“Another story!” Caroline said, grinning up at Wes. The two of them were sitting on the floor in front of her bed.
Isabelle leaned one shoulder against the doorjamb and folded her arms across her chest. She couldn’t tear her eyes off the man and his daughter. Just like she couldn’t help wondering where they would all be right now if she had told Wes about Caroline from the beginning. Would he have changed? Would he have wanted the three of them to be a family?
Had she cheated all of them out of what they might have had? God, that was a terrible thought and one that couldn’t do the slightest bit of good. What she had to do now was concentrate on the moment at hand and not get lost in memories or dreams of what if.
Wes had a book on his lap, and while he read the story out loud, he also tried to use sign language. The movements were a little clumsy, and he got quite a few of the hand signs completely wrong. Isabelle noticed Caroline giggling a little when Wes read the word bear and signed something entirely different. But making mistakes wasn’t important. The fact that he was trying, that he was going to the trouble to learn ASL tugged at Isabelle’s heart.
“Wes,” Caro said and signed, “read the one about Christmas.”
He feigned dramatic shock. “Christmas is over.”
“Not next Christmas,” Caro argued, with a little giggle that rippled through Isabelle’s heart.
“Three stories is enough, Caroline,” Isabelle said from the doorway, and the girl and her father both turned to look at her. Two sets of eyes the color of the sea in the Caribbean studied her. She saw Wes in her daughter every day, but seeing the two of them together like this, the resemblance was heartbreaking.
She wasn’t blind here. Not only was Wes enjoying this time with Caroline, but her little girl already adored him. Once she found out Wes was her father, that affection would be sealed forever. And again, Isabelle felt that twinge of guilt for keeping them apart.
“Mommy...” Caro dipped her head, looked up and let her bottom lip jut out just enough for a really good pout.
Isabelle laughed in spite of herself. “Not a chance, kiddo. Now get into bed and I’ll tuck you in.”
Dragging herself to her feet, Caro sighed heavily, turned and crawled under the covers, tugging them up to her chin. “Can Wes tuck me in tonight?”
Wow. Arrow to her heart. Shifting a glance to Wes, she saw the pleasure shining in his eyes, and that actually took a bit of the sting out of Caro’s request. She’d never had to share her daughter with another parent before. The joys, the worries, the sleepless nights had all been for her alone. But standing in the bedroom with Wes, both of them looking at the child they’d created together, Isabelle could almost see what she’d been missing. It was more than sharing the responsibilities. It was sharing those secret looks of pride and understanding when their child did something cute. Or silly. Or tender.
So Isabelle took a step forward, into that joint custody world. Bending down, she gave Caro a kiss and whispered, “Sleep tight. I love you.”
Then she stepped aside and let Wes be the one to smooth the sheet and blanket, to sweep soft, silky hair back off their girl’s forehead. He kissed her cheek and said, “Good night, Caroline.”
“G’night,” she said on a yawn. “Will I see you some more tomorrow?”
Wes straightened up and glanced at Isabelle meaningfully before looking back at his daughter. “You sure will.”
* * *
For the next week, Isabelle felt like a caged tiger in the zoo. Someone was always watching her—and that someone was Wes. Every time she turned around, there he was. At the grocery store. At Caro’s school—where he’d charmed the little girl’s teacher until the woman was practically a puddle of goo in front of him.
He showed up at her house nearly every evening, bringing dinner with him—which endeared him to Edna, who enjoyed the time off from cooking. He helped Marco pull a tree stump from the backyard, and now Isabelle had to listen to Marco’s glowing remarks about a “city man” who knew how to put in a real day’s work.
But the worst, she thought, as she pulled into the school parking lot, was Caro herself. The little girl was completely in love with her father.
Wes had plenty of charm when he wanted to use it, as Belle was in a position to know. But she’d never really stood back and watched as he made a conquest. The women in town, Edna, they were one thing, but seeing Caro respond to her father’s determination to win her over had been both touching and worrisome. The harder Caro fell for Wes, the easier it would be for him to eventually break the girl’s heart. Though to be honest, she hadn’t really seen any sign of Wes pulling away. Instead, he seemed focused on being an integral part of Caro’s life.
And all of it worried Isabelle. Sooner or later, he would return to Texas. What then? Would he want to take Caroline back with him? Would they end up in a bitter custody fight after all? Or would he have his fill of playing daddy and just leave—breaking Caroline’s heart? Even a best-case scenario was filled with possible misery. Say she and Wes worked it out together and he didn’t get tired of being a father? Wouldn’t he want Caro with him in Texas for at least part of the year?
Isabelle’s head hurt, and she didn’t see any relief in her near future. So she pushed all of those thoughts out of her mind and tried instead to focus on her work.
She went over the last of her digital drawings, adding a touch of color here, smoothing a sharp line there, until she was completely satisfied. Well, completely was a stretch. She was never truly satisfied with her work, and invariably, once she’d sent the drawings off, she would think of dozens of things she could have done differently.
But the most important thing here was getting her latest designs to the manufacturer who could get started on production. Isabelle sent off a quick email, attaching the designs, and then shifted her attention to the paperwork that had been mounting over the last few days.
