Apparently, it had been one heck of a farewell.
He wasn’t sure whether or not he should laugh or jump into action, but he wasn’t going to feel sorry for himself—he couldn’t—and he wasn’t going to let his daughter go through a childhood like his. At least not as far as being abandoned or mistreated. She’d be fine at the ranch, just as he had been. It was a great place to grow up, a place surrounded by horses, water and the shielding strength of the Rocky Mountains. Yet he couldn’t be there. He had a job. He had a life. He had people to protect—people needed him. That was to say nothing of his commitment to the military—it was his everything. The army was him.
He ran his hands over his face, stopping for a moment to scratch at the stubble on his cheeks. He needed to shave, but then again, he needed a lot of things—starting with a family he could trust to always tell him the truth.
Seriously, how could they have done this to him? And why? He just couldn’t make sense of it. Maybe they were trying to protect him, but even then, from what? A child wasn’t something that he should be protected from. Was it that they thought he wasn’t ready for a kid? Did they think he would be like his biological parents and just abandon the kid? They were wrong if they thought he could put a kid through a life like his.
He sighed as he thought about his first run-in with Winnie, when she’d fallen out of the tree. Sure, he might not have had a clue about how to raise a kid, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t willing to learn. Or was he? He tented his fingers over his beer and stared into the foam. Two bubbles rose, almost staring back up at him, and he shook the glass. He didn’t need anyone or anything else to judge him—or his ability to be a decent father.
He was more than able to be a father. He could handle the responsibility. He could be a dad—far worse men than him did it every day. He could do the whole thing far better than any one of them. He’d sign Winnie up for ballet and T-ball. She could even get into hockey like he had when she got older.
As he thought about all the things he wanted to do with Winnie, he realized the immense time commitment it would take to raise a two-year-old. She wasn’t in school or day care. Even if he started her in some kind of program, he would still have to take her there and pick her up. At Bragg, he would be completely on his own with her—there would be no extra sets of hands to shuttle her around or make sure she got to where she needed on time.
And all that was without taking his schedule into consideration. In the last three years, he had been deployed nearly a third of the time. If he reenlisted, it would probably be the same. That meant Winnie would constantly be waiting for him to come home.
If only Alli had just told him. He stopped. She probably hadn’t wanted to share the kid with him—or play pass-the-kid-around. Though they had spent one last night together, they really hadn’t ended things on a good note; if they had added a kid to the mix, it would have undoubtedly made things between them worse. And when parents fought, it was always the kid who paid.
He didn’t agree with the lie, but for a brief second he could almost understand why they had done what they had. Winnie didn’t deserve to be some pawn in a game of divorce. At least Winnie was being raised with the love and safety his family provided—Alli had given the girl that much of a leg up. It would have been all too easy for her to simply disappear with the baby and never look back. Yet she had decided to let the girl be a part of his family’s life—if not his. Then again, maybe it was just her easiest option. His family had given her a free ride in exchange for the time they got with the secret child.
The thought of how much she must have hated him made his chest ache. She didn’t trust him, and, well, he certainly didn’t trust her. As it turned out, the mistrust he felt had been completely justified.
Now that she had disappeared, the burden of the child should have fallen on him, but she had chosen her sister—and to still keep the truth hidden. She could have simply called him, left a message and let him handle things. Yet she hadn’t, and the thought made him ache even more.
It might have been her plan all along, to come back for her daughter the moment she thought the police were off her trail. If she kept Waylon out of it, kidnapping the girl would have been easier—at least she knew no one was threatening to take Winnie away from the ranch or from Christina. Alli probably was just waiting for the right moment to strike. First, she took the ring, got a little mad money, and then she and his daughter would be gone.
Alli was the epitome of selfishness. Everything she had ever done, every choice she had ever made—even in marrying him in the first place—had been to advance herself and her desires. She didn’t have a selfless bone in her body—apparently not even when it came to her child.
Bottom line, she couldn’t get her hands back on Winnie. It was impossible to know what she was capable of, and no matter what the future had in store for him, he couldn’t let Winnie’s safety be compromised—by anyone. Even if she wasn’t his daughter, her safety would have been number one, yet now that he knew the truth, it made everything more real and more immediate.
His daughter...the words echoed in his mind. It felt so strange to hear them rattling around in his thoughts, to feel the weight of the words on his shoulders. Yet, strangely enough, he welcomed the weight. It was nice to think he wasn’t alone in the world and just maybe he could keep the girl safe.
He moved to stand up, then stopped—he could save his daughter from many things, but her mother was not someone he could completely protect her from. The woman would always have a place in the girl’s heart and she would figure out a way into her life. Even if that meant she would ransack her daughter’s belongings for a ring that he assumed Alli wanted just for the money.
There had to be something else missing. Something else going on.
