by Patty Blount
Kara swallowed a sip of coffee and walked away from him to catch Nadia’s ball before it rolled too far away.
Okay, so she was going to make him work for it. He followed her. Together, they kept a small perimeter around Nadia and the ball.
“I know you probably think I’m a dick for the way I ran away last week so go ahead and get it off your chest.”
Damn it. He said chest. Now he couldn’t help looking at hers. She wore a T-shirt with a pair of pink shorts or pants or whatever they called those things that ended at the knee and damn it, he wanted to kiss her again. With a sigh of disgust, he sank to the grass, put his cup beside him and stared at his hands, trying to find the right words. Nadia ran to him and dropped into his lap. He caught her just before she neutered him. She reached up a hand, rubbed the scruff on his face. When she puckered her lips and kissed his cheek with a loud “Mwah,” he almost wept.
He didn’t speak for a long moment. When he looked at Kara, she was staring at him with eyes as soft as melted chocolate. He nuzzled her daughter and sucked in a breath for courage. “Okay, here’s the thing. I like you and God knows why, but you obviously like me, too.”
He ignored her snort of derision. Nadia decided to pull off her shoes and play with her toes. He laughed. Couldn’t keep shoes and socks on Erin if you’d glued them to her feet. “The thing is I’m not looking for anything…long term. I, ah, just got out of a relationship and I’m not over her.” He didn’t bother explaining it was Erin he was talking about, not Lynn. He figured he was getting through to Kara because she finally sat on the grass next to him. “But I want to give this a shot, see where it takes us.”
Kara’s eyebrows quirked at the word us and Reid took that as a good sign.
She didn’t say anything immediately. When she finally did open her mouth, her words almost stopped his heart. “Tell me about your daughter.”
She might as well have shot him.
“How did you know?”
She took his hand, squeezed it. “Your partner. Gene? He told me when you flipped out during the CPR class.”
He wanted to launch himself off the ground and hit something. Anything. If he hadn’t been holding Nadia, he would have. It took him a few minutes to figure out how to respond. Finally, he met her gaze. “She’s dead,” he admitted flatly. “I don’t talk about it. About her. Ever.” So why did he suddenly feel this urge to spill his guts and tell her all of it, right down to every tear he’d been unable to shed?
“I’m sorry.”
Words he’d heard a hundred, maybe a million times since Erin’s death. They never helped. They never soothed.
Until Kara Larsen said them.
Abruptly, he realized he was clutching Kara’s hand like a lifeline. Deliberately, he relaxed his grip and pulled his hand away. “You really think I’m a sign from your mother?” He wasn’t a sign; he was a hot mess.
Kara bent over, retrieved her daughter’s discarded footwear and redressed Nadia’s chubby feet. “Yeah. I do. I get that you don’t want to get into something serious and we don’t have to. But you were a good dad, Reid. So show me how to be a good mom. That’s all I want.”
That’s all.
He thought about that image his brother had planted in his mind, the one of Kara’s mother reading to his daughter. The right thing to do would be to run fast and far. Instead, he nodded. He offered his hand back to her, felt that sizzle singe him all the way down to his toes, and for the first time since his daughter died, found himself wishing for more.
That he had more to give.
*
“So, uh, where do we start?” Kara asked, strapping Nadia back into her stroller.
He scratched his jaw. “Well, would you like to hear my first impression of your daughter, that day in my CPR class?”
Kara waved a hand. “Oh, yes. Please enlighten me.”
“She’s bored.”
She blinked. Of all the things he could have said, she’d never expected that. “Bored,” she echoed, trying it on for size. “How so?”
“Look at her verbal skills. I’ve only heard Nadia say three or four actual words. Most of her communication is through shrieks and whines. And you come running whenever she does it, so she has no real need to form words.”
It stung, but yes. Reid made a good argument. A damn good argument. “So what do I do?”
“Read to her.”
“I do. I take her to the library’s story time. I read to her every night.”
“That’s great. Keep doing that. And expose her to new things. Maybe get her into daycare.”
