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Her cousins were the reason she’d come back to Pinehurst when the proverbial rug had been pulled out from beneath her feet. Of course, she’d had no idea then that things were going to get a lot worse before they got better—and she was keeping her fingers crossed that they would get better—but she knew she could count on Ashley and Megan to stand by her and support her whatever she decided to do.
“Mmm, I smell French toast,” Megan said, waddling into the kitchen a few minutes later.
“I promised you breakfast,” Paige reminded her.
“So you did,” Megan agreed. “But you know we would have come even without the bribe.”
Paige nodded, tears stinging her eyes as she slid the spatula under the bread and flipped it in the pan.
And although she knew her cousins had to be curious about the reason for her frantic phone calls last night, they didn’t press her. Instead, they worked around one another in the kitchen—Paige making the toast, Ashley serving it up for the kids, Megan brewing the herbal tea her sister had always preferred while sipping half a cup of coffee generously doctored with milk for the benefit of the baby she was carrying.
When Maddie had finished her breakfast and washed up, she took Emma into the living room to play with her, and the three adults sat down with their plates.
“Is this about the hunky guy Melanie saw you with last night?” Ashley asked.
“When did you see Melanie?” Paige countered.
“What hunky guy?” Megan wanted to know.
“Melanie was walking her dog when Maddie and I were on our way over here. She told me that there was a tall, dark-haired and very handsome man at your door last night and that you invited him inside. But not for very long, she assured me. Just about long enough for a cup of coffee, and then he was on his way again.”
Paige shook her head. “Remind me again why I decided to stay here.”
“Because you wanted to take some time to figure out your future, because you wanted to be closer to Megan and I, and because it’s a great neighborhood where the residents look out for one another.”
“Is that another way of saying ‘spy on one another'?”
“Who cares about the neighborhood?” Megan said. “I want to hear about the hunky man.”
Paige swirled a piece of French toast in syrup, then set her fork down again without eating it. Even the coffee that was as necessary to her system as oxygen in the morning wasn’t sitting comfortably in her stomach, and the breakfast she’d prepared held even less appeal.
“The hunky man is Lieutenant Colonel Zach Crawford of the United States Air Force. He claims—”
She thought she could get through this without any more tears, but the moisture that filled her eyes proved otherwise.
“He claims to be Emma’s father.”
“Emma’s father?” The shock in Ashley’s voice echoed Paige’s initial response to Zach’s announcement.
She nodded.
“Did he have any proof?” Megan demanded. As a successful research scientist, she was skeptical of anything that couldn’t be proven.
“He had a letter … from Olivia.”
Megan reached across the table and squeezed her hand. “Olivia named you as Emma’s guardian.”
“I know. But if it turns out that he is her father—” She couldn’t finish the thought.
But she didn’t need to. When Ashley reached for her other hand, she knew that they understood the bond she’d formed with Emma. It didn’t matter that she hadn’t carried the child in her womb or given birth to her—she’d taken prenatal classes with Olivia, coached her through the birth and, after the doctor and the mother, she’d been the first to hold the newborn baby.
Still, it was more than that. It was the realization that when Olivia died, the child had no one. And admittedly, there had been more than a few moments when Paige had cursed her friend for naming her the baby’s guardian, moments when she’d fervently wished Olivia had chosen someone—anyone—else.
But now things were different. They had a routine, and a connection. When Emma cried, Paige instinctively knew whether she was wet or hungry or tired or just wanted to be held. And she’d found that nothing comforted her so much as offering comfort to the baby she’d grown to love as if she were her own.
“If he’d shown up five months ago—heck, maybe even five weeks ago—I might have jumped at the opportunity to turn Emma over to him. But now … I can’t imagine my life without her.”
“You’re the expert on custody matters,” Ashley reminded her. “So all I’ll say is, whatever you need, we’re here for you.”
“Absolutely,” Megan agreed.
Paige knew it was true, and their unwavering support meant the world to her. “Thanks. At this point, I don’t know what I need, what he plans to do. I got the impression that he discovered the letter from Olivia when he got home from an overseas tour, tore off to confront her, found out she’d been killed and that I had custody of the baby, and raced out here without really thinking about what he planned to do when he finally came face-to-face with the child that he believes is his own.”
“Poor man,” Ashley murmured sympathetically. Then her gaze flew to Paige’s. “Not that I’m taking his side. Of course not. I just can’t help thinking that the news must have thrown him for a loop.”
“You mean like when Paige found out she’d been named Emma’s legal guardian?” Megan asked her sister.
Ashley nodded. “But at least Paige knew the baby existed. This guy didn’t even know he’d had a child.”
“If she’s even his baby,” Paige felt compelled to interject.
“You don’t think he is Emma’s father?”
“I don’t know what to think, why Olivia never told anyone about him. Any time I tried to get information about her child’s father, she stonewalled me. And yet, if I believe him, if I believe she wrote the letter he showed me, then she had a change of heart and decided to tell him about the child. She wanted him to be a part of her daughter’s life.”
“What do you want?” Ashley asked gently.
“I want him to have a change of heart—to have woken up this morning and, in the light of day, realize that he’s not ready to take on the responsibility of being a father and just disappear as unexpectedly as he appeared.”
But she knew it wasn’t going to happen.
A fact that was confirmed when Zach’s SUV pulled into the driveway while she was saying goodbye to Ashley and Maddie a few minutes later.
Ashley paused on the step, obviously wanting to hang around and meet him. But Maddie tugged on her hand, a silent reminder that they both had to get to school, and with a last wave, she was gone.
Unfortunately, Megan was still inside. But Paige had invited Zach to come by, so she gestured for him to follow her into the house.
