Harlequin Special Edition September 2014 - Bundle 1 of 2: Maverick for Hire\A Match Made by Baby\Once Upon a Bride (26 page)

The swing had stopped its motion and that's what Erica seemed upset about. He wound it up again and it started. Within a few seconds, she seemed content.

Kaitlyn looked a little pale when she entered the kitchen.

“Does that happen often?” he wanted to know.

“That hasn't happened ever. I haven't seen him since the divorce.”

“So what do you think brought him here tonight?”

“He said it was the interview.”

“But you didn't say anything that would paint him as a jerk. Loss divides couples—everybody understands that. Do you think he saw the article in the paper?”

She shook her head. “I don't know. But that was just the Fawn Grove paper. Jase said it was syndicated, but Tom wouldn't know that. The fact that this was TV and a much bigger viewing public must have had something to do with it. He was always very concerned with appearances.”

“Does his job depend upon them?”

“Partly. He's in marketing. He has to make contacts and keep contacts and make sure they think highly of him. But I never thought an interview like this would have any effect on him.”

Adam pulled out the kitchen chair and said to Kaitlyn, “Sit down. You look a little shell-shocked. I'll pour you more iced tea.”

“Adam, you don't have to get me anything.”

“Don't argue with me, Kaitlyn. Just tell me what you want.”

When she looked at him, with those beautiful green eyes, he saw more than he wanted to see. She wouldn't tell him exactly what she wanted because it was far beyond his ken. She kept it simple.

“Tea would be good.”

“He sounds like he always wants to be right,” Adam commented as he went to the refrigerator.

“
Everybody
wants to be right. At the beginning, he was attentive and charming and supportive. But being involved with a doctor isn't easy. I think he became resentful of so many things.”

“Would you do another interview if one came up?”

“It depends on the cause.”

“He ambushed you. Did he do that often when you were married?”

It was several beats before she answered. “Now that you mention it, maybe he did. I never considered that as a strategy, but when he wanted to confront me about something, it was always when I'd just come home from work, or just finished rounds at the hospital, or even on my way to a meeting. That's when he'd pounce to tell me about a new idea or something we should be doing differently.”

“And you didn't catch on until—”

“Until I got the divorce. At the beginning of our marriage, Tom and I had normal conversations, just like anyone does. But the busier we got, the less time we had, so every conversation was on the run. Maybe that's why some of them seemed like an ambush.”

“Maybe if Erica and I hadn't been here tonight, you could have settled things.”

“There's nothing to settle. I doubt if there will ever be another interview. But if there is, I'll let him know.”

“I think he wanted to talk to you, Kaitlyn, really talk to you. He might have regrets. I think
you
do.”

“Being involved with a doctor isn't easy,” she said again. “My hours were sporadic even after I joined the practice.”

“You had a career. He had a career. You have to stop making excuses for him. Maybe you
do
still have feelings for him.”

“I still have feelings about the dreams that never materialized and the baby we lost. But I don't have feelings and dreams about
him.
Adam, you've got to believe that.”

Did he? After seeing what had happened here tonight, he wasn't sure Kaitlyn was over her ex-husband, or whether her ex was over her.

“Are you going to talk to him again?”

“I'll see if he calls.”

“I know you, Kaitlyn. You like everything settled in a box. If he doesn't call you, you'll call him.”

Silence pervaded the kitchen after that comment. They didn't talk as they cleaned up the kitchen together.

Once Adam started the dishwasher, he said, “It's getting near Erica's bedtime. I can feed her and try to get her to fall asleep in the crib, but it could take a while.”

Kaitlyn looked troubled, and Adam didn't want to start anything that would mix up her feelings even further. When a woman dreamed of white picket fences and tomorrow, and she'd lost that dream, sometimes she wanted to hold on to it even harder. On the other hand, some disappointed women would just settle for what they could get.

He didn't like that thought, not at all. Because settling for the kind of passion they had wasn't settling, it was exploring. It was taking that roller-coaster ride, and it was remaining free and simply enjoying each other.

But as Kaitlyn stopped by Erica's swing, as she paced around the kitchen, as she moved the coffee canister to the left and then to the right, he knew tonight wasn't going to be about exploring or enjoying.

He went to her and wrapped his arms around her. “What can I do?”

She shook her head. “I wish I knew. I wish I knew why Tom's visit upset me so much.”

“The pain is still there,” Adam told her. “You're trying to make it go away by moving forward. Maybe he buried it, and the interview excavated it. It could be as simple as that. But I do think you have to explore what you had and what you might still want, maybe with him.”

She looked as if she were about to protest, but then she stopped. “After the divorce, I shut off all my feelings toward him. I was angry he had asked for the divorce. I was angry he blamed me. I was most angry that he even wouldn't try to work it out.”

“So you didn't want to give up.”

“It's a bad habit of mine. I don't like to fail.”

There was a difference, however, between not wanting to fail and still being in love with a man.

With his arm around her, he tilted her close and gave her a kiss that was meant to be consoling. But as with any time they kissed, rockets went off and the explosions rattled them. They tore apart.

“You want to think about all of it,” he said reasonably.

“And you don't understand why I have to.”

“Oh, I understand why you have to. I just don't like where it might be headed.”

“I don't like where
you
might be headed.”

Stalemate. Again.

He wouldn't be making love to Kaitlyn Foster tonight. They'd be in their separate residences, doing their separate things.

Suddenly, being separate didn't seem freeing to him at all.

* * *

An hour later, with one arm around Erica's car seat with her in it, Adam slipped his key into its lock, ready to feed his niece and then hopefully settle her for the night. At least for a few hours of it. But he found the lock already open.

At first he just stood there, clicking through his head the number of people who had a key to his condo. The manager, of course, his father, Tina— Maybe Tina had come for Erica.

