Free Baby in Her Arms by Judy Christenberry

given in to temptation, remembering how good she felt against him. He’d wanted her back in his arms.
    Not that he would’ve taken advantage of her or anything. He just wanted to hold her, like a kid with his favorite teddy bear. After all, he’d been injured—surely he was entitled to a little comfort?
    He grinned as he stepped into Ginny’s room. He didn’t think Maggie would accept that argument.
    “Hi, baby,” he said softly, greeting his daughter. Several tears slowly ran down her little cheeks, but she smiled when she saw him.
    “Willing to take any port in a storm, huh? Listen, we have to manage without Maggie just for this morning. She’s in a little snit, okay? So be patient.”
    He grabbed a clean diaper and approached the baby’s crib. He’d seen Maggie do this job several times, and he’d even managed it once at the diner. Not as efficiently as Maggie, of course, but he could do it.
    “Time to change the diaper, sweetheart. Let’s lie down,” he said as he put her on her back.
    Her big blue eyes widened and stayed glued to his face, as if she was trying to decide whether or not to cry. He reached up and wound the music on the mobile, making the animals that dangled down circle the crib.
    As he watched Ginny’s attention transfer to the animals, he decided changing a diaper wasn’t so bad. Even one that smelled a little. He didn’t remember such a smell before.
    Unsnapping her nightgown, wet from Ginny’s long sleep and subsequent action, he noticed the smell seemed to get worse.
    Uh-oh.
    Pulling the diaper away from her skin, he peeked inside.
    “Maggie!” he roared.
     
    Maggie had been congratulating herself on forcing Josh to take care of Ginny, when she heard that desperate roar. Fearing something terrible had happened to the baby—which, of course, would be Maggie’s fault—she vaulted from the bed and raced across the hall.
    “What is it?” she gasped.
    “Can’t you smell it?” he demanded, his eyes widened with outrage.
    It didn’t take Maggie any time at all to grasp the situation.
    “Good heavens, Josh, you scared me to death.”
    He’d done the same thing to Ginny, it appeared, as her baby face crumpled into tears.
    “There, there, Ginny, Daddy didn’t mean to frighten you. He’s just spoiled.”
    “What are you talking about? I’m not spoiled.”
    “Yes, you are. You expect everything to be easy.” She reached for the treated wipes. “When she has a dirty diaper, you clean her with these.”
    “Okay,” he hurriedly agreed, taking a step back.
    She handed him a wipe.
    “You want me to...to change her?”
    “That was the idea of you coming in here, wasn’t it?”
    “Yeah, but I didn’t expect a dirty diaper. I can’t—”
    She stared at him, a challenge in her eyes.
    “Come on, Maggie, you’ll be better at it than—”
    She shoved the wipe closer.
    With a frown—and muttering something under his breath that she didn’t ask him to repeat—Josh took the wipe. Undoing the tabs on the diaper, he carefully pulled it back, releasing the full force of the stench.
    “Ugh! This is terrible.”
    Maggie said nothing, only reached over to pull another wipe out of the box. After glaring at her, Josh began the loathsome duty of cleanup. Five wipes later, including one to clean off her heel where Ginny had kicked in the wrong place, Josh had successfully completed the cleanup.
    “Okay, I did it,” he said, looking at Maggie.
    “Good job. Now you’d better get a clean diaper on her before—”
    Too late. Ginny liked being free of her diaper. It didn’t seem to bother her that she wet all over herself.
    “Babies are disgusting,” Josh protested.
    “They take after their daddies,” Maggie suggested, grimacing in his direction. “I’ll go rinse Ginny off in our bathroom and diaper and dress her. You wash your hands, strip the bed and clean it with disinfectant, put on a new sheet and go get the bottle.”
    Gathering a clean diaper, baby powder, fresh