He normally loved this part of an investigation, where he searched for the key to the puzzle. Yet, with so much at stake, he hated this case. It was best that Wyatt was the one investigating this. There was no way he could remain objective now. Especially if Alli laid a finger on their daughter.
The word echoed again, and this time it didn’t sound as foreign.
He took a long drink of his beer. There was no way he was ready to go back to the ranch and his waiting family. He wasn’t ready to face their apologetic faces and downcast gazes. It would take a long time to get used to the word daughter, but it would take even longer to trust them again. Trust would have to be earned. Yet, if he looked into Christina’s glacial-blue eyes, a color so clean and pure that it seemed bottomless, he wasn’t sure he could continue being as resolute as he felt now. It was easy to be angry when he didn’t have to face her, when he didn’t have to hear her soft voice.
If his brothers had asked him to keep a secret, as Alli had done with Christina, he probably would have made the same choice she had. He had to respect her and his family’s honor and loyalty—albeit to the wrong person.
Of course, this all could have come back to the fact that they didn’t want to lose the baby, either. They really must have believed what they were doing was for the best.
There was no getting around it—he had to talk to them.
He moved to stand up but stopped as he turned to face the main bar area. Sitting two tables over from him was William Poe. There was a woman with him, with dark hair and heavy makeup; she looked like the woman he and Christina had seen at Poe’s house the day before. Lisa.
He turned back to the bar and waved down the bartender. The man dried a pint glass as he made his way over. “Need another round?”
He waved him off. “Nah. But, hey, do you know that guy over there?” He pointed at William.
“Sure, that’s William Poe. I think he does something for the county. He’s in here a lot. Why?” The guy leaned in closer in an effort to keep their conversation a little more private.
“You know the woman he’s with?”
; “Yeah,” the guy said with a nod. “Her name’s Lisa. Lisa Chase, I think.”
“Are they in here together often?”
The guy shrugged. “She just started hanging around with him in the last month or so. Poe’s always got a new chippie on his arm. I’m sure she’ll be replaced in another few weeks. Usually I don’t even bother learning their names.”
“Why this time? I mean, why do you know her name?”
“She’s the one who’s been paying the tab.”
It made sense that the one thing the bartender would care about was the person paying the bill. Waylon would have felt the same way in the guy’s position. Especially in a place like this.
“Does William normally buy the drinks for his dates?”
The bartender nodded. “The word on the street is that his wife’s assets are in probate and he’s been spending a lot of money trying to track down the woman who killed her—at least that’s what I heard him say. You hear about the case?”
It was a relief the guy didn’t know who Waylon was or what his connection was to the local events. There was a certain amount of freedom in anonymity.
“What about it?” he asked.
“Apparently, one of Poe’s exes went batty. Killed his mistress, who was a local veterinarian, and his wife. Bloody business when it came to the wife.” He made the motion of slicing a neck. “But hey, at least it was quick. When I go out, I’d choose that over cancer any day.”
Waylon couldn’t help but agree with the dude. He’d seen more than his fair share of death. The worst had been seeing bits of flesh stuck to a mud wall after a suicide bomber had detonated in Tikrit. If nothing else, though, that type of death was dehumanizing—if he didn’t think about it, the bits of flesh didn’t add up to a person. It was that thought alone that had allowed him to keep his sanity.
He thumbed the rim of his pint glass. He probably needed therapy. It was probably one of the reasons his family hadn’t wanted him to know about Winnie. With a life like his, it would be challenging to have a normal relationship with a child. He would always be overly protective, wanting to make sure his daughter was cared for and out of harm’s way. It was the reality of any parent who had seen the worst and come back to civilian life.
He couldn’t blame them for wanting to protect the child—not from the world, but from him.
He took out a fifty and laid it on the bar. “Thanks for the drinks, and the information. If you hear anything else about William and his crazy ex, my name’s Waylon. You can get ahold of me at Dunrovin.”
The guy’s eyes widened with surprise as he must have put two and two together. “Waylon? Waylon Fitzgerald?”
He gave a tight nod and turned away before the bartender asked him any more questions. As of late, the only thing he had in high supply were questions—what he didn’t need was more being flung at him.
Thankfully, as he made his way through the bar, William and Lisa were too busy making out to notice him. The way they were completely lost in each other’s faces made his stomach churn. William’s wife had just died, yet here he was flaunting his newest fling in public.
He never wanted to be that kind of guy who moved from one woman to the next without a thought. No. He wanted one woman for the rest of time.
For a second he could think only of Christina, and how beautiful she had looked lying back on the truck’s bench seat. And though he was annoyed at her for the secret she had kept, he couldn’t help but imagine her porcelain skin and how it had felt to kiss the soft lines of her belly and the arc of her ribs. He’d screwed up his chance to be with her. In all ways it was as if he was the dark and she was the light—they were in perfect complement.
