Kitabı oku: «The Baby Surprise / The Father for Her Son: The Baby Surprise»

THE BABY

SURPRISE

BRENDA HARLEN

THE FATHER

FOR HER SON

CINDI MYERS

www.millsandboon.co.uk

THE BABY

SURPRISE

BRENDA HARLEN

About the Author

BRENDA HARLEN grew up in a small town surrounded by books and imaginary friends. Although she always dreamed of being a writer, she chose to follow a more traditional career path first. After two years of practicing as a lawyer (including an appearance in front of the Supreme Court of Canada), she gave up her “real” job to be a mum and to try her hand at writing books. Three years, five manuscripts and another baby later, she sold her first book—an RWA Golden Heart winner—to Silhouette Books.

Brenda lives in southern Ontario with her real-life husband/hero, two heroes-in-training and two neurotic dogs. She is still surrounded by books (too many books, according to her children) and imaginary friends, but she also enjoys communicating with “real” people. Readers can contact Brenda by e-mail at brendaharlen@yahoo.com

Dear Reader,

“Write what you know” is advice frequently given to writers. So maybe it’s not surprising, considering my legal background, that several of the characters I’ve written have been lawyers.

Paige Wilder, the heroine of The Baby Surprise, is one of those characters. In this story, she is trying to balance the demands of her career with the needs of the baby in her custody. It isn’t a unique struggle and many women juggle not just these conflicting responsibilities but various other duties and obligations every single day.

It’s hard to keep all those balls in the air and, when faced with a similar dilemma, I chose to give up the practice of law and stay home with my kids. Luckily for me, I also found a new career path—writing stories with happy endings!

I hope you enjoy this one.

Best,

Brenda Harlen

For Courtney & Terri—

representatives of the new generation

of romance readers.

Thanks for being such loyal fans

(and for Zach’s name).

Prologue

Paige Wilder had less than zero experience with kids, but when Olivia Lowell, a friend and coworker at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, asked if she would be her birthing coach, she didn’t know how to say no to the single-mother-to-be. And despite her initial apprehension, the event of Emma’s birth was the singular most amazing experience of Paige’s entire life.

So when, several months later, Olivia asked her to watch the baby overnight, Paige had agreed. With both Ashley and Megan—her cousins and two best friends—now in the early stages of pregnancy, she figured it was a good time to get some babysitting experience and that she was up for the challenge.

A decision she was fervently regretting by 5:00 a.m. when she laid Emma in her crib and fell facedown on the narrow bed in Olivia’s guest room. Around midnight, she’d finally set aside the pretrial memorandum she’d been working on and decided to go to sleep. About the same time, the usually-charming infant woke up screaming like a banshee, and she’d repeated the performance almost every hour on the hour since then.

If nothing else, the experience reminded Paige why she’d never thought about having a child of her own. She was simply in awe of any parent who could deal with a crying child through all hours and still manage to get up and go to work the next morning.

As she finally drifted to sleep, she sent up a weary prayer of thanks that this babysitting assignment was only for one night.

Three days later, she found out otherwise.

Owen Wynne, the senior partner who had hired her to work at the firm almost six years earlier, set aside the pages from which he’d finished reading and looked across the desk at her.

Paige, still reeling from the shock that her friend had been killed in a car accident, struggled to comprehend the words he had spoken. “But what does that mean?”

“It means that you are now Emma Jane Lowell’s legal guardian,” he said patiently.

“That can’t be right,” she said, her tone tinged with equal parts desperation and disbelief.

Owen frowned. “I’d assumed, when Olivia came to me about drafting her will, that she’d already discussed this with you.”

She could only shake her head.

“Well, then, you’re certainly entitled to deny her request,” he assured her.

And Paige knew what would happen if she did—nine-month-old Emma would end up in the system. It was possible that the baby would be adopted by a wonderful couple and loved as if she was their own. Or she might bounce from one foster home to another until she’d reached an age where the state was no longer concerned with her care.

Either way, Olivia’s daughter would never know anything about her mother; she would never know how much she had been loved.

But still Paige hesitated. “I don’t know anything about kids.”

“Neither did I, when I first became a father,” Owen admitted.

“What about Emma’s father?” she asked, clearly grasping. “Are you sure Olivia never mentioned his name?”

“Not to me.”

Not to Paige, either, other than to insist that she’d had no contact with him since she’d told him she was pregnant. Her friend had always been a private person, but Paige had worried that, in this instance, she’d been so tight-lipped because the man already had a family.

“You don’t have to make a final decision today,” Owen told her.

Except that the decision had been made for her when Olivia named Paige as her daughter’s legal guardian. Why Olivia had chosen her would probably always be a mystery, but she couldn’t disregard her friend’s final wishes.

“Yes, I do,” she said. “I want this settled, for Emma’s sake.”

Paige wanted to ensure that Olivia’s baby had the kind of stable childhood that she herself had never known.

But when the papers were signed and she walked out of Owen’s office with Emma in her arms, she felt anything but settled. And she couldn’t shake the feeling that even the best-laid plans could go awry.

Chapter One

Five months later

As a little girl, Paige had never really felt as if she had a home, as if there was anywhere she truly belonged. Growing up as the only child of a divorced Army colonel, she’d left too many homes and too many friends to count, an experience that had taught her early on not to get too attached to anyplace or anyone.

When she was fifteen, her father had decided that Paige was too much trouble to keep with him and had sent her to live with his sister and her family. Even then, Paige had mostly kept to herself. In fact, for the first six months she’d refused to put her clothes in the dresser of the room she’d been told was her own, certain she would need to pack up and leave again as soon as she felt settled.

But six months had turned into a year and then two, and Paige found herself growing close to Ashley and Megan, the two sisters who were her cousins and now also her best friends.

