Kitabı oku: «The Daughter He Wanted»

Contents

Cover

Back Cover Text

Introduction

Dear Reader

Title Page

About the Author

Dedication

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

CHAPTER NINETEEN

CHAPTER TWENTY

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

EPILOGUE

Extract

Copyright

CHAPTER ONE

HE DIDN’T HAVE to know.

Alex Ryan sat outside the pretty white house on the quiet street in Bonne Terre, Missouri. It was an older home with a wide front porch and ivy growing up the two posts on either side of the three steps leading to the front door. It had a peaked roof with gingerbread trim. It wasn’t a true Victorian but someone along the way had added a few Victorian touches to the two-story home. He could see the tops of a wicker couch and rocker on the porch. Pots overflowing with red snapdragons and bleeding hearts hung from the ceiling and wound their way over the steps. In a few more days those plants would begin to die off, but for now they were pretty in the October afternoon sunlight.

There was a hopscotch course painted in sunny yellow on the front walk.

It looked like a happy house. A peaceful house. The kind of place he’d have liked to have grown up.

He didn’t have to knock on the pink front door. Didn’t need to introduce himself. He could turn the key, put the gearshift in first, make a right at the corner and be back at his own house within twenty minutes.

He could forget about the phone call that led him here. Go on with his life. A gauzy curtain in the front window flicked but he couldn’t make out more than a shadow inside. There was a late-model Honda parked in the drive, and the woman who lived here would probably like him to start up the truck and leave.

Alex looked down at his knuckles, white from gripping the steering wheel. He’d been fine before that damned phone call. His job as a park ranger at St. Francois State Park and St. Joe State Park was demanding and required all his focus. When he went home to his big, rambling house in Park Hills he was so tired that all he needed was a TV dinner, a sitcom laugh track and his bed. But the phone call came and now all he could think about was the tricycle he hadn’t been able to resist buying four years ago. The trike that was gathering dust in his attic, and was an almost exact replica of the pretty pink model that sat in this front yard now.

The trike he bought had been green, a compromise because Deanna insisted that, when they finally became pregnant, she wanted to be surprised at the birth.

But Deanna had gotten sick, so there hadn’t been a baby at all.

What could he gain from pushing himself into the lives of a strange woman and her daughter?

A four-year-old you didn’t know about until a week ago, he reminded himself. A four-year-old who lives in a pretty house on a quiet street in a town with an almost invisible crime rate.

She and her mother had been doing fine for four years.

You have a daughter. The soothing voice of the lawyer tasked with telling him about the mix-up at the fertility clinic echoed around the truck cab as if she sat beside him on the leather seat.

He had done the love thing. Married his college sweetheart and had a good life, but all that changed when Dee died. What could he give a four-year-old kid? He didn’t know how to act around adults anymore, much less children. It was one of the reasons he turned down every promotion in favor of hiking the park trails alone as a ranger.

Late-afternoon sun peeked from behind a cloud, caught on the chrome handlebar of the pink trike and winked at him.

He had to know.

The front door opened slowly and a slim woman stepped out onto the porch. Watched the truck for a moment as if she needed to think about something. Like whether or not to call the cops because a strange man was loitering on her curb. She started down the steps toward his truck and Alex swallowed hard. Too late. No chance for a clean getaway now. Sweat rolled down his neck, and he switched the air conditioning on. It didn’t work. The air conditioner pumped out enough cold air to make an elephant hypothermic but the nervous sweats continued. The woman shot a glance back into the house.

She was pretty, in a girl-next-door sort of way. Faded denim outlined her slim hips and red flip-flops protected her feet from the warm concrete. The old tee she wore with “Navy” emblazoned on the chest was splattered with paint. She tucked a long strand of honey-colored hair behind her ear as she opened the front gate and let it slide closed behind her.

Then she stepped onto the pavement and tapped on his window.

Alex hit the button to lower the glass and inhaled a slow breath filled with the smell of fall leaves and something tropical. Like mangos and bananas. Her. Sea-green eyes met his gaze. A splash of freckles played over her pert nose. He’d always been a sucker for freckles. Freckles and laughs. Deanna had both, along with white-blonde hair, short legs and an infuriating habit of finishing his sentences. Physically the women couldn’t be more different. Where Dee was short, this woman was tall. Willowy. Alex shifted in his seat.

