by Lois Richer
“You sound like Amanda.” He chuckled at her blink of surprise. “Yes, it’s finished. A month early, too. Tell me about Silver.”
Connie had been prepared to dislike this man. After all, he’d left his little daughter alone for several months to complete a job in some distant country. She didn’t see that as the sign of a doting father. But the eagerness in his question now had her reassessing her judgment. She knew nothing about the reasons Wade had left, and she didn’t trust the nasty hints Amanda had dropped. Not everyone was like her own father. Why did she have to keep reminding herself of that?
“Silver’s very bright. She seems to enjoy her gymnastics club, storytime at the library and her art class.”
“So she said. Clever idea, that video you sent. I should have thought of it before. I could have sent one back to her, shown her where I was working, what I was doing.” He frowned and then sipped his tea.
“Well, you can do that next time you go. She’ll love it.” Connie flipped the omelet onto a plate and set it in front of him.
“I’m not going again,” Wade said, with a stern finality, as if he thought she’d argue.
“Oh.” What were the implications of that? Would Connie’s job be over now that he was home? “Silver will be very happy you’re staying.”
“Mmm.” He ate for a few minutes, devouring the omelet and toast she set before him as if he hadn’t seen food in a long time. “Sorry.” He caught her staring and grinned. “I never eat on airplanes. Your cooking is very good.”
“They’re eggs. Hard to ruin.” She shrugged. “Cora said there’s cake. Would you like some?”
He nodded, and she cut a huge slice. Wade lifted a forkful of cake into his mouth, closed his eyes and groaned.
“Man, I’ve missed this.”
“Were there rough conditions where you were working?” she asked, trying to think of a way to ask if she should look for new employment.
“It was a work camp. Most of the labor was Argentinean so the kitchen tried to stick to their culturally familiar food. Delicious, but different.” Wade grinned. “I was more than ready for some good old American chow.” He finished the cake then set his dishes in the dishwasher.
“I could do that.”
“It’s done. Perhaps we can talk in the family room.” He lifted his cup and walked toward the big sunken room that overlooked the pool and the backyard. He waited for Connie to sit, then sank down in a larger chair. “On the video, Silver mentioned a Christmas play.”
“Yes. I’ve been taking her to church with me on Sundays. The Sunday school is putting on their usual nativity play. They’ve asked Silver to be one of the Christmas angels. She has a speaking part that she’s very excited about.” Connie frowned. “I hope it’s okay that I took her to church. Mr. Foster didn’t object and your—er—Amanda didn’t seem to care.”
“It’s fine,” he said. “I should have seen that she was going to Sunday school regularly. My father would have insisted on that.”
“Was he a godly man?” she asked curiously.
“My father thought God directed everything in a person’s life if they were committed to Him,” Wade told her, his face thoughtful. “I’ve been remiss in several areas where Silver is concerned, and church is one of them. I regret that.”
“Now that you’ll be staying home, I suppose I’m out of a job,” Connie said, summoning a smile.
“Why would you think that?” Wade regarded her with that dark probing gaze.
“Well, you’ll be here and…” Connie stopped, suddenly realizing that Wade had made no mention of taking over her duties with Silver. She should know by now that theirs was not a traditional father–daughter relationship.
“I’m going to be very busy finding enough staff to hire for our new job. And Silver still needs someone to look after her. Unless you haven’t enjoyed caring for her?” He raised one eyebrow.
“I love being with Silver,” Connie said with genuine satisfaction. “She’s a fantastic child, well behaved and so easy to teach. It’s been a pleasure to be here these past two months. You’ve done a great job raising her.”
“I can hardly take credit for that. Cora’s daughter cared for her when we first returned from Brazil. Then when she started her own family, she couldn’t manage it anymore so I hired a nanny for Silver, but—” He glanced up, his brown eyes intense in their scrutiny. “David may have explained the problem to you?”
“He said—” Connie blushed. “He said the nanny be came enamored of you.”
