Colonel Daddy

by Maureen Child

  “Who is she?” Donna prompted. “Anyone I know?”

  “Major Katherine Jennings,” he answered, and added silently, Kate. The woman I’ve been having an affair with for three years. The mother of your new little brother or sister. Oh, man.

  “Nope,” Donna told him. “Don’t know her.”

  You will, he thought, but said only, “I’ve gotta go, kiddo.”

  “Okay, but you owe me,” she warned. “Dinner here, next week?”

  “Deal.” Already moving to hang up, he said, “Say hello to Jack.”

  “Okay. ‘Bye, Dad.”

  He set the phone down, Donna’s last word ringing in his ears. Dad. Lord, he’d been a lousy parent the first time around. He swallowed back the knot of bitterness that always threatened to choke him when he recalled those lost years with Donna.

  As teenagers he and Donna’s mother had married with the best of intentions, only to see their relationship die within a couple of years. After the divorce, he’d concentrated solely on his career, moving up in the ranks—and he’d missed so much of Donna’s childhood, he’d hardly known her when she had come to live with him when she was thirteen.

  Shame simmered inside him, pushing him to his feet and demanding he move. He paced, unconsciously following the same path Kate’s heels had trod only a few minutes ago.

  Pregnant

  It had taken years to rebuild a relationship with Donna. Years filled with anxiety, frustration and the fear that he would never be able to overcome the “parenting” lessons he’d absorbed from his own father.

  And now it would all start again. A knot of tension tightened in his gut Was it fair to saddle some poor innocent baby with him as a father?

  Just like the last time he’d gotten married, the bride would be carrying his child. God. Hadn’t he learned anything in his forty-five years?

  He rubbed both hands across his face viciously. A grown man, and he’d been as irresponsible as he had been at seventeen. A sad thing to note about yourself, he thought.

  But instantly that night in Japan rolled back into his mind.

  The two of them, locked together on that tiny balcony. Kate’s flesh beneath his hands, her legs locked around his middle, the hot, tight feel of her body embracing his. In memory, he saw her head fall back, her lips form his name as another climax tore through her. He should have stopped then. Should have pulled away long enough to make sure she was safe. But he didn’t. His greed for her had spilled through him, and he could no more have left her—even for a moment—than he could have stopped breathing on command.

  So instead, with the sounds of the city far below them and the soft glow of the moon and a trillion stars above them, they’d created a life.

  A life that had a right to expect a few little things like security and love from its parents.

  Three

  Tom pulled up in front of the small duplex, parked beneath the lamppost, set the brake and turned off the ignition. Opening the door, he pocketed the keys and slid out of his new truck.

  Idly he ran one hand over the flashy red paint that looked a dingy gray in the weird glow of the yellow fog light. The day he’d bought it, just a month ago, he’d actually called Donna, to tease her about the “new baby” in his life.

  A short laugh shot from his throat. New baby had suddenly taken on a completely different meaning.

  He could just imagine the look on Donna’s and her husband’s faces when he announced the arrival of her little brother. Or sister.

  Shaking his head, he started around the front of the car. A muffled roar of sound rolled toward him. Out of the darkness, four young boys appeared as shadows in the gloom, then sailed past him, ably surfing the asphalt on skateboards.

  Their laughter hung in the air for a long minute after they were gone, and Tom stared after them. Skateboarding. In the dark. Fearlessly pitting themselves against drivers who would have a hard time spotting them in their blue jeans and sweatshirts.

  A cold chill swept over him. The kids couldn’t have been more than ten, tops. When his child was ten, Tom would be fifty-five. Nearly sixty. He groaned tightly. How in the hell would he be able to keep up with the kid?

  Shaking his head at the thought, he turned to stare at the small, neat apartments in front of him. A singlestory, craftsman-style duplex, ‘Kate had told him hers was the one on the right. Tom shifted his gaze to the square of lamplight making the blue drapes across a wide front window glow with a nearly serene light. He tried to imagine her there, inside.

