THE RE-ENLISTED GROOM

by Amy J. Fetzer

  She jerked from his grasp. "Don't tell me what's good for my daughter, Kyle." Her eyes flashed with outrage. "You have no idea what it's like to be a parent. Let alone a single one."

  His lips thinned, and he felt again like the orphaned kid from the wrong side of the tracks—not good enough to love. "You mean I have no reference to pull from, huh? That's what you're saying."

  She poked at his chest. "Don't put words in my mouth. You don't want to hear what I really have to say to you."

  He stared down at her, his hands on his hips. "Take your best shot, baby."

  She couldn't. It would be like unleashing a dam of emotion she wasn't ready—didn't think she would ever be ready—to face. She tipped her chin up. "It would just be wasted ammunition."

  Kyle made a frustrated sound and wanted to shake her. She was so closemouthed about her feelings, had them buried so deep it would take a shovel to dig her out. He knew how to get emotion from her, emotion the old Maxie gave freely, but Kyle didn't believe for a second that wild jungle sex was going to solve any of this. Yet like a sadist he asked the one question that had been ripping through his brain since he discovered she was a mother.

  "Just tell me one thing, Max." Her gaze swung up to meet his. "This guy who gave you Mimi, did you love him?"

  Maxie stared into his dark eyes. The feelings she had for him, the ones forced into hiding in a private lonely part of herself for the past seven years, suddenly swelled to the surface.

  Kyle clenched his fists, waiting.

  Her vision blurred. And the truth came easily from her lips. "Yes. Desperately."

  Kyle stared at the book and didn't see the words. He kept picturing the look in Maxie's eyes two days ago when she'd told him she'd loved another man. Desperately, she'd said and he knew the truth. It felt like a poison moving through his veins. He didn't think anything could hurt more than hearing her say it.

  It was enough to bring him to his knees.

  That she'd blithely broken his heart and turned her attention to another, let him love her beautiful body only weeks after, left him raw inside. A knot swelled in his throat as he looked across the living room where she was setting up a game board with Mimi. He tried to imagine the Maxie he once knew, the Maxie he'd adored and how she could coldly turn her back on all they'd meant to each other. He couldn't. There was more to this. And it was the single reason he hadn't taken up residence on Jackson's office couch. Kyle knew if he walked out the door, he would never see Max again. Leaving would be the simplest route. Hell, he thought, rubbing his aching thigh. Nothing with Max was simple.

  He watched them, their red heads bowed together, talking softly, and he wished he were a part of the conversation. In the past days he'd been a part of their lives, the family, and he didn't like being the outsider just now. He wanted in. He wasn't ready to give up. But he wasn't sure if he was ready to fight for the right, either. Did he even have one? When his time was up with the rescue team, would Maxie just say goodbye and dismiss him from her mind? Kyle had come here to do a job, and when he'd found Max here, he swore to himself that he wasn't going to repeat the past. And here he was, looking at what she'd offered him in the past and wanting it.

  A frown knitted his brows, and he stared at the carpet beyond his outstretched leg. He was jumping between berating himself for his choices, Maxie for hers and cursing life in general when feminine voices brought his gaze up.

  His lips curved as Mimi leaped on her mom, pushing Max into the sofa cushions and tickling her wildly. Maxie shrieked, tickling back, and Mimi's laughter staked a claim on his heart.

  Maxie staked one on his soul.

  What he wouldn't have given for his mom to have shown him attention like that when he was a kid. Even just a little. But she never did, walking straight out of his and Mitch's life forever. And his father right behind her. How different would his life have been if he'd been part of a real family, he thought. Any family. Maxie had everything she'd ever wanted or needed from her parents: love, clothes, food, security. But he and his brother … they'd had to work just to survive. Kyle wasn't holding that against her and knew she was more likely drawn to him because of his recklessness back then, but Kyle realized he'd wanted to feel that love himself, give it back and know when it got tough, there would be someone to back him up, no matter what he did.

  He still wanted it. His sour feelings weren't about what she had, but what he was afraid he might never find. Or didn't know how to keep.