“Interesting way to put it.” His mouth twitched. “She thought she was in love with me. I have no time for love, Ms. Ladden.” He paused, watching for her response.
Connie wasn’t thrown by his comment. “Me, neither.”
“Oh? Why is that?” He leaned back, lifted his feet onto an ottoman. “If you don’t mind telling me?”
“I don’t mind. It’s in the past. I’ve put it behind me.” Which wasn’t quite true. Being dumped still smarted. “Six months ago I was engaged to be married,” she said quietly.
“I learned too late that my fiancé expected me to cut all ties with my family.”
“Oh?”
“After I finished school, I helped my foster mother care for my foster brother, a ten-year-old boy named Billy with terminal cancer. I thought Garret understood that I couldn’t just walk away from Billy simply because I got married. We’d talked about it. I believed he understood my position. Clearly, I didn’t appreciate his issues.”
Wade said nothing, but his mouth tipped down in a frown.
“I was at the church, ready to walk down the aisle when someone gave me a note. Garret had left town to go on our honeymoon by himself. He didn’t want to start our married life in second place, he said.”
“Selfish guy.”
“That’s what I thought. He wouldn’t have had long to wait,” she murmured, a flicker of sadness tweaking her heart. “Billy died two months later.”
“I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.” Connie tucked away thoughts of the precious little boy. He could have been her own child, so deeply had she loved him. “Anyway, my foster parents had put up a lot of money for the wedding—alot for them that is. I needed to get a job and pay them back.”
“So you came to Tucson. I see. But if you’ve enjoyed your work here, why even think of leaving?” He rubbed his temple as if trying to ease a muscle there. Tiredness revealed itself in the tiny fan of lines on the outside edges of his eyes.
“I guess I assumed that now you’re home you’d be more involved with Silver,” Connie said bluntly.
“I will be, as my time allows. But I prefer she have full-time care. That would be you, unless you’ve other plans?”
“No. Uh, I mean, I’m happy to stay on as her nanny.”
Actually it would be a relief. After leaving North Dakota, Connie had specifically chosen Tucson because she’d tracked her birth father here. Though she hadn’t yet had any success at finding him, she spent most of her free time searching. Until she figured out why he’d abandoned her when she was eleven, Connie knew she couldn’t remove the barrier that had kept her from totally adopting the faith her foster parents had taught her and trust God in the deepest recesses of her heart. Garret had ruined any hope she had of trusting a man again.
“After seeing that video, I know Silver is thriving under your care. I’d like to ensure she stays that way. Her happiness is very important to me.” The quiet words hung in the silence. Then Wade rose, his gaze pensive. “If you’ll excuse me now, I’ve had a long flight. I’m going to bed. Amanda’s gone out, but she’ll be back. Hornby’s still around?”
“Oh, yes. Though I doubt he’ll still be up.” Connie checked her watch then shook her head. “No, I’m sure he’s asleep now.”
“So he still likes to rise before the rest of humanity? Some things never change. I suppose he’s still fiddling with those roses of his?” Wade chuckled as he followed her from the room.
“Yes
. He won first place in the horticultural show last month.” She indicated the snapshot she’d taken, which Silver had insisted on placing on the hall table. “Now he’s preparing for some kind of Christmas tour. He must have advised you or Mr. Foster about that?”
Wade laughed. Connie couldn’t help admiring how handsome he was when the stern lines around his mouth relaxed and his brown eyes lost their shadows.
“Hornby hasn’t advised me of his plans in years,” he chuckled. “He started here when my grandfather ran Abbot Bridges. I think he still sees me as a boy who’s barely tolerated in his precious gardens. Nothing changes for Hornby but his flowers.”
“His son visited him last week.”
Wade’s eyes opened wide. “Jared is back in town? I didn’t think he’d ever leave Australia. I’ll have to call him up.”
