He’d said he was staying. Maggie knew she couldn’t make him go. He out weighed her by a hundred pounds at least. No way could she throw him out of town. But he was sticking around because of his child, not the mother of his child.
He’d broken her heart once. She wouldn’t let him do it again. Not without resisting him every step of the way.
Chapter 8
A week after telling Faith that he was her father, Jack pulled his mail from the brick mailbox at the curb. Casually he sifted through the junk envelopes. Then, the same time as usual, he saw Maggie’s red compact car turn the corner and head toward him. He noted a hitch in his breathing as anticipation expanded in his chest. Apparently tamping down his emotions in civilian life was going to be harder than he’d thought. Especially when it came to Maggie—and the unbelievably big feelings his daughter had generated in him.
In the past seven days he’d hung out with Faith a lot. Several times her mother had let her skip camp to stay with him while she was at her shop. Then there were the occasions when his daughter had eaten dinner at his house and shown up on his doorstep first thing in the morning. He didn’t mind. He had a lot of time to make up for.
His gaze focused on Maggie’s car. Their drive ways reminded him of mini-runways separated by a narrow grass median. She pulled in and stopped her small car even with where he parked his black sport utility vehicle. As he’d done for the past week, he waited for his anger toward her to surface and wasn’t completely surprised when it didn’t. She hadn’t put up a single hurdle in his mission to get to know his daughter. Why shouldn’t he let go of the past and move forward?
Besides, he had more important ways to spend his energy. Like being a parent. There was no doubt in his mind that it was the hardest yet most important job he would ever do. But no pressure, he thought wryly.
Maggie got out of her car and waved. He envied the way she handled mothering Faith. She made setting limits look simple. She easily walked the walk and talked the talk while he felt as if he’d just stumbled naked into a mine field. His training for this op was non ex is tent.
He raised his hand to return her greeting. Something compelled him to speak. “What are you doing home at this hour?” As if he didn’t know.
She met him in his yard. “I always come home for lunch around this time.”
He would be lying if he said he wasn’t glad to see her. That feeling was responsible for the next words that came out of his mouth.
“I just ordered a pizza. Want to join me?” he asked. Please say yes, he thought. He found he very much wanted to spend time with her. Alone.
She raised her sun glasses and rested them on her head, studying him intently. Moving forward, she put her hand on his forehead as if checking for fever. “You okay?”
He savored the touch of her small, cool hand and tried to ignore the way his heart lurched. “Why?”
She shrugged. “Just checking. Thought maybe you were delirious or something.”
“Why would you think that?”
“It seems out of character for you to make social nice.”
“Then maybe it’s time to change that. Do you want some pizza or not?”
“Do I have ‘stupid’ written on my forehead? Pizza sounds great. Especially compared to the peanut butter and jelly sandwich I was planning on,” she said smiling.
He was dazzled by the look she sent him. Saucy, sassy and full of sunshine. An almost-over whelming urge to pull her into his arms churned inside him. Instead of acting on it, he turned away. “Follow me,” he said.
He led the way and stopped just inside his door, letting his eyes adjust from the glare in the yard. It was cool after the noon heat outside. He took notice of the form fit ting denim sundress she wore and the way it outlined her curvy little figure to perfection. Her slender arms and the part of her shoulders he could see were sprinkled with freckles. He remembered that she hated them, but he thought they were cute. He wouldn’t change them even if he had the power.
Maggie set her purse on the hall tree resting against the long entry wall. “It’s a hot one today,” she commented.
“Yeah.” And getting hotter by the second, thanks to his big mouth. “Can I get you a soda?”
“Do you have anything diet?” she asked.
“Because you don’t want to sabotage your low-fat pizza experience?” he asked, unable to keep from smiling.
“A girl needs to save a calorie wherever she can.” She followed him into the kitchen. “Does that mean you don’t have anything diet?”
“Yeah. How about sweet tea?”