However, when he pushed the door open and stepped inside, he saw his father. George Preston lay on the sofa, his legs stretched out before him, the TV blaring with the remote on his chest.

“Dad. What are you doing here?”

His father sat up and shrugged. “Waiting for you. Where have you been?”

Erica must have already caught the tension in the air, because she was wiggling in her car seat, getting ready to wail at a high decibel.

Trying to avert the inevitable, he set her on the armchair, quickly unfastened the harness and lifted her out. “I was having dinner with...a friend.”

“It couldn't have been much of a date with a baby along,” his father said wryly, swinging his legs to the floor. He came over to Adam, narrowed his eyes and stared at his grandchild.

“Little thing, isn't she?”

“She's only ten weeks old.”

“There's not much hair, either.”

Adam felt affronted for his niece. “This is a stage babies go through. She'll grow more hair, and it will probably be thick and silky like Tina's.”

“Unless the daddy was bald,” his father joked.

Adam wasn't in the mood for jokes. “Really, Dad, why are you here? Did Tina contact you?” That was possible, he supposed.

“No, she didn't contact me. But you laid a guilt trip on me when we talked. After all, I
was
Tina's stepfather for a short time.”

“You still
are
her stepfather.” Adam wanted to make it clear the responsibility didn't end when a marriage broke up, not when children were involved.

“So I'm here now. Have you heard from her?”

Did his father really want to help find Tina, or did he have another agenda?

“She called. I leave a message on her phone every day. But I've also hired a P.I. to do some investigating. I want to find her sooner rather than later.”

Erica began to cry. She was probably hungry and Adam wasn't fulfilling her needs.

“A P.I.? That will cost a pretty penny. I understand you want to get the baby out of your life, but—”

“I do
not
want to get the baby out of my life,” Adam protested. His vehemence surprised even himself.

His father studied him. “What's come over you?”

“Look, Dad, if you came to help, that's great. Do you want to take turns babysitting Erica?”

His father looked disgusted. “Get reasonable, Adam. I don't know anything about taking care of a baby.”

“I didn't, either, but I learned quick.”

“I brought someone with me.”

Adam looked around as if he'd missed someone when he walked in. “Who?”

“Iris. And I'm going to marry her. I thought maybe you'd like to meet her. We're going to fly to Las Vegas day after tomorrow.”

His father was trying to talk above Erica's cries, and his voice kept rising higher and higher, along with hers. At least all the noise gave Adam time to think. It gave him time to realize his father was only thinking of himself again.

“If you say you brought this woman with you—”

“Iris,” his father reminded him.

“Fine, Iris. Where is she?”

“She's staying at a five-star hotel in Sacramento. What did you think I was going to do with her? Throw her into this?”

By “this” he meant Erica's fuss. Annoyed with him, intent on meeting Erica's needs, Adam crossed to the kitchen. With the car seat on the counter, he quickly mixed up a bottle of formula, tested the temperature and then took it with him to the armchair.

As he expertly fed Erica and her cries diminished to contented suckling, he asked his father, “And do you intend to bunk with me?”

“Of course not. I'm staying with Iris. But I did feel a certain responsibility about Tina, and I had to get that settled with you.”

“Get what settled?”

“What you're going to do with her baby. After all, if she doesn't return, aren't you going to put her up for adoption?”

Just the thought turned Adam's stomach. Just the thought of giving Erica to anyone else made him feel absolutely sick.

He looked down at the child who'd found a place in his heart. “No, I would
not
put Erica up for adoption, any more than I'd put up a child of mine for adoption. I'm surprised you didn't do that with me after Mom died.”

“Adam!”

Had he gone too far? He didn't think so. “Look, Dad, I've had an unusually mixed-up evening. I'm glad you think you've found happiness with Iris. Is she twenty years older than you are, or maybe twenty years younger?”

“Younger,” his father snapped. “But that has nothing to do with it.”

“Tiffany was twenty years younger than you, too. Anna Mae was fifteen years younger. Do you think these women can give you back your youth?”

His father's brows drew together in an imposing scowl. “Your insolence tonight—”

His father's scowl didn't disturb him anymore. “It's maybe what you need to hear. If you aren't happy with yourself, you'll never be happy with someone else.”

“Look who's talking—the man who's never married at all.”

Score one for his dad. “Maybe I haven't, but maybe that's because I didn't want to have a marriage like any of yours.” He said it sadly without accusation.

“It wasn't my marriages that ruined your life. It was that girl in college. You should have told the police the truth that night.”

Adam went perfectly still. When his gaze met his father's, he knew that his dad had known the truth all along. A new respect for his dad came over Adam because his father hadn't been as clueless as he'd thought.

“I loved her and I protected her.”

“Love isn't always about protection, Adam. Sometimes it's about telling the truth.”

“She has the life she wants.”

“And how about you? If you hadn't been charged with reckless driving, if you hadn't been so mixed-up, if you hadn't been rudderless in college, might
your
life have turned out differently?”

Adam thought of Tina and Erica. He thought of the things Sherry had said to him, the bitterness that was now in the past. Then he thought about Kaitlyn.

“Everything in my life has brought me to this point,” he responded after some thought. “Now I have to make decisions that are going to affect the rest of it. One of those decisions is what to do about Tina. She needs support, Dad, and I'm not just talking about monetary support. There's an organization here called The Mommy Club. They can help her in so many ways. They can give her a list of the best services with a sliding scale of fees she can afford. They can hook her up with good doctors. They even have a hotline for young mothers who get overwhelmed, as well as affordable day care.”

“You learned all this in two short weeks.”

“I learned it because I needed to learn it if I was going to take care of Erica. It would be great if you get to know your granddaughter while you're here.”