Lucky Baby

by Layla Valentine

  “Why don’t you come inside?” I said, surprising even myself. “I’d love to cook dinner for you both as a thank you.”

  Ethan’s lips pressed together firmly, into a flat line. I could already read the “no” in his mind.

  I took a tentative step back, feeling flustered. He was wary of me. He’d come into the mountains to be left alone, and I was asking him to step into my world.

  In the silence that followed my question, my tongue traced my teeth, over and over again, wishing I could plot my way back to the inside of the cabin, to return to my weekend of solitude. I never did anything like this. Why on earth had I attempted bravery now?

  But Gracie bucked up, unbuckling her seat belt. “Oh, what are you making for dinner?” she asked, her eyes glittering.

  “Gracie, you know we need to get back home,” Ethan said.

  Gracie whipped her head around, flashing her blond ponytail.

  “For what?” she asked.

  “You know we can’t push ourselves into Serena’s vacation,” Ethan offered, his voice sounding unsure.

  “Don’t be silly,” I said, brightening my smile. “I have plenty of food and wine, and I’d love to share it. I even brought chocolate.” I gave this additional tidbit to Gracie, who leapt up from her seat. She danced slightly on the sidewalk, her knees bobbing together.

  “Daddy, she really wants us to come. Why not? I don’t want to go home. You were going to make fish sticks.” She stuck out her tongue, looking like a cartoon version of herself. I felt laughter bubbling up in my stomach.

  Ethan cut the engine, exhaling deeply. With a jolt, he pushed open the door of his truck and stepped out, his boots crunching on the gravel. This sound alone made shivers rustle up and down my spine. Now that I’d offered, and he’d agreed, I couldn’t turn back.

  So often, people took chances that changed the course of their lifetime. I tried to tell myself, in a flurry of thoughts, that this wasn’t one of those times. That this was just dinner, for a man who’d helped me out. It couldn’t feel bigger than that, even though my heart swelled.

  After he pushed the door closed, he marched to our side of the truck, looking at me with those dark blue, penetrating eyes. He seemed dominant, powerful, a force to be reckoned with. I took a tentative step back, my stomach feeling tense.

  “All right then,” I whispered, ducking my head toward the cabin. “Why don’t you come in? I’ll pour the wine. Gracie, you want some juice?”

  My voice was no longer my own. It didn’t have the certainty of a defense attorney, nor did it sound like the city girl I’d been my entire life.

  I shuffled toward the house, feeling uneasy on my feet, and opened the door. Splaying the groceries on the counter, I listened as Gracie and Ethan entered behind me.

  Gracie flumped onto the bed, mere feet away from the kitchen, and wiggled her feet back and forth. With a small cackle, she said, “Your bedroom is in your kitchen!”

  Feeling warmed, I turned toward her, the wine opener in my hand. I began to uncork the bottle of red, grinning.

  “When it’s just me, I don’t need so much space!”

  “I guess that’s true,” Gracie said, giving me a shrug. “I don’t need anything else but my bedroom. Has enough room for my toys and stuff. Dad’s got the big room.”

  “We can trade when you get enough toys, squirt,” Ethan said, grinning.

  He took a step forward and began to unpack the brown paper sack, drawing out vegetables, bread, cheese, and oil. With the certainty of someone who’d been in the cabin before, he reached for the first cabinet and drew out a skillet. After placing it on the stovetop, he drew out a small matchbook and struck it, opening the gas and beginning to heat the bottom of the skillet.

  Having been single for longer than I cared to admit, it had been years since I’d watched a man do something so intimate yet so normal for me. He poured the olive oil into the skillet, lifting his muscular forearm. After snapping the lid on the oil, he reached for a knife and cutting board, sending a whistle into the air. Perhaps he didn’t notice I was staring at him. Or, perhaps he did, and he didn’t care.

  “Your daddy knows how to cook,” I told Gracie, filling the silence.

  Gracie bobbed her head. With a quick motion, she undid her ponytail and allowed her blond curls to fall. “Don’t let it get to his head,” she laughed.

