Heart of a Hero (7 page)

“She entertains herself well for her age.” Phoebe glanced at her watch, trying to keep her voice from quavering. It tore at her heart to see Wade so desperately interested in his child. “But any minute now she’s going to realize that it’s snack time.”

Friendly. Neighborly. That was the ticket. She could ignore her temporary lapse in judgment if she just concentrated on remembering Wade several years earlier as he’d been before—before anything had happened. They’d been friends. No reason they couldn’t continue to be friends.

Wade still wasn’t looking at her although she had a feeling he knew exactly why she’d changed the subject. But he didn’t object, merely followed her cue. “Won’t a snack spoil her dinner?”

“Not if it’s a small snack like a cracker. And we don’t usually eat until close to six.” And then they’d sit down to dinner together, just like a real family.

A real family? What was she thinking? They were
not
a family. They were two people who had known each other for a long time and who now shared a child. But they hadn’t shared most of the other basic details that members of a real family would have.

And they might not be a real family, but they certainly were going to be doing many of the things
that families did. Her best bet, she decided, was to treat him as a tenant. Or no, maybe a boarder…he’d already announced he was moving in, so they were going to have to handle all the dumb little details, like meals and who bought toilet paper.

And there was the fact that they hadn’t really talked about custody or visitation or any of the much bigger issues that had been haunting her all day. “I have to get dinner organized,” she said, knowing she sounded less than gracious. “Nothing fancy, just a roast I put in the Crock-Pot this morning.”

“I love red meat. It doesn’t have to be fancy.” He said it with a straight face and perfectly innocent eyes. Was she only imagining the double entendre?

She felt her face slowly heating and she turned away before he could see her blushing. “I’ll make dinner if you’d like to play with Bridget.”

“What do you do with her when you’re alone?”

“She comes into the kitchen with me. I used to put her in an infant seat and sing to her but recently I’ve been able to lay a blanket down and let her roll around on it.”

“She looks like you.” He was watching Bridget again.

“Until she decides she wants something. When she’s determined, she sets her jaw the same way you do, and her eyes get that intense look.”

“I do not set my jaw.”

Phoebe smiled. “Okay. I must have imagined it about a million times in the last twenty years.”

He had to chuckle at that. “You know me well.” The amusement faded from his eyes. “And that’s another reason I need to be in Bridget’s life. She deserves to know how her parents met, that we grew up together.”

How her parents met? He made it sound as if they were an old married couple. That thought hurt. Hurt enough that she couldn’t face him anymore, and she walked away without looking back. But when she reached the kitchen door and she did glance his way again, Wade was still standing there eyeing her with a speculative expression that made her very, very wary. She knew what he’d said about not fighting over Bridget…but could she trust him?

She watched him walk over and lower himself to the floor, tailor-fashion. He was incredibly limber for such a big man. Any man, really.

Bridget turned toward him with a delighted smile as he picked her up and set her in his lap. She promptly grabbed his finger and dragged it into her mouth.

Wade looked at Phoebe over his shoulder with a pained expression. A chuckle bubbled up and
nearly escaped, and she couldn’t help smiling as she moved into the kitchen. He was the one who’d wanted to get to know his daughter.

But she sobered rapidly as she checked the roast. Dear heaven, what was she doing? She couldn’t just give in and let Wade live in her house!

But she didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t let him have free access to Bridget, he’d go to a lawyer.

In her heart, she knew she could never fight him on the issue, anyway. She felt terrible for keeping her pregnancy from him, worse that she’d never told him about his child. Guilt would kill her if she denied him one moment of time with his child.

And she’d never forgive herself for not telling him—or his family, when she’d thought he was gone forever—and letting his mother die without ever knowing she had a granddaughter.

Even if he’d been dead, as she’d assumed, she should have gone to his parents. She knew it, and she knew it was part of the anger that leaped in his eyes each time he dropped the carefully friendly facade.

She shivered as she assembled ingredients for biscuit dough and got out broccoli. He would never forgive her for that. Never.