  He should have come by sooner. Called her. He’d wanted to. But she was right. This did feel awkward. Sure, they’d known each other for three years. But they’d only spent three weeks of that time together.

  In the month she’d been on base, Tom had hardly seen her. He’d deliberately kept his distance, wanting to give her time to settle in. To get used to the idea of their being in such close quarters for the first time.

  But it had taken every ounce of his self-control to keep from calling her, talking to her. Honestly, he’d wanted to give her time to decide if she even wanted to continue the affair that had come to mean so much to him over the past three years.

  Now, it seemed the choice had been made for her.

  Dragging in a deep breath of sea-flavored air, he started for the front door. Along the way, he noted the neat flower border that lined the narrow, curved walk. Tiny statues of squirrels, chipmunks and rabbits dotted one half of the thumbnail-sized front lawn, and he smiled, wondering if Kate had set them out or if they belonged to her neighbor.

  How little he knew about her, the person, he mused. Oh, he knew that rubbing the back of her knee lightly would make her purr in pleasure. But he didn’t know the simple things. For instance, what was her favorite color?

  What the hell kind of relationship was this?

  Two front doors met him. The door on the left, painted a bright blue, also sported a wild-looking wreath made of dried flowers and boasting a stuffed canary on its straw ribbon. He glanced at it and it opened.

  A small, older woman in skintight pink pants topped by a neon yellow sweatshirt stepped out onto her porch. She looked up at him, smiled and instantly lifted one hand to unnecessarily smooth her chic, silver hair. “Well,” she said, her tone openly interested. “Hello. I heard you walk up, thought you were one of the girls. But you’re most definitely not, so just exactly who are you?”

  “Tom Candello, ma’am,” he said, and couldn’t help noticing when she winced slightly at the “ma’am.”

  She recovered quickly though and, stepping toward him, she held out her right hand. “Evie Bozeman,” she said, giving him a wide smile. “You’re here to see Kate, then?”

  “That’s right,” he said, and snapped a quick look at the still-closed door on the right.

  “And are you a Marine, too?” she practically cooed at him.

  “Yes ma’am, I’m a colonel.”

  “Ooh, fascinating,” she murmured, then her gaze swept him up and down. “A shame you didn’t wear your uniform. I do so love a man in uniform.”

  “I don’t usually wear it off base,” he told her and silently counted his lucky stars that he hadn’t worn it tonight, especially.

  “As I said, a shame. Ah, well, jeans are nice, too.” She inhaled sharply, beamed a smile at him and tightened her grip on his hand. “I’m delighted Kate has a date. I’ve told her and told her, she’s too young to just sit at home all the time.”

  Too young, Tom thought with an inward groan. At thirty-two, she was too young for lots of things. Including him. As he’d told her often over the past three years.

  “You take me, for example.” Evie was talking again, tugging him toward Kate’s door. “Why, I’m almost never home. Tonight’s different, of course. The girls are coming over for a game of cards. We invited Kate to join us, but she said she had plans.” She actually batted her eyelashes at him. “And she certainly wasn’t lying.”

  There was a gleam in Evie Bozeman’s eyes that had T
om wanting to call out the troops for backup.

  From out on the street, a car horn sounded and Evie looked past him, thank heaven, squinted a bit, then grinned and waved. “The girls are here,” she told him, and tugged him around again to face the walkway.

  Tom glanced over his shoulder at Kate’s unadorned door and wondered where the hell she was. Then it occurred to him that she might be watching all of this and thoroughly enjoying it instead of coming out to rescue him. As soon as that thought registered, though, he reminded himself that he was a colonel in the Marine Corps. He shouldn’t have to be rescued from a woman who had to be at least sixty-five.

  Determinedly he tried to pull his hand free, but Evie held on in a grip that told him she’d done this before.

  “Now, don’t run off, Tom,” she said, waving one arm in a wide arc, to hurry her friends along the flower-lined walk. “I want you to meet the girls.”

