Special Forces Father

by Victoria Pade

  “Thanks for replacing the pipe today,” Dani added.

  “Happy to do it. Thanks for everything else—everything you do with the kids and to help me with them, and for what you’ve done to help me with Declan—”

  “And for the soup,” she joked because his gratitude embarrassed her.

  He only smiled softly at her, reaching a hand to run his knuckles tenderly along her cheek this time. “Definitely that,” he added in a quiet voice and a tone that said soup wouldn’t have been on the list.

  But just when she thought he might pull her in again, kiss her again, he didn’t. After that featherlight stroke of her face he just took his hand away and said good-night.

  Once he’d left her alone in the kitchen Dani closed her eyes and took the deepest breath she could, holding it, hoping to suffocate the things he was stirring in her.

  But it didn’t help and she headed to her room, giving herself a lecture on all the reasons why nothing could ever work out between them.

  Because nothing could, she told herself.

  But somehow that didn’t seem to matter tonight.

  Chapter Seven

  “I don’t want nuffink for dinner.” Grady pouted, stubbornly crossing his arms.

  The little boy was having a hard time Saturday. Fresh out of bed this morning he’d asked when his mom and dad were coming home. Dani had had to remind him again that they wouldn’t be. He’d been acting out ever since, which meant stubbornness and picking fights with Evie, who had become oversensitive about everything after the conversation, too.

  It hadn’t made the trip to the Butterfly Pavilion pleasant and even getting ice-cream cones when they were finished with the bugs had been more of an ordeal than a good time.

  Now Dani, Liam and the twins were at the apartment that Dani ordinarily shared with Bryan, invited for dinner by Bryan and his boyfriend, Adam.

  “Dinner is a little while off anyway. Why don’t Liam and I take you two over to the park across the street and maybe we can work on your appetite?” Adam suggested. Then to Liam—with a nod toward Dani and Bryan—he said, “These two are going to want to chat so we might as well get out of here and let them.”

  “Is that okay?” Liam asked Dani.

  “It’s okay with me if it’s okay with you. You know how things are going today,” she answered, both because the twins were not being cooperative and because Liam hadn’t yet been alone with them even under the best of conditions. She wasn’t sure whether he was up for that.

  But he surprised her by saying, “I think I can handle it.”

  Adam was a former air force pilot so the two of them had found common ground talking about the military. Dani turned her attention to the kids, urging them to go to the park.

  Neither child was eager, but it helped when Bryan enticed them with the possibility of a small gift if they went, played hard and then came home hungry for the salmon he was making especially for them.

  When they’d left, Dani went into the small kitchen with Bryan to help with dinner.

  “You let him take the kids?” her friend observed.

  “I’m practicing today,” she informed Bryan. “There’s a good chance that he’s their dad and that we’ll all find out very soon. If it’s true, they’ll be a family that I’m not a part of. So I thought it might be a good idea to start letting Liam get a feel for that. I’ve been hanging back all day.”

  Bryan chuckled. “And you picked a day when the kids are being difficult?”

  Dani laughed. “Not purposely, but if he’s their father he’ll have those days to deal with, too. I’m letting him get that experience in the mix. I’m actually glad Adam wanted to take them all to the park. It’ll give Liam a real taste of things without me.”

  “And how are you doing with it—the hanging back and watching Evie and Grady go off without you?”

  “Okay,” she said tentatively. “I’ve been with those kids since they were barely a year old. I know they aren’t mine and I’ve always known that the time would come when I’d say goodbye to them. It won’t be easy. But...”

  Okay, it really wasn’t going to be easy because there was suddenly a lump in her throat that she had to swallow before she could go on.

  “But the more time I spend with Liam and get to know him, the more I hope that he is their father because it helps to at least be able to picture who I’ll be handing them over to. From the start of this I’ve dreaded the idea that I might just have to pass them off to the unknown of the courts and foster care, and believe me, this is not as hard as that.”

  “If he isn’t the dad maybe you and I will have to get married and try to adopt them,” Bryan said with half humor, half seriousness. “I don’t think I can stand to see them disappear into the system either.”

  “Let’s just hope we don’t get there.”

  Bryan gave her the ingredients to make herbed butter for him while he prepped the salmon. “And how are you doing with the idea of watching Liam go away?” he asked in a lighter vein.

  “It’ll be a relief—my eyes will get a rest!” she joked.

  But she’d realized today she wasn’t particularly thrilled with that prospect either.

  She’d refused to analyze it, though, and had merely taken it as a warning and forced herself to hang back even more. And while she was hanging back she’d gone over and over in her mind exactly why she should be perfectly fine with Liam riding off into the sunset. The sooner the better.

  She’d actually thought she had herself convinced and her attraction to him reined in until they’d gone home between having ice cream and coming to dinner.

  Then, as if she couldn’t contain herself, she’d changed out of her kid-friendly clothes, putting on her best butt-hugging jeans and a lightweight, black wrap sweater that she ordinarily wore a tank top under for modesty’s sake. And tonight she hadn’t.