“Daycare?” Kara frowned. “Absolutely not.” When Reid gave her the eye roll, she explained further. “Beth, my nanny, is fantastic with Nadia. Her mother’s sick, so she needed some time but—”
Reid held up his hand. “Kara, I’m sure your nanny is great, but Nadia’s not a newborn anymore. She needs to learn how to play with other kids her age. There’s a Montessori school not far from here where she can play and run around and exert all of this energy she’s got. You’ll find she’ll sleep better at night and won’t be so likely to Houdini on you.”
Houdini. Yeah, that was one way of putting it. Kara thought about it for a long while. Last week, when Al had taken Nadia out of her stroller and run around the park with her, the baby had fallen asleep on the way home—something she’d never done before—and slept straight through the night. Maybe there was something to this.
“Okay. Suppose I did enroll her in this program. What about communicable diseases and germs?”
“Everyone has to be vaccinated.”
“Okay, but what about the anti-vaxxers?”
“You make sure the program doesn’t have any before you leave her there.” Reid angled his head. “She won’t forget you.”
Kara nibbled a fingernail and fought back the stupid tears burning in the back of her throat. Nadia was a year and a half. She’d gotten her first tooth and taken her first steps. Maybe it was time to let someone else teach her new words and new skills.
“Okay.”
Reid’s eyes widened. “Really? You’ll consider it? Let’s go over right now so you can see what it’s like.”
With a sigh, Kara steered Nadia’s stroller in the direction Reid indicated. He was right. Rainbow Montessori wasn’t far. The director, a smart woman who introduced herself as Carol Hart, gave them a tour of the entire facility and introduced them to several teachers.
“Well, what do you think, Ms. Larsen?” Carol asked some time later.
Kara bit her lip and wished her mother were there. She’d know what to do. “I don’t know. It’s a lot to think about.”
“Can I make a suggestion?” Carol slid a look toward Nadia’s stroller where the baby was shouting and waving her hands at the toddlers in the classroom. “Unbuckle her. Let her join the children in this class and see how she likes it.”
Kara met Reid’s gaze and he gave her an encouraging nod. She hesitated a moment, but unbuckled Nadia and set her on her feet. Nadia instantly took off, running for the table where several toddlers were squishing some form of clay between fat little fingers. The teacher, Miss Jackie, was using cutters to punch shapes out of the dough.
“What’s this one, Madison?” she asked a little girl who was about Nadia’s size, but acted much older.
“That’s a ball.” She took it and tried to bounce it, but it just splatted on the table. The babies all laughed, including Nadia.
“And what’s this one?”
“A log.”
Kara’s eyes nearly fell from her head. A log? Was this child a savant of some kind?
“Let’s all make some logs.” Miss Jackie took a chunk of the dough and rolled it between her hands. “Here, Nadia. You try.”
Kara’s heart filled to near-bursting with pride as her daughter copied the teacher’s motions and made a log of her own.
“Yay, Nadia!” Miss Jackie applauded. “You made a log. What did you make?”
“La!”
Kara grabbed Reid’s hand. “Did you hear that? She said it. She said log.”
“Ms. Larsen, why don’t we leave Nadia here and return to my office?” Carol Hart suggested. “I can explain our policies and rates to you and your husband.”
“Oh, we’re—”
Reid squeezed her hand. “Good idea.”
Ninety minutes later, Kara was a bundle of raw nerves. She had so many misgivings about daycare, but Reid was all for it and Reid knew what he was talking about. The facility was clean and child proofed. The exits were controlled so that Houdinis like Nadia couldn’t escape without help and nobody could enter without proper ID. There was even a tiny natural playground out back that was entirely fenced in.
“I don’t know,” Kara repeated, still nibbling her nail.
Reid sighed and tugged her back down the corridor to the classroom door. “Look at her. She’s happy, Kara. She’s having fun. She hasn’t even noticed you’re gone.”
Kara’s eyes welled up. “I know!”
Reid laughed and tugged her into his arms. “Come on now, Mama. Time to cut the cord. You asked for my help. This is it.”
