Special Forces Father

by Victoria Pade

  This morning, when he’d come home from seeing his family, he hadn’t come searching for her and the kids. He hadn’t jumped right into their day.

  Instead he’d immediately gone upstairs to the guest room without so much as a hello or an announcement that he was back. He’d just come in the front door, climbed the stairs and stayed secluded for well over an hour.

  And as that time had grown, Dani had had sort of a flashback to when her father had vanished into the bedroom or bathroom in dark funks, lost in himself and his memories and whatever else his PTSD had caused him to suffer through, putting and keeping distance between himself and everyone else.

  She’d worried that was what Liam had been doing up there.

  Yes, seeing his injured brother for the first time had likely not been easy. And had he merely come back from that more quiet than usual that wouldn’t have alarmed her. It was that full-on withdrawal that pushed a button in her.

  Dani had told herself that was only her own baggage coming to the surface and she’d tried to stay positive. She’d also considered that maybe Liam hadn’t felt well and had needed a short nap or something with no deep-seated meaning behind it.

  She’d told herself that maybe he’d brought something in with him and he was going to come down with a surprise for the kids—a toy he’d needed to assemble or a project he’d needed to prep.

  She’d told herself that there was probably a simple explanation and everything was fine.

  But then he’d finally come downstairs. And when he had, it wasn’t with an assembled toy or a project for the kids. And he wasn’t the Liam who had been trying so hard to make friends with the twins. He wasn’t the Liam she’d spent the last few nights talking to, getting to know and even thinking about kissing.

  He’d been—and remained all day long—the Liam she’d first met. Stiff, solemn and nearly silent. A sentry standing in the wings just observing, barely giving an indication that he was even there. Seeming more than down-in-the-dumps over his brother but impossible to engage, to draw out of himself and his withdrawal. Like her dad.

  She’d tried including Liam as she’d played with the kids, teasing him, joking with him, but nothing had worked.

  Just the way nothing but time on the boat had worked on her father’s funks.

  She’d ultimately decided her focus needed to be on Grady and Evie, and she’d left Liam to whatever it was that had caused this switch, hoping that it might just right itself.

  Soon! she silently commanded, watching him now. After all, he was in the pool with the kids—wasn’t that a time and place to lighten up?

  But no, there he was, still stiff and solemn, his handsome face stony, just going through the motions.

  And even worse, he was insisting that the twins do only what they’d just learned, refusing to let them vary from the drill. Exactly the way Garrett would have and that set off another alarm in her.

  Liam was being completely inflexible. He was trying to maintain strict control over the kids, the situation.

  But if you don’t bend, you break... Dani had said that to Garrett so many times.

  Garrett was a police officer. A tightly wound police officer who had not unwound when he was off duty.

  But trying to convince him to try, to try for her sake and for the sake of her young charges when he was around them, had been to no avail.

  That constant drive for control had ultimately destroyed her relationship with him. Thinking about their relationship now, Dani knew two things: she never wanted to be involved with another man like that, and if Liam didn’t bend a little now, after an entire day of the detached wooden-soldier act, he was going to lose the headway he was only beginning to make with those kids.

  “It’s okay if they just play,” she called to him, hearing an undertone of anxiety in her own voice, both because he was reminding her of her former fiancé and because similarities to her father’s sudden lapses into withdrawal stressed her out. Plus there was so much riding on Liam for the twins’ sake.

  “I thought this was to practice what they learned,” he called back, frowning at her, again reminding her of both her father’s intensity and Garrett’s.

  “That’s the reason they give to stay in the pool. It isn’t what they really want to do. But it’s okay,” she repeated. “They had their lesson. You can just have fun now.”

  For a moment his expression showed complete disapproval of that notion, and yet again she thought of the strict adherence to things that her former fiancé had demanded.

  She held her breath. Fearing the worst. Hoping for better.

  Come on, Marine, these are little kids... Pull it out of the fire...

  Their eyes were deadlocked, and Dani really did feel as if she were facing men of her past as she willed Liam to come out from under whatever it was that had a hold of him today. But still, she feared that he would stand his ground, get angry and insist on dominating the situation.

  Garrett would have.

  But then Liam nodded. His expression remained somber and he still didn’t relax, but he did seem to accept her encouragement to move on because he broke off eye contact with her, returned his attention to Evie and Grady and said, “So, what do you guys like to do in the pool?”

  It was a question asked without any real invitation to change course, but Dani told herself it still opened the door for the twins to let him know what they wanted.

  She went on watching, unsure if Liam had already put them off to the extent that they didn’t want to swim anymore.

  But apparently staying in the pool was important enough to them to give Liam a second chance because they told him what they liked to do.

  And to his credit, he complied and took turns bracing them with his big hands under their backs to keep them afloat so they could pretend they were boats sailing in circles.

  Dani breathed a sigh of relief.

  He could give a little. He had put what the twins wanted before whatever was going on with him. So he wasn’t as bad as her dad had been. Whatever demons he was fighting today weren’t debilitating and he was still able to deal with the kids patiently.

