“Ope!” she said, shoving the package at her daddy. “Ope!”
“Please,” he reminded her.
“Ope, p’ease,” she said obediently.
He tore open the package, freeing the box cars for his daughter.
“Now you say thank you to Cassie,” he said, when he gave Saige the cars.
“Dan-koo,” she piped up.
“You’re very welcome,” Cassie told her.
“P’ay?” Saige implored.
“You want me to play?”
The little girl nodded so vigorously her ponytails bounced up and down.
“I’d love to play, if your daddy doesn’t need any help in the kitchen.”
“I certainly wouldn’t object to your company,” he told Cassie, ‘but if you’d rather play with Saige, that’s okay with me.”
So Cassie let Saige lead her to the living room where, in place of the coffee table she’d seen on her last visit, there was an enormous train table covered with curving tracks that went over bridges and through tunnels, winding this way and that with switches and turnouts and railway crossings, ascending pieces and risers, towers and moving cranes and even a roundhouse.
“Wow,” Cassie said. “This is quite the setup.”
“P’ay,” Saige said again, setting her box cars on the track and linking them to the red engine—obviously her favorite.
She looked at the various engines and specialty cargo cars on the track. “What train do I get to play with?”
The little girl crinkled her forehead as she considered. She decided on a green engine and turned to hand it to Cassie, then abruptly changed her mind and set it back down again. Next she selected a blue engine, then put that one down again, too. At last she decided on an orange one.
“I’m guessing orange is not your favorite color,” Cassie said.
Of course, Saige didn’t respond. She was already engrossed in driving her engine and box cars around the track, halting obediently at a railway crossing as she steered a purple engine pulling a passenger coach through on another part of the track.
After about ten minutes, Cassie realized why it had been so difficult for the little girl to decide which engine to let her play with, because she took turns with all of them, hitching and unhitching box cars and cargo cars to each of them in turn as she did laps around the table. Cassie stayed near the quarry, using her engine to haul imaginary cargo from the work site to the storage shed—and moving out of Saige’s way whenever she raced past with one of her engines, obviously driving an express and in a hurry to get wherever she was going.
“Who’s hungry?” Braden asked, poking his head into the living room.
Saige responded by immediately abandoning her trains and racing to the kitchen.
“Your daughter’s definitely worked up an appetite,” Cassie told him.
“She loves that train table,” he noted.
“Who wouldn’t?” she agreed.
“Now to see if you love my shrimp and grits,” he told her.
“Well, they smell delicious.”
He had a bottle of his favorite Pinot Noir in his wine rack and though she protested that she had to drive home, he opened it, anyway. She decided she would have one glass and no more—because she didn’t want to give herself any excuses for staying, no matter how much she wanted to.
Of course, the man himself was much more potent than any amount of alcohol, and the more time she spent with him the more time she wanted to spend with him. And after her first taste of the meal he’d prepared, she realized that he’d seriously understated his culinary capabilities. The flavors enticed her tongue—his shrimp and grits every bit as good as what her mother used to make.
“Is something wrong?” Braden asked.
“No,” she immediately responded. “Why would you think that?”
“Because you stopped eating and started pushing your food around on your plate.”
“This is really delicious,” she assured him, stabbing her fork into a shrimp, and then popping it into her mouth.
“So where did your mind wander off to?”
She finished chewing, swallowed. “I was remembering the last time my mom made shrimp and grits.”
“Good memories?” he prompted hopefully.
She nodded. “Very good.”
He topped up her glass of wine.
“I’m driving,” she reminded him.
“Eventually,” he agreed.
She picked up her glass and took a tiny sip. “Your daughter is obviously a fan of your cooking,” she remarked.
“Saige is a fan of food,” he told her.
“You’re lucky—some kids can be finicky eaters.”
He nodded. “My cousin’s daughter, Maura, was an incredibly finicky eater when she was little. For almost two years, she hardly ate anything more than chicken fingers, sweet potatoes—but only if they were in chunks, not mashed—and grapes.”
“Well, at least she was getting some protein, vegetable and fruit,” Cassie noted.
“True,” he acknowledged. “And while Saige doesn’t turn her nose up at too many things, I’m not sure how much food actually ends up in her rather than on her.”
Cassie had noticed that the little girl’s determination to feed herself resulted in a fair amount of food on her face, dribbled down her shirt and in her hair. “I’m guessing that bath time follows dinnertime.”
“And you’d be right.”
“Mo,” Saige said, shoving her empty plate toward him.
“How about dessert?” Braden suggested, catching the plate as she pushed it over the edge of the high chair tray.
“Zert!” she agreed happily, clapping her sticky hands together.
“Cassie?” he prompted.
“I very rarely say no to dessert,” she admitted. “But I don’t think I could eat another bite.”
“Not even a bite of lemon meringue pie?”
She groaned. “You do know how to tempt a girl.”
