Sophia took Mindy’s hand, and Zach raised an eyebrow at Mindy. Clearly, they had a lot to talk about.
Sophia looked up at Mindy and scrunched her nose up again. “Mommy, did you find Daddy for me?”
“No, Sophia, I’d do anything for you, but I didn’t find him. I think fate found him for you,” Mindy said.
“Who’s fate?”
Mindy chuckled. “It’s sort of like saying something happened by chance, but it was meant to be.”
Sophia still looked confused, but seemed to accept this explanation.
“Sophia, honey, do you still have the picture?” Mindy asked.
Sophia nodded and ran to her bedroom. A few minutes later she reemerged into the living room holding a small 4 x 6 photograph.
“Can I see it, Sophia?” Zach asked. Sophia nodded and handed the glossy sheet to Zach. Smiling back at him from the picture was a younger version of himself. He was wearing his army fatigues and standing in front of the little Mexican restaurant where he and Traci had spent so many happy hours. He was giving the camera an exuberant thumbs up, happy and unaware of the painful spiral his life would take over the next few years.
“Is it you?” Mindy asked, straining to see the photograph.
Zach didn’t speak. He couldn’t or he would lose it. He handed the picture to Mindy without another word. Mindy covered her mouth with her hands.
“It’s you,” she said. “You really are Sophia’s father.”
Sophia looked back and forth between Mindy and Zach. “So, now I have a mommy and a daddy?” she asked.
Zach knelt down next to her, glancing up at Mindy for a moment. “Yes, sweetie, you have a mommy and a daddy now. But mommy and daddy have a lot to talk about. Do you want to eat some breakfast while we do?”
Sophia nodded and started jumping up and down. “I love breakfast! Mommy can I have steak?”
Mindy laughed. “Not for breakfast, Sophia. But you can have Lucky Charms or a bagel. Which one do you want?”
“Lucky Charms!” Sophia squealed.
“I should have known,” Mindy said, taking Sophia’s hand and leading her to the kitchen. Then she called over her shoulder to Zach. “She loves steak, by the way. Would eat if for every meal if I let her.”
Zach chuckled. “That’s my girl.”
Zach sat on Mindy’s couch and ran his fingers through his hair nervously while Mindy set Sophia up with a bowl of cereal and an Elmo cartoon on the small television in the kitchen. He watched the little girl eagerly pointing to the marshmallows as they fell from the cereal box. Zach marveled at how tiny her little hands were as they gestured emphatically toward the cereal bowl.
All of Zach’s plans to escape had gone out the window the moment he laid eyes on Sophia. He had no idea what to do next, but he knew that he could never leave Sophia, now that he’d found her. And Sophia obviously adored Mindy—she even referred to her as “mommy.” Zach couldn’t take Sophia away from someone who she viewed as a mother figure, no matter how much Mindy had insulted him. After all, Sophia had already lost one mother. Even though Zach thought Traci had been the scum of the earth, he knew Traci’s death must have been hard on Sophia.
Mindy came back to the living room and sat tentatively on the opposite side of the couch.
“So, what now?” she asked, her voice filled with trepidation.
“I was hoping you could tell me,” Zach said. “I have no experience with children, and you have quite a bit. Plus, Sophia seems to love you. What happened to her mom? Her biological mom, I mean.”
“Rita was in a car accident. A drunk driving incident, from the reports. But, from the story Sophia just told us when she brought out that photograph, it sounds like the accident may have been intentional.”
“Rita. So that’s the name she was going by,” Zach said.
“Huh?” Mindy asked.
“She was hiding from me. Her real name was Traci.”
“Why was she hiding? And did you know about Sophia? I have so many questions.”
“I knew I had a cub. I mean, a baby. But I didn’t even know if the kid was a boy or a girl. Traci left me when she was pregnant, and threatened to out my clan as shifters if I told anyone that she was pregnant. She also threatened to get an abortion if I tried to follow her, so that neither one of us could have the baby. I never told anyone about the baby, because I didn’t want my clan to be exposed. As you’ll quickly learn from taking care of Sophia, part of shifters’ living successfully in society is limiting the number of people who know they’re shifters. If the wrong people find out, they can ruin your life.”
