by Jeannie Moon
“You do?” Her eyes turned to his and the expressiveness, the emotion gave his heart a little jolt. Something was going on, but she wasn’t giving up any of the details. Not yet.
“Why don’t you tell me what this is all about? You didn’t ask me over to find out about my career plans, did you?”
She shook her head and looked away. This girl was hiding something. Her body language, her eye contact was off. “Not exactly,” she whispered.
Kevin’s hand came up and his index finger stroked her cheek. “Harper is there something you need help with? A problem.” Her eyes were still averted. His finger traveled to her chin and he brought her face up so he could look her straight in the eyes. “What is going on?”
“This thing we started last year. It’s complicated. I mean, with my work and what you do for a living and your family . . .” She twisted her fingers nervously. “It got so intense between us, but I didn’t know where it was all going.”
“I’m not following. I thought we were pretty serious.” She rolled her eyes. “Are you worried that if we pursue something and it doesn’t work out my family will get involved?”
“Not exactly—well, maybe. God, I’ve made a mess of things.”
“Whatever it is, it can’t be that bad. Let me help.”
“Oh, it’s bad.”
“If you’re worried about my sister . . .”
“It’s not just about your family,” she whispered, and once again she walked away from him, a bundle of nervous energy. He followed her back to the living room, where she stood facing the fireplace. She must have heard him come in, because she started speaking without turning around. “I was falling for you last year. No doubt about it, and it scared me to death.”
“Me, too. That’s why I didn’t understand why you cut me out of your life.” Hearing her say it, hearing the emotion in her voice made Kevin wonder where this conversation was going.
“I didn’t realize you were as serious as I was, and I wasn’t about to be in a one-sided relationship. I don’t do complicated well. I’m very concrete, and my emotions have gotten me in trouble in the past. I tend not to trust them.”
“How could you not know I thought it was serious between us? I called you for six months. I’m sorry if I did something, but—”
Harper cut him off. “Don’t say that. Don’t apologize. Shit, I can’t dance around this anymore.” She faced him and plowed forward. “There’s no easy way to say what I have to say.” She took a breath and her words came out on a whoosh. “I had a baby.”
Kevin staggered slightly at her words and reached back for a chair or some kind of support. Of all the things she could have said, that was the last one he expected. “A baby?”
“Yes,” she whispered.
His hands knotted behind his neck, and he tried to let it all sink in. A baby. A baby? First there was confusion, then as he started to understand, anger. He felt his jaw tighten as he had more time to adjust. But how was this adjusting? He’d never felt this before. It was rage, betrayal, shock all rolled into one. “Are you saying you had my baby?” When she didn’t answer immediately, his voice turned low and cold, chilling her from the inside out. “Why the hell didn’t you tell me? When did this happen? How could you leave me out of his life?”
“Her,” she said. “It’s a girl.”
“A girl. I have a daughter and you didn’t fucking tell me about her?”
“I’ve wanted to tell you, but I didn’t know how. You were here, then you signed a contract to go somewhere else, then you got traded back . . . I didn’t know what to do. What to expect next.”
Kevin kept running his hands through his hair while he circled the room. The rushes of emotion that went through him were so complete he didn’t know how he would control himself enough to talk to her.
“Kevin, please say something.”
He stopped pacing and turned to face her. “Say something? What do you want me to say, Harper?” The volume of his voice rose with each word. “That everything’s okay? It’s not. This is not fucking okay! How could you do that? How could you keep her from me?” he shouted.
“I didn’t think you’d want her, and I didn’t want you to feel trapped.”
“Trapped?” His anger slipped out as his voice hardened. “That wasn’t for you to decide. It was mine.”
“I know.” Her voice cracked but her expression was focused, unbreakable.
Kevin grabbed a picture off the end table that he hadn’t noticed when he came in—a photo of a round, soft, perfect baby girl cradled in her mother’s arms. For a split second the anger was replaced with a wave of affection not only for the baby but for Harper. But it only lasted a second. “This is her?”