  Surrendering to the inevitable, he followed her gaze to the four women hurtling up the walkway. Each one well into her sixties, they wore jeans or the same kind of tights Evie was wearing. Sweatshirts, T-shirts and running shoes completed the ensembles, and Tom had to admit they looked nothing at all like what he would expect from a bridge club.

  “Girls,” Evie announced proudly, “this is Tom.” She paused for effect, then added, “He’s a Marine. A colonel.”

  Tom shifted uneasily as four pairs of interested eyes turned on him.

  “Where’d you find him, Evie?”

  “My, what a looker!”

  “Whose is he?”

  “Can we keep him?”

  This last from a tiny woman with carrot red hair and an eager glint in her eye.

  Tom met that look and took an instinctive step backward. Where were all of the nice grandmotherly type women he’d known when he was a kid?

  From behind him a door opened and he almost groaned in relief when he heard Kate say, “Tom?”

  Taking advantage of Evie’s surprise, Tom pulled his hand free and made a quick move for the blond woman standing in the open doorway. He didn’t remember ever being so glad to see her as he was at this minute. The porch light glimmered on the lightest blond streaks in her hair, making the short, curledunder cut shimmer like silver and gold threads. The dress she wore was enough to destroy a lesser man, and the light, flowery scent he always associated with her enveloped him.

  She smiled up at him as she closed and locked her front door behind her and his heart hammered against his chest. Yep, he told himself. Worse than a teenager.

  An audible sigh of disappointment came from “the girls.”

  “Hello, Kate,” Evie said brightly. “I was just introducing Tom to my friends.”

  “So I see,” she said, and fought down a ripple of excitement that shook through her when Tom’s arm brushed against her. She didn’t even want to think about the look she’d seen in his eyes a moment ago.

  “Going someplace nice, are you?” Evie asked, her gaze fastening on Kate’s dark blue, brushed-wool dress.

  “I don’t know,” Kate said, shooting a look at Tom. “Are we?”

  He rubbed one hand across the back of his neck. “I was thinking about the Pasta Pot.”

  “Good choice,” Evie told him, then began to herd her friends toward her front door. “Have a nice night. And Kate? Maybe you can join us for cards next week?”

  “I’d like that,” Kate said, smiling at the woman who’d become a friend in the past month.

  “I didn’t know you played bridge,” Tom muttered.

  Before she could correct him, her neighbor did it for her.

  “Bridge!” Evie exclaimed on a laugh. “That’s for old women. We play poker, honey, down and dirty.”

  “Poker?” Tom repeated, and Kate dipped her head to hide a smile.

  “Five-card stud. Wimps and wusses need not apply.” She sailed into her apartment with a wave and a high-pitched “Toodle-oo!”

  After a long moment of stunned silence, Tom muttered, “Now there goes a completely terrifying woman.”

  The tension she’d felt all afternoon shattered, Kate looked up at him and laughed. “Wonderful, isn’t she?”

  “Interesting,” he said, then confessed, “For a minute there, when ‘the girls’ arrived, I knew just what it felt like to be a nicely browned Thanksgiving turkey when dozens of hungry eyes are locked on it.”

  Kate looked him up and down quickly, covertly and couldn’t really blame Evie and the others. He looked good enough to eat. Black hair with just a dusting of gray at the temples. A red knit shirt that stretched tight across his muscled chest and broad shoulders was tucked into the narrow waistband of a pair of jeans that hugged his long, truly great legs. No wonder Evie and her friends had briefly captured him. It wasn’t every day a gorgeous man wandered up that walk.

  Something inside her quivered, like a guitar string plucked and left to vibrate. Kate swallowed hard and strived for a calm, easy tone in her voice as she said, “When I first moved in, Evie made me dinner every night for a week. Said I shouldn’t have to bother with anything other than unpacking because moving was such a bitch.”

  He chuckled, and the sound brought back memories of black nights, starlit skies and soft music. She could almost feel his warm breath on her neck. Almost taste the champagne they’d used to toast each other their last night together. The night they’d made a baby.

