The Baby's Bodyguard (15 page)

Janie reached for him. He picked her up, kissing her under the chin and making her laugh.

Ethan had taken a bad situation and somehow come up with a way to keep everyone safe. They just had to figure out a way to do the same for him.

Ethan gripped the steering wheel as they drove across the bridge into Pensacola, where the family was meeting them. “It’s a church social worker who’s coordinating the meeting. Someone their pastor recommended, I think. We’re meeting at the First Community Church on the playground.”

“I know. You told me. It’s going to be fine.”

“We should’ve brought Janie. She’d like a playground.” His voice was tight, his nerves about to take over. His stomach hurt. He’d already eaten an entire roll of Tums this morning, and he was thinking about stopping for another one.

“It’s better without other children. It’s not your first time meeting Charlie, but—”

“It’s the first time he’ll remember. I know. Do you think he’ll like the truck I bought him? I’m still not sure.”

“All little boys like dump trucks. They like anything they can collect stuff in and roll around. Trust me.”

He braked at a stoplight and let his head fall back against the headrest. “You know more about my little boy than I do. What am I doing? Maybe I should just let this go.”

There it was, the thought that he hadn’t wanted to voice out loud, right out there in the open where he hadn’t wanted it to be.

“Why would you do that? You have the opportunity to give your child the greatest gift on earth. The chance to know his father.”

“Charlie already has a dad.” His lips pressed tightly back together as traffic moved forward.

“But he doesn’t have you. Or his Uncle Tyler or Uncle Matt or Uncle Marcus. Not to mention your mom and dad, who will adore him. He is doubly lucky. He has two families who will love and cherish him.” She reached for his hand and unclenched his fingers from the wheel, instead lacing them with hers. “Don’t steal the opportunity from him by not giving this a chance.”

He put his blinker on. “Thanks for coming.”

“It’s my pleasure. And really, believe it or not, this is not the weirdest family reunion I’ve been a part of as a social worker.”

As they pulled into the parking lot, the playground was in plain sight. Kelsey heard Ethan whisk in a breath at the sight of a little boy running for the slide, chubby legs pumping.

“There he is.” Ethan swallowed audibly. “Oh, he’s so big.”

“Come on, let’s go meet them.” She opened her door
and heard Ethan do the same. He walked behind her as she met a short, perky redhead coming across the playground. He knew from the pictures that this wasn’t Charlie’s mom.

“Hi, I’m Sabrina. I’m a counselor here at the church. Dave and Linda asked me if I would be here when they met you for the first time. You must be Ethan.” She held out her hand and he took it.

He couldn’t say anything. Truth be told, he didn’t really even look at her. He only had eyes for the little boy wearing khaki shorts and a bright blue hoodie that he kept trying to take off.

Kelsey stuck her hand out. “I’m Kelsey Rogers. I’m a social worker with DCF in Emerald County.” As the woman’s eyes widened, Kelsey quickly said, “Oh, no. I’m here strictly as a friend.”

“Come meet Dave and Linda.” The perky redhead, whose name Ethan had already forgotten, led them over to a bench where the couple stood nervously waiting. “Dave, Linda, this is Ethan.”

Dave was a tall string bean of a guy, but his handshake was firm.

Linda’s eyes were already full of tears before they were ever introduced, and she didn’t shake his hand at all, opting instead for a hug. “I can’t believe what you’ve been through. Ever since we heard from the FBI, we’ve been praying for you.”

His eyes welled up, too. “You—that’s very generous, Linda.” He shook his head. “I didn’t know what to expect today.”

“We didn’t either.” Dave took his wife’s hand. “We
want you to know that we consider Charlie our son. He—has been since the day we first laid eyes on him.” Dave’s voice broke, but he continued after a deep breath. “We also know that we have to—we want to—find a way to make you a part of his life. He needs all of us. It wouldn’t be fair to him any other way.”

His wife had tears running down her face.

Ethan didn’t think he could breathe. And then, he heard the little voice. “Daddy!”

He turned. And realized his son was talking to Dave.

He nodded. He wasn’t Charlie’s daddy. Dave was.

His chest hurt, his heart feeling like it was breaking into a million pieces.

“Charlie, I want you to meet a friend of mine. This is …” Dave stopped, unsure.

Ethan smiled, surprising himself. “Ethan. Ethan’s fine.”

“Ethan’s here to see you. Why don’t you show him the slide?”

Big blue-gray eyes, the mirror image of Ethan’s, blinked solemnly. Then he wiggled out of Dave’s arms. “Okay, come on, Ee-tan.”

Ethan looked back at Kelsey and smiled.

That evening, as the sun was going down, Kelsey found Ethan exactly where she knew he would be. On his boat, where he always went when he needed to think. It was no wonder, with everything that had happened today. She’d been overwhelmed. She couldn’t imagine how he felt.

