The Daughter He Wanted (26 page)

“You don’t have to worry about Alex messing up any trajectories,” John said from across the table. “He’s a smart, capable man. Paige and Kaylie are lucky to have him in their lives.”

Finally a reasonable voice at the table. Alex wanted to reach across the table and hug his father-in-law. He settled for squeezing Paige’s hand. She threaded her fingers with his and squeezed back, as if John’s words had bolstered her spirits, as well.

“Kaylie’s trajectory is amazing. She’s a smart kid,” Alex said.

“And you know this how?”

“Can’t you see it?” Hank’s question baffled Alex. Who couldn’t see the sweet, smart, funny girl for exactly what she was? “She reads those two-and three-word sentence books, she knows her way around technology. Her teachers and classmates love her.”

“People liking her will have little impact on her future career choices—”

Alex cut him off. “People liking her will have a huge impact on her self-esteem and that will determine her career choices.” The older man scowled at him but didn’t say anything more.

Sue sniffled, the strength she’d displayed earlier seeping away. “I guess I can see why they’ve pulled you away from us. Ready-made family and—”

“Sue.” John’s voice held a warning but his wife ignored it.

Sue focused on her husband, as if the rest of the table had disappeared. “It’s plain to see the connection he has to Kaylie. I understand it—she is a sweet little girl. Even a blind man who couldn’t see the physical resemblance would know it.” She turned to Alex. “I guess—I guess you really are moving on.” Pain filled her voice along with a breathiness that made it seem as if Sue was ready to break. Before Alex could comfort her, Dot gasped.

“Physical... My God, Paige, he’s the donor?” From her tone, it seemed Alex had joined the farmer/leper colony with John and Sue. “How could you invite that man into Kaylie’s life without telling us about it first? This changes everything. Do you even know what he wants?”

“Yes, Mother, I know what he wants. He wants to sue me for sole custody and make sure you never see your granddaughter again.” John and Sue, Hank and Dot all focused on Paige, who rolled her eyes and seemed to gain strength from their close inspection. “He wants to get to know his daughter, Mother.
We
want to get to know one another. No matter what happens between us, we’re committed to raising Kaylie to the best of our abilities.” She focused on John and Sue. “He’s told me about Deanna and she sounds like a wonderful woman.”

Alex felt a little stab to his heart with that, because he hadn’t told Paige much about Deanna at all. Yet she was willing to try to comfort Dee’s parents, who were obviously having trouble with his change from widower to father and boyfriend. He wasn’t giving her enough credit, not nearly enough. Alex didn’t want to bring Dee into their relationship, for his past to impact his future, but it seemed she was already there. And that seemed okay.

Tears pricked the corners of John’s eyes and he hastily wiped them away. Sue sniffled. Alex patted Sue with one hand but held tight to Paige with the other. It was as if holding on to her helped steady him in the storm of Sue’s anguish.

“Who is Deanna?” Dot’s voice ran imperiously across the table.

“His wife. She died a few years ago.”

“You’re dating a widower?” Apparently being a park ranger was only the tip of the iceberg of things wrong with Alex in Dot’s eyes. “Paige, really.”

“Mother, stop. It’s my choice.”

Dot put her fingers to her forehead. “You’re dating Kaylie’s biological father, who was married to someone else, and you see nothing wrong with this picture?”

“No, I don’t.”

“Alex is a fine man.” Sue sniffled out the words from her side of the table.

Dot ignored that. “You had a future. A gallery showing in St. Louis, a chance to make something of yourself. And now you’re pinning your future—Kaylie’s future—on a park ranger who’s already been married and is a sperm donor to boot?”

“He wasn’t a donor. Alex and his wife were undergoing fertility treatments, and there was a mistake made at the clinic.” Alex saw Paige squinch her eyes closed and grit her teeth. “We’ve been over the gallery showing, Mother, and it’s always going to be a no. As for my future, how about I’m dating a strong, caring man who happens to enjoy spending time with my kid?”

“You have no idea the can of worms you are opening, Paige, and I, for one, know nothing good will ever come of it.”

John stood, pulling a still-sniffling Sue up with him. “Thank you for lunch. It was nice meeting you, Paige, but I think we should go.”

“You don’t have to—”

“Thank you for allowing us to meet Alex’s...your daughter.” He cleared his throat. “Thank you.” He and Sue began walking around to the front of the house.

