He lifted his hand, peaceably. “I’m sorry.” And he was. “I’m not trying to offend you. Just…to understand what it is that you do want.”
The offended glint in her eyes slowly softened. She pushed her hands into the side pockets of her coat and rocked on her feet.
He immediately recognized the motion. Chloe had done the same exact thing in the diner.
“I want my daughter to know she has a father.” Her gaze didn’t meet his. Instead, it was focused somewhere off over his left shoulder.
“Lots of kids don’t have a father around.” Some were better off, too.
The corners of her lips curved downward. “Did you have your father around?”
He’d had two, actually. His mother, believing her relationship with Ryan’s natural father was over, had married Tom Morehouse, who’d raised him until he’d died when Ryan was seven. A few years later his mom and Sawyer reconciled and had never been apart again. “Yeah. I did.” He sighed. The paper sack crinkled as he held it up. “The repair clamp you need,” he said. “I brought you a few extra.”
She blinked a little, obviously surprised. “Thank you. I was going to run to the store before they closed, but—”
“Now you won’t need to.” He jerked his chin toward the house. “I’ll put it on if you want.”
“That’s really not necessary,” she demurred.
But he saw the hopefulness behind the words. “Might as well.” He wasn’t opposed to offering the assistance. He just would have preferred to offer it to an absolute and utter stranger, instead of this woman with her impossibly sexy mouth and her claims about him and her daughter. “I’m here.”
And they were evidently just one big, happy family.
Mallory wasn’t ungrateful for the offer of assistance, but as she led the way up the sidewalk that she hadn’t had time yet to shovel, she found herself wishing the assistance weren’t coming from him.
She hadn’t expected him to do cartwheels of joy when she’d told him about Chloe. She couldn’t think of many men who would appreciate such news coming right out of the woodwork. And while she was trying to be fair—to see the situation from all sides—she didn’t have a hope of really succeeding there, because she was firmly rooted on Chloe’s side.
A child deserved to know their father. Period.
To this day, she still couldn’t understand Cassie’s decision not to tell Ryan about the baby at the time. Growing up, her older sister’s life had been just as devoid of a father as Mallory’s. Maybe Cassie would have changed her mind after Chloe was born if she’d lived to have the chance.
Unfortunately, that was something that Mallory simply would never know.
She preceded Ryan into the house and without a word, he practically bolted up the stairs the minute she’d pushed the door shut after them.
The sensible part of her told her to follow him and watch what he did with those clamp things so that she could do it herself the next time if she had to. But the rest of her mutinied and, instead, she dropped her coat on the hard-backed chair sitting in the front entry next to the narrow console table, and went into the kitchen where Chloe and Kathleen were.
Both were wearing Kathleen’s hand-sewn aprons tied around their neck and waists and both of them were in flour up to their elbows as they kneaded bread dough on the counter. The only difference between them was that Kathleen was sitting on a bar stool while she worked, and Chloe was standing on a chair. Beyond that, their concentrated expressions were almost identical.
And neither seemed to have noticed the sound of Ryan in the house. She decided to leave it that way for now and stood silently in the doorway.
Just watching them eased nerves that were feeling slightly singed.
Are you seeing this, Cassie? Chloe’s making rolls with Gram just the same way you and I used to.
“Get yourself an apron, Mallory,” Kathleen said without looking. “There’s another dough ball for you, too, if you want.”
Mallory just smiled. She walked over behind the only people in the world that she would do anything for, and kissed first the top of Chloe’s head, then Kathleen’s papery-thin cheek. “I need to call the hospital and check on a patient.” She also needed to deal with the very disturbing man upstairs repairing her plumbing.
“Work, work, work,” Kathleen tsked, but without any real heat. “Just remember, there is more to life than work.”
“Yes, Gram,” she agreed dutifully, and just as dutifully admired Chloe’s handiwork with the bread dough before escaping to her office at the back of the house.
She made her phone call to the hospital, talking briefly with the nurse on duty, but that didn’t take long. Her new mom was recovering as nicely as expected.
Which left Mallory with nothing to do but go up the stairs.
She didn’t find Ryan still in the bathroom, though. That small room was quite empty. She looked behind the cabinet door to see the pipe and its new clamp. There was no sign of water leaking, and the bucket she’d used was empty and sitting on the edge of the tub.
He’d even emptied the box containing the shampoos and soaps and whatnot that she’d pulled from the cabinet, replacing everything neatly inside it once more.
His thoroughness—his thoughtfulness—was disconcerting.
Was it possible that he could have left without her hearing his exit?
She slowly closed the cabinet and went out into the hall. Her bedroom was closest to the stairs. Chloe’s was farthest. She turned in that direction and found Ryan there.
He was sitting on the foot of the twin-size bed looking very large and very masculine amid the lilac-hued, childish décor, and her footsteps faltered at the visceral tug the sight of him gave her deep inside.
“I’m getting the hint that she likes purple,” he said after a moment.
She swallowed and managed a faint smile that hopefully masked the strange breathlessness she felt and stepped inside the room, leaning her shoulder back against the doorjamb. “It’s been her favorite color since she discovered the Purple Princess games a few years ago from a school friend.”
“What grade is she in?”
She discreetly hauled in a breath. Let it out. “Third.”
His gaze finally slanted to hers. “Isn’t she a little young for third?”
“She skipped second grade.” She tugged at her ear. “I know that not everyone thinks that’s a good idea, but she’s so bright and I started her in second at the beginning of the school year when we were still in New York, but she was—”
“Bored,” he inserted.
She looked at him a little more closely. It was hard, considering that doing so made her stomach flip around even more in those jittering circles.
But there wasn’t judgment in his deeply blue eyes.
She wasn’t sure exactly what was there, but at least she could tell that. “Yes. She was bored. She was bored through a good portion of the first grade, too.” And bored schoolchildren tended to find more interesting things to keep them busy. Particularly mischievous things.
“I skipped third,” he said.
“Oh.” She moistened her lips.
“And ninth,” he added without expression. “And most of my senior year of high school.”
“That’s…impressive.”
His lips