  She had tied the sweater tighter at the side of her waist so the resulting V neckline was higher than when she had something underneath it. But still, there was slightly more enticement without the underneath layer.

  She’d also taken her hair out of the ponytail she’d had for the day and used the curling iron before brushing it and leaving it loose.

  Then she’d added a hint of eye shadow, a second application of mascara, and blush and highlighter, too.

  And not only hadn’t she been able to resist dressing for him, but trying to rein in her attraction to him hadn’t been too successful when Liam had come down from the guest suite after having showered and shaved, and bowled her over once again. Tonight he was wearing a pair of jeans that fit jaw-droppingly well and a white crew-neck sweater just tight enough over those broad shoulders and every muscle of his massive chest and flat stomach to tease her.

  But still, she’d spent the drive over here swearing last night’s kissing was the last time she was going to let that happen, and that she was going to put more distance between them from here on. She was going to do it or die trying!

  “I can understand your eyes needing a rest,” Bryan said with another laugh. “I thought you were exaggerating about how great-looking he is, but you weren’t!”

  “Told you so,” Dani said with a laugh.

  Despite talking on the phone every day, they’d both been too busy to get together since Bryan had delivered the papers for her grandmother’s trust on Tuesday morning. He’d suggested this dinner so he could meet Liam because Dani had confided that her resistance to Liam’s appeal was eroding. It had made Bryan all the more determined to meet him.

  “I thought you were crushing on him and that’s why you made him sound so good,” Bryan added. “But, sweetheart, how is your tongue not hanging out all the time?”

  “I told you what’s going on so you would talk me out of it,” she reminded him. “Gushing over him doesn’t help.”

  “I don’t want to talk y
ou out of it,” Bryan said matter-of-factly.

  “Bryan...” she chastised with her tone.

  “I don’t,” he said, standing his ground firmly. “Until he came around, if you weren’t worrying about one thing, you were worrying about another. What to do with Gramma’s house. Whether to keep the restaurant and give up nannying, or sell the restaurant. The twins and what’s going to happen to them—”

  “I’m still worried about all of that. I still have to make decisions about the house and the restaurant and my own future. I still don’t know what’s going to happen to Evie and Grady—”

  “But the thing is, even though all that stuff is weighing on you, since that guy has been there I think he’s kind of balanced out some of the bad. He’s lifted you out of the thick of it. And I think that’s just what you need right now.”

  She couldn’t deny that Liam had become some sort of counterweight. That it was not only nice to have him around so she didn’t always have to be a mock single parent, but also so she could talk to him about even her own problems. Nice to have their evenings alone after the kids were in bed...

  But she also couldn’t deny that shouldn’t be the case. Or at the very least that she couldn’t let that become something bigger than it was. That she couldn’t come to expect or rely on him to the point where she felt any kind of loss when this was over.

  “So last night...” Bryan was saying into her wandering thoughts. “Kiss or no kiss?”

  She’d told him yesterday about the brief one on Thursday night, lamenting that it had happened and why she shouldn’t let it happen again. She’d sworn to him that there was absolutely, positively not going to be another kiss.

  Now her only answer was a grimace that made Bryan laugh yet again. “How was it?”

  “Ohhh...incredible,” she complained.

  “Was it only kissing?”

  “Yes. But a lot of it. And—”

  “Hot?”

  She shrugged.

  Bryan laughed again. “Better still!”

  “It’s not,” she insisted. “It’s bad and stupid and I don’t know why I keep letting it happen!”

  “Because you like him. Don’t you?” her friend challenged.

  “I don’t dislike him.” It was the most she would admit to.

  But there was more she could have admitted to.

  Not that it was anything serious—how could it be when they’d really only just met?

  But still, something odd was going on with her. In the mornings when she got up she kept watch on the clock, literally counting how long she thought it might be before he’d be there. More eager than she wanted to be for him to show up.

  And when he did? There was the weirdest warm rush that went through her the minute she set eyes on him. A warm rush that didn’t even have anything to do with those blazing good looks of his. A warm rush that was like...

  She didn’t want to think this, but it was like something was missing until he walked in and then all was right again.

  It really was nuts. She’d never felt that about anyone. Not even Garrett, who had been a huge part of her life for a long time. Who she could have married.

  But maybe it was just that counterweight thing, she told herself. Liam gave her the sense that everything was going to be all right.

  “I know why you’re letting it happen,” Bryan said in answer to her comment. “It feels good and it’s fun. And I think that’s why he was sent to you—like the donuts that appear every Friday in the break room at work. I have no idea where they come from or who goes to the trouble or pays for them. It’s just a little job benefit that I gladly accept.”

  Dani laughed again but with some confusion. “Liam wasn’t ‘sent to me.’ I had to have the marine corps track him down. And that was for the sake of Grady and Evie.”

  “So it was the marine corps that sent him to you,” Bryan concluded neatly. “They’ve sent in the troops—that’s why you should go for it.”

  “Simple as that?” she said.