  Hell. What did he know about family? Without constant guidance in the foster homes and orphanages, he and Mitch were trouble waiting to happen, and the less restrictions, the more they were willing to risk for a rush of excitement. It was to get attention; he understood that now, but after he'd joined the marines, the wild behavior had magnified, skating along the edge of danger. And he foolishly dragged Maxie into it. Yet it had been like running with a wolf pack—free, untamed fun.

  And lonely, a voice reminded, and Kyle closed the book, his gaze on his fingers as he shaped the spine. Half the reason he'd joined the marines was so he wouldn't be alone anymore. And he'd known that in marrying Max, he would never have had to feel that ache again. Or was he trying to grasp something tangible and lasting in an otherwise dismal existence before the war?

  Hell, that was then and this was now, he thought rubbing his thigh, his fingers digging into the still-tender scar tissue.

  "Your leg hurt, Mr. Hayden?"

  His gaze jerked up, and he couldn't help but smile at her gap-tooth grin.

  "Yeah, bothers me sometimes when it gets really cold."

  She tilted her head. "How come?"

  Boy, she's cute, he thought. "I jumped out of a helicopter with a giant rubber band tied to my ankles. And when it sprang up, I got tangled and nearly lost my leg."

  Mimi's eyes had widened as he told her the story and now were as big as coins.

  "Bungee jumping?" she squeaked, and he nodded. "That was a really stupid thing to do, Mr. Hayden."

  Kyle flushed with embarrassment.

  Beyond her, Maxie snickered.

  With sheer willpower, Kyle kept his gaze on Mimi. "Yeah, I know. But I did a lot of stupid things back then." Like let your momma go, his conscience whispered.

  "Wanna play with us?"

  Kyle's gaze shifted past her to Maxie and the game board. Being across the room from Max was bad enough, inhaling her scent seeing what he couldn't have would be torturing himself. "I don't think so."

  "Please," she said.

  "Mimi," Max said, her gaze on the board as she arranged game pieces, "if Mr. Hayden doesn't want to play, then don't bug him."

  That sounded too much like a challenge to him. "Afraid you'll lose, Max?"

  Her head jerked up. It was the first time he'd spoken to her in two days beyond the essentials of good manners, and across the room, their eyes locked. Maxie thought she would come apart right there. She didn't realize how much she'd missed talking with him, having his attention. It was like being released from the bottom of a cold pool. She could breathe again. She knew she shouldn't have said what she did in the barn the other day. It gave him a distorted and ugly view of her. But she couldn't let him know her feelings, since she wasn't sure herself.

  How much deeper a hole could she dig? she wondered. Would she ever escape her feelings for him? Or was she destined to be haunted by her mistakes?

  "So … you're admitting you're chicken?"

  Mimi folded her arms over her flat chest. "My mom isn't afraid. Are you, Mom?"

  Maxie blinked, realizing she was staring at him. And he was staring back. "Put your money where your mouth is, Hayden." She set a tiny metal race car on the board. Mimi hopped up and down, grabbing his hand, pulling him out of the chair and leading him to the coffee table to play.

  An hour later, he was getting smoked. By a six-year-old.

  Mimi owned most of the avenues, and the last roll of the dice decided the game.

  "Well, I'm busted." He handed Mimi the last of his c
ash, then looked at her mother. "How about you, Max?"

  She could barely look him in the eye all evening, he noticed. She would smile and laugh with Mimi, join in the conversation during dinner and the teasing as they hovered over the game board, yet she hardly spoke directly to him. He didn't really blame her, and if he weren't swimming in emotional sewage, he might have apologized for how he'd treated her in the barn the other day.

  "Penniless. Totally wiped out," Max said as she gave over her measly one-hundred-dollar assets to Mimi, who grinned and made a show of stacking it neatly.

  "Thank you," Mimi said politely. "Can we play one more game? Please?"

  "No way," Maxie said as if she were asking for the moon. Two games was her limit. "You've got Nature Girls in the morning, so git, princess." She cocked her head toward the hallway. "Six o'clock will come mighty early."

