Special Forces Father

by Victoria Pade

  “Definitely living in the moment is a plus. They don’t know yet that their own lives won’t go on the way they always have, the way they are. So far they’ve taken in stride that I’m their only nanny now, and it hasn’t occurred to them that it might not just go on forever.”

  “They don’t need to be prepared for it not to?”

  “Sure. But until I know what to prepare them for, there’s no sense in worrying them with the possibilities.” As much as it was worrying her that she might have to hand them over to the system. “I want them to have whatever sense of security they have with me for as long as they can. I want to protect them as long as I can.”

  Liam smiled and made a small sort-of-chuckling sound. “I don’t know if it was the court or Audrey who picked you out of the nanny pool to be the primary caretaker now, but whoever did it was smart.”

  “It was Audrey first—right after the accident she asked me not to leave them with anyone else. Since she was still alive they didn’t need a guardian, just a round-the-clock nanny. Technically it was the court who formally named me guardian. But it helped convince the judge that I should have guardianship because I’d been Audrey’s choice as round-the-clock nanny to begin with.”

  Audrey was not a subject they’d talked about beyond the current situation. It was slightly strange to Dani that he’d been involved with someone she knew. But it wasn’t as if she and Audrey had been close. Dani had been told to call both Audrey and Owen by their first names but, beyond that familiarity, Dani’s relationship with them had been strictly as their employee.

  But talking about Audrey now brought it home to Dani that Liam had had a relationship with the other woman and made her wonder about it.

  “How did you and Audrey meet?” she ventured.

  “At a wedding,” he said without seeming to have any reservations about telling her. “My sister was living here then, too—that was before she went back to Northbridge for a year to take care of Mom until she died—and I came to Denver for a training and to see her. Kinsey’s boss was getting married, she needed a plus-one, and I was it. Audrey was a bridesmaid.”

  “I’m surprised she didn’t have me contact your sister about the twins or about getting hold of you.”

  “Kinsey worked with the groom. She didn’t even know the bride. She met Audrey through me and only at the wedding when I introduced them after I’d met her. Usually Kinsey took time off work if one of us came to see her but she couldn’t for that one and, since she was on overnight shifts, I spent days with Kinsey and evenings with Audrey without any overlap.”

  Dani was reasonably sure he meant that he’d spent nights with Audrey but appreciated that he was downplaying that aspect. Although rather than feeling any kind of jealousy, she had difficulty actually imagining them together. In her mind, Audrey went with Owen.

  “After that,” he was saying, “Audrey and I stayed in touch for about eight months long distance. But there was no reason for her and Kinsey to see each other or talk. Kinsey didn’t even know I’d kept in contact with Audrey, and Audrey was a little scattered—I doubt she remembered my sister’s name. They definitely didn’t run in the same circles. Audrey was a trust fund baby and my family is anything but.”

  “I wouldn’t have expected Audrey to want a long-distance relationship,” Dani said with some surprise. The Audrey she’d known had required a great deal of attention from her husband, to the point of competing with Grady and Evie if Owen showed much interest in them.

  “I don’t know if you’d call it a relationship so much as acting out a fantasy,” he said with what sounded like reluctance. “The uniform can inspire that in some women. I’ve always avoided them and since I met her when I was in civvies, it didn’t occur to me at first that that was part of it with Audrey. I guess that was dumb because she said she could tell I was military the minute she laid eyes on me, even in a suit.”

  “You do have that air about you. I think it’s in the posture.”

  “Well, by the time I realized that was the draw, we’d hit it off. And she was fun, she had the money and the desire to travel to wherever in the world she could meet me when I had leave, so I just kind of went with it. I figured that the most it would amount to was having a little company on leave and that’s always nice. We did a week in China, ten days in Japan, then the last time it was a week in Spain. It was after Spain when things changed.”

  “Because she was pregnant. But she really didn’t give you any idea that she was?”

  “None—even thinking back on it there was nothing. It was just a Dear John call. I’d had them before.”

  “Were you brokenhearted when she called it off with you?”

  “No,” he answered without having to think about it. “I liked Audrey. But it was just fun and games with us. That’s all either one of us was interested in. And I’ve been doing what I do for a long time. I didn’t have any illusions. I knew the odds of Audrey falling into something with someone else when she hadn’t even heard from me in months on end was pretty high. That just goes with the territory.”

  “So you weren’t in love with her?” Dani knew she probably had no business asking but for some reason it made it easier for her to keep her perspective—that the love of Audrey’s life had been Owen, and that Liam’s time with her late employer was little more than a lark. A long-ago lark.

  Not that it should matter one way or another, she was quick to remind herself.

  “I wasn’t in love with her, no,” he said, again without having to think about it. “And she wasn’t in love with me either. From the start we agreed to no strings attached. So when she called things off it wasn’t a huge surprise and I wished her well—and meant it—and just went back to business as usual.”

