Patricia Johns – The Deputy's Unexpected Family (страница 8)

Gabe nodded. “So why didn’t she tell him?”

“I think it was a complicated situation,” Harper said delicately. “The relationship obviously didn’t last, and she had...her own worries, I suppose. But she decided not to. And now that the adoption is underway, I don’t want to do wrong by Zoey. I want to make sure that she has everything she needs, emotionally and physically, and I truly believe a little girl needs her daddy. I don’t want to raise her so that my own heart is full, but hers has a hole in the size and shape of her father. When kids grow up with a hole in their hearts, they spend a lifetime trying it fill it, and it seldom works out well.”

“Don’t I know it,” Gabe said softly.

His grandmother...she was still rolling that over in her mind. She’d never once suspected that Imogen Banks was anything less than the solid Christian woman she appeared to be.

“So do I tell him?” Harper asked. “That’s my question. Do I tell the father that he has a child, even if that news wouldn’t be welcome?”

Gabe was silent for a moment. “And you know this guy?”

“A little.”

“I could do a background check on him, if you want. Just to make sure he’s not...creepy, or something.”

Harper laughed softly. “No, I don’t think that’s necessary. He’s a guy from town. So...not exactly a stranger.”

“Oh. Well—” Gabe shrugged “—I’d tell him. At least he’d know, and you could tell Zoey that you did your best.”

Tell him. She knew in her heart that she had to. Zoey’s needs had to come first, and while Andrea had done her best by her daughter, Harper wasn’t going to face God with Andrea, public opinion or her own excuses to back her up. She had to do the right thing.

“Besides,” Gabe said with a slow smile, “you can rest easy that most guys aren’t as messed up as I am.”

“That doesn’t really help.” Harper licked her lips, closed her eyes for a moment in a fleeting prayer for guidance over her words, then blurted out, “Because Zoey’s yours.”

* * *

The smile slipped from Gabe’s lips. What? He stared at Harper for a moment, processing her words. Or trying to. His mind wasn’t reacting fast enough, and he found himself searching her expression for answers, instead of his own head. Her lips were parted as if she wanted to say more, then she pressed them shut. But those big green eyes stayed focused on him, her glasses seeming to magnify that clear gaze.

“No, she’s not,” he said at last. It seemed like a feeble thing to say, but everyone knew that Andrea had hooked up with another guy after she left him.

Harper glanced toward Zoey, and Gabe followed her gaze. The little girl was perched on a stool, her feet kicking in rhythmic thumps against the legs. She seemed totally preoccupied, hunched over a new picture at the counter.

“She is,” Harper replied, her voice low. “If you look at Zoey’s eyes—they’re yours. And her chin—”

“A slight resemblance doesn’t mean anything,” he said with a short laugh. “A cleft in the chin isn’t that rare, Harper.”

“Andrea told me,” Harper went on. “She lied to everyone about who the father was because she didn’t want you to find out. The other guy was a cover story. You’re Zoey’s father, Gabe. I wouldn’t have said anything if I wasn’t sure.”

Gabe sucked in a stabilizing breath. As a police officer, he was a critical judge of people’s stories. How many times had a perp pleaded his innocence, only to have all the evidence on him? How many men in prison claimed to be innocent? Almost all of them. He knew what a lie sounded like, and he heard the truth in her voice.

“So I’m the guy that Andrea thought was no good for Zoey?” he said after a moment.

Harper’s silence was all the answer he needed, and that confirmation was like a punch to the gut. They’d made a baby... When he’d been promising himself that he’d stop crossing that line with her, that he’d get his head straight and stop fooling around... When he’d been wondering if it wasn’t just better to break up considering that they wanted such different things... While he hadn’t been man enough to just do what he knew he had to do, they’d made a baby.

He’d never guessed.

Andrea had been the one to break it off with him, and he’d known she was right. But when she’d walked away, she’d been pregnant, and that changed the way he saw himself. He was no longer a guy who knew better than to shackle a woman down to the likes of him. He was now the guy that his pregnant girlfriend had run away from.

Gabe had never claimed to be father material—or even husband material, for that matter—but to have a woman actively hide his child from him...

A father. That’s what this kept coming back to. He was a father?

