Paige put Kaylie’s jacket over her shoulders and strapped her backpack onto her back. “Bedtime is still eight o’clock, even though it’s Friday, okay?” Kaylie nodded. Paige stood. “Thanks for watching her on short notice—again. Twice in one week, I owe you a girl’s night.”
“And you know I’ll collect. So what’s going on?”
Kaylie wandered across the room to the whiteboard on the wall and started drawing.
“I...have this thing.” She hadn’t told Alison about Alex’s surprise visit that week.
Alison raised a brow. “Thing as in D-A-T-E?”
Paige shook her head, crossing her arms at the wrists and then shaking them. “No. Not even close. But not in front of her.” She nodded at Kaylie, making smiley faces with the colored pens on the whiteboard across the room. They moved closer to Paige’s desk and out of Kaylie’s hearing range. “Thing as in D-A-D-D-Y.”
Alison gasped and her expression turned serious. “He called.”
“Nope, showed up on my curb and sat there like a stalker for going on two hours. Wednesday, just before you guys got back from swimming. Mrs. Purcell called me and then put 9-1-1 on notice.”
“Mrs. Purcell. Sweet old biddie.” Alison groaned. “Was he horrible and self-righteous about being a sperm donor?”
“No, he was calm and...normal.”
“Normal is good.”
“Normal might be his act. Especially with my track record.”
“Don’t do that. Don’t talk about yourself like you’re still the sixteen-year-old trying to get Mommy and Daddy to pay attention to you. We all act like fools when we’re kids.”
Paige glanced at Kaylie across the room and lowered her voice. “We don’t all get arrested on prom night for TPing the superintendent’s house.”
“We don’t all wind up with possibly the smartest, sweetest four-year-old, either.” Alison hooked her thumb toward Kaylie, who was drawing lopsided birds over the smiley faces. “Remember, you’re the one with the control here, so don’t sweat it. Tell him about midnight feedings and the upcoming drama over losing her baby teeth. He’ll run back to his home and forget all about you. And her.”
Paige could only hope. And maybe dread. Because what did it say about someone that they didn’t want to get to know a sweet kid like Kaylie? And what did her attraction to someone who could leave a child behind say about her? “I’ll probably make it home before the second movie.”
Alison gathered Kaylie’s things before crossing the room to take her hand and start for the door. “Whatever you need. See ya.” And they disappeared down the hall.
There was nothing left to do but drive to the next town and have coffee with Alex Ryan.
Thirty minutes later, sitting in the parking lot with her hands clenched around the steering wheel of her Honda, Paige decided she was being silly and childish about resolving this situation.
She had to go in.
Paige repeated that to herself twice more but her hands still seemed glued to the wheel, and not because Kaylie had “painted” it with Nutella a few weeks ago. No matter how much Paige scrubbed there was still a sticky feel to the wheel.
Alex’s blue truck was parked five spaces down, between a low-slung convertible and a delivery truck. He was probably inside, waiting.
Paige blew out a breath as she summoned her courage. She peeled her fingers from the wheel and then dropped her keys into her bag. Now go tell him what you expect.
She pushed her long hair behind her ears and started toward the coffee shop. She ordered a half-caff skinny mocha and surveyed the room. Alex sat along the back wall, sipping his own drink. He had a black ball cap on the table, which matched the black tee with the Forestry Service logo over his chest. She could see jeans and hiking boots beneath the table. He must have come straight from work, like her. She smoothed her free hand over her hip and joined him at the table.
“Sorry, I’m a little late—”
He held up a hand, cutting her off. “No problem. It can’t be easy, doing it all on your own. Babysitter problems?”
She nodded. Better he think she was waiting on the babysitter than building up her confidence to see him again. Paige sipped her coffee. “It isn’t easy, not even when you have a partner.”
“I know.”
“I don’t think you do. I don’t think you understand the kind of unit Kaylie and I are. We don’t need you to take on babysitter duties or chip in for her dance classes.”
“Kids take dance classes at four?” His eyes widened at that. “I always believed stuff like that waited until school started.”
“Some actually start at two, but that isn’t the point. She might have gymnastics lessons, and at some point she’ll probably need braces, or she might fall and break her arm. I’m a teacher, which means I get paid about two dollars an hour by the time you figure base pay against actual hours, but—”
“I never even thought about that,” Alex interrupted. He twisted his mouth to the side. “Of course I can help with tuition or anything else. I have a decent health plan—”
“That isn’t what I meant.” Paige put her fingers to her temples. She was doing this wrong, all wrong. She shook her head. “What I meant was that we don’t need your money. Whatever she wants I can give her. And what she needs isn’t another part-time babysitter.”
“But I’m more than willing to help out, however you need.” He reached to his back pocket, and before he could pull out his wallet and offer her money for her mommy services—which would get him a quick smack on his hands—Paige kept talking.
“What I need is to know you’re not going to disappear on her. And what Kaylie needs, or will need at some point, is a real father. Someone to teach her how to ride a two-wheeler and embarrass her when she goes on her first date. Those are things money can’t buy. Attention can.”
Alex tapped the tips of his fingers against the Formica tabletop. Nice fingers, Paige noticed. She clasped her hands in her lap, not wanting him to see the mess she’d made of her thumbnail throughout the day, worrying over how this night would go.
“Awful” had been her best guess earlier and that was certainly how this felt. Not because of him. He was being perfectly nice, even if he’d been about to offer her a payoff like Mr. Nelson at the clinic. She was the one making a mess of it. Inadvertently insinuating he had to pay to see Kaylie. Throwing the chip she’d been feeling for the past few weeks down on the table. The chip labeled I Can Do This On My Own.
Finally, he sat back against the booth seat, spinning the plastic stirrer over the tabletop. “I don’t have any expectations. And I know I can’t replace you as Kaylie’s anything. You’ve been there since the beginning. I’m the stranger who is biologically related but never so much as watched a younger sibling while my parents ran to the grocery store.”
Paige had looked him up on Google during her free period but all she’d found was his wife’s obituary and his picture on the Forestry Service website from when he was named Ranger of the Year two years before.
“You were an only child?”
Alex nodded.
“Me, too.” So they had one thing in common. Well, other than Kaylie. “All my life my parents have jumped between complete indifference to me and total intrusion in my life. Their priority is what they want—for their lives and for mine. I know the pain she’ll feel if you aren’t willing to invest your time and energy into really getting to know her.” She watched him closely for a moment. His eyes were bright, his hands busy with the stirrer. A vein at his temple was pounding.