THANKSGIVING DADDY

by Rachel Lee

  “I noticed yesterday. And I hate froufrou.”

  “Good.” Wendy’s smile widened.

  “Say,” Seth said, “do you suppose Yuma would give Edie a chance to fly one of the Hueys? She flies Pave Hawks right now.”

  Wendy’s brow lifted. “CSAR, huh? I bet you he would. And you ought to have plenty to talk about. Yuma flew medevacs in ’Nam. I’ll give you a call. Nice meeting you, Edie.” Then she hurried off.

  “She’s nice,” Edie remarked, looking after her before resuming the walk that had now taken them to the main street. Freitag’s was half a block ahead. “Why does she call her husband by his last name?”

  “Because he prefers it. His given name is Billy Joe. Wendy calls him that once in a while but she’s the only one.”

  “Interesting. She looks a bit like your mom.”

  “But not as pushy,” Seth said wryly.

  “Your mom’s not pushy. She’s just...” Edie sought a nicer word.

  “Pushy,” Seth repeated. “She’s been a mother too long.”

  Edie laughed quietly. “I guess that would do it.”

  “With six daughters? About like being a pilot or a SEAL, I think.”

  That drew an even louder laugh from her. “I guess we’re going to find out.”

  As soon as the words popped out, she realized how they might sound. She stole a glance at Seth, but he seemed not to have noticed. After a moment she relaxed again. If he’d taken it the wrong way, he could call her on it. Otherwise, she’d just forget it.

  This time he didn’t wait near the front of the store, but followed her back to the maternity section. “Use my arms to throw things over if you like them,” he said easily.

  She hesitated. “Seth, people might talk.”

  “They probably already are. And they’re good at putting two and two together, believe me.”

  She hadn’t thought about that possibility, but standing there faced by racks of maternity clothes, she realized that it was inevitable. She had bought maternity clothes yesterday. She was staying with Seth. What would be the most obvious conclusion to draw?

  “Do you...do you mind?” she asked carefully.

  “Hell, no. I’m sure I’ve already been cast as the villain in the piece, the unscrupulous user of innocent women who will now pay for his sins. At least they won’t be bored for a few days.”

  He gave her a breathtaking grin. She giggled. “So we’re a soap opera?”

  “Pretty darn near.”

  “I’d rather be cast as the evil seductress of the sheriff’s son.”

  His eyes twinkled. “You certainly fit the role.” He waggled his eyebrows at her. “Damn it, Edie, one look at you and I was in your thrall. Under your spell. There’s something about a woman in cammies...”

  She laughed so hard then that two saleswomen came to look and tears ran down her cheeks. “No lace and satin for you, huh?”

  “Uncle Sam raised me. I lose it over cammies.” He paused and winked. “Of course if you want to try the lace and satin I’d be happy to advise.”

  He kept his voice low so he couldn’t be overheard, and she was grateful, but her heart skipped at least three beats at the suggestion. Lace and satin? Boy, would she love to try that sometime. The thought surprised her, as she’d never felt such a desire before, but then she remembered the baby bump. Wouldn’t that look cute in some sexy getup? Her laughter renewed, but when he questioned her, she refused to explain.

  Instead she turned her attention to the clothes. It wasn’t as hard to face today for some reason. Maybe she’d crossed another hurdle in her adjustment. Seth offered no advice or opinion except that since it was getting cooler, she might want some long sleeves, maybe some flannel.

  She settled on some jeans, some cotton flannel work shirts, and broke down for one prettier top in royal blue with some ridiculous sequins around the neck. She saw the way Seth’s eyes smiled when she picked it, and wished she knew what he was thinking. She shooed him away though when she chose some underwear. It seemed ridiculous even to her after the intimacy they had shared, but she sent him on his way with the things she had already purchased.

  “I’ll meet you at the register. Now scat.”

  He laughed and did as told. And that’s where she really lost her mind. Maybe the women around here worked hard and didn’t want a lot of froufrou, but that evidently didn’t extend to underwear. Feeling almost guilty, she selected some satin items and a couple of bras with a little lace. For the life of her, she couldn’t have said why.

  When she returned to the register, she sent him away while she paid. She didn’t want him to see her selections. Not yet, anyway.

  Where the heck had that thought come from? For an instant she almost returned the frilly items, then steeled herself and bought them. She could always find a trash can if she changed her mind.

  Seth took most of the sacks from her when she joined him out front. “Lunch?” he asked. “We’ve got a great selection: Maude’s, Maude’s or Maude’s.”

  “Lead me to a salad and a small sandwich.”

  “Big salad, but small sandwich not likely. We can take the leftovers home. And maybe I need to learn how to cook. When you see Maude’s menu, the baby will probably gag, but dang, it’s good food.”

  Maude was an experience all by herself. Edie wouldn’t have thought that a woman so rude could manage to run a successful business, but there was no mistaking the success of it. The place was jammed and they got the last booth.