  As I poured the glasses of wine, I fell into conversation with Gracie, listening to the sizzle of the vegetables as Ethan tossed them into the skillet. I passed him a glass, and he didn’t thank me, choosing instead to be a silent force behind me. Gracie began to tell me tales of her first grade class, which had just begun the previous week.

  “We’re learning about coloring right now, which is silly,” she sighed. “I’ve known how to color since I was four.”

  “Oh, so long ago,” I said, hopeful she didn’t pick up on my teasing. Two years ago had been just a few minutes ago, at least in my eyes. But for Gracie, it had been an entire lifetime.

  “I just know I’m the best colorer in my class,” Gracie continued, sipping at the juice I’d poured her. “I don’t need any more help. I’m going to be an artist,” she continued.

  “Oh?”

  “Like Picasso,” she said decisively.

  I glanced back at Ethan, loving the fiery passion of this little girl. I nudged him with my elbow, making eye contact.

  “How’s it coming back here? Did you hear that you’re the father of the next Picasso?”

  “If she ever leaves California for Spain, I’ll hunt her down,” he said, his eyes glowing. “This Picasso isn’t leaving the West Coast.”

  “Daddy!” Gracie said, laughing. “He doesn’t want me to grow up.”

  “You never should,” I told her. After nudging Ethan, I interrupted his stirring of the vegetables, saying, “I was meant to be the one cooking. Not you.”

  “Got carried away,” Ethan said, taking a step back. He passed me the spatula and gripped his glass of wine, giving me another steamy look, which I couldn’t quite identify. I began to butter the bread, turning on the oven beneath the stovetop, and chopping up garlic.

  “I hope you like garlic bread,” I told them, feeling my heart hammer in my chest. Why was this man making me so anxious?

  “So you said you’re just escaping the city?” Ethan asked. He leaned heavily against the counter, sipping the wine. “Needed an escape from your normal life?”

  “Something like that,” I said, placing the pieces of bread on a large baking sheet and slotting them into the oven. “I’m a defense attorney, and I noticed the stress creeping in on me. Years were passing, and I needed to do something for myself, you know? Anything.”

  “You should try coloring!” Gracie called from the bed, bringing a grin to my face.

  “I don’t suppose your dad’s all that into art, is he?” I asked.

  “He’s pretty good, but not as good as me,” Gracie said, sounding wonderfully serious, in the way of young kids.

  I gave Ethan a sneaky smile, hoping he would return it. He didn’t. But his eyes seemed to shine with a kind of light, an assurance that he was safe, happy, relaxed in my little, rustic home.

  Chapter 4

  Serena

  I finished cooking, sliding the vegetables, garlic toast, cheeses, and fruits onto plates for our hodge-podge, improvised dinner. No one complained. The steam rose up from the vegetables, and I watched as Gracie began to slice at hers with her fork, gobbling quickly. The wine had already gone to my head, making me feel giggly, wide-eyed.

  As we ate, Gracie and I struck up another conversation about her favorite animals, about her future plans, about the kids in her class. As we spoke, I couldn’t help but feel a pang of sadness. Having kids had always been a part of my “life plan,” sometime down the road, but I’d always been so busy, rushing from one case to the next, with many sleepless nights in between. Going to the gym was almost too much to ask, sometimes.

  As I snuck closer and closer
to 30, I had begun to think that romance, love, and children were things that happened to other people. People who weren’t as committed to their careers, maybe. People who had given themselves space.

  As it stood, I couldn’t even imagine raising a child in San Francisco. It was far too expensive, and the rent on my tiny one-bedroom apartment was astronomical. I felt continually like I was chasing after some kind of dream, some kind of paycheck. Something that would bring me eternal happiness, allow room for romance, for children. But I wasn’t sure it would ever come.

  Gracie continued to chatter. I lowered my piece of garlic toast, blinking at it wistfully. I felt Ethan’s eyes upon me, assessing me. I’d never been such an open book in front of someone. With my nostrils flared, I swallowed sharply, asking if either of them needed anything else.

  Gracie popped up from her chair, rubbing at her stomach. “I’m so full!” she said, emphasizing her words. “Do you mind if I go out on the porch, Daddy?”