  Mimi rolled her eyes, since her mother said that every night. "Oh, all right," she groused, and wiggled out from her spot at the coffee table. "Night, Momma." They hugged and kissed, and Mimi started toward the hall, then stopped short running back and stopping beside him.

  Kyle was still as glass.

  "Thanks for the second helicopter ride, Mr. Hayden," she said, even though she'd already said so. The two rides were about the most fun she'd had all year.

  "You're welcome. You're the best copilot I've ever had."

  Mimi grinned proudly, then leaned out and pecked a quick kiss to his cheek.

  Kyle blinked, then smiled gently, tugging on her braid. He was a sucker for redheads, he thought, a wrenching warmth curling through his chest. She looked so cute in her flannel pj's, robe and Tasmanian Devil slippers. Downright squeezable. "G'night, short stack. Sleep well." She took off to bed, and Kyle's gaze followed her.

  Maxie felt the tightness in her chest pull harder when Mimi kissed him. The look of pure longing in his eyes drove a bolt of guilt through her and made her feel she was wrong in keeping fatherhood from him. Biology had little to do with being a father, she told herself. Any man could be a father, make a child, but there was only one mother. She knew it was sexist, but he hadn't been willing to take her calls years ago and when she had just managed to get her life together, he was worming his way into it as if he had the right. He didn't. He'd given that up years ago.

  "Mimi's a great kid—child." He brought his gaze back to hers.

  "Thank you." Maxie gripped the coffee cup resting on her lap and could feel the instant change in the atmosphere. "I had help from my parents." In more ways than he could imagine, she thought.

  "Yeah, I don't doubt it."

  Deep envy tinted his voice, and Maxie's heart cracked a little as she left the sofa, moving to the fireplace to stir the blaze that didn't need stirring. Leave the room, a voice said. Don't open this wound again or it will never heal.

  "You have great parents, Max." Kyle'd known from the first moment he met Lacy and Dan Parrish that they were committed to each other, that they loved, deeply, and loved their children even more. And Mimi knew her mother would die for her. Kyle realized suddenly, that even though he'd known the little redhead only a short time, he would, too.

  Kyle watched her, wanting her in his arms, wanting to be inside her life instead of on the edge. He just didn't know how to go about smashing that wall she'd built. Or if he wanted the pain that would come with it. He gazed at her profile as she poked at the fire, then noticed the wet path of tears on her cheeks. The sight tore through him like an unsharpened blade. "Max?"

  She looked at him, her eyes burning with emotion he couldn't name. "Please, don't say anything, Kyle." Her voice broke, and the tears she'd been fighting flowed free. "At least until Mimi leaves for her Nature Girls."

  She rushed past him and into the hall, but not before she covered her mouth with her hands, smothering a sob as she passed her daughter's room.

  Kyle sank deeper into the chair and rubbed the back of his neck.

  She looked like a wounded animal just then. It made him realize she was hiding more from him than he imagined, that if she was finished with him, if she was really so ready to have him out of her life—then why wasn't she happy he'd soon be leaving?

  The next morning, Mimi stood on the porch, her pack beside her and her little body bundled up to her green eyeballs. She looked like a cowboy elf in Santa's workshop with her red hair, freckled cheeks, boots and hat.

  Kyle winked at her, and her red nose grew redder. They were waiting for her bus ride to Nature Girls, a two day outing to look for animal tracks. Kyle didn't think she was old enough to go—guides, group leaders or not. Maxie often went with them, they'd said. But it wasn't her turn on the schedule. And then there was the threat of another snowfall and the rescue teams' need for more fresh mounts. And then, of course, there was the boarder, as Max put it.

  Kyle looked at Max, who stood several feet away from him, a regular occurrence since the day in the barn. Yet it was her somber expression, the way she folded her arms over her middle and tipped her hat down, that made him want to shake her. Or hold her.

  Mimi Anne Parrish glanced worriedly at her mom.

  Kyle looked down at the crimson-haired cherub. She was craning her neck so hard to look up, he stooped. But not before he chanced another look over Mimi's shoulder at Max as she hitched her hip on the porch rail and stared out onto her land. He met Mimi's gaze.

  Her little forehead was furrowed tightly.