He was standing at the stern, looking out at the open water beyond them. He stood so straight and tall, carried so much willingly on his broad shoulders. He took her breath away.

She stepped on board and, as he felt the shift in balance, he turned around.

“Hey there.”

Kelsey hesitated before walking any closer. “I thought I’d find you here. Want some company?”

“Sure. Want a Coke? I just have the real thing, none of that diet stuff.”

She laughed at the face he made. “That’s no problem. I tend to prefer my sugar straight up, anyway.”

He chuckled, low and deep in his chest. The sound was pure. There was much more to come for Ethan, but it was clear that a piece of him had been restored in the reunion with his son.

Kelsey cleared her throat. “I’ll get the drinks.”

She walked into the galley in the cabin of his boat and got two cans from Ethan’s small refrigerator. Back on the deck, she tossed one to him, sat beside him on the stern of the boat and cracked open her can.

For a long minute, she didn’t say anything, just let the stress of the day seep out of her. The last few days had been full of overwhelming highs and lows. The rocking of the boat and the sound of the breeze were so peaceful.

She glanced to the side, still seeing tension in his profile. “Are you worried?”

He never answered quickly. It was one of the things she loved about him. He always thought things through,
and this time was no different. He nodded slowly. “A little. Everything was so emotional today. The hard work starts now. Trying to figure out where to go from here. How to really make things work with two families who love him.”

“You’re right. It won’t be easy. But oh, Ethan. He was so precious today.”

He shot a grin at her. “He was, wasn’t he?”

They sat in silence a few more minutes. The sun was a giant, glowing orange ball in the west. It sank farther toward the water every second, sending ribbons of multicolored light sparkling across the surface.

“Ethan, I love you.” She blurted it, and immediately wished she could take it back.

As still as he was by habit, he went even more still. She fought nervous laughter back and instead just spoke all the things she’d been feeling. “I know it’s irrational because we’ve known each other such a short time, but that’s just the way my heart works.”

Kelsey could see the beginnings of panic on his face. He wasn’t ready to hear this, and she’d gone and blundered into it, committing to a path she couldn’t come back from. But it was the truth, no matter how silly it sounded when she said it out loud.

She forced herself to finish out the thought. “I told you about my childhood.”

He nodded.

“Losing everyone like that, it changes you. But it wasn’t the only time I lost a person I cared about. It wasn’t even the first time. In the mission field, goodbyes are just part of life.”

Ethan reached for her hand. “That must’ve been a hard lesson to learn as a young person.”

“What I learned was never to wait—always tell the people you love how you feel. You might not have another chance.” She stared out at the water, where a pelican was diving for his dinner. “So there you go.”

Dusk eased over the edge of evening into darkness, and his voice was as soft as the sky around them. “You don’t have to worry about never seeing me again, Kels.”

She shook her head, a lump in her throat, tears welling in her eyes despite her best effort to keep them away. “I’ve lost so many people I love. I don’t wait anymore.”

He looked at their linked fingers, rubbed his thumb over hers, sighed. “You know I care about you.”

She turned away from him. “Okay, you can stop now. Wow. Those are the words a girl dreams of hearing.”

When she tried to get up, it was his hand on her arm that stopped her. “Kelsey, you’ve changed my life. Brought me back to a world that I wasn’t sure existed for me anymore.”

“I sense a
but
coming.” And she didn’t want to hear it. She really didn’t want to hear it.
Check, please?

He gave her a look that spoke volumes of heartache. “I wish things were different, that I was at a different place, I really do. But now I’ve got Charlie in my life, and things are so uncertain. The only certain thing is that my life is about to make a radical change.”

He smiled, but it was a sad smile. “You and I come
at life from such a different reality—when you would seize love because of uncertainty, I run from it.”

“But if you know that—Ethan, you don’t have to go through this on your own. I want to go through it with you.”

“Maybe it’s better if I do this alone. I’m so sorry, Kelsey. I wish that I could be the man that you need me to be.”

Her eyes spilled over—stupid, stupid tears—but she didn’t give in, not yet. “Don’t be sorry. I understand that you’ve had a lot to come to grips with.”

And she did understand. She just didn’t want to. She framed his face with her hands, allowing herself this one moment of indulgence to memorize his face, the strong jaw, the place where his hair brushed his neck.

He closed his eyes.

She stood and easily leaped to the dock. She waited there a minute until he opened his eyes again. “For the record, Ethan, I think you’re wrong. I think God has a bigger plan for us than you can even imagine.”

She could feel his eyes on her back as she walked away.

Six weeks later

K
elsey tied Janie’s hoodie tighter around her chubby little cheeks. “Mama, swing!”

“Okay, pumpkin. Ready?” Janie nodded and Kelsey gave her a big push in the baby swing at the park, loving the way her little girl could laugh and squeal with full abandon. Kelsey didn’t have to worry anymore that she would have an episode.