  Then he switched gears and Dani thought it was a signal that he didn’t want to talk about his relationship with Audrey anymore.

  “What about you?” he asked. “Were you and Audrey friends—”

  “I was just the help. She was friendly and pleasant to me, but we didn’t talk about anything except the kids. It was only at the end when she told me about you—or anything personal—and that was out of necessity.”

  He nodded as if that made sense to him.

  There didn’t seem to be more to say about their mutual acquaintance but Dani was still curious about his past. She said, “You’ve had a lot of Dear John calls?”

  “I didn’t say ‘a lot,’” he amended with a laugh. “I haven’t had a lot of relationships. The longest one was with my high school girlfriend—Kristi Williams—before we went our separate ways for college and lost touch—”

  “That easy? Your first love and you just ‘lost touch’?”

  “No, there was some teenage angst and heartbreak, but that’s what first loves are for, aren’t they?” he said with a smile that spoke of a tender spot for that memory and made Dani like him all the more for it.

  “And between your first love and Audrey? Since Audrey?”

  He grinned. “I don’t have a Garrett story,” he said. “I’ve never been engaged or even come close. I haven’t ever even had the exclusive talk. There have just been women I’ve connected with the way I did with Audrey. I’d see them before and then again after a few mission gaps until something made things fizzle. But I’m not sure those count as full-blown relationships.”

  “Do you juggle women?”

  “No!” he scoffed, again without hesitation. “I’ve had runs with one woman at a time while they last, until something happens to change things.”

  “Such as?”

  “There was a warrant officer in another unit who reached the end of her tour and went home. There was a navy nurse restationed to Africa. A couple of civilians who met other guys while I was away—one of them had even gotten married during the ten months I was unavailable. There was a photographer with a news crew who was just long gone when I got back from
a mission.” He shrugged. “No matter what’s going on on the personal side, I get my orders, disappear for two days or two months or—”

  “Ten months,” she recalled.

  “And when I come out from under, things can be the same or anything can have changed. That’s just how it goes.”

  But suddenly she was thinking about him being Grady and Evie’s dad again. “Ten months,” she repeated. “That’s not only long enough for one of your civilians to meet and marry someone else, it’s a long time in the life of little kids.”

  He sobered, frowning. “Yeah. I’ve been thinking about that.”

  “You’re career military.”

  He nodded slowly. “Have been...”

  “Will that change if the kids are yours?”

  He took a deep breath and shrugged. “I’m not really sure. But it is why I want to do tomorrow’s family day at rehab. Conor and Kinsey are going. Kinsey wants to talk about her wedding. And the Camdens, I’m sure. But I was thinking maybe I should talk to her and Conor about the twins, too.”

  “In case they are yours.”

  “Actually, even if they aren’t,” he said.

  “Oh?”

  “I’ve been thinking about what to do with them if the DNA comes back and says I am their father, about taking them to live on bases overseas, about babysitters and nannies, missions I can’t control the length of... I don’t know that that would be the best thing for them and I think maybe I need to talk to my brother and sister about leaving the kids here with them, about having one or both of them be guardians while I’m deployed... If I stay in the corps or until I can transition out...”

  “Is that something your family would do?”

  “Honest to god, I don’t know. This is nothing any of us has ever dealt with before. I’m just going to feel them out about it. I can’t really make the decision about whether or not to stay in unless I know if I’ll have help. And while I’m feeling them out about what happens if I am the dad...” He hesitated before he said, “Today I thought that maybe we should also talk about taking them on even if I’m not the dad.”

  “In what way?” Dani asked.

  “I don’t know, I’m just throwing ideas out there,” he admitted. “All I know is that when I came here I was figuring that I’d do what I could for them, even if I’m not their father, because I knew Audrey and wanted to help the kids she left behind. Maybe because I was a kid who got help from someone who wasn’t related to me and I owe a little payback for that. But somewhere along the way the little buggers got under my skin all on their own and made that a bigger deal to me.”

  “And that occurred to you today? When they were at their worst?”

  “Yeah,” he answered with a wry laugh. “Today especially, I guess, because I saw them upset about Audrey and her husband being gone. Saw them kind of scared, and...” He shook his head. “I have to fix that for them, whether they’re mine or not.”

  “How?”

  “I don’t have a clear picture. But I just got to thinking that if I am their dad I’m gonna need help. If I’m not, they need help. Kinsey is looking for more family. She’ll be married next month. There’s Conor and Maicy... I know couples have to be attractive volunteers to take in kids. Add me to the mix—a friend of their mother and the person she picked to give them to—toss in a couple lawyers lobbying for it and maybe we could persuade the courts to let us be joint guardians or an extended foster family or whatever it might take so that all together we could look after them. I don’t know. I’m just hoping we can maybe take the first step to putting our heads together to work something out.”

