Quade's Babies - Brenda Jackson [28]
The babies had been fed and put back to sleep, but not before she had given Quade a quick lesson in diaper changing. He had even helped while she had given them a bath and dressed them in new sleeping attire.
And then Quade seemed determined to sit and hold Venus for a while, actually rocking her to sleep. From the questions he’d asked, Cheyenne knew he was concerned with Venus’s weight. Although Cheyenne had tried to sound encouraging, she had to admit she, too, was worried about Venus. During their last routine doctor’s visit, Dr. Poston had said if Venus’s weight wasn’t up to what he considered a satisfactory level, he would be putting her in the hospital’s special-care baby unit for a week. There she would be fed by nasogastric tube.
Cheyenne hadn’t told anyone of what the doctor had said, and had even led her family to believe the babies would be okay to travel home to Jamaica within a month’s time. She hadn’t actually lied because she wanted to believe that would be the case. But her youngest child seemed less inclined to take her breast milk, and no matter what Cheyenne did, Venus seemed unresponsive to any feeding stimulation.
“Are you okay?”
Quade’s question cut into her thoughts and she glanced over at him before she took a seat on the sofa. “Yes, I’m fine, just a little tired. My family was right. Taking care of all three of them isn’t as easy as I thought it would be. I had a schedule prepared and thought it would be a piece of cake. I guess I’ve been proven wrong.”
Quade came to sit in the chair across from her. “Did you really think you were a superwoman?”
She chuckled. “I wanted to believe I was. I guess starting tomorrow, I’ll begin my search for a nanny while I’m here.”
“Are you planning to go someplace?”
Cheyenne felt the weight of his gaze on her and glanced up and met his eyes. They locked on hers. “Yes. Charlotte isn’t really my home. I’ve been living in Jamaica for the past couple of years. I have a home there. I wanted the babies born in America, so I came back here for their birth. It was never my intent to stay.”
“Oh, I see.”
She shrugged, thinking no, he really didn’t see. Neither did her family. Her mother meant well and so did her sisters, but while they were here to help her, they had preferred doing practically everything for the babies and leaving her with nothing to do other than breast-feed them. Tonight, she had gotten her first real taste of motherhood by handling the babies on her own. Quade had offered his help, but hadn’t forced it on her and she appreciated that. Tonight she had felt in charge, sure of herself and her abilities. She closed her eyes, thinking that if she could only get Venus to be more responsive to her feedings and gain weight, everything would be perfect.
“You’re sleepy. Why don’t you go on to bed.”
She snatched her eyes back open and looked over at Quade, embarrassed that she’d almost fallen asleep while sitting. “No, I’m fine.”
“No, you’re not. You’ve done a lot today. Motherhood is no joke. I have an all-new respect for my cousins’ and brothers’ wives who are new mothers.”
She smiled. “You make it sound like there are a lot of them.”
He chuckled. “There are. Seems like an epidemic hit and pregnancy swept through the Westmoreland family like wildfire. But it has made both my mother and my aunt Evelyn happy since they’d always wanted a bunch of grandkids.”
She nodded. “Do you plan on telling your family about the babies?”
A smile touched his lips. “Yes, but not yet. You think your family is bad. If I were to tell my mother she had more grandchildren somewhere, she would be on the first plane out of Atlanta.”
“Atlanta? Is that your home?”
“It’s where I was born and raised. I haven’t actually lived there since I left for college.”
“And what college did you attend?”
“Harvard.”
She blinked in surprise. He was a