His gaze moved back toward Zoey, who was climbing down from her stool again, a piece of paper clutched in one hand. He was looking at her differently this time, scanning her small, round face for signs of his own. His hand moved up to his own chin, rubbing against that familiar cleft under the sandpaper of stubble, and his mind was spinning in a fog of shock.

“Look!” Zoey said, holding up the paper to Harper. “I drew all of us. That’s Mommy, and Mommy, and me and Grandma and Grandpa...and that’s a cricket.”

Harper’s eyes misted and she nodded, then kissed Zoey’s head. “I love it,” she said. “Your snack is in my bag. It’s on the desk in the back room. Why don’t you go get it?”

Zoey skipped off, and Harper looked down at the faint scribbles on the page.

“Mommy and Mommy,” Harper said. “That’s what she calls me and Andrea. I’ve been upgraded to Mommy, recently, but when she tells stories, you have to know which Mommy she’s talking about.”

Gabe watched Zoey go—sturdy little legs and tangled brown waves. His emotions hadn’t caught up to this yet, and so far, she just looked like a kid—not his kid, not someone any closer to him than any other kid was... But when Harper looked at Zoey, he could see love burning deep in those green eyes. She saw something more when she looked at that child...

Gabe scrubbed a hand through his brown curls. “So Andrea knew she was pregnant when she left.”

“Yes.” Harper turned back toward him. “She said that she knew you didn’t want to get married or have kids, and once she realized she was pregnant, she knew that she had to make her choices with a child in mind, too. And she couldn’t keep doing...whatever it was you two were doing. The back and forth. The constant trying. So she came home.”

Home. That was Comfort Creek for Andrea, but this town wasn’t home for him. He’d been determined never to return to this hypocritical town. It had an attractive enough veneer, but he knew what was burbling underneath...and suddenly a thought struck him for the very first time.

“And no one told me.”

“Andrea made me promise to keep the secret,” Harper said.

“And you’re the only one who knew? I’m sure her parents knew I was the father. And her brother would have known, too, I imagine. If they knew, there would have been others—aunts and uncles, close friends, promising to keep that secret.”

Pink rose in Harper’s cheeks. “I told you.”

“She’s four.” He couldn’t mask the edge in his tone. “It’s been five years.”

“She wasn’t my daughter then,” Harper retorted. “And it wasn’t my business.”

Yeah, that’s what everyone in this town said about his grandmother, too. The way she raised her grandson was none of their business. What she did behind closed doors was her personal business, and far be it from them to push into someone else’s privacy. She was old, and he was a handful—they could sympathize with poor Imogen. But never once did they question whether Gabe’s behavioral issues might have arisen because of his crotchety old grandmother.

Gabe had been a little boy who was told how terrible he was on a daily basis. He’d been an adolescent hiding the emotional bruises from his grandmother’s caustic comments. And now most recently, he was the father of a daughter he didn’t even know existed. Not deemed good enough by Andrea and those closest to her. Ironically, that wasn’t very different from his grandmother.

This town had clean streets and cordial smiles, like the one from Chief Morgan, and under it all was the cesspool of secrets. He had a little girl, and Comfort Creek had kept its collective mouth shut. This stupid town hadn’t changed a bit.

“Not your business.” He nodded slowly. “I should have known about her, and long before this.”

Harper nodded and tugged her ginger curls away from her face. “I agree. But I’m telling you now.”

“And if it hadn’t been for that car accident?” he prodded. If Andrea hadn’t died, leaving her daughter...their daughter...in Harper’s care, what then?

Harper shrugged faintly. “What would you have had me do, Gabe? Go behind my best friend’s back and inform you about Zoey? I couldn’t do that. But I was the voice of reason and balance. I encouraged her to tell you, and eventually...I think she would have.”

“When Zoey was a teenager?” he asked.

“I thought you didn’t work with what-ifs?” She looked away.

So, he’d hit a nerve, had he? Good—she deserved to squirm a little bit. This whole town did! His emotions were kicking in now, and it wasn’t the appropriate emotional response...not what people expected to see when a man discovered he had a child. He wasn’t overflowing with love. He wasn’t feeling tender and paternal.