He grinned. “Is that a yes?”
“It’s an I wish but still no.”
“Zert!” Saige demanded.
“Coming right up,” Braden promised his daughter.
He carried the stack of dinner plates into the kitchen. Cassie wanted to help him clear up, but she didn’t want to leave Saige unattended, so she stayed where she was and did her best to clean up the little girl with her napkin.
When Braden returned, she saw that he carried a wet cloth in addition to the bowl containing his daughter’s dessert. He set the bowl on the table and pretended to look around for her. “Saige? Where are you?”
The little girl giggled.
He turned his head from left to right and back again. “I can hear her but I can’t see her.”
Saige giggled again.
“Wait a minute—” He held out the cloth, then swiped it over his daughter’s face, scrubbing away the remnants of her dinner. “There you are. You were hiding behind all those cheesy grits.”
Saige grinned as she held out her hands for him to clean, too, in what was obviously a post-dinner ritual. Braden complied, then set the bowl on her tray table.
The little girl’s dessert was flavored gelatin cut into squares that she could easily pick up, and she immediately dipped her hand into the bowl.
“Apparently you are a man of many talents,” Cassie noted.
Braden shook his head. “I can’t take credit for dessert. My mother made the Jell-O squares, and the pie that you said you don’t want came from The Sweet Spot.”
The downtown bakery he credited was legendary for its temperamental pastry chef—and its decadent desserts. “Now I’m really sorry I don’t have room for pie.”
“We can always have our dessert after.”
“After what?” she asked warily, watching as Saige curled her fingers around a square and lifted it from the bowl to her mouth.
He smiled. “Whatever.”
“Braden,” Cassie began, but the rest of what she intended to say was forgotten as Saige held a second square of gelatin out to her in silent offering. “Oh...um...is that for me?”
“Zert,” Saige told her.
“Well, there’s always room for Jell-O, isn’t there?” she said, and opened her mouth.
* * *
It was his own fault that he’d been caught unaware.
Braden had been so focused on enjoying the time that he was spending with Cassie—and watching Saige and Cassie together—that he’d forgotten about Lindsay’s telephone call only a week and a half earlier. He’d forgotten that his happiness was like a precarious house of cards, and that an unexpected puff of air—or an unannounced visitor—could cause it to tumble down around him.
Saige was finishing up her Jell-O when the doorbell rang, and he left Cassie in the kitchen with his daughter while he responded to the summons.
He opened the door, and his heart stalled. “Lindsay.”
“Hello, Mr. Garrett.” A smile—quick and a little uncertain—immediately followed her greeting. “I’m sorry to drop by uninvited, but I’ve been driving around for hours, not sure if I was actually headed in this direction.”
“Did you want to come in?”
She nodded. “I want to see Saige.”
Braden stepped away from the door. “You know you’re always welcome.”
“I know that visitation was part of our original agreement—but a lot of things have changed since Saige was born. In fact...I’m getting married at the end of the summer.”
“Congratulations.”
“Thanks.” She tucked her hands in her pockets and rocked back on her heels. “The thing is...”
Whatever else she intended to say was temporarily forgotten as her gaze moved past him, and he knew, even before he turned, that Cassie was there with Saige in her arms.
“There’s your daddy,” Cassie said, halting abruptly when she saw that he wasn’t alone. “Oh, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize you had company.”
“This is Lindsay,” he told her. “Saige’s birth mother.”
“Oh,” she said again, her gaze shifting from Braden to Lindsay and back again. “Hi.”
Lindsay returned the greeting stiffly.
“Da-da!” Saige, oblivious to the tension, lifted her arms to reach out to him, and Cassie transferred the baby to him.
Lindsay’s tear-filled gaze followed the little girl. “She’s grown so much,” she said softly. “She’s even bigger than she was in the photos you sent of her first birthday.”
He nodded.
“I’m, um, going to finish up in the kitchen,” Cassie said, backing away.
“Nanny?” Lindsay asked, when Cassie had gone.
“No.” He set Saige on her feet by the train table and settled into a chair, then gestured for Lindsay to sit.
She perched on the edge of the sofa, her hands twisting the strap of her oversize purse as if she needed to keep them busy to prevent herself from reaching out to the little girl.
“Saige doesn’t have a nanny. She’s with me most of the time and, when I’m at work, my mom takes care of her.”
“It’s nice that your family helps out,” Lindsay acknowledged, opening her purse now and withdrawing an envelope. “But a little girl needs a mother.” Then she lifted her chin and handed the envelope to him. “And I am her mother.”
Chapter Thirteen
Even before Braden opened the flap and pulled out the papers, he knew what he would find inside: an application to reverse Saige’s adoption. And though he understood and even—to an extent—empathized with her position, he had to believe that the law was on his side. That belief was all that allowed him to maintain a semblance of calm when he was feeling anything but.