“Sounds great.” She looked around the room while he pulled the pitcher from the fridge. “It looks the same as it did when your grand mother was here.”
He heard the sadness in her voice as he set the glasses and pitcher of tea on the center island. “You miss her, don’t you?”
She nodded and blinked at the sudden sheen of moisture in her eyes. “She was like family.” Laughing shakily, she added, “I guess she actually was family, at least to my daughter. Our daughter,” she amended. “I wish she’d known you were Faith’s father.”
“Me, too.” When the doorbell rang he said, “Chow’s here.”
He went and paid the delivery guy, giving him a generous tip. Then he took the card board box and carried it to the kitchen. While he’d been occupied, Maggie had found plates, utensils and napkins and set them out on the oak table occupying the cozy nook. She waited by one of the four ladder back chairs.
“Lunch is served,” he said, placing the box on the table.
She breathed deeply. “Smells wonderful. Mushroom and black olive, I bet.”
“You can smell that?”
“I didn’t have to. It’s your favorite.”
He couldn’t believe she remembered. Then he recalled that she used to kid him about being a closet vegetarian and what would the guys say if she blew his cover. He missed those carefree days, before his job had turned him cynical and suspicious. He’d once taken pride in his ability to perform his duties with exemplary skill. Now he just felt stripped of his humanity—always expecting the worst.
“Have a seat. I’ll get the drinks,” he said gruffly.
When he brought them back to the table, she’d already put several pieces of pizza on his plate and a slice on her own.
“This is great,” she said, taking a bite. “Almost as great as what you were doing on the computer.”
He glanced at his system set up on the built-in desk in the corner of the kitchen. His house, or rather his grandmother’s, was almost a duplicate of Maggie’s. The two tract homes had identical floor plans, but flip-flopped. In the excitement of seeing her while getting his mail, he’d for got ten about the research he’d been doing on the Internet.
“What about what I was doing?” he asked.
“You were reading up on parenting,” she accused.
“And why would you think that?”
“I can read. I saw the sites you were searching. ‘Spare the Rod, Spoil the Child.’ ‘Discipline and Love’—not necessarily in that order—‘A Parent’s Tools.’ ‘Dads and Daughters—A Special Bond.’ It doesn’t take a mental giant to figure out what you’re up to.”
He rubbed a hand across the back of his neck. “Guilty as charged.”
She held her slice of pizza and stopped halfway to her mouth. “To research parenting techniques on the Internet. How sweet is that? Guilty is not the word I would choose. Something tells me when you discovered computers you found a friend. And you’re pumping him for information. I think it’s great.”
“I’m not sure whether to say thank you, or if them’s fightin’ words.” He shrugged to hide his pleasure at her praise. “I feel like I’ve walked into a movie that has already started and I’m playing catch-up.”
“Oh, Jack—”
He reached across the table and touched her hand. Electricity zinged up his arm and he quickly pulled back. “It was just an observation, not a criticism.”
“You’re not angry?” she asked, an intense expression on her face, as if his answer meant a lot to her.
“Not now.”
She brushed a napkin across her impossibly lush lips. “How could I have ever thought you were dangerous?”
“Because I am.”
She made a sound that was an awful lot like an un-lady like snort. “About as dangerous as a teddy bear. Somehow I’m going to find a way to convince you of that.”
“Good luck. In polite society, I’m a hazard.”
“The only hazard I can see,” she said, chewing thought fully, “is to my heart.”
“What?”
She went completely still, then swallowed hard, as if she’d bitten off more than she could chew. “What I meant was, and this isn’t an easy thing to admit—”
“Go on,” he prodded, his own heart racing as if he’d just run a 10K. Was she saying what he thought? Or were his social skills as non ex is tent as he believed?
“That fact is—”
“What, Maggie? Spit it out.”
“It’s not very attractive of me. And I’m not very proud of the feeling.”
“C’mon. This is me.”
