The Daughter He Wanted

by Kristina Knight

  Paige went over the instructions for dinner and bedtime with the high school girl who babysat Kaylie on the rare evenings Paige had to work late. The two settled into the couch with the tablet and a new game. She looked out the window again.

  No blue pickup parked in front of her house.

  The grandmother clock in the living room chimed the half hour. Should she text? Call? It didn’t seem like Alex to be this late.

  She wiped her palms on the linen legs of her trousers and tucked her hair behind her ears for at least the twentieth time. Maybe she should pull it back...

  Paige picked up the phone and then put it back down. She would not call and demand to know where he was, it was silly.

  People were late all the time. A honk sounded at the curb and she hurried to the window. Alex.

  He jogged up the walk and rang the bell, an apologetic look on his face.

  Paige put on her best Disappointed Teacher expression and teasingly said, “You’re late.” Her stomach growled and Alex grinned.

  “You’re going to love dinner.” He crooked his arm and Paige slid hers through. “I’m sorry,” he said as he handed her into the truck. “Paperwork.”

  “No problem, I was only joking.” She hadn’t been about to melt down, not at all. Just a friendly joke to set the mood. Alex seemed to buy the lie. He slid behind the wheel and drove them out of town. “Are you and Tuck still working on end-of-the-season spreadsheets?”

  He cut a glance in her direction. “How did you know what we were working on?”

  “I have my mysterious ways.”

  “Tuck told Alison?”

  “So maybe my ways aren’t so mysterious. At least she didn’t have a private detective watching you.” Alex laughed at that. “What do spreadsheets have to do with rangering?”

  Alex explained about visitor numbers and funding, making his job sound much more regimented than the hiking, suntanning and fishing he’d told her about before. She knew he’d only kidded her about the tanning, but this part of his job seemed almost...clerical. It didn’t fit with the vibrant, outdoor guy she’d come to know.

  “We used to have a secretary who took care of all that while we did the ranger thing. Budget cuts.” He shrugged. “At least it puts my accounting background to good use.” He pulled onto the interstate road.

  “Where are we going?”

  “St. Louis.”

  “But it’s a Wednesday.” She had school in the morning, an alarm that would sound by six so she could wrangle Kaylie out of bed and get cereal into her tummy before the mad rush to the elementary school. The thought of spending a long evening with Alex was nice, though. An entire evening of adult conversation, some light flirting. Maybe another kiss or two.

  She could always double up on the coffee and go to bed at the same time as Kaylie the following evening.

  “And a date is a date no matter what evening it falls on. I thought about taking you to the Low Bar or maybe the Chicken Hut in Farmington.” There was something else in his voice, some emotion she couldn’t quite put her finger on, but that made her think tonight wasn’t just a flirting, kissing, first-date kind of thing. Then that note was gone and he was just Alex. “But seeing as we’re adults with a kid and all, I thought real food and atmosphere were called for.”

  Paige’s belly did a little flip. Strange note in his voice or not, the way his voice rumbled over the word atmosphere pushed her worries to the back of her mind. “And we’re going to find that atmosphere at...”

  Alex grinned. “You’ll see in about forty minutes. How was school today?”

  He kept her talking and Paige was grateful. The more she talked the less nervous she was about what they were doing. Going out. On a date. Kaylie had a babysitter, and Alex hadn’t yet mentioned their daughter. This was definitely a first date. Which was why the weird anticipation/nervous energy she felt was so off. She’d been on her share of first dates. Maybe not any with these kinds of implications, but in the grand scheme of things a first date was just that and if things didn’t work out...

  No, she was not going there. She was staying in the present and thinking about tonight. Not tomorrow or the next day or ten years from now. It was a beautiful Wednesday evening in October and she was twenty-nine for another ten days. That was enough.

  As they drove along the interstate the changing leaves caught Paige’s attention. She pulled out her phone to take a couple of pictures. They weren’t great but she could work with them for a school project with her older students or maybe come up with a finger-painting plan for the kindergartners.

