Sure, it would be easier. But that didn’t change his answer. He gazed at Marcy, looking so content and so motherly with Emily asleep in her arms, then at Dave, his closest friend and best partner for twelve years, and he shrugged. “Yeah, I’m going home. I’m leaving tomorrow.”
Faith was sitting at the desk behind the counter when the bell over the door chimed. Swallowing a sigh, she glanced automatically at her watch. It was 5:25, and she had already started working on the bank deposit in preparation for going home. It had been a long day, and she was tired, and no matter how nice she always was to customers, she didn’t want to sell one more thing today. Still, she put down the stack of bills she’d been counting and got to her feet, resigning herself to an additional fifteen or twenty minutes’ work.
By the time she’d turned, the customer had reached the counter. He was standing there, arms resting on the rosehued countertop, hair a little windblown, expression more than a little belligerent. He was prepared for the coldest of welcomes, and she wished she was prepared to give it, but she was too surprised. Too pleasantly surprised, she realized with dismay.
After a long, still moment passed, she finally spoke. “I didn’t expect to see you again.” But that wasn’t true. She had known that he would come back on the pretext of a family visit but really to check up on Amelia Rose. She’d known that he felt the responsibility too deeply to stay away completely. She just hadn’t expected his return so soon. She had figured that he would wait a while—that, in a week or two, he would call some family member and, in the course of the conversation, casually ask if Faith had had her baby yet. Then eventually duty, mixed with curiosity, would draw him back, and eventually she would have been ready to deal with him.
But she wasn’t ready today, not after having cried because of him Saturday, not after having spent all day Sunday doing exactly what he had once suggested—curling up on the chaise in Amelia Rose’s room with her giant teddy bear, occasionally drifting off and constantly feeling sorry for herself. It had taken a real effort today to pretend that things were normal, to force her life and herself back into some semblance of normalcy. Now here he was again, upsetting the tenuous balance she’d achieved, threatening to topple it completely.
“I’m harder to get rid of than that.” Drumming his fingers on the counter, he glanced around the shop, then nodded toward the money spread out behind her. “Go ahead and finish that. We’ll take it by the bank on our way to dinner.”
She didn’t move. “It’s customary to ask someone to have dinner with you, not just assume that she will.”
“Will you have dinner with me?”
She shook her head.
“That’s why I didn’t ask. That’s why I’m not giving you a choice.” Once again he gestured toward the desk. “Go on. Finish up there before some customer comes in. I’m hungry.”
For a long time she continued to study him warily, then she glanced at the deposit. The work had to be done, whether he was here or not, whether she went out with him or home alone. Sinking into the chair, she reluctantly swiveled around so that her back was to him and picked up the stack of one dollar bills to count them again. It wasn’t easy to concentrate, though, with him standing only a few feet away, with her hands trembling just the slightest bit, with her heart beating fast and loud enough to drown out the mental count she was trying to make.
Finally she set the money down and faced him once more. “What are you doing here?”
“Waiting to take you to dinner.”
“Two days ago we agreed that you would go home and forget about—”
He began shaking his head, cutting her words off. “I can’t think of anything we’ve agreed on, Faith.” Then he deliberately added, “Except that we both want what’s best for Amelia Rose.”
“And I am the best judge of that.”
“No, you’re not. You’re the best judge of what’s good for you. I’m the best judge of what’s good for me, and together we’ll have to compromise on what’s good for her.” His shrug was expressive—a little arrogance, a little censure and no uncertainty at all. “If you wanted complete, undisputed authority over this child, you should have gone for complete anonymity down at the sperm bank. But that baby didn’t come from a test tube. She’s a part of me, and that gives me rights, sweetheart.”
Turning cold inside, she tried to hide her fear when she asked, “Legal rights?”
His expression filled with annoyance. “Moral rights, Faith. She’s my daughter.”
“But you don’t want a daughter. You never wanted children, remember?”
“A man’s entitled to change his mind.”
“Sure. And what about later, when this attack of conscience becomes so familiar that you don’t even notice it anymore, when you get tired of the responsibility, when you discover that being a father is more than you’d bargained for? What will you do then? Change your mind again? Decide once again that you don’t want to be a father?”
“No.”
She waited for more, but that was all he had to say. No. As if he had no doubt. As if sometime in the past forty-eight hours, he had come to terms with the fact of her pregnancy and the changes it could make in his life. As if he’d seen the possibilities instead of merely the responsibilities. As if he really might want the child he had helped create.
She wasn’t sure how she felt about that. On the one hand, it had broken her heart for Amelia Rose’s sake to know that he would prefer that she’d never existed. On the other hand, his earlier rejection had left her the sole person of importance in their daughter’s life. With him—and his family—out of the picture, that meant more of Amelia Rose’s time, attention and affection for Faith. It meant all of Amelia Rose’s love for Faith. But now he was telling her that she had to share.
It wasn’t fair. He had a family, the biggest and best family in all of Texas, while she had no one. Why couldn’t Amelia Rose be hers and hers alone? Why did she have to share when he already had more relatives than she could even imagine? Why did he have to want Amelia Rose, too?
