The Deputy's Unexpected Family

Chapter Three

Harper bent over a dustpan and swept up the last of the glittering glass particles. At least she hoped this was the last of it. Every time she swept, she seemed to come up with more glass. At the counter, Zoey was drawing a picture and chattering to herself. Heidi had already left a few minutes earlier, leaving Harper and Zoey alone in the store.

The dress, newly pinned up and marked for Heidi’s desired alterations, hung in the back room. Harper couldn’t bring herself to touch it yet. The thought of shears slicing through the lace...it was almost physically painful. She’d talked Heidi down to knee length, which was something. Heidi had always liked being different—the girl with short hair when everyone else wore theirs long, a tattoo on her calf she liked to show off in summer, and very likely the reason she insisted upon a short dress for the wedding.

Couldn’t Heidi, just once, blend in? Even if only for Chris!

A navy blue SUV rumbled to a stop outside. Harper paused and looked closer. Gabe got out, but he wasn’t in uniform this time. He was wearing a pair of jeans and a gray T-shirt that tugged around his well-muscled biceps. Obviously, the police force kept him in shape, and she had to admit that Gabe had matured into a good-looking guy. A little less ruggedness would go a long way in making this more comfortable for her.

Harper met him at the door so she could unlock the deadbolt.

“Hi,” Gabe said as she opened the door. She stepped back and he came inside.

“What happened to the uniform?” she asked.

“I’m supposed to blend in.”

He didn’t really succeed. Gabe was tall, muscled, and even in plainclothes, he looked like a brick wall. And maybe she liked that. If those thieves were going to return, she’d rather have Gabe as their distraction. Maybe they’d think twice and just move on.

Harper felt a tug on her hand and she glanced down to see Zoey looking up at Gabe, wide-eyed. Harper glanced between them, noting the similarities in their faces—the chin, the slate gray eyes... Did Gabe see it?

“This is Zoey,” Harper said.

“Hi, Zoey.” Gabe gave her a nod. “I’m Officer Banks.”

That was formal, but what did Harper really expect? As far as he knew, this was his ex’s daughter. Not his business.

“I drew a picture,” Zoey said. She lifted it up for Gabe to see, and he took it from her fingers, regarded it for a moment.

“Very nice.” He handed it back.

“It’s for you,” Zoey said.

“Oh—” Gabe’s expression softened and he took the picture back. It wasn’t much more than a few scribbles. She was only four, after all. But he folded the paper in quarters and then tucked it into his back pocket. He cleared his throat. “Thank you, Zoey. I appreciate that.”

Zoey seemed to like that, because she danced back to the counter to draw another one. Gabe would likely leave this shop with a whole ream of paper filled with Zoey’s artwork, and right now he didn’t even know how precious that was.

“You aren’t used to kids, are you?” Harper asked as she leaned the broom into a corner.

“Not really,” Gabe admitted. “But I am used to dealing with criminals and general run-of-the-mill bad guys, which you’ll probably find more useful right about now.”

Harper smiled ruefully.

“But you seem to have risen to the challenge,” Gabe said.

“She was my goddaughter,” Harper replied. “I’ve been in her life since birth.”

“Seems like you’ve got it under control,” he said with a nod. “So how’ve you been...otherwise, I mean?”

“I’m good.” She glanced around. “I manage the store now. Dad had a hard time stepping down. This place was his heart and soul, you know? Anyway, he had a small stroke and that meant he had to slow down and recover.”

“And you have your chance to run the place.”

“Yeah. I’ve been waiting for this.”

Gabe strolled across the store, his gaze moving over the window, the racks of dresses... He reached out, looking like he might finger the fabric of a gown, but instead he pushed it back and knocked on the wall behind.

“What are you looking for?” she asked.

“Don’t know. Just looking.” He shot her a wry smile. “So your dad’s doing okay, though?”

“Yes, he’s almost completely recovered, and he’s settling into retirement with Mom. My sister’s getting married.”

“Yeah?” His gaze moved up to the ceiling, scanning from one side to the other. “Who’d she land?”

