The Daughter He Wanted (32 page)

“She will. Someday.”

Paige scoffed at him. “Biology is only a small part of what makes a family. If you saw anything over the past six weeks, it should have been that. Biological or not, she loves you. She wants you.” She reached out but Alex backed away. “She deserves to have a father.”

Alex couldn’t look at her, couldn’t look at Kaylie, so he focused on the beeping of the machine instead. Beeping machines were still familiar after all these years. “She deserves to have a
real
father. It will be better for both of you if I walk away now, before things get more complicated.”

Anger shot from Paige’s gaze as she turned on him. “So you would choose to fight for
our daughter
because you think she has the right DNA, but now she doesn’t meet your standards because her genetic material isn’t what you expected?”

“I don’t give a damn about chromosomes.”

“Then fight for her. Fight for us.”

He spun on his heel and walked out of the hospital room before he could change his mind.

Paige and Kaylie were a unit. He was the unwelcome addition neither had ever asked for.

CHAPTER TWENTY

A
FEW DAYS
later
Paige dumped sacks filled with the makings for sushi and wontons onto her kitchen counter. She pulled a chopping board and knife from a drawer and began slicing and dicing.

Kaylie lay on the sofa, a Biscuit book in her hands. The hospital released her the same day they’d learned Alex wasn’t her father. For the first time Hank and Dot had no recriminations for Paige. They called daily to check on Kaylie, and to make sure Paige had everything she needed.

Her daughter was healing; that was all she could ask for.

“Can I get up?” Kaylie asked from the sofa.

Paige crossed the room, felt her forehead for fever and checked her pupil dilation like the doctors showed her. Kaylie seemed normal, although she still complained of headaches now and then. “Do you want to color?”

Kaylie sat up, nodding. “The Belle book, please.”

Paige got colors and the book, setting them up on the coffee table. The book Alex had been reading caught her eye. She picked it up. Thought for a second about putting it back on the shelf and instead tossed it into the recycling bin.

“Is Alex still working?”

Paige didn’t know how to explain he wasn’t coming back so she had taken the easy road so far, telling Kaylie Alex had to work and couldn’t come over.

“I think so, sweetpea.”

Kaylie was quiet for a long moment, rolling a yellow crayon over Belle’s dress on the coloring page. “I miss Alex. Is he mad that I ran and bonked myself?”

“No, kiddo, he isn’t mad.” Paige hugged her close and kissed the crown of her head. How could she explain that simple DNA changed how Alex felt about Kaylie?

Who was she kidding?

DNA changed how Alex thought about Paige, too. She settled in with Kaylie, coloring the opposite page and wishing she could go upstairs and pull the covers over her head. Forget about the fertility clinic, the accident. Forget about Alex.

No, she didn’t want that. The accident she could do without. What had she said to Nelson during their first visit? She didn’t want his money because, no matter what had happened on the day she was inseminated, it had brought her Kaylie.

The same applied to Alex.

Whatever had happened on the day they discovered the mislabeled vials, it led to her meeting Alex. How could she regret that?

It was ridiculous that she was still crying over him, really. It had been four days.

“Did I tell you Auntie Al is coming over for dinner tonight? Why don’t you finish this picture for her while I finish dinner, okay?”

Kaylie nodded and went back to coloring.

Paige was done feeling sorry for herself. Her daughter was okay. Celebration was in order. Celebration and thank you. Tonight she had invited Alison over for dinner, to thank her for stepping in so often over the past few weeks.

She chopped carrots and cabbage and set tiny cubes of beef and chicken aside to cook later. Alison loved Paige’s sushi and wontons, and it was about time she showed her friend how much Paige appreciated her.

Paige swiped at the corner of her eye with her shoulder.

No more tears over what might have been. She had put her life back together several times before, and she could do the same one more time.

Alison arrived a short time later. Paige turned on the local radio station and then filled wonton wrappers and cooked the rice while Alison oohed and aahed over the coloring page.

“What did I do to rate your wontons and sushi?” she asked, coming over to the counter.