  Traffic slowed as they drove closer to the city, and as they topped a rise Paige drew in a breath. St. Louis at night was breathtaking, the glowing streetlights like the intricate string of fairy lights she’d hung in Kaylie’s bedroom last year. A million cities around the world probably looked just the same, but for her St. Louis was the best. Brilliant spotlights lit up the Arch in the distance and as they crossed over into downtown she saw two old paddle wheel boats carrying diners up and down the Missouri River.

  Of all the places her parents had taken her on vacations, and even when she’d been away at boarding school nearby, St. Louis was the place she thought of when life got to be too much. She rolled down her window just a bit and under the smell of car exhaust she smelled the grass and the river.

  Fall in Missouri. It was home.

  Alex pulled to a stop before a small bistro near the Arch, handed his keys to the valet and helped Paige from the truck. A hostess in a smart black dress showed them to a table overlooking the river. She had been to nicer places, primarily as a tagalong with her parents, but the combination of view, lighting and Alex paled the other places.

  “This is too much.” Her eyes widened. She hadn’t meant to say that aloud, but the words didn’t seem to faze Alex.

  He looked over the menu, chose a wine and when the hostess disappeared said, “I promised you atmosphere.”

  “A promise of atmosphere doesn’t mean you have to waste an entire paycheck on one dinner.” But it was certainly a lovely way to spend an evening. She could see lights from the river barges and steamboats every so often, and the Arch to her left. Hushed conversations swirled around them, none close enough to hear, but loud enough to drown out the nerves threatening to take her under once more.

  “So, here’s how I see this evening playing out,” Alex said, his voice serious and his hands clasped on the crisp linen tablecloth. “We’re going to have a nice dinner and enjoy this great view. Then we’ll turn into pumpkins tomorrow when you go back to elementary school and I hike around the park.” That wicked grin glinted in the soft light and Paige chuckled.

  “Is this your way of saying, ‘Enjoy the moment, Paige’?” she asked.

  “It is.”

  The waitress filled their glasses. Alex held his up. “What do you say?”

  Paige waited until she left and then lifted her glass. “I say you forgot one thing we’re going to do tonight.”

  “Really?”

  She nodded. “You remembered dinner and the great view. You didn’t say anything about a walk along the river.”

  “I thought that was implied.”

  “I don’t like implications. I like things to be spelled out. Teacher and mom, remember?”

  “Then here’s to a night filled with atmosphere, good food and a walk. And since you like things spelled out, a good-night kiss.” Alex clinked his glass against hers.

  They placed their orders. Paige wasn’t sure what to say. The old Paige would flirt, keep that kiss conversation going. Maybe play a little footsie under the table. She hadn’t been on a date, not with anyone she was this attracted to, since she’d locked the old Paige in a box and shoved her under the bed. Alex didn’t seem to mind the silence. He looked out the window at the steamboats on the river as if they fascinated him.

  He was an outdoors kind of guy. Maybe they did. Why not find out?

  “What is it that you do? You know, when you aren’
t hiking and suntanning and filling in spreadsheets?”

  “I make a killer mac and cheese. The odd last-minute babysitting gig.”

  She grinned and sipped the wine. “I’m serious. This is a date. Dates are when people get to know one another. What is it that you do?”

  Alex shifted in his chair. “I play basketball, although that used to be a lot more fun than it is now. Bad knee. Tuck keeps asking me to join the Low Bar Bowling League with him but I’m pretty sure joining that league means I have to grow a mullet, so I’ve avoided it so far.”

  “A mullet is not a good look. Good idea on the avoidance.”

  He grinned. “I thought so.”

  “What else?” Paige crossed her legs under the table and her toes curled when they lightly brushed against his khakis.

  “I don’t know. I work, I mow the lawn. Nothing incredibly special.”

