His mouth opened, and then he closed it before he said...whatever had come to mind. Kate wished he’d have blurted it out; that was what she’d just done. Turnabout was fair play, after all, and then maybe she wouldn’t feel so exposed now, as though someone had yanked a bandage off her heart.
Finally, he said, “You just met me three days ago. How could you be—” he grimaced as though he found it hard to say the next word, then continued “—captivated by me?”
“Because you’ve done it all right. What I wish I’d have done from the start, and what I would love to go back and do over, but I can’t. You accepted responsibility and you found the courage to give Dee and Emmie every bit of your life and your love. You’re a real parent—” tears burned as they pushed forward “—and that’s what I so wish I could be.”
“You want to be a mother,” he said softly, as though he understood.
But he didn’t. “I had a daughter,” she said, “nearly four years ago.” She blinked through more tears. “She’s the same age as Dee.”
“You had a daughter?” he asked, his voice tender with emotion. “What happened, Kate?”
“I gave her up.” Her chin trembled, and a sucking gasp escaped. “Seeing you, watching how wonderful you are with Dee and Emmie—” another loud, un-ladylike sniff “—is why I’m so captivated with you. Because you’re everything that I wasn’t. I—gave—her—up.”
Her sobs tore through the stillness of the night, but they were soon smothered against the broad planes of Mitch’s chest, because he pulled her close, holding her through the pain, through the tears and whispering the words he must’ve thought she wanted to hear.
“I’m so sorry, Kate. It’ll be okay. Everything will be okay.”
But Kate thought of that bulletin board at the church and Lainey’s sweet, beautiful face smiling at her from the center of that yellow crepe paper flower, and her tears fell harder, because she knew that, when the entire truth came out, everything would definitely not be okay.
Chapter Six
“You wait here, Daddy,” Dee instructed. “I want to get Miss Kate by myself.”
Mitch admired the independent spirit growing stronger and stronger in his oldest princess, a quality she’d undoubtedly inherited from Jana. His late wife had been “strong-willed,” as her family called it, finding it difficult to ask for help and thrilling to accomplish any task on her own. Dee was a pint-size version of the woman he’d loved, and he thanked God for reminding him this week—with Emmie’s selection of the stuffed bulldog she currently clutched in her arms and with Dee’s determination now to get Miss Kate by herself—that Jana would always be here, a part of their lives, in spirit.
Following Dee’s request that he stay put, Mitch stood his ground near the towering magnolia that filled one side of the bed-and-breakfast’s front yard. When Dee teetered a little on the third step, he moved forward.
“I’m okay,” she said quickly.
“I know you are,” he said, never wanting to stifle that independence, “but it’ll be easier if you let me hold the bread or Snow White so you can use the rails.”
She had her treasured Snow White figurine in one hand and a bag of bread in the other. She’d insisted she could carry both—and she could—but hauling them while also tackling the B and B’s stairs wasn’t so easy. He took another step toward her, but she shook her red pigtails. “I can do it,” she said, and then moved the Disney figure to the opposite hand so that she grasped both the knotted bread bag and the prized princess in her left fist. “See?” she asked excitedly, putting her other hand on the rail and continuing toward the door.
Amazing, the pride he felt at watching her figure things out on her own. “Yes,” he said, “I do see, and you’re doing a great job.”
Emmie wiggled in his arms so she could watch her big sister complete her way up the steps, across the porch and to the front door. “Kay-Kay,” she said, obviously looking forward to seeing Kate today as much as Dee.
And as much as Mitch.
For the past three days, ever since their conversation late Wednesday evening, he hadn’t stopped thinking about the petite, black-haired beauty that had fallen apart in his arms. He’d wanted to protect her that night; in fact, he’d wanted to protect her ever since. She’d admitted something so personal—that she’d given up a child—and Mitch had felt her pain so intensely that he’d gone to bed that night wiping away his own tears.
He couldn’t imagine giving up a child, couldn’t imagine a life that didn’t include his precious Dee or Emmie. And even though he didn’t know the details about why Kate had chosen to give up her baby, he knew the end result. She ached for a child she never knew.