Still, her aunt’s residence had never felt like home so much as a house that she was visiting. Even when Paige moved into her own condo in Syracuse, it was little more than a place to store her belongings and lay her head. But there was a house on Chetwood Street in Pinehurst, New York, that Ashley and Megan had purchased a few years earlier, and Paige felt more at home there than anywhere else she’d ever lived. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that it was where she went when her life fell apart.

She had called both of her cousins to let them know that she wanted to come home for a while and to make sure they didn’t mind if she stayed at the currently empty house. Megan had been the first to move out, when she’d married Gage Richmond the previous year, followed by Ashley, who had vacated the premises only a month ago, after her wedding to Cameron Turcotte. The sisters had decided to list the house for sale but hadn’t yet taken any steps in that direction, so Paige had proposed that she rent the property for the summer.

She really wasn’t sure how long she intended to stay. Her career as a family-law attorney usually kept her too busy to allow for anything more than a long weekend, and even then she usually worked extra hours both before and after in order to make up for the time away from her office. As for an actual vacation, she honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken one, although she had taken more than the occasional day here and there over the past five months—a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the partners who were now concerned about her apparent lack of commitment to her clients and the firm.

It was the reason for this hiatus, which came with the recommendation that she take the time to think about what she wanted for her future. As if having full-time care of a fourteen-month-old baby allowed one time to think.

At first she’d been so shocked by the suggestion that she hadn’t known what to say or do. Her immediate instinct had been to insist that she wanted what she’d always wanted—a partnership at the firm. It was what she’d been working toward for the past half-dozen years. But when she’d picked Emma up from the sitter after work, she’d accepted that a lot had changed in the past five months, that taking care of Emma had changed her.

And if it really came down to a choice between having her name stenciled on the wall behind the reception desk at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne or providing an orphaned little girl with some semblance of family, well, there really wasn’t a choice to be made. Because she loved that little girl with her whole heart.

That realization had been a simple one, but it was followed by some tough questions. Most notably, if she chose at this point in her life to walk away from the career she had only recently started to build, where would she go? What would she do?

It was these concerns that had directed her toward Pinehurst, New York.

Unfortunately, almost a week later, she still wasn’t any closer to figuring out if she could balance her professional obligations and personal responsibilities, or even if she wanted to.

It was difficult enough to accept that Emma would never know her mother or father, but the demands of Paige’s career required that she leave the child with a babysitter for ten hours a day. Of course, Annabelle was a wonderful caregiver who had been chosen by Olivia to take care of her daughter, but that knowledge did little to alleviate Paige’s feelings of guilt.

These thoughts were weighing on her mind Thursday night when she was startled by a brisk knock on the door. A quick glance at the glowing numbers on the front of the DVD player revealed that it was 8:12 p.m., but because Emma had been fussing for so long and had only just fallen asleep, it felt much later.

She pushed herself up from the chair, careful not to jostle the baby, and hurried toward the door. She’d spoken to both Ashley and Megan earlier in the day and neither had made mention of any plan to stop by, and because both of them had keys to the house, it was safe to assume that someone else was knocking.

Shifting Emma to her other shoulder, she hastily tugged open the door before the uninvited guest could knock again.

She noticed his eyes first. Dark blue, intensely focused and strangely familiar. And when those eyes locked on her, she felt an unexpected surge of heat through her veins, an unwelcome sizzle in her blood.

Then she noticed the uniform, and everything inside of her went cold.

“Are you Paige Wilder?”

His voice was deep and sexy, and she felt that sizzle again. But ignored it.

“I am,” she admitted. “Though I don’t know why my identity would be of any interest to a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force.”

His brows lifted, as if he was surprised by her accurate reading of his uniform insignia, and she was struck again not just by the intensity of his gaze, but also the rugged handsomeness of the whole face. His skin was tanned and taut over his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. His hair was dark and glossy and short. He was well over six feet—probably six-three, she guessed—and his shoulders were broad, his torso long and lean, his legs even longer.

The overall effect was one that any woman could appreciate, and Paige was no exception. Apparently fifteen years as an army brat hadn’t inoculated her against the effect of a handsome man in uniform, but five years as an attorney had taught her the wisdom of looking beneath the surface.

“I’m not here in an official capacity,” he assured her.

“Then why are you here?”

“I’m Zach Crawford—” his gaze shifted to the baby curled up against her chest, then back to her “—Emma’s father.”

Emma’s father.

The words echoed in Paige’s mind, the implications sweeping through her with the chilling intensity of a bitter winter wind, numbing everything inside of her despite the warmth of the late-May evening. She instinctively tightened her hold on the baby in her arms and took a step back, away from this stranger’s outrageous claim.

The man standing on the porch interpreted her action as an invitation and moved forward. She shook her head and stood rooted in his path.

“Emma doesn’t have a father,” she told him.

Amusement glinted in those all-too-familiar eyes.

Emma’s eyes.

She desperately pushed that thought aside, trying to convince herself that his eyes were simply blue and any perceived resemblance was nothing more than that.

“Are you really that unfamiliar with basic biology, Ms. Wilder?” he asked.

She felt her cheeks heat in response to the unexpected teasing note in his deep voice. “Olivia told me that Emma’s father wasn’t interested in being a father,” she clarified.

“Then she lied,” he said bluntly.

Paige shook her head again. “She named me as Emma’s guardian because she had no other family. Because Emma had no other family.”

“Except that’s not exactly true, either.”

She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it. Why would Olivia have lied about something like that? And, more importantly, what did this man’s presence here now mean for the little girl sleeping in her arms?

