. And he wasn't just saying that-he really  did want to see the baby again. More than that, he wanted to see  Liberty with the baby again.

Liberty gave him another one of her shy smiles, as if she'd been hoping he'd say that but hadn't dared to ask.

As they walked toward the front door, Hazel followed them. "You two  should consider applying for adoption," she said. "A nice couple like  you? And because you found him, you might have a better chance of  getting him. If they don't find his birth mother, that is," she added,  sounding sad. "Poor dear."

Liberty jolted. "I don't-"

"We'll discuss it," Marcus said. He put his hand on Liberty's back and guided her down the stairs. "Thanks so much."