As she was introducing Zach and Megan, she heard the soft slap of the baby’s hands on the ceramic tile floor as she crawled toward the sound of familiar voices. When she rounded the corner and spotted Paige, those big blue eyes lit up and her mouth curved in a wide smile.
Beside her, she heard Zach’s breath catch.
Emma heard it, too, because she looked over at him, then actually scooted back a step. And the little girl, whose exposure to the male species had been limited and who had certainly never met anyone as big and imposing as the man in front of her now, started to cry.
Paige wanted to scoop the child into her arms, to hold her and hug her and promise her that the big scary man would go away and everything was going to be okay. But it was a promise she knew she wouldn’t be able to keep, so she stood motionless, helpless, while Zach squatted beside the teary child.
He murmured softly to her, so softly that Paige couldn’t hear the words that were said. But despite the soothing tone, Emma turned away, tears tracking down her cheeks as she crawled over to where Paige was standing. Grabbing hold of her pant leg, she pulled herself up and hung on, peeking at the stranger from behind the shelter of Paige’s leg.
Zach stood, too, and sighed wearily.
“She’s a little wary of strangers,” Paige told him.
She expected he would again claim that he was her father, but he seemed to understand that even if that was true, he was also a stranger.
“But she warms up quickly,” Megan interjected, as if to reassure Zach. Then she ruffled Emma’s soft curls. “Don’t you, Em?”
The little girl looked up at her and smiled shyly. Then, apparently bored with the adult conversation, she dropped down to the floor again and crawled back to the living room.
“I want to get the paternity test done as soon as possible,” Zach told Paige.
“All right,” she agreed, biting back a more elaborate retort that would have let him know in clear terms that what she wanted was for him to descend into the fiery underworld.
Megan sent her a look that warned her cousin that she knew what evil thoughts were lurking in her mind, then she turned to Zach and asked, “What are you going to do in the meantime?”
“I had originally planned to fly out to California tomorrow, but finding out about Emma changed those plans.”
“Having the responsibility of a child changes everything,” Paige felt compelled to point out.
He nodded. “That’s why I’ve decided to stay in Pinehurst until we’ve established Emma’s paternity.”
He planned to stay in Pinehurst?
Oh, this is not good, Paige thought.
At the same time, Megan said, “That’s great.”
Paige frowned at her, but her cousin refused to meet her gaze.
“Because caring for Emma has been a big responsibility for Paige to tackle on her own,” Megan continued.
“I’ll gladly help in any way that I can,” Zach said.
Paige didn’t need or want his help and the steely-eyed glare she sent in his direction told him so. But he wasn’t looking at her but at Megan, who rewarded his evident compliance with a smile.
“And it would probably help ease Emma’s shyness if she got used to seeing you around,” she continued. “She’s in the living room playing, if you wanted to hang out in there.”
“Do you mind?” he asked Paige, as if her opinion actually mattered.
She forced a smile through gritted teeth. “No. Go ahead.”
Paige waited until Zach had left the room to turn to her cousin. “I can’t believe you just did that.”
“What I just did was ensure that Zach Crawford will see firsthand how good you are with Emma, how much she’s bonded with you, and realize how difficult it would be for her if he tries to take her away,” Megan said.
“So I’m supposed to believe that you did this for me?”
“You know that Ashley and I love that baby, too. Maybe not the way you do, but none of us want to see you lose her.”
“Yet you just invited the enemy to essentially set up camp here.”
“It’s not as if you could force him to leave town before he’s ready, and this paves the way for a cooperative, rather than an adversarial, relationship,” Megan said reasonably.
“If he is Emma’s father, he could take her away from me, so forgive me for not wanting to cooperate with him.”
Megan sighed. “You are one of the most rational people I know, but you’re being completely irrational about this.”
Paige knew it was true, but she wasn’t quite sure how to explain it.
“Something about him just sets off my radar,” she finally admitted.
Her cousin’s eyebrows lifted. “Your I-don’t-trust-this-guy radar? Or your I-don’t-trust-myself-around-this-guy radar?”
Paige frowned.
“Because I may be happily married and eleven months pregnant—” she glanced down at her enormous belly “—but even I couldn’t miss the fact that Zach Crawford is seriously hot.”
“He’s a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force.”
“Which, for a lot of women, would only further enhance his appeal. Yummy good looks, perfectly sculpted body, strong moral character and dedication to his country.”
“None of which qualifies him to assume the care of a fourteen-month-old baby, even if she is his daughter.”
Megan nodded slowly. “Now I get it.”
“What do you get?” Paige asked warily.
“That this isn’t about Zach at all.”
“It’s about Emma.”
“Maybe,” her cousin acknowledged. “And maybe it’s about the fact that Colonel Phillip Wilder was a respected military leader but a complete screwup as a father.”
“It’s about Emma,” Paige insisted.
And although there was no disputing that Paige was genuinely concerned about the child’s well-being, it was obvious to both of them that there were more issues to be dealt with than the custody of one little girl.
Zach stayed through the morning, just hanging around while Emma played. Sometimes Emma approached Paige, wanting her help with some task or another, and although she cast frequent curious glances in Zach’s direction, the little girl kept a careful distance between herself and the stranger.
To his credit, Zach didn’t push to engage her in play or conversation and he didn’t hover. He just stayed in the background, silently observing. Paige knew it was ridiculous, but she couldn’t help feeling that her every word and her every action were being monitored by the man who claimed to be the little girl’s father.
When it was time for Emma’s lunch, she felt compelled to offer to feed him, too. And he responded with such genuine appreciation, she felt guilty for making the offer so begrudgingly.
They munched on sandwiches while Emma tackled cooked noodles and vegetables with her six teeth.
“She’ll go down for a nap after lunch,” Paige told him, as she cleared their plates away.
Hint, hint.
“I guess that’s my cue to head out,” he said.