“Chris Holmes, of the Holmes Homes legacy.”

“Ah—so she’s marrying money.”

“She’s marrying a very decent man.” Harper corrected him. “You’ll probably see him around.”

“Hmm.” His gaze came back to Harper’s face and he raised his eyebrows. “So...you still dislike me as much as you used to?”

“That’s—” She felt the heat hit her face. “That was a long time ago, Gabe. I just thought that Andrea was expecting too much from you.”

“So it was never personal,” he said with an arched eyebrow. “Is that what you’re saying?”

She sighed. “Maybe it was personal. If someone’s against your relationship, it’s hard not to be, right? So I’ll take responsibility for that. I thought you would use my friend, and I didn’t hide my opinion.”

“I didn’t use her.”

“But you weren’t good for her.”

“Yeah, well, we might agree there,” he said with a shrug. He turned away from her again and started scanning the store’s floorboards. He was being thorough if nothing else. She couldn’t help but follow his gaze, wondering what he was expecting to find.

“How does it feel to be home for a little while?” she asked after a few beats of silence.

“Awful.”

She started to laugh, thinking he was joking, then she sobered. “What? Oh, you must mean with your grandmother’s passing—”

Gabe walked away again, heading toward the counter. He peered into the back room, his head swiveling around to get a good look. When he remerged, his expression was different...gentler.

“Now that she’s gone, I guess there’s no harm in telling the truth,” Gabe said. He turned his arm over and tapped a scar. “That was from her.”

“What?” Harper looked closer—it was long and pale. He’d been cut deeply.

“She came at me when I’d been caught with a cigarette. I fell into some rocks.”

Harper’s mind reeled. “Wait... Came at you?”

“She wasn’t the woman everyone thought she was,” he said bitterly. “And I was a constant disappointment.”

“Gabe, I had no idea...” Harper ran a hand over her brow. “Did you tell anyone?”

“Nope.” Gabe shrugged. “We all have baggage. Mine is a little harder to set down, I guess.”

“So being back here in Comfort Creek...it’s not ideal,” she clarified.

“You could say that.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Not your fault.” He shot her a small smile. “It’s just life.”

It wouldn’t be Zoey’s life; that was for sure. Zoey would be loved and supported. She’d be appreciated, and when she was disciplined, it would be with gentle firmness. No child should have to live like that. It wasn’t “just life.” Harper sighed.

“Andrea told me that you didn’t want kids. Was your grandmother part of that?”

He shot her a quirky smile. “Don’t try to psychoanalyze me now, Harper.”

“I’m not. I’m just curious. Like...if you’d somehow stumbled into parenthood, would that have been so bad?”

“Oh, like you did, you mean? Let’s put it this way—I’m not anyone’s first pick for godfather,” he said with a chuckle. “I know better than to agree to those roles.”

“No, I meant—” How could she even say this? It was delicate, and he wasn’t making this any easier. How was it that Gabe hadn’t pieced any of this together yet? Gabe raised an eyebrow and gave her a sardonic look.

“What if you’d gotten Andrea pregnant?” Harper asked, lowering her voice.

“I didn’t.”

“Just for argument’s sake.” Harper pressed, glancing over to where Zoey sat at the counter with her crayons, just to make sure they weren’t overheard. “What if you had? Would you have just walked away?”

Gabe shook his head. “Look, Andrea and I weren’t going to get married. I know she wanted all of that, and I really didn’t. But it was more than that. She was a good woman, but she wasn’t entirely right for me. So if you’re thinking that we split up because of that alone—”

“No, no...” Harper heaved a sigh. “Let’s put Andrea aside. What if you did have a child out there somewhere?”

“I don’t know how to answer that,” he said. “I don’t tend to live my life by what-ifs. I’m a more pragmatic kind of guy. I’m not interested in the family life, and I take the necessary precautions. Or I did. I’m a Christian now, so I don’t cross those lines anymore, and I don’t play games. I don’t toy with women’s expectations. I put it out there pretty straight.”