“Well, if you’ll excuse me?” Connie tried to step around him, but Wade’s hand on her arm stopped her.
“So, there won’t be any, um, situations, between us that you might mistake?” Wade asked, his gaze direct.
Connie had to smile.
“I’m not looking for a man,” she assured him and then realized that wasn’t quite true. “At least, I’m not looking for a husband,” she amended. “You don’t have to worry about my affections, Mr. Abbot. You’re quite safe.” Then she stepped awkwardly around him and hurried up the stairs to her room next to Silver’s, his “good night” echoing around her head.
As she sat in her window seat overlooking the backyard, Connie mused on the changes that would come. The Abbot home was large. The master wing was on the second floor, on the far side of the house, opposite Silver’s rooms and hers. The child might have very little contact with Wade unless Connie arranged otherwise.
“There’s a problem between the two of them, God,” she murmured, watching as Wade emerged on the pool deck ten minutes later. He walked back and forth across the deck, pausing at one end to inspect a bush, then resuming his private stroll. “Some barrier that I don’t understand. Help me to help them. Amen.”
She didn’t turn on the light, didn’t prepare for bed, as was her custom. Instead, Connie sat in the dark, watching Silver’s father pace across the yard, his steps barely slowing. When he finally sat on one of the chaise longues, the little clock on her nightstand read two thirty.
Yes, definitely something wrong. It wasn’t her business, but Connie wanted to help. She knew what it was like to face each day knowing your father didn’t care about you, had cut you out of his life. She couldn’t let that happen to sweet Silver.
Wade wasn’t uncaring. He’d made it a point to visit his daughter, check on her when he arrived home and even bring her a special toy. He’d asked about her welfare, said it was important to him that she be happy. He had to love her.
“He has to, God. Because I don’t want Silver to be like me.”
Wade climbed the stairs slowly, knowing he should stay away but needing to reassure himself one more time that Silver was all right, that nothing bad had happened to her in his absence. The reports he’d asked David to send were never enough to soothe his imagined anxieties. And the video Ms. Ladden had sent only made his yearning to be near the child that much stronger.
“Can you come home and see me in the Christmas play, Daddy? Please? I’m going to be an angel,” Silver had said in the video.
An angel. A gift from God—for him? That was the question.
He slipped through the partially open door and stood gazing down at the wonder that was Silver. From the moment she’d been born, he’d been overwhelmed by her, by the silver-gold hair that had never lost its fat curls, by her enormous blue eyes that peered up at him with utter trust, by the tiny hands that grasped his in complete confidence that he would not lead her astray.
And yet Wade had failed her. At least he felt he had. Though his heart ached to spill out the words of love that had built inside for the past four years, somehow they wouldn’t move past his lips.
Because since the day Bella had died, he’d been enslaved by fear.
Fear that Silver wasn’t his. Fear that someone else would claim her and he’d lose the only person in his life who truly mattered. Fear she’d never know how much he wanted to be the kind of dad she deserved. With his return home, those fears erupted anew. What had seemed so simple last week in Argentina—coming home, settling down, being a real father—now took on nuances and complications he hadn’t imagined.
Bella’s child.
Not his daughter, but Bella’s child.
As always, Wade’s mind traveled back to that day and the phone call that had turned his world on its axis. There had been a fire on a private yacht. A child had survived unharmed. A woman had died. Her death was a result of smoke inhalation, they said. The reason for the fire wasn’t known. When Wade arrived on the scene, he’d seen that beside Bella lay the body of the man she’d run to, the man with whom she’d been going to raise Silver.
The nightmare had shattered when Wade had heard the plaintive cries, pleas for someone to help. He recognized Silver’s howl immediately. She lay upstairs in her carrier, secured to a chair on the bow of the charred vessel, kicking and bawling at the top of her lungs, guarded by a firefighter. She was fine—unhurt but hungry. Wade had snatched Silver into his arms and left as quickly as he could. The next day he’d flown home.
