Лорет Энн Уайт – Heart of a Hero: The Soldier's Seduction / The Heart of a Mercenary / Straight Through the Heart (страница 8)

When he returned, Phoebe was still sitting on the couch with her hands clasped. She jumped up when he walked back in without knocking and dumped his duffel on the floor inside the door. There were tears on her face, which she hastily wiped away, and then she did a double take.

“What are you doing?” She already knew, and she was aghast.

“Moving in.” He shrugged. “It’s the only way to really get to know Bridget without taking her away from you.”

She nodded as if she saw the logic, but a moment later, she shook her head vigorously. “Wait! You can’t just move in here!”

“Why not? You and I have always gotten along well. We probably know each other better than a lot of couples do. And you have an extra bedroom. I saw it last night. I’ll pay rent.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head helplessly. Finally, she said, “This is outrageous. So how did you just make it sound so utterly logical?”

He grinned, feeling a lot more relaxed now that she hadn’t kicked him out first thing. “I’m gifted that way.” He’d hoped her obvious guilt would help sway her to his point of view and, apparently, it had worked.

Suddenly, he realized she hadn’t spoken. She was staring at him as if he’d grown a second head. “What?”

She shrugged. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile since you got off that swing yesterday.”

“I haven’t had much to smile about,” he pointed out.

Instantly, the angry tension was back in the room, humming between them like a downed electrical wire. He was about to speak again, to get more answers to the questions she’d never given him a chance to ask, when an odd whispering sound filled the air.

It was barely audible, but Phoebe reacted instantly, a blinding smile lighting her face. “Bridget is awake.”

His body reacted to that smile. But—

“A-ba-bah-bah-ba,” It was a little louder now. Wade glanced around the room and spotted a baby monitor on one end table. Aha.

Phoebe started for the stairs. “If I don’t get her fast, they’ll hear her down at the end of the street. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wade smiled to himself as she took the steps two at a time. Bridget was six months old. That had to be a bit of an exaggeration—

“A-bah-bah-BAH-BAH!”

Whoa. His kid had a set of lungs on her like Pavarotti.

“Bridget.” Phoebe’s voice was a gentle singsong. “How’s my girl? Did you have a good nap?”

The baby gave a delighted squeal that just about split his eardrums. Did Phoebe have that monitor turned up too high?

“Hello, my sweet baby girl.” No, the monitor wasn’t too loud, because Phoebe’s voice sounded normal. “How was your nap? I’ve got somebody downstairs who wants to meet you.” He heard her chuckle. “But first we’d better change your diaper or he’s liable to keel over.”

He listened to the rustle of the plastic diaper and the baby cooing, to Phoebe talking and singing little nonsense verses. It sounded surprisingly right. But he shouldn’t be surprised. Phoebe had always had a sensible, motherly streak. Years ago, if someone had asked him if he could envision her as a mother, he wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant before saying yes.

A wave of intense sadness swamped him. And now she was the mother of his child. If he hadn’t been determined to find Phoebe, he’d never even have known he had a daughter.

Footsteps on the stairs alerted him that they were coming, and he shook off the moment of melancholy and braced himself for his first clear sight of his daughter. He knew from what he’d seen last night that her hair was some shade of red, but the low light of the nursery hadn’t yielded much more.

Phoebe’s legs came into view, and then the rest of her appeared. She was carrying a baby girl with the wildest red hair he’d ever seen in his life. Quirking in ringlets all over her head. Even at this young age, Phoebe had pulled the front of it atop her head with an elastic hair tie. Bridget’s hair was much lighter than Phoebe’s, and far more vibrant than Melanie’s pale strawberry had ever been. His kid’s hair looked like a live flame.

Her face was a pretty little oval with a slightly more determined chin than was probably good, her eyes blue and sparkling as they found him. His heart skipped a beat. He actually felt it trip and miss, and he took a deep breath. God, she looked a lot like Phoebe.

His throat closed up and he just stood there as they approached. Phoebe was talking to the baby as if she could understand every word she said, telling her about a friend of Mama’s from far away who was coming to stay with them for a little while.

