A SEAL's Secret Baby

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Deacon nodded.

“I’ve wanted to tell you about Pia for a long time now, but the timing never felt right.”

“It’s okay…” He shook his head. “Well, it’s not okay that you kept this from me, but now that I know, I deserve the chance to prove I can be a good man. Never in Tom’s league, but for Pia’s sake, at least close.”

“But you’re not pushing the whole official daddy title, right?”

Tipping his head back, Deacon groaned. “You’re like a dog with a bone. Leave it alone, Ell. Like it or not, as Garrett says, I am Pia’s father. I’m trying to be sensitive here. Really, I am. But there’s only so much a guy can stand.” He gave her a glare before turning to look out to sea. “I’m good enough for you to cry on, but not for anyone to know I fathered your kid?”

As if wanting to say more, but holding back, he laughed before reaching for his Patrón. He walked down the steps off the deck and stood at the back fence. Ellie watched as he tipped up the bottle repeatedly.

She should’ve gone to him, but couldn’t.

The most she could manage was taking and hiding his motorcycle key.

And just when she’d thought all her tears had been spent, they returned with a vengeance. Were it not for her fears of Tom’s parents learning she wasn’t the perfect wife they’d imagined her to be, Deacon would still be sober beside her, making her world a less lonely place.

Why couldn’t he understand how much was at stake if she admitted Tom hadn’t been Pia’s dad?

Why can’t you understand Deacon has every right in the world to share the truth whenever and with whomever he pleases?

Chapter Four

The morning sun was like a laser in his eyes when Deacon woke on Ellie’s sofa, feeling as if he’d been kicked by the mule he’d encountered in a rural area on his last mission. Worse yet, from the nursery, Pia wailed. Where was Ellie?

The restroom needed to be first on his priority list, but his mission to the Congo had left zero tolerance for baby tears, so he headed straight for the nursery.

He scooped Pia from her crib. “Hey.”

Huffing, red-eyed and offended, she stared at him, harder than any woman he’d ever wronged.

“Ouch.” Leave it to a female to make him feel even worse, when for once he was trying to do the right thing.

Ellie’s bedroom door was closed.

He found the baby monitor off and sitting on the kitchen counter. Assuming Ellie needed the rest if she had been tired enough to forget it, he set Pia in an armchair. “Stay. I’ve really got to take care of business.”

Back from the bathroom, Deacon found his daughter off the chair and making a beeline for a giant potted fern.

“Whoa…” Snatching her around her waist, he held her gaze with his. “Since when are you such a rebel?”

She blew a raspberry.

“And you stink.”

Her giggle didn’t do much to alleviate the smell.

In his role as Uncle Deacon, he hadn’t done much in the way of Pia’s care. Meaning when it came to changing a diaper, he didn’t know squat. How hard could it be?

In the nursery, he started the mission much as any other, by gathering supplies. Clean diaper—check. Wipes. Powder. Lotion. Fresh snappy pajama-thingee.

He figured the table sporting a raised edge and floral pad on top was for changing, and he set Pia there. Only all the supplies were on the counter section of the built-in cabinets and bookshelf.

Eyeing his daughter, he asked, “If I leave you here, are you going to stay?”

The gleam in her eyes told him he’d asked a stupid question. The monkey would be gone faster than he could call her name.

It took a couple trips, but he finally had the equipment and the child in the same place. Unsnapping her PJs was simple enough, but they were damp, so he wrestled them off, being careful with her arms, as they struck him as somewhat floppy. Normal? He didn’t have a clue.

The dirty diaper was problematic.

Sticky tabs had been made with a super polymer resin apparently tough enough to withstand Pia and others of her kind, yet not especially user friendly for those in a caretaking position. Wishing for his Bowie knife, he settled for ripping, which made for a whole new problem. The fluffy stuff inside the diaper that held the pee? Not cool.

Deacon had wiped, lotioned and powdered when Pia decided to pee again. “Seriously?”

Lucky for her, she already had a killer smile.

Repeating the whole process, adding the diaper, then gently cramming her gangly limbs into ridiculously small clothing holes finally netted him a pleasant-smelling kid. The snaps were out of order, but those were way over his head in level of difficulty.

“Good Lord,” Deacon mumbled on his way back to the kitchen, holding Pia on his right hip. “That was too intense for this early in the day. Know where Mommy keeps her aspirin?”

“Mommy!” Pia’s smile faded and she was back to making the huffy noises she’d produced when he’d first wrangled her from her crib.

Deacon found headache relief in the cabinet alongside the fridge, then poured himself OJ. “Want some?”

He held the juice glass to Pia’s mouth, but she made a sour face.

Checking the fridge, he found bacon and eggs. Nothing took care of a hangover like a big breakfast. “You’re gonna like my bacon, Miss Pia. Back when me and your dad shared a place, he said I didn’t cook it long enough—actually told me the pig was still oinking. But I told him to—well, never mind what I said. Probably not anything fit for your tender ears.”