  And he had let go of that inclination to keep a tight rein on things in the pool, too. Even if it had taken some intervention, he’d still allowed Evie and Grady the freedom to play and just be kids—another thing that would hopefully make him okay as a father.

  As much as she wished for it, she couldn’t expect perfection. With Evie and Grady’s future at stake, Dani had to hope not only that Liam would prove to be their father, but that he could at least be an okay father to them. And while seeing what she’d seen today wasn’t heartening, it hadn’t robbed her of all hope for that.

  But it did temper the impact of his gorgeousness.

  Because while there was no arguing that the man was hotter than lava, Liam reminding her of her father and Garrett was an eye-opener.

  Liam was a marine, in the line of work that had caused her father’s problems. There were no assurances that Liam wasn’t on the same path.

  And when it came to the reminder of Garrett? The similarities she’d seen between the two today?

  She couldn’t ignore that either. She’d already come up against enough of the issues that Garrett’s high-pressure job had caused to know she wasn’t the person to be with someone whose occupation caused rifts in their personal life.

  The reminders of her dad’s and Garrett’s issues added even more reasons to resist Liam’s almost overwhelming appeal.

  But watching him sail Grady in a circle gave her a slow three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of that torso, those muscular arms and that full expanse of back, and she decided his appeal wasn’t almost overwhelming.

  It was completely overwhelming.

  So it was a good thing that she had a whole list of reasons to resist.

  * * *

  “What
was the name of what I ate tonight?”

  “Evie and Grady’s favorite pasta—cavatelli. But for some reason we’ve always shortened that to cavatils so that’s how they say it and it sounds different than it looks on the menu,” Dani answered Liam’s question later that night when the kids were in bed.

  He’d followed her to the laundry room, where she was taking the swim things out of the washing machine to hang the suits and toss the towels into the dryer.

  He leaned a shoulder against the doorjamb. “Ah, that makes sense—I did see that cavatelli thing on the menu. They were really good,” he praised. “And you make those?”

  “Not me in particular. It is Gramma’s recipe but not one of the secret ones, so it isn’t something I have to do myself. Ours are a little different than what they usually are because we put ricotta in the dough.”

  “They look like tiny hot dog buns.”

  Dani laughed. “That is what they look like.”

  “And the kids, you might have to put them on the payroll. They handed out menus to customers, brought out the silverware wrapped in napkins. All very seriously.”

  Dani laughed again. “I know. They call it ‘playing restaurant’ but they really get into their roles.”

  “And you just let them have run of the place even with the customers?”

  Was that more of a need for control coming through? Because Garrett had also disapproved of the kids being allowed to do even those small things.

  “I told you it’s always been a family restaurant. They aren’t doing anything I wasn’t doing at their age. Most customers get a kick out of it but when we have the occasional one who doesn’t, Carmella intervenes and keeps the kids away from them.”

  “Carmella...” he said, putting some lilt into the name. “She’s, what? About a hundred?”

  Dani laughed. “She’s eighty-six.”

  “She told me working keeps her alive.”

  “I know, she tells everyone that. She’s a fixture there. She and my grandmother were close. I wasn’t sure Carmella would stay after Gramma died, but she told me she didn’t know what she’d do with herself without that place to go to every day. And everybody loves her, so as long as she wants to work, she works.” Unless Dani closed or sold the restaurant.

  But she didn’t add that.

  Instead she was just glad to see that Liam’s mood had improved.

  That improvement had first started at the pool. Grady refused to play it, but Evie’s favorite game was to get out of the water, go to the pool’s edge and jump into waiting arms.

  Dani’s safety stipulation was that the little girl not get the running start she really wanted. But even doing it right from the edge, Evie still loved the challenge of trying to increase her distance each time. Her gusto for the leap, her cries to warn that she was coming and her glee when she was caught—and maybe that it had helped break the ice between Liam and Evie—had caused the first slight lift in Liam’s curtain of gloom today.

  Then, at the restaurant, the curtain had risen a little higher when Carmella had been undaunted by that still-stoic manner of his. The warm, elderly woman had treated him the way she treated everyone—as if he were her cherished grandchild who’d come for a visit. She’d doted on him, teased him, flattered him and eventually succeeded at improving his mood even more.

  When Dani had finished in the kitchen she’d called the twins to the table where Liam was stationed and the four of them had eaten dinner. The kids had chattered freely and Carmella had joined them at the table whenever there was a lull, so the meal ended up with a lot of happy talk and laughing. Liam didn’t join in, but it did seem to take his disposition up another notch.

  By the time they’d left Marconi’s, he was still quiet, but his low-spiritedness seemed to have gone away. And now here he was, seeking out her company rather than retreating to the guest room’s isolation again the way Dani had thought he might.

  “I’ve been in homes that aren’t as homey as your restaurant—my own, for one,” he said.

  “Your home wasn’t homey?”

