Discovered: Daddy

by Marilyn Pappano

  “I saw the cutest little sleeper down at Faith’s store,” the oldest of his sisters, Anna, remarked. “But I couldn’t think of anyone to buy it for.”

  “She does stock some of the neatest things,” Lucia, the youngest, agreed. “Don’t you know her baby is going to be the best-dressed, best-provided-for baby New Hope has ever seen? It’s awfully convenient for her, owning the Baby Boutique.”

  “I was in there yesterday,” Nick remarked, pretending innocence when he felt none. “I needed directions to the formal wear place.”

  His mother lifted her hands from the water, sending a soap bubble drifting into the air, and turned toward him. “Then you met Faith. Pretty, brown hair, very sweet?”

  “And very pregnant?” he added dryly.

  “That’s her.” Anna dried a large oval serving platter, then shoved it into Nick’s hands. “Put that over there with Aunt Marguerita’s dishes, would you? Isn’t Faith a sweetheart?”

  Lucia didn’t give him a chance to answer, which was just as well. Of all the things he’d thought Faith Harper might be in the last twenty-four hours, “sweetheart” wasn’t one of them. “She provides New Hope with all their baby needs, along with much of their food for gossip. Half the town spends half its time trying to figure out who the father of her baby is.” She gave a disgusted snort. “As if it’s any of their business.”

  Nick very carefully laid the platter down, then remained where he was, his back to the women, his gaze on the kids playing outside.

  “Come on, Lucia, don’t be self-righteous,” Anna chided. “We’ve spent enough of our time trying to solve the mystery. People can’t help but be curious. She hardly ever dated, and she was never serious about any man. She never left town, so it couldn’t have been a romance in Dallas or elsewhere. No man in town is looking guilty when he sees her or stepping forward to accept responsibility or —”

  “Or hanging his head in shame,” their mother interrupted. “Which is exactly what he should be doing — exactly what they both should be doing.”

  “Oh, Mama, no more talk about shame, please,” Lucia pleaded. “She made a mistake. She got pregnant. At least she’s doing the right thing. She’s having her baby. She’s going to make a home for him, and she’s going to love him and be the best mother he could ever want. She’s got nothing to be ashamed of.”

  Luisa returned to washing the dishes, the splashes punctuating her words. “I just don’t understand her. Being raised the way she was, she knew people would talk. She knew certain people would blame her baby for what she’s done the same way she was blamed for her mother’s choices. Why didn’t she take precautions?”

  An uncomfortable sensation that he knew all too well as guilt crept down Nick’s spine. He wished he had never come into the kitchen, wished he had never mentioned meeting Faith. Still, he forced himself to ask the question his mother’s words had prompted. “What do you mean, being raised the way she was?”

  “Why, Faith is illegitimate herself.”

  “And no one’s ever let her forget it,” Lucia grumbled under her breath.

  Before his mother could return to the subject — one Nick found himself wanting to know more about — Anna stepped in once more. “What good does being ashamed do, Mama? What were her options, anyway? Have the baby and — according to you — live her life in shame? Or have an abortion and live with the regret?”

  “She could have told the man no,” Luisa retorted.

  “Maybe he didn’t ask. Maybe for once in her life she got to act like a typical, normal person and get swept away. Maybe she loved the guy. Maybe she was forced.”

  Nick turned around, silently protesting Anna’s last suggestion before grudgingly conceding a very small chance that she could be right. He didn’t think he would ever force a woman to submit to something she didn’t want. It went against everything he believed in. But the simple fact was that he had been stinking drunk that night. He didn’t remember what he did. He couldn’t swear that he hadn’t forced Faith, couldn’t swear that he hadn’t hurt her — even though the mere idea that he might have — that he could have — made him sick.

  “What do you mean, she could have told the man no?” Lucia rinsed two handfuls of silver, gave it a shake, then dumped it in a colander. “The last time we had this conversation, you said the person who did this to Faith wasn’t deserving of being called a man.”

  Feeling queasy and not wanting to hear his mother’s response, Nick edged toward the back door. He didn’t get there quickly enough, though. Her vehement words filtered out seconds before he closed the door that would cut them off.

  “And I meant it. If he can’t accept responsibility for what he’s done, then he’s no man at all. I would be ashamed to know him.”

  Shoving his hands into his pockets, he made his way around the house and onto the sidewalk. He had his keys in his pocket. He could get in his truck and go anywhere—to visit old friends, to see how the town had changed or simply for a long drive. But instead of going to his truck, he turned down the sidewalk. He didn’t question the wisdom of where he was going, didn’t even acknowledge to himself where he was going until he was standing on the sidewalk at one end of the broad brick drive.

  It was foolish to come here. He was in New Hope to spend time with his family, not Faith Harper. She didn’t want to see him. She had made that clear enough last night. Hell, he didn’t even want to see her. He wanted to pretend that she didn’t exist.

  But she did exist, and he couldn’t deny it.

  He also couldn’t deny her baby. His baby.

