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The promise he made her, not to hurt Kaylie, felt like a promise about Paige, too. How could he hurt a woman he barely knew? Another of the million unanswerable questions plaguing him lately.
He didn’t want to hurt her or the little girl, and making sure everyone came out on the other side of this without a few bumps or bruises would take all his focus. Only he couldn’t forget about those adorable freckles, the way her upper half filled out the navy tee, the tight behind she showed off so well in jeans and the pretty, paint-splattered toes.
How many women still blushed, much less admitted to blushing when they could just as easily pretend nothing happened? He liked her. Didn’t want to, but there it was.
Paige Kenner tripped all his buttons in the attraction department.
Not that that had anything to do with anything.
Alex turned up Mooner’s Hollow Trail to check in on the hiker’s kiosks. So far it was a quiet afternoon at St. Francois State Park. He swiped a bandanna over the back of his neck. Hot but quiet. October was almost over, but so far Mother Nature seemed to be ignoring the fact that fall was here. He knelt beside Coonville Creek, dipped the bandanna into the water and then squeezed it over his head before replacing his black ball cap and continuing down the trail. Any day now the leaves would begin turning. First brilliant reds and then more subtle oranges and yellows would peek through before the first frost.
His walkie crackled and Tucker Blevins’s deep voice echoed around the quiet trail.
“Any campers in the past day ask about setting up camp off-trail and away from the usual sites?”
Alex hadn’t seen many campers, period, for the past week. The park was open to them from March through November but once school was back in session traffic died down significantly.
“Other than the RV that checked in two nights ago, I haven’t seen anyone.”
Tuck was quiet for a moment. “I’ve got an off-grid camp, maybe a day or two abandoned, just off Pike’s Run. You close enough to get over here so we can look around for any lost hikers?”
Tuck described his location and Alex left the trail to start in that direction. Off-grid hiking wasn’t unusual but it might have occurred because someone had gotten hurt or more experienced hikers wanted to rough it for a night or two. Either way, they needed to check for anyone lost and make sure the campsite was cleared.
Two hours later what was left of the site was packed into a couple of sacks, but there were no campers to be found. No real trail, either. Which led Alex to believe it was kids on a dare. Most experienced hikers would have marked some kind of trail so they could easily get their bearings and return to camp.
Of course, most experienced hikers would also not leave most of their campsite behind.
Alex hefted one of the sacks over his shoulder while Tuck grabbed the other one and they started the cross-country hike back to the park office. They hit the creek within a few minutes and then rejoined Mooner’s Trail. Alex pushed his black ball cap off, wiped his forehead with the bandanna and replaced the cap. Tuck followed in silence and it ate at Alex.
“What?”
“What, what?” Tuck feigned surprise.
“You never hike in silence.” Alex rolled his eyes. “Since we were kids it was what girl let you get to third base, how hot the girl at the honky-tonk was or how women seem to go from fun to clingy in a heartbeat. You haven’t said a word in more than a half hour. I repeat, what?”
Tuck kicked an acorn off the trail as they curved around a creek bend. “I wondered how it went with the baby mama. And then I remembered how mostly I do the talking because you don’t like to talk about anything important anymore and decided to keep my big mouth shut.” He elbowed Alex. “But since you brought it up, how’d the big meeting go?”
“How did you know I went to see her?” He shifted the pack on his back but that didn’t ease the tension in his neck. Tension that had nothing to do with carrying an extra fifteen pounds of gear and everything to do with how Paige looked standing in her kitchen. Then again in the clinic office. A little scared, a lot focused. Sexy and ruffled and damn it, why did he have to keep thinking of her at all?
“Dude, since Deanna died you haven’t talked about much of anything except the weather, baseball and tourist traffic. A month ago you tell me about the fertility clinic screwup and two days ago you call in for a personal day. Same thing yesterday. It’s an easy jump from Alex-Never-Takes-Vacation to Alex-Met-The-Mom.”
“We talk about more than baseball and tourists. And the weather is important.” Alex scowled as the office came into view.
