The Daughter He Wanted

by Kristina Knight

  “Are you sure? I’ve made it through tired days before.”

  Alex took off the apron and held up his hand. “Scout’s honor. I have nothing else going on today. Get some rest. I don’t want to see you back down here before noon.”

  Paige stepped onto the bottom step but her foot slipped and she landed smack against Alex’s shoulder again with an “Oof.”

  He scooped her up in his arms and started upstairs.

  “I’m fine,” Paige protested but he just kept going up, up, up, forcing her to clamp her arms around his divine shoulders. Their faces were mere inches apart and the part of her body held firmly against his muscles sizzled once more. Paige swallowed. At the top of the stairs Alex stopped.

  “Which way?”

  It took Paige a second to understand what he meant and then she pointed down the hall to her bedroom. “I can walk.”

  He didn’t listen and Paige didn’t push. She was too tired and it felt too good to be in his arms, even after that embarrassing slip on the steps. They crossed the threshold to her room and Alex put her down and then sat beside her on the soft pink-and-brown comforter. He reached over and pushed a lock of hair off her forehead.

  Paige was caught by his gaze for a long moment before finding her voice. “Thank you for breakfast.”

  “My pleasure.” His voice was low in the room. “Thanks for calling me yesterday. It...meant a lot.” He trailed his index finger along her hairline. Paige didn’t push him away. She was caught, mesmerized by his gaze. Fascinated once more by his full lips and the little scar at the corner of his mouth.

  “Alex.”

  He rested his hand against the mattress and Paige pushed her back against the headboard. “Paige.”

  “Th-thank you, for staying.”

  Paige didn’t know if she swayed forward or if he leaned in but in the next moment his lips were against hers, moving slowly. Tasting, as if she might be the sweetest fruit. Paige reached her hands to his neck, feeling the smooth skin there and playing with the hair at the back of his head. She didn’t care. Not about his motives or what might happen down the road. For this moment she only wanted to feel him against her. To enjoy a moment when she was Paige and not also Kaylie’s mom.

  She refused to feel guilty about that, and slanted her lips more fully against his, opening for him. This was so much more combustible than the kiss at the grocery store. Alex’s tongue slipped inside her mouth and Paige inched forward, wanting more.

  Maybe it was more to the point that she was tired of insisting she didn’t want or care about him. She did. A lot. Cared about the man he seemed to be and the way she felt when he was around. The way he seemed to complete their family unit, but more than that, the way he made it okay to be a woman as well as a mom.

  Alex cupped his hand around her head and pulled gently on her ponytail, slipping her hair from the band. His tongue played against hers for a long moment and then he pulled back.

  He sighed and rested his forehead against hers. “I shouldn’t—”

  Paige shook her head and pressed her finger against his full lips.

  “Don’t. Don’t say you shouldn’t have kissed me. I leaned in, the same as you. I’m tired but I’m still in control of who I do or don’t kiss.”

  Alex pressed a swift kiss to her forehead and stood.

  Not wanting him to see just how affected by the kiss she was, Paige waved her hand toward the door. “Now get out of here so I can have that nap.”

  And regain a little equilibrium. God knew, she was going to need it.

  * * *

  ALEX COULD SENSE her presence as she stepped off the last step and came into the living room. She had changed from the navy-and-green tracksuit and tee to a black-and-pink version. No shoes on her feet, so he could see her pretty purple-painted toes. That mass of hair was loose around her shoulders and Alex closed his eyes, remembering how she’d looked in her room when he’d kissed her.

  He pushed the thought away. Kaylie was playing the game on her tablet—again—and Alex was putting together peanut butter sandwiches for lunch. It felt incredibly weird and yet right to be in Paige’s kitchen, talking with Kaylie and waiting for Paige.

  But he shouldn’t have kissed her, not when she was exhausted. He would apologize once Kaylie was distracted with lunch.

  He held up a sandwich. “Want one?”