Because she was his daughter, not just a part of him, but of his parents and grandparents, his brother and sisters and all their children. She was a Russo, and, to him—to all of them—that mattered.
Scowling hard, Faith turned back to her work. “I wish I had gone to the sperm bank,” she muttered.
“It wouldn’t have been nearly as much fun,” he replied. His next words came from a spot just off to her left. If she let herself, from the corner of her eye she could see his boots, scuffed and damp, and the legs of his faded jeans. “I’m assuming that it was fun the way we did it.”
Her cheeks turning pink, she made no reply.
“Come on, Faith, tell the truth. You enjoyed it, didn’t you?”
She risked a sidelong glance. “It’s none of your business.”
“Darlin’, I was there. That makes it my business.”
“Then you should have stayed sober enough to remember.”
He crouched beside the desk, more on her level. “I wish I had been sober. I wish I did remember.” He looked and sounded achingly serious, causing her a moment’s sympathy. What was it like to know you’d done something—something that affected not only your life but other people’s lives, too — yet have absolutely no memory of it? How frustrating would that be?
Up front a rap on the window startled Faith, drawing her attention from Nick. It was Mr. Chambers, who owned the bookstore down the block. She returned his wave with a feeble smile and a wave of her own, then looked back at Nick. “Why are you here?” she asked quietly.
He rose to his feet and backed off as far as the counter before answering. “I wanted to tell you the news before the family grapevine spread it around town. I quit my job and put my condo up for sale.” He stopped, took a breath and shrugged as if what he was about to say meant nothing at all. Then he said the words that threatened to change her entire life. “Welcome me home, Faith. I’m moving back to New Hope.”
&nb
sp; Chapter 6
“Welcome me home,” he’d said, but that was a joke. Judging by her expression, Faith was the last person in the world who would want him back in town. She had actually turned so pale at the news that her eyes were the only bit of color in her face—beautiful blue eyes that were growing colder by the moment. She opened her mouth to speak, but couldn’t find her voice. She started to rise from the chair, but couldn’t find the strength.
“It wasn’t an impulsive decision,” he said, his voice calm and steady though no other part of him was. “I haven’t been able to think of anything but Amelia Rose since last Wednesday. I knew even when I left Saturday that it was wrong. I think some part of me knew then that I’d be back.”
“We don’t need you,” she whispered.
“Maybe you don’t—” although he had a few doubts about that “—but you can’t speak for her. She’s my daughter. Kids need their fathers.”
“But they adapt beautifully to not having them.”
“Did you adapt beautifully? Can you honestly tell me that there was never a time in your entire life when you didn’t wish you had a father? That you didn’t see your friends with their dads and want one of your own? That you never wondered what you had done, what was wrong with you, that you didn’t deserve a father?”
She didn’t answer his question, not with words, at least. But her eyes... She was a grown woman, independent, about to give birth any day, and even now in her eyes was just a little bit of longing, just a little bit of the lonely, unwanted girl she still protected inside. Undoubtedly, she had needed a father when she was little. Some part of her still wanted one now.
After a long heavy silence, he approached her, and she pulled back, making the muscles in his jaw tighten. He didn’t back off, though. Reaching past her, he picked up the stack of bills and started counting. “Thirty-one,” he said, but she didn’t move. “Faith.” He nudged her chair, turning her an inch or two until the desk stopped her. “Let’s get this finished and go to dinner.”
Another moment passed before she picked up the pen and made a note next to the listing for ones. It took only a few more minutes to count out the rest of the money and balance the drawer, then another minute for her to fill out the deposit slip. While she went into the storeroom for her coat and purse, Nick shut off all the lights except the ones at the front. They were shining on Christmas displays—toys and holiday-themed clothes spread around a miniature tree decorated with tiny foil-wrapped gifts. Right in the center was a pair of footed sleepers, one in red with a matching Santa cap, the other in candy cane red-and-white stripes. He’d seen photos of assorted nieces and nephews in similar outfits, usually posed on Grandpa Santa’s knee. He wondered if Faith would dress Amelia Rose in such an outfit. Maybe, though he would bet his final paycheck from the Houston P.D. that she would prefer something along the lines of the velvet or satin and lace dresses. No doubt she realized that infancy was just about the only time she would have much control over her daughter’s clothes, and she would choose the fussy and frilly every time.
But that was all right. Eventually Amelia Rose would get the jeans and T-shirts, the scuffed sneakers and skinned knees. Her Russo cousins would see to that.
Faith joined him from the back, glanced outside at the rain and sighed. On his drive up here from Houston, he’d been happy that the temperature slide had stopped in the low forties so he wouldn’t have to contend with sleet or ice. She looked disappointed that it hadn’t gotten another fifteen degrees colder so she could have snow.
“I have to go by the bank,” she announced unnecessarily.
“We’ll drive.”
“I’d rather walk.”
He started to point out that forty-two degrees was chilly enough on its own, that forty-two degrees and wet from a three-block round-trip in the rain was downright uncomfortable, but he stopped himself. She was a bright woman—and a stubborn one. She knew the downside of a cold walk in the rain, and if he protested, she would no doubt remind him that he could go away and leave her to do it on her own, which she would prefer anyway. Instead he stepped outside and, while she locked the door, zipped his leather jacket and turned the collar up against the wind.