The kid was a ball of fire. He sat on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom later that evening, listening
to the sounds of her bath progressing. He wondered who was wetter, Phoebe or the kid. Bridget made noise nonstop, giggling, squealing and occasionally shouting. In the background, intermittent splashing indicated that the bath wasn’t quite over yet.

A few moments later, he heard Phoebe’s footsteps in the hallway. She stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, the baby in her arms.

Bridget was wrapped in some kind of white towel with a hood, and she sent him a cheery smile that showed her two front teeth. Phoebe set her down beside him, and her diaper made a funny plastic hiss when she plopped down on the carpet. She immediately began waving her little arms, opening and closing her fingers, her babbling beginning to escalate in pitch until Phoebe snatched up a book and thrust it into her hands. Bridget squealed, a sound so high-pitched that it made him wince.

Yep, definitely a ball of fire.

And he meant that almost literally, Wade decided, eyeing the brilliant curls, still damp from her bath, that peeped out from beneath the edges of the white terry cloth on her head.

“Time to get you into your pajamas, little miss.” Phoebe came over and sank down beside them holding a set of pink pajamas. “Here,” she said to
Wade. “If you want to keep her next week, you’d better start practicing how to get baby clothes on and off. Sometimes I think the manufacturers sit around and brainstorm ways to confuse parents. Hey, c’mere, you.” She deftly snagged the baby, who had begun to roll out of reach. “Oh, no you don’t. It’s bedtime.”

Bedtime.

If someone had told him he’d be sleeping under the same roof with Phoebe two days after he’d flown east, he’d have figured they were nuts.

Bedtime. Phoebe.

How the hell was he going to sleep knowing she was right in the next room?

His daughter screeched as Phoebe set her in front of him again. “Go for it,” she said, smiling.

“You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

“Oh, yeah.” She chuckled. “I had to learn by doing, so it’s only fair that you have the same experience.”

“Thanks.” He picked up the pajamas. There were snaps in places he didn’t even know snaps could be sewn. And his hands were about twice the size of the little piece of clothing. This was going to be interesting. To his relief, Phoebe returned to the dresser from which the pajamas had come and began putting away items from a clothes basket set atop it.

Twenty minutes later, he breathed a sigh of relief. “There. I think that’s it.”

She came over and knelt beside him to look, then raised her gaze to his and nodded. “You got it. You pass Clothing the Baby 101.”

He snorted. “What’s 102?”

“Well, 102,”
she said, “is the class where you learn the Murphy’s Laws of Childrearing. Like, ‘a child does not have to go to the potty until after you have completely zipped, buttoned and snapped every loose fastener on a snowsuit.’”

“Sounds like you already know them.”

“Teaching,” she said, “has taught me at least as much as I’ve taught my students. Which reminds me, no school tomorrow. It’s Saturday,” Phoebe said. “Bridget’s not much for sleeping in so we’ll be up anytime after six or so.”

“Six! You’re kidding. I’m on leave.”

She shook her head. “No such thing when you’re a parent.”

“I’ll get up with her if you’d like to sleep in.”

Phoebe looked at him as if he’d spoken another language. “You’d do that?”

“Well, sure. It must be tough being the one on call every minute of every day.”

“It’s not so bad.” Her tone was stiff, as if he’d offended her. “You’re welcome to get up with us,” she said, “but until you learn your way around the kitchen and our morning routine, it’s probably best if I get up.”

“Phoebe.” He rose and stopped her with a hand on her arm as she moved by him. “I am not trying to take your role in her life away, and I wasn’t trying to slam you again for—I just want to learn everything there is to know about her.”

She nodded, although she wouldn’t look at him. “I’m sorry for getting prickly.” The air of tension left and her shoulders sagged. “This is going to take some getting used to.”

That it was. He watched as she bent over and picked up a discarded shoe and sock. She’d changed from the neat skirt and blouse she’d worn to school that day into a pair of faded jeans and a T-shirt, although she’d neatly tucked the shirt in and added a belt. Probably her version of hanging-around slob clothes.

