Craving a Hero: St. John Sibling Series, book 3 (26 page)

His response came through tight lips. "Then be prepared to share that bed you're sitting on because I'll be sleeping in it."

#

She'd said she'd bunk with Carrie. That Kelly would rather share her sister's bed than one with him rankled him. Though why he couldn't fathom, not when he was madder at Kelly than he'd ever been with anyone in his life.

Besides, he had a daughter to think about.

A daughter.

His.

A sweet girl who gurgled away in the loop of his arms, her tiny fingers and hands exploring his ears, his nose, the buttons on his shirt.
His
daughter. He had so much to think about, so much to plan. His mind reeled.

Angel, on the other hand, had her own agenda. She wanted down. And when he didn't put her down, she squirmed and fussed.

From where she sat on the bed, an ever present sentry, Kelly said, "After her nap, she usually goes downstairs to play."

But he wasn't ready to share her and his words came out more peevish than he intended. "The rest of you have had her to yourselves for nine months. It's my turn now."

Kelly got up from the bed and walked out of the room. What the hell was she going to do, enlist the aid of her father? Frank couldn't even climb the stairs.

A twinge of guilt twisted through his gut. He knew how much Frank doted on his granddaughter. He knew he was denying Frank by not letting Angel play downstairs. But his emotions were too raw, his hurt too new. And he hurt like he never thought he could.

He should call Dixie or his mother or even Tess. A woman would know what to advise him to do at this moment.

Except he wasn't sure he wanted any advice right now. He just wanted his daughter…who was squirming to get out of his arms.

He eyed the braided rug in front of her crib and wondered if it was soft enough—sanitary enough for her to play on. Before he had to decide, though, Kelly reappeared in the doorway, a bundle in her arms that looked like a lumpy, mini comforter. When she spread it on the floor, he saw what the lumps were. Toys.

Without a word, without trying to take Angel from him and put her down amidst her toys, Kelly turned and left. She was giving him the space to be alone with his daughter as he'd demanded.

His first instinct was to thank her, but he was still too angry with her.

So he sat on the floor, his back to the doorframe where he watched Angel kick her little legs—where he could readily head off any crawling explorations into the hall leading to the stairway. Or he lay on his belly beside her, the two of them playing with soft puzzle toys that stimulated little minds.

Come suppertime, much as he wanted to keep her to himself, he joined the family at the kitchen table, taking the seat next to Angel's highchair, the seat her mother no doubt usually occupied. No one argued the point with him. Kelly even refused her mother's offer to change places with her so she could sit on the other side of the highchair.

She really was trying to give him his space with his daughter. She even silenced her family after a barrage of "You're feeding her too fast," and "That needs to be mashed more," and "Wipe her chin." She even stood guard in the bathroom doorway against her mother when he insisted on bathing Angel.

But Kelly watched over them, her only comment referencing her refusal to leave a quiet, "In her best interest."

Not that he was going to give Kelly any breaks. Not yet. But he was grateful for the back-up. Angel was a leave-no-prisoner-dry bather. As he dried her on Kelly's bed, wondering over her tiny, perfect toes and dimpled kneecaps, Kelly brought him one of her father's t-shirts.

"Thought you could use a dry one," she said.

He accepted it with a nod, not yet ready to even talk to her.

Even when he diapered Angel and picked her up only to have the diaper fall off, he said nothing as Kelly showed him how to diaper the baby properly. Having successfully dressed her in her pink onesy pajamas for the night, he glanced toward the doorway where he expected to see Kelly overseeing everything. But the doorway was empty. Only then did he realize he had a smile on his face.

Had he really been looking for Kelly's approval?

He shook off the sentiment and turned his attention back to Angel, tickling her, making her giggle.
His
daughter. The reality of it was still sinking in.

Yet, at the same time, this half a day of knowing she was his had tired him out more than a fourteen hour shoot. He lay down on the bed beside Angel, watching her explore his fingers, listening to her babble and giggle, engulfed in her fresh-bathed baby-smell.

A movement woke him. Kelly stood at the bedside, easing Angel out of his arms. He jerked into a sit.

She held up a silencing finger, whispering, "You can't sleep
with
her. You could roll over on her. She could roll off the bed."

"Sorry," he muttered, climbing off the bed and following Kelly to the crib. "I didn't mean to fall asleep with her on the bed. I know better. You have to believe I would never do anything intentional to hurt her."

Kelly laid the still sleeping Angel in her crib and covered her with a blanket. "I know you wouldn't."

Then she kissed her fingertips, pressed them against their daughter's forehead, turned and left the room.

#

He carried Angel into the kitchen the next morning, feeling anything but rested. Not Angel's fault. She'd slept the night through. But there'd been so many emotions, so many concerns rolling through him, he hadn't been able to sleep peacefully.

