The Daughter He Wanted (5 page)

Alex flipped the hours sign on the office door to Closed and marked the time they would be back in the morning. He grabbed his keys from the hook behind the door and started for his truck. He’d let Paige lead the way. For now.

CHAPTER THREE

P
AIGE SQUEEZED HER
hands—hard—around her phone and then hit the delete key on her last text. The one that read
Sorry, something suddenly came up.
She couldn’t do that to him.

To her.

The sooner she figured out what kind of man Alex Ryan was, the sooner her life could start forming the new normal it needed. DNA testing would take a few weeks, but if physical looks were anything to go by, she didn’t need that confirmation. Kaylie was practically a miniature Alex. Still, she’d swabbed her daughter’s cheek the night before and dropped off the strip at the clinic this morning. Maybe soon she could go to the grocery store without wondering if Alex would be buying grapes in the produce section or if her neighbors had figured out that there was more to the man sitting outside her house than met the eye.

Alex buzzed back that he would meet her there and before she could retype the blow-off message, Paige tossed her phone into her bag.

It was ridiculous, really, all the weird scenarios that had played out in her head over the past two days. Since inviting him into her home, she’d had a nightmare that he fought her for custody, and then a made-for-TV dream about them falling in love and living happily ever after, complete with more tawny-haired, crooked-smiling kids in her house. Her fifth graders were studying a unit on the human body and Paige caught herself drawing Alex’s image as the model for the male face.

Now she’d have to grade at least two dozen renditions of Alex’s warm eyes and full lips. Paige sighed. This was not how a mature adult would react. A mature adult would hammer out the details of visitation through lawyers. The only lawyers Paige knew were friends of her parents, though, and she wasn’t about to call that kind of drama into her life.

She could do this on her own.

Kaylie wandered in the door, dragging her Lalaloopsy backpack in one hand and her jacket in the other. “Hi, Mama.” She tossed the light pack and jacket on Paige’s desk, folded her arms and leaned against it. “Guess what we did today in circle time?”

Kaylie attended preschool at the small school where Paige taught. She pushed thoughts of Alex and joint custody aside to focus on the little girl.

“What?”

“We learned a new song about the days of the week. And I can teach it to you so you know, too. Ready?” Paige nodded and waited. Kaylie snapped her fingers twice and then began singing to the tune of
The Addams Family
theme song, “There’s Sunday and there’s Monday...”

Paige watched her daughter, singing and snapping, and felt tears welling up in her eyes. He was going to love her, love her and want more and more time with her. Paige wasn’t sure she knew how to share her daughter. Didn’t know that she wanted to. She hurried around the desk and wrapped Kaylie in a tight hug. The little girl wiggled and pushed away.

“Too tight! And I’m not done yet.” Paige released her, reluctantly, and Kaylie finished the song. “Think you can remember that?”

Paige nodded. “You are a very good teacher, sweetpea,” she said mock-solemnly.

Kaylie looked at her expectantly.

“What?”

“Hug now.” And she held out her arms. Paige wrapped her back up, hugging her tightly while Kaylie burrowed her head against Paige’s neck, like she’d done since she was an infant.

It didn’t matter how cute Alex Ryan was, Paige realized. It didn’t matter that on paper he seemed like a good enough guy to be Kaylie’s father. She couldn’t drop her guard, couldn’t let her attraction get in the way. Attraction as much as rebellion had led her down too many wrong paths in her youth.

There was the twenty-five-year-old who took her to Texas over spring break when she was sixteen, and then an aspiring rocker who hit her. After that a football star who tried to turn her into a beauty queen, and the band instructor at her boarding school. The one thing all four had in common was her parents’ hatred of them.

It was the younger man—one of her father’s students—whom she dated the year after earning her degree that had made Paige take a hard look at what she had been doing with her life. He accused her of using him as an accessory when all her life she’d felt like the accessory her parents used to make their family seem perfect. Until that night she had floated from dead-end boyfriend to dead-end job, not using her degree, not practicing her own art, because at least when she was underachieving it annoyed her parents to the point they would call to tell her how much potential she was wasting.

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.