Take Me To The Beach

by K. L. Grayson, Karina Halle, A. L. Jackson, Marni Mann, Monica Murphy, Devney Perry, Kristen Proby, Rachel Van Dyken

  For the first time, I was embarrassed for being so chemically attracted to him. Why would he want me when he probably had a fancy, rich girlfriend in New York?

  Still, I had no control over how my body came to life when he was near. My blood heated. My palms ached to press against the hard planes of his chest. My fingertips itched to dig into the muscles of his sculpted ass.

  But he wasn’t here for me. He was here for Charlie.

  I was his one-night stand gone awry.

  Nothing more.

  I shook off the charge of his presence, concentrating on the matter at hand. Charlie was meeting her father tonight.

  “So.” Logan began pacing around my small living room, his gaze sweeping over the two floral print chairs that somehow went with our celestial blue couch. “Did you, um, talk to Charlie?”

  His fingers fidgeted with his watch as he spoke, and he’d run a hand through his hair twice already. Something about him was off tonight. He’d still charged the air and spiked the temperature with one step inside. He still smelled divine, thanks to his Armani cologne. But he was different.

  He was nervous.

  So, as gently as I could, I tried to put him at ease while hinting at how to approach Charlie.

  “Yes, I talked to her. She’s . . . absorbing everything. She needs time to think, so just take it slow with her, okay?”

  “Slow. Got it.” He nodded, staring at a canvas painting above the couch. “Did you do these?”

  I nodded. “I did.”

  A couple of years ago, I’d decided to try painting on a whim. Hazel had cleared out most of the artwork her parents had left her, and she’d asked me to make something to fill the walls. So I’d done three paintings.

  The first was of me sitting on the dock by the lake. For my first attempt with oils, it had turned out okay. My hair was too light and the details a bit fuzzy, but it had been good practice for the others. The second painting was of Hazel’s beautiful profile. And the third, the one that Logan was trying to memorize, was of Charlie at one year old with her first two teeth showing through her happy smile.

  I didn’t know what was going through Logan’s mind, but my heart squeezed for him regardless.

  He’d missed all of those moments. The baby cuddles. The toddler babbles. He’d missed her first words and first steps.

  For Logan’s sake, I hoped Charlie would cut him a break tonight. She was notorious for her intense scrutiny. Jackson called it her superpower. Most adults had nothing on my five-year-old girl.

  Please, don’t let tonight be a disaster.

  I wanted a good night for both of them because neither would ever forget it.

  Wanting to give Logan a moment, I cleared my throat. “I’m going to put these flowers in some water. Then I’ll bring Charlie in.”

  He didn’t turn away from Charlie’s face. “All right.”

  I darted back to the kitchen and scrambled to put the sunflowers in a vase. As it filled with water, I peered out the window over the sink to the backyard. A streak of flying brown hair caught my eye as Charlie ran from her fort to the shoreline of the lake.

  I shut off the faucet and left the flowers to hurry to the back door before she could get herself wet.

  “Charlie!” I shouted. “Time to come inside.”

  Her feet skidded to a stop on the grass, then her frame slumped as she changed direction, plodding toward the house and up the porch steps.

  “Let’s get you washed up, okay?” I placed my hand on her neck as she came through the door, then steered her right for the sink.

  As we both scrubbed her hands, she looked up at me. “Is he here?”

  “Yes, he’s in the living room.”

  Her tiny shoulders drooped so low my heart ached. It wasn’t Logan, just his presence. My girl struggled so much with change. It was just who she was. It didn’t help that her friend Katie had told her horror stories of trading homes every three days after her parents had divorced.

  I shut off the water and knelt next to Charlie, caressing her cheek. “Logan is really excited to meet you and have dinner with us. Do you think you can be brave and give him a chance? We don’t need to worry about all of the other stuff tonight. Okay?”

  She nodded and fell into my arms.

  I held her tight, hoping to give her some of the courage she often gave me. Then I let her go and stood, holding out my hand.