Her backside was slim and rounded beneath the jeans. Damn, but he was annoyed with himself. He had a lot more important things than sex to think about tonight, and yet every time he looked at Phoebe all rational thought fled and he became one big walking male hormone.

Bridget let out a squeal and he came back to earth abruptly. Phoebe scooped the baby into her
arms. “What are you fussing about, you silly girl?” she asked. “Would you like your daddy to read you a story?”

The kid couldn’t exactly answer yes, but Phoebe motioned him over to the big maple rocker and set Bridget in his lap anyway. She came to him as if she’d known him all her short life, settling easily into his lap, then popping her thumb in her mouth. He read the story but after just a few minutes, her little head nodded against his chest and the thumb fell from her slack lips. Glancing down, he realized she’d fallen asleep.

His throat was tight and his chest ached; she was so precious! It was almost too much to believe, that this beautiful child was his.

He wanted to snuggle her against him but he was afraid if he moved she’d wake up. And so he sat with Bridget in his lap until Phoebe stuck her head around the corner of the door frame. “Is she asleep?” she asked in a hushed tone.

He nodded.

She came into the room and knelt at his side, lifting the baby into her arms. As she transferred Bridget’s weight, the underside of her breast pressed against his arm for a moment, and her warm, intoxicating, feminine fragrance teased his senses. Instantly, awareness rose, and with it
arousal. He wanted to kiss her again. Hell, he wanted to do a lot more than that. He watched silently as she rose to her feet with his child in her arms, and the knowledge that they had made this precious little person together was, oddly, a whole new kind of aphrodisiac. Their daughter had been conceived that day in the hunting cabin, and it didn’t take much effort at all to recall the sweet, sizzling passion that had bound them together in far more than just a physical way.

Then Bridget’s tiny arms hung limp and her head fell onto Phoebe’s shoulder as Phoebe lifted her into her crib. She brushed a kiss across the fiery red curls as she laid the child down, and he swallowed hard, another emotion joining the riot of sensations rushing through him.

How was it possible to go from not even knowing his child existed to loving her more than he loved his own life in less than a day? He didn’t even know her, really. And yet…he did. And he would. Another shock jolted him as he realized he could imagine her five years from now—because he’d known her mother at that age as well.

Phoebe turned and left the room on nearly silent feet, and he slowly pushed himself upright. He walked to the crib and gazed down at his daughter
for a long moment.
I promise to be the best daddy I can be,
he vowed silently.

Then he followed his child’s mother out of the room. They needed to talk about the changes that were about to occur in their lives.

P
hoebe was already at the table in her small dining room when he came down the stairs after unpacking his duffel, removing papers from her satchel and making neat piles carefully spaced on the table. She glanced up and sent him an impersonal smile. “Time to grade math tests.”

He walked through the living room to her side, looking down at the work she was spreading out before her. “You do this often?”

“Just about every night.” She smiled wryly. “The kids complain when I give them assignments, but I really should be the one whining. Every
assignment they hand in multiplies my work by twenty-four students.” She shrugged her shoulders as she pulled out her chair and took a seat. “It’s going to get even more interesting when I start my next class. I’m taking a children’s lit class that begins in January.”

“I thought you already had a degree.”

“Yes.” She pulled out an ink pad and a stamp with a smiley face on it. “But in order to keep my teaching certificate I have to do continuing education every so often or work toward my master’s degree. The specifics vary from state to state, but the general concept is the same. You probably have to do the same thing—keep your skills current, I mean.”

“Yeah. Except now, if I were to stay in the Army, I’d be stuck behind a desk. My ability to hit a target dead center fifty times in a row isn’t quite so critical anymore.”

She bit her lip and he could see the moment when she realized that she’d reminded him of his forced change of career. Still, she continued to stare up at him, concern in her face. “Will you tell me what happened to you?”

He felt the muscles of his face tightening with the effort to keep a casual expression in place. “I have a piece of shrapnel in my leg. It’s too risky
to remove.” He tried to smile. “Plays hell with airport security.”

She didn’t return the smile. “I meant how it happened.”