If he played his cards right, they could come to some kind of agreement when it came to the child, but finding himself in agreement with that woman was almost as unlikely as finding a unicorn. Perhaps it was the tension that always seemed to reverberate between them, but when it came to Winnie, he had a feeling the only common ground they would find would be the fact they each loved the child and wanted to keep her safe.
Chapter Thirteen
Christina stood by the window, watching and waiting for Waylon to come back. He had every right to be angry with her—and she wouldn’t have been too surprised if she got a call that her truck had been abandoned in front of the airport. He probably hated them all right now, but most likely no one more than her.
She should have convinced Alli to tell him before, but her sister wasn’t the kind who backpedaled once her mind was made up. Sure, Christina could have gone around her sister and told Waylon, but until now it would have done far more harm than good. Or at least she had thought it would. She wasn’t so sure anymore.
The more she thought about the wrong they had done Waylon, and the more minutes that ticked by, the more she was convinced Waylon had run away. He had done it before. She couldn’t blame him. Sometimes the only thing a person could do when they had been repeatedly broken was run. It was the only effective way she had ever learned to protect her heart—and he had probably learned the same lesson.
Her thoughts went to when she was in the truck with him, lying on the bench seat and looking up into his eyes. She had been right to stop things from going any further, but now she regretted her choice. Well, kind of regretted it. Sure, it made things easier now that he was apparently gone, yet she wished she had taken the chance to live a little. She couldn’t help but imagine what it would have been like to have him further his advance, and to have him kiss places that even now begged for his touch.
She moved to the chair across the living room and sat down in the dark, still watching for him, though it was more out of desperation than an actual belief.
It felt good to sit alone in the dark. It was the first time in what felt like an eternity that she had a moment that wasn’t filled with talk about what had happened and what they could do to fix things. There was always something that required her attention and action. She didn’t mind when it was about Winnie, but she never had a moment to herself anymore.
She closed her eyes and drew in a long breath. This was what Waylon’s life was probably like—quiet and serene. She could understand if he didn’t want to take over the care of his daughter if this was what he was used to. It would be an extreme change to go from living alone in the routine of the military to caring for a two-year-old he barely knew.
He was probably scared out of his wits.
She had been scared, too, when she had read Alli’s note designating her Winnie’s appointed guardian. Even though she had been there for all of Winnie’s life, the thought of just picking up where her sister had left off had been more than terrifying. Though she hadn’t had the time to pay her own feelings too much attention. No, she had only one choice—take the girl and raise her, or give her up. She would never give up her niece. Never.
Yet if Winnie went with her father, it wouldn’t be Christina’s choice. It would be his, his decision whether or not he would whisk his daughter away. She had to accept it—there was no sense in going to court to fight over custody when in the end it would undoubtedly be given to the biological father. He was a good man, a good provider and Winnie’s closest relative. She couldn’t compete with him—she owned nothing but one beat-up old truck and she trained horses, which paid her bills but not much else.
She ran her hands over her face, looking out at the moon between her open fingers.
Her breath hitched in her throat, and she couldn’t control the sobs that overtook her as she thought about Winnie sitting beside Waylon in a plane, flying to a state where she’d never been and where Christina was unlikely to see her. Sure, they might have the occasional week and maybe a holiday here and there, but it would be nothing in comparison to the time they’d had together over the last few years. Basically, she would lose the girl forever.
She dabbed at
the tears that poured down her cheeks. She couldn’t bear the thought of losing her niece, but she also couldn’t risk her safety, and she couldn’t make choices on Winnie’s behalf.
If Waylon ran away, as a woman who longed to feel his touch and be held in his arms, she would be broken. Yet, as Winnie’s guardian, she couldn’t help the feeling of freedom and relief at the thought that he might have gone. She shook her head at the realization that she could be so selfish. Even if he left, she couldn’t keep Winnie. Not as her own child. No, not now that the truth was out. From this day on, Waylon would be Winnie’s father and she would only ever be merely Winnie’s aunt. Nothing more.
The girl would need her father to help her learn how to tie her shoes and to ride a bike, and maybe someday she would need him to walk her down the aisle.
The thought only made Christina’s tears come down that much harder, and she gasped for air as her emotions moved through her unchecked—so much that she didn’t realize Waylon was standing next to her until he gave her shoulder a soft squeeze.
“Christina, are you okay? Did something happen?”
She stood and buried herself inside his arms. He smelled of liquor and the woody aroma of a bar, but she didn’t care. He was here. He had come back to her. To them. He hadn’t run away, even though it would have been all too easy to disappear into the night.
“I’m so sorry, Waylon. I’m so sorry,” she said between sobs. Her tears wet his neck and made their skin slick, but she didn’t move.
He sighed. The sound was heavy and slow, the sound of someone who might have been just as confused and upset as she was.
She leaned back, looking up into his face. He gave her a smirk, the one he seemed to reserve only for her, as it so rarely made an appearance except when they were alone. She loved that smile, the way his eyes met hers and how, in that moment, he could make all her fears disappear.
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