“Look, I can see that this has caught you off guard,” he said. “And I’m sure we both have a lot of questions that, if you let me come in, we could discuss without the neighbors watching.”

A quick glance across the street confirmed that Melanie Quinlan, an attractive young divorcée who made no secret of the fact that she was on the hunt for husband number two, was in her front yard, garden hose in hand to water the flowers she’d just finished planting. Except that her attention was on the uniformed stranger, so she was actually watering her porch rather than the colorful blossoms in the bed in front of it.

Paige lifted her free hand to wave, and the other woman smiled and waved back enthusiastically, not even trying to hide the fact that her attention was riveted to the scene playing out in front of her—or at least on the man who was part of that scene.

“If I said no, would you go away?” Paige asked Zach.

“No.”

She sighed and stepped away from the door. “Just let me put Emma down.”

She wasn’t sure why she thought he might protest, why she thought he might want to hold the child he claimed was his own—or at least take a closer look at her—but she was undeniably relieved when he let her go without a word. She felt his gaze on her, though, the weight of that intense stare heavier than the child in her arms, and wondered why it made her feel all hot and tingly inside.

She worried over that as she carefully laid Emma on her back in the crib and bent to touch her lips to the baby’s soft cheek. She inhaled the scent of baby shampoo and felt tears sting her eyes. She’d started to take this nightly ritual for granted, and now the appearance of a stranger at her door threatened not just this special time she shared with the little girl, but also the whole future she’d envisioned for them together.

She’d never thought about having a child of her own. Even when it was all her friends and family had been talking about, she’d been too busy with her career to spare a single thought to motherhood. But then Emma had come into her life, and suddenly stepping into the role wasn’t a choice but a necessity.

She’d had to make a lot of adjustments when she learned that Olivia had named her as Emma’s guardian, and not without resistance, at least in the beginning. But it hadn’t taken Paige long to realize that Emma hadn’t just changed her life, she’d enriched it. The little girl’s presence made her think about things she hadn’t thought about before. Playing the part of her guardian made her appreciate what it meant to be a mother when that wasn’t something Paige had ever considered.

But through all of the transitions and adjustments, Paige had never imagined that someday someone might turn up in her life and lay claim to the child, as Zach Crawford had just done.

Olivia had always been stubbornly closemouthed about the man who had fathered her child. It was the only topic about which Paige had ever really argued with her friend. She didn’t care about the identity of the man except insofar as she believed he should bear some responsibility for the child he’d helped create.

She’d been frustrated by Olivia’s stoic determination, but her friend had always maintained that she could do it alone—and she wanted to. She knew that there were people who whispered about her situation—not because she was an unwed mother-to-be but because they knew that having to shoulder the responsibility on her own would limit the professional opportunities available to her. She would no longer be able to schedule late-night meetings or quick out-of-town trips for the convenience of a client, and at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, imposing such limitations was akin to career suicide.

The few female partners at the firm had done everything but handstands to prove they deserved to be there. And any woman who happened to be a mother and a lawyer was even more suspect because—God forbid—she might put her family responsibilities ahead of her obligations to the firm. Karen Rosario had waited until she’d made partner to start a family and gave birth to her first baby at age forty-two. And then she hired a live-in nanny to raise the child she’d supposedly wanted so much.

When Paige decided to go into law, she hadn’t considered how difficult it might be to someday balance her career with a family. But she’d thought about it a lot after Olivia told her she was pregnant, and the more she’d thought about it, the angrier she’d become thinking that Olivia was making all of the sacrifices while the man who’d gotten her pregnant—whoever he might be—had simply walked away from his responsibilities.

Maybe it was the lawyer in her, but Paige had wanted to track him down and slap him with a paternity suit to ensure that he at least shared financial responsibility for the baby he’d helped make.

“It’s a lot of responsibility to handle on your own,” Paige said to her friend, cautiously broaching the topic she’d avoided for the past several months because she’d been certain Olivia would tell her about the baby’s father when she was ready. But so far, she’d volunteered nothing.

“I know.”

“Are you sure you have to do it alone? Maybe the father—”

“No,” Olivia interrupted quickly. “This has nothing to do with him.”

“You’re an attorney—you know better than that. Whether you like it or not, it’s his baby, too, and that means he has both legal rights and responsibilities.”

“He has enough responsibilities without adding a child—especially one that neither of us planned—into the mix.”

The comment gave her pause, but Paige finally asked, “Is he married?”

She was relieved when Olivia laughed at the question.

“Married? No, he’s not married. And he’s not the kind of guy who would cheat on his wife if he was.”

“But he’s the kind of guy who would abandon the woman who’s pregnant with his child?” she challenged.

Her friend looked away. “Drop it, Paige. Please.”

Because she could tell that Olivia was still hurting, and because she knew better than anyone that a man couldn’t be forced to feel something for a child he didn’t want, she’d dropped it.

And Olivia had never told her anything else about her baby’s father, not even his name, which meant that Paige had a lot of questions for Lieutenant Colonel Zach Crawford.

She headed back downstairs now, determined to get some answers.

Zach was still standing in the hallway where she’d left him, his feet shoulder-width apart, his hands clasped behind his back. Paige recognized the military stance but, in conjunction with the uniform, it left her feeling anything but “at ease.”

She moved toward the kitchen, and he fell into step behind her. She’d spent countless hours in this room, usually with Ashley or Megan or both, and she’d never felt as if the space was small. But something about Zach’s presence made her feel… crowded. She was far too aware of him—his impressive height, his obvious strength, his overwhelming masculinity.

She glanced at him as she reached for the empty carafe from the coffeemaker, and she swallowed hard when she found those intense and stunningly blue eyes on her. The tug of attraction came again, and she found herself as annoyed as she was baffled by it.