“You work from home?”
Isabelle jolted in her chair, glanced at the open doorway to her home office and slapped one hand to her chest when she saw Wes standing there. “How did you get in?”
“Edna let me in. Told me you were up here.”
Traitor, Isabelle thought. Her housekeeper was clearly indulging her inner matchmaker. Too bad the woman didn’t know that Wes wasn’t interested in a match of any kind. Isabelle’s heart ached a little at that internal reminder. It would be so much easier for her if she could just get past the feelings for him that kept resurfacing.
He strolled into the room, hands in his pockets, and wandered the perimeter, invading her space, looking at everything. She bit her tongue, because telling him to get out of her office would only make him that much more determined to look around. He took long, slow strides, moving with a sort of stealthy grace that made her insides quiver completely against her will.
Taking a deep breath, Isabelle watched as he checked out the full-color digital printouts of her latest sketches she had taped to a wall and the easel where one of her charcoal sketches was on display. Then he moved onto the dry erase board, with her schedule laid out, and finally to the corkboard where she’d affixed dozens of pictures of children holding toys.
Her office was at the front of the house on the second floor. Caroline called it the tower room. The windows looked out over a landscape that included the woods full of snow-covered pines, a lake, and in the distance, mountains that looked tall enough to scrape the sky.
The room wasn’t very big, but she didn’t need a massive office since there was no one to impress. She had a desk with a computer, an easel and paints, and space enough to pace when she needed to think. But right now, Isabelle wished for a much bigger space, because her office seemed to have shrunk the moment Wes walked into it.
“What is all this?” he asked quietly, turning at last to look at her.
“My work. It’s what
I do now,” she told him and stood up from behind her desk. She didn’t want to be seated while he loomed over her. “I set up a nonprofit that provides toys to hospitalized children. I call it Caro’s Toybox.”
She didn’t look at him, instead focusing on the pictures of the smiling kids she kept in her office as inspiration. “I do the design work and the manufacturer produces the toys, then we distribute them.”
He looked at those smiling faces in the photographs, too, and asked, “How’d you get into this?”
Isabelle walked up to stand beside him so that both of them were looking at those happy faces staring back at them. “When Caro was so sick, and then diagnosed, we spent a lot of time in the local hospital. We saw ill, scared children, and I realized that stuffed animals, or dolls, or even a toy plane could bring comfort to those kids when no one was around.”
She sighed as memories rushed into her mind—sharing waiting rooms with other worried mothers, hearing the muffled cries of children, punctuated by an occasional wail of pain.
“I held Caro on my lap as doctors poked and prodded her. She was scared, but she had me there to try to comfort her,” she said sadly. “But there were a lot of kids on the ward who spent too much time alone in their beds. Their moms and dads had other kids to take care of, and jobs, too. Nurses are amazingly great, but they’re frantically busy and can’t always take the time to try to ease a child’s fear.”
“I wish I’d been there. For Caro. For you.” His voice was low, soft and tinged with regret.
Isabelle looked at him and saw his features soften and felt closer to him than she ever had. Whether he’d been there or not, he was Caroline’s father, and only the two of them could really understand what it was like to have a sick child you couldn’t help.
“I wish you had been, too.” She looked up at him. “I know it’s my fault that you weren’t, and for that, I’m really sorry.”
He looked down at her, and his clear aqua eyes shone with emotion that he couldn’t hide. “Thanks. For saying that. For meaning it.”
Isabelle’s heart thumped hard in her chest. Her stomach swirled with anticipation, expectation and a jolt of nerves that only increased with every breath she drew. “I do, Wes,” she said. “If I could do it all over...”
He shook his head, reached out and laid one hand on her shoulder. “We can’t do any of it over. But we can do it differently from here on.”
The heat of his touch drifted down, sliding into her chest and filling her with a kind of warmth she hadn’t known in five years. Staring into his eyes, she was drawn in by that magnetic pull she’d always felt around him. It took everything she had to keep from moving into him, wrapping her arms around his neck and kissing him. But that would only make this moment even more confusing than it already was.
So she only reached up to cover his hand with her own. “We can do that.”
He released her as his eyes warmed and a half smile curved his mouth. “Good.” He shifted his gaze back to the faces on her board. “So you decided to try to take care of all of those kids,” he said.
“To do what I could, yes.” She too looked at the board where smiling children were caught in a moment of time. “We set up a toy room on the pediatric floor—” She broke off and chuckled. “Nothing fabulous, of course, usually a maintenance closet that we take over. We add shelves, paint and stock it with toys. Then every new patient gets to choose a toy for themselves.”
She smiled a little, remembering the excitement of the kids when they were given the chance to go toy shopping right in the hospital. “It’s a good feeling, watching children go into the room and inspect everything there before making their choice.”
“Yeah,” he said softly, “I bet it is.”
She felt him looking at her, and she turned her head to meet his gaze. He was giving her a quizzical look, as if he was trying to figure her out. “What is it?”
He shook his head. “Nothing. I’m just...impressed.”
“And surprised?”
