Discovered: Daddy

by Marilyn Pappano

  Panic surged in her eyes. “She belongs to me,” she insisted.

  “I just meant—” He ran his fingers through his hair, and they came out wet. “Quit being so damned argumentative. You know what I meant. Now, are we going to dinner or not?”

  The only thing that stopped Faith from saying not was the fact that Nick so obviously expected it from her. He thought that she would try once more to back out, that he would have to once more insist, so instead she said nothing. She stared at him for a moment, then slowly turned and raised one foot for the high step into the cab. His help was unexpected—and, she insisted silently to herself, unwanted. It wasn’t anything intimate—a hand on her arm, another on her back—but any touch at all was unwelcome. Even if it did warm her in a way her coat couldn’t possibly manage.

  She settled into the seat, pulled the long folds of her coat around her and, with a scowl through the rain-streaked window, slammed the door. He was scowling, too, as he moved around the front of the truck, then climbed behind the wheel.

  After he made a U-turn on the unusually quiet street, they drove the few miles to the restaurant in silence. There wasn’t a big crowd at Johnny’s, she noticed, blaming the weather. Who wouldn’t rather be snug and dry at home, eating a big bowl of steaming homemade beef stew, on a night like this? She certainly would ... wouldn’t she?

  There was no hostess awaiting them inside, just Johnny’s wife at the cash register. She greeted them with a Texas-size smile and a cheeriness that Faith couldn’t come near matching on her best day. “Sit wherever you want,” she said with a wave around the dining room. “If you want the buffet, you can help yourself, and if you want to order off the menu, the waitress will be around in a bit.”

  Faith slipped out of her coat and hung it on a rack near the door, then wandered past the buffet table. She had voiced a preference for brisket earlier, but now that she was faced with a wider selection, she had to admit that the ribs did look good. So did the chicken, the sliced pork, the Polish sausage and everything else in the stainless-steel pans. She did love good barbecue, she thought with a sigh.

  “Do you want to go someplace else?”

  She went to join Nick, who was waiting near the closest booth. “No, this will be fine.”

  “You just looked a little...”

  “Dazed? I see all this food, and my eyes glaze over.” She carefully maneuvered onto the bench, pushing the table a few inches away to accommodate her stomach. As lean as he was, Nick could do without the extra space. “Dr. Austin told me at my last checkup to watch my weight. I’m sure he didn’t mean eat here and watch it go up even higher.” “How often do you see him?”

  “Monthly at first, weekly now. Every Tuesday until I pop.”

  His look was just short of teasing and it almost made her smile. “Until you ‘pop’?”

  “That’s the proper medical term for giving birth — at least, in Dr. Austin’s office.” Rubbing the spot on her stomach where Amelia Rose most frequently aimed her kicks, she blew out her breath. “Sometimes I feel as if I will pop, literally. I don’t think my skin could possibly stretch enough to gain one more pound. I can barely squeeze behind the steering wheel of my car, and all those maternity clothes that were way too big four months ago are now stretched to the limits. I’m ready for this to happen.”

  “Are you doing natural childbirth?”

  “No.” Her tone was even, her manner deliberate. “I don’t need the pain or the partner.”

  “I’d like to be there anyway.”

  For a long time she simply looked at him. She understood his request. Wasn’t that desire to be there from the very beginning a small part of what had caused the medical community to do away with the practice of sedating mothers in favor of allowing them to be awake and alert during birth? Hadn’t that same desire led to a policy of admitting fathers to the delivery room? Millions of fathers had done it; millions more would in the future. But Nick? In the room with her when Amelia Rose was born? The idea made her squeamish. “What with the nursing staff,” she said flatly, “there will be enough strangers in the room as it is. I don’t need one more.”

  “But I’m not a stranger,” he politely observed.

  “For all practical purposes, you are.”

  “Then we’ll have to spend the next few days remedying that.”

  She started to protest, but the arrival of the waitress forestalled her. She ordered the buffet and a pop, went to the steam tables to fill her plate, then came back to wait. Nick had also ordered the buffet and joined her with his own dinner only a minute later.

  “I thought you preferred the brisket.”

  She looked down at her plate. The thick slices of brisket were there, somewhere underneath the Polish sausage, the chicken legs and the beef ribs — and all that was in addition to baked beans, cole slaw and a mound of potato salad. “This is why the doctor told me to watch my weight,” she said, indulging in a moment’s contemplation before reaching for the first sauce-dripping rib.

  “Has it been hard?”

  “Watching my weight?”

  “Being pregnant alone. Having no one to help out.”

  She chewed a bite of tender rib meat, then wiped her fingers on a napkin. “What kind of help do you think a pregnant woman needs?”

  “Someone to lift things for you. To help around the house and the shop when you’re tired. Someone to rub your feet when they swell or your back when it hurts.” He shrugged. “Someone to just hold your hand once in a while.”

  His words made her uncomfortable, because she had spent those few days between finding out that she was pregnant and hearing that he was married imagining just that sort of togetherness. She’d built an elaborate fantasy in which she told him about the baby and he, with a perfectly good excuse for not contacting her, was thrilled, in which they were immediately married and he did all those things often, especially the back rubbing and the hand holding. The dream had brought such pleasure while it lasted, and it had died a hard death. The mere mention of a back rub—the mere thought of his hands on her skin — was enough to bring it back in all its bittersweet futility.

