An Unexpected Christmas Baby. Tara Quinn Taylor

taken on a child. But then, his mother, a criminal, had agreed to take him on, too. By birthing him. Keeping him.

      “My mother died in childbirth.”

      Flint’s shocking words hit her harder than they would have if she’d been on the other side of the room. Or in another room. Speaking to him on the phone.

      Knees starting to feel weak, she knew she was out of time. “And just like that, you become a father?”

      “Just like that.”

      There were things she should say. More questions to ask. But Tamara simply stood there, staring at him.

      Unable to move.

      To speak.

      She was shaking visibly.

      And had to get rid of the bundle she held.

      Pronto.

       Chapter Five

      “Here, you need to take her.”

      As the pink-wrapped bundle came toward him with more speed than he would’ve expected, Flint reached out automatically, allowing the baby’s head to glide up to his elbow, her body settling on his lower arm. While holding a baby was still foreign to him, he was beginning to notice a rhythm, a sense of having done it before.

      “She needs to bond with you.” The woman was a stranger to him and yet she was sharing one of the most intimate experiences in his life. His coming to grips with a reality he had little idea how to deal with and a role he was unsure of. Burying his mother. Meeting his sister. Becoming for all intents and purposes, a father. All happening in one day. He’d been about to lose it—and she’d saved him.

      Just like she’d saved him from almost certain job loss earlier.

      Could she really be, somehow, heaven-sent? By his mother, not any divine source watching out for him. He’d long ago ceased hoping for that one.

      Did he dare even think of his mother making it to an afterlife that would allow her to help her baby girl?

      Was he losing his damned mind?

      “Until two days ago, I didn’t know the first thing about children.” He hardly remembered being one. It seemed to him he’d grown up as an adult. “Babies in particular.”

      “You’ve had her for two days?” The woman had backed up to the other side of the desk and was halfway to the door. A couple of times she’d rubbed her hands along shapely thighs covered by a deliciously short skirt and was now clasping them together as though, at any second, they might fly apart.

      “I just got her today,” he said, calming a bit now as the baby settled against him as easily as she had with the efficiency expert. It was the first time he’d actually held the infant.

      All he’d done so far was pick her up to lay her on a pad on the table. And to put her back in her carrier to feed her. That was it.

      “So, how often does the holding thing need to happen?” How far behind was he?

      “All the time.” She was nodding, as though following the beat of some song in her head. Rubbed her thighs again, then was wringing her hands. Then reached for the doorknob. “When you’re feeding her, certainly, and other times, too. Whenever you can. There are, um, books, classes and, you know, places you can go to learn everything...”