A Man Like Mike by Sami Lee

environment by taking him out of his cot.”
    “That sounds like something straight from one of those dour parenting books you’ve got out there.”
    Eve’s fingernails dug into her palms. Bailey was already watching the exchange between them with interest, the undertones in their voices doing nothing to settle him back to sleep. With that in mind, Eve denied herself the gratification of arguing with Mike, whose arrogance was made possible only by an ignorance she would dearly love to point out to him. Instead, she stepped forward and held out her arms, relieved when Bailey immediately wriggled free of Mike’s embrace to settle into hers.
    Eve rested her cheek against the little boy’s. “There you go B. We need to get you back to sleep now, okay? Good boy.”
    She crooned to him, yet still he cried. She rocked him in her arms, but he looked up at her as though she were the most useless person in the world and opened his mouth to issue an ear-piercing scream.
    Immediately Mike was beside her, offering his arms. “Let me take him.”
    Eve sent him a look that could wither a flower on the stem. “You’re not helping. There’s too much activity in the room.”
    “And you looking like you’re going to put your head through the wall is helping?”
    “I’m fine,” Eve lied, her teeth clenched. Bailey’s screams were only mounting and, gallingly proving Mike’s point, each wail pushed her blood pressure higher. “Would you please just leave?”
    With a look of pure frustration, Mike did as she asked. Without another word he stalked out of the nursery.
    Damn. She hadn’t meant to fight with the man, but taking care of Bailey was her job, not Mike’s.
    Eve forced the tension from her shoulders, gentling her tone. “It’s all right B. It’s all right.” She made gentle shushing noises that seemed to get her nowhere. At last, in desperation, she began to sing the first song that came into her head, ‘You Can’t Hurry Love’, by the Supremes, because she had heard it on the radio earlier that day.
    Blessedly, the sound seemed to arrest Bailey’s attention. Gradually his sobs turned to tiny hiccupping sounds and by the time Eve sang, ‘before loneliness will cause my heart to break’ for the third time, his eyes were drooping.
    Relief washed over her. At last she felt confident to gently place Bailey back in his timber cot, tucking his favourite teddy bear beside him. Eyelids at half-mast, he immediately reached for the toy, scrunching its plush ear in his hand the way he liked to do as he drifted off and looking at her with his big, droopy blue eyes.
    Although it had seemed longer to her, he had gone from hysterical screaming to sleep in less that fifteen minutes, a much shorter time than it had taken her to settle him a month ago.
    Backing slowly out of the room, Eve turned at the door, only to collide with Mike, who had at some point returned, unnoticed. He was leaning on the doorjamb, quietly watching her.
    She felt cool skin, solid muscle, beneath her hands before she used them to push herself away from him. Her pulse skyrocketed again … because he had scared the life out of her, she told herself. “How long have you been standing there?”
    His voice was as soft as hers. “Long enough to know you’re not going to win any karaoke competitions.”
    “Very funny,” Eve told him in a tone that said he was being anything but. So she couldn’t hold a tune to save herself. It wasn’t very gracious of him to point it out.
    Nor was it polite of him to watch her without making his presence known. And couldn’t he have put on a shirt? Her gaze trailed of its own volition over firm muscles, lightly dusted with dark, straight hair that looked like it would be soft to the touch. A narrow trail of it bisected his flat stomach before it disappeared beneath the elastic waist of his pants.
    Stop it! Eve scolded herself. This was hardly the time or the place to be ogling a man, just because he happened to be