Of all the times for her body to suddenly decide it had been in stasis for too long, now was not a good one. And even if it had been a good time, Zach Crawford was definitely not a man she should ever find herself attracted to. Not just because of the uniform, but because he had once been intimately involved with one of her best friends.

It occurred to her that the uniform might have been why her friend had never told her about the man who had fathered her child. Because Olivia knew something of Paige’s history with her father, she knew Paige would question her decision to get involved with a man who could never make her or their daughter a priority in his life.

She was considering this as she turned on the tap to fill the carafe. “Do you want coffee?” she asked Zach.

“I’ve been on the go since oh-five-hundred,” he told her. “I would love coffee.”

She’d been up since oh-five-hundred herself—5:00 a.m. to nonmilitary people—and she would have preferred to skip the coffee and sink into her mattress and into the oblivion of sleep as peacefully as Emma had finally done.

But she knew she wouldn’t get any sleep tonight—not until she had some answers to the questions that had been swirling through her brain since Lieutenant Colonel Zach Crawford had spoken the two words that continued to echo in her mind.

Emma’s father.

If it was true, if Lieutenant Colonel Zach Crawford really was the father of Olivia’s baby, that simple fact would change everything.

Paige worried over the possibility as she put a filter in the basket and measured out the grounds.

It was easy to see how Olivia might have been attracted to the man. Over and above the fact that he was six feet three inches of mouth-watering masculinity, he moved with a sense of purpose and carried himself with an aura of command that were as much a part of who he was as those blue, blue eyes.

She reached into the cupboard for two mugs and filled them from the carafe.

“Cream? Sugar?” she asked him.

“Just black, thanks.”

She handed him one of the mugs and added a splash of milk to the other.

He waited until she’d taken a seat at the pub-style table in the dining room, then sat down across from her.

“I understand you worked at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne with Olivia?”

She nodded.

“You were good friends?”

“Since our first year at law school together,” she told him.

“She never mentioned you to me.”

“She never mentioned you to me, either,” she told him. “In fact, she never said anything about Emma’s father.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Nothing at all?”

“The only thing she ever told me, and only when I asked where the baby’s father fit into the picture, was that he wasn’t interested in playing any role in his child’s life.”

He scowled at that. “I might not have been thrilled by the news of her pregnancy, if she’d ever bothered to tell me, but she had to know there was no way in hell I would abandon my child.”

“If Olivia never told you she was pregnant, how did you find out? And how do you know that you are Emma’s father?”

“Well, at this point, I’m not one-hundred-percent certain,” he admitted. “But I have a letter from Olivia that says I am, and I have no reason to disbelieve it.”

“You just said Olivia lied.”

“She lied to you,” he clarified, “if she told you that I didn’t want to know my child. Because the truth is, I didn’t know about the baby. Not until I got home from Afghanistan and found the letter she’d left for me.”

“Olivia died five-and-a-half months ago,” Paige told him, with an ache in her heart that was more for the child who would never know her mother than for the premature end of her friend’s life.

A shadow—grief? regret?—momentarily clouded those stunning blue eyes, but then it passed and he nodded. “I found that out when I went to your law firm to find her. The receptionist told me about the accident.”

“No one knows why she was in New Jersey,” Paige admitted.

He sipped his coffee, then set the mug down again. “I live in Trenton,” he told her. “Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that I have an apartment about five minutes from the base, which is where I sleep when I’m in town.”

“She went … to see you?”

He nodded, confirming another fact that seemed to give credence to his claim of paternity. Of course, Paige wasn’t going to take his word for it, nor was she simply going to hand over a child on the basis of his say-so.

“My landlord told me a young woman stopped by looking for me early in the new year. When he told her I was overseas, she left a letter for me.”

“Do you have the letter?”

He took it out of the inside pocket of his jacket and passed it across the table to her.

Apprehension whispered through her as she picked up the envelope. Her fingers trembled as she lifted the flap and pulled out the single page.

Zach,

I’m sure you’re wondering why you’re hearing from me now, after so much time has passed, especially since I was the one who asked you not to contact me, so I’ll get straight to the point. You have a daughter.

Chapter Two

Paige sucked in a breath, startled to see the words clearly written there, supporting this stranger’s claim to the little girl in her care. She wanted to crumple the letter in her fist, to stuff the paper back in the envelope and tell Zach to take it away, to tell him to go away—far away from Emma. But she forced herself to read on.

When she was done, she refolded the letter and tucked it in the envelope again, then slid it across the table to him. She picked up her half-empty coffee cup then set it down without drinking, her stomach churning.

“With all due respect, I have no intention of giving up custody of Emma just because you showed up on my doorstep with a letter that claims you’re her father.”

“A letter written by her mother,” he pointed out.

She couldn’t be one-hundred-percent sure that Olivia had actually written the letter. In an age of computers and e-mail and text messaging, she honestly didn’t recognize the handwriting as her friend’s. However, why would this man be here now if he didn’t believe it was true?

“Even so, Olivia never identified you as the father on Emma’s birth certificate,” she reminded him.

“Did she name anyone else?”

She ignored his question. “I was Olivia’s birthing coach—I went to prenatal classes with her and I was in the delivery room when Emma was born. And through it all, Olivia never once mentioned your name. And, contrary to what is in that letter, she claimed that Emma’s father knew of the pregnancy but wanted no part of his child.”

“That was the lie,” he said again.

And the contents of the letter he carried certainly bore that out. But she wasn’t ready to give up, she wasn’t ready to have her heart torn out of her chest, and she knew that was what would happen if he took Emma away.

“Still, I think the best course of action right now would be to have a paternity test.”

He frowned into his empty mug, then pushed back his chair to refill it. “Fine,” he said. “How soon can we get that done?”