  When her little fingers slipped into mine, I smiled and led her out of the kitchen toward the living room.

  Logan was sitting on the edge of the couch, his hands steepled together by his chin as one of his feet bounced. When he saw us come into the room, he stood fast. His eyes zeroed in on Charlie. “Hi.”

  Her hand gripped mine harder.

  “Come on, honey.” I walked farther into the living room as Logan stepped around the coffee table to meet us in the middle. “Charlie, this is Logan. Logan, this is Charlie.”

  He knelt down in front of her and held out his hand. “Hi, Charlie.”

  I tensed, holding my breath as I waited for her to react.

  She was staring at his hand like it was the pink headband I’d tried to get her to wear once.

  Logan’s eyes darted up to mine, then back to Charlie. His hand was still between them, begging for a touch.

  It hurt to watch as she rejected him. My heart ached as the longing on his face grew while his hope dimmed.

  Finally, the pain in my chest was too much and I pried Charlie’s hand out of my own. “Charlie,” I scolded, pushing her forward a step. “Don’t be rude.”

  Reluctantly, she put her hand in Logan’s.

  He swallowed hard as they touched, shaking her hand. “It’s nice to meet you.”

  She looked over her shoulder to me with panic and whispered, “What do I call him?”

  Logan chuckled and let her hand go. “How about Logan?”

  She nodded and met his gaze, studying him for a moment. “Mommy said you live far away.”

  “That’s right. I live in New York City.”

  “And that’s why you didn’t visit me before?”

  Logan looked up to me for help. “I, uh . . .”

  “He didn’t know where we lived.” I dropped to my knee next to Charlie. “That’s my fault. But as soon as he found out, he came right here to visit.”

  Logan gave me a sad smile, then focused back on Charlie. “I’d really like to get to know you, if that’s okay?”

  The corner of her mouth turned up a bit. Was she actually going to smile? Could it really just be this easy?

  “Do you like forts?” she asked.

  He smiled and my heart started to race. Say yes, Logan! Just say yes! “I don’t know if I’ve ever been in a fort. Do you have one?”

  She nodded and flashed him a shy smile. “It’s outside. I can show you.”

  “How about after dinner?” I offered.

  “Sounds great.” Logan and I both stood, sharing a look of pure relief.

  “Okay, we’d better eat.” I turned and led the way toward the kitchen.

  Charlie and Logan followed in silence, sitting at the dinner table as soon as we got to the kitchen. I left them there and went to the stove to bring over the food. But the kitchen was small and with the table in the corner, I could still hear them.

  “Are you going to stay here now?” Charlie asked.

  “Well, um, no.” I looked over my shoulder to see a rush of panic cross Logan’s face. “I have to go back home in a week.”

  Charlie’s forehead furrowed as she took a few more steps and stopped. “Then you’ll be gone again?”

  “I guess. But I’ll come back again to visit.”

  “When?”

  The good feeling I’d had a moment ago vanished. Like most kids, Charlie remembered promises. Every detail. If Logan committed to a visit and it fell through, she wouldn’t forget.

  Goddamn it. Why hadn’t we talked about this more last night? Why hadn’t I prepped him? We should have made a more specific pl
an. We should have delayed this meeting until the two of us were on the same page.

  But now it was too late. He was here and she was asking the questions she had a right to have answered.

  My insides started to twist. I abandoned the stove for the table, but before I could jump in and change the subject, Logan spoke up.

  “I’m not sure.” Logan smiled. “But soon. And maybe you and your mom can come and visit me in New York. You could even move there and live with me.”

  Wrong answer.

  “No!” Charlie’s wide eyes snapped to mine. Her chin quivered. “I don’t want a dad anymore.”

  My feet froze as the pain hit because from three feet away, I felt Logan’s heart break.

  Thea

  An hour later, the most painful dinner of my life was over.

  “Can I go?” Charlie asked, already picking up her plate.