Deacon found a frying pan and started enough bacon cooking for Ellie to have some, too. He wasn’t sure what the munchkin ate. Only knew that as long as he kept talking, she didn’t cry. Using goofball accents even earned him the occasional giggle.

“What are you doing?” As she marched toward him, wearing black booty shorts and a pink tank top, Ellie’s scowl matched her daughter’s. “You can’t hold her next to the stove. What if the bacon splatters?”

“Good point,” Deacon said, while Ellie snatched Pia from his arms. “Rookie mistake I hadn’t considered.”

“A mistake that could land her in the emergency room.”

“Whoa!” He held up his hands. “Lesson learned. Just trying to help out.”

“Well, when she woke up, I wish you had come get me.”

Clenching his jaw, Deacon summoned every ounce of what bit of gentleman remained in him to not let Ellie have it. What was her problem? If she hadn’t left Pia’s monitor in the kitchen, he might still be sleeping. Granted, he shouldn’t have had Pia near the stove. It’d been a mistake, but nothing worthy of this attack.

After turning off the burner, he dumped the bacon on a plate then tossed the pan in the sink. “Where are my keys?”

She took them from a teacup in her curio cabinet. “Here.”

“Not sure what your issue is—” he bounced the keys in his palm “—but you need to get over it. I was only trying to help.”

Deacon left.

When the sound of his motorcycle’s powerful engine faded, and the only proof he’d been there was the acrid smell of exhaust drifting through the open kitchen window, Ellie finally allowed herself to exhale.

“What just happened?” she asked her child, wishing she was old enough to hold an intelligent conversation. But then that would open an entirely new box of issues. When Pia was five or ten or eighteen, what would she think about her mother wanting to hide the fact that Deacon was her real father?

Setting Pia in her high chair, fixing her oatmeal with raisins, and filling her sippy cup with apple juice sidetracked Ellie’s racing mind for a few minutes. But that was only a temporary fix.

She feared what had upset her most about finding Deacon holding her daughter—their daughter—had little to do with lethal bacon grease and more to do with the fact that her baby girl had been happy. Grinning in her father’s arms. Though Ellie had known it was past time for Deacon to learn the truth, she’d been naive to assume he’d have no problem hiding the fact that he was a parent. Her carefully balanced pile of secrets was poised to topple, and as much as the thought terrified her, she realized that for Pia’s sake—and Deacon’s—full disclosure was for the best. A girl needed her father.

Even if, in the process, the fallout destroyed her mother.

* * *

“I WAS SO NOT IN THE MOOD for this.” Deacon set his rebreather unit on the aft end of the Mark V Special Operations Craft. Breathing pure oxygen for hours at a time when he’d started his morning with a killer headache had only made his day worse.

“Come on,” Garrett teased, with an elbow to Deacon’s ribs. “How can you not love practicing for disarming nukes at three hundred feet?” Unzipping his dry suit, he tilted his head back to take in the sun. “It’s the dark that gets me. The black swallows you whole.”

“Yeah.” Deacon began the long process of disassembling and stowing his gear. They would rinse off the seawater back on base.

Garrett joined in the mundane task, asking, “What’s up with you? You’ve been off all day—I mean, beyond your hangover.”

“Remember our last conversation about Pia?” Deacon checked to make sure none of the rest of their team were within eavesdropping distance.

“Sure. You take my advice and see her?”

Deacon winced. “Yes and no.”

Groaning, Garrett said, “Man, you’ve got to lay off the sauce—especially around your kid.”

“It wasn’t like that.” Deacon bristled. “I wasn’t going to drink at all, but then Ellie made me crazy. One thing led to another and somehow I downed the better half of a bottle. Ellie took my keys and I passed out on her sofa.”

“This just keeps getting better….” Garrett shook salt water from his fins.

“So this morning, I hear Pia crying. Wanting to try my hand at the whole responsible dad thing, I handled it. Got the kid scrubbed down, and I would’ve fed her, too, but Ellie flipped. I’m cooking bacon, with Pia in my arms, and she practically accuses me of child abuse. Says I’m gonna burn her with grease. The whole scene was nuts.”

Garrett didn’t answer, just kept messing with his gear.

“What? You think I was in the wrong?”

“No. Just put yourself in Ellie’s shoes. Not only did she lose her husband, but now she’s got this deep dark secret threatening to spill. Tom’s folks think the world of her and Pia. They’re her support system. What happens if she loses them, too?”

“Hadn’t considered that.” Sitting back on his heels, Deacon strove to balance himself against the Mark V’s 45-knots-per-hour bounce. “But you told me I should take an active role in raising my kid. Now you’re saying, for Ellie’s sake, I shouldn’t?”