Harper nodded and straightened her shoulders. He’d never seen Harper cautious. Or scared, but that was the woman who stood before him. She was not the badass executive he was used to seeing.
“What’s her name?” The little details became so important. Her name. Her birthday. Her favorite color.
“Annalise. I call her Anna.”
Annalise. It was beautiful. Perfect like the little baby on the photo and he wouldn’t ever have known if he hadn’t run into Harper at the grocery store the night before. If he hadn’t pressed her to see him. He stared at the photograph. This was his daughter. The baby she was holding in the photo was his.
The swell of emotion for his child was overwhelming. Unexpected. Terrifying.
Harper hadn’t moved. Her hands were clasped tightly at her waist, and although she was trying to appear unruffled, he could see in her eyes she was nervous. Well, tough shit, he thought. It didn’t matter. He didn’t care.
He’d always liked her. He’d liked her from the very beginning, thinking she was misunderstood when Meg was suspicious of everything she did when they first met or when Caroline called her cold and manipulative. Now he knew there was truth behind the way they felt.
“What were you thinking, Harper? How could you do it?”
Staring at him long and hard, Kevin saw the fear replaced by resentment. “I don’t have an answer. Like I said, I was worried about you feeling trapped, about you being angry.”
“So you didn’t tell me about our baby because you didn’t think I’d want her? I cared about you. I wanted to be with you, and instead you bolted and kept my daughter a secret? It sounds like you were the one worried about being trapped.” His voice was a roaring echo in the apartment.
“I was terrified. I knew I should tell you, but I don’t trust people, Kevin. I just don’t. Everyone I’ve ever cared about has left me or let me down.” Now she was the one moving, pacing. “I wanted to tell you, but just around when I found out, you took the deal to play in California. That’s not exactly around the corner and your standard line was that ‘the life’ didn’t allow for families and relationships. I didn’t know what to do. So I didn’t do anything.”
“What about my family? You see Meg and Jason pretty much every day. What did you tell them? They had to ask about the father.”
She looked away again, hiding from him. That so wasn’t going to fly. He grabbed her arm and turned her around. “What. Did. You. Tell. Them?”
“That I didn’t know. They have no idea.”
He let her go and walked in a small circle. He was restless, agitated. He wanted to fucking hit something.
“This is unbelievable.” A wave of nausea rolled through his gut and choked him.
“I know. I’ve been a wreck since I found out I was pregnant. All I could think about was how I was going to manage it.”
“Manage it? Manage what? The baby or the lies you’ve been telling?”
“Kevin this hasn’t been easy . . .”
“Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you? You should have told me the minute you knew, Harper. Not even a question.”
“I don’t want your pity, Kevin. But you have no idea what I went through.” She folded her arms, defiant. “I’m trying to do the right thing.”
“I
f this was so hard, why did you keep her? Why didn’t you just get rid of her?”
Harper’s lip curled, and he thought he saw her back arch like she might strike. The last comment may have crossed the line. But again, he didn’t really care. “Don’t you judge me. I had her because I want her. I want to be her mother. I want to raise her. To love her. I was scared to death, but I didn’t worry about my lifestyle. So, like I said, don’t judge me. You don’t know anything about me or my life.”
“I think that’s pretty obvious, but how can anyone know you? You don’t let anyone in. You see my family every day. Every fucking day, and you kept Anna a secret.”
Harper drew in a breath and looked toward the ceiling. Her resolve, the certainty that she’d done the right thing, made him even angrier. He wanted her to cry; he wanted to see her suffer, but so far, nothing.
“So why now? What made you tell me today?”
“I’ve thought about you every day since I found out. I thought about how I would tell you. Seeing you at the dinner was hard, but when I saw you yesterday, I had an attack of conscience. I knew you deserved to know. Your family deserves to know.”
