He shifted so he was closer and put his arm around her. “I’m sorry.”
“Me, too.”
She leaned into his strength and felt comfort and peace. Saved it up to remember on cold lonely days.
“I have to go,” he whispered.
“I know.”
And that was it. He walked away. No final kiss. No goodbyes. Just walked right out of her life. Jack sensed her mood and pressed close. She looped her arms around him. “Yeah, Jackie, we need another place to play.”
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
HE CAME AWAKE IMMEDIATELY. A roll of fading thunder rattled the windows. A flicker of lightning lit up the room a millisecond before a sizzling, crackling boom crashed overhead. Almost lost in the sound was a small cry. Jules. He threw back the covers and fumbled for the T-shirt he’d thrown at the end of the bed.
“I’m right here, Jules,” he called as he went to her room. Nothing happened when he flipped the switch. Great. “Hey, baby girl, it’s all right.”
He made his way to her bed, stubbing his toes on and stumbling over books and toys. He reached for her and she leaped from the bed, attaching herself to him. Her legs locked around his waist and her arms crisscrossed around his neck, almost choking him. Her cheek was wet with tears as it pressed against his. He brought his hands up to hold her tight.
“It’s okay, baby, I’ve got you.”
“Make it stop.”
Another earsplitting crack of lightning rattled the windows, and she pressed her face against his neck.
“I can’t make it stop. But I won’t let go until it’s gone.”
He reached down and pulled the comforter from her bed and draped it over her. As he made his way down the hall to the living room, the storm continued to rage overhead. It was a doozy. Hopefully a fast-moving doozy. He sat on the sofa and she burrowed into him, pulling the blanket around her and over her head. The sounds of thunder and lightning continued to fill the room. If Jules hadn’t been so afraid, he might have enjoyed the display of Mother Nature’s power. He tightened his arms around her.
“It’s okay. It won’t last for long. It’s going away now.”
She went still in his arms. “How do you know?”
“Easy. You count the time between the flash and the thunder. If the time is getting longer, the storm is moving away.”
“Really?”
“Let’s test it out. Wait for the lightning.”
When the flash came, he began to count. “One. Two. Three.”
Boom!
Jules squealed, but it had more of a startled tone to it than the terror she’d shown earlier.
“So, three that time. Now, when the next one comes, we’ll see. You count with me.”
When the flash came, she whispered along with him. “One. Two. Three. Four.”
“A little more that time,” he said.
By the time they were getting up to ten, Jules was drifting back to sleep. On the next flash, she didn’t even count. He could feel her breathing, deep and relaxed. He didn’t want to wake her so he tried to shift around to a more comfortable spot. Pretty early, he guessed, as his eyes drifted closed. Too early to be waking up.
“Uncle Wyatt?”
He jerked out of his doze. The light in the room had changed. Brightened. The storm had passed and morning was closer than he thought. Or he’d overslept. “Yeah?”
Jules squirmed until she was splayed out over his chest, half lying, half sitting on him. Her face was serious.
“What’s wrong, Jujube?”
“Nothing.” She fidgeted with the edges of the blanket. “I had a question. But I’m not sure.”
He shifted so he was sitting more upright and rubbed a hand across his face. “You can ask me anything, Jules. Anything. I’ll never be mad at you for asking a question.”
Her eyes met his, dark and thoughtful. Are all eight-year-olds this smart? She snuggled down against him, her cheek pressed to his chest, and he put his arms around her.
“I don’t think you’ll be mad,” she said as her fingers plucked at the fabric of his shirt. “I just don’t know if I should.”
Stay with the original plan.
“You can always ask me anything, Jules.”
Her hand went still, and she took a deep breath.
“Would it be okay if I called you Daddy?”
Everything went still. For a brief second all was numb, then an overwhelming feeling welled up in him. His heart seemed to expand until surely it would explode out of his chest. This must be how it feels to hold your newborn child for the first time. This must be the sudden, blinding, overwhelming love he’d heard others speak of. It took a moment to answer.
