Sweet and Sassy Baby Love

by Alicia Street

  “So you could run back to a life that did not include me.” She gave him a cynical grin.

  “It was a big mistake. We were both wrong.”

  “No, we weren’t. It was a no-win situation, Matt. It would not have worked. It would have caused a painful rift between you and your father, maybe with your whole family. I would have been asking you to choose between them and me. It would have destroyed us.”

  “Maybe not. We’ll never know. I wish I could go back and do it over. All except for my son. He is the only good thing that came out of it.”

  Em smiled. “What is his name?”

  “Matthew, of course. My brother dubbed him Matt three.”

  “Is he ‘the third’?”

  “No, because his middle name is Edward, Nicole’s father’s name.” He glanced at Em and she seemed calmer now, but he still had to tread carefully. “Since Sadie is mine I’m guessing she is about three and a half years old?”

  Em nodded. “How did you find out about her?”

  “I was eating at The Blue Albatross and the issue of the bait and tackle store came up. Gayle, our waitress, mentioned little Sadie Clifford who is in daycare with her son and said she was your daughter. I knew right away she was also mine.” Matt spoke in a gentle tone, but his words brooked no dispute. “As her father I have a right to meet her. To be involved in her life and to do my part to take care of her. You can’t keep her from me, Em.”

  ***

  “I know.” One part of Em was wary of trusting Matt, but another part was thankful for his caring attitude toward Sadie. “During my first couple years when I was living in Philadelphia, I was still so angry that I had planned to say her father had died.”

  “Then I turned up at your snowball fight.”

  “Actually, it was way before that. It was when Sadie started looking and acting less like a baby and more like a little girl. At this point Sadie is not quite at the stage where she notices who has a daddy and who does not. But it won’t be long before she begins to ask about those things—and about where her daddy is. I have been struggling with that, knowing it isn’t fair to her or to you to keep it hidden. And I don’t want to lie to my daughter. She would hate me later on if she found out I lied to her. Sadie deserves to know her father, even if we have to figure out how to explain that you have two families.”

  “Does she have your eyes?”

  “Nope. Yours. She’s even got that russet hair that runs in your family.”

  “Was you aunt with you when she was born?” Matt asked, and Em heard a slight crack in his voice.

  “Yes. And my dad came in the next day.”

  “I’m sorry I wasn’t there. I want to make it up to you, Em. Give me a chance to show you I can be the man you once loved.”

  How many times had she fantasized Matt showing up out of the blue and saying that to her? But it was only a fantasy. “That is not going to happen. Not when you are putting my father out of business. The reason I came back here was to help him get back on his feet. You know he has a drinking problem, and he was finally doing well again. Then you and your greedy family came in and—”

  “Wait a minute, Em. Let me explain. That was what I came to talk to you about the other day.”

  “I thought that was about Sadie.”

  “No, I just learned about Sadie this afternoon. You think I would have waited two days to see you if I had known about Sadie? I would have broken down your door.”

  “So, are you saying it was not your family that bought the building?”

  Matt heaved a sigh. “Rocklyn Winery bought it. When my dad asked me to sign the papers I saw what the address was and argued with him, trying to convince not to buy it, but he would not relent. Then my uncle told me my only chance of helping you would be if we own it because the landlord is set on selling and another buyer would likely insist that you leave.”

  “This sounds like double speak, Matt. I’m not—”

  “I have a plan. My father doesn’t know yet, but my uncle and I are looking for another building, and when we find one, we will convince my father it is a better location, fit, whatever for the proposed wine bar. Then your dad can just stay put and rent the bait and tackle shop from my family.”

  He gave her one of those cute grins that used to make her get all steamy inside and pull him toward the bed. And if she could believe him—that he was trying to save her father’s business for her—then maybe he meant what he said about loving her.

  Matt’s hand touched hers and he whispered, “It was you I should have married four years ago, but I gave in and let my father win. I won’t let that happen again.”

  Chapter Six

  “Your father did not look too happy when I saw him out front as he was leaving,” Ivy said, handing her Sadie’s other shoe.

  Em knelt on the floor in front of her daughter who sat on the edge of the bed. “He wasn’t. He wanted to be here, but I told him Matt and I had to do this alone. At least the first time.”

  Ivy nodded. “I totally agree with that.”

  “No shoes, Mommy. No shoooooes.” Sadie kicked her feet back and forth, making Em have to pull back out of the line of fire.

  “But these are pretty princess shoes,” Em said, holding up a shiny black leather Mary Jane. “I want you to look like a princess for Daddy.”

  “Chrissy’s daddy coming?”

  “No, sweetheart. It is your daddy who is coming over.”

  “Mine daddy?”

  “Yes, and he can’t wait to meet you.”

  Sadie seemed to stop and think about this. Then she frowned and asked, “Mine grandpa?”

  “No, Sadie. Your daddy.”

  “I have daddy?”

  “Yes, and I think it would be nice if you wore these pretty shoes the first time he sees you.”

  Em kept talking to distract her as she took Sadie’s foot and casually slipped one shoe on and buckled it. Then she actually managed to get the other one on without any objection.