  He crossed the lawn to the veranda steps. Maybe she wouldn’t be home. It was Thanksgiving, after all. Surely she, like everyone else in the country, spent it with family whenever she could. But from the top of the steps, he could see her car parked in the same spot where she’d left it last night. That in itself meant nothing, but that odd, wary feeling in the pit of his stomach suggested that she was home, that any moment now she was going to answer his ring and fix that cold, blue gaze on him.

  He gave her what he thought was plenty of time to reach the door before ringing the bell a second time. Almost immediately the lock clicked and the door swung open.

  Somehow she managed to look more fragile in the bright afternoon sunlight than she had yesterday, even when she had fainted right in front of him. Maybe it was because she hadn’t expected him, and so the hostility wasn’t yet in place. Maybe it was the silly teddy bear, big enough to make her seem small, that she was holding in one arm. Maybe it was the way her hair hung loose, curling around her face before falling to brush her shirt, instead of being secured in a snug, no-nonsense braid, as it had been yesterday.

  Maybe she seemed fragile because he knew that she was illegitimate, just like her baby. Because he had helped make her the subject of cruel gossip. Because people blamed her for indulging in something—sex—that other women did every day and for something she didn’t do at all. She didn’t choose to get pregnant, didn’t choose to have the father of her baby disappear from her life without so much as a word.

  Faith didn’t offer a greeting, didn’t pretend to be gracious or even remotely pleased to see him. She simply stood in the doorway, hugging the ridiculous teddy bear, and waited.

  Nick combed his fingers through his hair. “Can I come in?”

  “Why?”

  “We’ve been through this before, haven’t we?” He offered the best smile he could muster—a pretty sickly one—but she didn’t return it. She didn’t reveal any expression at all. “Do you have company?”

  “No.” After a moment, clutching the bear tighter, she stepped back and allowed him entry, but not without a warning. “I don’t have much time.”

  The house smelled exactly as it had the night before—of old wood and spicy potpourri. There was no aroma of roasted turkey, no freshly baked bread, no tempting pies. He wondered if she’d gone to a relative’s for dinner and returned early or if she’d spent the day alone. Thanksgiving Day alone, be
knew from his own experience, was a lonely place to be. “Do you have plans for this evening?”

  “I have plans right now, and they don’t include standing in the hallway pretending to be sociable.”

  “Do they involve your friend?” He reached out to straighten the bear’s droopy ear, and she took a hasty step back. She didn’t want him even coming close to touching her, he realized, and the sick feeling in his stomach intensified. Withdrawing, he shoved both hands into his pockets, then abruptly, without any warning even for himself, asked, “That night — did I hurt you?”

  Faith stared at him. Had he hurt her? Oh, yes, that was very definitely pain she’d felt when she had gone upstairs to wake him for breakfast and discovered that he’d slipped out sometime in the early morning hours. It had hurt to find out the next day from Michelle that he’d returned to Houston, to realize that he had gone back home halfway across the state without so much as an “It was fun.” It had really hurt later when she’d found out, in the space of a few days, that she was pregnant and he was married. Reaching the understanding that her baby would have no father and no family other than her had been particularly painful, too.

  The biggest pain of all, through, had begun as a fear early that morning in February, and it had grown, as surely as Amelia Rose had grown, over the following weeks. It was her overwhelming bad judgment, her unforgivable mistake. After years of Great-aunt Lydia’s warnings, after years of promising herself that she wouldn’t turn out like her mother, she had done exactly that. She had let a man sweet-talk her into throwing caution to the wind—along with good sense, morality and a few other qualities Lydia held dear—just as her mother had done, and she had found herself pregnant and alone, just as her mother had been. Her only consolation was that at least she had waited until she was twenty-five, when she was grown, had a job and a home and could care for her baby. Her sixteen-year-old mother hadn’t had those advantages.

  Yes, Nick had hurt her—but only because she’d been foolish and naive. Because she had believed in magic, in princes and knights in shining armor, in love at first sight, soul mates and happily-ever-after. She’d been hurt because of her dreams, her expectations, her loneliness and her incredible need for love.

  And those were answers she would never share with him or anyone else.

  In front of her he shifted uncomfortably. “I realize I was drunk, that I might have... might not have...” He looked away, muttered a curse, then looked back. “Did you want... Did I force you...”

  Understanding dawned, bringing with it a bitter amusement at her own naivete. He wasn’t interested in any emotional pain he might have caused. For some reason it had occurred to him that his behavior that night might have been less than honorable. Silently she scoffed at the notion. She would bet money that Antonio Russo’s son had never behaved dishonorably in his life. That was the whole reason he was here. Honor. Making things right. Accepting responsibility for his actions.

  How far would honor require him to go? Would he ask for a paternity test to prove that Amelia Rose was his daughter? Would he offer money to help support her? Would he play the role of part-time father?

  Would he introduce Amelia Rose to his family, give her grandparents and great-grandparents, aunts and uncles and dozens of cousins? Would he want her with him on weekends, holidays and summer vacations down there in Houston?

  Would he even suggest marriage?