“I can make some calls tomorrow,” she told him. “But probably not until sometime next week.”

His scowl deepened.

“And you’re going to need a lawyer,” she told him.

“Aren’t you a lawyer?”

“Yes, but I’m not going to represent you.”

“Why in hell do I need representation?”

“Because …” She hesitated, not wanting to give him any ideas about seeking custody if that wasn’t a course of action he’d already considered. Maybe he didn’t want Emma with him—maybe he just wanted to meet the little girl he believed was his daughter. So all she said was, “Because you should make sure you understand all of your rights and responsibilities.”

“I’m aware of my rights and responsibilities,” he assured her. “And I intend to be a father to my daughter.”

Which still didn’t tell her whether he was looking for full custody or standard every-other-weekend noncustodial parent access or occasional visits during his periods of leave.

“For how long?” she asked.

He frowned at the question. “What do you mean?”

“When do you have to report back for duty?”

“July seventh.”

Which was actually longer than she’d expected and still not nearly long enough if he was serious about building a relationship with Emma. “So why are you even here?”

“What do you mean?”

“I mean, why did you bother to come all this way, feign an interest in being a father to the child you claim is your own, if you’re going to go wheels up again in a few weeks?”

“I’m not feigning an interest,” he said. “And I’ll go wheels up again because that’s my job.”

“And if Emma is your daughter, who will take care of her while you’re doing your job?”

Zach was taken aback, not just by Paige’s question—which demonstrated the glaringly obvious fact that he hadn’t thought very far ahead when he’d embarked on this journey—but by the disapproval in her tone.

Okay, so maybe he didn’t have all of the answers. Maybe he didn’t have any of the answers. But he was determined to do the right thing and, as far as he could tell, being a father to his daughter was the right thing.

“I don’t know,” he admitted. “But I’ll make arrangements.”

“You mean day care,” she guessed.

“Didn’t you have her in day care?”

“Olivia had found a babysitter who lives close to the office. It’s a more personal environment than a day care and Emma’s happy there.”

“That’s great,” Zach said. “Except that I live in New Jersey.”

Paige dipped her head, her coppery hair falling forward to hide her face, but not before he saw the tears that filled her eyes.

He silently cursed himself for his insensitivity. Because he knew that as much as he’d been completely blindsided by the news that he had fathered a child, this woman had been just as shocked to find him standing at her door. For the past five-and-a-half months she’d been raising Emma. She’d been responsible for the day-to-day care of his child and, with a few simple words, he’d threatened to destroy the foundation of that relationship.

He impulsively reached across the table and touched a hand to her arm.

She jolted at the unexpected contact. Or maybe she’d been startled by the electricity that suddenly crackled in the air. It had sure as hell startled him.

She looked at him now, and he saw both wariness and awareness in the depths of her dark brown eyes. He’d expected her to have green eyes to go with the red hair. Instead, they were the color of rich, dark chocolate and sinfully tempting. His gaze dipped to her mouth, to lips that were naturally pink and sweetly curved, and he found himself wondering if they would taste as good as they looked.

Whoa—totally inappropriate thought there.

This woman was the legal guardian of his daughter, and it was unlikely he would gain either her trust or sympathy by making a move on her within two hours of meeting her. But he couldn’t deny he was tempted.

Of course, he’d been overseas for the past year and a half and hadn’t been with a woman for even longer than that. In fact, he hadn’t been with anyone since the last weekend he’d spent with Olivia … likely the weekend their daughter had been conceived.

Thinking of Emma reminded him why he was there, and he dropped his hand from Paige’s arm. But the air continued to crackle, the tension continued to build.

“I don’t want us to be adversaries,” he said at last.

“I don’t see how we can be anything else, not if it’s your intention to disrupt Emma’s life.”

“I want to get to know my daughter. How is that disruptive?”

“The disruption will come when you disappear from her life as abruptly as you appeared in it.”

She spoke with such conviction he guessed it was likely that she’d grown up with a father who was a transitory presence, too. He knew he had no hope of defending himself against her personal demons, so he only said, “Maybe we should continue this conversation tomorrow.”

“Why?”

“Because I just got home last night, I read Olivia’s letter this morning, then drove from Trenton to Syracuse to Pinehurst, all the while trying to get my head around the fact that I have a fourteen-month-old child I didn’t know anything about before today.”

“I thought you’d be going back to New Jersey tomorrow, if not sooner.”

“You mean you wished I was.”

She didn’t deny it.

“I’m not going anywhere until we figure this out,” he assured her.

“Unless duty calls,” she guessed.

“I have almost two months.”

But the skepticism in her eyes warned that she knew it was a promise he couldn’t make and confirmed that Paige’s apparent disapproval of his career was about more than the possibility of his deployment interfering with his ability to get to know Emma.

“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.

“What time is good?”

“Not oh-five-hundred,” she warned.

He smiled. “How about oh-nine-hundred?”

“A much more civilized hour.”

Zach wished her a good-night and made his way to the door.

His first meeting with Paige Wilder hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. But nothing had gone quite as he’d expected since his plane had touched down at McGuire Air Force Base twenty-eight hours earlier. From the shocking news revealed by Olivia’s letter to his unexpected and undeniable reaction to Paige Wilder, his life was suddenly FUBAR.

Yet, as he made his way to his SUV, he realized he was whistling and already looking forward to tomorrow.

Zach had spotted a couple of hotels on Main Street when he’d driven through town earlier, so he started to retrace his route, figuring he would check into the first one that he came across. He found “Hadfield House—A Bed-and-Breakfast” first. The sign outside promised private baths and hot breakfasts, but Zach only cared that there was an empty bed because he was too exhausted to go much farther.