“Yeah. You. The father Faith has just found. The truth is I’m jealous of you and your relationship with her.”
He let out the breath he hadn’t realized he was holding. Why would he have thought she was going to say her heart was in danger from him? Because she cared about him? Instead of resigning his commission in the army, he should have been drummed out on a Section Eight—mental problems. “You’re joking.”
“I wish I were. For the past week I’ve hardly seen her. She wants to spend every waking moment with you.”
“Have I thanked you for letting her spend as much time with me as you have?”
“Yes. And I feel the need to confess that if you hadn’t invited me for pizza, I’d have been knocking on your door, anyway. She forgot her baseball mitt.”
“I could have taken the glove to her at camp.”
“I know. That’s my point. I needed her to need me.” She sighed. “In defense of my shallowness I feel compelled to point out that since she was born, I’ve been everything to her. And now here you are.”
This time he couldn’t help it. He grinned from ear to ear. “I’m not sure whether to say thank you or ‘I’m sorry’ and ‘It won’t happen again.’”
“I’m not asking you to do either. This is my problem. I need to deal with it. Suddenly I feel as if I don’t fit anywhere. On top of that, I’m competing with a hero.”
“I think we covered this already. I’m no hero.”
“As far as Faith is concerned you are. You can do no wrong. In fact she’s convinced you’re going to propose to me.”
“Marriage?” Jack almost choked on his tea. He swallowed and coughed, then said, “She is?”
Maggie nodded, then pointed a warning finger at him. “Don’t even think about it.”
“Why would I?”
Other than the obvious reasons that she was gorgeous, gutsy and he couldn’t get her out of his mind. But he had no intention of inflicting himself on Maggie and Faith, except in an auxiliary capacity. They deserved a better man than him in their lives.
“You would because you’re a good man. Noble.” She wagged a finger at him. “You’ve got to watch that. Just because we share a child doesn’t mean we have to get married. Two wrongs don’t make a right.”
“It isn’t wrong if two people love each other.” Whoa. For a guy with no heart, he had a hell of a nerve spouting relationship counsel.
“True. But that’s the only reason for getting married. When you think about it, we hardly know each other. We’ve been apart longer than we’ve ever been together. The sequence of events in our lives is completely out of whack. It wouldn’t work.”
Jack wanted to argue that she was wrong. If they wanted it badly enough, they could make it work. Then he remembered who he was and the things he’d done and realized he had no business arguing anything. He would consider himself lucky if he could spend time with his daughter and not have any of the dirtiness that was his life rub off on her.
“Why haven’t you ever married?” he asked. “Because of Faith?”
“Partly,” she admitted. “No one can love her the way I—” shyly she met his gaze “—I mean, you and I—no one can love her that way. I didn’t want to trap her in a situation she had no control over.” She picked at her pizza crust. “Do you believe in soul mates?” she asked, studying him.
“I don’t know—”
She laughed at him. “You could look more un comfort able, but I’m not sure how. The other reason I never took the plunge is that I haven’t met anyone who felt like—”
“What?” he asked, the blood pounding through his veins. He wanted her to say she hadn’t met anyone like him.
Maggie took a deep breath, horrified at what she’d almost revealed. She’d almost said she hadn’t met anyone like him. True, he was the only man who had ever touched her soul. It was also too true that she had a bad feeling he was the only one who ever could touch her, at least the way he had ten years ago. But now she sensed he wouldn’t reach out again. Or worse, believed he couldn’t.
“Tell me again why you never told anyone I’m Faith’s father.”
She shrugged. “I over heard your father bragging about you. He said you’d found your niche in the army and were doing great. I didn’t want to blow that for you.”
“So you kept quiet and went through child birth and raising Faith alone. And did a damn fine job.”
“I had my parents.”
“The same ones you kept a secret from. To protect me. Who’s really the hero, Maggie?”