“So you just let the baby go, just like that?” Mindy asked, her eyes widening.
Zach bristled a little bit at Mindy’s implication. “I didn’t abandon her. I kept my distance until the baby would have been born, to keep Traci from having an abortion because of me. Then I tried my best to find her. I searched high and low, even hiring private detectives. I don’t know how she managed to do it, but she left no trace. All my searching never turned up a Rita in Idaho.”
“So this is what you meant when you said you’ve been through a lot,” Mindy said.
Zach nodded slowly. “It’s hard for me to trust anyone, after what Traci did to me. She stole five years of Sophia’s childhood from me. I never even got to see her as a baby. I didn’t get to watch her first steps, or hear her first words.” Zach’s voice broke as he spoke, and he had to stop talking. He was going to start full-on sobbing if he wasn’t careful, and neither Mindy nor Sophia needed to see that.
“So, are you going to take her away from me now?” Mindy asked, her voice flat and emotionless.
“No. You obviously love her, and she obviously loves you. And I’ll need help, learning how to take care of a small child. Besides, I meant what I said the other day, about trying to change. I want to learn to trust again, I know you think I’m just some crazy guy with emotions swinging back and forth out of control, but I want to do better. I want to be better.” Zach felt his heart pounding as Mindy looked over at him, and tears started filling her eyes.
“I thought I was going to lose her, right when she’d become a part of my life,” Mindy said. Now it was Mindy’s voice that was breaking. Zach looked over at Sophia, who had finished her cereal but was still engrossed in her Elmo cartoon. He didn’t want Sophia to see him or Mindy crying right now. The last thing he wanted to do was to upset the girl and agitate her inner bear. Zach reached across the huge space between him and Mindy on the couch, and grabbed Mindy’s hand.
“I’m not here to take her away from you. I’m here to do what’s best for her, and that includes keeping her with the woman she looks up to as mommy. But I think we should try to move her out to base. Everyone out there knows about shifters, and can help her learn to control her shifting in a safe environment. We can watch her while you’re at work, too, so she doesn’t have to be in a regular preschool until she has her bear under control. You’re welcome to come stay out there with her. We have plenty of room.”
“I can’t move her without getting approval from her caseworker,” Mindy said. “They have to approve locations, and I can already tell you they won’t approve a giant firefighter’s base. But…there’s a way around that.”
“Which is?”
“You claim your parental rights. Take a DNA test that proves you’re the father, and they’ll hand full custody over to you. You can take her wherever you want, then,” Mindy said, her voice breaking again. “But I lose my chance to adopt her.”
Zach squeezed Mindy’s hand again. “I promise, I’m not taking her away from you.”
Zach felt his own bear growing restless as he held Mindy’s hand in his. Now it made perfect sense to him that they were fated to be together. But he didn’t know if Mindy would ever be interested in him for anything other than being Sophia’s dad.
All he could think, though, as he looked over at her, was that he cared about Mindy more than ever after seeing everything she’d already done
for Sophia. If Mindy would only give him a chance to love her, he knew the three of them could be a happy family together.
Given the way she’d rejected him last time he tried to date her, he had no idea if he was hoping for too much.
But he did notice that she didn’t pull her hand away as he gave it another squeeze.
Chapter Fourteen
A few hours later, Zach was sitting in Ian’s office as his alpha looked back at him in shock.
“Why didn’t you tell me any of this?” Ian asked, his eyes wide and disbelieving. Zach had just told Ian about Sophia, starting with the day Traci left him and ending with that very morning, when he’d met his daughter for the first time.