  “Did you want to show Logan your fort?” I grasped for anything that might put a smile on her face. All through dinner, I’d been trying to find a topic that would connect Logan and Charlie but nothing had worked.

  Any time Logan had tried to make conversation, she’d try to hide behind her plate of noodles. Nothing either of us had said could get her to mutter more than one or two words throughout the whole meal.

  She hadn’t even been impressed by the sunflowers.

  Charlie had shut down the minute Logan had mentioned the idea of moving. The only thing that was going to get her to emerge from her shell was time.

  “I want to play in my room,” she whispered, sliding off her chair.

  “Okay. I’ll come up in a little bit and we can do your bath.”

  “I’m glad I got to have dinner with you tonight.” Logan forced a smile and stood from his chair. “Good night, Charlie.”

  “Good night.”

  She dropped her plate in the sink, then disappeared upstairs with sad eyes.

  When the sound of her footsteps faded, I looked up at Logan. “I’m sorry.”

  “I think I failed that test.” He ran a hand through his hair and sank back into his chair.

  “She’ll come around. She just needs some time.” I stood and began clearing dishes from the table.

  “Thank you,” he said. “Dinner was delicious.”

  “I guess none of us was all that hungry.” Our plates were all still half full. Food had been pushed around during the awkward silences instead of eaten.

  “She’s not like other kids, is she?”

  “Not like most,” I said over my shoulder as I rinsed a plate. “It takes her a while to warm up to new people and change. She’s not really shy, just . . . wary. For years, her world consisted of only me, Hazel and Jackson. She just needs time.”

  “Time I don’t have.”

  Because his life was in New York. And ours was in Lark Cove.

  I shut off the water and turned away from the sink, leaning back against the counter. “I guess we’d better come up with some sort of plan.”

  “Yeah.” He nodded. “Would you ever consider moving back to the city?”

  I shook my head. “I’d do it if I had to, but I’m hoping you won’t make us.”

  “Make us?”

  “It’s no secret you could bury me under a mountain of lawyers to get custody of Charlie.”

  His eyes narrowed. “I told you last night I wouldn’t do that.”

  “I know.” I held up my hands, hoping to calm the rising tension in the kitchen. “I’m just laying it out there. If you wanted her in New York, you could make that happen. I’m hoping you won’t because we’re happy here.”

  “She could be happy there.”

  “Yes, she could. But she is happy in Lark Cove.”

  He frowned. “I can’t come back and forth to Montana all the time.”

  My stomach sank. I knew without asking that he wouldn’t consider moving an option. I didn’t blame him. I knew leaving the city would be asking too much. But that hasn’t stopped my foolish heart from hoping.

  I wanted him to choose Charlie over everything else. I wanted him to prove that she was his most important priority.

  I wanted the impossible.

  “What do you want to do?” I asked quietly.

  “I don’t know. I wish . . .” He sighed. “I wish she would have liked me.”

  The ache in my chest came back with a fury. “She will, Logan. Just give it time.”

  “I don’t have time, Thea.” He stood from the chair and planted his hands on his hips. “I have to leave on Sunday. I have one week. One week to get to know my daughter and build something of a relationship with her. Then I need to wrap this up and get my life back to normal.”

  My blood pressure spiked. He wanted to wrap this up in a week? He thought in seven days he’d have a loving father-daughter relationship. It took me longer than a week to decide if I liked a new shampoo.

  And what was normal? There was no such thing. His life, the one he was so desperate to get back to, would forever be different. As of yesterday, it wasn’t about him.

  “Wrap this up and get your life back to normal?” I repeated.

  He shook his head. “That came out wrong.”

  “Good,” I snapped. “I’m sorry this has disrupted your life, but you’re going to need to find more than a week for your daughter.”

  “Which would be easier if you were in New York.”

  “I’m not taking her to New York! She’s starting first grade in the fall. She has friends here. She has family. I can’t give her the life she has here in the city.”