  “Why not something special?” He made her curious, not just because he was holding back. She could see him measuring his words, and that was okay. First date, she reminded herself. And he likely hadn’t been on one in longer than she had. Mostly he made her curious because beneath the laid-back ranger facade she knew there was more to him. A man didn’t just go against family tradition or turn down an accounting degree to hike the Missouri wilderness.

  “Hiking is kind of that thing for me. When I’m out there, even though I’m on the job, it isn’t work. It’s me and nature. I guess that’s all I need.”

  “I’ve never been much for hiking. Or anything that leads to sweaty, smelly clothes at the end of the day.”

  “Employ a yard boy, do you?”

  She fluttered her eyelashes at him and executed her best Deep South accent. “As any Southern woman with breeding would.”

  Alex’s laugh was deep and rumbly and did funny things to the tiny hairs at the nape of her neck. Her skin seemed to prickle and she couldn’t resist leaning across the table.

  “Tell me about your favorite place to hike.”

  He was quiet for a long moment. “At the far end of St. Francois Park there is an overlook. You can climb to the top and it’s almost like you could touch the sky. I know full-on mountain ranges are a lot taller, but the county spreads out below with some of the old quarry hills glinting in the sun, tall grasses blowing. In the summer you can see the corn and wheat fields in the distance. Maybe catch a cloud of dust from a tractor. It’s so quiet that if a chipmunk moves in the trees you can hear it, and even if you go there alone, you’re surrounded by life.”

  “That sounds lovely.” Paige twirled her glass by the stem. She was surrounded by her students all day and had Kaylie at home in the evening hours. She thanked her lucky stars to have a friend like Alison in her corner. Still, there were times she felt totally and utterly alone. Like she might be the only single twenty-nine-year-old in St. Francois County. “That picture you sent me, of the barn, is it near there?”

  He shook his head. “It’s at the corner of the property so I don’t get there as often as I’d like. We stay on the main trails for the most part because those are the most trafficked areas.” He leaned in to the table. “And what is it you do? When you aren’t teaching art to ruffians in the public school system, I mean.”

  Paige chuckled. Her mother hadn’t called her students ruffians but the implication was clear in every conversation at every lunch and dinner: Paige was wasting her time teaching art. She should be creating it. Dot couldn’t see that teaching her students was creating, and that painting for her daughter or friends was enough for Paige. The way Alex said it made the words okay. Like it was their joke and that he understood teaching art was the better use of her time. He got it.

  “My mother is pretty transparent, isn’t she? She means well, but she’s just never understood that her dreams for me aren’t my dreams for myself. I always thought she’d come around. So far she hasn’t.” Sometimes Paige wondered if her mother ever would come around. If her father would ever be even a shadow of the TV dads she’d wished for growing up. She was too old for wishes but as the first star twinkled through the city lights, she considered wishing one more time.

  She changed her mind and wished instead for another night like this one. Talking with Alex. Flirting a little. Getting to know him. Changing her life, once more, in a way that would bring her what she wanted: a family.

  “It kind of sucks when our parents don’t live up to our expectations, doesn’t it?”

  More than sucked, even for a woman who was about to turn thirty. “This is a date, though. Let’s not get all maudlin over my poor-little-rich-girl childhood.”

  Alex was quiet for a moment, like he wanted to say something else. There was an emotion on his face that she couldn’t decipher and then it was gone.

  “What is your dream? Other than teaching art and being one hell of a single mom?”

  “I do juggle those hats well, don’t I?” Paige finished the wine and Alex topped her glass off once more. “I want to paint a mural. At the school, I think. Something that takes up an entire wall, and I want the kids to help. Kind of put their own stamp on the school.”

  “Not fair, that’s a work-related dream.”

  She lifted a shoulder. “What can I say? My work is my passion.”

  “Is any of your reluctance to send something to that art guy a reflex against your mother’s dreams?”

  “Not fair, we’re not talking about my parents, remember?”