  “There are plenty of people I can ask if I need help moving heavy things,” she said, being deliberately obtuse. “I have part-time help at the shop. I don’t like having my feet rubbed, and holding hands is juvenile.”

  “My folks have been married nearly forty years, and they still hold hands.”

  Forty years. She used to dream about such stability, about living literally happily-ever-after with her own Prince Charming. It was those damned fairy tales that had gotten her into trouble in the first place. They had made her believe in magic. Nick had made her believe in magic... and then he had destroyed that belief.

  Now she dreamed about having a good mother/daughter relationship. She dreamed of finding satisfaction with her status as an unwed mother, with her house too big for only two people to fill, with her bed too empty ever to provide a baby brother or sister for Amelia Rose. She dreamed of finding happiness with her tiny family of two until Amelia Rose was grown and married and having babies of her own. She dreamed of not minding the long wait, twenty years or more, until she had a real family. Twenty years.

  “That’s a long time,” she murmured.

  Nick misunderstood, thinking she was referring to his parents’ marriage. “Not for a Russo. You know there’s never been a divorce in the Russo family?”

  “Then there must be some very unhappy marriages.” She made her tone a little scornful, but she didn’t feel it. Like any intelligent adult, she had a good idea of what went into making a marriage work, and she respected anyone willing to try. Divorce was so much easier than commitment. Leaving was so much less trouble than working out the rough spots, compromising, giving and taking, giving in without giving up.

  “Probably a few,” he admitted, “but none that I know of personally. I think they go into it with a different attitude. A lot of people get married thinking, ‘If it doesn’t work out, I
’ll get a divorce and try again.’ My family gets married with the intention of staying married, forever and ever. They’ve got more invested in it. They need to make it work.”

  Faith polished off another rib, wiped her hands, then sprinkled a few grains of salt on the potato salad before scooping up a forkful. “I can’t tell you much about the Harper philosophy on marriage,” she said with a touch of sarcasm. “I assume my mother’s parents were married at least sixteen years. I don’t know if my mother ever married at all. Great-aunt Lydia never did. She thought men were evil and sex was an abomination to be endured only for the purpose of procreation.”

  “And what do you think?”

  “Some men are evil.”

  He grinned. “About sex.”

  As she studied him, his grin widened. He was too appealing, too handsome, too wickedly sexy, for a woman to resist. Even if magic did exist only in fairy tales, it was no surprise that she had willingly thrown away a lifetime of teachings for a little of his attention. Those few brief hours had made her feel things she’d only dreamed about. They had given her pleasure, passion and hope for a future, for love, for a family. They had given her the first truly intimate connection she’d ever made with another human being and had made her feel alive, desired, special, normal.

  And they had given her the second intimate connection she’d made with another person: Amelia Rose.

  “It was okay,” she said grudgingly.

  “Okay?” He feigned a crestfallen expression. “That’s all? It was okay?”

  “It was very nice.”

  “You do wonders for my ego, lady.” Abruptly, he sobered. “Tell me about that night.”

  She thought about telling him everything, all the details, all the intimacies. How tired she had been after the party, how surprised she had been to walk into the kitchen and find him there, looking even more done-in than she’d felt. How she had sat down across from him at the table and they had talked a little. Her usual shyness in dealing with a man had been compounded by who the man was. Nick Russo had a reputation in New Hope as a charmer, a ladies’ man, a threat to any woman who might cross his path. She had watched him earlier in the evening, making lashes flutter and hearts skip beats. Every woman there except her, it seemed, had flirted with him, and he had responded to them all.

  But, alone in her kitchen, he had seemed like just a nice guy — handsome and sexy, yes, but genuinely nice. She hadn’t hesitated more than a heartbeat in offering him one of her guest rooms. She hadn’t thought more than twice about the wisdom of such an offer, about safety or propriety. He was a Russo, for heaven’s sake. He was Antonio’s son, Michael’s brother, a dedicated cop.

  She could tell him how she had shown him upstairs to the front bedroom, how she had been folding down the covers when he’d bumped her, knocking her against the iron headboard, catching hold of her arms to steady her, then moving his hands to the rail to trap her. She could tell him about the absolute shock that had passed through her at the contact and how he must have felt something, too, because a purely impersonal touch had instantly become very personal, a caress, a gentle stroking, and it had led to a kiss that left them both dazed.

  She could tell him everything, and when she was finished, he would know, but he still wouldn’t remember. He wouldn’t feel any of the feelings he had felt that night. He wouldn’t recall his desire or the gentle coaxing or the incredible sensation of oneness when he’d finally taken her. He would know in the same dry, secondhand way he knew about history or about crimes that took place before he arrived on the scene. He would know, but he wouldn’t know.

  When moment after moment passed without her answer, he spoke again. “You can’t blame me for being curious, Faith. For questioning how in the hell I managed to forget a night with you. For wondering what made a woman like you do what we did with a man like me.”