  "What's up, short stack?"

  Mimi felt a strange tickle in her tummy when he called her that. She liked Mr. Hayden. He smiled a lot and didn't yell and gave her helicopter rides even when Momma didn't want him to. And Mom liked him. A lot. Mimi could tell by the way she looked at him. Except right now. Right now was different. And Mimi figured it was 'cause of the argument they'd had in the barn. She'd come back to ask if she could have a snack and even though she hadn't heard the words, she understood the sound of their voices and left before they saw her. What she couldn't understand was how they could kiss one day and be so mad later. Adults were strange, she thought quickly.

  No one knew it, but she'd heard Grandma and Mom whisper about him a few times, too, when they thought she was asleep. It was a long time ago, when she was just a kid, and she never knew what it was all about. But even after the whispers, Mom was always sad like she was now. And she always cried. Like she had last night. Mom hardly ever cried, even when a horse stepped on her foot last Halloween and turned it purple, so Mimi knew she wasn't feeling good right now. And she knew Mr. Hayden was the one who made her sad.

  "Can you do something for me, Mr. Hayden?"

  The seriousness in her voice made him uneasy. "Sure."

  "Don't make my mommy cry again."

  Kyle blinked, a fierce pain catching him in the chest. Oh, God. She'd heard her mother cry after their fight in the barn. He glanced at Maxie, but Mimi cupped his face in her gloved hands and made him look at her. The brim of her cowboy hat touched his.

  "Promise?"

  "I'll try not to," he said. This child was far too old for her britches, he thought.

  "You gotta promise."

  "I do." He would die before breaking his word to her, but Kyle didn't think it was possible. The bus horn tooted.

  Maxie took a step away from the rail and froze, frowning at the pair. "Mimi, the bus."

  Mimi let go of Kyle, and he stood. "Have a good time, short stack."

  Mimi tried to wink at him. "You, too, Mr. Hayden."

  He smiled to himself as she went to her mother, took her hand and lifted her pack.

  Kyle stayed on the porch. The bus was rocking from a good two dozen little girls bouncing in their seats, singing loud enough to make him cringe.

  Maxie kissed her daughter, and Mimi was about to step on the bus when she suddenly bolted from her mother's grasp, racing back up the porch. Kyle knelt and she slammed into him, her little arms locking around his neck. "I like you, Mr. Hayden."

  Kyle felt his heart shatter and come together in one hard breath. "I li
ke you, too."

  She didn't meet his gaze as she tore away and ran to the bus, climbing in and dropping into her seat. She kissed her mom through the glass, and the door closed. Kyle moved beside Max as the bus drove away. "Are you sure she'll be all right? I mean it's snowing."

  "Sure, she will. They're going to search for deer tracks in the snow, and they need the white stuff to do it."

  Kyle continued to watch the retreating bus. "Yeah, I guess. She's just so little."

  His concern touched off a warm spark she'd suppressed for days. "It's only overnight and they stay in cabins." The bus vanished at the turnoff, and she shifted her gaze to his profile. "What did she say to you?"

  He arched a brow in her direction, his gaze taking in her eager expression. "Nothing. Copilot stuff." Let her stew, he thought, then almost relented when she stormed into the house. Kyle stared at her retreating back, then her retreating behind, and followed her into the house.

  He had the urge to check for land mines before stepping into the war zone.

  It was going to be a long two days.

  * * *

  Nine

  « ^ »

  Kyle stilled as he passed Mimi's room, then peered inside. He'd never actually been in here, but the fact that Maxie was on her hands and knees, rooting under the bed with her sweet behind up in the air, had a lot to do with his hanging close. He let his gaze briefly scan the frilly room, pink and white, elaborately dressed dolls lining shelves and assorted toys scattered everywhere. Kyle brought his gaze to Maxie as she muttered to herself about her daughter's habits and that she honestly didn't have time for this. Yet just the same, she sat back on her haunches and dressed a naked doll, even hunted down the lost shoes and hat before setting it on the shelf. She loved her daughter so much, he thought, jealous not of Mimi, but that he'd been denied that kind of devotion.