  “I’m not asking why your mother is so desperate to see one of your paintings at the St. Louis Museum of Art. I’m asking why you aren’t.”

  “I didn’t say I don’t want that.” She did. A little corner of her heart wished she were good enough, not for her mother’s sake. For her own. Because when she painted she got lost in the moment, in the act of creating. Seeing other people get lost in her work would be...amazing, she decided.

  “You didn’t say you do.”

  Paige fiddled with the linen napkin in her lap for a moment. She straightened her shoulders and looked into Alex’s eyes. “Because I’m not good enough. And I don’t want some favor to my mother to be the reason people wonder why an average painting of a daisy is in a gallery filled with Monets and Baroccis.”

  “I’m no critic, but it didn’t seem average to me.”

  She offered a smile, hoping that and the dim lighting would hide the pain she felt from her eyes. “And my paintings aren’t average to me, but I’m not foolish enough to think I’m on par with any of the masters. My mother, on the other hand, doesn’t care if I have the actual talent as long as she can lay some sort of claim to a piece of displayed art in a major museum. For a long time I played along with her game. Then I decided it was time to stop playing and go after what I really wanted.”

  “And what is that?”

  “A real life. With real friends. The kind of life that’s filled with memories as vivid as the clips they show on those sitcom flashback episodes. That’s my dream. You know, along with that mural at the school.”

  Alex lifted his glass again. “To dreaming, then.”

  Their dinners arrived and for a short while neither spoke as they enjoyed the meal. Finally Alex said, “Did you really compete for Miss Missouri in college?”

  “Who—who told you that?”

  “I had you investigated,” he joked.

  “Alison told Tuck and Tuck told you.” Paige’s face burned. She was going to kill her friend. Friends didn’t have pillow talk about their friends with their boyfriends. But there was no going back and erasing that colossal mistake. “I did. And I played the water glasses as my talent.”

  Alex choked on his drink. “You’re kidding, right?”

  “It was that or paint something live and, well, that first day you saw what I’m like when I paint. I’d have killed my formal gown with splatters.”

  “How do you play water glasses?”

  Paige lined up the glasses on the table—two filled with wine and two filled with water, all at different levels—and pushed her finger
around the rim. A low hum sounded from the fullest glass, and when she switched to the water glass with barely a sip left, the low hum changed to a higher octave.

  Alex clapped softly. “Where did you learn to do that?”

  “Boring dinner party with Hank and Dot when I was nine. Mother grounded me for a week.”

  “So you stopped?”

  Paige shook her head. “I played them louder. Ended up being a four-week sentence.”

  “I guess now I know where Kaylie gets her stubborn streak.”

  “Yep, comes by it naturally,” Paige said proudly.

  Alex signaled the waiter and paid the check but instead of getting into the truck, he took Paige’s hand and started toward the walk along the river. Fairy lights hung low from tree branches and spotlights on the Arch were bright in the night sky. Although the evening was warm, only a few other pedestrians walked with them. Alex led them up the stairs to the Arch, where they circled and then started back along the path to the restaurant. This time the silence didn’t bother Paige. She just enjoyed the sounds of the night and the nearness of Alex.

  The last of the steamboats docked and Alex paused so they could watch the crew set the ropes and get the walkway ready for passengers. He pulled Paige to his side and they continued on to a quiet area filled with trees and a few park benches.

  “I was thinking about Sunday and the weekly barbecue,” Paige said.

  “I’m uninvited already?”

  She poked him in the ribs as they walked. “I was thinking Tuck and Alison should have some alone time. My parents don’t know about all this yet, but they probably should. You know, they were distant and cold and they still want to run my life, but it isn’t fair to them. Not knowing about your relationship with Kaylie. So what if we make it an us-and-them thing, without the friend buffer?”

  He took her hand in the darkness. “And what about my relationship with you?”

  “That, too.” Her words were a whisper in the dark, beneath the tree branches with stars and fairy lights twinkling above them.