The intense expression in his vivid blue eyes took her breath away. “I was scared to death. But I just did what I had to.” The words were barely more than a whisper past the lump in her throat and her hammering heart.
“Isn’t that what a hero does? What he—or she—has to do in spite of the fear?”
“She’s my child. I love her. It’s not a big deal.”
“You’re wrong. It is a big deal. And I—”
“What?” she prompted, hoping.
“I admire you very much,” he finished.
That was almost as good as love. Right? It wasn’t the can’t-wait-to-see-you, I-hurt-when-I’m-not-with-you kind of feelings they’d had when they were teenagers. But it was something.
She had no right to wish or to expect anything from him—not for herself. She hadn’t wanted to force him into that ten years ago. And she still felt the same way. Somehow she would have to find the courage to reconcile herself to the reality of her situation.
She’d come to terms with the fact that she’d created reasons to hold back the truth from him. It was one thing for him to leave after high school, to discover and build a new life. It was something else for him to stay in Destiny and turn his back on her because he just couldn’t care about her the way she wanted him to. That was just too pitiful. Not a good enough reason to withhold the truth, but she’d already admitted to him that she was shallow. She didn’t have to confess this out loud, too, did she?
She stood. “Thanks for the pizza, Jack. It’s getting late and I have to get back to the shop. If you could get Faith’s mitt for me, I’ll run it over to her at camp.”
He stood, too. “Are you sure you don’t want me to do that?”
“No. I have to go out anyway.”
He nodded. “Okay.”
He disappeared and returned several moments later with the baseball glove. “Here.”
She took it, care fully avoiding the touch of his warm, strong fingers. “Thanks. By the way, Mr. Internet,” she said. “I noticed that the computer store in town is up for sale.”
“Oh?”
She nodded. “Have you figured out yet what you want to be when you grow up?”
“Meaning I have too much time on my hands since leaving the military?”
&nb
sp; “If the combat boot fits…” She shrugged. “Anyway, I thought you might be interested. See you later.”
“I hope so.”
Hope. She turned quickly away before he could see tears in her eyes that she couldn’t control. Her hopes were so much bigger than all those years ago yet so in credibly hopeless. Her heart hurt just thinking about it.
Several days later Maggie’s heart ache hadn’t improved. If anything, she was going downhill fast and couldn’t seem to slow her descent. Glancing out in her backyard, the reason for her decline played catch with her—correction, their—daughter. Faith had insisted her father come over for dinner. Other than the danger to her own heart, Maggie couldn’t come up with an excuse to say no. He’d joined them for hamburgers, even done the grilling as if he’d spent the past ten years setting domestic standards in the suburbs.
Instead of joining them in the yard, which Maggie had been sorely tempted to do, she was cleaning the kitchen. And the whole quirky scene felt like something out of a whacked-out sitcom.
Jack laughed at something Faith said, and Maggie glanced over her shoulder and out the screen door. The smile on his face made her want to march right out there and wrap her arms around his waist, snuggling against his rather impressive chest. His blue eyes and devilish grin made her feel as if he’d tossed a lasso around her and was tugging her toward him.
Turning away from the tempting sight, she sprinkled cleanser in her sink and started to scrub as if her life depended on perfectly pristine porcelain. When there was nothing left to cleanse, mop, scour, sweep or wash, she was forced to find something else to keep her indoors and away from the call to danger. She and Jack shared a child, but that didn’t mean they would share a life—as in a man/woman sort of thing. Because of Faith she was forced to see him. But that didn’t mean she could hang out with them, not if she wanted to keep what was left of her heart in one functional piece.
She poured herself an iced tea and grabbed the newspaper, spreading it out on the table. Outside, she could hear Faith talking. Father and daughter had abandoned their game of catch and were sitting side by side on the glider swing on the patio, in her direct line of vision. Tomorrow Maggie planned to move the swing up against the house where she couldn’t see it. Just in case this after-dinner-hanging-out-time became a tradition.
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