Thankfully he always traveled with a duffel bag packed with a change of clothes and some basic toiletries—he certainly hadn’t planned on staying overnight. He hadn’t planned on being gone more than a few hours—just long enough to make the trip into Syracuse, talk to Olivia, demand an explanation for the letter and her silence, and try to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do now.

The news that Olivia was dead had been as much a shock as her revelation about the baby. And although he grieved the death of the vibrant young woman, he was also frustrated by the realization that he wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to confront her and demand answers to the questions that crowded his mind.

Early that morning, when he’d read Olivia’s letter—and reread it over and over again, as if doing so might somehow change the words that were written—he’d tried to call her, but both her home and cell numbers were out of service. At the time, he’d been more annoyed than concerned by the realization, but he’d decided that the conversation they needed to have should be face-to-face, and he’d driven to the apartment building she’d lived in while they were dating.

When he got there, he found that her name was no longer on the tenant directory and his inquiries of the landlord only revealed that she no longer lived there. His next stop was the law firm where she worked, and when he walked through the heavy glass doors of the law offices of Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, he’d been confident that he was getting closer to the answers he sought.

It was the receptionist—Louise Pringle, according to the nameplate on her desk—who’d told him, with tears in her eyes, that Olivia had been killed in a motor-vehicle collision more than five months earlier.

He’d had to swallow around the lump of guilt and regrets that had lodged in his throat before he could ask, “Did she have her baby with her?”

“Oh, no. Paige was babysitting the little angel, and thank the good Lord for that.”

Relief shuddered through his system, assuring him that, although the news about the baby had rocked him to the very core, he wanted a chance to know his child, to be a father to his little girl.

“Paige?” he prompted.

“Paige Wilder. She’s another one of the attorneys here. She has legal custody of Emma now.”

“Is it possible for me to see Ms. Wilder?”

“She’s out of town,” the efficient Louise had said, consulting the schedule on her computer. “But Victoria Lawrence might be able to squeeze you in around two o’clock tomorrow.”

“Thanks, but I really need to see Ms. Wilder,” he had said. “Do you have a number where I could contact her?”

The older woman had started to shake her head, but then she eyed the uniform again and paused. “I really can’t give out that kind of information,” she said. “Maybe if you left your name and number and the reason you want to speak with her, I could contact Paige and ask her to get in touch with you.”

“It’s a personal matter.”

The furrow in her brow deepened, but when she looked up at him again, her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, I didn’t realize.”

“Didn’t realize?” he prompted.

“You’re Emma’s father.”

Her matter-of-fact assertion had taken him aback. Although he had originally gone to the law offices to see Olivia about that possibility, he’d been completely unprepared to hear a stranger echo his short-term girlfriend’s allegation.

“What makes you say that?” he asked, as wary as he was curious.

“She has your eyes,” Louise told him.

“Crawford blue” was how his mother had always referred to the color that each of her children had inherited from their father.

Although blue was a common eye color, he’d had enough people comment on the unique shade of his to realize that “Crawford blue” was distinctive. But he couldn’t say for certain whether or not Olivia’s child had the same color eyes because she’d been asleep when he arrived at Paige Wilder’s door.

He hadn’t looked at her closely enough to see if there was any other resemblance. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. He was willing to do the right thing by his child, if Emma was his child, but, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he was prepared to tackle fatherhood and everything it entailed at this point in his life. He hadn’t thought much about having kids at all, except in the vaguest of terms and somewhere in a still-distant future.

He was thirty-seven years old, long past the age when most of his contemporaries had settled down with a wife and kids. Some of them were even on their second or third wives, which was not a path he had any desire to follow.

But if he’d fathered a child, as Olivia claimed, he would be a father to that child.

And so he’d taken the address Louise had discreetly slipped to him and he’d found Paige Wilder and Emma.

He’d found his daughter.

And seeing the baby in Paige’s arms had absolutely terrified him.

He’d seen and experienced some unbelievable things during his years in the Air Force, all without batting an eye. But the sight of that beautiful little girl, so small and vulnerable and completely dependent, had nearly knocked him on his ass.

After Zach left, Paige stood beside Emma’s crib, tears streaming down her cheeks as the truth of the situation sank in. She could try to block Zach Crawford at every turn, she could stall him with all kinds of legal maneuvering, but her efforts would only delay the inevitable. Because she knew too well that the interest of a previously unknown father was a significant change in circumstances that could—and would—successfully challenge her custody decree.

And losing Emma would break her heart.

Why did you do it, Olivia? Why did you lie about Emma’s father?

Of course, her friend couldn’t answer her questions now, and Paige found herself cursing in frustration. And then she felt guilty for cursing a woman who had died so young and so tragically—a woman who had been one of her closest friends and yet, in retrospect, a woman she wasn’t sure she had really known at all.

If I’d known, I would have been prepared for the possibility that Emma’s father might show up someday. Instead, you let me fall in love with this child, never guessing that Zach Crawford might show up and want to take her away.

She had no doubt that was what he planned to do. A man who had risen to the rank of lieutenant colonel was undoubtedly dedicated, honorable and trustworthy—definitely not the type of man to walk away from his own child.

But maybe Emma wasn’t his child. Maybe, despite Olivia’s letter, her friend was mistaken about the baby’s paternity. Because aside from the eye color, she really hadn’t seen any resemblance between Zach and Emma. The man was a complete contrast to the child. He was so solid and strong and—

The mental image was so vivid that her heart actually skipped a beat, and Paige cursed herself for the uncharacteristic weakness. She wasn’t usually the type of woman to get all fluttery and tongue-tied over a handsome man, and letting her imagination run wild with respect to Zach Crawford wasn’t just futile—it was dangerous.

I don’t want us to be adversaries.