“Now that they’re gone, I hope we can have a real conversation about the ramifications of you dating this man,” Dot began, but Alex cut her off.

“The ramifications are that I’m staying.” Alex stood, towering over the table. “I like your daughter and granddaughter and I’m a part of their lives now. Our hope in inviting you here today was that we could all get to know one another on an adult level. I can see now that isn’t going to happen.”

“Well, I never—”

“Well, you should.” Paige stood beside Alex. “We are dating, Mother and Dad. We plan to see a lot of one another. Alex is building a bond with Kaylie and we’ll tell her the whole truth about who he is when she is ready.”

Dot stood, hands fisted at her sides and all traces of the headache she’d pretended to have a few moments before now gone. “You’re allowing him to walk all over you. Just like every loser you’ve brought home before.”

Paige’s skin paled but she stayed steady and Alex’s anger level rose on her behalf.

“You can leave. Now,” he said.

“I will finish this conversation. You had us both fooled, Paige Julia Kenner. You made all these proclamations about how great a mother you would be and we truly hoped having a child dependent on you would help you change. But you’re still the spoiled brat who ran off to Texas on spring break and who nearly ruined the career of a second-year law student. You’ll never change and if we have to, we’ll be the proper parents that Kaylie deserves.”

Paige gasped.

“Get out.” Alex had had enough. He grabbed Dot’s slim clutch from the outdoor sofa and pressed it into her hands. “You have no idea the kind of woman your daughter is. She’s an amazing mother with an infinite ability to love and care.” Alex looked from one parent to the other. “You can’t scare her into shutting me out of her life or Kaylie’s. And if you follow through on your threat of a lawsuit, you’ll lose.”

He took Paige’s trembling hand in his again. Together they watched Hank and Dot stride across the yard, backs straight and shoulders tense.

“I’m sorry.” Her words were barely a whisper but they stabbed against Alex’s heart. How could parents be that cruel?

“I’m sorry, too.” He wasn’t sure if he was sorry for causing the ruckus or for the hell she’d obviously experienced growing up. Maybe both.

His parents weren’t perfect but hers were so much worse than he had ever imagined. And yet, here she was, standing beside him. Raising Kaylie on her own, holding down a job. With a full life, friendships, and she’d welcomed him into her life, too.

Alex tilted his head against hers. “What do you say we go play with our kid?”

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

“
I
SHOULDN’T HAVE
spoken to my mother that way.” Paige sat on the lounger beside Alex, looking at the starry sky. She’d put Kaylie to bed a few minutes before but asked him to stay. “I pushed her buttons with that whole ‘he wants sole custody’ thing. That’s what pushed her over the ledge into hysterical country.”

“I don’t know about that.” Alex put his arm around her shoulder and the warmth of his embrace was welcome in the chilly night. “I think she was gearing up for a fight from the moment she got out of the Caddy.”

“The Cadillac is her transport of choice when she has a mission in mind.” Paige shook her head. “Still, I shouldn’t have goaded her. I should have kept my head, kept things calm. You didn’t deserve the things she said about you. Neither did John and Sue, who seem like really nice people, by the way.”

“They are really nice people. John’s a bit more steady than Sue, at least over the past few years. As for goading your mother, she was spoiling for a fight. You stood your ground, there’s nothing wrong with that.”

Still, Paige knew better than to engage. She’d learned the hard way that when Dot was on a rant the best defense was to say nothing. Maybe she could have said nothing if her mother hadn’t snapped at Kaylie or been downright insulting to Alex and his family.

In a couple of days Dot would call, Paige would cave and apologize and their relationship would return to the status quo.

No, that wasn’t happening. Not this time. Not when Paige’s intentions with the barbecue were to forge a new path for her family—Kaylie and Alex deserved better. They deserved a path of unconditional love and support. Caring. There would be disagreements, Paige wasn’t fooling herself, but there would be no accusations or throwing a person’s past in her face. Speaking of, maybe it wasn’t such a good idea for Alex to only know about post-Kaylie Paige. New leaf, starting fresh. She didn’t dwell on the mistakes she made in the past, but it wasn’t fair to him to pretend nothing had ever happened.