  “It would be great if you could...” Dani said, unsure if what he was suggesting was possible. But unconventional or not, it was still the best solution she’d heard for the twins if Liam didn’t turn out to be their biological father. And just the fact that he was willing to try made her feel as if there was hope for Grady and Evie avoiding the system.

  He had no idea how much that meant to her. So much that she got excited enough to say, “I’d help! Regardless of where I end up going from here, I’d actually like the chance to stay in contact with them.”

  It made her feel worlds better to think that might be possible after having been so close to the twins for the last three years. To think that she might not have to merely hand them off and never see them again.

  “That’d be good, too. You’re important to them. We’ll just all have to see what we can do—the takes-a-village thing,” he concluded.

  But coming from him Dani had faith. And she just wanted to throw her arms around him and kiss him and show him how much she appreciated just what a good man he kept proving to be.

  Which she knew she couldn’t do.

  So she got a grip on herself and decided it was better to return to the lighter topic of the evening—his love life.

  To that end, she said, “So, you know not to get too attached to any woman. Audrey wasn’t alone in that.”

  “What I know is to enjoy the moment and everything in and about the moment,” he said, taking the hand she wasn’t leaning on and holding it cradled in his, rubbing his thumb in circles on the back of it. “I guess I have to have a four-year-old’s mentality for that.”

  “And when that moment is over you’re not sorry? You’ve never tried to hang on or asked a woman to wait for you?”

  “There have been one or two I’ve been a little sorry not to see again. But no, I’ve never asked anyone to wait for me.”

  “Because there’s never been anyone you care enough for to try to tie up, or because you don’t think it’s fair to ask that of them?”

  His gaze was on their connected hands. “Both, maybe,” he answered. “I know plenty of guys in Special Forces who are married or engaged or have girlfriends. But I’ve just kind of always played it by ear. Like with Audrey. When I came up for air on a mission I’d contact her. If she still seemed on board, great—”

  “But when she wasn’t, that was okay, too.”

  He answered that with another shrug.

  “Have there been some women you don’t contact when you come up for air?”

  He grinned. “Haven’t you had guys you don’t want to see again after a date or two?”

  She laughed. “Sure.”

  “Me, too,” he said with a laugh of his own.

  There was something that gave Dani the distinct impression she’d reached the end of his tolerance for talking about his past, though.

  Proving that she was right he suddenly acquired a more playful air. He used that hand he was holding to pull her down to him as he raised up on his elbow enough to meet her halfway and give her a sweet, savoring kiss before he ended it and said, “Last night got to me kind of bad.”

  “Too much soup?”

  He laughed a throaty, sexy laugh. “No, not too much soup. You. Wanting you got to me kind of bad...” He shook his head and his expression showed some amazement at just how much before he said, “It started me thinking that being here right now with you and not making the most of it might be the worst thing I ever let happen...”

  “‘Making the most of it...’”

  He grinned crookedly and an even greater sparkle came into those already sparkling blue eyes of his before he kissed her again. And, in the midst of it, let go of her hand to wrap both arms around her and pull her to lie on the floor with him.

  She could have protested but between what Bryan had said to her earlier and what Liam had just said about getting the most out of the moment she didn’t force herself to. And it would have taken some superhuman force because kissing him was exactly what she wanted to be doing.

  So kiss him she did, lying there on the floor with him, her arms around him, too, and her tongue answering the call of his with the same fervor it had the night before, thinking that maybe sometimes there didn’t need to be a tomorrow b
ecause today—tonight—was too good to pass up.

  And kissing him was too good to pass up because the man could kiss better than anyone. His tongue was perfect and adept and knew all the right things to do.

  His body against hers was also sublime—all rock-solid muscle and strength and power, pliable under fingers that pressed into his back and palms that rode expansive shoulders in a massage that had him writhing ever so slightly.

  Her breasts against that hard chest made her nipples strain for more as he rolled just enough to put her flat on her back, coming partway over her.

  His mouth opened even wider then and his tongue played a more forceful game with hers as one of his hands found the tie at her waist, pulling it free so that her top fell open, exposing her lacy bra.

  Still, she wasn’t inclined to put up any opposition. Or close her top. Instead she adopted a little boldness of her own and slipped her hands under his sweater to touch that smooth skin she’d ogled at the swimming pool.

  His hand sluiced slowly away from her waist where the tie had been knotted, stealing his way up inch by inch until it was just to the side of her breast.

  Was he waiting for encouragement or torturing her?

  Dani knew only that it was definitely torture to have his hand so close to where she wanted it without him finishing the trip.

  She arched her spine just enough to relay the message but all he did was curl his fingers into the side of her bra and slide them to the outer swell of her breast.

  Oh, he was torturing her all right!

  So she took a deep enough breath to expand into the cups, her taut nipples poking into the lace.

  He seemed to know exactly what she was doing because he chuckled faintly, deep in his barrel chest, and brought the backs of his fingers forward to catch one of her hardened nipples between them, squeezing gently but enticingly but still not giving her what she wanted.