But they were, and she needed to remember that and forget that the lieutenant colonel had stirred feelings she hadn’t felt in a very long time.

Chapter Three

Zach didn’t usually dream. Or maybe it would be more accurate to say that he didn’t usually remember his dreams. But when he bolted up in bed early the next morning, the details were fresh in his mind and his heart was pounding hard and fast from the adrenaline that had surged through his system.

He scrubbed his hands over his jaw, blinked away the last remnants of slumber and reminded himself that it had only been a dream.

But it had felt so unbelievably and terrifyingly real.

He was flying an F-22 Raptor in enemy skies when the jet suddenly started to spin. He couldn’t get the plane under control and he was dropping fast. He swore and he prayed, then he reached for the ejection handle.

But he felt no relief when he successfully punched out, only an escalating sense of panic when the parachute failed to deploy. Then he glanced down and saw that there was a baby sitting in his lap. A tiny little girl who looked up at him with wide, trusting blue eyes. And all he could do was hold on to her and fervently pray as they plunged toward the ground.

He pushed himself out of bed and strode toward the bathroom. A quick flick of his wrist had the shower running, and he stripped away his briefs and stepped under the pounding spray, desperate to clear the lingering shadows of the dream from his mind.

He didn’t need a psychiatric assessment to know that learning he was a father had sent his whole world spinning out of control. What worried him more was to think that maybe the dream hadn’t simply been a manifestation of his own fears but an omen—a warning that his sudden appearance in Emma’s life could tear her away from the safety and security of the life she had with her legal guardian.

And suddenly an image of Paige Wilder filled his mind.

The gleaming coppery hair, the dark chocolate-colored eyes and the distinctly feminine curves packed quite a punch. There was no denying that he’d felt an immediate jab of purely sexual attraction the moment she’d opened her door. But it was more than her obvious physical beauty that tugged at him. It was the stubborn tilt of her chin, the determined glint in her eyes and the realization that this woman was as fiercely protective of the little girl who had been placed in her care as a mother bear would be of her cubs.

But Zach wasn’t going to be scared off by anything she said or did because that little girl was his daughter. He was sure of it. And he suspected that Paige was sure of it, too, but she was going to drag things out, hoping that he would have to go wheels up again before anything was resolved.

If that was the case, Paige Wilder was in for a surprise because Zach wasn’t going anywhere without his daughter.

Emma was still sound asleep when the sun started to peek over the horizon, but Paige crawled out of bed anyway. Oh- nine-hundred was definitely a more civilized hour, but she knew that the promise of French toast would be enough to summon her cousins for a quick breakfast meeting before Zach arrived.

Ashley was a first-grade teacher who’d never wanted anything more than she’d wanted a family, and in the past year she’d ended her engagement to a cheating fiancé and then married the high-school sweetheart who had moved back to town. Now she was stepmother to his darling little girl and expecting a baby of her own in just about three months. Megan was the vice president of research and development at Richmond Pharmaceuticals, married to the company president’s youngest son and in her ninth month of pregnancy.

The three of them had traditionally met once a month for Sunday brunch and, occasionally, on Friday nights just to hang out together. It used to be that their social gatherings included as much wine as conversation, but that had changed in the past year since first Megan and then Ashley got pregnant and Paige learned she’d been entrusted with custody of Emma.

But the camaraderie they shared and their trust in one another hadn’t changed, and Paige knew they never would. And that was why she’d come home—to be with these women who knew her better than anyone else ever had, who understood her hopes and dreams, and who would understand how confused and conflicted she was feeling right now.

As if on cue, Ashley was at the door with her seven-year-old stepdaughter just as the coffee finished brewing and Emma woke up.

“I hope you don’t mind that I brought Maddie,” she said. “I figured she could help keep Emma busy while we talked and then she and I can leave for school directly from here.”

“Of course I don’t mind,” Paige said because, aside from the fact that she was grateful Ashley was there, she absolutely adored Maddie.

“Do you like French toast?” she asked.

The child’s eyes sparkled as she nodded her head enthusiastically. “I love French toast.”

“Then you get the first piece,” Paige decided, dipping a slice of bread into the egg batter, then dropping it into the hot pan.

Her cousins were the reason she’d come back to Pinehurst when the proverbial rug had been pulled out from beneath her feet. Of course, she’d had no idea then that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better—and she was keeping her fingers crossed that they would get better—but she knew she could count on Ashley and Megan to stand by her and support her whatever she decided to do.

“Mmm, I smell French toast,” Megan said, waddling into the kitchen a few minutes later.

“I promised you breakfast,” Paige reminded her.

“So you did,” Megan agreed. “But you know we would have come even without the bribe.”

Paige nodded, tears stinging her eyes as she slid the spatula under the bread and flipped it in the pan.

And although she knew her cousins had to be curious about the reason for her frantic phone calls last night, they didn’t press her. Instead, they worked around one another in the kitchen—Paige making the toast, Ashley serving it up for the kids, Megan brewing the herbal tea her sister had always preferred while sipping half a cup of coffee generously doctored with milk for the benefit of the baby she was carrying.

When Maddie had finished her breakfast and washed up, she took Emma into the living room to play with her, and the three adults sat down with their plates.

“Is this about the hunky guy Melanie saw you with last night?” Ashley asked.

“When did you see Melanie?” Paige countered.

“What hunky guy?” Megan wanted to know.

“Melanie was walking her dog when Maddie and I were on our way over here. She told me that there was a tall, dark-haired and very handsome man at your door last night and that you invited him inside. But not for very long, she assured me. Just about long enough for a cup of coffee, and then he was on his way again.”

Paige shook her head. “Remind me again why I decided to stay here.”