  “Yes. A little simple, no ties, no expectations, purely biological release. With one of the hottest men I’ve ever seen. Something to ease all the stress you’re under and put a smile on your face, so when you’re old and think back on it, you can have one sweet memory of an otherwise awful time.”

  Dani laughed again. “Wow.”

  “Oh, yeah, I’m betting there will be a lot of wow,” Bryan said.

  “You know that some kind of fling is not me,” she countered.

  “I know it hasn’t been. And it won’t be after this. But this one time? Let it be you.”

  “Bryan...” she chastised again.

  “I’m serious! You like him. You’ve earned it. What harm is there? Unless...” He paused to look at her just as he was about to put the salmon under the broiler. “Do you more than like him? Is this something that could end up hurting you?”

  She didn’t think so...

  But what she said was, “He’s a marine like my dad was. And he has a mind-set that isn’t much different than Garrett’s—”

  “I know he had a bad day when he saw his twin for the first time, but I thought you were leaning away from the idea of PTSD.”

  “I am. But still...when you come from that world anything could happen to cause it anytime.”

  “But it’s not there now. And the mind-set thing? You know Adam can be a little like Garrett, too, when he’s in military mode and he’s all earnest and conservative and straitlaced. But he isn’t always in military mode the way Garrett is always a cop, policing everything and everybody. From what you’ve said about Liam he’s more like Adam with that stuff than like Garrett.”

  Dani didn’t refute that but she also couldn’t be completely sure it was and would always be true. Instead she said, “And there’s the fact that I did only break up with Garrett three months ago and am not ready for anything else yet—especially with the house and the restaurant and my career future all waiting for a decision. Until I’ve sorted out what I’m doing all the way around, I can’t be starting something new.”

  “Donuts on Fridays is not ‘starting something new,’” he pointed out. “It’s just a job benefit. It doesn’t happen every day. It could end and we’d all just go on the same. But we enjoy it now, when it’s happening...” he finished in a singsong voice.

  He seemed to give her a moment to be tantalized by the idea before he said, “And what if you could enjoy a little job benefit in the form of Liam but you don’t? You’ll always wonder what it might have been like. You’ll build it up in your mind to something that nothing else and no other man might ever live up to. Think of it as doing a service for the Mr. Right you finally do end up with. And for yourself so you don’t spend the rest of your life disappointed with him.”

  “What if I did it and no one for the rest of my life can live up to him?” she said, as if this was a purely academic debate even though she thought there was a chance that Liam might always be in a class by himself.

  “Or maybe he’ll be so bad at it that he’ll cure you of lusting after him the way you are now.”

  Dani laughed. “I am not lusting after him.”

  “Oh, you sooo are. So just take care of it. You take care of everything else for everybody else. No matter what reason convinces you, do this for you. Trust me—and I know you do—you will regret it if you don’t, not if you do.”

  Dani just shook her head at that notion as if her friend was out of his mind.

  But secretly she wasn’t convinced that he didn’t have a point.

  * * *

  “Oh, you didn’t go to bed. Or run away from home,” Dani said.

  After getting the twins to sleep Saturday night there had been no sign of Liam. The day and evening with Evie and Grady were so fraught with four-year-old melodrama that she’d thought he might have just retreated. But when she’d
gone to the front door to activate the security system she’d spotted him in the formal living room off the entry, in the direction opposite the dance studio and workout room.

  He was lying flat on his back on the floor underneath the enormous skylight in the ceiling. The only illumination in the room came from the moon overhead and the glow of the exterior lighting coming in through the two walls that were completely glass. But everything in and about the space was white—the walls, the leather sofas, the molded coffee and end tables, the unlit lamps, the white-on-white artwork—so everything was fairly visible, including Liam even though his white sweater blended in.

  His hands were on his ultra-flat stomach but he took one away to pat the white shag carpet beside him. “Felt like I spent most of the day hunched over. I needed to stretch out,” he explained. “Try it. Puts everything in line again.”

  She wasn’t sure what it put in line again, but it was quiet now that the twins were asleep, and peaceful there in that big open room with so much of the outdoors coming in through all the glass. And despite knowing that the best way to fight Liam’s appeal would be to simply say good-night and go to bed with a good book, Dani looked forward to this time with him too much to deny herself. Especially after a day with pitifully unhappy kids.

  So once the alarm was set she joined him.

  But she didn’t lie down the way he was. She sat near his upper half, resting her weight on one hip and hand, and curling her legs under the other hip.

  He rolled to his side to face her, propping himself on his left elbow and forearm. “I’ve had days in combat that were easier than today. And I’ve run into insurgents more agreeable than those two downstairs,” he said.

  Dani laughed. “Kids are entitled to bad days, too.” But she’d been happy to see that, through even the worst of it, Liam had been steady and calm and patient; he’d never lost his temper.

  “Yeah, I can’t imagine what must go through their little minds,” he agreed. “It’s lucky they were used to round-the-clock nannies so maybe it’s not so unusual for them to go a long time without thinking about their parents. And lucky that they live in the moment. But when whatever brings it up for them that Audrey and her husband aren’t coming back...that’s gotta scare and confuse them.”