“Okay. Okay, let’s try it.” She took out her checkbook and returned to Carol Hart’s office to make arrangements. By the time the paperwork was signed and the ID cards generated, parents had started to pick up their children. A man in a shirt and tie nodded as he passed and entered Nadia’s classroom. A little boy’s excited shout of “Daddy!” had Kara’s eyes filling up all over again.
“Come on. Let’s get you both home before you lose all your electrolytes,” Reid teased. They stepped inside Nadia’s classroom. The man in the tie was holding his son with one arm and stuffing a blanket and stuffed animal into a bag with the other.
“Nadia, time to go home,” Kara called.
Nadia was climbing on a large sculpture of some sort. She leaped down and across the room. Kara crouched down and opened her arms but Nadia ran past her and into Reid’s arms.
“Daddy!”
*
He’d left Kara and Nadia at the corner and headed to his night tour, that word echoing off the walls of his skull.
He hadn’t been called Daddy in two years. Two years, seven months to be exact.
After he’d figured out how to breathe again, he decided it was a bad idea, a very bad idea to be around Kara Larsen. She made him forget the promises he’d made himself. No, no, that wasn’t it. She made him want to forget everything he’d promised himself. But he couldn’t do that. He couldn’t let himself be that man again. He’d barely survived it the first time around.
“Hey, Bennett.” Gene held up a hand. “Shit, you okay? You look like you saw a ghost.”
Reid almost laughed. He opened his locker and started changing into his uniform. “Yeah, I’m fine. Kara’s kid called me Daddy today. Almost crapped my pants.”
Gene’s eyebrows shot up. “Uh oh. Let me guess. You breaking up, running for the hills?”
Reid shrugged. “It’s not like that. I’m just helping her out.”
Gene nodded and winked. “Riiiiiiiight.”
Stubbornly, Reid shook his head. “Okay, look. I’m not saying I have no interest in Kara. She’s smart. She’s gorgeous. If she didn’t have a kid, I’d be all over that. But she does. I can’t risk it.”
Gene sat on a bench in front of the lockers. “You can’t risk what, exactly? Having her kid call you Daddy?”
Reid slammed his locker door. “So what are you telling me? Because that ship sailed, I should say What the hell and just go for it, get Kara and her daughter all sucked up into my crap?”
Gene shook his head. “No, man. I’m pointing out the obvious. You’ve already tried staying away and yet, you’re in her life. So why don’t you just try to make it work this time instead of putting the brakes on? Come on, pal. Nut up.” Gene stood up, patted Reid’s back and headed for the break room.
Reid stared after him, cursing him silently. It was all so easy for people like Gene. He had a steady girlfriend. In fact, Gene was never not in a relationship and as far as Reid was concerned, that hardly qualified him to be giving out advice. At least he knew when hearts were at risk and took steps to prevent the inevitable pain. He was sparing all of them that—couldn’t Gene see that?
Sparing you, you mean.
His brother’s voice in his mind broke through his mental tirade.
Admit it, little bro. A relationship is exactly what you want.
And because he was obviously losing what few marbles he still had left, his former wife’s voice picked up where his brother’s left off.
Remember what I told you when we signed the divorce papers?
Yeah. He had. She’d told him it was obvious she couldn’t make him happy anymore and if he was ever lucky enough to find someone who could, he’d better hold onto her with both hands.
Damn it, that was the heart of it. He was happy around Kara and her daughter. He’d even laughed.
Out loud.
He wasn’t sure when he’d done that last because he always felt switched off. Powered down. Life happened around him, not to him. He wasn’t sure when it happened, but yeah…he felt on when he was with Kara and Nadia.
He sank to the bench in front of the lockers and absently buttoned his shirt. Could he do this? Could he open his cold dead heart a second time and not shred the pieces that were still intact? They’d both been hurt before, he reminded himself. Both had known loss and grief. Both were parents.
Because even though Erin was gone, he was still and always would be her father.
Could he do things right this time?
