Bye-Bye Baby

by Morgana Phoenix

  Bye-Bye Baby

  By Morgana Phoenix

  Love has no expiration.

  The morning Beth packed her bags and walked out of Cole’s life was the day he swore the only girl for him would be the six year old who called him daddy. He didn’t have time for love, not between raising his baby girl and trying to figure out what the hell he was going to do with his life. But fate has a funny way of coming around and kicking you when you least expect it. Cole’s new life was no exception.

  As a product of a severely broken home, Beth Doan knew better than to ever get married. She’d seen what that commitment did to people and she loved Cole McClain too much to let marriage destroy them. But the minute she boards that bus she knew she was making the biggest mistake of her life. Only maybe she wasn’t, not when she goes running back home to the only man she ever loved and finds him in the arms of another woman.

  When an unexpected accident throws them together four years later, the last thing either anticipated was to become responsible for a little person who needs them a whole lot more than they need their bitterness and hurt feelings. Can Cole and Beth forgive and forget long enough to save the life of a child neither one of them predicted falling in love with?

  Or are some wounds just too deep to heal?

  Bye-Bye Baby ©2015 by Airicka Phoenix

  www.AirickaPhoenix.com

  This book or parts thereof may not be reproduced in any form, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical,

  Photocopying, recording, or otherwise) without prior written permission of the copyright owner and/or the publisher of this book, except as provided by United States of America copyright law.

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are a product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is coincidental.

  Editor: Kathy Eccleston

  Beta Readers: Jaime Radalyac & Krystal Marlein

  Illustrator: Airicka’s Mystical Creations

  Interior Design & Formatting: Airicka Phoenix

  ISBN-13: 978-1505682021

  ISBN-10: 1505682029

  Published by Airicka Phoenix

  Also available in eBook and paperback publication.

  As Airicka Phoenix

  Games of Fire

  Betraying Innocence

  TOUCH SAGA

  Touching Smoke

  Touching Fire

  Touching Eternity

  THE LOST GIRL SERIES

  Finding Kia

  Revealing Kia

  REGENERATION SERIES

  When Night Falls

  As Morgana Phoenix

  THE BABY SAGA

  Forever His Baby

  IN THE DARK SERIES

  My Soul For You

  Kissing Trouble

  SONS OF JUDGMENT SAGA

  Octavian’s Undoing

  Dedication

  My Readers,

  For helping keep my dream alive.

  Acknowledgement

  I want to start this acknowledgement off by thanking my readers. It’s because of you that this book exists. Thank you all so much for taking the time to read and love Forever His Baby. Please enjoy Bye-Bye Baby as my thank you for being so incredible.

  More thank yous go to Katherine for squeezing in time for me, no matter how crazy the deadline. You are such an amazing and generous friend.

  Jaime and Krystal, you ladies never fail to make me feel like a rock star. Thank you for always having my back and for being as strange as I am.

  My online family, the girls in the dark court, thank you for never letting me fall, but always helping me soar.

  My real life family, thank you as always for loving me. All of me. The love I have for you, there is no word for it in the human language. It is beyond this world.

  Please enjoy and thank you again.

  Love always,

  ~Airicka

  Chapter One ~ Cole

  There is a fine line between patience and murder.

  At least, that was what his college professor had always told him. Cole had never understood the terminology until moving back to Willow Creek and remembered why he’d been so adamant to leave in the first place.

  “Mrs. Boyce, I can’t sue your neighbor just because he likes to water his grass early in the morning,” he explained through gritted teeth for the ninth time with all the patience he could muster without shattering his jaw. “He can water his lawn whenever he wants.”

  “But his hose is so loud!” Mrs. Boyce stressed. “It sounds like a horse is taking a piss in my begonias.”

  While the image made Cole want to recoil, he forced a smile and decided to take a different route.

  “Why don’t I talk to him and see if we can’t come to some type of arrangement?”

  The heavy creases around her gray eyes deepened when she squinted at him. “Well, that’s all I asked you to do.” She shuffled to her feet, barely able to see over the desk as she pried open the top of her clutch purse and rummaged inside. Cole started to tell her not to worry about paying him; after all, it wasn’t like he actually had to do anything. But she pulled out a peppermint candy and set it down on his desk. She smiled fondly at him.

  “For being such a good boy.”

  Cole simply smiled and waited until she was out of his office before dropping his forehead against his desk with a tortured groan.

  It was noon on a weekend and Mrs. Boyce had been the only person to pass through those doors in over two weeks. The deafening silence of his office was beginning to grate on his nerves. Even the tiny radio he’d brought in to fill it seemed only to agitate him with useless noise. Every stitch of paperwork had been filed, refiled, and then filed again, just to keep his mind from going insane. Yet, nevertheless, he would return the next day, and the next, feasibly until the day he died, because at some point during his short few years in law school, he had sold his soul to the devil and purgatory was now his new home. Which meant he would be trapped in that closet sized space, tucked into the very far corner of an even smaller building forever. And, possibly as a joke, someone had lined his room with paisley red wallpaper, so not only did it feel like hell, but it looked like hell, or some scene from The Shining.