But in four years, the startling clarity of one image from that day never left Wade’s brain, no matter how hard he’d tried to erase it—Bella’s man was a young blond-haired Adonis whose blue eyes stared lifelessly at him.
That man could have been Silver’s father. Silver, the child Wade would gladly give his life for if it would keep her safe and happy.
The beautiful blessed daughter he’d begun to doubt was his own.
Something wet dripped on Wade’s shirt and brought him back to the present. Tears. But what good did they do? How could he give up Silver? It would be like ripping out his own heart.
But what if Wade was wrong to keep her? What if he’d torn her away from cousins, aunts and grandparents who would dote on her, fill her life with love—something he had so much trouble showing?
“I can’t lose Silver, God. Don’t ask that of me. Please.”
God hadn’t answered Wade Abbot’s prayers in a very long time.
Chapter Two
“I have to thank you, David.” Wade looked at the man who’d been his best friend since they’d been kids, the only person besides Jared whom he could trust as Silver’s guardian. “Miss Ladden seems to be a perfect match for Silver.”
“Because of where she grew up, you mean?” David nodded as he adjusted his chair so the sun couldn’t reach his eyes in the outside café. “I guess being the eldest of ten foster kids does prepare you for whatever a whirlwind like Silver can throw at you.”
“Ten kids? Wow! I didn’t know the authorities would allow parents to foster that many children.” Wade bit into his pizza.
“According to my investigator, those who run children’s services are so delighted with the results of this foster home that they will send as many kids as the Martens family are willing to take. Martens—that’s the name of Connie’s foster parents.” David signaled for a refill of his iced tea.
“Apparently, kids are clamoring to get in there.”
“Why?”
“Maybe because they get to live on a big farm in North Dakota with everything a kid could ask for—a creek to swim in, a hill to slide down in winter, lots of woods to hide in and animals galore.”
“You sound like you’ve seen the place.”
“I checked it out.” David shrugged. “I had my god-daughter to protect, remember?”
Wade met his gaze. “Thanks, man.”
“My pleasure.” David grinned. “It’s a fantastic farm. Not a lot that’s modern but the Martens family make up for that. They seem to adore each and every one of their charges, and their kids beg not to be moved. Of the forty kids the family has had over the years, most have gone on to
college.”
“Including Miss Ladden?”
“No, she stayed after high school to help the Martens family with a special needs kid. And call her Connie. She doesn’t stand on formality.” David lifted his pizza then winced. “I can understand your reasons for preferring formality after the last nanny, but I’m fairly sure you’re safe with Connie. She’s had some bad experiences with men. I can’t imagine she’s interested in repeating the experience. Has she told you about her father?”
“No.” Wade wanted to know more about the vivacious woman who seemed to adore Silver. “She told me about her fiancé bailing though.”
“You should ask her about her dad,” David said quietly.
“She entered foster care when she was eleven and hasn’t seen her father since.”
Wade couldn’t imagine how Connie must have felt. He’d grown up with a beautiful home and parents who made sure he had everything he needed. Things had changed when Amanda arrived on the scene, especially after Wade’s stepbrother, Danny, was born. But Wade had never been abandoned.
Until Bella in Brazil.
“That’s the reason Connie came to Tucson,” David continued. “She’s trying to find her father.”
Wade frowned. “Why?”
“You should ask her.”
“I will,” Wade assured him. “But right now I’m asking you.”
“I’m guessing she wants some kind of closure.” David grabbed another piece of pizza. “What do I know? I’m just a lawyer.”
“A very good one.”
“Thanks. What are you going to do about the company? You know Amanda won’t let your decision to stay here go by without a fight.” David sighed. “Dear Amanda. Sometimes I wish your father hadn’t left her those shares in Abbot Bridges.”
“You and me both.” Wade pushed away his plate, refused the dessert their server offered and asked for coffee. He sipped it then pushed it away as well. “The one thing I really miss about Argentina is the coffee.”