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That was when she took a substitute teaching job at the school, stopped looking for a new guy in every grocery aisle or bar and decided she wouldn’t hedge her future on the chance her parents might approve of her, hell, might pay attention to her, now.
She’d turned her life around, but she couldn’t erase the memories of those mistakes. Paige couldn’t allow Alex to be another in her long line of romantic misadventures, not when Kaylie could be the one hurt this time. She squeezed once more before letting Kaylie go.
“So, kiddo, Alison’s picking you up tonight because Mommy has an appointment.”
“But Auntie Al picked me up—” Kaylie beetled her brows and then snapped her fingers like she had when she was singing “—Wednesday. That’s when she took me swimming.”
“I know, and now it’s Friday. But I have a boring, grown-up appointment and Auntie Al says she has a craving for pizza and maybe a princess movie. Sound like a good trade-off?”
“Two princess movies. Merida and then Belle, because they are the best princesses ’cept for Princess Amidala.”
Paige laughed. “You’ll have to talk that over when she picks you up, sweetpea. But I do agree with you on the Amidala-Merida-Belle thing.” She glanced at the clock and realized Alison would be there in just a few minutes. She pulled Kaylie’s class papers out of her backpack and ooh’d and ahh’d over her coloring and name-writing skills until Alison poked her head around the corner.
“Sweetpea! You ready for Princess and Pizza Night?” Alison came into the classroom, wearing tapered trousers and a tuxedo blouse with her long red hair wrapped up in a bun. She worked at a local winery in the HR department and always looked put together. Paige looked at her own pencil skirt and cap-sleeved shirt. At least she didn’t have chalk on her butt today.
“Merida and then Belle, Auntie Al.” Kaylie threw her arms around Alison’s hips, hugging her. “And if there’s time, maybe we could find Princess Amidala on Netflix?” She turned her hopeful gaze on Alison, batting her eyes.
Alison laughed and tousled the little girl’s hair. “If you agree to a half-pepperoni half-cheese pizza, I could be persuaded to find an Amidala short.”
Paige put Kaylie’s jacket over her shoulders and strapped her backpack onto her back. “Bedtime is still eight o’clock, even though it’s Friday, okay?” Kaylie nodded. Paige stood. “Thanks for watching her on short notice—again. Twice in one week, I owe you a girl’s night.”
“And you know I’ll collect. So what’s going on?”
Kaylie wandered across the room to the whiteboard on the wall and started drawing.
“I...have this thing.” She hadn’t told Alison about Alex’s surprise visit that week.
Alison raised a brow. “Thing as in D-A-T-E?”
Paige shook her head, crossing her arms at the wrists and then shaking them. “No. Not even close. But not in front of her.” She nodded at Kaylie, making smiley faces with the colored pens on the whiteboard across the room. They moved closer to Paige’s desk and out of Kaylie’s hearing range. “Thing as in D-A-D-D-Y.”
Alison gasped and her expression turned serious. “He called.”
“Nope, showed up on my curb and sat there like a stalker for going on two hours. Wednesday, just before you guys got back from swimming. Mrs. Purcell called me and then put 9-1-1 on notice.”
“Mrs. Purcell. Sweet old biddie.” Alison groaned. “Was he horrible and self-righteous about being a sperm donor?”
“No, he was calm and...normal.”
“Normal is good.”
“Normal might be his act. Especially with my track record.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t talk about yourself like you’re still the sixteen-year-old trying to get Mommy and Daddy to pay attention to you. We all act like fools when we’re kids.”
Paige glanced at Kaylie across the room and lowered her voice. “We don’t all get arrested on prom night for TPing the superintendent’s house.”
“We don’t all wind up with possibly the smartest, sweetest four-year-old, either.” Alison hooked her thumb toward Kaylie, who was drawing lopsided birds over the smiley faces. “Remember, you’re the one with the control here, so don’t sweat it. Tell him about midnight feedings and the upcoming drama over losing her baby teeth. He’ll run back to his home and forget all about you. And her.”
Paige could only hope. And maybe dread. Because what did it say about someone that they didn’t want to get to know a sweet kid like Kaylie? And what did her attraction to someone who could leave a child behind say about her? “I’ll probably make it home before the second movie.”
Alison gathered Kaylie’s things before crossing the room to take her hand and start for the door. “Whatever you need. See ya.” And they disappeared down the hall.
There was nothing left to do but drive to the next town and have coffee with Alex Ryan.
