Free While We Waited (The Reed Brothers #8) by Tammy Falkner Page B

take him.
    “Oh, hell no,” I say.
    “Take him. Feel his forehead,” she insists.
    Begrudgingly, I take him from her and set him in my lap. He looks up at me and immediately starts to cry.
    “She makes me feel like that too,” Star tells him.
    “Here, you take it.” I hold him out toward Star. She has baby fever, so I assume she’ll take him, but she jumps up and starts to sort through bags of baby stuff instead. “Hel-loooo,” I cry. Everyone ignores me.
    I feel a little wobbly with him in my arms and I’m afraid I’ll drop him, so I pull him closer to me. He settles his little head against my shoulder and I look down my nose at him. The weight of him in my arms feels awkward.
    “He does feel warm,” I say. “You don’t think he’s getting sick, do you?”
    Star unwraps little sleepers and blankets and then takes them to put them in the wash.
    “Shouldn’t you ask Tag if he wants that stuff?” I say.
    “It’s just some used crap that my neighbor was throwing out.” Star grins at me as she comes back into the room. She hides all the empty packages in the trashcan, burying them deep. “And it’s not like he doesn’t need it. I don’t think he has much.”
    “Except for Wren’s fifty thousand dollars,” I remind her.
    “I used that to get Benji from Julia,” a deep voice says from behind me.
    I jump, and the baby jumps too. I pat his back to calm him down.
    “Who’s Julia?” Star asks.
    “His mother,” Tag answers. He’s wearing a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, and he doesn’t have shoes or socks on. He rubs a towel across his wet hair, chafing it briskly.
    “Where is she?” Star asks.
    “I have no idea.” He sits down next to me on the couch and smiles at his son. “I didn’t think you like babies,” he says to me.
    “I don’t,” I grumble. But the baby’s being so still and calm. I hold him, because I want to hear the story about the mother of Tag’s child.
    “Well, babies like you,” he says. Then he tweaks the end of my nose with the tip of his finger.
    I reach up and cover my nose. I can’t believe he just did that. I catch my sisters looking at one another with shocked expressions. “Shut it,” I say to them all.
    Peck pops her baby off her boob and switches sides, all beneath a blanket that Star handed her from her bag. “So she’s not coming b-back?” Peck asks.
    He shakes his head. “No.”
    Star asks softly, “Do you want her to?”
    “I did. Even after all that happened, I wanted her to come back. But she’d moved on. It was my own fault, I think.”
    So you just offered her fifty thousand dollars and she gave you the baby?” I ask.
    “No.” He scratches his head. “There was a little more to it than that. But to make a long story short, I’m broke and I have Benji.” He shrugs. He looks down at Benji, who is starting to fidget in my arms. “Does he look warm to you?”
    Benji is still fretful, so Tag gets up and fetches a bottle. I expect him to take the baby from me, but he just warms the bottle and then hands it to me. I look up at him like I’m lost, because I am.
    Tag adjusts Benji in my arms so that he’s reclining a little, and he sticks the bottle into his mouth. Tag grins at me. “I had to figure it all out too,” he says. “I’m still learning.”
    “I don’t particularly want to learn,” I grumble.
    He laughs. “He likes you,” he says quietly.
    “Well, that’s one of us,” I toss back.
    I try to maintain my aloofness, but I find that I kind of like the little guy.
    Tag’s leg is pressed along the length of mine, and my shoulder touches his arm. He could move over some. There’s room on the other side of him.
    “We brought you some baby stuff,” Star tells him. “You didn’t look like you had much with you.”
    He heaves a sigh. “I don’t have much. But you really didn’t have to do that.”
    She waves a breezy hand through the air. “Oh, it was nothing. Just some stuff my neighbor was tossing out.”
    “Liar,”