“Would you want to know about that child, though?” she pressed.

“Hypothetically, yeah. Sure.” He eyed her curiously.

Zoey traipsed back across the room, a page fluttering in her grasp. It was just some swirls and dashes, but Harper knew the dedication her little girl put into those expressions of her feelings.

“It’s for you,” Zoey said, handing the picture up to Gabe with a proud smile. “It’s a house. And a dog. And a sun. And another dog.”

“Oh, very nice. Yes, I can see that clearly.” Gabe looked at the page for a moment, then folded it and put into his back pocket with the other picture. “Thank you.”

“Zoey, why don’t you draw a picture for me?” Harper asked with a smile. “I love your pictures.”

“Okay.”

Zoey headed off again, leaving Harper and Gabe in relative privacy once more. She knew what she had to do here. The longer she put this off, the harder this conversation would be. But more than that—this was for Zoey. Her daughter would ask questions, and if Harper stood between Zoey and her biological father now, she knew who the bad guy would be—her. Gabe was in Comfort Creek, and deep in Harper’s heart she sensed that there were more reasons to his arrival than just sensitivity training. God worked in weird ways, but it was always effective.

“Look, Andrea and I were over a long time ago,” Gabe said. “I’m sorry that I was a disappointment to her, but that’s all in the past.”

“Yes, of course.” Harper nodded. “I’m not trying to guilt you over the past. You two didn’t work out, and that’s not the end of the world. I’m asking because Andrea never told Zoey’s father about her, and now that I’m her mom, I’m left in a bit of an ethical dilemma.”

Gabe nodded. “So why didn’t she tell him?”

“I think it was a complicated situation,” Harper said delicately. “The relationship obviously didn’t last, and she had...her own worries, I suppose. But she decided not to. And now that the adoption is underway, I don’t want to do wrong by Zoey. I want to make sure that she has everything she needs, emotionally and physically, and I truly believe a little girl needs her daddy. I don’t want to raise her so that my own heart is full, but hers has a hole in the size and shape of her father. When kids grow up with a hole in their hearts, they spend a lifetime trying it fill it, and it seldom works out well.”

“Don’t I know it,” Gabe said softly.

His grandmother...she was still rolling that over in her mind. She’d never once suspected that Imogen Banks was anything less than the solid Christian woman she appeared to be.

“So do I tell him?” Harper asked. “That’s my question. Do I tell the father that he has a child, even if that news wouldn’t be welcome?”

Gabe was silent for a moment. “And you know this guy?”

“A little.”

“I could do a background check on him, if you want. Just to make sure he’s not...creepy, or something.”

Harper laughed softly. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary. He’s a guy from town. So...not exactly a stranger.”

“Oh. Well—” Gabe shrugged “—I’d tell him. At least he’d know, and you could tell Zoey that you did your best.”

Tell him. She knew in her heart that she had to. Zoey’s needs had to come first, and while Andrea had done her best by her daughter, Harper wasn’t going to face God with Andrea, public opinion or her own excuses to back her up. She had to do the right thing.

“Besides,” Gabe said with a slow smile, “you can rest easy that most guys aren’t as messed up as I am.”

“That doesn’t really help.” Harper licked her lips, closed her eyes for a moment in a fleeting prayer for guidance over her words, then blurted out, “Because Zoey’s yours.”

* * *

The smile slipped from Gabe’s lips. What? He stared at Harper for a moment, processing her words. Or trying to. His mind wasn’t reacting fast enough, and he found himself searching her expression for answers, instead of his own head. Her lips were parted as if she wanted to say more, then she pressed them shut. But those big green eyes stayed focused on him, her glasses seeming to magnify that clear gaze.

“No, she’s not,” he said at last. It seemed like a feeble thing to say, but everyone knew that Andrea had hooked up with another guy after she left him.

Harper glanced toward Zoey, and Gabe followed her gaze. The little girl was perched on a stool, her feet kicking in rhythmic thumps against the legs. She seemed totally preoccupied, hunched over a new picture at the counter.