  “I think we’ve had this conversation before,” she began slowly. “But tell me again, what do you mean, a woman like me?”

  He looked uncomfortable. “A nice woman. A woman who doesn’t engage in casual affairs. The kind of woman that men marry. Not the kind of woman who goes to bed with strangers.”

  Having eaten as much spicy food as either she or Amelia Rose could bear, Faith pushed her plate away, then eyed the homemade banana pudding at the near end of the buffet table. Pudding couldn’t be bad for her. After all, it had milk and fresh fruit, two items that Dr. Austin had encouraged her to eat plenty of. Then, with a sigh because she knew better and she really was too full, she turned her attention back to Nick. “I’m not the kind of woman who normally attracts a man like you,” she said flatly. “That’s what you’re saying, isn’t it?”

  Discomfort made him shift uneasily. Embarrassment brought a flush to his cheeks. “No, it’s not —” Breaking off, he muttered what sounded like a curse, then confessed. “All right. You’re right. You’re not my usual type. You’re too smart. You’re too real. But that’s not what I was saying. It’s for damned sure that I’m not your type, either, but you weren’t drunk that night, so you can’t blame it on that. So why in the hell did you let me stay? Why did you let me...” Impatiently, he gestured toward her stomach.

  Not her type, she thought with just a little wistfulness. How could it be so obvious to him that handsome, charming, sexy, nice and passionate wasn’t her type, when she thought it was? Exactly what did he think she deserved? Some little geek who favored bow ties and double-knit slacks, who greased his hair better than his car and fixed his broken eyeglass frames with masking tape? Some shy loner who couldn’t speak to any woman but his mother to save his life? Or maybe no one was her type. Maybe he thought she’d followed in the footsteps of the wrong female relative. Instead of being easy and loose like her mother, maybe he thought she should have emulated Lydia and lived out her life a bitter, dried-up, untouched old prune.

  “Maybe I let you —” she mimicked his gesture “— because I wanted to. Because I wanted you. Maybe you’ve got all it wrong, Nick. You’ve been blaming yourself for seducing me, but maybe I seduced you. You were drunk.” She smiled coolly. “You were easy. When would I ever again have had such an opportunity? This weekend at the wedding? You wouldn’t have even looked at me if I hadn’t been pregnant, if I hadn’t fainted in front of you, if I hadn’t—”

  “That’s not true,” he interrupted. “I would have looked...but I wouldn’t have touched. I learned the difference a long time ago between the having-fun-with kind and the marrying kind, and, darlin’, you are definitely the marrying kind.”

  And that was definitely not his type. “What does it matter?” she asked irritably. “You keep asking all these questions, but what the hell does any of it matter? We did what we did. It’s over and done with. End of story.” She dropped her napkin on the tabletop and scooted to the end of the bench in preparation for standing up. His next words stopped her in place.

  “It’s not the end, Faith. Not as long as our daughter lives, or our granddaughter, or her granddaughter. This story will never have an ending. We’ll never have an ending.”

  “What are you going to do now that you’re home?”

  Before answering his father’s question, Nick folded his hands over his stomach and leaned back in his chair. It was lunchtime Tuesday, and so far the morning had gone well. His earlier business had been successfully taken care of, and his parents had been thrilled to hear that he was back home to stay. It was a pleasant change from Monday evening and Faith’s reception. “Go to work for the New Hope Police Department.”

  “You put in an application?”

  “This morning. Got hired before I left the building. I’ll be starting in two weeks in patrol, since that was the only opening they had, but eventually I’ll work my way back up to detective.”

  “You know, you could come to work here and make your father happy,” his mother suggested. “It would mean a lot to him to have at least one of you kids working in the business.”

  Antonio snorted. “She means yo
u could come to work here and make her happy. She worries about you being a police officer. She says it’s too dangerous.” To his wife, he said, “At least it’ll be safer for him here. We don’t have much crime, and there’s never been an assault on an officer in the whole history of the town. So what changed your mind, son? Three days ago you’re telling me that Houston is your home, then you call this morning and tell us that you’ve moved back to New Hope to stay. What happened?”

  “It was the wedding, wasn’t it?” his mother asked. “Seeing your brother and Michelle get married, visiting with all the relatives, seeing how your nieces and nephews have grown up hardly even knowing who you are. It made you realize what you were missing, didn’t it? It made you realize that New Hope will always be your home.”

  “It was a combination of things,” he said noncommittally. The reason, of course, was one he couldn’t yet share with her or his father, but the time was coming — and quickly. Amelia Rose’s due date was only five days away. Then they would know — then he would tell — regardless of whether things were settled with Faith.

  Faith, damn her blue eyes. She kept trying to pretend that he was going to go away and leave her alone. Last night, when he’d taken her back to the shop after dinner, she had primly thanked him for the meal, told him goodbye again and pretended not to hear when he’d told her that he would see her the next day. Well, it was the next day, nearly noon, and he hadn’t made good on his promise yet, but he intended to. As soon as he finished visiting with his parents, he planned to go to the Baby Boutique if for no other reason than to remind Faith that he was still around. Sooner or later she would accept the fact. She would get used to the idea of him being there. She might even start to miss him when he wasn’t.