“Not at all. For Pia’s sake, for sure you should. Just maybe take it a little slower. No more passing out on the couch, for one. And two, put the baby in her high chair before handling popping grease.”

* * *

“EVERYTHING’S PERFECT.” Tom’s mother, Helen, used a pushpin to add a pink balloon to the last pink streamer. “I doubt Pia will remember any of this, but I’m in desperate need of cheer. My granddaughter’s second birthday couldn’t be a more perfect excuse.”

“Agreed.” Ellie dropped raspberry sherbet into a bowl of pink lemonade punch. It had been a month since she’d seen Deacon, who’d been off on another mission. It’d been over a year since Tom’s passing. Every day she hoped missing him would get easier, but if anything, the fact that he really wasn’t coming back was sinking in. The heartbreaking finality of his absence, in everything from deciding whether or not to repair the broken washer or buy a new one, to what to have for Sunday supper, was taking an emotional toll.

Ellie’s only bright spot was Pia. She talked more every day and now had a working vocabulary of about thirty words—mostly commands for what she wanted Ellie to do. Play, hot, cold, food, ouch. How badly Ellie wanted to share these milestones with Tom. How guilt-ridden she was for not sharing them with Deacon.

She’d invited him to Pia’s big day, but in the same breath prayed he’d stay away.

“These are delicious.” Tom’s father helped himself to a cherry cupcake with cream cheese icing. “Ellie, you sure know how to cook.”

“Thanks.” She glowed at the man’s kind words. Her home life had been far from idyllic, growing up, which made her cherish her relationship with Helen and John all the more. “It’s a new recipe, so I’m relieved they turned out.”

Guests started arriving.

Ada. Neighbors. Friends from her old Mommy and Me crowd, as well as her widow support group and new alcoholic outreach program. She’d recently begun working with Pandora, a young alcoholic mother who’d lost her child to foster care. Though Ellie hadn’t admitted it to Ada, the work was extremely satisfying, going a long way toward making Ellie finally recognize she wasn’t a helpless little girl anymore. Bad things might occasionally happen in her life, but she was ultimately in control of how she reacted to those events. The more friends who arrived, the more relieved Ellie felt that Deacon wasn’t among them.

Helen turned on a kid-friendly CD and soon the normally serene backyard was transformed into a riot of frosting-smudged kids running wild on sugar and fun.

Ellie was at the kitchen counter making a fresh batch of punch when the back door swung open.

“Where’s the birthday girl?” In walked Deacon, brandishing a huge beribboned box. “Sorry I’m late. Pia’s gift was a special-order thing, and it just came in this morning.”

Ellie’s hands were trembling so badly she dropped the last scoop of sherbet down the garbage disposal. She tried finding words, but none made it past her dry mouth. He wore jeans and an untucked cobalt button-down that, when he removed his sunglasses, did the most amazing thing to his brown eyes. The man wasn’t just handsome, he was breathtaking—and he knew it.

Wielding his smile as if they’d seen each other just the other day, he asked, “Anyplace special you have assigned for presents?”

“I, um…” She wiped her sticky fingers on a dishrag. “Just put it anywhere. I didn’t think you were coming.”

“Why wouldn’t I?” he asked with an extra helping of charm. “I’m Pia’s father.”

“Who hasn’t seen her in a month.”

“Through no fault of my own.” There he went again with his smile. “You can thank Afghan rebels for my absence, but I’m here now and psyched.”

“You could’ve let me know you’ve been on a mission. I had to find out through friends.”

“Sorry,” he said, still smiling. “You know how it is. After our last talk, I assumed you’d understand that would be the only reason I wouldn’t show up. Regardless, forgive me?”

What a loaded question. On one hand, there was nothing to forgive him for. On the other, she wanted to blame him for being Pia’s father. But how could she when she’d played an equal role in the utterly careless abandon that fatal night? Moreover, her daughter was her world—more than ever since Ellie had lost Tom. If anything, in some twisted way, she owed Deacon great thanks for wanting to tackle this most important job with his usual SEAL drive to excel.

“Of course I forgive you. But you have to do the same for me. I didn’t mean to come down so hard on you about the bacon. I just…” Hands to her forehead, she searched for an explanation for the chaos in her heart that had stemmed from seeing Pia in his arms. “Well, not that it’s an excuse, but with the anniversary of Tom’s death, and telling you about Pia, I was having a rough time.”

“Ellie, are there more—” Helen saved her by arriving in the kitchen with an empty cupcake platter. “Deacon!”

When she drew him into a hug, Ellie fought an irrational jealous twinge. She’d forgotten the simple luxury of human touch, and missed it. Sure, she held Pia all the time, but that wasn’t the same as losing herself to the warmth of being held.

“John and I have wondered how you’ve been.” Her hand to his cheek, Helen added, “The anniversary had to have been hard on you, too.”

Eyes welling, he nodded. “Sorry I haven’t called or anything.”