“Because you wanted to take some time to figure out your future, because you wanted to be closer to Megan and I, and because it’s a great neighborhood where the residents look out for one another.”

“Is that another way of saying ‘spy on one another'?”

“Who cares about the neighborhood?” Megan said. “I want to hear about the hunky man.”

Paige swirled a piece of French toast in syrup, then set her fork down again without eating it. Even the coffee that was as necessary to her system as oxygen in the morning wasn’t sitting comfortably in her stomach, and the breakfast she’d prepared held even less appeal.

“The hunky man is Lieutenant Colonel Zach Crawford of the United States Air Force. He claims—”

She thought she could get through this without any more tears, but the moisture that filled her eyes proved otherwise.

“He claims to be Emma’s father.”

“Emma’s father?” The shock in Ashley’s voice echoed Paige’s initial response to Zach’s announcement.

She nodded.

“Did he have any proof?” Megan demanded. As a successful research scientist, she was skeptical of anything that couldn’t be proven.

“He had a letter … from Olivia.”

Megan reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Olivia named you as Emma’s guardian.”

“I know. But if it turns out that he is her father—” She couldn’t finish the thought.

But she didn’t need to. When Ashley reached for her other hand, she knew that they understood the bond she’d formed with Emma. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t carried the child in her womb or given birth to her—she’d taken prenatal classes with Olivia, coached her through the birth and, after the doctor and the mother, she’d been the first to hold the newborn baby.

Still, it was more than that. It was the realization that when Olivia died, the child had no one. And admittedly, there had been more than a few moments when Paige had cursed her friend for naming her the baby’s guardian, moments when she’d fervently wished Olivia had chosen someone—anyone—else.

But now things were different. They had a routine, and a connection. When Emma cried, Paige instinctively knew whether she was wet or hungry or tired or just wanted to be held. And she’d found that nothing comforted her so much as offering comfort to the baby she’d grown to love as if she were her own.

“If he’d shown up five months ago—heck, maybe even five weeks ago—I might have jumped at the opportunity to turn Emma over to him. But now … I can’t imagine my life without her.”

“You’re the expert on custody matters,” Ashley reminded her. “So all I’ll say is, whatever you need, we’re here for you.”

“Absolutely,” Megan agreed.

Paige knew it was true, and their unwavering support meant the world to her. “Thanks. At this point, I don’t know what I need, what he plans to do. I got the impression that he discovered the letter from Olivia when he got home from an overseas tour, tore off to confront her, found out she’d been killed and that I had custody of the baby, and raced out here without really thinking about what he planned to do when he finally came face-to-face with the child that he believes is his own.”

“Poor man,” Ashley murmured sympathetically. Then her gaze flew to Paige’s. “Not that I’m taking his side. Of course not. I just can’t help thinking that the news must have thrown him for a loop.”

“You mean like when Paige found out she’d been named Emma’s legal guardian?” Megan asked her sister.

Ashley nodded. “But at least Paige knew the baby existed. This guy didn’t even know he’d had a child.”

“If she’s even his baby,” Paige felt compelled to interject.

“You don’t think he is Emma’s father?”

“I don’t know what to think, why Olivia never told anyone about him. Any time I tried to get information about her child’s father, she stonewalled me. And yet, if I believe him, if I believe she wrote the letter he showed me, then she had a change of heart and decided to tell him about the child. She wanted him to be a part of her daughter’s life.”

“What do you want?” Ashley asked gently.

“I want him to have a change of heart—to have woken up this morning and, in the light of day, realize that he’s not ready to take on the responsibility of being a father and just disappear as unexpectedly as he appeared.”

But she knew it wasn’t going to happen.

A fact that was confirmed when Zach’s SUV pulled into the driveway while she was saying goodbye to Ashley and Maddie a few minutes later.

Ashley paused on the step, obviously wanting to hang around and meet him. But Maddie tugged on her hand, a silent reminder that they both had to get to school, and with a last wave, she was gone.

Unfortunately, Megan was still inside. But Paige had invited Zach to come by, so she gestured for him to follow her into the house.

As she was introducing Zach and Megan, she heard the soft slap of the baby’s hands on the ceramic tile floor as she crawled toward the sound of familiar voices. When she rounded the corner and spotted Paige, those big blue eyes lit up and her mouth curved in a wide smile.

Beside her, she heard Zach’s breath catch.

Emma heard it, too, because she looked over at him, then actually scooted back a step. And the little girl, whose exposure to the male species had been limited and who had certainly never met anyone as big and imposing as the man in front of her now, started to cry.

Paige wanted to scoop the child into her arms, to hold her and hug her and promise her that the big scary man would go away and everything was going to be okay. But it was a promise she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep, so she stood motionless, helpless, while Zach squatted beside the teary child.

He murmured softly to her, so softly that Paige couldn’t hear the words that were said. But despite the soothing tone, Emma turned away, tears tracking down her cheeks as she crawled over to where Paige was standing. Grabbing hold of her pant leg, she pulled herself up and hung on, peeking at the stranger from behind the shelter of Paige’s leg.

Zach stood, too, and sighed wearily.

“She’s a little wary of strangers,” Paige told him.

She expected he would again claim that he was her father, but he seemed to understand that even if that was true, he was also a stranger.

“But she warms up quickly,” Megan interjected, as if to reassure Zach. Then she ruffled Emma’s soft curls. “Don’t you, Em?”

The little girl looked up at her and smiled shyly. Then, apparently bored with the adult conversation, she dropped down to the floor again and crawled back to the living room.

“I want to get the paternity test done as soon as possible,” Zach told Paige.

“All right,” she agreed, biting back a more elaborate retort that would have let him know in clear terms that what she wanted was for him to descend into the fiery underworld.