A little while? Ha. She might not choose to accept it, but he was here for good.

He swallowed the thick knot clogging his voice. “Hi, Bridget,” he said. He was at a loss. What did you say to somebody this size?

The child grinned, a wide smile that sent a cascade of drool down her chin and showed him two tiny pearly white teeth on the bottom. Then she turned her head abruptly into her mother’s shoulder.

Before he could figure out what to say, Phoebe saved him. “Daddy,” she told his child. “Bridget, this is your daddy.”

The baby peeked out at him with one blue eye, then grinned before hiding her face again.

“Flirt,” said Phoebe. She walked across the room and expertly unfurled a large baby blanket while still holding the child on her hip with the other hand. Then she set the baby in the middle of the blanket.

Bridget wobbled for a moment, then seemed to find her balance and sit straighter. “She just started sitting up by herself two weeks ago,” she told Wade over her shoulder. “Why don’t you come sit down and play with us? She’s not usually shy and she should get used to you quickly.”

“All right.” He strove for a normal tone although his heart felt as if it were going to fly right out of his chest.

He joined them on the brightly colored blanket. Phoebe was building a tower of blocks. Every time she’d get three or four stacked up, Bridget swiped her hand and knocked them over, squealing and chortling. Once, when Phoebe stopped for a moment, the baby smacked her little hands together and yelled, “Ack!” in a tone that left no doubt what she wanted.

Wade hastily reached for another block. “Way to get what you want, kid.”

Phoebe chuckled. “She has a mind of her own. And if she doesn’t get her way, she lets me know about it.”

“Reminds me of Melanie.” He’d said it without thinking. The moment the words hit the air, he knew they’d been a mistake.

The happiness drained out of Phoebe’s eyes, leaving them guarded and sorrowful. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Bridget does seem to have a stronger personality than I ever had.”

He wanted to protest. There was nothing wrong with Phoebe’s personality. Just because Mel had been more vocal about everything under the sun didn’t mean Phoebe’s personality was any less pleasing. She just wasn’t loud and attention-grabbing, that was all. But he didn’t know how to say that in a way that made much sense, and he could almost feel the resistance in the air. She didn’t want to talk about Melanie, that much was clear.

A pang of guilt shot through him, tempering the anger that still simmered. He was blaming Phoebe for not telling him about the baby…but he’d been responsible for her sister’s death. No wonder she hadn’t told him.

The baby had grabbed a board book and was busily manhandling the sturdy pages. As he watched, she put it in her mouth.

“Here, honey.” Phoebe extended a brightly colored set of rings and confiscated the book. “We don’t chew on books.”

Wade looked at the frayed corners of the one she held. “Apparently, some of us do.”

She smiled, and abruptly it felt right between them again. “I’m working on it,” she said wryly. Then she glanced at her watch. “It’ll soon be dinnertime. Would you like to stay and eat with us?”

He raised one eyebrow.

“Are you planning to stay here tonight?”

“That’s the plan.” He stood and folded his arms. “If you spend the weekend teaching me how to take care of Bridget, then I could keep her while you work.”

“Don’t you have to work or something?” she asked in an exasperated tone.

“Or something,” he agreed.

“So you have to go back to California.” It wasn’t a question.

“No. I’m pretty sure I’m retiring from the service.”

She looked shocked. “But that’s what you’ve always wanted to do. To be. A soldier.”

“I’m not physically able to perform on the battlefield to the army’s satisfaction anymore,” he said quietly. “And I’m not interested in a desk job staring at a computer monitor all day. So I’m taking early retirement.”

“But what will you do?”

He shrugged. “I’m checking out a number of options. One of them is with a freelance security firm out of Virginia. I’d be establishing a West Coast office.”

“So you’d be going home?”

He noted with satisfaction that she still referred to California as home. But all he did was nod. “That would be the plan.” He shrugged. “But now, everything has changed.” He looked down at his daughter, who had rolled onto her stomach and was making swimming motions as she tried valiantly to get to another toy just out of reach. “Everything.”

Four

Phoebe still sat on the blanket at Wade’s feet and he reached down, putting his hands beneath her elbows and lifting her to her feet.