  A shriek of laughter rose up from next door, and Tom glanced that way, unaware of Kate’s spiraling thoughts. “She’s something, all right,” he said. “I look at her and try to imagine my own mother wearing that outfit.”

  “And can’t?” she asked, dropping her keys into her purse and starting down the walk.

  “Angelina Candello?” he asked as he followed her. “In neon? I don’t think so.”

  “Angelina’s a beautiful name,” she said softly and waited for him to unlock the truck door.

  “Yeah.” He held it open for her. “You would have liked her.”

  “Would have?”

  “She died about six years ago.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  He shrugged but she caught a glint of remembered pain shining briefly in his eyes. Then he closed the door and walked around the hood to climb in beside her. As he fired the engine and pulled away from the curb, Kate watched him, her mind racing.

  Three years, she thought. Three years she’d known him and yet she really knew so little. Swallowing back the sadness welling inside her, she asked quietly, “Your father?”

  “Died when I was a kid.” Tom kept his eyes on the road, “Angie raised me. What about you?”

  Kate’s hands smoothed the fall of her dress across her knees and watched the ripple of material as she said, “I never knew my father. My mother died when I was fifteen.”

  “So we’re both orphans.”

  She shot a look at him from beneath lowered lashes. “Yes. I guess we are.”

  Another long moment of silence stretched out between them until finally, when they stopped at a red light, Tom spoke. Gently he asked, “Do you realize how little we know about each other?”

  “Strange, isn’t it?” Strange and sad and lonely. She’d loved him from the moment she laid eyes on him. She could map every inch of his body from memory. She’d held him inside her, found magic in his touch and was now sheltering his child within her and she didn’t even know his middle name.

  “What is your middle name?” she asked abruptly, determined to start mining him for information.

  He stared at her, brow furrowed in confusion. “My middle name?”

  “It’s a place to start, don’t you think?” She crossed her legs, black silk stockings swishing. She linked her shaking hands around her knee.

  Someone behind them honked, and Tom turned his head forward and stepped on the gas.

  “Yeah, all right.” He nodded and moved into the left lane. The fingers of his left hand tapped nervously against the steering wheel. “Nice night.”

  She stared at him as he
steered the truck into a well-lit parking lot. When he didn’t say anything else, she commented, “You’re stalling.”

  “Hmm? Why would I be stalling?”

  “You don’t want to tell me your middle name.”

  “That’s ridiculous.” He snorted a laugh as he pulled into a parking slot, set the brake and killed the engine.

  “I think so.”

  He winced. “You haven’t heard it yet.”

  A smile tugged at the corners of her mouth. Was he embarrassed? Another piece of information to add to the paltry store of things she knew about the man she loved.

  Kate locked her fingers together tighter to keep from reaching out to touch him. In the dim, muted glow of the overhead lights, his face was shadowed but she still read the stubborn reluctance on his features.

  “Okay,” she said softly, “now I have to hear it.”

  One corner of his mouth tilted up, and that dimple of his creased his cheek. Kate’s stomach slipped and she forced air into her lungs in an effort to quiet it.

  “This is top secret, Major,” he warned, giving her a mock glare.

  “Sir!” she snapped, and freed one hand long enough to give him a sharp salute.

  “I’m serious,” he said. “Only a handful of people know what I’m about to tell you.

  “I’m honored.”

  “I’m embarrassed.”

  “I noticed.”

  “Fine.” Frowning, he leaned in close and muttered, “Salvatore.”

  Kate pulled back and looked at him. “You’re kidding.”

  “Would I make that up?”

  No, she supposed not. Aloud, she tried it out. “Thomas Salvatore Candello. Hmm.”

  “It gets worse.”

  Her eyes widened. “There’s more?”

  “Thomas Salvatore Giovanni Candello.”

  “Wow.”

  He nodded sagely. “Now you understand the reason for secrecy.”

  Actually her hormones were making her just sappy enough to find his full name sort of...romantic. But instead of saying so, she told him, “Your secret’s safe, Colonel.”

  “It had better be, Major,” he said with another warning look. “Now it’s my turn. Give.”