Page 36 of The Irish Rogue

When she didn’t immediately take the shirt, he glanced over at her and realized that she was staring at his bare chest. Good! At least he wasn’t the only one ogling tonight!

“Kennedi?” he prompted.

Suddenly she jumped to attention. “Right!” she gasped, then carefully took the shirt. “I’ll just…pop this into the dryer.”

He watched as her eyes lingered over his chest and he wanted to roar with triumph! As soon as she was gone, he looked back down at Declan, who was trying to stuff a large toy…thing…into his mouth. Thankfully the…thing…was far too big, so he wasn’t going to succeed. But he took a moment to pull the thing away and grin up at Sean. He laughed, rubbing the boy’s round tummy. “You little divil!”

Sean’s heart melted in that moment.

And then he got splashed again.

Sean nodded. “I get ya, my man. I get ya!”

They played for another few minutes, but Sean realized that the water was cooling fast. “I think we should get you out of there. We don’t want you to get sick!”

Declan didn’t agree and started screaming when Sean lifted him out of the water. But now what?

“Here,” Kennedi said, rushing back into the bathroom. “His towel is right here,” she explained, but she had to reach around Sean to grab it. She glanced up at him, her gaze revealing her wariness at touching him. Fortunately, the bathroom was too small for her to avoid touching him, and Declan was too angry about being cold.

“Wrap him up in this,” she explained, offering him the towel.

“Umm…how?” he asked, not kidding. He was holding a slick, wiggling, rather angry, baby. “I’ll drop him if I move my arms.”

Kennedi understood and draped the towel over her arms. “Can you…?” she asked, nodding her head to indicate that he should transfer Declan to her arms.

Carefully, he leaned forward, placing Declan right on top of the towel. But because he was new to this, it was awkward and the back of his arm brushed her breast. Full, amazing breasts, he realized. They were significantly bigger than he remembered. Then he thought about her nursing. Hadn’t he read somewhere that pregnancy and nursing made a woman’s breasts larger?

God help him!

They were truly magnificent breasts!

Quickly, he backed up and made room for her, noting the pink flush to her high cheekbones. She really was quite lovely, he thought, watching as she moved into the second, small bedroom. There, she expertly wrapped his bottom in a fresh diaper, then a fleece pajama thing that covered him from his neck down to his toes. Declan, the little devil, didn’t make things easy for her. His arms and legs waved in the air, fighting her every step of the way.

Good boy, Sean thought with a chuckle.

She glanced over at him, grumbling, “Yeah, just you wait until it’s your turn.” She carried Declan over to the rocking chair and settled in. “You don’t need to stay any longer. I’m just going to feed him again and then he’ll go to sleep.”

Sean glanced at his watch. “It’s only seven-thirty. Does he always go to sleep this early?”

She shrugged, nervously fiddling with the buttons on her blouse. “He’s a hungry feeder at night. It usually takes me a half hour to finish feeding him, and he slowly falls asleep as his tummy fills up.”

“Every night?”

She nodded. “Every night.”

“I thought it was hard to get kids down to sleep at night.”

“It might be for some kids, but Declan falls asleep hard each evening. He’ll wake up around midnight for another feeding. Maybe only one or two if I’m really lucky.”

“Are those feedings hard?”

She shook her head. “I’m used to it now. It was really difficult the first few weeks. He needed to be fed every forty-five minutes. And it hurt. I wasn’t getting enough sleep and I was too scared to go to the grocery store, so I lost too much weight, too quickly.” She gazed down at Declan who was nursing heartily already. “Which made my milk production slow down.” She sighed and looked up at him. “That’s when Dorothy came over and she helped me. A lot,” she grumbled. “She took Declan for me for two hours, gave him formula, and let me get some sleep.”

“Just two hours?”

She laughed, rocking slightly as she looked down at her nursing son. “Getting two hours of uninterrupted sleep after weeks of only napping is life altering.” She lifted her eyes, the memories causing her smile to linger as she lifted her eyes to him. “Dorothy doesn’t have any kids. They never were able to conceive. But she’s worked in the church nursery for decades and has a lot of tricks up her sleeve. She’s the best grandmother for Declan.”

Suddenly, her smile faltered and Sean could tell she had an issue with something she said. He replayed her words in his head, wondering what the problem was.

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