He waited a moment, then two, but all of the voices in his mind were silent. He couldn’t help but wonder if Kara would think that was a sign, too.
Chapter Eight
‡
It was raining Friday evening when Reid rang Kara’s buzzer.
“Hello?”
“Kara, it’s Reid.”
She buzzed him in and had the apartment door open for him. He stepped into the living room, a plastic bag full of Chinese take-out cartons in his hand and found her holding Nadia on one hip. “Who’s hungry?”
Kara’s jaw dropped while he lined up the cartons on her counter. When the bag was empty, he balled it up, stuffed it under her sink. He shrugged out of the hoodie he’d put on to protect himself from the rain, tossed it over her sofa. He held out his arms and Nadia practically tumbled into them. “How is Nadia liking daycare?”
Kara’s eyes raked over him and the few drops of rain he could still feel on his skin evaporated. He swallowed hard, hoping he was doing the right thing, hoping he could be the kind of man a woman like Kara Larsen wanted.
“Oh,” Kara finally said. “Um, good. She couldn’t wait to start playing. The teacher said she was very vocal. Look. They gave me a report.” Kara showed him the form with the Rainbow Montessori logo.
Reid skimmed it and grinned. “Some issues with sharing, huh? Okay, she’ll learn.” He adjusted the baby in his arms. “And what about you, Miss Nadia? Did you have fun today?”
The baby nodded once.
Reid turned shocked eyes to Kara’s. “She nodded! That’s new.”
Kara smiled proudly. “That’s nothing. Watch this.” She pointed to the baby. “What’s your name? Hmm? Tell us your name.”
Nadia laughed and shouted, “Nah da.”
Reid’s eyes widened even more. “Wow.”
“And who’s this? What’s his name?” She pointed to Reid.
Nadia laughed and said “Eed.”
Reid’s lips curved in a delighted grin. “I’m Eed.
Kara clapped. “Yay! Good girl. High five.” But her smile quickly faded. He watched her hurry to the kitchen, find some plates and utensils, and set them out on the counter next to the cartons.
“And how was your week?” He asked her with a probing look.
“Fine.” Kara looked away and shrugged and he knew she was lying.
Okay, maybe
not lying. But he could tell something was wrong. He knew her tells now. She was biting her lip and avoiding eye contact. And, she didn’t have purple circles under her eyes so she was sleeping well, which meant Nadia was sleeping well. So what was bothering her? She scooped lo mein onto a plate, still avoiding his gaze. He slid a hand under her chin and lifted her face. “Kara. What’s wrong?”
She put the plate down and squeezed her eyes shut. “You were right, Reid. You were right. Daycare is exactly what she needed. She’s making friends and soaking up knowledge like a little sponge.” Kara turned, looked at Nadia. The little girl was sitting on the floor, cuddling her bear. “Look at how calm and quiet she is.”
He crossed his arms and angled his head. “I’m confused. I was right. Daycare was what she needed. And you’re miserable. Why?”
She put the food carton down and gripped the counter for a moment. “Forget it.”
“No.” He took her by her arms, turned her to face him. “Out with it.”
“Fine.” She blew the hair from her eyes. “You’ve heard of Saxony House?” When he nodded, she gave him a tiny shrug. “Well, Ronald Saxon is my new client.”
Right. The Dos Equis guy. He knew that. Her eyes lifted to his and he waited for the big reveal. “And?” He prodded.
“I’ve been helping him set up a charitable foundation, and one thing led to another and I may get the opportunity to manage his personal portfolio, too and well—” she waved a hand toward her daughter. “With Nadia in daycare, it’s been, I don’t know. Better. Easier. The hours fly by and suddenly, it’s time to pick her up.” She pulled away from him, the words falling out of her mouth. “I should feel guilty. I should miss her more. I should—”
Ah. That explained everything. “You got any wine?”
She blinked. “What?”
“Wine. Got any?”
“Oh. Um. Yeah.” She found a bottle of white in her refrigerator, slid it over to him. He rooted around in a drawer, found a corkscrew, and opened the bottle. He poured her a glass.
