Just then the shower spray faded to a trickle. He’d been in such a hurry to get away from Sandy’s place that he hadn’t bothered to fill the water tank all the way, and last night at the campground he’d been too preoccupied with his bottle of Jim Beam to finish the job.

“None of this would be happening if you hadn’t taken the baby swimming in that dirty river,” Nell felt duty-bound to remind him, sounding just like a nagging wife.

He spun the Demon so her teeth were facing outward and squeezed himself through the tiny shower door and out into the minuscule bathroom. As he reached for a towel, he banged his elbow into the wall. “Damn it!”

“Two damn its already,” Nell said from the other side. “It doesn’t seem to be going very well.”

“If you don’t want to see a naked man, you’d better get back from that door.” He wrapped the towel around the Demon, opened the door, and set her on the floor outside. “She’s all yours.”

He shut the door in the face of Nell’s amusement. The baby immediately began to howl.

“She wants you,” Nell said.

“Tell her to take a number.”

He heard something that sounded like a laugh and he smiled—his first of this miserable day. As soon as he had the towel anchored around his hips, he opened the door and stepped out.

“Gah!” The baby reached up for him, her own towel still draped over her head. She yelped as he moved past her to the back and pushed the sliding door shut.

He heard a scurrying sound and knew she was crawling after him.

“Come here!” Lucy exclaimed. “You don’t like him. He’s a jerk.”

Apparently the Demon didn’t agree because a small head butted into the door he had just closed. There was a blessed moment of silence, and then all hell broke loose.

The eruption wasn’t the pathetic whimpering of an upset baby. Instead, it was the outraged howl of a female who’d been denied her man. He whipped off his towel in frustration. Why couldn’t Sandy have given birth to a boy baby?

Nell began to moo.

Once Button had been cleaned up, she needed to be fed, then they had to wait for her stomach to settle. Nealy watched from Mabel’s window as Mat paced along the road, the soles of his shoes attacking the pavement, a deep frown of displeasure creasing his forehead. Every once in a while, he’d pick up a stone and hurl it into the river. Once he actually dropped down on the side of the road and performed a long series of push-ups. His impatience annoyed her. Why couldn’t he just enjoy the day?