The Daughter He Wanted (6 page)

It took a moment but Alex laughed, a hearty sound in the quiet coffee shop. Paige looked around but no one paid any attention to them.

“Since I’ve never had coffee with an unknown baby mama before, I can honestly say I had no expectations. Listen, I told you the other day I just want to meet her. I know that sounds cavalier, like I’m going to give her an ice cream and then stroll away forever. I don’t know how any of this is going to work. We barely know each other—” he waved his hand between them “—and we aren’t friends. I was trying to talk myself out of knocking on your door the other day.”

Paige sat back in her seat. She’d never imagined he would admit he had reservations about meeting their daughter. It wasn’t the victory she’d expected, though. Instead of pumping her fist in a “whoop-whoop” she wanted to shrivel farther against the booth. God, it was like she was manic.
Yay! He doesn’t want to meet her!
one minute and holding back tears because he didn’t see what a gift Kaylie was the next.

“I kind of thought that.”

“What I realized, just before you stepped out on the porch, is that I can’t not be involved. Can’t walk away. Drive away. I need to know her, as much as you’ll allow. I won’t push, I promise you I won’t.” The promise was there, in his brown eyes. In the tension in his shoulders and his thumb flicking against the stirrer.

“If you’re not pushing yourself into our lives, if you don’t know that you want to have a part in my daughter’s life, just what do you want?” It was the question she’d been dying to ask for two days. The question that had brought on both the nightmare and the silly movie-ending dream.

“I’m not sure.”

At least he was honest. “We can’t be a replacement for the family you lost.” The words were defensive so she gentled her voice. One thing she’d learned as a child was that histrionics didn’t make the point. Solid, calm rationality did. “Fertility treatments are rough on couples. You lost your wife before they could really get started, and I’m sorry about that.” She swallowed. “But no matter what you lost, Kaylie isn’t the replacement part that will fix it.”

“I know that, too.” Alex bent the stirrer and then shoved it through the sip-spout of his coffee lid. “Whatever this is, it isn’t guilt-ridden. I got over my wife’s death a long time ago. I could have gone my whole life without knowing any of this, but I know. I can’t turn back the clock, not on any of it. I can’t forget that I have a daughter. All I’m asking for is a chance to get to know her. If not as her dad maybe as a friend?”

A guy who is a friend. It would be less intimate. Safer for Kaylie, certainly. In Kaylie’s insular world friends stayed around forever, but maybe it would be simpler if they started with the friend card. For Paige, too. Friends had beer after ball games, not caviar by candlelight.

Then, because she didn’t want to give him time to come up with an excuse, “Alison, the friend I mentioned the other day, and I have lunch every Sunday. This week it’s at her house. You could come by. Meet everyone. It’s informal. No pressure, and it’s a familiar place for Kaylie.”

Plus, it was less than forty-eight hours away. If this man wanted a relationship with Kaylie, he would cancel whatever plans he had. And if he didn’t...better to understand his priorities now than later.

“Sunday.” Alex crushed the empty coffee cup in his hands. “What time should I be there?”

CHAPTER FOUR

“
I
CAN’T BELIEVE
you invited him,” Alison hissed through her teeth as she picked up the bowl of potato salad and pushed open the back door with her hip.

Paige followed her onto the covered deck of the bungalow with a plate of condiments in one hand and a pitcher of sweet tea in the other. They started the tradition of Sunday dinners, switching between Paige’s home and Alison’s, after college. Sometimes friends stopped in. If Alison happened to be dating someone, he might stop by. Her parents were regulars since Kaylie was born, but they wouldn’t be here today. One hurdle at a time, she decided, and Kaylie meeting Alex for the first time was a big enough hurdle.

“Scratch that, I can’t believe he showed up. From everything you said.”

Alex sat under Alison’s maple tree with his large, muscled friend Tucker. It had seemed like an easy thing to invite him to the barbecue, a good way for him to meet Kaylie with few expectations and zero pressure on the little girl. Now that he was here, though, it was a different thing altogether. Because even though he seemed oblivious to the women on the porch and even though he wasn’t pushing himself at Kaylie, he was there. Making her feel itchy and self-conscious. “I didn’t say anything.”