  I glanced out toward the porch, which was about a half-football field from the lake. As evening crept along, the lake was becoming a deep blue color, reflecting the surrounding pines.

  Ethan cleared his throat, saying, “Just don’t go down by the lake, baby.”

  Gracie ducked from the house and onto the porch, perching on the swing. She brought her legs up and down, creaking the swing forward and back. As she sat, she unzipped her backpack and drew out a small coloring book and a pack of crayons. As Ethan and I sat in silence, she began to scribble, using first the green crayon, then the blue. I could sense her mind whizzing away, at work.

  “She’s pretty incredible,” I finally said, feeling myself stutter.

  “She’s a force of nature,” Ethan agreed, laughing. “Sometimes I feel like she knows more about the world than I do. She’s always bringing up stuff she learns at school. Stuff I think I forgot about on my long road to becoming an adult. You know. When things like knowledge no longer matter so much. It’s more about survival.”

  “I hear you,” I said. “For me, it’s just one bill after another. One day after another. I haven’t said the word ‘Picasso’ in years. It really opens up your mind to hear her thoughts, though. I mean, it gives me some semblance of hope that she cares about creativity. That she has such an active mind.”

  Ethan dabbed a napkin across his mouth, giving me a slight smile.

  “It’s too bad we can’t live in the city, actually,” he offered. “I think the schools might be better out there. I wish I could give her the whole world.”

  I tilted my head, sensing a story brewing behind Ethan’s eyes. As Gracie’s swing continued to creak back and forth, I heard myself ask, “Why do you live all the way out here, anyway? Just because you can think more clearly? Like the privacy?”

  “Something like that,” Ethan said. He crossed his burly arms over his chest and squinted at me, almost trying to look all the way through me. “The privacy. The fact that we don’t have to answer to anyone out here. And also…” He paused for a long moment. I felt tension grow between us, shivers running up and down my spine.

  “Well, just between us, I used to have a very different life,” he said.

  Different lives. Didn’t we all have that? I’d been an attorney for years, sure. But before that, I’d been a student. I’d briefly been a loving and caring girlfriend. I’d been a high school cheerleader, for a season or two. And before that, I’d been a doting and loving daughter, much like Gracie. But as I assessed Ethan, it became clear to me that he didn’t just mean this.

  “Oh yeah?” I said, urging him on.

  “Are you sure you want to know?” he asked, cracking a slight smile.

  His eyes glittered, showing a kind of bad-boy arrogance. I had a passing fancy that I wanted to sit on his lap, to whisper into his ear. I wanted to inhale his scent. I brought my hand across my nose, trying to control my sudden urges. I hadn’t a clue where they came from.

  “Yes,” I said. “I’m sure.”

  “All right.” He cleared his throat, his eyes growing even darker. “I used to be a bounty hunter.”

  Immediately, my thoughts clouded with images of all I knew of bounty hunters. A dark and brooding man, following a target across the continent, a gun strapped into his holster. I imagined Ethan’s large, domineering hands, gripping at some stranger’s throat, lifting him into the air, demanding attention. Outside, behind me, I listened as his young daughter began to whistle tunefully. I shivered at the contrast.

  “I’m sorry. What did you say?” I asked, wondering if I had misheard, or if he was perhaps playing me for a fool.

  But Ethan didn’t let up. “I was a bounty hunter for twelve years. Always living on the fringe of society, working odd jobs, you know. That is, until three years ago.”

  “Three?” I felt this didn’t add up. Gracie was six years old. Had he really been carting a little girl around from one murderous job to the next?

  “That’s when the state contacted me,” he continued, “telling me I had a daughter. You can imagine the kind of punch to the gut that was. That I had a three-year-old daughter I didn’t even know about. Her mother never informed me. I didn’t see her much after our brief affair, anyway.”

  “The state contacted you?” I asked, incredulous. “But what about—”

  “She passed away,” Ethan said, his eyes lowering. “She didn’t have anyone else. No mother, no father. No siblings. Basically, the state said that if I didn’t pick up my daughter, she’d be taken into foster care. A three-year-old orphan, essentially. I couldn’t bear the thought of it. So, I changed everything.”