  “With fluff, please.” Paige nodded and then poured a cup of coffee. “Thank you. For filling in last night and for staying this morning. I actually feel more or less human now.” She sipped and closed her eyes. “You didn’t have to do any of it, so thank you.”

  Okay, so apparently they weren’t going to talk about the kiss. Just as well with Kaylie in the room.

  Alex called Kaylie over for her sandwich, and once she was settled on the couch with the game and lunch he said, “I was happy to do it. It gave me some time to hang with Kaylie, see how things work when you’re not just a friend at lunch but the person in charge.”

  “Sometimes being in charge isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.” There was a note in her voice, something he couldn’t quite name that unsettled him.

  “Maybe. And maybe the newness is still coloring my vision, but even the minor meltdown she had over her game wasn’t that terrible.”

  “Minor meltdown?”

  “You gave her five minutes, she wanted to finish her game and then she wanted to get three stars.” Paige nodded, as if she knew exactly what he was talking about. Because she’d experienced it firsthand, no doubt. Alex took a water bottle from the fridge and drank. “How do you do it?”

  “Do what?” She watched him over the mug as if she was waiting for something. Alex wondered what that something was.

  “Make it look so easy. I’m exhausted after eighteen hours. You’ve been doing this for four years. She’s a happy, healthy, smart kid. She listens, and she wants things her way but she doesn’t flip out when things don’t go the way she wants. How do you do it?”

  Paige sat down, relief evident on her face. “I made a choice, and promised myself I wouldn’t make the same mistakes my parents did. And, you know, single motherhood doesn’t leave a lot of alternatives to doing it all yourself.” She laughed but the sound was slightly brittle.

  “It can’t be easy.”

  “I just... My whole life I’ve been told what to do and how to do it and no matter what I did—or didn’t do—it was never enough.” Her eyes rounded and Paige put her hand over her mouth. “I didn’t mean to say that. I make them sound so terrible.”

  “I’ve met them, remember? The perfect parents from The Brady Bunch, they aren’t. So how did you turn out to be so Marcia?”

  Paige shook her head. “Oh, no. Marcia was perfect. I’m so not Marcia.” She chewed on her lower lip for a moment as if she wasn’t quite sure what to say. “They weren’t abusive, and maybe they didn’t know how to add a child to their lives and still be the people they wanted to be. So I was shuffled around and trotted out for family photos or big university luncheons. I promised myself on that first visit to the clinic that if I became pregnant I wouldn’t do to my kid what was done to me. I’d listen and I’d parent but she would know why things happened. Why bedtime is at seven and why we eat vegetables as well as fruit. My child would know he or she was wanted and not just an accepted responsibility.”

  “You make it sound so simple.”

  “Anything but. And she doesn’t always like my explanations or rules, but we get through.” Paige shook her head and then leaned her chin into the palm of her hand. Her hair swished forward and a lock fell across her face. “At the end of the day, no matter what else has happened, it’s just me and her and a bedtime story. Hugs and kisses. So even if things didn’t go her way, she knows that I love her. I have to believe that’s been enough.” She waited a beat. “These questions, is this your way of telling me you don’t want to move forward?”

  He caught the note that time: wariness. That he might walk away or that he might stick around. H
e studied her face as he said, “Not even close. I want more, and I hope that doesn’t freak you out.” There it was. A flash of relief. Alex let out the breath he’d been holding.

  “Will it freak you out if I say it freaks me out?”

  Her green eyes were wide and open, a stream of emotions running through them. Fear and excitement and nerves and something else he couldn’t quite put his finger on. He had a feeling the same emotions were showing on his face. “Maybe a little. Maybe freaking out isn’t all that bad in this particular situation. We seem to take parenting differently. You’re calm and encouraging where I’m intense and probably a little loud. That’s going to be weird, at least for a while.” He looked past her to the little girl on the sofa happily blowing up cartoon monkeys and stick houses. “I’m sorry I kissed you that way, upstairs. I wanted to, but you were tired and I should have—”

  She held up her hand. “I already told you not to apologize about that. I kissed you as much as you kissed me. And I hear even married couples have different approaches to parenting now and again. You might even have disagreed with your wife.”