  He was still hunched over with his eyes closed when the door opened and the sweetest sound in the world filled the room.

  “Daddy!”

  Cole’s head jerked up. He blinked back the blur across his vision and focused on the tiny blonde person bounding past the empty reception’s area, straight into his cramped little office.

  “Hey!”

  He lunged out of his chair, ignored it when it rolled back a foot and slammed into the filing cabinets behind his metal desk, and hurried around just as Calla leaped into his outstretched arms. Her thin ones wound around his neck and she held him with all the strength in her tiny body. Her riot of curls the color of spun gold smelled of strawberries and he breathed it all in with his eyes closed.

  A shuffling alerted him to the second person stepping into the room. His eyes opened and he grinned at the tiny blonde woman grinning back at him.

  “Hey, stranger.”

  Lily McClain, sister-in-law, baby mama, and all around best friend in the world, raised a fine, blonde eyebrow. “Hey, yourself.”

  She was a tiny thing with sleek blonde hair and a thin face. Her eyes were a wide brown that reminded him of a doe’s. Looking at her, it was impossible to tell she’d had two babies. Her silhouette was slender beneath the heavy coat and jeans. Calla, the love of Cole’s life was the one they shared together thanks to a very stupid pact six years ago inv
olving an old condom and their virginities. Finding out they had a daughter hadn’t changed the dynamics of their friendship. Lily, who had been in love with Cole’s brother, Sloan, her entire life, had gotten married to the man of her dreams and Cole had gotten a beautiful daughter. Cole couldn’t have been happier with the outcome.

  He glanced down around her legs for the second small person that should have been with her.

  “Where’s pipsqueak?”

  Lily and Sloan’s daughter, Willa, was two years younger than Calla and the exact opposite of her sister. While Calla was bald and loud, Willa was shy and pensive. Cole guessed that Calla had gotten that streak from him, while Willa was the miniature version of Sloan with his ever brooding demeanor.

  “With my mom baking cookies.” Lily moved deeper into the room. “Calla wanted to come see you since we were already in town shopping. I hope that’s all right?”

  Cole propped his daughter onto his hip. “Of course it’s all right. I’m always happy to see my girl.” He tweaked her nose and earned a giggle. “You’re getting heavy.”

  “Uncle Sloan says I’m almost big enough to help him move people,” Calla announced proudly. “Willa’s still too small.”

  Cole nodded. “He could be right. I’d have to see your muscles to be sure.”

  Face bunched into one of comical toughness, Calla raised a bony arm and tried to make her biceps bulge beneath the puffy material of her jacket.

  Cole made the appropriate sounds of awe and wonder. “Would you look at that?” He squeezed the soft muscles with his free hand. “You’re practically He-Man!”

  Blue eyes bright with excitement, Calla looked from her mother to her father. “Who’s He-Man?”

  “Someone before even your father’s time,” Lily muttered with amusement.

  “Hey, I’ve seen posters.” Cole replied with feigned outrage. “So where are you guys headed after here?”

  “Mommy says I need shoes,” Calla said, jutting out a foot so he could see the worn tops of her sneakers.

  Cole frowned. “Didn’t mommy buy you shoes a couple of weeks ago?”

  Calla nodded with all the seriousness of a six year old. “Uncle Sloan says I play like a boy.”

  “I believe it,” Cole replied, gingerly setting her down. “I have four more hours here, but I can swing by after supper and pick you and Willa up. We can go out and get ice cream, if it’s okay with your mom.”

  Calla’s eyes widened. “Is it, Mom?”

  Lily nodded. “Sure, but why don’t you come over for supper, Cole?”

  “Because I had supper with you guys yesterday, and the day before that.”

  Lily rolled her eyes. “So?”

  “Well, I do have my own apartment with a functioning kitchen.”

  Lily frowned, her lips pursing. “Yes, but I don’t like you being there by yourself. You really should consider moving back.”

  Cole burst out laughing. “Move back?” He laughed harder. “In a two bedroom house with four other people?”

  “It’s not that funny,” she grumbled. “We can move the girl’s playroom from the basement, or … I don’t know, build another room, or something.”

  Cole raised an eyebrow. “Seriously?”

  She threw her hands up. “We can figure it out.”

  Stepping around their daughter, he pulled Lily into his arms and kissed the top of her head noisily. “Will you stop fussing? You’re giving yourself gray hairs.”

  She smacked his chest. “Shut up.”

  Chuckling, he drew away.

  Lily eyed him, her expression sad and he knew what was coming before she even opened her mouth. “It’s been four years, Cole. Maybe it’s time you—”

  “I don’t want to talk about it, Lil,” he cut in sharply. “I need to get back to work.”

  She looked like there was more on her chest she wanted to get off, but reluctantly relented and set a gentle hand on Calla’s shoulder.

  “Will you at least come for supper? Please?”

  “Yeah! Please, Daddy?” Calla chimed in, doing a little bounce on the balls of her feet.

  His heart softened at the sight of his baby’s big, blue eyes and puckered bottom lip.

