The Ten-Day Baby Takeover. Karen Booth

floor, holding the little boy. He was slowly growing comfortable with this tiny human clutching the lapel of his suit coat, keeping him warm and reacting to the world Aiden walked through every day without giving it a second thought. It all was new to Oliver—sights and sounds, people and places. He didn’t play the role of stranger though; he played explorer, full of curiosity. Aiden had to admire that disposition. He was cut from the same cloth.

      They reached the top of the stairs and the hall where all four bedrooms were. At the far end was his master suite. There was only one other room furnished, for guests. The other two remained unused and unoccupied. With most of his family in the city, visitors weren’t common, nor would they likely ever be. His friends, small in number and much like him in that they preferred to roam the globe, were not prone to planning a visit. No, the apartment with arguably too much space for a confirmed bachelor had been purchased with one thing in mind—breathing room.

      He fought the sense that Sarah and Oliver were encroaching on his refuge. He made accommodations for no one and doing so put him on edge, but it was about more than covering electrical outlets and putting up gates. He hadn’t come close to wrapping his head around his newfound fatherhood, even if he did accept that with the arrival of Sarah Daltrey, everything had changed.

      He was counting on the results of the paternity test to help it all sink in. He’d already made the call to his lawyer. It would mean a lot to know that Oliver was truly his. Aiden had lived much of his own life convinced that Roger and Evelyn Langford—the people he called his parents—had lied to him about who Aiden’s father was. Roger Langford’s death nearly a year ago had made the uncertainty even more painful and the truth that much more elusive. He wasn’t about to badger his mother, a grieving widow, over his suspicions. But he would confront her, eventually. He couldn’t mend fences with his family until that much was known, and there was a lot of mending to be done. Aiden had made his own mistakes, too. Big, vengeful mistakes.

      “I was thinking we could put Oliver in here.” Aiden showed one of the spare rooms to Sarah. “It’s the biggest. I mean, he is going to get bigger, isn’t he?” Talk about things he hadn’t considered…life beyond today, when Oliver would be older…preschool, grade school and beyond. No matter what, Aiden didn’t need to think about where Oliver would go to school. He would be wherever Aiden was. There would be no shipping him off as his parents had done to him.

      “Is it the closest room to yours?” Sarah asked.

      “No. The smallest is the closest.”

      “That’s probably a better choice for now.” Without invitation, she ventured farther down the hall. “In here?” Sarah strolled in and turned in the small, but bright space—not much more than four walls and a closet. “This is better. It’ll make it easier on you. He still gets up in the middle of the night.”

      “And I’ll need to get up with him.” He stated it rather than framing it as a question. He was prepared to do anything to feel less out of his element, as if any of this were logical to him, which it wasn’t.

      Oliver fussed and kicked, wanting to get down.

      “Let’s let him crawl around,” Sarah said.

      Aiden gently placed the little boy on the floor. He took off like a bolt of lightning, scrambling all over the room on his hands and knees.

      Sarah pulled a few toys out of her bag and offered them to Oliver. “Yes. You’ll need to get up with him and comfort him, especially when he’s teething like he is now.”

      Aiden leaned against the door frame, acting as a barrier in case Oliver decided to escape. “Is that why he drools so much?”

      Sarah smiled and sat on the floor with Oliver, tucking her legs beneath her, her dress flounced around her. “My mother used to say that’s not drool. It’s the sugar melting.”

      Aiden wasn’t prone to smiling, let alone laughing, at things that were quaint and homey. But he couldn’t have stopped if he’d wanted to. He drank in the vision of Sarah. She was so different from every woman he’d ever known. She was beautiful, but not made up. Eloquent, but not pretentious. There was no hidden agenda, nor did she seem concerned with impressing him. She just came right out with it, but didn’t mow people over with her ideas. She simply stated what she found to be best, in a manner that made it seem as if it were the only logical choice.

      Sarah again looked around the room. “We should probably order a crib online and see how quickly we can have it delivered, along with some other necessities. He’ll need a dresser, a changing table. You should probably invest in a rocking chair for this room.” She began counting on her fingers. “Then there’s clothes, diapers, formula, bottles, toys, bath supplies, baby laundry detergent.”

      “Special laundry detergent?”

      Pressing her lips together, she nodded. “When he’s crying in the middle of the night, you don’t want to be wondering if it’s because his skin is irritated. One less thing to worry about.”

      Just when he thought he was getting a handle on things, a new spate of information came down the pike. “Like I said before, it’d be great if you could make some lists. You can use the computer in my home office and get a lot of that ordered.”

      “We need to call the nanny agency, too. They probably don’t take calls after five on a Friday. Sounds like we have a busy night ahead of us. Oliver’s going to need a bath, too.” Oliver crawled over to Sarah with a stuffed toy in his hand and showed it to her.

      Aiden’s cell phone rang with a call from his sister Anna. “Excuse me for a minute. I need to make sure this isn’t anything important.”

      “Sure thing. I’ll call the nanny agency and Oliver can play. Avoiding outlets, of course.”

      “Right. The outlets.” Gotta deal with that, ASAP. He accepted the call and stepped out into the hall. “Anna, hi. Everything okay?”

      “I was calling to ask you the same thing. Is everything going well with Sarah and Oliver? I can’t believe it, Aiden. A baby. It’s so amazing. Are you just bursting at the seams?”

      Aiden wandered into his room and sat on the leather bench at the foot of the bed. “More like my brain is about to implode. I don’t know what I’m supposed to feel. At least you’ve had time to get used to the idea of becoming a parent. It’s only been a few hours for me.”

      “I’m sure it will take some time, but I’m so excited for you. You know, the minute I looked into Oliver’s eyes, I knew he was yours. He looks just like you. It’s going to blow Mom’s mind when she sees him.”

      Oh no. The one thing he hadn’t yet taken into account. “Please tell me you haven’t said anything to Mom. Or Adam for that matter, but especially not Mom. I need to figure out how best to deal with this.”

      “I haven’t said a peep.”

      He exhaled a little too loudly, if only to make the weight of dealing with his mother subside. “Good.” His mind often raced at the mere mention of his mom, thoughts quickly mired in bad memories and sad stories. He couldn’t fathom the moment when she’d meet the son he hadn’t known he had. Would he feel better about his suspicions, a misgiving he’d shared with no one other than Anna? Or would he feel worse? Either way, his mother’s reaction to Oliver would be telling. If she accepted him unconditionally, he’d always wonder why she hadn’t treated him the same way. If she rejected him, he’d have a hard time not blowing up at her.

      “When are you going to tell her?” Anna asked.

      “Tomorrow. Or maybe Sunday. I need time to get us settled.” He rested his elbows on his knees. “Sarah’s calling the nanny agency, we have an entire nursery of furniture to order and I’m apparently in Daddy School after that. I have to learn how to change a diaper and give him a bath.”

      Anna tittered.

      “What’s so funny?”

      “I like the image of you bathing a baby. It’s sweet. And unlike anything