Be My Baby Read Online Free PDF

Jack?”
    “No! Want Mrs. M.!” Daisy looked up her father again, her eyes suddenly pooling with picturesque tears.
    Jess had to hand it to her—being able to cry on cue was a very neat trick. Clearly the kid was an infant Meryl Streep.
    And clearly her father wasn’t immune, even though he had to know his daughter’s tears weren’t exactly genuine. He knelt down to eye level with her. “Daisy, we’ve talked about this. Mrs. Melendez is moving away from Konigsburg. You can’t stay with her anymore.”
    “Want Mrs. M.!” Daisy’s voice rose a couple of decibels.
    In his high chair, Jack stared at her, his forehead creasing.
    “Want her now !” Daisy’s lower lip was trembling. She appeared to be on the verge of a spectacular meltdown.
    Jack began to whimper, staring up at Jess in distress. She wasn’t sure if it was Daisy’s noise or her unhappiness that was getting to him. Given his tendency to sympathize with everybody in range, she’d guess the latter. She reached down quickly, moving his bowl of oatmeal to the dining room table and picking him up out of the chair before he could let loose with anything worse. The last thing they needed was two screaming children.
    When she turned back, Daisy was staring at Jack, her mouth open in mid-wail.
    Jack looked down and smiled, his own mouth spreading in one of his joyful grins as he reached toward Daisy’s hair. Like her father’s, Daisy’s curls spilled around her face in a corona. Jack’s fingers fastened on one dark spiral, and he giggled.
    Daisy leaped back, her expression changing from misery to outrage. “He pulled!” she sputtered.
    “Sorry. He likes hair.” Jess shifted Jack onto her other shoulder so that he was a little out of range. “I’m sure he likes yours a lot because it’s so pretty.”
    Daisy stood transfixed, her hand on the curl that Jack had touched, her eyes wide. “Pretty?”
    “Very.” Jess managed to keep her voice matter-of-fact. “It’s so curly and dark and soft. He’s probably never seen anything like it before.”
    “Pretty.” Daisy stroked her hair again, thoughtfully. Jess had a feeling she was experiencing a paradigm shift.
    Lars Toleffson cleared his throat. “Yes. Well, I’ll take off. See you this evening, Dais.” He stepped through the door quickly, closing it behind him. His daughter seemed barely aware of his absence. Smart man.
    “Pretty,” Daisy repeated once more, and her lips spread in what would someday be a killer smile.
    Jess sighed. “Welcome to the sisterhood, kid.”
     
     
    All morning long Lars waited for the phone to ring with Jessamyn Carroll telling him to come get his daughter.
    It wasn’t that Daisy was stubborn, exactly. He sighed. Who was he kidding? Daisy was the most stubborn kid he’d ever met. Daisy made Genghis Khan look reasonable.
    It was a trait she’d inherited from her mother. Yet another thing for him to worry about. Considering that Sherice had only been around Daisy for her first year, Lars really hoped she hadn’t had a chance to imprint much of her character on their daughter, but every once in a while he saw Sherice in something Daisy did.
    Like this morning when his daughter suddenly began to look like an infant femme fatale. Lars shuddered. He really didn’t want to think about what it would be like when Daisy hit high school and boys started coming around the house. He’d probably have to put up razor wire or something.
    When his office phone finally rang, he picked it up without looking to see who was calling, figuring it was probably the Jessamyn Carroll call he’d been dreading all morning. “Lars Toleffson,” he barked.
    “If you talk to all your customers like that, no wonder you aren’t making any money,” his ex-wife purred on the other end of the line.
    Lars gritted his teeth. He’d been avoiding Sherice’s calls for a couple of days, figuring anything she wanted to talk about could be handled by his lawyer with a lot less pain. “What do