  “She looks adorable,” Ivy said.

  Em sat back on her heels and smiled, looking at her daughter all dressed up in a blue plaid dress with a matching cardigan. She had considered just letting Sadie wear her usual play clothes, but then she decided this was a special day. After all, Em’s little girl was going to meet her father for the first time.

  “Anything you need before I leave?” Ivy asked.

  “A hug?” Em stood and reached for her friend. “I am so nervous,” she whispered in Ivy’s ear as the two women hugged. “A crazy part of me is afraid he will try to take her from me. Another part is afraid he will reject her in some way.”

  “Way off on both counts.” She pulled back and looked Em in the eye. “It is going to be fine. It sounds like he has already confessed his undying love in so many words. He is the one who screwed up and should be nervous. Not you.”

  “What would I do without you, Ivy?”

  “Probably eat less cake.” She patted her on the back and then leaned over and ruffled Sadie’s hair. “See you guys later.”

  About ten minutes after Ivy left, the front doorbell rang. Em glanced at Sadie, who was sitting on the living room floor playing with her Peppa Pig playhouse. Then she opened the door and Matt stepped in, his face breaking into a huge smile the second he saw Sadie.

  It was as if his whole identity transformed in that moment. Suddenly he was no longer the guy she had fallen in love with who broke her heart—he was Sadie’s father.

  Em knelt on the floor next to Sadie, ready for any damage control that might be necessary, as Matt approached her, saying, “Hi, Sadie.”

  He squatted on the floor a couple feet in front of her and Em was glad he just stopped and waited. She had not given him any pointers and now wished she had because she wanted Sadie’s experience to be as positive as possible. But Matt seemed to know the right thing to do. He did have a two-year-old son, Em reminded herself.

  Sadie stopped what she was doing and looked up at Matt with big eyes, curious but
puzzled. She did not seem afraid, just unsure.

  “Sadie,” Em said, “this is your daddy.”

  “Mine daddy?”

  “Yes,” Em said, and when she turned to face Matt, his eyes were wet.

  “She is beautiful.”

  Em let out a soft laugh. “Well, she looks like you.”

  “Actually, she looks exactly like my baby sister, Kendra, did when she was three. I never introduced you to my sister, did I?”

  “No. Tucker is the only one in your family that I met, and that was an accident when he showed up at your bungalow one night when I was there.” Em couldn’t help the slightly bitter tone in her voice. Matt had kept her separate from his family the whole year they were together, and at the time she had loved it. She had loved the way the two of them would get lost in their own little world as if no one else on earth existed or mattered, just each other. But in hindsight, the way he had suddenly left her and returned to “his” world, leaving her stranded, made trusting him now risky business.

  “I brought you a present,” Matt said to Sadie, who was still just staring at him.

  As he set the large bag on the floor, Em took it and began opening the top. “Let’s see what is in the bag, Sadie. Let’s see what Daddy brought for you.”

  Sadie shifted her gaze to the bag and waited, more silent than usual, as Em drew out a stuffed toy. “Ooh, look, Sadie. A nice llama. All soft and floppy but big enough for you to sit on.”

  Sadie let out an ear-piercing squeal and climbed onto the llama’s back as soon as Em set it on the floor. When Sadie hugged it, both Em and Matt sighed and then laughed.

  “Thank you, Daddy,” Em said, but she didn’t push Sadie to say it. Too much for the first meeting. She was just glad her daughter had come out of her catatonic state of staring at Matt.

  The rest of the visit went really well, including the tortellini lunch Em had made for all three of them. She had purposely scheduled Matt to come after Sadie’s nap time, but of course there were still a couple minor tantrums.

  By the time Matt left, Sadie had even said a few words directly to him. The first time was to tell him how she felt about string beans (she hated them).

  The second time was when she said out of the blue, “Mommy pretty.”

  And Matt said, “Yes, Sadie, Mommy is very pretty.”

  Em felt his eyes on her in a way that had always melted her defenses in the past, and she realized how unrealistic it was to believe she could keep her relationship with Matt totally out of these meetings between Sadie and her father.

  When he was leaving, Matt managed to get Sadie to wave good-bye to him, but he stopped Em at the door and spoke softly. “My cousin is an attorney of family law. I want us to meet with her and work out how I can make her legally mine and set up—”

  “Don’t you dare try and take her from me.”

  “What?” Matt pulled his chin back. “How can you possibly think I would do that?”

  Although she was slightly embarrassed by her paranoid outburst, Em glared at him, hand on her hip, and said, “I once thought I knew you and you turned around and became someone else. Someone who hurt me and abandoned me. So, pardon me if I have a few trust issues going on here.”

  “Point taken.” Matt blew out a sigh. “Look, I want to make sure you and Sadie are cared for. Do I want more than that? Yes. But whether or not you let me back into your life, I want to make sure that Sadie has legal rights as my daughter. Does that make sense?”

  “Yes.”

  “Will you meet with my cousin and me to work this out?”

  “Okay.”

  Then he did something that took her by surprise. Before turning and going to his car, he leaned in and kissed her on the forehead. It was the way he said his goodbye to her every time they were together during that wonderful year when they had fallen in love.