And maybe because of that, she’d quickly grown to adore Mitch’s children. He could see her affection toward Dee and Emmie every time she spoke to them, looked at them. And he sensed that God had brought Kate Wydell to Claremont for more than merely providing Mitch with someone to help him at the office. He’d brought her here because He didn’t merely plan on Kate helping Mitch; He planned on Mitch helping Kate.
Bonding with Dee and Emmie provided a salve for her soul, and he realized that their growing relationship with Kate was something he shouldn’t fight or feel guilty about. This was good for his girls, good for Kate...and maybe even good for Mitch.
He enjoyed the journey raising the girls. And, though it took him a few days to adjust to the idea, he also enjoyed the fact that Kate was becoming a part of their lives. They had their grandmother, their aunt Hannah and their teachers at school and day care, so it wasn’t as if they hadn’t been around adult females before, but there was something different about the way they were around Kate.
And the way Kate was around his girls. Even though she’d known them only a week, he was certain that every time she looked at Dee and Emmie, he saw love.
Kate must have seen them coming, because the door opened to reveal the object of his thoughts standing on the other side.
“Well, hey,” she said, her smile beaming at Dee. She wore a red sundress similar to the blue one she’d worn earlier in the week, the skirt skimming her ankles, except she didn’t have the jacket on this time, and Mitch’s attention was drawn to her slender neck and shoulders. A small gold locket rested beneath her throat, and it glistened in the morning sunlight. Although he’d been around her every day this week, Mitch still found himself momentarily taken hostage by her beauty. She didn’t seem to be aware of the effect on him, which was good.
“Is it time to go now?” she asked Dee.
“We got old bread.” Dee lifted the half loaf of wheat bread, smashed to smithereens from her desire to carry it on her own. She’d dropped it a couple of times before they’d even made it out of the house and then had swung it like a lopsided purse ever since.
“I see that.” Kate managed to keep her smile in place without so much as a giggle at the pitiful bag of bread. “Do you know what?”
“What?” Dee asked.
Emmie, wanting to join in on the conversation, said, “Wha?”
Kate laughed. “I told Mrs. Tingle that we were going to feed the ducks today, and she gave us all of her leftover bread from breakfast.”
“How much?” Dee asked, leaning to the side to peer past Kate.
Kate crooked her finger, grinned at Mitch and Emmie and then steered Dee inside. A few seconds later, Dee dashed out with both hands clutching grocery bags that each held at least two loaves of bread. “Look at this, Daddy!” She held up her prize.
“Wow!” Mitch exclaimed. “That sure is a lot of bread. What did you do with the loaf you had?”
“Miss Kate put it in here. She said I could carry these by myself. And we put Snow White in my pocket.” She glanced down to her chest, where the figure’s dark head peeked over the pocket of her pink shirt.
Her smile stretche
d into both cheeks, and Mitch knew he hadn’t made a bad decision inviting Kate on their outing today. They’d worked hard all week, first at Mitch’s home—while taking care of sick children, no less—and then at the office. They deserved a day of fun, and he knew Kate would enjoy it more if Dee and Emmie were a part of the activities. Feeding the ducks seemed perfect. Nothing too intimate that would suggest a date to prying eyes, but private enough that they could enjoy the gorgeous day and the girls without a huge crowd. There would be some people at Hydrangea Park, no doubt, but the place was large enough that he, Kate and the girls could find a spot for feeding the ducks.
“I’ve actually got a few things for us to bring,” Kate said, carrying an oversize picnic basket.
Annette Tingle followed Kate onto the porch. “Kate told me y’all were going to Hydrangea Park to feed the ducks, and the day is so pretty that I thought it might be nice if you had a picnic while you’re there. I surprised her by packing y’all a basket.”
“A picnic! Yay!” Dee looked to Mitch. “You hear that, Daddy? We’re gonna have a picnic!”
