His success in the pub buoyed him.
He’d almost never actually held her for so long. At home, he either took her for her feed then handed her back to Andreas, or the other way around. The longest he held her for was mid-morning naptime if he’d given her breakfast. He’d only just graduated to bath time. To parade her around, feed her, then cuddle her while she slept…he’d not done that all in one go, uninterrupted, before.
And the rush of intense love he’d felt while doing so had been overwhelming. He’d been utterly entranced by her, from the tiny grooves of her knuckles to the way she’d wrinkle her nose if he stroked its tip. She was so tiny in his arms, so delicate, and yet so tough at the same time. He’d never appreciated how much of a miracle the human body actually was. As Andreas had