She'd awakened all happy gurgles. But, seeing her mother at the kitchen table, Angel brightened even more and reached for her. He didn't want to hand over his daughter but…

For her good.

Kelly hugged Angel to her, smiling, kissing her head, and cooing at her. Alma set a mug of hot coffee in front of the seat next to the highchair and asked him what kind of eggs he wanted. So they weren't ganging up to do battle against him.

"What's Angel usually eat?" he asked.

"Soft scrambled," Alma said.

"Then make mine the same," he said.

He sat around the corner from Kelly, the highchair between them. She was wearing her fatigues and looking no more rested than he.

"You working today?" he asked.

She nodded.

"You trust me that much with Angel?"

"She's your daughter," Kelly said. "Besides, you'll have the family here for back-up."

He grunted. "I half expected to find you in a sleeping bag outside Angel's bedroom this morning, making sure I didn't try skipping out in the night with her."

She bounced Angel on her knee, but spoke to him. "You said you wouldn't take her away."

"I could have been lying."

She looked him in the eye. "I'm the liar here. Not you."

Then she rose, placed Angel in the highchair, gave her a good-bye kiss, and headed into the mudroom where she grabbed her jacket, but paused. "I called Andi last night. Had her go over to the camp and drain the pump so it wouldn't freeze when the fire died out. You want me to pick up your things and bring them here?"

#

He hadn't known what to tell Kelly when she asked if he wanted her to bring in his things from camp. He hadn't thought that far ahead. In the end, he'd muttered a, "yes." By the end of the second day, though, he knew moving into her house had been a mistake.

When Kelly returned from work, he beckoned her to follow him upstairs, leaving Angel happily ensconced on her grampa's lap.

Closed in Kelly's bedroom, he started with, "Everybody here keeps jumping in to take over Angel's care."

"They're used to taking care of her," she said. "It's a natural response for them. It's nothing personal."

"But
I
need for her to bond with me; and I don't know how else to make that happen than to take care of her and that's not going to happen when everyone here is getting in the way?"

"It'll take time."

"Easy for you to say. Everyone else has had nine months to build a bond with her, eighteen if you count…" He glanced down at her stomach.

She spread a hand across her mid-section. Of their own volition, his hands cupped the air between them and it hit him how badly he'd have liked to have felt their daughter moving inside Kelly's belly. Both Roman and Sam had told him how amazing the experience had been for them. Hell, there was even a picture of Dixie and Michael, her first husband, living that moment; and it made him ache for all he'd missed.

"Dammit, Kelly," he said, emotion driving up the volume of his voice. "I can't fight my way through your parents every day for a chance to hold her—care for her. If she's going to come to know me as her father, I need alone time with her."

The color drained from Kelly's face. "You said you wouldn't take her away from me."

"I don't want to."

"And where do you propose to have this alone time?" she asked, her voice likewise rising. "Dixie's, where the paparazzi are sure to descend on you? Have you thought out how scary that kind of environment could be for a baby who's been separated from everything and everybody she knows?"

"That's not—"

"You said you'd make decisions based on what was best for Angel."

"That's why—"

"I won't allow you to turn her into some story on the front page of the tabloids. I won't let you put her through that kind of hell."

He caught her by the shoulders, stilling her. "I wouldn't do that to her, either, Kel."

She stared at him through tear-glazed eyes.

"There is a place I could take her where there will be no paparazzi. The camp."

She stepped back from him, breaking from his hold, the expression in her eyes shifting from apprehension to pain and protectiveness. "But she'd still be without anything or anyone familiar."

"Not if you come with us."

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

She followed Dane in her truck, Angel's car-seat safely secured in the backseat of Dane's SUV. Her truck had an extended cab which would have kept Angel just as safe. But, he wanted alone time with his daughter and a twenty to thirty minute ride with a nine-month old babbling nonstop could be quite the bonding experience.

And if she cried through the whole trip?

Then twenty minutes of incessant tears would test Dane's commitment.

Kelly winced. The idea of her daughter weeping inconsolably tore at her motherly instincts.

But, the way Angel's little head tipped this way and that reassured her the baby was in adventure mode and not crying her heart out. And, the movement of Dane's mouth caught in his driver's side mirror suggested he was carrying on a conversation with a child who hadn't yet put together any intelligible words.

Still, heaven help him if Angel turned out to be just another passing fancy. If he created a bond with Angel and then walked out of her life…

For an instant, all the old feelings of being rejected by her own father slammed through her.

But, Dane wouldn't do that. She was counting on him not doing that—counting on the fact he had strong family values—that family was important to him. Counting on the strength of his reaction to learning he had a daughter.