“Not according to the State of North Carolina,” he finally responded to her claim, his tone gentle but firm.
“An adoption can be reversed,” she insisted.
He slid the papers back into the envelope and set it on the table beside him. “Usually only with the consent of the adoptive parents.”
She frowned at that.
“I don’t know who’s giving you legal advice, Lindsay, but I can assure you that no judge is going to overturn an adoption sixteen months after the fact.”
“But what if it’s in the best interests of the child?” she persisted.
“She hasn’t seen you in more than a year,” he pointed out. “Do you really think it would be in her best interests to be taken away from everything she knows, and everyone who loves her, and placed in your care just because there’s a biological bond between you?”
Lindsay’s lower lip quivered as her eyes filled with tears. “I love her, too.”
“I know you do,” he acknowledged. “That’s why you wanted a better life for her than you could give her on your own.”
“But I’m not on my own now. And when I told Charles that I had a child, why I gave her up, and about you now being a single parent to Saige, he said she would be better off with us.”
“I appreciate that you’re thinking about what’s best for Saige,” he said, “but I promise you, staying here—where she’s lived her entire life and where she has the love and support of my extended family and with whom she’s bonded emotionally—is the best thing for her.”
Lindsay swiped at the tears that spilled onto her cheeks.
“Look at her, Lindsay,” he instructed, though the young woman hadn’t stopped doing that since Saige had entered the room. “Do you really want to tear her away from the only home she’s ever known? The only parent she’s ever known?”
She choked on a sob, the ragged sound drawing Saige’s attention from her trains to her visitor.
“Choo-choo,” she said, holding up her favorite red engine.
Lindsay sniffled. “That’s a pretty awesome choo-choo,” she said, and was rewarded with a beaming smile.
“P’ay?” Saige invited.
She dropped to her knees on the floor beside the table and reached for a green engine. Saige immediately snatched it away.
“Saige,” he admonished softly. “What have I told you about sharing?”
She set the green engine on Braden’s knee, indicating her willingness to share with her daddy, then selected a yellow engine from the track for the visitor.
Lindsay, apparently happy just to be interacting with the little girl, began to move it around the winding track.
“So...the woman in the kitchen,” she said, glancing up at him through red-rimmed eyes. “Is it serious?”
He knew that the question didn’t indicate a shift in the topic of their conversation but was actually an extension of it. And of course, the honest answer was that his relationship with Cassie was still too new to be categorized. However, he knew that response wouldn’t assuage her concerns, so he gave her one that would. “Yes, it is.”
Lindsay was quiet for a moment before she said, “Saige seems to like her.”
“Saige adores Cassie—and the feeling is mutual.”
She watched the little girl play for several more minutes. “She seems happy,” she finally acknowledged. “Here. With you.”
“She is happy,” he confirmed.
Her eyes again filled with tears as she watched Saige abandon her trains and raise her arms toward Braden, a silent request to be picked up. He lifted her onto his lap, and she immediately rubbed her cheek against his shoulder and stuffed a thumb in her mouth.
“I guess I just needed to see her again, to know it was true,” she admitted softly. “I thought maybe she needed me..
.but it’s obvious that she doesn’t.”
“Not being needed isn’t the same as not being wanted,” he told her.
She seemed surprised by that. “You’d still be willing to let me visit?”
“That was always our agreement,” he reminded her.
She managed a smile. “Maybe I knew what I was doing when I chose you for Saige.”
“I like to think so.”
“I’ll talk to my lawyer about withdrawing the court application,” she said.
“I’d appreciate that.”
His daughter yawned and tipped her head back to look at him. “Kee?”
“You can have your monkey after your bath,” he promised.
Lindsay blinked. “Monkey?”
He nodded. “The sock monkey you gave to her when she was born—she won’t go to sleep without it.”
This time, Lindsay’s smile came more easily. “And she’s obviously ready for sleep now,” she decided. “So I should be going.”
Braden rose from the chair with Saige in his arms. “Can you say bye-bye to Lindsay?”
“Bye-bye,” she said, and yawned again.
After a brief hesitation, Linday stepped forward and touched her lips to Saige’s cheek. “Night-night, sweetie.”
“Bye-bye,” the little girl repeated.
“I’ll come back to visit again,” Lindsay told him. “But next time, I’ll call first.”
* * *
Cassie was just putting the last pot away when Braden and Saige returned to the kitchen. “Where’s Lindsay?”
“She’s gone,” Braden told her.
“That was a short visit,” she said cautiously. “Is everything okay?”
“I hope so,” he said. “We cleared the air about a few things while you were clearing up in here—so thank you.”
Though she had a ton more questions about the young woman’s obviously impromptu visit, she held them back, saying only, “Thank you for the delicious meal.”
“Why don’t you relax with a glass of wine now while I get this one—” he glanced at Saige “—bathed and ready for bed?”
“Can I help?”
Baby Talk & Wedding Bells Page 14