Zach shrugged. “I didn’t want to expose the clan. I was afraid our last vestiges of a peaceful life would be gone if Traci reported us to the authorities. After everything we’ve been through, I just couldn’t do that to the clan. And I knew if I told you about Sophia, then the whole clan would be foaming at the mouth to go after her, completely ignoring the fact that doing so would lead to their own demise. I was also afraid that if Traci found out we were looking for her before I could find her, she might harm the kid. It seemed like the best thing for everyone’s safety was to just keep the whole thing quiet.”
“You should have told us,” Ian said, his face softening. “I can’t believe you’ve been keeping this all inside for the last half-decade. No wonder you’ve become so bitter.”
Zach looked down at the ground. “I’m sorry about the way I’ve acted. I know it’s been awful. I just couldn’t stand the pain of not even knowing if my cub was alive.”
“You have to trust your clan, Zach. You have to trust me. I’m your best friend, remember? If someone’s hurt you, they’ve hurt me. We’re all in this together. Don’t ever feel like you have to be alone with anything that you’re going through. I hope you never find yourself in a situation as painful as this again. But, if you do, I want you to come to me. The clan can find a way to overcome threats of exposure. What you did to protect us is an admirable display of loyalty, but also a foolish display of trying to do everything on your own. Don’t shut us out like that again.”
Zach nodded. He tried, for what seemed like the hundredth time that day, to blink away tears. So many emotions that he’d never even felt before flooded him.
“I’m sorry,” was all he could manage to get out.
Ian smiled kindly at him. “It’s okay, buddy. It’s in the past now. When do I get to meet your daughter?”
“Mindy’s bringing her over later this afternoon. She’s going to introduce her to the whole crew. We’re hoping that if Sophia stays here, she can get a lot of help with controlling her bear. She’s never had anyone to guide her with that, and it sounds like it’s starting to get out of control. Then I have to get a DNA test to prove she’s mine, and the state will award me custody of her.”
“What about Mindy?” Ian asked.
“She’s definitely going to stay in Sophia’s life. Sophia loves her, and I don’t want to separate them.”
“That’s great, but that’s not what I meant. I meant what about you and Mindy. Every time you say Mindy’s name, your face lights up like a Christmas tree. Are you going to admit that she’s your lifemate now, or what?”
Zach’s face fell. “I actually admitted it to myself before I even knew about Sophia. But when I tried to ask Mindy out, she made it clear that she had no interest in me. Basically, she said I was mean and emotionally unstable.”
“Well, maybe you should try again. I have a feeling that she might see a different side to you now that she knows your whole story.”
Zach shrugged. He didn’t want to get his hopes up. Besides, he had a lot of things to take care of with Sophia before worrying about his love life.
A sudden knock at Ian’s office door brought their conversation to an end.
“Daddy?” a little voice called from behind the door. “Are you in there?”
Zach smiled and went to open the door. Sophia stood there, dressed in an adorable light purple jumper, and holding tightly to Mindy’s hand.
“Come on in, sweetheart,” Zach said. “Come meet your Uncle Ian.”
* * *
The next few weeks were a blur of activity. Zach took a DNA test, and the court set a date to rule on his petition to establish paternity rights. On a warm day at the end of April, Zach walked into a courthouse wearing a suit that he had bought specifically for the occasion. Mindy walked next to him, holding Sophia’s hand. They sat in the courtroom, waiting for their turn to go before the judge, as several other family law cases were heard before theirs.
Zach glanced over at Mindy and saw that her face had gone completely pale. She still worried, he knew, that he was going to take Sophia away from her. But the truth was, just like he could no longer imagine his life without Sophia, he couldn’t imagine it without Mindy, either. The two of them had spent a lot of time together over the last few weeks, and Mindy never failed to make Zach laugh. She was a kind, fun-loving individual—exactly the kind of lifemate Zach wanted by his side. He kicked himself every day for ever thinking that a human couldn’t possibly be perfect for him.
Mindy was perfect. If only he could figure out a way to convince her of how deep his feelings for her ran.