He took the rough road into camp slow, for which she was grateful. She was equally grateful to see a thick plume of smoke rising from the wood stove chimney. Not that she'd doubted Andi wouldn't have a fire stoked and the cabin heated for them. But it was extra important the place be warm for Angel.

By the time she'd unloaded the Angel's gear from the back of the truck and joined Dane and Angel in the cabin, he had her snowsuit off and was carrying her around the one room building, pointing out things to her. He was a natural with babies. But then Angel was an easy baby, good-natured and out-going. How well would he handle the inconsolable sobbing that came with cutting a new tooth?

Kelly set up Angel's playpen-crib combo in crib mode and placed it beside the double bunks. That he'd recognized Angel would need someone she knew with her even as he demanded his
alone time
with her had also spoken volumes to Dane's sensibility; and, for that above all, she was grateful.

Not that she should have been surprised. Even two summers ago as a
Sexiest Man
in the making, he'd demonstrated a groundedness she hadn't expected.

"And that one," Dane was saying to Angel as he pointed out the perfectly symmetrical eight-point rack of antlers above the fireplace, "is your mommy's."

She'd done him a great disservice by not involving him in his daughter's birth—in her first nine months of life. She'd seen that the moment she'd found him rocking their daughter in her bedroom, tears on his cheeks.

That's why she'd played the hands-off parent as much as she could bear in the days since. Which, no doubt, was the reason he'd felt comfortable about choosing her to be Angel's anchor, the familiar tie to the world she knew.

Dane stood in front of the mirror next to the window over the sink, Angel held high in the crook of his arm. He pointed at her image in the mirror.

"That's Angel. That's you."

Then he pointed at his own image. "And that's me. That's your daddy."

And so it went throughout the rest of the day and into the next. Dane carrying his daughter about the cabin identifying things for her—identifying himself as her father every chance he got, playing with her on the bottom bunk, feeding her, changing her diapers, watching over her as she slept while Kelly watched over them both should either need her, and aching to be part of their interplay. But she'd promised this time to Dane and she owed it to him to keep her promise.

The payoff, for Dane, came their third morning and it was a big one.

He was playing the
who's-in-the-mirror
game with Angel when her babbling took the form of a word, her first.

"Da-da."

"Yes," he said. "That's your da-da."

Kelly turned from the stove where she was making scrambled eggs. Angel looked from the mirror to Dane, her tiny fingers grabbing his chin as she repeated, "Da-da."

"Yes, I'm your da-da," he said, his voice husky, his blue eyes shimmering with unshed tears; and he looked at Kelly grinning. "Did you hear her?"

She nodded, tears welling in her own eyes. She could have told him babies usually discovered the hard consonants before the softer ones like the
mmmms
as in mama—that she really didn't grasp the concept of daddy yet. But she'd have died before she took this first from him. He'd missed so many.

"Her first word," Kelly said, beaming at father and daughter. She should never have doubted him.

But then, she'd never before seen a man so happily interact with a baby the way Dane did.

#

They'd shared Angel's first word, him and Kelly. And it felt good, right. It felt like something he wanted more of.

But she hadn't shared.

Not the first nine months of Angel's life. Not all the months before while she was carrying his daughter…their daughter.

Angel gurgled up at him from her crib and smiled.

"You little flirt," he said, chucking her under the chin.

Angel giggled.

"Hard to take a nap when the room's so bright, hey my sweet Angel?"

She yawned but waved her tiny fists in the air, fighting sleep. It reminded him what a fighter her mother was.

His smile slipped. Whatever his feelings for Kelly, they would always be bound together by this child.

He looked to where Kelly was wiping down the table after their macaroni and cheese lunch. Even angry with her, the sight of her made his chest ache.

Maybe he wasn't so angry with her anymore. After all, she'd consented to his taking her—his daughter to a camp where there was no electricity or hot, running water. She'd kept herself as much out of the way as possible in the one room cabin so he could bond with Angel.

He stroked his daughter's silky hair. She blinked up at him with sleepy eyes.

"How come, the last two days I put you down for your afternoon nap you were asleep almost before your head hit the mattress? Did all that exploring we've been doing tire you out? You all acclimated to the place now?"

"Da-da, da-da, da-da."

She'd been trying on that word ever since first saying it this morning. The sound of it still brought a lump to his throat.

He slid his fingers away from her head. "Daddy will fix it."

By the time he rigged a drape around the crib of a blanket strung from the bunk post to Frank's repositioned recliner, he knew he had something more to fix for his daughter than an overly bright sleep-space.

#

Dishes washed, Kelly wrung out the dishrag, hung it up, and drained the sink. When she turned around, Dane sat at the table, a mug of coffee in front of him and another across from him.

"Sit with me," he said.