“Those old boyfriends my mom brought up—”

Alex held up a hand. “I didn’t expect you’d never dated anyone. It isn’t important.”

“Thank you for that. But I think it is.” Paige took a deep breath. She hadn’t thought about the events leading up to the spring break fiasco for a long time. “When I turned sixteen, I was attending a day school in St. Louis. My mother hinted there would be a big celebration, but at the last minute a law school cocktail party came up and they canceled. Literally, the last minute. The limo hired to pick me and my friends up didn’t show. We sat on the curb for over an hour waiting. One of the girls finally called her mom. I was so embarrassed and, of course, when the parents started calling, the blame was put on my shoulders. My birthday was the inconvenience, not my parents’ choosing a Halloween work party over standing plans from weeks before.”

“Your birthday is October 31?” Alex asked.

“We haven’t talked about birthdays, have we? Yes, I was born on Halloween at midnight, which is a cool birthday for a kid because, dress up. Anyway, they’d stood me up before, but never in front of my friends. I got mad and I swore I’d embarrass them as badly as they’d embarrassed me—which is where the mom in me now winces. They decided we would go on a family cruise for spring break and I was still spoiling for that fight. I had visions of the Caribbean or Hawaii or some Greek islands. They chose a spring tour of New England so we could see the trees and flowers blossom.”

“Not that exciting for a teenager.”

She shook her head. “So the night before we were to leave, I left. This guy at a local bar we always snuck into invited me to South Padre with him. He was supposed to be on his college’s spring break. I didn’t tell them where I was going so God knows how they found out, but they found me in a seedy motel in Texas with a twenty-five-year-old mechanic. The flirty guy had lied about his age, his school. And I know now how dangerous what I did was. At the time, though, I just wanted them to...”

“Come after you? Take you home?”

“I wanted them to see me. I was angry and once I figured out the guy was a liar I was terrified of the mistake I’d made. And why? Why did I do that, anyway? Because my parents were flakes? I was mad that I let them get to me. I’ve worked hard to stop being angry and stop taking the bait they throw at me and this afternoon I took it. I’m sorry. And I’m not that girl anymore.”

“I know.”

Paige blinked. “You do?”

He nodded in the darkness and pulled her body closer to his. “Everything about you, from your job to your friends to the way you treat Kaylie, screams that you’re a competent, complete, caring woman. Every kid makes a mistake now and then. What happened when they got you home?”

The compliment made Paige glow. “They shipped me off to another boarding school, this time in Switzerland. I was the only one who didn’t speak French or German so I was automatically an outsider. They didn’t let me come home for summer break. But I guess the joke was on them because I met Alison there the next fall. Her parents were going through a nasty divorce. My mother has never let me live that trip to Texas down. It’s always her first strike.”

For the first time, though, it didn’t hurt to tell the story. Uncomfortable, definitely. But her parents’ dismissal of her didn’t hurt this time. It was merely a part of her past.

“Thanks for listening.”

“Thank you for telling me about it.” They were quiet for a long time, watching stars twinkle to life in the night sky.

“What about you? Tell me why your parents weren’t perfect. I dare you,” she joked.

“They were more Dan and Roseanne Conner, from that sitcom. Sarcastic and a little scary.”

“Scary? I think Hank and Dot have that emotion cornered.”

Alex shook his head. “They heckled school plays.”

She slapped at his shoulder. “They did not. No one heckles school plays.”

“My parents were the first of their kind.” Alex nodded. “They yelled at umpires and referees, usually on behalf of the other team.”

“Nuh-uh.”

He held up his hand in the Scout salute. “Swear. And they made me swear, every Christmas, that Santa was real.”

“Every Christmas?” Paige laughed along with him.

“Until I was eighteen. The end of childhood meant it was okay to believe in only the spirit of Christmas, not the big man in the red suit.”

“That Santa thing must have been hard when you hit puberty.”

“You have no idea.”

“They don’t sound so bad.”

He smiled in the darkness. “They don’t, do they? I had a good childhood. I guess you realize that more as you grow up.” He pulled her into his arms and she went, willingly.

His lips were warm in the dark and he tasted of dark chocolate from the cake they’d eaten after dinner. Paige thought she might nibble those lips all night, but there were more questions to ask. More things she wanted to know, and after declaring their relationship status to both sets of parents this felt like the right time to ask.