“Where do you want to eat?” he asked, prepared for a reminder that she hadn’t accepted his invitation or an announcement that she much preferred to go home and eat alone. It came as a bit of a surprise when she actually replied.
“There’s a barbecue place a few miles north of town.”
“Johnny’s.” He knew the place, a cinder-block building painted red and set in the middle of a gravel parking lot. It was small, shabby and looked disreputable, but the always-full parking lot attested to its popularity. He usually managed a couple of meals there on every trip home, but on the last two, he hadn’t even come close.
They walked a half block in silence, until they caught a red light at the intersection. There she glanced up at him. “Do your parents know you’re back?”
“Not yet. I’ll tell them tonight.”
“Everything?” She sounded and looked more than a little anxious.
He brought her attention to the green light, then started across the street with her at his side. Going public would be one way to gain the upper hand, he mused. If everyone in town knew that he was the father of her baby, she would find it harder to push him away and impossible to avoid his family. From his grandparents on down through Lucia—and, when he returned from his honeymoon, Michael — all the Russos would be dividing their time between welcoming her to the family and pressuring her to make it official. He regretted the possibility of unleashing them on someone so innocent, but if Faith didn’t come around to his way of thinking soon, he just might have to do it. In a situation like this, a man had to use whatever weapons he had available, and his family would be a formidable weapon.
“No,” he replied in answer to her question. “Not everything.” Then, just when she started to relax, he added, “Not yet. Mom will think it was the wedding—being home, seeing the family—that brought me back. Pop will think it was something he said, about Houston just being the place I lived while New Hope was always my home.” He looked at the shops along the street as they walked. “I hate to admit it, but I think the old man was right. I liked Houston—I liked it a lot—but there’s just something about being here, about seeing places I used to go when I was a kid, about remembering things I’d forgotten.” It was a familiarity, a sense of belonging, but he didn’t know if it came entirely from the town or, at least in part, from Amelia Rose. Fathers were supposed to share things with their kids. He knew almost as much about Antonio’s growing-up years in New Hope as he did about his own. Someday, maybe Amelia Rose could say the same.
“I wouldn’t know about that,” Faith said stiffly. “I’ve always lived here.”
“Have you ever wanted to live elsewhere?”
She paused in front of the heavy glass bank door, standing there even after he’d opened it and warm air rushed out to meet them. “No,” she said at last. “I belong here. I can’t say that about any other place.” Turning, she walked into the brightly lit lobby, dropped the bag in the night deposit, then came out again. “So you’re serious about moving back.”
“I told you, I quit my job and put the condo up for sale.”
“You quit just like that? No notice? No warning?”
“I had vacation time on the books. I’m using two weeks of it as notice, and I’ll get paid for the rest.” He shoved his hands into his pockets to warm them. “Under the circumstances, I didn’t think I should delay by working out the notice.”
“You don’t need to be here. I have a telephone. I can call you when she’s born.”
He didn’t respond. He knew as well as she did that any notification would come well after the fact and very, very grudgingly. He also knew—or, at least, suspected—that if he gave her time alone with Amelia Rose, his chances of making a place for himself in their lives would drastically lessen. Once she held their daughte
r in her arms, once she had the baby all to herself for hours of very private, very intimate one-to-one bonding, she would be more convinced than ever that neither she nor the baby needed him around. She would want Amelia Rose all to herself.
With a sigh of resignation, she changed the subject. “What will you do? What about a job and a place to live?”
“I’ll put my application in with the New Hope P.D. and the Frisco County Sheriff’s Department tomorrow. If they’re not hiring, I can try the departments in the Dallas area. If worse comes to worst, there’s always Antonio’s. You pointed out yourself that Pop had always hoped one of us would follow him into the business.”
“And you said yourself that you couldn’t face doing it for a living.”
“I could do it short-term. I can do anything short-term,” he said with a shrug. “As for a place to live, I’ll be staying at Mike’s apartment while he and Michelle are gone. Then...” He shrugged again. Maybe by the time they came back, he would have moved into a nice old Victorian on Sycamore Street.
As they approached his truck, Nick pulled the keys from his pocket. Unlocking the passenger door, he pulled it open and waited for Faith to climb in. She looked at it suspiciously. “I’d really rather go home.”
“And miss Johnny’s ribs?”
“I prefer the brisket,” she said absently. After a moment she met his gaze. “You know, there will probably be people there that we know.”
He acknowledged that with a nod. “Are you ashamed to be seen with me?”
“Not ashamed.”
“Just afraid people will remember that I was home for the party you gave Mike and Michelle, that they’ll start counting the months?” He wiped away a drop of rain that splatted on the upholstery. “Darlin’, you aren’t going to be able to hide it too much longer. When was the last time you saw a Russo baby that didn’t look damn near identical to all the other Russos?” He waited, but she didn’t reply. It wasn’t necessary. “People have already seen us together. They’re going to take one look at Amelia Rose and they won’t have to bother with counting. It’ll be obvious who she belongs to.”
Discovered: Daddy Page 14