  She sensed dozens of eyes on her, could almost feel the questions beating on the back of her head. Well, let them wonder. She focused her attention on Seth, which was surprisingly easy to do, and on the huge salad that came loaded with grilled chicken and a grumble from Maude about “expecting women need protein.”

  She almost choked.

  Seth shrugged. “Told you,” he said. “Judging by that salad, I get the role of villain. I hope she doesn’t burn my steak.”

  “Would she?”

  “Absolutely.” He flashed a smile. “You never have to wonder where you stand with Maude or her daughters.”

  “I actually don’t mind that.”

  “Most of us don’t. She can take some getting used to, though.”

  Thirty seconds after he made that comment, Maude put a tall glass of milk in front of Edie. Evidently she wasn’t going to get the coffee she had asked for. Her lips started twitching and she had to fight down a laugh.

  When had laughing become so easy? Why was she feeling so light today, especially after a night of tossing and turning? She decided not to question it, however. She was sure all the worries would return in good time.

  Seth kept the conversation light and general, sort of like the fun they’d had that night in Afghanistan, both of them seeking a break from reality. They kept it up all the way back to his house and the good feeling followed them right through the door.

  He took her bags to the bedroom, saying, “Time to put the feet up, my lady. I think I’m going to go out and buy a bed for one of the spare rooms, so you might as well rest. I’ll be back soon.”

  She wondered if he wanted to get away from her. Something must have shown on her face, though, because he reached out suddenly and gripped her upper arm gently. “You can come if you want. I just thought you might need a nap.”

  “I do,” she admitted. The nearly sleepless night seemed to be catching up with her.

  “I won’t be long,” he promised. “Just a bed they’ll probably deliver tomorrow. You can even help me pick out the sheets in the morning if you want.”

  She smiled then, feeling better.

  “And I swear,” he added as he headed for the door, “I’m going to figure out something I can cook tonight.”

  “What are you going to cook in?”

  “
I bet if I tell my mom I’m in the mood to get domesticated, she’ll have some pots to spare. I do have dishes, you know.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. “Have you ever thought about how utterly capable you and I are with some things, and how utterly incapable we are with others?”

  “Often lately,” he admitted, looking rueful. “I’ve been staggering my learning curve, but it looks like I need to speed some of it up.”

  After Seth left, Edie debated whether to go nap in bed or on the recliner. She settled on the recliner after only a few minutes’ thought. It seemed better somehow. Certain habits of safety hadn’t departed, she realized. She wanted to know if anyone came into the house.

  Life lived on the edge for too long, she thought as drowsiness began to sweep through her. Too long. When had she last truly relaxed?

  With Seth that one night. And again today. Wondering about that, she fell into a deep sleep.

  Chapter Seven

  Seth had been using a twin bed as a convenience until he finished the renovations. So, of course, given all that was going on, did he just go buy another cheap one for one of the other bedrooms? Definitely not. He’d intended to get a king-size bed eventually, to fit his height better, and that’s what he bought.

  Try explaining that one to Edie, he thought as he wrote the check for the mattress and frame. But it would be stupid to buy yet another bed he wouldn’t be likely to use in the long run.

  He arranged for afternoon delivery the next day, then skipped the sheer idiocy of calling his mother and bought a set of cookware and utensils that were recommended by the clerk. Enough to manage some simple cooking, he figured, and while he claimed to be unable, he’d been married twice. There were a number of things he had learned to cook during those two spells, and he was pretty sure he hadn’t forgotten how.

  On the way out the door, heading for the grocery next, he spied a display of stuffed animals. Completing his idiocy, he bought a big stuffed bear for Edie. He could always claim it was for the kid if it bothered her.

  He’d been thinking hard since yesterday when she’d thrown out that sarcastic suggestion that they should just get married. His response hadn’t changed. It looked to him like the best way to handle all the things they were going to have to deal with. Logical. Good planning. Mission-specific action.

  Thing was, he was beginning to realize that while that might sound like a good reason, things weren’t apt to be so easy in the doing. Why? Because he was still as attracted as hell to the woman, and the more time he spent with her, the better he liked her and the more he wanted her.

  If she didn’t feel the same, marriage could be a disaster, for him anyway. He’d meant what he said, though, and if she decided to give it a shot, he’d give it his best one.

  But he didn’t really want what he’d offered. He wasn’t sure he wanted to risk marriage again. Both of his had ended so painfully, though in different ways, that he’d pretty much made up his mind never to do that again. When you could avoid that kind of pain, it only made sense to do so.

  But this was a whole different equation, one that involved a baby. Every fiber of his being rebelled at the thought of letting that child grow up with an absentee father. No child should have to do that, and even though many did, his was not about to be among them as long as he had breath in his body.

  As short a time as Edie had been here, he’d begun to see a change in her. He guessed she was starting to trust him a bit. Certainly the very determined, hard-edged pilot was lowering her defenses a bit, showing less resistance to the idea of him as a father to her child and even for a few minutes here and there letting him see she had a softer side.

