by Shirley Jump
“I didn’t find you. I noticed you.” He came around in front of her, blocking the view of the shore with his tall, defined body. She met his gaze, and a little fissure of heat ran through her.
“Noticed me?”
“I always notice you, Diana.” He cupped her jaw, his thumb tracing a half circle on her bottom lip. “From the first minute I saw you, covered in soapy water and puppies.”
She let out a nervous chuckle that Mike silenced with a light sweep of his finger across her lips. Her brain misfired, and she skipped a breath. “That’s what you remember about the first time we met? Soapy water and puppies?”
“I remember that all I could see was your smile. I had never seen a smile like that.”
“Like what?” She was shameless, fishing for compliments like this, but right now, standing on this beach with the man who had brought her an ice cream when she was vulnerable and scared and worried, Diana wanted more of Mike, much more. She wanted a peek inside his head, into what kept drawing her to him, over and over again.
He traced the outline of her mouth. She parted her lips, inhaling the warmth of his touch. “This is going to sound corny and dumb and like a fifteen-year-old’s lovesick poetry, but every time I see you, your smile reminds me of the sun breaking over the horizon in the morning. Easy, warm, welcoming.”
Lovesick poetry, he’d said. Because he was lovesick? Or was she reading too much into a simple pair of words? “All that from one smile?”
“From every one of your smiles.” He reached up and brushed a tendril of hair off her forehead. “I went back to Alaska, and I kept seeing your smile. I couldn’t forget that, or forget you, as hard as I tried.”
The same heady, mindless rush that had swept over her back in January returned. A rush that had bloomed into an explosive infatuation, one that had her whispering I love you in her moonlit bedroom to a man she hardly knew. A man who was gone before the sunrise.
She’d made that mistake before of falling head over heels in an instant with Sean, and look where it got her. Raising a child alone with a man who made part-time parenting into a joke. When was she going to learn? Real love was built over weeks, months, years. It wasn’t that fictional love at first sight that made her make rash decisions she regretted as soon as the morning dawned. Mike Stark, this wounded, complicated, struggling man, was going to break her heart again. She could see the writing on the wall. It was time she paid attention to the message.
“Mike, we can’t—”
“I have three weeks left, Diana. We can for three weeks.”
“And then what? And then you’ll disappear in the middle of the night, leaving me some short little thank-you note?”
“I don’t think I said thank-you in that note, although those two words wouldn’t be enough after that incredible night.” He grinned, but she didn’t smile at the joke. His features sobered. He took her hands in his, and when he met her gaze, she saw raw honesty in those blue depths. “I wrote that note because I didn’t know how to say good-bye. It was a sucky note, and I’m sorry.”
“It was the truth, though. No expectations. No regrets.” The words stung even more now, in the light of day, with Mike so close.
“I’m not the kind of man you need long-term,” Mike said softly. “I’m not anybody’s long-term.”
Her stubborn heart kept hoping that he would suddenly morph into a settle-down guy. That he would fall so hard for her, he’d never leave, and she’d be wrapped in this delicious, insane feeling every day for the rest of her life. “I… I can’t do three weeks, Mike. I want more.”
“Do you? Deep down inside, Diana, do you really want a forever kind of guy?”
Again, a question that treaded too close to paths she never traveled. The questions that asked why she had sporadically dated over the years and never settled into a long-term relationship. The questions that asked why she found fault with every man she met, rather than doing the hard work of sticking it out and seeing the relationship through. The questions that asked why she fell for the one man who wouldn’t stick around, even as she said she wanted the stereotypical happily-ever-after.
Instead of answering, Diana thrust the ice cream in Mike’s direction. “Do you want some? It’s melting faster than I can eat it.” And so was her resolve.
No matter how many times she told herself that Mike was all wrong for her, she kept returning to one immutable fact. Mike Stark was one hell of a desirable and intriguing man. And even though her brain said otherwise, the truth was—
She wanted him now just as much as before. The future, her heart, and common sense be damned.