“I want to say thank you, for helping out so much during the Alex thing,” Paige said. Alison reached for a wonton wrapper and together they rolled the ingredients. Paige concentrated on making each roll as symmetrical as possible while Alison slapped a little rice and some fish into each before plopping it back on the plate.

“So I guess you don’t want to talk about it,” she finally said.

Paige decided playing dumb was her best defense. “Talk about what?”

“The reason Alex has been in a short temper all week. Why you look like you’ve seen a ghost or you’re dealing with an eating disorder.”

“Not really.” Paige rolled another bit of sushi.

Alison slapped her hand against the counter. “Too damn bad,” she said, collecting the plates of ingredients and setting them aside. “I’m not spending the rest of this evening ignoring the fact that you look like you’ve been hit by a truck. This isn’t just about Kaylie’s accident, is it?”

“I thought it was an eating disorder.” Paige tried to make the joke but it fell flat. “I’m not good company. Why don’t you call Tuck and go have a late dinner on me?”

“Why don’t you tell me what happened?”

Paige sighed. “That hole in the middle of the net that was supposed to catch us? It turned out not to be me.”

“Him?” Alison said softly.

Paige shook her head. “The fertility clinic. Alex isn’t Kaylie’s father. I have the paternity test to prove it.” She slid a sheet of paper across the counter and tried to explain what she still didn’t understand. “He says Kaylie deserves a real father and by ‘real’ he means ‘biological.’”

Alison snapped her jaw closed, rallying for Alex after reading the damning sheet of paper. “Maybe he just needs time.”

Paige sniffed and decided to hell with it. She was already depressed. A little wine wouldn’t change anything. She finished the glass and poured another. “We were his replacements. The family he would have created with Deanna if he could, and now that he knows Kaylie has the wrong DNA, we’re out of the picture.”

Alison’s next question caught her off guard. “Do you love him?”

“You know me, always in love with Mr. Wrong.” Paige kept her voice light but she couldn’t stop a tear from falling down her cheek. “He said he loved me, just before everything fell to pieces. I know he loves Kaylie. I think maybe he just said he loved me because I said the words first. Because he thought if he loved Kaylie he had to love me, too.”

“I don’t believe that. He’s a good man, Paige. A solid guy whose life went horribly wrong and then took another weird turn a few weeks ago.” She shook the paper in her hands. “Despite what this says and what he did when he walked out of the hospital, I still believe Alex Ryan is a good man.”

“Don’t tell me he needs to process, this is about more than processing a few emotions. Do you know he never takes us south of Bonne Terre? Our dates are in St. Louis, and he meets us for dinners or lunches here in town. I don’t know what his house looks like. These are big, screaming warnings that he hasn’t let go.” Paige took a deep breath and plunged ahead, voicing the fear that had torn her up since he walked out of the hospital room. “There is a part of him that’s still there, living it. I’m the new girl, the girl he flirts with and laughs with. The girl who reminds him of the guy he was precancer.”

“I don’t believe that. Not from what I saw when he was around you. Not from everything Tuck told me about him.”

“I don’t think he even realizes it. He put Kaylie and I in a tiny compartment of his life that would never touch the rest of his boxes, the boxes filled with his memories of Deanna and the life he wishes he still had.”

* * *

A
LEX SHOVED HIS
truck into Drive and pulled away from the park office. He was tired. So damned tired.

Frustrated.

Every morning Tuck asked him what his problem was. Every morning Alex told him to back off. He didn’t want to talk to Tuck about his world falling apart again so he did his work as quickly as he could and headed for one of the trails, not caring if it rained or was icy cold.

Tonight he pulled into downtown and took a left at the second light. Despite the late hour the gates were still open so he pulled through and found the quiet spot under the red maple tree where they put Dee’s coffin to rest. Stared at it for a long time and then let the anger turn to sadness. Because she was gone. Really and truly gone, and there was nothing he could do to change that. No mantra he could chant that would change the way she’d died or the things they’d never gotten to do together.

Like raise a daughter like Kaylie.

He gripped the steering wheel and then banged his head lightly against his hands.

She wasn’t his daughter. Why did he keep forgetting that?