  That was good. It meant they could deal, and they were going to be dealing, one way or another, for decades to come. He’d seen enough with his own family to know you didn’t raise a kid to eighteen or twenty-two and then quit being a parent. No, that never quit, and not always because it was habit. They’d been there for him after both his marriages. They’d been there for him every single time he’d needed something. Parenting was a lifetime commitment.

  But Edie wasn’t looking that far down the road. He honestly couldn’t imagine the devils and demons she must have been dealing with, facing a pregnancy all alone in a career field where such things still weren’t exactly accepted. Oh, if she hadn’t been a pilot, it wouldn’t have been as difficult, but given her career track, given where she had wanted to go, it must have been hell. In some respects, the military hadn’t caught up with itself. It had broadened the role for women, then didn’t seem to know what to do when women did what women did, other than let them resign.

  Not that he objected to the option, because he didn’t. Children mattered. But for someone like Edie... Oh, he could easily imagine the subtle pressure to get rid of the baby or resign. Yeah, he could envision it quite clearly.

  She’d withstood all of that, though, which showed a lot of backbone because he was familiar with the kinds of pressure senior officers could bring to bear, all without crossing any lines of proper conduct. Then, once she’d worked most of it through in her own mind, making a great many sacrifices, she’d hauled herself out here to do what she considered the honorable thing, planning to turn right around and continue dealing with all of this on her own.

  She was one admirable woman in a lot of ways.

  But he had to admit he liked the softer side of her, too. Just as he’d loved their tumble in the hay in Afghanistan, he was discovering his admiration extended beyond her fantastic piloting skills and her sexiness to the whole way she approached life. Duty and honor first. Facing tough situations and dealing with them.

  Yet he sensed all of this was taking a serious toll on her. Well, why wouldn’t it? He was grateful she had let him hold her this morning, little enough on his part. She needed to know she could turn to at least someone, and if he was it, so much the better for all of them. It’d make him feel like less of an ass, it might give the baby a father who was around and it might lighten her burden.

  Right now, he seriously wanted to lighten her burden.

  But he also had to be sure of himself, and he wasn’t sure about some things. He hadn’t been kidding her when he told her he still had a hair trigger. Twenty years in special ops, often on dangerous, deniable and redacted missions, hadn’t left him a standard model male. He was different in ways that might be extremely important when raising a child. A part of him had necessarily become hardened. Other parts tended toward authoritarian. He was used to being obeyed. He could deal with messiness and things blowing up in his face, but those weren’t ordinary situations. He knew exactly what he was capable of, some of it stuff other people never had to deal with in an entire lifetime.

  On the other hand, training, experience and the years had taught him an extraordinary amount of self-control. He could clamp down on his emotions faster than a rattlesnake could strike. Become an automaton. He wasn’t sure that was a good thing in a situation like this.

  Look at him. His hair trigger had caused him to get angry with her. He hadn’t clamped down fast enough that time. He guessed it was all situational, and this was a whole new situation.

  In fact the side of himself he was showing Edie was like wearing an unfamiliar suit: careful, compromising, reasonable. He was walking on eggshells and it wasn’t comfortable or natural. Unlike his two wives, Edie had probably met enough SEALs in her job to have some idea of what lay beneath the surface, but most of the civilized stuff about him was a veneer. At his core rested a highly trained barbarian, one to be unleashed only when needed. But what if it slipped the leash?

  Back to that whole control thing. Control was everything on a mission, and if you had to, you flipped the switch of your emotions. On and off like some kind of light.

  What the hell kind of father would that make him?

  He pulled into the parking lot at
the grocery and dialed his cell, calling his dad on his cell, the only sure way he wouldn’t get his mother. It was not Marge he needed to talk to.

  “What’s up?” Nate asked his son.

  “I’m transitioning.”

  “Got it.”

  “So how the hell do you do it? How do you go from being what I’ve been to being a decent father?”

  Nate was silent for a long time. Seth began to wonder if anyone had an answer to that. Finally... “I’m not sure there’s any one way. We all have our devils to deal with. But when your oldest sister was born, I held her in my arms and knew one thing for sure.”

  “Which was?”

  “That I had a new mission and was going to give it my all. It wasn’t so different from other missions, where your buddies are more important than you are. Where getting them out safely is your primary concern. You have the skills, son. They just need some fine-tuning. You also have a couple of dads as examples. Play the part until it fits.”

  Play the part until it fits. As he walked into the grocery, Seth guessed that was what he was doing. Playing a part because he didn’t want to lose a son. Amazing how important that had become, how central to his life in such a short amount of time.

  But was that fair, to play a part? Maybe it would be to the kid until it became comfortable, but what about Edie?

  Still unsettled, he forced his attention to shopping. When he got home, he put the teddy bear in a closet.

  * * *

  In the morning, he and Edie settled on some navy blue sheets for the bed and a few pillows. Well, he pretty much settled and she went along. He sensed in her once again the resistance to thinking herself part of his life for the long term. He was going to have to find a way around that.

  Her eyes grew huge, though, as she realized he was buying king-size sheets. He even thought he saw a little apprehension in her expression.

  “King-size?” she said as they hit the street again.