The judge called Zach’s name, snapping him back to the present, and he walked up to the front of the courtroom holding Sophia’s hand. He waited patiently as the judge reviewed the petition and the proposed order to grant him paternity over Sophia. The DNA tests were attached, showing clearly that Zach had fathered Sophia.
After a few minutes, the judge banged his gavel a few times on his podium. “The petition is granted. So let it be ordered. And let me be the first to congratulate you, sir, on officially becoming a father in the eyes of the State of California.”
“Thank you, your honor,” Zach said.
Sophia stared up at the judge with wide eyes. As they were turning to leave, she glanced back over her shoulder at the judge and took in his black robe.
“I like your dress,” she said simply, and the whole courtroom erupted into laughter.
Zach grinned. He could hardly believe that such a sweet little girl was his. Although Sophia had called him Daddy from the first day she met him, it had taken a little longer for her to truly warm up to him. But after a few weeks of Zach doting on her, Sophia had become a total Daddy’s girl.
That evening, the Burning Claws Clan held a celebratory barbecue. Sophia bounced back and forth between the arms of all of her new aunts and uncles, her face glowing with the kind of innocent happiness that every little girl deserves.
Zach stood by the grill, flipping burgers and watching his daughter. His heart had never felt so full. After a few minutes, Mindy sidled up next to him.
“Big day for both of you, huh?” she said, taking a sip of her beer.
Zach smiled at her. “Yes. I can’t thank you enough for everything you’ve done to help make this a reality. I could have never sorted through all that legal bullshit so quickly without your help.”
Mindy shrugged. “It was nothing. I don’t want Sophia caught up in a long, unnecessary legal process.”
Zach flipped the last of the burgers, and then looked over at Mindy. “It was more than just ‘nothing,’ and you know it. I want to thank you somehow. Can I take you to dinner tomorrow night? I’ve already asked Bailey to babysit, so I know you’re free.”
Mindy tilted her head sideways and gave Zach a mischievous grin.
“Is this a friends’ thing or a date?” she asked,
Zach grinned. “This time, it’s definitely a date.”
Mindy smiled and gave Zach a quick wink before walking back over to the group. “I’ll see you then,” she called over her shoulder.
Chapter Fifteen
The next evening, Mindy fidgeted in her seat as she waited for Zach to sign the receipt from their dinner. She tugged at the hem of her little black dress, and hoped that her makeup still
looked okay after the meal. She and Zach had shared a lovely evening, and she couldn’t keep her heart from beating faster every time she looked over at him. He looked effortlessly handsome in his light blue checkered button down and relaxed fit jeans. She knew that, beneath that shirt, he had a perfect six-pack, too. The day he’d come to her door, shirtless and shoeless, looking for Sophia, she’d done a double take at the sight of him. And how could she forget how well-endowed he was? His drunken erection from the first night she’d met him had made that much clear.
Zach finished paying, and looked up at Mindy.
“Shall we?” he asked, starting to stand and offer her his hand. She nodded, and let him lead her back out to his truck. Her heart beat like a teenager in love at the feel of his hand on her hand. She’d been hoping all night that he would ask whether they could revisit his desire to date her, but he hadn’t said anything specifically. Their conversation had flowed easily, jumping topics from Sophia, to Zach’s job, to Mindy’s job, to places they might like to travel. Mindy kept hoping the conversation would turn to their relationship, but Zach seemed to be avoiding the subject.
Mindy felt ashamed of the way she had brushed him off at the pizzeria. She knew she couldn’t possibly have known all the details about why he acted the way he did, but still. She could have been more open to giving him a chance. Now, as she climbed into the passenger seat and watched him put the turn signal on to head back in the direction of base, where Sophia was likely in bed by now, Mindy decided to take matters into her own hands.
“Wait,” she said. “Turn the other way.”
Zach looked over at her, his eyes full of questions.
“Sophia’s sleeping, and Bailey is there for her if she needs anything. Let’s go back to my townhome and open a bottle of wine.”
Fire Bear Shifters: The Complete Series Page 47