He wasn’t buying anything she said right now. Not any of it. What had happened in the last couple of days was that she realized that her days of avoiding him were over. They had people in common, they lived in the same neighborhood. It was just a matter of time before he saw the baby. “I think that attack of conscience is total bullshit. You had to tell me.”
“I don’t know what you mean.”
God, this was calculated. Kevin couldn’t see anything through the haze of anger. She shook her head, but he knew the truth. “It’s because I live here now. There was no way you could manage to keep up the front. I’d see you, see the baby, and do the math.”
“No!” She looked scared now. Good. “It may seem like that, but no. I wanted you to know. I knew keeping her from you was wrong.”
“You wanted me to know on your timetable, Harper. If I hadn’t moved back here, you wouldn’t have said a word.” He picked up the little snowman he’d given her and rolled it in his fingers. The crystal was cold. Like her.
“You know,” she said, smug and angry, “If that was the truth, I could have picked up and left. You seem to think I’m tied here. I’m not and I’m not afraid to change if I have to. I’ve done it before and I’d do it again. I’d have landed a job somewhere else in a heartbeat and you never would have known.”
The force building inside him was too much. The anger, the frustration peaked, and he finally snapped. Without warning, Kevin pulled back and threw the snowman with the same power he applied when he was picking off a base runner. The projectile broke a vase that was in its path and then shattered when it hit the wall. “You manipulated me, played me for a fool,” he shouted. “I’ve been wondering what I did, why you dropped me. How could you cut me out of her life, Harper? How could you do it to a little baby?”
Harper froze at his sudden outburst and then lowered her eyes, unable to look at him and the fury behind his gaze. Her next words came out on a broken whisper. “I would never deliberately hurt her.”
“Keeping her from the only real family she has? It’s not just me. What about her grandmother? Her aunts and uncles and cousins? What do you call that?” He sneered in disgust. “You’ve hurt her, Harper. Your intentions mean shit.”
With those words, a snuffle and a cry caused them both to turn toward the hallway leading to the bedrooms. Harper’s lip trembled and her eyes filled with tears. Without uttering a word in her own defense, she turned and bolted from the room. Happy to be rid of her for the moment, Kevin sank into a chair and dropped his face in his hands. A door opened and closed and he took the time alone to absorb all the information.
He had a daughter. He lifted his face and for the first time noticed the pictures around the room. Anna was everywhere. Pictures of her dotted the space and, when he took the time to notice, there was a stuffed toy in a small chair by the fireplace and a pink blanket tossed over the arm of the sofa. But Kevin’s eyes settled back on one photograph in particular, the one of Harper and their infant daughter. He took the silver frame let his hand passed over the image. Anna was maybe a few minutes old, but Kevin couldn’t focus on anything but Harper’s face. The love he saw captured in Harper’s eyes spoke volumes. It was the love that existed only between a parent and a child.
Feeling his own eyes start to burn, he returned the picture to the shelf and left the living room to find her. It was time to settle this, to come to an understanding about their child. Kevin was going to be part of Anna’s life, and Harper would just have to deal with it.
He heard the weeping and opened one of the doors in the hallway. The room was a soft yellow and sitting in a chair in the corner, Harper was holding Anna. The baby squirmed and fussed, but it was Harper who was crying. Tears tracked down her cheeks as she tried to soothe the infant in her arms. “Shhh, baby. Shhh.”
Kevin stood over her, watching her cry, and for the first time he could remember, he was unaffected by a woman’s tears.
***
Harper heard him enter the room and at this point she didn’t know what else to say to him. “I know I was wrong,” she said quietly, turning to face him. “But I’m trying to make things right.”
“I don’t know what to say to you.” Kevin’s voice was filled with emotion, but his face was hard, unfeeling. “I’m trying to make sense of it all, but it’s the lying. It’s like I don’t know who you are.”
“I’m sorry,” she said. “I know you don’t believe me, but I am.”