“No, not really,” he said, tipping his head to one side to look at her more deeply. “You always had a big heart.”
Now she was the one shocked. And a little off balance. These few moments with Wes had fundamentally changed how they were dealing with each other. Which was good for Caroline, but dangerous for Isabelle. Old feelings were awakened and new ones were jolting into life. “Well, it’s getting late, and I need to pick up Caro at school.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I’ll go with you. But first...” He paused, looked down at her and said, “I’d like to help you. With this.”
“What?”
“If you had more toys available, you could get into more hospitals, right?” He studied each smiling face on the board as if committing them each to memory.
“Well, yes,” she said, watching him. “We’ve been moving slowly, running on donations and what we can produce. It’s taking longer than I’d like.”
“Then let me help,” he said, and this time he turned to her and reached out to hold her upper arms in a soft, firm grip. “What you’re doing is something special. Something important, and it makes me proud that you started it all. So let me in, Belle. Let me be a part of what you do.”
Her heart jumped into a fast, heavy rhythm. His eyes on hers, she saw his sincerity. Saw how much he wanted this and what it meant to him. She was touched more deeply than she’d expected. With Wes’s help she could grow her program faster than ever before. They could reach more children. Offer more comfort. That he wanted to do this meant more to her than anything else he could have done.
“I’d like that very much,” she said.
A slow, satisfied smile curved his mouth, and his eyes gleamed. He rubbed his hands up and down her arms, creating a friction that kindled the heat already building inside her.
“Thanks for that,” he said. “I think we’ll make a great team.”
Isabelle smiled, but her heart hurt a little, since five years ago, she’d thought the same thing.
Six
If anyone had told Wes a month ago that he’d be sitting front row center at a four-year-old’s dance recital, he would have called them crazy. Yet, here he was. And most amazing of all, he was having a good time.
Isabelle sat beside him, and next to her were Edna and Marco. On Wes’s right, Chance, Eli and Tyler sprawled in the too-small chairs, trying to get comfortable. The elementary school auditorium was packed with parents, grandparents and kids of all ages. The room was big, the chairs were uncomfortable and in the corner beside the stage, an elderly woman was playing a piano that looked as if it could have been one of the first ones ever made.
Smiling to himself, he shook his head and leaned in when Isabelle whispered, “Look over there.”
He followed her gaze and spotted Caro, standing in the wings, peeking around the stage curtain. When she saw him, she grinned and her little face brightened. She waved, then made the sign for thank you. His heart did a slow, hard roll in his chest as he signed back you’re welcome.
Of course she didn’t have to thank him for coming. There was literally nowhere else he’d rather be than here, waiting to see his little girl take part in a dance recital. With the help of the hearing aids she wore, Caro could hear the music well enough to participate in the dancing she loved. Wes frowned thoughtfully to himself as Caro ducked back behind the curtain to join her class.
How long, he wondered, would the hearing aids work? How long before she entered a completely silent world? He’d been doing research on the cochlear implant, and the more he read the more certain he was that he wanted to get Caroline to a specialist as soon as possible. Yes, he knew that there were many, many happy, healthy deaf people and he knew that Caro would no doubt have a fulfilled life no matter which path she took. But was it so wrong for a father to do everything he could to try to make his chi
ld’s life a little easier?
He glanced at Isabelle, who had the look of a nervous mom. Her blond hair waved and curled across her shoulders, and as she listened to Edna, she laughed quietly and her greenish-blue eyes shone. She wore a red silk shirt and black slacks, and just looking at her sent a jolt of desire whipping through Wes that he fought like hell to tamp down.
Ever since their talk in her office a couple of days ago, the tension between them had eased in one way and tightened in another. Though there was less anger, more understanding now, the sexual buzz they shared was stronger than ever. Hell, it had been five years since he’d been with her, and sitting beside her now, it was all he could think about.
But he had to move carefully. Slowly. He couldn’t give in to what he wanted if his desires were going to make everything else harder. He needed to get his daughter to a specialist. He needed to save the merger, though right now that looked impossible. And soon, he was going to have to be back in Texas to take care of the business he couldn’t handle over the phone. And he wanted Belle and Caroline to go with him. Sex would just complicate everything.
Damn it.
“Oh, hell,” Chance muttered from beside him. “Hide me.”
Frowning, Wes looked up and saw Kim Roberts headed their way, her gaze fixed on the oldest Graystone brother. Wes was so pleased her laser focus was on someone other than him, he couldn’t even feel sorry for Chance.
“They’re starting!” Isabelle reached over, grabbed Wes’s hand and squeezed as the piano music got louder and the lights in the hall were dimmed.
“Thank God,” Chance mumbled as Kim had to retreat and find a seat. “Saved by tiny dancers.”
Wes grinned, then everything in the room faded away but his daughter, one of a dozen little girls dressed as butterflies as they pranced across the stage. Brightly colored tissue paper wings fluttered, pigtails bounced and nervous giggles erupted in more than a few of the performers. In the darkness, he and Isabelle held hands, linked together by one beautiful little girl and the heat threatening to engulf them both.
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