He leaned in, watching her, and slowly took a bite of the ice cream. Chocolate glistened on his lips, tempting her to take a lick. It had to be one of the most erotic things she’d ever seen, and Diana forgot all over again why she kept objecting to Mike. He pulled back, and before she could stop herself, she reached forward, and swiped at his chin. “You have a little bit…”
“I don’t care.” Then he closed the distance between them, gathered her to him with a growl, and kissed her. And all those pretty little lies Diana told herself disappeared under the bright sun.
Fourteen
It had taken the strength of Hercules for Mike to stop with one kiss. Already he wished he were back on the beach with Diana in his arms, finishing what they kept starting.
But she was right. In the end, he would do exactly what he’d done before, and leave her. He had no sticking power. He’d proved that with Jasmine—heck, with his own kids. The only thing he would do is make Diana miserable. Sure, he could stay for a while, but in the end, Mike Stark knew himself and knew that the urge to return to the world he knew, one of rules and structure and danger, would whisper its siren call and he’d go back.
He knew all that about himself, knew it well, and yet when he looked at Luke, sitting with the girls at the table in the ice-cream parlor, telling knock-knock jokes that had Jenny and Ellie in stitches, Mike envied the hell out of his best friend. Was it just because the grass right now was looking mighty green on the other side of the fence? Or because he was too damned afraid to jump that fence and screw up the lawn? Every moment with his daughters was one step forward, two steps back. He was pretty sure he’d also taken a half-dozen steps sideways.
Mike had brought his girls to Rescue Bay to get them out of that hellhole they lived in with Jasmine, and to finally get to know the children he’d fathered, without interruptions. He’d pictured family picnics on the beach, roasting marshmallows over a fire pit, like some damned commercial for paper towels.
Instead, the connection the girls had made with him when he’d told them they were having ice cream for lunch had evaporated as soon as they had their desserts. He’d been fooling himself if he thought he was anything other than the babysitter dude. The dessert meal had only moved him a miniscule step closer to Dad. Jenny and Ellie were leaning forward, eager and fixated on every word Luke said. Clearly those bonds between Mike and his daughters were as thin as gossamer.
Or maybe Mike was just feeling a little extra grumpy after the encounter with Diana on the beach. Hell, everything in his life right now was one step forward, two steps back and a whole hell of a lot of steps sideways.
Mike fiddled with his half-eaten bowl of chocolate chip ice cream. Luke switched gears to one of his Coast Guard stories, this one about a wayward bear cub who had wandered onto the base grounds, found his way into the mess hall, and gotten his head stuck in an industrial-sized jar of peanut butter.
“That’s silly,” Ellie said, laughing. “He musta loved peanut butter lots.”
“Is the baby bear okay?” Jenny asked.
“Yup. Right as rain now. And I hear he took a cue from Winnie the Pooh and only looks for honey pots now.” Luke winked.
Jenny rolled her eyes, but a smile curved across her face. “That’s really cool how you guys saved the bear.”
“Actually, it was your dad who saved him.” Luke gestured toward Mike. “Y
ou have to be very careful with bears, and especially with baby bears, because sometimes the momma gets mad and thinks you’re hurting her baby. Bears are wild animals, so they don’t always understand that people are trying to help them.”
“Did the baby bear get scared when he was in the peanut butter?” Ellie asked.
Luke nodded. “He was crying, real loud. We were worried his momma bear was going to come out of the woods at any minute. But we couldn’t leave him with his head stuck in a peanut butter jar.”
Ellie giggled. “That would be silly.”
“Silly and dangerous. So your dad decided he’d save the baby bear.” Luke gave Mike a nudge. “You tell it. It’s your story.”
Mike didn’t have that easy camaraderie that Luke had, though. The girls were still hanging on Luke’s every word, as if he was the best storyteller in the world. Ellie and Jenny barely glanced in Mike’s direction.
His own daughters thought he was about as exciting as a dead turtle on the side of the road. He told himself he didn’t envy Luke for how easily his friend had connected with the girls, but he did.
A lot.