He gave her a gentle hug. “Yes. It would be very okay. If that’s what you want.”
She pushed up. “’Cause you sort of are, right? I mean, I don’t have a real daddy, but you and me, we’re our own family now, right?”
“That’s right. You and me. We’re a family. I love you like a daddy would, Jules.”
She smiled and leaned forward to give him a smacking kiss before snuggling into his arms again. “I love you, too, Unc... Daddy.”
She said the word slowly as if testing it out. Wyatt wiped at his eyes and stared up at the ceiling. A smile crossed his lips. You’re a daddy. Congratulations. He found her hand and held it in his. She’d already drifted back to sleep. He remembered when she was a baby. She’d seemed so tiny then, but even now, at eight, she seemed so small and fragile.
Eight years old. He brushed the hair back from Jules’s face as the realization washed over him. Jesus. She was the same age Sadie had been when her mother left her. He imagined Jules with no family, nobody willing to take her in, moved from home to home. The thought of it made him sick.
Sadie had lived it. Been in foster care all her life. He tried to picture an eight-year-old Sadie. Had she been a tiny bird of a girl like Jules? All dark hair and skinny arms? His heart, which had moments ago been so jubilant and full of love, now almost broke.
The return of electricity was heralded by the beeping of various devices. The microwave was the loudest and most obnoxious. He slid out from under Jules and went to silence the noise before it woke her. He found his cell. Six o’clock. Way too early. He carried her back to her bed and tucked the blanket around her. She mumbled something and rolled over, already deep asleep. The easy sleep of a child. He stood and watched her. Daddy. How much courage had it taken for her to ask him that? He only hoped he could live up to the honor. He nodded. Yes. It was time to make that phone call. Get the adoption process going and make her his daughter.
He tiptoed out but left the door open a crack in case she woke up. In case she was scared again. He leaned against the kitchen counter as the coffeemaker hissed and spit, looking out at the garden. The storm didn’t seem to have damaged the seedlings, but he’d check it out later. His mind kept circling back to the vision in his mind’s eye of an eight-year-old Sadie, awake and terrified in her bed with no one to come and tell her it would be okay. It explained quite a lot.
Her prickly exterior. The anger. The way she kept her thoughts and feelings wrapped up tight and wouldn’t admit to anything resembling want or need. Growing up like that must have messed her up. He ran a hand through his hair and across his face. More proof that walking away had been the right thing to do. He might understand the emotional damage done to her, but Jules wouldn’t. Jules shouldn’t have to. It was enough that she had learned the hard fact that parents sometimes die; she didn’t need to know some parents walked away from their kids. She didn’t need to wonder if he would walk away from her.
He poured coffee and sat at the kitchen table. No. For Jules he needed to find a woman who knew what family was. Who knew what a child needed in terms of love and support. Who knew how to show and acc
ept love. Not someone like Sadie, who kept her heart locked away from the world.
Except.
She didn’t. Not really. She and Josh were as close, if not closer than he and Maddie had been. She’d taken him in and given him the chance to build a good life for himself. And Molly. Molly was the grandmother who looked out for them both. She’d built a little family and he knew there was nothing she wouldn’t do for them.
And the guys. She felt responsible for them all. She worried over them like a mother.
He moved restlessly around the kitchen, pulling out ingredients to make pancakes with when Jules woke up. It’d become their Sunday morning routine.
So, sure, okay, she was capable of caring. Once you get beyond the razor wire she kept strung around her heart. He turned the mug around in circles on the table and replayed the evening they’d spent together. She might claim it was only sex, but it hadn’t been. She’d let down her guard. She’d told him secrets and he’d told her his. He’d been under the razor wire that night. And it had been good. The sex had been incredible. The shared confidences in the dark had made it even better.