“I heard,” he said. A picnic. Feeding the ducks had seemed like a fun activity, definitely nowhere near the date realm. A picnic in the park and feeding the ducks...teetered on the edge of date classification. Then again, was it considered a date if you brought your children along? Maybe that fact kept this situation clear, and it eased Mitch’s concern for folks getting the wrong idea again.
“And I’ve got a little surprise, too,” Kate said. “Let me put this basket in the car and I’ll go get it.”
Mitch shifted Emmie to his left hip and moved toward Kate. “Here, I’ll take the basket for you.”
Their hands brushed as he claimed the wooden handle, and the hint of peaches that always surrounded Kate caused him to inhale deeper; however, that scent was quickly overpowered by the smells escaping that basket. “Fried chicken?” he asked.
“I thought the girls would like chicken tenders,” Annette said, “and I also put in some homemade potato salad, baked beans and coleslaw. Oh, and a few fried apple pies. They were still hot from the oven, so I added a little silver shaker of powdered sugar for you to put on top before you eat them. That makes them taste better, you know.”
Mitch wasn’t hungry, but his stomach growled anyway, and Mrs. Tingle grinned.
“Sounds like you’re gonna enjoy them,” she said.
“I can’t imagine anyone not enjoying all of that,” he said honestly, thinking that the picnic wasn’t a bad idea after all. He couldn’t remember the last time he’d been on a picnic or had that kind of home-cooked food. Oh, wait, earlier this week he had, and courtesy of the same sweet neighbor. “Thanks, Mrs. Tingle. I really appreciate this.”
“I do, too,” Kate said, and then she hugged Annette, but it wasn’t a typical thank-you type hug. She held her for a moment, gently squeezing her close. “You’ve been so good to me.”
Mrs. Tingle sniffed then blinked a couple of times. “Oh, child, you touch my heart.” Then she broke the hug and gave Kate a tender smile. “Now you go enjoy yourself today. Everything’s going to be just fine.”
Mitch wondered what the woman referred to. Had Kate also told her about the child she’d given up? Had she told the lady that she was “captivated,” as she put it, by Mitch’s parenting of his girls? Or was there more currently bonding Mrs. Tingle to Kate?
He shouldn’t feel he needed to know. Kate was his employee, and he knew as much as he should know about an employee. But they’d moved beyond employee status Wednesday night when he’d held her in his arms. Friends, maybe? Or perhaps comforters would be a better term.
Had Kate gotten upset again, needed someone for comfort and turned to Mrs. Tingle?
And if she did, Mitch wondered...why her? And why not him?
“You said you have a surprise,” Dee reminded Kate, then gave her a full baby-teeth grin. “What is it?”
“I’ll go get it,” Kate said, turning and darting back into the house.
Mitch opened the trunk of his car with the key fob and then walked toward it to put the basket inside and to get his mind off whether or not Kate had confided in Mrs. Tingle instead of him. Dee’s squeal of delight forced him to look back to the porch, where Kate had exited with a kite in each hand, one bright yellow with a smiley in the center, the other bright pink with the same smiley.
“Daddy, look!” Dee yelled.
“Wook!” Emmie repeated.
Kate and Dee hurried toward the car, Dee swinging the bread bags as she’d been doing all day, but now with a little extra jump in her step, and Kate laughing softly.
“I went to the toy store as soon as it opened this morning to see if Mr. Feazell had any kites, and he did!” Kate said excitedly. “He said the wind should be just right for kite flying. Won’t it be fun to fly them in the park?”
“Yes!” Dee said, flinging her bread bags into the trunk so hard that Snow White fell out of her pocket. She hurried to pick her up and then rubbed her clean on the bottom of her shirt.
“Fun!” Emmie raised her tiny shoulders and clapped her hands together. “Kay-Kay! Fun!”
Mitch nodded. She was right. Kay-Kay was planning to have fun with the girls today, and he should be happy about that. He shouldn’t be wondering why she’d talked to someone else instead of him. That’d be the type of thing someone with a personal interest in her would do, and he didn’t have a personal interest.
And even if he ever did, she didn’t feel that way about him. She’d said she was captivated, but because of his parenting, not because of Mitch himself.
“Let’s go have some fun,” he said, and he resolved to do just that.