He would not be attracted to her. Not, not, not.

You’re not here to be attracted to the mother. Definitely not. He had nothing to offer her, but the little girl, maybe he could give her...something.

Still, he was mesmerized by the light tan dots over the woman’s nose and those long, long legs covered in tattered denim.

“I’ve had four neighbors call to let me know a strange man is casing my house. And Mrs. Purcell—” she pointed toward a green-shuttered home with a cracked sidewalk and an old Chevy Impala in the drive “—has probably also called 9-1-1. So, unless you just like being interrogated for sitting in your truck you might want to come in.” She offered him a kind smile but her hands trembled against the door. Her voice had a light twang to it that a lot of Southern Missouri residents had. Not so twangy that single-syllable words became multisyllabic, more of a slow, I’m-not-in-a-hurry twang. “Unless you’ve decided against it?” The words were semihopeful and Alex couldn’t blame the woman for that.

He tapped his booted foot against the floorboard and flipped the key. “I haven’t really decided anything but maybe we could talk?”

She blew out a breath, nodded, and the strand of hair she’d tucked behind her ear slipped forward, hiding her face for a moment. “They told me you’d like to meet. I kind of hoped we could talk over the phone first.”

Alex shrugged and his shoulder pushed against his seat belt. He pulled the key from the ignition and then released the belt. “It’s easier to hang up a phone than not answer a doorbell.” He got out of the truck and shut the door. Paige, the lawyer told him her name was Paige, watched him, arms folded over her chest and an annoyed slant to her full lips. “I didn’t— Not that you wouldn’t answer.” This was going wrong. So wrong. This situation was completely out of his grasp. “I’m not sure where to begin.”

Her voice was quiet, resigned. Like she knew she couldn’t stop what was coming, but wanted to all the same. “I’d rather not have this conversation on the street.” She stepped away from him. “I’m Paige Kenner, by the way. And you’re Alex Ryan.”

“I know.” She raised her eyebrows at him. Alex ran a hand over his face as if that might wipe away the discomfort he felt now that he was face-to-face with Paige. It didn’t. Paige seemed...normal. Nice. She hadn’t run screaming for the cops when a strange man sat outside her home, anyway. And he’d just swung from arrogant to meek and back to arrogant in about two seconds. He held out his hand and waited a long moment before Paige reached out. Her skin was soft against his and he told himself the little shock he felt was from his smooth-soled boots rubbing against the carpet on the floor of his truck and not because he was attracted to her.

“Sorry, yeah, I’m Alex. I’m your daughter’s father.”

* * *

PAIGE WANTED TO do anything except lead Alex Ryan into her home. But there were at least four pairs of eyes on them right now and one of those pairs—Mrs. Purcell—would be right back on the phone with the Bonne Terre police department if Paige ran screaming down the street.

Maybe that wouldn’t be the worst thing.

The police would come, and crazy teenage reputation or not, the officers would take her seriously. She was a teacher now, a single mom. Valued member of the community. He might look perfectly adorable in the black tee with the park ranger logo over the chest, faded jeans and boots, but there were only a few reasons a stranger would sit outside a home for hours. None of them good. The cops would take Alex Ryan into custody and delay this meeting. Maybe even make him reconsider stepping into her life.

God, let him reconsider. Her life worked now. She liked who she was, liked being Kaylie’s mom, giving her daughter all the love and attention Paige was denied in her own childhood. When she was a child, her parents either ignored her completely or interfered to the point that Paige couldn’t take it and lashed out. Those actions had sent her down the road of rebellion until she realized the one person she hurt with her antics was herself. It was a shock and had sent her down a new path. A path that led to the stupidest fertility clinic in the tristate area, apparently, but as crazy as it was that they’d used Alex’s semen instead of the donor she’d chosen, she still had Kaylie. The most amazing four-year-old on the planet.

For a moment she wondered about the strange man in the truck outside, and then she caught a glimpse of tawny hair and saw the way his head cocked to the side as he studied her home.

Both characteristics were exactly the same as her daughter’s.