“And that was my point. When things are going well you talk, when things get hairy you clam up. It’s been your MO since we were kids.” Alison set the food bowls on the table and brushed her hands together. “So when you didn’t give me a breakdown Friday and when you didn’t say anything yesterday other than that you’d invited him, I figured the chances were slim he’d show.”

“I tell you everything.” Having brought out the condiments and tea, Paige knew there was nothing left inside until the chicken was ready, so she sat on Alison’s bench.

Alison rearranged the bowls of food on the table as she was no doubt arranging her next words. “You tell me about things when you’ve already made your decision. And that’s cool. I’m the friend, the supporter. The cheerleader. Not your priest or your mother.”

Huh. Paige had never realized it, but Alison’s words rang true. She did like to have her ducks in a row, so to speak, before telling anyone about her plans. Probably because if she didn’t have logical, intelligent arguments for everything from a new bike to a new hairstyle as a child her parents automatically shot her down.

Had she done that this time?

“I never realized before now that I did that.” Paige popped an ice cube into her mouth and then put her glass back on the table. “And I know. I was going to be strong. I was going to shut him down and insist that Kaylie and I were fine on our own.” She picked her glass back up and rolled it between her hands. “I had this hope in the back of my mind that maybe he only wanted to make sure we wouldn’t file for custodial support. But he isn’t going away. He has a right to know Kaylie.”

“He does. And you have the right to monitor those visits until you’re certain where he’s coming from.”

“Park Hills,” Paige said automatically. “I know, that’s not what you were really asking. He’s from Park Hills, works as a park ranger and lost his wife to cancer just before Kaylie was born. And if this isn’t a supervised visit, I don’t know what is.”

“True enough. And the cute friend?” Alison indicated Alex’s mountain of a friend sitting beside him under the tree. She flipped her head upside down, gathered her long red hair into her palm, grabbed the ball cap from the handrail and then slid her hair through the back opening. She waved a hand in her face. “Lord, it’s hot out here for October. Seriously, what do you know about the friend?”

“You’re terrible. My life is in turmoil and you’re thinking about your next date?”

“Don’t tell me you haven’t noticed we’ve got two of the hottest men in St. Francois County in my backyard.” Alison clucked her tongue.

Kaylie squealed from the swing set in the neighbor’s yard, rescuing Paige from answering. Kaylie squealed again and Paige fisted her hands but managed not to run screaming into the other yard to protect her daughter from the swings. Kids played on swings every day, she reminded herself, and only rarely did they get hurt. Alex looked like he might run into the yard, too.

Helicopter parents, we’re two helicopter parents in the making
. For the past four years it was only her making sure Kaylie was safe in her crib, graduated from bottles to veggies, and didn’t get an infection from a skinned knee. A small piece of her heart was glad she wasn’t the only person watching over Kaylie now.

“I checked him out. He is who he says he is. He isn’t crazy or an alcoholic and he doesn’t have gambling debts.” She took a fortifying breath. “I know my track record isn’t great, but you have to admit most of the mistakes I dated were solely to get my parents’ attention. But that is beside the point because we aren’t dating. Not now and not ever. He’s Kaylie’s father and will eventually be my coparent. End of story.” Definitely, definitely the end of the story.

“Well, he is quite dishy. And your Google search didn’t return any obvious red flags.” Alison sat back in her chair and folded her arms over her ample chest. She inspected the men in the yard as if they were paintings at an auction. “If you were actually in the market...”

“Which I’m not.” Paige shrugged as if she hadn’t spent most of the past three days remembering how the man looked in jeans and a fitted tee. Or wondering what he might look like in baseball pinstripes.

“For my money, though, Tall, Dark and Handsome Friend wins in the looks department.”

“They aren’t unattractive.” Paige managed to say the words without her voice going into breathless territory but she couldn’t bring herself to look Alison in the eye. The guys in the yard drew her attention again as they sat back in the lawn chairs listening to the Rams game on the radio.

“Pu-lease, don’t tell me you haven’t noticed Alex has a smile like a Hollywood star. Or that his body is taut without going over into veiny-muscle territory.” Alison picked up her tea and drank. “And his voice is like sex on a stick.”

Paige sputtered iced tea across the table. “Sex on a stick? What does that even mean?”