“Wrong. I talk. You mostly listen. I’m not gonna go all girl on you and say I’ve missed our friendship, but when you told me what happened, it was nice to see a little of the old Alex coming through again.”
Alex unlocked the park office and dumped the excess gear on the tiled floor so they could catalogue it and then box it away. “The old Alex?” he asked.
“You remember him, don’t you? Got excited about things, got mad about things.”
“I’m not mad or excited about this mix-up. It’s messing with my life.”
“What life?” Tuck closed the door behind them. “You come to work, you hike alone, you show up for the rec leagues and through it all you’re not really there. And you definitely don’t talk about anything.”
“I haven’t had a lot to say.”
“For three and a half years?” Tuck’s pack joined Alex’s and they began separating and cataloguing the extra ropes, shoestrings and miscellaneous matter that had been left behind. “I know Deanna’s death was hard and I know her parents have put a lot of pressure on you to keep her memory alive. We’re good.” Tuck waved his hand between them. “It was just nice to see a sliver of the Alex I knew precancer. I kinda missed that guy.”
“That guy and this guy are the same guy.” Besides, it wasn’t like he’d intentionally shut people out. It was just easier to get through the gray days after the funeral in his private bubble. And the longer that bubble was around him the harder it was to break through. After the call from the lawyer, the gray seemed to dissipate some. He wasn’t sure he liked life outside the bubble, though, not if it kept his best friend talking about feelings.
Tuck tossed an empty canteen into a box and noted it on the paper. “That guy was alive. You’ve just been going through the motions. So, is she a hot baby mama, or one of those chicks with the sexy tats and piercings but an inability to make good decisions?”
Alex rolled the extra pack up and returned it to his own gear. “Paige is...” He beetled his brows. “Fine.”
Tuck hooted and slapped Alex on the shoulder. “So we’re talking one-hot-mama territory, aren’t we? Is she single?”
He couldn’t hold back the grin. At least Tuck was off the feelings subject and on to the physical. Physical Alex could handle. “You’re an ass. And we didn’t get that far.”
“Do I detect a hint of hands-off in that sentence?” Tuck sat back on his heels, stacked the boxes and then stood.
Alex had no good response to that question. Besides, Tuck always had the ability to see right through him. From the attraction he still felt for the woman two days later he didn’t think the wall he was trying to erect was quite thick enough to withstand the scrutiny. He picked up the boxes and shelved them in the storage area.
“It’s okay, you know, if you like her.” Alex shot Tuck a back-off glance. In true Tuck form, he ignored it. “Dee wouldn’t have wanted you to be—”
“Don’t psychoanalyze me.” Alex cut off his friend. Talking about feelings or how Paige looked in the abstract was one thing. Talking about Dee... Alex couldn’t seem to talk to Dee anymore and he certainly wasn’t going to talk about what she might or might not have wanted. “I’m not attracted to Paige.” And maybe, if he repeated that to himself enough times, it would be true. “She’s pretty but she’s also the mother of the child I don’t even know. We’re barely acquaintances, much less anything more.”
Tuck held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, got it. So when do you meet the kid?”
“Don’t know yet.” And damned if that didn’t irk him, just a little bit. He got it. If a strange woman appeared on his doorstep determined to meet his kid he would react the same way. Even if there was a biological connection. But it still irked. He had a good job, no criminal history, a good family and friends. On paper he was perfect dad material, even if part of him worried he couldn’t make a connection with the little girl. That somehow he would mess up her life.
Tuck didn’t need to hear all that, though.
“We’re having coffee to talk about it this evening.” And just this morning he’d swabbed his cheek and sent the sample to the clinic.
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
PAIGE 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.
It took a moment but Alex laughed, a hearty sound in the quiet coffee shop. Paige looked around but no one paid any attention to them.
“Since I’ve never had coffee with an unknown baby mama before, I can honestly say I had no expectations. Listen, I told you the other day I just want to meet her. I know that sounds cavalier, like I’m going to give her an ice cream and then stroll away forever. I don’t know how any of this is going to work. We barely know each other—” he waved his hand between them “—and we aren’t friends. I was trying to talk myself out of knocking on your door the other day.”