Paige opened the front door and waited for Alex to pass by. His broad shoulder brushed against her and tension bubbled up in her belly. She took a moment to steady her hands against the doorknob at her back and mentally shook herself. There was nothing to be afraid of. Those four pairs of eyes would keep watch over her house until the blue truck sitting on the street had driven away. It was one of the reasons she chose this neighborhood. The house was the perfect size for her and Kaylie, and it was one of those places where neighbors watched out for one another.

Paige’s mom side appreciated the sentiment, even if the Mrs. Purcells of the world sometimes paid a little too much attention to her.

Alex stood in her entryway looking around as if he was lost. Her paint supplies took up most of the space in the living room to the left and Kaylie’s latest infatuation—Lalaloopsy dolls—took up the rest. She led the way through to the open-plan kitchen and family room.

“Would you like some iced tea?” Prim and proper and not at all what she wanted to ask. She wanted to be direct, tell him he had no business here. That he needed to leave. Something held her back.

Alex shook his head and Paige motioned him to sit at the island counter while she refreshed her glass. She wasn’t thirsty but it was something to do with her hands so she fussed with slices of lemon and added more ice before putting the pitcher back into the fridge.

Finally there was nothing left to do so she turned back to the man at the counter, trying to ignore the assessing way he watched her. Despite the casual clothes, Alex Ryan was the mirror image of everything she had left behind in her parents’ home, from the set of his shoulders to the judgment she saw in the thin line of his mouth. Rigid standards and rules she could never live up to. Expectations that had left her heartbroken and wounded. She didn’t need his approval, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like she’d asked him to come into her home and disrupt her life.

It wasn’t as if she’d had his permission to use his semen, either.

The clinic sent a file with his pertinent information, but Paige couldn’t force herself to read it. A small piece of her had hoped that if she ignored the report the man would ignore her. Now she wished she had read it cover to cover instead of putting it in her bottom desk drawer.

Her gaze caught on the picture of Kaylie at her fourth birthday party, cake frosting up to her eyebrows, princess crown askew, charging after the boys with her blue lightsaber.

Kaylie was the reason for all of this. Paige had wanted a family, so much so that on her twenty-fourth birthday she’d decided to take life by the horns and create the family she dreamed of. The sweet, smart, silly girl was everything Paige needed. No men needed to apply and since Kaylie had been born, not even a handful had stuck around through dinner.

And here was one more. A man so afraid of commitment he hadn’t known whether to get out of his car or run screaming into the warm Missouri afternoon.

No, that was unfair. She didn’t know anything about Alex Ryan.

A man so gorgeous the rebellious part of Paige, the part of her she couldn’t get rid of no matter how much she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, was glad her daughter wasn’t here. Wanted to flirt. Wished they’d met at a bar or under any other circumstances so that she could flirt and touch and see if the attraction she felt for him, he felt for her, too.

She glanced at her watch. Just over an hour until her best friend, Alison, would bring Kaylie back from her swim lesson at the rec center. The principal at her school required impromptu meetings now and then; today Alison was able to step in and help Paige. She was grateful. Alison was her biggest supporter and cheerleader. Paige hated missing the lesson, but Alison liked playing auntie for Kaylie from time to time. This introduction needed to get moving and get over with because, until she knew exactly what Alex Ryan’s intentions were, he was not getting anywhere near her daughter.

“So, this is awkward.” She blurted the words out, not sure where else to start. “We have a child together but I don’t know anything about you.”

He offered her a half smile, making his eyes crinkle at the corners and accentuating a little scar at the corner of his full lips. The tension she’d felt when he’d brushed past her ratcheted up a notch and she admitted to herself it wasn’t fear at all. It was flat-out excitement. Want. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such an instant attraction to a man. Attraction was bad. Very, very bad. Attraction meant throwing all her rules about relationships out the window. Attraction led to mistakes and mistakes could hurt Kaylie.

Hurt Paige.

She gulped some tea, hoping it would put out the sizzle of heat that seemed to grow with every second Alex was in her kitchen.

He shrugged, the motion defining his upper arms—as if they needed more definition—and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “I always figured if I were to have a conversation like this it would be because of a drunken night in Cabo, not because a fertility clinic marked my, uh, sample, as ‘anonymous donor’ rather than ‘IVF candidate.’” He gave a chuckle, and the deep sound sent another hot zing across her nerve endings, as if her ears were now an erogenous zone.

