As a little girl, Paige had never really felt as if she had a home, as if there was anywhere she truly belonged. Growing up as the only child of a divorced Army colonel, she’d left too many homes and too many friends to count, an experience that had taught her early on not to get too attached to anyplace or anyone.
When she was fifteen, her father had decided that Paige was too much trouble to keep with him and had sent her to live with his sister and her family. Even then, Paige had mostly kept to herself. In fact, for the first six months she’d refused to put her clothes in the dresser of the room she’d been told was her own, certain she would need to pack up and leave again as soon as she felt settled.
But six months had turned into a year and then two, and Paige found herself growing close to Ashley and Megan, the two sisters who were her cousins and now also her best friends.
Still, her aunt’s residence had never felt like home so much as a house that she was visiting. Even when Paige moved into her own condo in Syracuse, it was little more than a place to store her belongings and lay her head. But there was a house on Chetwood Street in Pinehurst, New York, that Ashley and Megan had purchased a few years earlier, and Paige felt more at home there than anywhere else she’d ever lived. So maybe it wasn’t surprising that it was where she went when her life fell apart.
She had called both of her cousins to let them know that she wanted to come home for a while and to make sure they didn’t mind if she stayed at the currently empty house. Megan had been the first to move out, when she’d married Gage Richmond the previous year, followed by Ashley, who had vacated the premises only a month ago, after her wedding to Cameron Turcotte. The sisters had decided to list the house for sale but hadn’t yet taken any steps in that direction, so Paige had proposed that she rent the property for the summer.
She really wasn’t sure how long she intended to stay. Her career as a family-law attorney usually kept her too busy to allow for anything more than a long weekend, and even then she usually worked extra hours both before and after in order to make up for the time away from her office. As for an actual vacation, she honestly couldn’t remember the last time she’d taken one, although she had taken more than the occasional day here and there over the past five months—a fact that had not gone unnoticed by the partners who were now concerned about her apparent lack of commitment to her clients and the firm.
It was the reason for this hiatus, which came with the recommendation that she take the time to think about what she wanted for her future. As if having full-time care of a fourteen-month-old baby allowed one time to think.
At first she’d been so shocked by the suggestion that she hadn’t known what to say or do. Her immediate instinct had been to insist that she wanted what she’d always wanted—a partnership at the firm. It was what she’d been working toward for the past half-dozen years. But when she’d picked Emma up from the sitter after work, she’d accepted that a lot had changed in the past five months, that taking care of Emma had changed her.
And if it really came down to a choice between having her name stenciled on the wall behind the reception desk at Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne or providing an orphaned little girl with some semblance of family, well, there really wasn’t a choice to be made. Because she loved that little girl with her whole heart.
That realization had been a simple one, but it was followed by some tough questions. Most notably, if she chose at this point in her life to walk away from the career she had only recently started to build, where would she go? What would she do?
It was these concerns that had directed her toward Pinehurst, New York.
Unfortunately, almost a week later, she still wasn’t any closer to figuring out if she could balance her professional obligations and personal responsibilities, or even if she wanted to.
It was difficult enough to accept that Emma would never know her mother or father, but the demands of Paige’s career required that she leave the child with a babysitter for ten hours a day. Of course, Annabelle was a wonderful caregiver who had been chosen by Olivia to take care of her daughter, but that knowledge did little to alleviate Paige’s feelings of guilt.
These thoughts were weighing on her mind Thursday night when she was startled by a brisk knock on the door. A quick glance at the glowing numbers on the front of the DVD player revealed that it was 8:12 p.m., but because Emma had been fussing for so long and had only just fallen asleep, it felt much later.
She pushed herself up from the chair, careful not to jostle the baby, and hurried toward the door. She’d spoken to both Ashley and Megan earlier in the day and neither had made mention of any plan to stop by, and because both of them had keys to the house, it was safe to assume that someone else was knocking.
Shifting Emma to her other shoulder, she hastily tugged open the door before the uninvited guest could knock again.
She noticed his eyes first. Dark blue, intensely focused and strangely familiar. And when those eyes locked on her, she felt an unexpected surge of heat through her veins, an unwelcome sizzle in her blood.
Then she noticed the uniform, and everything inside of her went cold.
“Are you Paige Wilder?”
His voice was deep and sexy, and she felt that sizzle again. But ignored it.
“I am,” she admitted. “Though I don’t know why my identity would be of any interest to a lieutenant colonel in the United States Air Force.”
His brows lifted, as if he was surprised by her accurate reading of his uniform insignia, and she was struck again not just by the intensity of his gaze, but also the rugged handsomeness of the whole face. His skin was tanned and taut over his sharp cheekbones and strong jaw. His hair was dark and glossy and short. He was well over six feet—probably six-three, she guessed—and his shoulders were broad, his torso long and lean, his legs even longer.
The overall effect was one that any woman could appreciate, and Paige was no exception. Apparently fifteen years as an army brat hadn’t inoculated her against the effect of a handsome man in uniform, but five years as an attorney had taught her the wisdom of looking beneath the surface.
“I’m not here in an official capacity,” he assured her.
“Then why are you here?”
“I’m Zach Crawford—” his gaze shifted to the baby curled up against her chest, then back to her “—Emma’s father.”
Emma’s father.
The words echoed in Paige’s mind, the implications sweeping through her with the chilling intensity of a bitter winter wind, numbing everything inside of her despite the warmth of the late-May evening. She instinctively tightened her hold on the baby in her arms and took a step back, away from this stranger’s outrageous claim.
The man standing on the porch interpreted her action as an invitation and moved forward. She shook her head and stood rooted in his path.
“Emma doesn’t have a father,” she told him.
Amusement glinted in those all-too-familiar eyes.
Emma’s eyes.
She desperately pushed that thought aside, trying to convince herself that his eyes were simply blue and any perceived resemblance was nothing more than that.
“Are you really that unfamiliar with basic biology, Ms. Wilder?” he asked.
She felt her cheeks heat in response to the unexpected teasing note in his deep voice. “Olivia told me that Emma’s father wasn’t interested in being a father,” she clarified.
“Then she lied,” he said bluntly.
Paige shook her head again. “She named me as Emma’s guardian because she had no other family. Because Emma had no other family.”
“Except that’s not exactly true, either.”
She couldn’t believe it—didn’t want to believe it. Why would Olivia have lied