He was about to tell Luke to just finish the story when Ellie looked at Mike and said, “Daddy, how did you get the baby bear out of the peanut butter?”
It was the Daddy that melted his heart and kept him in his seat. For that word, he’d tell stories for a week straight. “The bear was moving in a south by southeast direction, toward a densely wooded area,” Mike began. “We were concerned that the animal might become entangled in brush or worsen the situation if it tried to climb a tree—”
Across from him, Luke mocked a yawn. “For Pete’s sake, you’re not writing a report for the base commander. Tell the story, but take out the boring parts, will you?”
The girls looked at Mike, Ellie still eager and leaning in his direction, Jenny already bored and picking at her nails. He was losing his audience before he even got to the important stuff.
He wanted to tell Luke that he didn’t have a clue how to tell a story without the boring parts. That he liked the straight lines and emotion-free zone of a report. Then he thought of all the nights Luke and he had spent in bars with their friends and crew members. A beer, two, sometimes three, and the stories flowed as easily as water in a brook, with each man trying to out-joke and out-exaggerate the other. Mike cleared his throat, pretended he was holding a beer instead of a cup of chocolate chip ice cream, and tried again.
“That baby bear was a stubborn little thing with a heck of an attitude,” he said. “He wanted to run back to his momma with the peanut butter container still on his head, and every time I tried to catch him, he ran toward the woods. But we knew if we let him get away, he could die.”
Ellie gasped. “Die? How?”
“Well, with the jar on his head, he wouldn’t be able to eat or drink.” Across from him, Jenny, the more stubborn one, feigned boredom, but kept an ear cocked in Mike’s direction as he talked. Ellie perched on her knees on the seat, elbows on the table, as close to Mike as she could get without actually climbing in his lap. “So the other guys helped corner the bear and I sat down, braced my feet on the ground, grabbed hold of that peanut butter jar, and pulled. I pulled and pulled and pulled and then pop! The jar came off.”
Ellie laughed. “Like when Rabbit had to get Pooh out of da window. Cuz Pooh ate too much honey. Cuz Pooh is a tubby bear.”
Mike chuckled. “Exactly like Pooh. We got the jar off and the baby bear ran away, fast as he could, straight to his momma.”
“Daddy, you’re really brave,” Ellie said. “Cuz bears can bite and stuff. I’da been scared.”
“I was scared, El. But saving the baby bear was more important than me being scared.”
“I’m glad you saved him, Daddy,” Ellie said. She gave him a smile then, a simple one that winged across her face like a burst of sunshine, and lit up her wide blue eyes. His heart swelled and Mike wished he could capture that smile and hold it in his palm forever. It was the kind of smile that said, Dad, you’re my hero, the kind of smile he had never seen on either of his children’s faces before. The kind of smile that filled a man in a way nothing else in the world could.
“Me too, El. Me too.” Mike swallowed past the lump in his throat.
Jenny had finished her ice cream. She put the empty bowl to the side, fished a pencil out of her pocket and began drawing on the napkin. She hadn’t said a word while she listened to Mike’s story of the baby bear, and he wondered if maybe she didn’t care, or wasn’t interested. No matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t win over Jenny. Was it too late? Was she too old? Was he destined to forever be the babysitter dude in her eyes?
He thought of the way his heart warmed every time Ellie said Daddy. How he wanted to hear that name from Jenny, too. That same look of You’re my hero in her eyes. The girls started talking, debating whether bears liked peanut butter or ice cream better.
Mike draped an arm over the back of his chair and turned to Luke. “How’d you do it?”
“Do what?”
“Go from zero to sixty. From picking up a different woman every week to picking out a wedding cake and whatever the hell kind of flowers you have at a wedding.”
“Daddy.” Ellie glared at him. “You said a bad word again.”
Mike shot her a bemused look. “You have an uncanny ability to pay attention when you want to.”
“I’m smart.” Ellie crossed her arms over chest. Chocolate ice cream ringed her mouth, and a dot of whipped cream sat on her nose. “Mommy says so.”