“She is,” Harper replied, her voice low. “If you look at Zoey’s eyes—they’re yours. And her chin—”

“A slight resemblance doesn’t mean anything,” he said with a short laugh. “A cleft in the chin isn’t that rare, Harper.”

“Andrea told me,” Harper went on. “She lied to everyone about who the father was because she didn’t want you to find out. The other guy was a cover story. You’re Zoey’s father, Gabe. I wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t sure.”

Gabe sucked in a stabilizing breath. As a police officer, he was a critical judge of people’s stories. How many times had a perp pleaded his innocence, only to have all the evidence on him? How many men in prison claimed to be innocent? Almost all of them. He knew what a lie sounded like, and he heard the truth in her voice.

“So I’m the guy that Andrea thought was no good for Zoey?” he said after a moment.

Harper’s silence was all the answer he needed, and that confirmation was like a punch to the gut. They’d made a baby... When he’d been promising himself that he’d stop crossing that line with her, that he’d get his head straight and stop fooling around... When he’d been wondering if it wasn’t just better to break up considering that they wanted such different things... While he hadn’t been man enough to just do what he knew he had to do, they’d made a baby.

He’d never guessed.

Andrea had been the one to break it off with him, and he’d known she was right. But when she’d walked away, she’d been pregnant, and that changed the way he saw himself. He was no longer a guy who knew better than to shackle a woman down to the likes of him. He was now the guy that his pregnant girlfriend had run away from.

Gabe had never claimed to be father material—or even husband material, for that matter—but to have a woman actively hide his child from him...

A father. That’s what this kept coming back to. He was a father?

His gaze moved back toward Zoey, who was climbing down from her stool again, a piece of paper clutched in one hand. He was looking at her differently this time, scanning her small, round face for signs of his own. His hand moved up to his own chin, rubbing against that familiar cleft under the sandpaper of stubble, and his mind was spinning in a fog of shock.

“Look!” Zoey said, holding up the paper to Harper. “I drew all of us. That’s Mommy, and Mommy, and me and Grandma and Grandpa...and that’s a cricket.”

Harper’s eyes misted and she nodded, then kissed Zoey’s head. “I love it,” she said. “Your snack is in my bag. It’s on the desk in the back room. Why don’t you go get it?”

Zoey skipped off, and Harper looked down at the faint scribbles on the page.

“Mommy and Mommy,” Harper said. “That’s what she calls me and Andrea. I’ve been upgraded to Mommy, recently, but when she tells stories, you have to know which Mommy she’s talking about.”

Gabe watched Zoey go—sturdy little legs and tangled brown waves. His emotions hadn’t caught up to this yet, and so far, she just looked like a kid—not his kid, not someone any closer to him than any other kid was... But when Harper looked at Zoey, he could see love burning deep in those green eyes. She saw something more when she looked at that child...

Gabe scrubbed a hand through his brown curls. “So Andrea knew she was pregnant when she left.”

“Yes.” Harper turned back toward him. “She said that she knew you didn’t want to get married or have kids, and once she realized she was pregnant, she knew that she had to make her choices with a child in mind, too. And she couldn’t keep doing...whatever it was you two were doing. The back and forth. The constant trying. So she came home.”

Home. That was Comfort Creek for Andrea, but this town wasn’t home for him. He’d been determined never to return to this hypocritical town. It had an attractive enough veneer, but he knew what was burbling underneath...and suddenly a thought struck him for the very first time.

“And no one told me.”

“Andrea made me promise to keep the secret,” Harper said.

“And you’re the only one who knew? I’m sure her parents knew I was the father. And her brother would have known, too, I imagine. If they knew, there would have been others—aunts and uncles, close friends, promising to keep that secret.”

Pink rose in Harper’s cheeks. “I told you.”

“She’s four.” He couldn’t mask the edge in his tone. “It’s been five years.”

“She wasn’t my daughter then,” Harper retorted. “And it wasn’t my business.”