  “Suddenly, your life was turned upside down,” I breathed. “Everything you’d ever known…”

  “It didn’t matter after that,” Ethan said, a small smile breaking out. His teeth were near-perfect, glossy white. “I went to the foster mother who’d had had her the past few days, while they were trying to contact me. I peered into her little bed as she slept. Just this bright blond baby, with these little hands that were gripping the comforter. When she finally did wake up, she laughed at me, as if she’d known my face all along. After that, I couldn’t leave her there. I knew I had to step up.”

  I was completely shocked at this news. Leaning heavily against the back of my chair, I asked, “Does Gracie know about your past?”

  “Of course not,” Ethan said. “She knows that I wasn’t with her mother for a few years, and that she didn’t come live with me until she was three. But she really doesn’t remember anything before that, so she accepts it as fact. The way she accepts Picasso as a fact, for example, even though she’s never met him.”

  After a brief pause, he added, “I have a single picture of her mother. I found it on one of my internet accounts. She’d posted it online seven years ago, maybe. One of the both of us. We hadn’t gotten along well. It had been just a sexual thing, really, especially since I was always going out of town on my ‘missions,’ as she called them.”

  “Did you tell her what you were doing?” I asked, genuinely mystified.

  “Never,” he said. “I didn’t want to put her at risk. I couldn’t let anyone know what I did. It was invigorating, being out on my own all the time. But it was also terribly lonely. Maybe that’s one of the reasons I took Gracie on, as well. I don’t think I could have kept going like that, all on my own.”

  “You’re brave,” I said, unable to think of another adjective. “Both for doing that and giving it up for someone who only had you to rely on.” I shifted, trying to pull the pieces of this puzzle together in my mind. “And you had to come all the way out here—out in the mountains—because…?”

  Ethan rose up. I watched as his muscles adjusted in his black shirt. He gripped the bottle of wine on the countertop and lifted it, pouring us both another hearty glass. I accepted mine, feeling my head grow a bit heavier. I was leaning toward him, inhaling the strength of his story.

  “Well, when I got out of the game and had a toddler with me, I couldn’t keep moving ar
ound the way I had been. Before, I was always in and out of hotels, coming and going across the country so that nobody could track me down. I used many different names, and I had passports to back up most of them, just so I could slip in and out of places, unbeknownst to the people I was tracking.

  “With a daughter who was in the state system, I knew I couldn’t keep up changing my name. I had to remain in one place, get her signed up for preschool, build a world for her. And I couldn’t use anything else but my name, so she could keep her last one. Tiller.”

  “Of course,” I breathed, recognizing the problem. “But who was trying to track you down?”

  “Due to my former line of work, I have plenty of now-incarcerated criminals who want me dead. It’s just the facts. I worked hard for my living, and I saved up a lot of money. Which means we can hide out here till she’s 18, at least. It’s the only way I can assure our safety. It’s the only way I can assure that the criminals I tracked down won’t find a way to send their goons after me. It’s the only way I can make sure they won’t come and find me and make me remember how I ruined them.”

  Again, I felt myself shiver. Ethan spoke with such intensity, contrasting the gorgeous sunset outside, which glowed orange against his daughter’s curly hair.

  I crossed my legs, feeling my thighs squeeze at my groin—igniting me with excitement, attraction. It had been a long time since I’d been this enamored with someone. And I’d never had such excitement mix with such a sense of fear.

  “Anyway,” he continued, shrugging slightly. “I hope my story doesn’t freak you out.”

  “No…” I said, slicing my palm through the air. “I think it’s a remarkable story. How much you gave up for your daughter—it’s inspiring. And having worked as an attorney for years, I’m no stranger to this world.” My eyes glittered. “You were hunting the bad guys, sounds like.”

  “And sounds like you were defending them,” Ethan said, teasing me for the first time.

  “Mostly drug cases,” I said. “Men who did drugs, got caught, and didn’t want to go to jail for it. Also, a few cases where I was fighting for fathers who wanted partial custody of their children. That definitely got tough at times.”