Page 12 of Love In The Spotlight

“Because a parent will spend every last dime they have to make sure their child is comfortable,” he said seriously. “I know. I’ve been there too.”

“Penelope is your daughter?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said. “And no, it’s not public knowledge. It’s taken a lot of work for me to keep her out of the news.”

“Why?” she asked. “It might have softened your image.”

“I don’t need my daughter to change my image, but I didn’t want my image to be reflected on her. I had a come to Jesus talk with myself and pulled it together.”

Which explained why so much changed in his life in terms of tabloids.

“Does your daughter have the same skin issues as you?” she asked.

“Yes. Everything that touches her would make her break out in a rash. I’ve got to wash all her new clothes first. All her stuffed animals. Everything. She hated taking baths because I think the water and the soap burned or itched more. My mother reminded me of what worked for me as a child and sent me the formula she’d used. It’s patented and your brother knows. I mixed it together and tried it on myself first after stopping everything else I used.”

“Because you wouldn’t let it touch your daughter’s skin until you remembered how well it did work?” she asked.

Laken was touched to hear that and wondered if she’d unfairly judged him.

Didn’t West tell her not to do that?

Now she knew why West wanted her to hear all of this from Jamie.

“Exactly. I’d like it branded that way too. That I wouldn’t give my daughter anything I wouldn’t use first.”

“That’s good,” she said. “Not that marketing is what I do, but I know they will eat that up. And the designs?”

“Penelope is young yet. I needed something to occupy her in the tub. I bought these animal sponges and she’d play with them and we were able to put the soap on the sponge and bathe her that way by tricking her. I might have pretended to be feeding them.”

“Cute and smart,” she said.

“I’ve been told I’m both.”

“Back to the cockiness,” she said, grinning, “but I get it now too. That baby bottle shape makes sense. The same with the sippy cup and straw. It lets the device grow with what the child is using too.”

“That was my thought. We can have normal sponges and bottles for teens and adults, but I want to focus on this for children. This is for my daughter. Everything this company becomes or represents is for her future.”

Which would touch a chord with Laken too. Her parents were this way.

West more so.

West would have appreciated that trait of Jamie’s.

“I’m going to guess by the timing of things, Penelope is less than two?”

“She is,” he said. “She’ll be two on February eighteenth. So twenty-one months now.”

“Are you going to have her be in the press when this comes out or just her story?”

“I haven’t decided yet,” he said. “Her skin is cleared up. I never wanted to be judged over my skin and don’t want her to be either.”

“And people would have judged you as a parent,” she said.

“Definitely that.”

“This probably has nothing to do with business, but I’m curious. Do you have full custody of Penelope?”

“I do,” he said. “Her mother is no longer with us.”

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