“Yes, you are smart,” Mike said, running a finger down the bridge of Ellie’s nose and swiping off the whipped cream. “Sometimes too smart.”
Ellie kept her arms folded and her little gaze narrowed on Mike’s face. “Daddy. Bad word.”
Luke laughed. “Yeah, Daddy. Pay up.”
Mike sighed, fished a dollar out of his wallet and plopped it into Ellie’s open palm. “Now finish your ice cream. We have things to do today.”
As they got to their feet to toss out their trash, Luke leaned toward Mike. “My advice? Don’t sweat the small stuff. Being anal is a great thing in the military, but it’s not so great in a family. Let things go, ease up, and quit worrying so much. Eventually, you’ll find your way, build your bridge, and before you know it, you’ll be the one picking out wedding cake.”
Mike put up his hands to ward off the possibility. He was working on becoming a better father, not finding a way to walk down the aisle again. Though a part of him whispered how wonderful it would be to wake up to Diana’s smile every morning. “I did the marriage thing once. Never doing it again. A man learns from his mistakes.”
“Yeah, and what’d you learn?”
“That I su—” He paused, then corrected himself before it cost him another dollar. “That I stink at relationships. Even the ones with people who share my DNA.” He nodded toward Jenny, who was standing by the shop door, doing her level best to ignore him and stamp with impatience on the floor at the same time.
“That one needs more time and energy, I think,” Luke said, his voice low.
Mike lowered his voice, too, to keep the girls from overhearing. “I’m trying. But she couldn’t care less what I say or what I do. Heck, I don’t think she listened to a word I said today. She’s like a prisoner on death row, just waiting out her stay until she can make a break for it.”
Luke chuckled. “You know, I hear they’re looking for a good flight mechanic in Clearwater. Should you ever want to relocate and be closer to the girls.”
“And leave AIRSTA Kodiak? Hell, that’s my home.”
“Making one here isn’t such a bad option.”
Mike snorted. “Yeah, well, that might matter to the younger one, but the older one… I don’t think she cares what planet I’m on, never mind whether I’m in the same region of the country.”
“Oh, yeah? I think she pays attention more than you notice.” Luke reached forward and plucked the napkin off the table. H
e pressed it into Mike’s hands. “Open up your eyes, buddy, and see the details. They might paint a different picture.”
Mike glanced down at the white square in his hand. The faint gray pencil outlines of a baby bear sat in the center of the square. To the right, a man sitting on the ground, holding an empty peanut butter jar. And above that, in all caps, the word RESCUED.
Mike glanced over at Jenny, who flicked her gaze away, as if she didn’t want to admit she’d drawn a scene from his story. But she had, and even though Jenny was still calling him dude and might never call him dad, for the first time in eight years, Mike began to hope he might someday have a relationship with his daughters. Both of them.
He glanced again at the napkin, at the smiling bear and the happy ending that Jenny had depicted.
RESCUED.
“I’m doing my best to save us all, baby,” he whispered under his breath. “I’m doing my best.”
Fifteen
On Friday morning, Jackson pushed on the double doors and stepped into bright sunshine and overwhelming heat. The air-conditioned interior of Prince Academy tempted him to stay inside, to head back to class, and for a second, he lingered, one foot inside the building, one outside.
Then he shifted his backpack, the weight tugging one of his shoulders down, and all he wanted in that second was for the burden to be off, to leave it and all the expectations of this stupid school behind. Here, they expected him to be smart. To fit in with the rest of the uniformed clones. There were days when he wanted to stand up in the middle of the room and scream at the teacher, I’m not like you and I never will be.
Instead, he sat in the back of the room and drew all over his notebooks, ignoring the teacher and sneaking text messages under his desk. He mumbled answers when they called on him, and stayed as low in his seat as he could, hoping he could just disappear.
But every once in a while, the topic would grab his attention, and he’d forget he was pissed off at his mother for sending him to this stupid rich-kid school. Then someone would look at his secondhand uniform and his scuffed shoes, and he’d be reminded all over again why he hated this place and hated everyone in it.