After putting the girls in their car seats and then waiting for Kate to climb in (and bring along that peach scent he’d grown accustomed to), they backed out of the driveway and waved goodbye to Mrs. Tingle, still standing on the porch.
She waved back, and then she clasped her hands together beneath her lips while she watched them drive away.
Mitch got the strangest sensation that the woman was praying.
* * *
Kate laughed as the pink kite tilted to the right and then circled back to the left, the wind catching it and sliding it through the sky while the baby in her arms giggled.
“Pretty!” Emmie said and then bestowed an openmouthed, wet, sloppy kiss on Kate’s cheek.
“Oh, Emmie, thank you,” Kate said, snuggling her close as they cheered on their kite.
“Ours is higher, Miss Kate!” Dee yelled from where she stood holding the spindle of string.
“Yes, it is, isn’t it? You’re really good at this, Dee,” Kate said, and she watched as Dee tilted her head to rest on her daddy’s shoulder and grinned, her eyes never leaving the yellow smiling kite.
Mitch knelt beside Dee with his arms around hers to help her maintain control of the cord as their kite slowly but surely made its way closer and closer to the clouds. He kissed Dee’s forehead. “Love you, sweetie,” he said.
“Love you, Daddy,” she answered, and Kate’s heart melted.
Just two weeks ago, she’d attended the Mother’s Day service at her church in Atlanta, watched the smiling faces of moms and children displayed in the slide-show presentation before the sermon and wept for everything she’d lost. She’d cried because she’d thought she might never get to experience moments like this.
“Kay-Kay,” Emmie said, and then gave her yet another of those wet kisses.
“You are too sweet,” Kate said into that giggling, smiling face. “You know that?”
“Kay-Kay,” Emmie repeated happily.
Kate snuggled her again and then heard the searing crack of a kite gone rogue. She jerked her attention upward and, sure enough, that pink smiley face jerked and heaved back and forth so much that Kate didn’t know if it’d
come crashing to the ground or pull itself free from the string completely and make a run for the ocean. “Oh, dear.” She knew the little girl in her arms wouldn’t be pleased if she saw that smiley disappear, and Kate didn’t want any sadness associated with this day. They’d had so much fun feeding the ducks, eating their picnic lunch, pushing the girls on the swings and now flying their kites. Those were the things she wanted to remember from today, not watching Emmie’s pretty kite float away.
But the thing was pulling into the wind so hard now that the spindle had started spinning too fast for Kate to regain control, or at least to regain control with a baby in her arms.
“No!” Emmie yelled, pointing to the pink smile now slashing across the sky like a pen trying to write a name in the clouds. A messy name.
“I’m trying to stop it,” Kate said. She heard Mitch instruct Dee on holding her spindle secure until he returned. Where was he going?
And then she knew, because his arms wrapped around hers the way they’d been wrapped around Dee’s a moment ago. She felt the warmth of his chest against her back.
“I’ll help you,” he said against her left ear, and then his lips brushed her cheek as he told Emmie, “Daddy will get it, sweetie.”
Every inch of Kate’s skin tingled as he capably manipulated the spindle, working the string in and out until he regained control, his biceps flexing against Kate’s arms with every maneuver, and Kate’s heart thundering so hard that she was certain it’d knocked against her ribs. Until this moment, she’d thought of this day as a family day, the type of day she’d have if she could be a real mother. Except now she realized that in her true dreams, there was a man in the picture. A loving daddy and husband who would come to their rescue, be strong and capable, gain control of every situation. A man she could love and honor and trust and be faithful to for as long as she lived.
A man like Mitch.
“Okay, I think you’re good now,” he said, the warmth of his words feathering across her left ear and trickling down her neck, and then he eased his hands away from hers—have mercy, she’d been so lost in the close proximity, she hadn’t realized his hands had covered hers completely—and he tenderly touched Emmie’s soft curls. “Everything’s better now,” he said.
Love Inspired February 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: The Cowboy's Reunited FamilyThe Forest Ranger's ReturnMommy Wanted Page 46