She was going to need a lot more than tea. Focus on the tea, she ordered herself. But the way his muscular arms filled out his short sleeves was an even bigger distraction. She focused on a picture of Kaylie on the back wall, her daughter smiling at the camera with Mickey Mouse ears atop her head.

That did it. Seeing her baby’s smiling face did more for Paige’s focus than the past fifteen minutes of ordering herself around had. Kaylie was important—not Paige’s hormones.

“So, you weren’t a donor?” Once more she cursed herself for not reading the clinic file on Alex. The lawyer merely told her that the man whose donation she’d used would like to contact her. Over the next ten minutes, which seemed to take ten hours, Paige had worried he was contacting her to tell her he had cancer or AIDS or some congenital disease that might affect her precious girl.

Learning he only wanted to meet her was almost a relief until the implications hit her. He only wanted to meet her so that he could be part of Kaylie’s life.

“No, my wife and I were IVF candidates. It was after the first embryos were implanted that we learned she had cancer.” Sadness flickered in his eyes. “The embryos didn’t result in pregnancy and we decided everything, even the precautionary donations I made, should be destroyed.”

Thank God, he had a wife. Thank God she hadn’t made a move on him. Wait, a wife. And cancer. She sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the instinct pushing her to reach out to him.

“I didn’t realize you were married.” There, her voice sounded normal.

He smiled, but instead of crinkling his eyes, it left them bleak. “She died. Just over three years ago,” he said. Paige reached across the counter, brushing her hand across his and mentally castigating herself for the little snap of attraction at the contact. He was a widower, for crying out loud, and this was her kitchen, not the Low Bar. They were discussing the possibility of him creating a relationship with her daughter—not with her.

And, damn it, why couldn’t she keep her hands to herself? This man was a stranger who would mess up the pretty, uncomplicated life she’d created. He didn’t need her pity and she certainly didn’t need to feel this overwhelming need to comfort him.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.” It was no wonder he’d come looking for her. No, for Kaylie. His wife died, then he learned his sperm was used and a child came of it. He was probably trying to recapture some of the joy he’d expected when he and his wife began IVF treatments.

And she still didn’t want him to mess with her kid, but this wasn’t some frat guy who suddenly decided to see if he had any progeny. This was a man willing to go through IVF and who knew what else with his late wife so they could have a child.

That was commitment.

This time the clench in her belly was less attraction and more fear. How could she share her daughter with a virtual stranger? A stranger who was the antithesis of everything she had decided she wanted when she left home.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, his deep brown eyes focused on her, as if he could see through the paint-splattered tee to the heart beating erratically beneath. Paige shifted, suddenly uncomfortable in her favorite tee.

“What is it that you want from me? Us?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I couldn’t not try to find you, not after the clinic called.”

Not what she wanted to hear. Or was it? If he didn’t know what he wanted, maybe this one meeting would be enough. Maybe her world didn’t have to change.

“You work in the parks?”

“Ranger, so most of my days are spent hiking. Making sure the streams aren’t overfished. That kind of thing.”

“That explains the tan, then.” Paige’s eyes widened. “Not that I thought you were lazy or anything. I mean, you’re here in the middle of the afternoon but—” There was no way to recover. Alex laughed.

“Not even my closest friends call my job a ‘job.’ And the best part of it is that I’m not stuck behind a desk and I rarely have to wear a suit.”

“Both definite pluses, I suppose.” Paige laughed with him. Laughing got her through a lot of days, especially those when Kaylie was whiny or needed every second of attention Paige had. “I’m a teacher, so no suits, either. Although I regularly come home with paint or chalk all over me.”

“What grade?”

“Elementary school, art, actually. So I get to hang with the kids for an hour, do fun stuff and then send them back to homeroom.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a teacher.” Was that appreciation in his gaze? He watched her for a moment and Paige forgot to breathe. Then, the look was gone and he was just a guy sitting in her kitchen. A gorgeous guy, but just a guy. He cocked his head to the side and a half smile spread across his face, stretching that tiny scar near his mouth until it almost disappeared. “From what I remember all my teachers, kindergarten on, wore orthopedic shoes, had gray hair and liked to smack at my hands with a ruler.”