Thirty minutes later, sitting in the parking lot with her hands clenched around the steering wheel of her Honda, Paige decided she was being silly and childish about resolving this situation.
She had to go in.
Paige repeated that to herself twice more but her hands still seemed glued to the wheel, and not because Kaylie had “painted” it with Nutella a few weeks ago. No matter how much Paige scrubbed there was still a sticky feel to the wheel.
Alex’s blue truck was parked five spaces down, between a low-slung convertible and a delivery truck. He was probably inside, waiting.
Paige blew out a breath as she summoned her courage. She peeled her fingers from the wheel and then dropped her keys into her bag. Now go tell him what you expect.
She pushed her long hair behind her ears and started toward the coffee shop. She ordered a half-caff skinny mocha and surveyed the room. Alex sat along the back wall, sipping his own drink. He had a black ball cap on the table, which matched the black tee with the Forestry Service logo over his chest. She could see jeans and hiking boots beneath the table. He must have come straight from work, like her. She smoothed her free hand over her hip and joined him at the table.
“Sorry, I’m a little late—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off. “No problem. It can’t be easy, doing it all on your own. Babysitter problems?”
She nodded. Better he think she was waiting on the babysitter than building up her confidence to see him again. Paige sipped her coffee. “It isn’t easy, not even when you have a partner.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand the kind of unit Kaylie and I are. We don’t need you to take on babysitter duties or chip in for her dance classes.”
“Kids take dance classes at four?” His eyes widened at that. “I always believed stuff like that waited until school started.”
“Some actually start at two, but that isn’t the point. She might have gymnastics lessons, and at some point she’ll probably need braces, or she might fall and break her arm. I’m a teacher, which means I get paid about two dollars an hour by the time you figure base pay against actual hours, but—”
“I never even thought about that,” Alex interrupted. He twisted his mouth to the side. “Of course I can help with tuition or anything else. I have a decent health plan—”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Paige put her fingers to her temples. She was doing this wrong, all wrong. She shook her head. “What I meant was that we don’t need your money. Whatever she wants I can give her. And what she needs isn’t another part-time babysitter.”
“But I’m more than willing to help out, however you need.” He reached to his back pocket, and before he could pull out his wallet and offer her money for her mommy services—which would get him a quick smack on his hands—Paige kept talking.
“What I need is to know you’re not going to disappear on her. And what Kaylie needs, or will need at some point, is a real father. Someone to teach her how to ride a two-wheeler and embarrass her when she goes on her first date. Those are things money can’t buy. Attention can.”
Alex tapped the tips of his fingers against the Formica tabletop. Nice fingers, Paige noticed. She clasped her hands in her lap, not wanting him to see the mess she’d made of her thumbnail throughout the day, worrying over how this night would go.
“Awful” had been her best guess earlier and that was certainly how this felt. Not because of him. He was being perfectly nice, even if he’d been about to offer her a payoff like Mr. Nelson at the clinic. She was the one making a mess of it. Inadvertently insinuating he had to pay to see Kaylie. Throwing the chip she’d been feeling for the past few weeks down on the table. The chip labeled I Can Do This On My Own.
Finally, he sat back against the booth seat, spinning the plastic stirrer over the tabletop. “I don’t have any expectations. And I know I can’t replace you as Kaylie’s anything. You’ve been there since the beginning. I’m the stranger who is biologically related but never so much as watched a younger sibling while my parents ran to the grocery store.”
Paige had looked him up on Google during her free period but all she’d found was his wife’s obituary and his picture on the Forestry Service website from when he was named Ranger of the Year two years before.
“You were an only child?”
Alex nodded.
“Me, too.” So they had one thing in common. Well, other than Kaylie. “All my life my parents have jumped between complete indifference to me and total intrusion in my life. Their priority is what they want—for their lives and for mine. I know the pain she’ll feel if you aren’t willing to invest your time and energy into really getting to know her.” She watched him closely for a moment. His eyes were bright, his hands busy with the stirrer. A vein at his temple was pounding. She didn’t want him to implode the life she’d built but she also couldn’t just send him away. He was at the coffee shop because of a mistake, but he was also Kaylie’s biological father. Paige tried to lighten the mood. “So coffee with the baby mama you never knew. Going well?” She sipped her coffee.
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 (#ulink_84d96dc7-d796-5a79-a91e-5043552dae5d)
“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.