“I’m sorry.” His words were a whisper in the quiet cab. “I couldn’t stop it.” Emotion clogged his throat but he kept talking as if she might hear him. He apologized for the things they didn’t have time for, apologized for the way he’d jumped into a new life with Paige, apologized because the cancer took her before she could have a little girl like Kaylie. Wondered what Paige and Kaylie were doing that evening.

“I feel obligated to tell you you’re an ass,” Tuck said through the open truck window as he surveyed the empty cemetery.

Alex refused to take the bait. “That’s not news.”

It was better for everyone, all around, if he stopped trying to be what he wasn’t. He was a widower. He wasn’t Kaylie’s father. His past had messed up Paige’s life and he refused to wreck it further.

It shouldn’t be this hard to move on from her. He shouldn’t hear her laugh when he was in line at the grocery store. Shouldn’t see her face in his dreams. It had been a month, six weeks. Falling out of love with a woman he barely knew should be as simple as falling in had been.

So why wasn’t it?

He snagged his bottle of water from the cup holder and drank, but Tuck was still there when he finished the bottle.

“Don’t you have a date to go on?”

“Sure. I’m picking her up in an hour.” He pointed to his car, parked behind the truck. “But I thought maybe I could talk some sense into you before I danced her through the night.”

“I don’t want you here.”

“Doesn’t look like you have a choice. What happened at the hospital?”

“Kaylie fell, slight fracture to her skull, but she’s okay.”

“I didn’t ask why she was in the hospital. Alison told me that. I asked what happened at the hospital.”

Alex gripped his hands on the wheel. “X-rays, pain meds—”

“God, you really are an ass. Why is it that prehospital you said you loved Paige and posthospital you won’t mention her name? Haven’t seen her and are stomping around like Godzilla destroying Tokyo?”

Saying it out loud wouldn’t change anything. Wouldn’t make losing dad status any worse, Alex decided. “I’m not Kaylie’s father. The mix-up at the clinic was clerical only, only they jumped the gun and told Paige and I immediately.”

Tuck whistled low and long. “Damn. I’m sorry, man.”

Alex wanted to shrug, as if it wasn’t anything big, but couldn’t. “Yeah.”

“Being pissed at the clinic doesn’t mean being pissed at the world. What does Paige have to say about all this?”

“That we’re still Kaylie’s parents.”

Tuck raised an eyebrow at Alex and waited.

“
We
aren’t her parents. Paige is. I’m just...the guy whose name they put on the wrong vial.”

“You think you can’t be Kaylie’s father because you don’t have the same DNA?” Tuck said incredulously.

“That’s kind of what DNA means. Family. Paternity. Relative. I’m not her father.”

“Neither is the guy who donated the semen to make her. And he’s got the same DNA.”

Alex clenched the steering wheel. Tuck didn’t understand. Couldn’t understand what it meant to think he was Kaylie’s father only to find out he wasn’t.

To love Paige but realize he had nothing to offer her.

“I don’t think Kaylie cares that your DNA string isn’t a match to hers. I think she cares that you’re teaching her to swim and give horses tomato baths.”

A set of lights flashed behind them and the night watchman stopped, reminding Alex the cemetery would close in a few minutes. Alex waved the older man off and watched as Tuck got into his truck to drive away. After a long time he drove slowly through the gates, thinking about the fertility clinic. Kaylie. Everything circled back to Paige.

Why would she want him, a widower with family issues to deal with, if he didn’t have a real connection to Kaylie?

It’s just to find out. If there is a problem, we’ll know and deal with it.
Dee’s words from that first conversation about the clinic echoed in his mind.
This is just step one on our journey to becoming parents. It doesn’t matter how we do it, it only matters that we do do it.

A peaceful feeling settled over his shoulders. What if Dee was right? What if it didn’t matter how a family was made—through biology or pharmacy or choice?

For the first time since he’d met Paige he saw a light that wasn’t dependent on her or on Kaylie. Because it was part of him.

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

P
AIGE MOPED THROUGH
the week, indulging herself in a few good, hard cries and a couple of pints of Ben & Jerry’s salted caramel ice cream. Spent extra time watching movies and reading books with Kaylie, and after her daughter was asleep, turned on old black-and-white tearjerkers on late-night television.