  Alex rolled that thought around in his head for a moment. It was Dee who’d picked out the parenting book, just like she’d picked out those ridiculous rooster tiles that he could only now admit he didn’t like. Dee who was the cheerleader in high school. He’d mentally put Dee on the swimming bench beside him the other night and admitted she would have reacted the same way Paige had when Kaylie went under.

  Paige pushed away from the counter. “I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have mentioned...her.”

  Alex was quick to reach out to her. She held his hand for a split second and continued across the kitchen to pour tea into a glass. “No, it’s okay. She isn’t an off-limits subject, I just realized I’ve been carrying around conversations she and I had about potential future children as some kind of gospel truth when they were just conversations. Talking about what might happen or how we might approach a situation.” She watched him closely as he talked. How did he make her understand? “Like you said at that first barbecue, there are theories and then there is the reality of being in the middle of a meltdown when every rule or idea you thought you had is out the window.”

  Paige stood with her back to the counter. “We don’t have to always agree. We just have to be able to talk. About her. About whatever might be happening between us.” She motioned her hand between them. Alex mimicked her stance against the other counter, shoving his hands into his pockets once more because it seemed the only way to keep them from reaching for her. And what Paige needed now wasn’t physical connection.

  “I’m not sorry I kissed you, and I’d like to do it again sometime when you aren’t exhausted and half asleep.” He hooked his thumb toward the living room. “I don’t know how we do this without disrupting her life, at least a little bit.”

  “And yours.” Her voice was quiet in the kitchen, the wariness back in her expressive green eyes. “You’re going from widower to father and whatever else this is in the span of a little more than a week.”

  “And you want to know if I’ll feel the same in another month or two or a year?” Hell, so did he. Because as much as he liked being with Paige and Kaylie, when he went back to the house in Park Hills he wasn’t alone. Dee was still there, in the kitchen she decorated and the furnishings she chose. In the empty flower beds and the boxes in the attic he hadn’t been able to give away. Alex swallowed. But even in Dee’s house he could see Paige, sometimes more clearly than he could see his wife. That scared the bejesus out of him.

  What happened when he couldn’t see or hear Dee at all any longer? Would Paige and Kaylie completely overshadow the good years that had come before them?

  Part of him hoped they would, because when they were around the crushing grief he’d felt for the past four years wasn’t there. Part of him wanted to keep Dee alive, as alive as she had been on the day that picture was taken at the lake. Because those days were real. Those days mattered.

  “I can’t tell you how I’ll feel in a week or a month or ten years from now. I can tell you that right now this scares me. I’ve been Dee’s boyfriend, husband and now widower for almost half my life. I’m not sure what it means that I’m moving away from that man, away from her.” He took a breath and charged forward because if he didn’t say this, all of this, now, he might not say it. Ever. “But I like the man I am with you and Kaylie more than when I’m Alex-the-Widower. I want to be more than him. If that’s all right with you.”

  Paige gulped and he watched the muscles in her neck work for a long moment. “I like the woman I am with you, more than I’ve liked myself in a long, long time.”

  “Then maybe that will be enough,” he said, the hopeful note in his voice sounding high and unlike him.

  “At the end of the day, no matter what happens with us, I’ll be here and she will also have you. We have to trust it will be enough.” Paige reached across the open space, tucking her hand in his. “Are you doing anything today?”

  Alex hesitated. Saturday was a day he usually spent with Dee’s parents, but just last week John told him to take some time. It would be harder on Sue, but it was already past noon. She wouldn’t expect him so late.

  Somehow that didn’t make him feel better. A trickle of guilt pressed against his shoulders. Sue and John needed him, needed to be listened to and understood. Paige caught his hesitation and plunged forward.