  “Yeah, I’ll be there.” He ruffled her curls fondly. “But no Brussel sprouts!”

  “Yeah! No Brussel sprouts!” Calla recited with verve, pointing a stubby finger at her mother.

  Lily glowered at him. “Brussel sprouts are good for you!”

  “They smell like feet,” Calla complained.

  “You smell like feet,” Lily muttered with a teasing grin as she poked Calla in the nose.

  The two giggled and the sound was pure, unduplicatable magic.

  Cole watched them with his own mouth twitching.

  When they left with a final hug and kiss from Calla, he just stood there, staring at the ugly red wallpaper and brown, wood trim and wondered if the devil would sprout out of the walls if he set the fucking place on fire.

  Policer and Warner Law Firm was owned by Stan Policer and Gabe Warner. The pair were old as dirt and were usually off spending their remaining days fishing, which had been awesome when Cole had first signed up. All he had to do was sit there and wait for someone to come to him with a case. Cole hadn’t minded being the only person there in the beginning, but as time went by, the vast amount of free time had begun to drive him batty; there weren’t many actual legal cases in a town as small as Willow Creek. There was the occasional divorce, the odd neighborly spat that was resolved over homemade cookies before the ink dried on the file and once in a while, someone came in asking if they could use his phone. It was any wonder he made any money at all. Stan and Gabe paid him—thankfully—biweekly, or he’d never make ends meet, or help pay for the many number of sneakers Calla seemed to go through in a month.

  When he’d gone to college to become a lawyer, he’d always pictured himself in a fancy top floor office with wall to wall windows and thousand dollar suits. That dream had nearly become a reality, then he learned about Calla and all that changed. And while he didn’t regret his decision, he couldn’t help wondering what his life would have been like if he had stayed on course, if he had gotten that junior position at Barkley and Boyd and moved into the city.

  Maybe then, she wouldn’t have left him.

  As quickly as the thoughts resurfaced, he squashed them. He had no right thinking that way. He had a beautiful little girl that he wouldn’t give up for anything. Thinking otherwise was a betrayal of the unconditional love she had for him. Plus, thinking what if did nobody any good. Beth was gone. She left him. There was nothing he could do about that.

  With the all too familiar weight of grief, anger, and disappointment settling in the pit of his stomach, Cole finished his work. He closed up the office and made his way the two blocks to his apartment to shower and change. Autumn had fallen over Willow Creek and everything held the crisp scent of approaching winter. Several people waved to him in passing. They asked how he was, how Calla was, and if he’d heard anything about what was going on with the Porters. Cole had no answer to the latter. The Porters kept to themselves and he wasn’t the sort to care one way or another if they were having marital problems. Although, if they were, maybe it would finally give him some work.

  At home in his two bedroom apartment, Cole showered and switched his navy blue suit for a pair of jeans and a sweater. He drew a light coat on and headed out to his car.

  The old farmhouse Sloan had bought years ago looked nothing like Cole’s childhood memories of the place. It had been freshly repainted and the summer blooms that Lily religiously planted every summer had been dug up and the soil had been turned over for next year’s planting. There were toys strewn across the lawn, a bicycle was propped against the stairway, and one of the girls had drawn colorful people with chalk on the path to the front door. Cole climbed the steps and helped himself inside without knocking.

  The beautiful sound of chaos greeted him first, followed by the warmth and the swe
et smell of something rich and creamy. He shrugged out of his coat and snagged it on the hook marked Cole. His shoes went on the plastic mat and, in his sock clad feet, he padded into the sitting room.

  The TV was blaring. A series of colorful ponies were running through an apple orchard. Calla sat on the floor, head bent over a coloring book, frantically rubbing a pink crayon down to a nub. Willa was on the sofa, mouth slightly gaping, as she watched whatever was taking place on the screen. Her hair, a shade darker than Calla’s, was in a messy ponytail that left tendrils framing her rosy cheeks. Her tiny feet twitched every so often, like she wanted to jump up and gallop along with the ponies on TV.

  Cole smiled. “Hello darlings.”

  Calla’s head jerked up first. Her face lit up. “Daddy!”

  Pink crayon forgotten, she bolted across the room and threw herself at his midsection. It took Willa a second longer to wiggle off the sofa, but she followed her sister and latched on to Cole’s other side with an elated, Uncle Cole!

  “How’s my two favorite girls?”

  He scooped Willa up into his arms, took Calla by the hand and led both girls back to the sofa. He sat with Willa in his lap while Calla described the pink mess on her pages.

  “Then they popped him with a needle and pink goo went everywhere,” she finished with flourish.

  “That is very interesting.” He remarked carefully, still not sure why the butterfly had eaten all the pink flowers, or why anyone would pop him with a needle. “Where’s Mommy and Daddy, Will?”

  Head resting on his shoulder, Willa pointed towards the kitchen. “Kissing.”

  Cole rolled his eyes. “Of course they are.” He planted a smacking kiss to Willa’s nose before dumping the girl onto the sofa and getting to his feet. “I better go in there before they burn the food … again.”