While Janie would always have to be followed by cardiologists and might have more surgeries ahead of her, she would, with God’s help, have a long, happy life.

Kelsey tickled Janie’s feet as she came back toward her and then pushed her again.

Out of the corner of her eye, she caught a glimpse of a dad with a stroller turning the corner into the park. Her breath lodged in her throat as she realized it was Ethan. She hadn’t seen him since she’d left the bed-and-breakfast the night after their talk on the boat.

He’d sent Janie a stuffed animal and some balloons
after her surgery. The nurses said he’d called every day to check on Janie, too, but she hadn’t talked to him. She hadn’t wanted to. She wanted him to have the opportunity to figure things out on his own. If he wanted to talk to her, he knew where to find her.

As he walked closer, she could see that his face was relaxed, at ease. She’d never seen him like that. He stopped a few feet away, stuffed his hands in his pockets against the stiff, salty ocean breeze. “Hi, Kelsey.”

Her chin trembled as she tried to control the flood of emotion that she felt seeing him again. She’d expected the love—what she hadn’t expected was the worry, exasperation, wonder of the last six weeks to come out all at once. “I have so many questions, I don’t even know where to start.”

He smiled, a full-out grin. Kelsey stopped, almost dazzled by it.

She turned back to Janie and pushed. “You got custody of Charlie?”

Hearing his name, Charlie wiggled in the stroller. “Ethan, wanna swing!”

Ethan unbuckled his son and lifted him into his arms. “Right now we’re just doing visits, trying to figure things out. They’re good people.”

“Mama, swing!” Janie kicked her feet in the little panda bear shoes that Kelsey bought her.

“How about a cracker?” Kelsey reached into the pocket of her turquoise blue peacoat and pulled out a plastic bag of animal crackers, offering one to Janie and one to Charlie.

When he took the cracker, she said, “Hey Charlie, I’m Ethan’s friend, Kelsey.”

Charlie was unimpressed, but took the animal cracker anyway, blinking big blue eyes at her.

Ethan slid him into the swing next to Janie and gave him a big push. When Janie came back toward him, he grabbed her feet, pressing snorty kisses to the bottoms of them.

Kelsey laughed at her reaction. And his, when he turned to her. Tears in his eyes.

“She looks beautiful. So healthy.” He rubbed his nose with the back of his hand and laughed at himself. “I thought I was ready for this. I’m not sure I’d ever be ready.”

She put her hand on his arm. “It’s okay. I’m a little overwhelmed, too.”

He pushed both the kids again, while Kelsey stood with her chilly hands deep in the pockets of her coat.

“I heard you quit your job,” he said without looking at her.

“I’m working as a church social worker. I needed more regular and more flexible hours. I’m adopting her, Ethan.”

The look on his face, in his blue eyes, was tender, but he wasn’t looking at his son, he was looking at her. And she wanted to reach out to him, but she couldn’t. She had more to think about now. More than just her own heart. She had Janie’s to think about, too. “So you’re just out for a walk in the park?”

“Actually, no. We’re here to see you.”

Her heart wanted to believe him. Her head, though … her head wasn’t quite ready to take that trip.

Janie squealed and kicked her feet. She’d bloomed in the weeks she’d lived with Kelsey. He gave each of the toddlers a push in the swing and reached under the stroller for the pink roses he’d placed there earlier. “I wasn’t wrong to take the time, Kels—I was a mess. But the feelings I had for you, those were real.”

She took the flowers, lowered her face into the blooms and closed her eyes. He didn’t breathe.

That she would turn him away suddenly seemed a very real possibility.

But she opened her eyes and what he saw in them … He could breathe again. “You said you thought God had bigger plans in mind for us. Would that possibly include Thanksgiving with the Clark clan and Friday playdates in the park?”

Kelsey laughed. “I think that can be arranged.”

He cupped her face in his hands, her cheeks cool in the crisp breeze. His breath caught. “You said once that you didn’t wait to say I love you. I don’t want to wait anymore. I want to say it now and I want to say it every day, for as long as I have to say it. I love you, Kelsey.”

She tilted her face up to his, and the love in her eyes nearly bowled him over. He never thought he would get a second chance at forever, but here she was offering it to him.

“I love you, too, Ethan.”

Leaning forward, he captured her mouth with his. His arms circled around her and he lifted her, swinging
her around. She laughed and he looked up into her beautiful, expressive eyes. “Every day. Always.”

Her arms were around his neck, and though she was smiling, tears formed in her eyes. They were two damaged people, but somehow they had managed to make something beautiful out of it. She let her forehead fall to his. A moment, two, as he thanked God that he was standing here with her in his arms.

“Mama!” Janie squealed.

Kelsey laughed.

And he knew as he heard her laughter, forever couldn’t possibly be long enough.