Yeah, that’s what everyone in this town said about his grandmother, too. The way she raised her grandson was none of their business. What she did behind closed doors was her personal business, and far be it from them to push into someone else’s privacy. She was old, and he was a handful—they could sympathize with poor Imogen. But never once did they question whether Gabe’s behavioral issues might have arisen because of his crotchety old grandmother.

Gabe had been a little boy who was told how terrible he was on a daily basis. He’d been an adolescent hiding the emotional bruises from his grandmother’s caustic comments. And now most recently, he was the father of a daughter he didn’t even know existed. Not deemed good enough by Andrea and those closest to her. Ironically, that wasn’t very different from his grandmother.

This town had clean streets and cordial smiles, like the one from Chief Morgan, and under it all was the cesspool of secrets. He had a little girl, and Comfort Creek had kept its collective mouth shut. This stupid town hadn’t changed a bit.

“Not your business.” He nodded slowly. “I should have known about her, and long before this.”

Harper nodded and tugged her ginger curls away from her face. “I agree. But I’m telling you now.”

“And if it hadn’t been for that car accident?” he prodded. If Andrea hadn’t died, leaving her daughter...their daughter...in Harper’s care, what then?

Harper shrugged faintly. “What would you have had me do, Gabe? Go behind my best friend’s back and inform you about Zoey? I couldn’t do that. But I was the voice of reason and balance. I encouraged her to tell you, and eventually...I think she would have.”

“When Zoey was a teenager?” he asked.

“I thought you didn’t work with what-ifs?” She looked away.

So, he’d hit a nerve, had he? Good—she deserved to squirm a little bit. This whole town did! His emotions were kicking in now, and it wasn’t the appropriate emotional response...not what people expected to see when a man discovered he had a child. He wasn’t overflowing with love. He wasn’t feeling tender and paternal.

“This town.” His voice trembled with barely restrained anger. “Everyone keeps their secrets, don’t they? They close the circle and claim to be so innocent. But what happens when they close the circle and you’re the one on the outside? Huh? I was raised in Comfort Creek since my mother dumped me with my grandmother shortly after my birth. Chief Morgan just gave me a very touching speech saying that I’m one of your own. But this town didn’t take care of me. And one day, it might not take care of you, either.”

“So you wanted to know.” Harper shook her head. “Andrea didn’t think you would! If you had any kind of flexibility, maybe you should have let Andrea know that, because I’m not taking responsibility for—”

Zoey appeared in the doorway, and as Gabe’s gaze landed on the girl, the words died in Harper’s mouth.

“We shouldn’t discuss any of this in front of her,” Harper said, her voice tight.

“Yeah. Agreed.” Even he could see that their old, festering issues would be poison for that little girl.

Zoey stared at them, gray eyes wide. Did Zoey have any sense of who he was? When he was a boy, he used to imagine that his dad would come back for him. His mom was a lost cause, but he’d held out hope for a dad. He’d figured that he’d know his dad right away—some sort of innate feeling, or something. But that had only been a childhood fantasy. In reality, it was possible to look your own child in the face and have no idea who she was.

“Zoey, it’s okay, sweetheart,” Harper said, her tone softening. “Come here. We’re done talking about that anyway.”

“Are you fighting like with Aunt Heidi?” Zoey asked doubtfully.

“Yes.” Shame clouded her expression. “Something like that. But we won’t anymore.”

Gabe had to get out of here. He needed space to process all of this, and he didn’t trust himself to do it in front of Zoey.

“I’m going to head out.” He hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “I’ll be in touch.”

It was too casual of a statement to encompass it all, but he didn’t know how to deal with this—and his anger wasn’t going to be of use right now. He needed space.

Before Harper could say anything, he marched to the door and pulled it open. Outside that door was freedom, but something tugged his gaze back over his shoulder once more to the curly redhead who stared at him with regret swimming in her eyes and the dark-haired child next to her, an apple slice held aloft.

He’d promised himself that he’d never come back to this town for good reason, but that was before he’d known he had a child here, and all of his issues aside, life had just gotten a hundred percent more complicated.