“What!” Cal’s jaw dropped.
Hysterical laughter bubbled up just as it had threatened to do when Alex told her. This time Daisy gave in to it. “He’s looking for a wife.”
“You?” Cal demanded.
“No. He was as surprised as I was when he knocked on my door. He didn’t know he was coming to see me.”
“Then how—?”
“Lukas sent him.”
Cal’s eyes widened. His teeth came together. “Lukas needs to mind his own business.”
“Of course. But Lukas never does. Besides, he didn’t have any idea what he was doing. He never knew about Alex and me. No one did.” No one ever had except Cal—and only because when she’d discovered she was pregnant, she’d had to talk to someone. “Don’t blame Lukas. He thinks he’s doing me a favor sending clients my way. And he is, I suppose. Most of the time. Not this time,” she said quietly.
“No.” Cal stared down at his fingers plucking at the grass for a moment. Then his gaze lifted and went toward Charlie who was still playing with his friend in the dirt. The question was there, but unspoken.
“I didn’t say a word.”
“But he—”
Daisy shook her head. “No. That hasn’t changed. He wouldn’t want to know.”
“Still?” Cal persisted.
“No. He doesn’t want relationships any more than he ever did,” Daisy said firmly. “He doesn’t want a real wife—he wants a woman to take to social events and go to bed with. It will save him the effort of having to go out and find one, charm one.”
“He charmed you,” Cal pointed out.
Cal, of course, knew that. He knew the whole sordid story.
She had met Cal Connolly when she’d taken the job with Finn after college. Cal had been the photographer she’d replaced, Finn’s assistant before her.
Even after Cal hung out his own shingle, he had regularly come by Finn’s to talk shop. Daisy had been included in the conversation. She learned a great deal from both of them.
Finn was brilliant, mercurial—and impatient. Cal was steadier, calmer, more methodical. He didn’t yell quite as much. Finn had a wife and growing family. Cal was single, on his own. So it was Cal she began to spend time with. And while Finn had always remained her mentor, Cal had quickly become her best pal.
When she wasn’t working for Finn, she had spent hours working with Cal, talking with him, arguing with him. They argued about everything from camera lenses to baseball teams to sushi rolls, from free will to evolution to love at first sight.
That had always been their biggest argument: did you love because—bang!—it hit you between the eyes? Or did you love because you decided who the right person was and made up your mind?
Because of her parents, Daisy had been a staunch believer in the “love at first sight” notion.
“I just haven’t met the right person,” she had maintained over and over. “When I do, I’ll know. In an instant. And it will be perfect.”
But Cal had scoffed at that. Ever the logical realist, he’d said, “Nonsense. I don’t believe it for a minute. That makes you nothing but a victim of your hormones.”
“It’s not hormones. It’s instinct.”
But Cal had disagreed. “You can will whom you love,” he’d told her firmly. “It’s a rational decision.”
So when he’d proposed to her, he’d been determined to demonstrate just that. “Obviously your way doesn’t work,” he’d pointed out. “So we’ll try it my way now.”
And Daisy, because she did love Cal—just not the way she thought she loved Alex—had faced the truth of her own folly. And she’d said yes.
It turned out they were both wrong. But they’d given it their best shot. And Daisy still did believe in love—now she had a codicil: it was apparently for other people.
Now Daisy let out a sigh and wrapped a blade of grass around her finger where Cal’s wedding ring once had been.
“So, are you going to do it? Matchmake for him?” Cal asked.
“Of course not.”
He grunted. “Good.” He stared out across the field. “Was it … the same? Did you feel … this time … what you felt before?”
It was all Daisy could do not to touch her tongue to her lips. Instead she pulled her knees up and wrapped her arms around them, in full cocoon mode. “He’s still charming,” she admitted.
Cal had been watching the next batter swing and miss. But at her words he turned his head and shot her a sharp glance.
Daisy gave him a quick humorless smile. “Speaking objectively. Don’t worry. I’m not a fool anymore.”
“So I should hope.”
The batter swung and missed. Cal hauled himself to his feet to go pitch another inning. “You all right? Anything I can do?”
“No. He won’t be back.”
Cal cocked his head. “No?” He didn’t sound so sure.
“Why would he? I didn’t invite him in. I didn’t encourage him at all.” I didn’t kiss him back! “And he doesn’t want me. He wants some woman who won’t care.”
“And Charlie?”
“He doesn’t know about Charlie. I’m doing him a favor, really,” she said firmly. “He doesn’t want kids. He never did.”
“Because he doesn’t think he has any,” Cal pointed out. “What if he finds out he does?”
“He won’t.”
“But if—” Cal persisted. It was what she hated about him.
“Charlie is mine! And yours.”
She had always told Charlie—not that he understood yet really—that he had two fathers—a birth father who had given him life, and Cal, the father he knew. Charlie didn’t question it. Someday he would, no doubt. But by then it would be ingrained in his mind. There would never be a time when she had to “tell him” his father was not Cal.
Because in every way that counted, his father was Cal. Cal was the one who had been there for her. He’d been her husband when Charlie was born. Charlie bore his surname. He was the only father Charlie knew.
If someday he wanted to know about Alex, she’d tell him. If someday in the distant future, Alex learned he had a child, perhaps they would meet. But not now. Now Charlie was a child. He was vulnerable. He didn’t need a father who didn’t want him.
“You don’t know what he’ll do, Daze,” Cal said heavily, “if he finds out.”
“He won’t find out.” She would make sure of that.
Cal’s smile was grim. “We hope.”
CHAPTER THREE
A DAY went by. Two.
Daisy still kept looking over her shoulder—well, out the window, actually—feeling skittish. Apprehensive.
She checked the caller ID every time the phone rang. Her breath caught whenever she saw a shadow on the front steps.
She actually dropped the kettle she was filling this morning, even though it was just the FedEx man bringing an order to Mrs. Kaminski upstairs.
Now she was filling it again for her friend Nell, who had just brought Charlie home from