Until Jules’s phone call had interrupted. And she’d sent him off without a word, without a complaint, without any resentment. She knew Jules came first. She expected Jules to come first. Damn, man. It’s been there all along. Since the first meeting in the park, she’d asked about Jules. Asked if she would be comfortable at the dinner. When he’d come to tell her he was quitting, her first response was that he had to do what was best for his family. For him and Jules.
A sinking feeling filled him. He was under the wire. He and Jules both. Sadie had let down her guard and taken them both in. Quietly. Without expectations. She’d loved them both. He’d been the one pushing away. He’d been the one holding his emotions back. He’d been the one who didn’t know what a family could look like. He put his hands to his face.
Jules wandered into the kitchen. Her hair was a snarled mess and she dragged the comforter behind her. “What’s the matter, Unc... Daddy?”
He held out his arms and she came to him. He lifted her up on his lap. “Nothing. You want blueberry pancakes this morning?”
She leaned back and put her hands on his cheeks to tip his head down. “You looked sad.”
“I’m not sad. I realized I believed something about someone that wasn’t true.”
“So you’re sorry, not sad?”
“Exactly. How’d you get to be so smart?”
She shrugged. “Shiloh’s mom makes chocolate chip pancakes. Can we make those?”
“I don’t think we have any chocolate chips.”
She jumped down to go into the pantry. Wyatt watched her. She’d seen it more clearly than he. He was sorry. He was sorry he’d let his own fears for Jules color how he saw Sadie. He was sorry that he’d slipped so effortlessly in love with her that he never even noticed she might feel the same. And he’d walked away from her. He hadn’t even tried to trust her.
Jules came out of the pantry with a bag of peanut butter chips that were supposed to have become cookies. “What about these? We can chop up a banana on top, too. Does that sound good?”
“Can I ask you a serious question, Jules?”
She climbed on the chair next to him, kneeling in the seat so they were eye to eye. “Like a grown-up question?”
“No. It’s about something you did.”
“Am I in trouble?”
“No. I’m curious. When you met Ms. Sadie for the first time, you told her how your mother used to curl your hair. Remember that?”
Her little face went serious and she nodded. “Uh-huh.”
“Why? Why did you talk to Sadie about your mother when you hadn’t talked to anyone else about her?”
Jules pushed her messy hair out of her face. “I knew she cared.”
“How did you know?”
Jules sat down and her face crunched up in concentration. “I think it’s like—it’s like you can tell. Most people treat you like a kid. But some treat you like you’re you.”
He tried to decipher that. Treat you like you’re you. “Like a person?”
“Yes. A lot of people act like they want to talk to a kid, but they’re faking. Ms. Sadie doesn’t fake it. She likes me.”
No, he thought as he kissed the top of Jules’s head and thanked her, Sadie didn’t fake anything. Especially about the people she cared about. He was a fool. Worse than a fool. He’d walked away from a woman who cared about Jules as much as she cared about him.
“Are we making pancakes?”
He stood. “Sure are. Peanut butter and banana pancakes. Get the flour, Jujube.”
He turned the griddle on and pulled down a mixing bowl, remembering the first couple of pancake disasters they’d had before he got the hang of it. He’d made a mess of things with Sadie while trying to figure out this single-father thing. He had a choice. He could leave it as it was and pretend it’d been a “wrong place, wrong time” kind of thing. Or he could try again.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
SADIE DIDN’T WANT to get out of bed. She didn’t want to face the new week. Everything had changed. Lito was gone. Wyatt was gone. She’d faced down her mother. She’d found the secret to letting go of the anger and fear that had colored every aspect of her life. She’d talked with Grant again. They had a long journey ahead of them, but they both agreed to take it slow.
Jack’s doggy breath in her face got her up. She should be happy. She should feel a million pounds lighter without her past weighing her down, not slow and sad. She brushed her teeth, unable to meet her eyes in the mirror. It’s because you screwed everything up with Wyatt.
