Page 38 of Bad Wolf's Nanny

Lola glanced down.

His eyes were fluttering closed again. She smiled.

“Don’t worry, Sam. Most adults find this stuff unbearable, too. But you’re going to grow up knowing all about it. Poor thing.”

She looked at him longer this time.

At his impossibly tiny eyebrows, his soft hair, and that adorable little dimple in his chin. He was growing faster than she’d expected. He was nearly double the weight he’d been when she first met him, his cheeks fuller, his movements more coordinated. He’d started tracking her with his eyes when she walked into the room.

He smiled now, a real smile. Not just the reflexive gas bubble grins, but honest-to-god recognition.

She’d never expected to love him this much.

And yet here she was, completely undone by an eight-week-old with a terrible sense of timing and an uncanny talent for peeing during diaper changes.

“You’re going to break hearts someday,” she whispered, “just like your father. Only…maybe with less smirking.”

Sam wriggled, his little nose twitching.

She exhaled slowly, tipping her head back.

It was strange how much had changed. Two months ago, she’d still been arranging books alphabetically by century and swearing she’d never touch a cock-sure alpha playboy with a ten-foot pole. Now she was sharing space with one and looking after his baby. Eating his food. Folding his laundry. Heating bottles at three a.m. like it was the most natural thing in the world.

And it wasn’t just convenience. She knew that now.

She liked it here.

She likedhim, too.

That was the problem.

She didn’t know when it had started. Maybe the first time he’d fallen asleep on the couch with Sam asleep on his chest. Or the night she caught him humming under his breath while he rocked the baby in the early hours of the morning, completely unaware she was watching.

Dane was…not what she’d expected. He was blunt, cocky, maddeningly attractive. But underneath that, there was a quietness she hadn’t anticipated. A depth.

And he was trying. He was trying so hard to be a good father.

The fact that he didn’t think he was good at it just made her want to wrap him in a blanket and make him tea.

Lola looked down at Sam again, who was now sound asleep, little mouth slack, hand fisted into the fabric of her shirt.

“You and me, we’ve got him covered,” she whispered.

The shower cut off in the background.

She stiffened immediately.

Dane would be out soon. And as much as she’d gotten used to him being around, his scent in the hallway, his socks in the laundry, the permanent dent his body made on the right side of the couch, there were still moments where her nervous system short-circuited at the mere sound of him moving around shirtless in the hallway.

Which healwayswas, because apparently, he had a vendetta against wearing actual clothes.

She glanced down at herself, milk-stained hoodie, leggings, and fluffy socks with a hole in one toe, and winced.

Dane would walk in, looking like a literal Greek god who’d just finished bench-pressing the moon, and she’d be sitting here looking like a failed art student on her sixth cup of herbal tea.

“You’re not helping my confidence, you know,” she whispered to Sam.

Sam snored lightly in response.