Alison waggled her eyebrows. “You know what I mean, and don’t tell me you didn’t notice.”

“Did you spike the tea?” Alison shook her head. Paige mopped up the drops on the table, refusing to look her friend in the eye. “I didn’t notice,” she managed in an almost steady voice. “And my point was that he isn’t a loser who donated his sperm and is now looking for some kind of validation. He doesn’t have any dreaded diseases that might have been passed on to Kaylie. He’s a normal guy who has been through a rough few years and had a kid dropped in his lap.”

“Oh, no.” Alison’s voice dropped lower.

“What?” Paige blinked.

“You like him. Like, like him, like him.”

The timer went off in the kitchen, saving Paige from having to answer Alison’s statement but still she muttered, “I don’t like him, like him.”

Alison disappeared into the kitchen to finish barbecue prep and Paige turned back to the yard. Being grateful he wasn’t a serial killer wasn’t the same as liking him. Thinking he might be a good friend for Kaylie wasn’t the same as thinking he’d make a good boyfriend. He seemed to be as nervous as she about dropping all this on Kaylie. Points for him. He had a steady job. More points. He looked good in Levi’s. Extra bonus points.

Not that she’d really been looking.

He had a seemingly normal friend, which added to his points total. And slight overprotective streak aside, if Alison were truly worried about his motives she’d have given him her version of the Spanish Inquisition at the door and never let him set foot inside.

Then there was her private conviction that Alex Ryan was more than a commitment-phobe who would look for any reason to disappear.

Kaylie moved on to the sandbox, drawing her attention, and ran a toy truck over the wooden sides. Just a normal Sunday afternoon. Well, other than the incredibly distracting man sitting under the tree. He hadn’t pushed himself at Kaylie, which was a relief. Her daughter liked everyone she met, but like many toddlers she needed time to warm up to most of them.

Paige watched him for a long moment as he listened to the ball game. Black baseball cap covering his tawny hair, tee stretched across his broad chest, faded blue cargo shorts that were slightly tight in all the right places. His eyes were a deep brown that seemed to turn to gold when the light hit them just right. He crossed his ankle over his knee and held the longneck bottle by his fingertips beside him.

It just wasn’t fair for a man to have the tawny eyes
and
the tawny hair, not to mention the thick eyelashes and that little scar at the corner of his mouth that seemed to wink when he smiled.

His friend said something and his laugh cracked across the backyard, sending the butterflies in her belly into overdrive. It was a good laugh. A solid, confident laugh.

He turned and his intense gaze settled on her, pushing the butterflies to full-on panic mode. Alex smiled and tipped the bottle toward her before taking a drink. He turned his gaze back to his friend Tucker, but Paige had the unsettling feeling his focus was still on the deck.

On her.

It made the hairs on the back of her neck stand up. Made her sit a little straighter in her chair. Cross her legs.

God. She was not, repeat not, interested in the man as a...

Shoot. Yes, she was.

She needed to cap that feeling the way she capped the tubes of paint in her studio: tightly. Not just for her own sanity, either. Alison wasn’t wrong about Paige’s past romances.

She sighed. Men who either couldn’t or wouldn’t treat her as anything more than an accessory. Something to put on and take off as the mood suited them.

Paige never doubted her decision to have Kaylie as a single parent.

Not until the gorgeous man sitting under her best friend’s tree had shown up on her doorstep. Well, curb.

Please, don’t let him treat Kaylie like an accessory.

Alex pointed and Paige looked in that direction in time to see Kaylie climb up the rungs of the ladder and hurl herself toward the metal trapeze frame hanging from one end of the swing set. Her breath caught in her throat for a moment that seemed to take too long. Kaylie sailed through the short space, tawny hair flying behind her, until her little hands caught the bottom rung and held fast. Her legs swung once more, twice.

Kaylie giggled as the trapeze swung crazily to the side. And then she fell, hard, down to the ground.

Paige was out of her chair like a shot and so was Alex. They started toward Kaylie but she got up, dusted off her rump and turned toward the house.

“Didja see me, Mama? I flew! I really flew!” She high-fived herself. “Good job, Kaylie, good job!” An enormous grin split her face and she turned to the ladder. “I’m’a go again. Watch this time,” she ordered.