Duh. She spit into the sink. You didn’t even have the guts to try. Not that it would have done any good. He thought she was damaged goods. Way too damaged to be trusted around Jules. That hurt. The idea that she would hurt a child after all the hurt she’d been subjected to in her life cut deep. But she understood. More than understood, she approved. He put Jules and her welfare above anything else. Above anyone else. As he should.
“Okay, Jack. We’re going. Settle down.”
She let him out the back door and sat on the step as he went through his routine. She heard a car pull into the front parking lot and checked the time. A few minutes before eight. She whistled for Jack. The guys would be getting here soon. Maybe Josh would take over the staff meeting. She didn’t have the energy to talk today.
Footprints crunched on the gravel path that led around the side of the house. Jack barked ferociously as the gate opened. “Jack! Hush.”
“Stupid mutt. Like you didn’t know it was me.”
Josh shut the gate behind him and came to sit beside Sadie. He shoulder bumped her. “How you holding up, sis?”
“Good. Okay. Getting there.”
“Did you figure out your valuable life lesson?”
She elbowed him lightly in the ribs. “Don’t be a smart-ass. Yes. I learned it wasn’t what she did that ruined my life. My anger and resentment is the problem.”
“So you’re better now?”
There was a tone underlying his teasing words. The fearful tone of one who’d been abandoned. She hooked her arm around his waist and pressed her cheek against his shoulder. “Not by a long shot. I still need you, brother. I’ll always need you.”
“Touching. And we need you to start this meeting so we can get to work,” Noah said from behind them.
“Be right there.”
She got coffee and settled at the head of the conference table. “All right. Let’s get going.” She flipped open her notebook. “First up, Josh has interviewed and accepted four new clients in Columbia. He’ll need a team willing to travel there for cleanings. Travel, hotel and meals will be paid for. There will be a five-dollar-an-hour bonus.”
She p
aused to let Josh add more but he only nodded.
“We’ve been running through supplies at an increased pace and I want to ask...”
She stopped as Molly appeared at the open doorway between the conference and waiting rooms.
“Sorry, Sadie. There’s someone here to see you.”
“I’m in a meeting.”
Molly moved aside and Wyatt Anderson stepped into the room. The shock of seeing him there froze her in her seat, and she struggled to remember how to breathe. She stared at him until she realized her mouth was hanging open and snapped it shut. Why was he here? She blinked and resisted the urge to pinch her arm. Was she still in bed? Dreaming?
“What the...” one of the guys said. A low chorus of angry mutters rose behind his words.
Josh lifted a hand and silence returned. Sadie’s heartbeat also returned, slamming out a reverberating percussion that she could feel through to her bones.
Wyatt’s gaze moved briefly from Sadie to Josh and he gave the barest nods. He lifted the bouquet of roses in his hands. Pink roses. A wild, light feeling rose inside her. She looked into his eyes. A small smile turned up one corner of his mouth. He made his way around the table to her and held out a hand.
“Your grandfather wasn’t the only man who loved you, Sadie. I love you. I know I came here under false pretenses, but that was the only thing I ever lied to you about. How I feel about you was never a lie.”
Around the table, the guys had turned to stone. She could hear Molly sniffling at the doorway. This is it, Sadie. Take his hand. Reach out and put your hand in his. Fear, her old friend, elbowed aside the light feeling she realized was hope. Fear was used to this moment. This was where it lived. Between her and the people who tried to care about her. She was afraid to look into his eyes. His hand remained outstretched. Steady, strong and unwavering. Waiting for her.
“I know I’ve screwed up with you,” he continued. “Especially where Jules is concerned.”
She looked up then and was captivated by the emotion in his eyes. Love.
“I’d convinced myself that Jules was the reason I needed to walk away from you. But she’s actually the very reason I shouldn’t walk away. Who is ever going to understand her better? Who is going to know exactly how she feels? Who is going to be dedicated to protecting her the way I want her to be protected? You will, Sadie. You’ve lived it. You know her pain. And you would never add to it.”
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