“I believe you’re sorry, but I think it’s all about you, Harper. You’re sorry you got caught, that you had to tell me.”
Harper rubbed her eyes, sat up straight and held Anna closer. “No. I’m glad you know. I’m sorry you’re hurt.”
“I’m pissed,” he said.
“I know you are, but I’m still happy you know.”
She was glad. She felt this incredible lightness settle over her, and just knowing Anna now had her father to look out for her made her feel better. Harper knew Kevin probably hated her, but this was all about their child. She’d take whatever hits came her way. If nothing else, when she was wrong, Harper admitted it.
Kevin didn’t say anything for a long while. He just started at her and Anna and she wondered when he’d lob the next insult or dig. But it didn’t come. He stepped closer and extended his hands. “May I hold her?”
Harper nodded and stood, focusing not on his eyes, but on the rest of him. His big hands and broad chest would provide safety and protection for Anna. Their daughter would have something Harper never had, a protective father. She’d have a man to love her, cherish her, and be a role model for her. Telling him was the right thing, and without hesitation, Harper slid the baby into her father’s waiting arms.
“Tuck your arm under her.” Harper adjusted his elbow and hand to cradle her head. “Like that.”
Taking a step back to watch, Harper lost her breath. The picture of the big, hard-nosed jock with their pretty little girl was enough to make her regret every second she’d stolen from them. What had she been thinking? Being a father was embedded in Kevin’s DNA.
He let out a shaky breath and when he looked up, tears welled in his eyes. “Is it supposed to hit you in the chest like this?” he asked. “God, it actually hurts.”
Harper nodded, holding back her own tears. “She does that to you.”
He walked around the room, cooing and talking to her, a contrast to be sure. The big man holding his delicate baby was a study in love at first sight.
“How could you keep her from me? God. Do you have a heart at all?”
She wanted to tell him she did have a heart, one that was big and sloppy, but that it had been broken so many times she didn’t know how to tell him or how to let him in. The thought of him getting close scared her to death, but seeing him hold Anna helped her understand that being without him would scare her even more
. Anna needed her father. Maybe there was hope after all.
“I’m working on the heart thing,” Harper said. “She’s helping me.”
The baby fussed, squawking and hiccupping, and flailing her little arms, and Kevin’s face washed out with worry. “Is she okay?”
Nodding Harper reached out and he passed the baby to her. “She’s hungry.”
“Oh, uh, do you need a bottle or something?”
Harper grabbed a blanket and sat in the big chair again, lifting her shirt and settling in to nurse. “Nah, I got that covered.”
“Oh. Right. Should I leave?”
Grinning, Harper shook her head. “First, you’ve seen everything there is to see on me, and second, while this can be hell on the boobs, the whole thing is kind of a miracle.”
The bedroom wasn’t that big, but Kevin managed to get as far away from her as possible, settling himself on the window seat on the other side of the room. He folded his hands and looked at the floor, looked at the stuffed animals sitting next to him. He looked at every single thing in the room except her. Finally, he watched her feed their baby, and Harper saw Kevin’s heart change. He couldn’t be there for the birth, but seeing his baby eat, seeing her healthy and thriving was showing all over his face. When the silence did become too awkward, he spoke. “Does she need anything?”
“No. I’ve been doing okay.”
“Where is she when you go to work?”
“I have an au pair. An ex–navy nurse who is a complete godsend. She’s off tonight.”
Kevin set his jaw and his eyes drilled right into hers. “I’d like to meet her.”
A challenge. It was bound to happen, and Harper tried not to let it get to her. “That can be arranged. I think you’ll like her.”
The restlessness returned and Kevin stood and paced and then leaned his arm against the wall near the bank of windows, looking out at the city street below. “There are so many things in my head right now. I want to call my finance guy and set up a trust for her, I want to run a background check on your nanny, I’m worried about the amount of hours you work . . .”