Nope, not just a guy. Alex Ryan was dangerous from the tips of his tawny hair to the soles of his booted feet. And all the muscled, tanned areas in between.

“I assure you twenty-nine is old enough to be a teacher. For the record, you don’t look like those grumpy old guys in the Smokey the Bear hats, either.” He scrunched his eyes together, as if searching for something. Some kind of common ground, maybe. She would certainly like to find some.

“I’m thirty-two. Born and raised in Park Hills.” He mentioned a town only a few miles from Bonne Terre. Paige had driven through it many times in her life. “I’m surprised we’ve never run into one another.”

Paige wasn’t. Her parents had sent her to a private school near St. Louis when she was ten, telling her she deserved a better education than she would find in a small town. Then, at sixteen, they’d tired of her antics altogether and sent her to a Swiss boarding school known for discipline and year-round school. During the rare summer or winter breaks when she was allowed to come home, she made sure her parents knew she was there. Dating the wrong guys, ignoring curfews, whatever it took to make them notice her. But that wasn’t the conversation that would get them on more even footing.

“My parents sent me to boarding school. I was rarely here as a teenager.” It wasn’t a lie, just an omission of all the facts that might leave Alex with a bad impression of her. Paige reached for another glass. “Are you sure you don’t want tea? A soda?”

“Water?”

Paige nodded and filled the glass with ice and water, adding a slice of lemon at the last moment. Alex plucked the lemon from the glass and sucked it between his full lips, drawing out the juice. Her belly clenched at the action and Paige swallowed hard.

He sat up a little straighter and dropped the wedge back into his glass. “Sorry. Habit. I like lemons.”

So did Kaylie. She waved the apology away and hoped she hadn’t been looking at him like a missing hiker desperate for water.

“You’re a park ranger. I’m a teacher. How did we wind up here?”

Alex shook his head. “I’ve been asking myself that very question since the lawyer called.” He took her hand in his, held it for a long moment, and the world seemed to stop moving. The ticking of the kitchen clock faded into the distance. The breeze that had been blowing through her windows stopped billowing through the curtains. She forgot to breathe for a long moment. “When the lawyer called I didn’t want to know her. I didn’t want to know that she’s four years old. But now all I can think about is when is her birthday and what cereal does she like for breakfast and can she spell her name yet? Do kids even know how to spell at four?”

One meeting would not be enough, not with those kinds of questions, Paige realized.

The kitchen timer beeped, usually a reminder to put her paints away and start dinner for Kaylie. And just like that Paige’s world started spinning again, this time reminding her to finish this meeting and get Alex out of her house. He had so many questions, and none were what she had expected when the lawyer had called or when she’d looked out her window and seen the unfamiliar truck parked on her curb.

That didn’t mean she had all the answers; not yet, anyway.

“Not all kids can spell at four, but she can.” She withdrew her hand from his grasp because, while he seemed to be the opposite of every commitment-phobic man she’d ever known, that didn’t make him good date material. Getting a handle on this weird attraction she felt had to be her first priority. She tucked her hair behind her ear and busied herself with the empty paper-towel container. “Well, a few words. Bat, cat, that kind of thing. And she can count to thirty without mixing up too many of the numbers.”

Paige blew out a breath and then bit the corner of her lip. She took the picture of Kaylie off the windowsill and held it out. “This is her, last May on her birthday. She is kind and smart and the way she sees the world is...so funny.” Alex took the frame, holding it so tight the tips of his fingers turned white. “I know I’m biased because I’m her mom but she’s just...the best.” Paige bit her lower lip again. The impulse to ask him to stay, to get that first meeting over with was nearly too much to bear. He looked so lost and confused sitting at her counter and gazing at the picture of her—and his—daughter.

But her impulses had gotten her into plenty of trouble in her life and she’d learned to push them away.

Paige was Kaylie’s mom and not this man’s girlfriend or confidante. She would not fix his problems by endangering Kaylie’s stable world.

“What does she know about her father?”

“She’s never really asked so I haven’t told her anything. All the pictures in her baby book are of me and her. I thought I would cross Daddy Bridge when she started to ask questions.”

He traced his index finger along the image of Kaylie chasing the boys and smiled, a softer smile this time. No self-deprecation. No sadness. A sweet smile that she’d felt on her own face when Kaylie said her first word and took her first step.