  He pointed to his chest as he stepped closer. “I am her family too. And if it’s about money, you don’t need to worry. You’d have the best of everything. So would she.”

  We were his charity case now? I pushed off the counter and met him in the middle of the kitchen. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about her lifestyle. It’s about where I want her to grow up.”

  “And what about what I want?” His voice got louder. “I should get a say too, especially since I haven’t so far. It wasn’t my fault that I missed the first five years of her life!”

  “It wasn’t mine either!” I stood on my tiptoes, inching toward his face. My chest was heaving, almost touching his, and with an angry breath, I realized just how close we’d gotten.

  His gaze was heated and the inch between us crackled. Even angry he was gorgeous. The pull between our bodies was just as strong as it had been years ago.

  My eyes drifted to his lips. I remembered them being soft but hard. He’d used them as weapons against my skin to render me helpless.

  He leaned in, just a bit, tempting me closer.

  I wanted to kiss him and snake my hands up his arms. To shove all of my frustration into something raw and physical. I wanted to ignore the heap of problems at our feet and get lost in something sweaty.

  But it wasn’t about what either of us wanted.

  It was about Charlie.

  I dropped my chin and took a step backward. Then another. “She has a lot of questions, and I don’t have answers.”

  He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t either.”

  “We have to find them.”

  “I know.” He nodded. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I think it would be best for me to go before something happens between us that we’ll regret.” Without a good-bye, he turned and left me standing in the center of my kitchen.

  Regret. His last word echoed off the red-speckled countertops and yellow-tinged cupboards. It burned my ears.

  Logan would regret a kiss with me. Maybe he regretted ever stepping into that hotel bar.

  And damn did that hurt. Almost as much as knowing he had no plans to change his lifestyle for our daughter.

  After Logan left, while I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, I pulled myself together. As I did my chores, I shrugged off the sting of his rejection. I reminded myself that only one thing mattered in all of this.

  Charlie.

  Then I went upstairs and down the hall to her roo
m. She was sitting at her “art center” with her back to the door. Her center was nothing more than a short, square desk pushed into a corner, but it had a small drawer for her special drawing paper and a cup to hold her markers. These days, her legs were nearly too long for the child-sized chair.

  That center was the only thing in the room that had any girly qualities. Charlie had shocked me when we’d gone shopping in Kalispell for the table. Instead of going for the white or royal blue as I’d expected, she’d picked pale pink.

  The rest of her room was decked out in items from the boys’ section at Target. She had a green camo bedspread and matching sheets. Her bookshelf in the corner was in the shape of half a canoe. And there was a black teepee at the foot of her bed where she’d escape to read with a flashlight. Her bedroom resembled her fort outside more than it did a little girl’s room.

  Everything was tomboy.

  Except for that pink table.

  “Hi, honey.” I knocked on the doorframe.

  She looked over her shoulder and then went right back to coloring.

  I crossed the room and knelt next to her chair. “What are you drawing?”

  “Just a picture,” she mumbled as she used brown to shade in the roof of the house she’d outlined.

  Our house.

  She’d drawn the cottage along with three stick figures. One was me, judging by the long black hair. The other was Hazel with gray strands around her round face. And the last was Charlie, standing between us with a big smile.

  Who wasn’t in the picture? Logan.

  Like mother, like daughter.

  Charlie used art to express her feelings when she couldn’t find the words.

  “That’s a pretty picture,” I said, stroking her hair. “Can you take a break and look at me?”

  She set down her marker and turned in the seat, her chin still tipped down. When she looked up, her brown eyes flooded with tears. “I don’t want to move far away, Mommy.”

  “Don’t worry.” I pulled her off the chair and into my arms. “We’ll figure something out.”

  She sat on my bent knees and buried her head in the crook of my neck. “Promise?”

  “Promise.”

  The knot in my stomach tightened. If Logan forced my hand—if he made us move to the city—I’d never forgive him for making me break my promise.