  Deep in her heart Faith hoped not and said a whispered prayer to that effect. There was no way in the world she could ever marry Nick Russo, no way she could take his name, live in his house and be a part of his family, knowing all along that it was only because he felt obligated, that it wasn’t her he wanted but rather only to make things right. There was no way after four sweet years on her own that she could return to being someone else’s burden, no way she could live with anyone for any reason less than love. She couldn’t endure that sort of marriage, even though it would give her everything else in the world that she’d ever dreamed of. A husband, a home, a family. Ever since she was old enough to realize that she didn’t have one, she’d wanted a family so badly she had ached with it. Ever since she’d been befriended in fourth grade by Lucia Russo, she’d wanted that family, or at least one just like it.

  Please don’t let him offer it for all the wrong reasons.

  “No,” she answered at last on a sigh. “You didn’t do anything.”

  He looked pointedly at her stomach, then offered a hesitantly teasing disagreement. “Unless this is New Hope’s first virgin birth, I’d say I did something.”

  The first part of his statement was too close to the truth for her to be amused. She’d heard more than a few similar jokes around town when her pregnancy had first become obvious. Even Nick’s brother Michael, an old friend, had laughingly remarked—not knowing that Faith was only a few feet behind him—that when it came to virtue, it was well known that hers was intact. She had forgotten until then just how much guys talked. She had been warned—repeatedly, from the time she was ten years old and ignorant of the subject matter—that boys always talked about girls who did, and she had learned in high school that they also talked—with the same adolescent humor—about girls who didn’t.

  “So what are your plans?”

  “What plans?”

  “The ones that don’t include standing here pretending to be sociable.”

  “I was moving some things upstairs.”

  “I’ll help.”

  “I don’t need help.”

  “Then they must be very small things. Baby things?”

  She answered with a shrug.

  “Where are they?”

  With a sigh, she gestured toward the living room. Everything was in pastel bags and boxes marked with the shop’s logo and dumped on Lydia’s petit point couch. They provided the one bright spot in a room that could best be described as cheerless. It was one of the few rooms in the house that Faith hadn’t redecorated yet. She had intended to do it before Michael and Michelle’s engagement party, but business had picked up at the shop, and afterward... Well, she’d had other, more important things on her mind since then.

  Nick crossed the few yards into the room, gathered up an armload of boxes and filled his free hand with bags, then joined her at the stairs. Heaving a sigh that was transparently reluctant, she led the way up the long staircase, holding the bear around the middle, feeling the fat padded feet bump her legs with each step.

  At the top was a broad hallway, wider than most rooms, with two rooms on either side. Her room was at the back of the house, looking down on the yard and over the tall privacy fence into the Nicholsons’ yard behind her. The nursery was across the hall, and farther down, facing the front, were the two remaining bedrooms. One had been Great-aunt Lydia’s. The other had an iron bed, marble-topped tables and lace curtains. She had been seriously tempted to turn that room into the nursery, to cut the bed into pieces, take a sledgehammer to the marble tables and use the curtains for kitchen scrubbers, but in the end, reason had prevailed. She wanted Amelia Rose closer to her own room, and Lydia’s teachings on thrift couldn’t be so easily discarded.

  Although it seemed she’d had no trouble at all ignoring the old lady’s warnings about chastity.

  Turning into the nursery, Faith settled the bear on the chaise longue underneath the side windows, then watched uneasily as Nick gave the room a thorough study. She didn’t need or care about his approval of the room. She knew it wasn’t exactly traditional. The woodwork—moldings and doors, window frames and shelves—was dark, and one pretty, breezy day last spring, she had painted the walls a deep coral. The chaise was one of Lydia’s antiques, thickly padded and elegantly curved, reupholstered in an ivory-on-ivory floral-patterned fabric. The changing table was a mahogany dresser with a hand-quilted pad draped over the top, and the nearby lamp shaded with creamy glass was as Victorian—and as old—as the house itself.

  But there were softer touches, too. A herd of pastel-hued carousel horses prance
d across one shelf. Baby-oriented planters in front of the windows held ivies and fragrant jasmines. The wooden quilt rack was stacked with quilts in shades of pink and sky blue, peach and palest yellow, along with vibrant primary colors. A crescent-shaped night-light formed a sleeping moon with a star or two dangling from its tip, and the chimes in front of one window offered the sweetest, softest musical tones.

  She didn’t care about Nick’s opinion. She reminded herself of that as his gaze circled the room and reached her. “Where do you want this?”

  Moving forward, she took the boxes from him and stacked them on the foot of the chaise. He set the bags on the floor nearby, then turned his attention to the crib that lay in pieces on the floor. “Are you working on this?”

  “I’m thinking about it.” Actually, she had started on it that morning, before discovering that putting rails, slats and legs together so that the resulting product was straight, sturdy and square was a two-person job, one that she would save for a visit from a friend—provided that a friend came visiting soon. She was going to need this in another week or so.

  Nick crouched down, examining the few pieces she had succeeded with, then picked up a corner of the box the crib had come in. The directions for assembly, skewered to the box with the screwdriver she’d been using, came off the floor with it. “That’s no way to treat a precision tool,” he remarked, his tone mild and barely hiding amusement. He worked the screwdriver free of the box, then offered the directions to her. “Read them to me.”