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her?”
    “Normally, she’s cheerful and charming. Because we’re fighting, she’s huddled against my chest. Clearly, she’s picked up on our mood and is nervous.”
    “Okay,” he said finally with a stiff nod. “Babies have emotions and are experts at reading them. Tell me how that helps me.”
    “Well, so far, it hasn’t helped you at all. It’s been working against you.”
    His jaw clenched again and for the first time that day, she noticed the fine lines of exhaustion etched around his eyes. The sheer tension rolling off of him. She fought against the sympathy growing inside of her. This situation was his own damn fault. No one else would expect to bond emotionally with an infant in less than two weeks. No one else would expect their baby daughter to love them automatically. But Derek expected it. And he’d blame himself if it didn’t happen.
    She sighed, suddenly feeling as if she were kicking him when he was down. Still, she pressed on. “It’s that emotion thing I was telling you about. You’re very closed off. Very emotionally distant.”
    “Is this supposed to be helpful?”
    She winced at the hint of pain in his voice. It wasn’t impossible that her criticism had hurt his feelings. It just seemed so unlikely.
    “Ultimately, yes, it should be helpful. You want to know why Isabella bonded so quickly with Dex?”
    “Yes. That’s exactly what I want to know.”
    She ignored the sarcasm in his voice. “She bonded with him so quickly because he fell in love with her right off the bat.”
    Derek all but smirked. “Dex fell in love with a baby?”
    “Scoff all you want, I’m just telling you what I saw. You haven’t seen it, because every time you’re in the room with the two of them, all you can see is that your daughter likes him better. It’s driving you crazy, so you don’t see what’s really going on there.”
    “I’m not a child, Raina. I’m not jealous of Dex.”
    Once again, it was all she could do not to bop him on the head, though this time the urge was tempered with amused exasperation. She shook her head ruefully. “Of course you’re jealous of Dex.”
    He looked ready to argue with her, but she didn’t give him the opportunity. He was so hard on himself, always so determined to do the right thing. And apparently, no one had ever told him it was okay to experience jealously.
    “It’s natural to feel jealous,” she explained. “After all, you’ve pretty much succeeded at every thing you’ve ever done. You’re simply not used to Dex excelling where you’ve failed.”
    “I wouldn’t say he’s excelled.”
    She rolled her eyes in exasperation. “I would. When he believed Isabella was his, he opened up to her. You should watch them together sometime. It’s like he’s a completely different person when he’s with her. Well, her and Lucy.”
    She couldn’t hide the note of wistfulness that crept into her voice as she was talking. Before Lucy had come into his life, she’d always thought of Dex as a little cold and impersonal. Never in a million years would she have pegged him as a candidate for uncle of the year, but in those few weeks he’d thought he was Isabella’s dad, he’d been transformed.
    Frankly, she was a little jealous herself. Not of Dex, but of Lucy, who had managed to win his heart. Of course, it wasn’t Dex’s heart Raina wanted. The Messina hearts were as complicated as they were well-guarded. Yet somehow Lucy had figured out a way in. Raina doubted she was even close to the right door.
    Which was the kind of thinking that had made her so miserable during her tenure at Messina Diamonds. And she couldn’t help wondering, if in nine years working for him, she hadn’t been able to get Derek to open up to her, how in the world was she supposed to get him to open up to Isabella in just two weeks?

    Watching the emotions play across Raina’s face, he could all but see her frustration mounting. So it didn’t surprise him when she marched across the