  ***

  “I don’t want his charity,” Jack grumbled, as he put his feet up on a hassock in the living room.

  Em sat in the chair across from him. Sadie was sound asleep so she had figured this was the best time to have this discussion. “It’s not charity, Dad. Sadie is his daughter, and you are her grandfather, so naturally Matt doesn’t want your business to go under.”

  “He just wants to get in your pants again, more like it.”

  “I am not going to discuss my sex life with my father. But just to clarify, let me say Matt is going out of his way to make this happen, fighting his father who wants to go forward with his plans.”

  Jack snickered. “He’s got you all wound up already. Playing you like a violin. I know his kind. He’ll have fun with you and Sadie for a while, then he will be gone.”

  “That sounds more like my mother.”

  That hit home, and Em was sorry the moment she said it, but Jack came back right away with, “Then where was he for the last four years?”

  “I never told him I was pregnant.”

  “Pregnant or not, he left you high and dry.”

  Em ground her teeth and said, “The reasons are complicated, but I am willing to eat humble pie to keep you from losing your business. If we don’t go with Matt’s plan, what will you do? Retire? At fifty-five?”

  “Maybe. You don’t need me anymore. Now that you’ve got your rich boyfriend.”

  “Is that what this is about? Your male ego? I thought you would be happy to hear about the generous child support Matt set up for me and Sadie. And as to needing you—Sadie and I both need you because we love you. And people like Phil need you because you have been a valued part of the fishing community for thirty years.”

  Her father was silent for a few moments, and Em knew that meant she might have gotten through to him.

  But then he picked up the TV remote and flicked it on. “You are getting ahead of yourself. Your boyfriend hasn’t found another building yet, and when he sees that he can’t, his brilliant plan will go up in smoke and he will be on his way.”

  Em stood in front of the TV, arms crossed over her chest. “You like to gamble on fishing and football, well, you and I are going to have a little bet. I will bet you that Matt comes through with the building, the new lease for Jack’s Bait and Tackle, and sticks around permanently for Sadie.”

  “And for you.”

  “For me?”

  “Yeah. Add that in and we’ve got a bet.”

  Did she even want that?

  Yeah, she did. And her father could see it. Why else would she be standing here defending Matt to him?

  “Okay,” she finally said.

  A combination of excitement and trepidation surged through her as she realized what she was saying. Em was admitting she wanted Matt to come back to her. And that she believed him when he said he wanted a second chance. But the fear that he would turn around on her again was just as strong. And if it happened a second time, she would be shattered and broken even worse than before.

  Jack interrupted her thoughts. “If you win, I’ll invest in that new storefront sign you’ve been bugging me about so long. If I win, you and I will hire somebody else to handle all your dealings with Matt Rocklyn so you don’t ever have to speak with him again.”

  Chapter Seven

  “You were the only one in our family who liked Em,” Matt said to Tucker as they walked along the narrow sandy beach that bordered Tucker’s small house in the dunes as well as the northern boundary of the Rocklyn vineyard. “You were the only one who took me aside to question my extreme turnaround, asking me if I was sure I really wanted to marry Nicole. Nobody else could see what a disaster I was walking into.”

  “Well, I’m not so sure about that,” Tucker said. “Grant might have seen it if he ever paid attention to the people around him instead of his animals. And Kendra and Jeff weren’t living near here, so they didn’t learn anything about it until all the plans were made. So you are really just talking about Dad and Mom.”

  “And Chad, but with his heavy schedule he wasn’t around much either. I think he just said what he thought I w
anted to hear.”

  “Knowing Chad, I’m surprised he didn’t try to talk you out of tying the knot with anybody period.”

  Matt laughed. “True. Marriage is definitely not on his to-do list.”

  They fell into a silence as they ambled near the water’s edge. The Sound looked blue and blustery and cold today. Or maybe it only looked that way because of the upheaval Matt feared his announcement might spark in his family.

  “Sooo,” Tucker said, “was there a reason you brought up Em? I know she moved back here a few months ago. Are you thinking of starting something with her again?”

  “Uh, yeah.”

  “Considering the way you dropped her out of the blue, I can’t imagine you parted on the best of terms.”

  “I wish that were the only complication. I ran into her a few weeks ago and at first it was just the realization that I still love her, that I screwed up badly when I lost her. And hurt her.”

  “Did she dump some hate on you?”

  “Kind of. But a couple things bind us together. One is that Dad and Uncle Mike just bought the building her father’s shop is in, which would put him out of business.”

  “Oops.”

  “Big ugly oops. But I’m trying to find another place for the wine bar so Jack and Em can stay.”

  “How’s Dad reacting to that?”

  “He doesn’t know yet. I’ll have to convince him once I find the place. Or override him, since Uncle Mike is on my side.”

  “Whoa. That is a first for you. Bucking Dad’s authority.”

  Matt shook his head. “I guess I have been ‘his boy’ my whole life, haven’t I? Didn’t even see it. But what I see now is that I chose Dad over Em that summer we were in Europe—and I hate myself for it. And I won’t do it again.”