  “Not like that, no. At my house growing up it was strictly kids should be seen and not heard. Coupled with Hugh’s military attitudes, we were taught to stand straight, only speak when spoken to, follow orders without question—”

  “In other words, do what you were told,” Dani translated with another laugh. “That’s what all parents want.”

  “Sure, but...there was just a different atmosphere. Watching you with Grady and Evie, watching things tonight at the restaurant, it’s all... I don’t know, open and warm and inviting and indulgent in ways that my upbringing didn’t have. You all act like kids are special.”

  “Kids are special,” Dani said as she finished with the swimming gear and they went into the kitchen, where she opened the dishwasher to empty it.

  “Like I said, that isn’t how I was raised. Everything was more reserved. More conservative. We knew my mom loved us but there were no spontaneous hugs like Carmella dishes out at the drop of a hat, like you do with the kids all the time—”

  “Italian families can be very affectionate,” she conceded.

  “And your whole restaurant has that feel to it—like one big Italian family. With the kids being little shining stars right in the middle of it instead of being...well, seen and not heard,” he went on. “In my family kids treated anything like Evie and Grady were, are, considered spoiled.”

  “I was spoiled rotten by my grandparents, and I grew up in the ‘atmosphere’ you saw tonight, but there was still discipline and rules. I had to behave, but I knew I was the apple of everybody’s eye and it was great. I feel bad for kids who don’t have that. It’s actually one of the reasons I like being a nanny. I like the idea of bringing that into the lives of kids who maybe are expected to be seen and not heard, or kids whose parents don’t have the time or inclination to make them feel the way I did growing up. I like to be able to give them the kind of attention I had.”

  “Yeah, I suppose now that I think about it, Hugh training us for the military got Conor, Declan and me a lot more attention than most of our friends got from their parents, so that’s probably part of why we liked it. But it just wasn’t all so...touchy-feely.”

  “Sooo...if you end up being the twins’ dad, which way will you go as a parent?” She felt the need to ask.

  “Huh...” he mused. “I haven’t thought about that. You mean, like a parenting style, right? It never occurred to me to choose what kind of parent I’d be. I just thought...you know...you just do it...”

  Dani handed him glasses to be put in the cupboard. “You aren’t just doing what you’re doing now without putting any thought into it,” she said. “You’ve been working on the relationship you want to have with the kids. The kind of parent you are will determine that, too. My friend Bryan was raised with the sort of attitude you’re talking about—not military but definitely not ‘touchy-feely.’ He’s gay and it made it kind of hard to come out to his family. In fact, he came out to mine before he came out to his. I always thought that was sad. And he and his father don’t even speak now.”

  “Yeah, that’s not good,” Liam agreed.

  Talking about Bryan reminded Dani about the call she’d had from him today. Since she wanted to let seeds she planted about choosing the kind of parent to be take root, she changed the subject.

  “Bryan called me this morning to tell me there’s been an offer on the restaurant.”

  Liam’s brows pulsed together. “I didn’t think it was up for sale. I thought you were on the fence about that.”

  “I am and, no, I haven’t put it up for sale. But an offer came in anyway. Bryan is an attorney and he represents us. He also represents another small chain of Italian restaurants around here. That’s where the offer came from.”

  “A chain? So they’d change things to fit in with that? They wouldn’t leave i
t the way it is?”

  She shook her head. “But it’s a good offer because they want the secret recipes, too, to add to their own menu.”

  “Are you going to take it?”

  “I haven’t had time to think about that. I’m just kind of in shock at the amount right now. And it seems so soon...”

  “After being at that place I can imagine how tough a decision it is to part with it. It’s more than just a business—”

  “It’s family in itself.”

  “But stick with it and you have to stop working with kids,” he repeated what she’d told him before.

  “Or sell and feel like I’m really losing what’s left of my grandparents.”

  He nodded, giving credence to her dilemma. “But it seems to me that since your grandmother steered you into doing your own thing, she’d understand if you sold out so you could go on doing your own thing.”

  “True,” Dani conceded.

  It didn’t make the decision for her but talking to him did help ease a little of the pressure she was feeling. She appreciated that. As much as she appreciated talking about this with someone as coolheaded as he was.

  But she didn’t want to deal with it right then so she made a joke to get them out of the conversation. “And if I sell, that leaky pipe in the basement could be someone else’s problem.”

  “That leak is nothing. You just need a section of pipe replaced and I can do that.”

  “You can?”

  “I’m no master plumber but I can shut off your water and do that. I’ll fix it tomorrow while we’re there making that weird bomb soup you and the kids kept talking about.”

  “Billi bomb soup—it’s a family recipe but I promise there are no real bombs in it,” she joked again, realizing that she was suddenly feeling better on two counts: Liam was back to himself and it was good to have another perspective on the restaurant, especially now that there was an offer on the table. It was also good to have someone who could lend a hand with a problem there.

  But a temporary reprieve from thinking about the offer put her mind back on Liam and his mood today as they finished with the dishwasher and moved on to the dance studio.