Her heart leapt in her chest. For the most part, he'd ignored her presence since coming to the camp; and that he now wanted her company…

She slid into the seat opposite him, warning herself he probably wanted to talk logistics of sharing parenthood when they lived so far apart.

He sipped his coffee, staring over her shoulder toward the drape she'd seen him rig around Angel's crib. This was definitely going to be about Angel.

She wrapped her hands around the hot mug, breath held, the silence stretching. When his gaze finally shifted to her, his eyes were somber but no longer full of anger and, when he spoke, it was with a quiet solemnness.

"Why didn't you tell me you were pregnant?"

The breath shuddered from her. "I was going to."

"What stopped you?" he asked almost gently.

She stared into the dark liquid shimmering in the cup between her hands. "When I told my dad, he had a stroke. One disastrous reaction was more than I could handle."

"So you knew when you called me from the hospital," he said, only the faintest hint of censure in his tone.

She looked up at him. "Everything was crazy that night. I thought my dad was going to die and it was my fault."

His gaze slid toward Angel's enclosure before coming back to her. "And in the days following…when he did survive, after he came home, why didn't you tell me then?"

Though his tone didn't accuse, she felt the full weight of her guilt. "I was afraid to."

"That I'd do to Angel what your biological father did to you?"

So he remembered what she'd confessed to him in their closest moments so very long ago. She grimaced. "I thought I could protect her against the pain of growing up, knowing she'd been rejected by her father."

"After all I told you about how I felt about family, you still thought I'd abandon her?"

She stared into her full mug. "Your career was just taking off. You were having the time of your life."

"I remember telling you I wanted a family."

She met his gaze, looked into his wounded eyes. "You also said
someday."

"So I did." He sipped at his coffee, his pupils pulsing with thought. When he put his mug down, he asked, "What were you going to tell Angel when she was old enough to ask about me—her father?"

"That I didn't tell him—you about her."

His brow wrinkled in bewilderment. "And you thought that would be less painful for her?"

"You don't know what it feels like to be rejected by someone that important to you."

"Maybe not," he said, his voice tight. "But I know what it's like to live for texts and emails from someone you love only for them to stop coming."

She blinked at him.
Love?

"After the director forbid me from bringing my cell to the shoots, I'd race back to my trailer at every break just to see if you'd sent me a text. The first full day I went without getting anything from you worried me."

"You were in love with me?" she asked, stunned, hopeful.

He glanced toward where Angel slept and drew a deep breath. "I think I began falling for you when you ordered me to drop my pants so you could dab sting stop on my ass, Kel. Maybe even before then. That stiff handshake you gave me when we met at the ranger station piqued my curiosity."

She thought she understood and some of her hope died. "I challenged you."

"Okay, you were a challenge," he conceded. "But when we made love the first time, I felt something I'd never felt with another woman. It was like a seed of something greater was being planted in me."

"A seed definitely was planted in me that first time," she said, a bittersweet smile pulling at her lips.

He glanced toward the drape strung from the bed where they'd made love. She wanted it to have been love. But, even if it was, she'd destroyed it.

There was a great sadness in his voice when he spoke again.

"Your messages came pretty sporadically after that. For a long time I believed it was because you were dealing with your dad's situation. Then, one evening, sitting in my trailer sweeping through a week's list of texts, I realized there were none from you."

He looked at her through sad eyes. "That's when it hit me. You'd been distancing yourself from me for months."

"I couldn't keep lying to you, not telling you I was pregnant. Given how your career was flourishing, given what I feared your reaction would be, I thought it was for the best."

"You never thought to give me a chance?"

"I vacillated. I came close to having my mother call you the night I went into labor. But a nurse walked into the labor room with the latest tabloid paper and there, splashed across the front page was a picture of you with some beautiful starlet, the headline reading,
The Hawke Engaged.
"

"It wasn't true, Kel. Those rags—"

She reached across the table, her fingers against the back of his hand stopping him. "I know. But at the time—"

"So you figured it would be better for Angel to grow up believing in a fairytale, that if only her father knew about her he'd come to her like some shining knight?" He shook his head. "Didn't you see that, when she found out you never told him—me, she'd blame you for not having a father?"

Kelly pulled her hand back and swallowed against the lump in her throat. "I thought it would be better if she hated me for keeping her father from her, than for her to live with the hurt of his not wanting her. I thought, better if she had someone tangible to vent on."

Pain pinched at the corners of his eyes, reminding her of the tabloid pictures her mother had shown her in the months after they'd stopped corresponding and her mother's comments about how sad he looked in those pictures. She'd seen it, too, the smile for the cameras that didn't reach his eyes. The sadness she saw in his eyes now went even deeper.

"I'm sorry I didn't tell you," she whispered. "I really am."