  “It’s okay. I want to drop some chicken soup off for Alison, and I thought we could take Kaylie to the park for the afternoon. October has been warm so far, but the cold weather can’t be far away.” Paige gathered the dishes from the counter. “I’ve held you up long enough. You should go, get started on your weekend plans or—”

  “The park sounds great,” Alex interrupted. Before another wave of guilt could crash down on him, he continued. “I didn’t have anything planned but grocery shopping. I hate grocery shopping.”

  She turned back to him, relief evident on her face. Like he might have passed a test of some sort. No, that was wrong. Paige wasn’t the type to test. She was open and honest. The kind of woman who spoke her mind and expected everyone else to do the same. Maybe he should tell her about John and Sue rather than lying about groceries.

  Paige sent Kaylie upstairs to grab shoes and a jacket and then followed so she could change. Alex didn’t know why she needed to. She looked more than fine to him in those black yoga pants and the stretchy tee with her feet bare and her hair loose around her shoulders.

  No, he didn’t need to tell her about Deanna’s parents. They were his responsibility, not hers. And today was their first full day as a family. Not a lunch or a dinner and no Alison or Tuck to provide that friendly barrier.

  This was not the time to rock the boat. This was the time to enjoy the rolling waves and sunshine pouring down from the sky.

  * * *

  PAIGE LEANED AGAINST the headboard as she turned another page in the book. Tonight she and Kaylie were reading Dr. Seuss. Kaylie pointed to the words on the page as she read the last line. Paige squeezed her close and then got up to place the book on the shelf.

  “I had fun today, Mama,” she said with a yawn.

  “Me, too. Prayers, please.” She leaned her shoulder against the doorjamb and listened as the little girl said her prayers. “Good night, sweetpea,” she said and turned off the overhead light. Kaylie pushed a button and circling stars filled the darkened room from the plush night-light on the bed.

  “’Night, Mama.” She yawned again and settled farther into her pillows. “Tell Alex good-night for me, too.”

  Paige closed the door softly and drew in a slow breath. Tell Alex good-night. Why was she playing with fire like this? She leaned against the door and closed her eyes. He seemed like such a good guy but there were so many things she didn’t know. So many things she wanted to know. So many reasons to not go down this path. She looked at the closed door beside her. So many reasons to continue on this path, too.

 
Because today seemed like a preview of what life might be like if she allowed Alex all the way in. Playing with Kaylie in the park. Exchanging a few heated looks over peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Knowing there was someone downstairs waiting for her, if she’d just start walking. Under every friendly smile from Alex and beneath each incidental touch Paige felt more than friendship. More than what she imagined mere coparents felt for one another. That tug of attraction she’d been fighting for the past two weeks was stronger than she realized and while Alex was busy talking and laughing with Kaylie, Paige was busy watching him. Feeling his eyes on her from time to time and wondering what it meant.

  Okay, so not wondering as much as getting butterflies in her stomach because she knew when a man was interested. Alex hadn’t been subtle. He also wasn’t pushy. When she said no to a date he backed off. Still, she could feel him watching her when they were together and the feeling was just a little bit addictive.

  It made it hard for her to keep her head and think about Kaylie, put her daughter’s needs before her own. Maybe that wasn’t such a bad thing. She put her fingers to her lips, remembering the feel of him against her that morning.

  She wanted to do more than put her arms around his neck and hang on. God, she was jumping in too fast. They barely knew one another. She’d kissed him. He’d kissed her.

  She wanted to kiss him again.

  Yes, he’d dropped everything to be a fill-in babysitter the night before, made sure she got a nap this morning and then spent the rest of the day playing house.

  No, not playing house. It was more than that. More than a man filling a few boring hours with a kid and her mom. It was...

  Paige couldn’t name it exactly so she settled for “more” and pushed away from the wall. She could stand up here in the hall all night or she could go downstairs and have a relevant, succinct conversation about what this was. She walked through the kitchen and onto the back deck where Alex sat on a lawn chair before a low blaze in the fire pit. The sharp ends of three skewers were in the flames, melting off the last remnants of marshmallow from the s’mores they’d made after dinner. He lifted his beer and drank, the movement sure. Strong. Paige forgot to breathe for a moment as she watched him.