The Daughter He Wanted. Kristina Knight
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ranger logo over the chest, faded jeans and boots, but there were only a few reasons a stranger would sit outside a home for hours. None of them good. The cops would take Alex Ryan into custody and delay this meeting. Maybe even make him reconsider stepping into her life.
God, let him reconsider. Her life worked now. She liked who she was, liked being Kaylie’s mom, giving her daughter all the love and attention Paige was denied in her own childhood. When she was a child, her parents either ignored her completely or interfered to the point that Paige couldn’t take it and lashed out. Those actions had sent her down the road of rebellion until she realized the one person she hurt with her antics was herself. It was a shock and had sent her down a new path. A path that led to the stupidest fertility clinic in the tristate area, apparently, but as crazy as it was that they’d used Alex’s semen instead of the donor she’d chosen, she still had Kaylie. The most amazing four-year-old on the planet.
For a moment she wondered about the strange man in the truck outside, and then she caught a glimpse of tawny hair and saw the way his head cocked to the side as he studied her home.
Both characteristics were exactly the same as her daughter’s.
Paige opened the front door and waited for Alex to pass by. His broad shoulder brushed against her and tension bubbled up in her belly. She took a moment to steady her hands against the doorknob at her back and mentally shook herself. There was nothing to be afraid of. Those four pairs of eyes would keep watch over her house until the blue truck sitting on the street had driven away. It was one of the reasons she chose this neighborhood. The house was the perfect size for her and Kaylie, and it was one of those places where neighbors watched out for one another.
Paige’s mom side appreciated the sentiment, even if the Mrs. Purcells of the world sometimes paid a little too much attention to her.
Alex stood in her entryway looking around as if he was lost. Her paint supplies took up most of the space in the living room to the left and Kaylie’s latest infatuation—Lalaloopsy dolls—took up the rest. She led the way through to the open-plan kitchen and family room.
“Would you like some iced tea?” Prim and proper and not at all what she wanted to ask. She wanted to be direct, tell him he had no business here. That he needed to leave. Something held her back.
Alex shook his head and Paige motioned him to sit at the island counter while she refreshed her glass. She wasn’t thirsty but it was something to do with her hands so she fussed with slices of lemon and added more ice before putting the pitcher back into the fridge.
Finally there was nothing left to do so she turned back to the man at the counter, trying to ignore the assessing way he watched her. Despite the casual clothes, Alex Ryan was the mirror image of everything she had left behind in her parents’ home, from the set of his shoulders to the judgment she saw in the thin line of his mouth. Rigid standards and rules she could never live up to. Expectations that had left her heartbroken and wounded. She didn’t need his approval, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like she’d asked him to come into her home and disrupt her life.
It wasn’t as if she’d had his permission to use his semen, either.
The clinic sent a file with his pertinent information, but Paige couldn’t force herself to read it. A small piece of her had hoped that if she ignored the report the man would ignore her. Now she wished she had read it cover to cover instead of putting it in her bottom desk drawer.
Her gaze caught on the picture of Kaylie at her fourth birthday party, cake frosting up to her eyebrows, princess crown askew, charging after the boys with her blue lightsaber.
Kaylie was the reason for all of this. Paige had wanted a family, so much so that on her twenty-fourth birthday she’d decided to take life by the horns and create the family she dreamed of. The sweet, smart, silly girl was everything Paige needed. No men needed to apply and since Kaylie had been born, not even a handful had stuck around through dinner.
And here was one more. A man so afraid of commitment he hadn’t known whether to get out of his car or run screaming into the warm Missouri afternoon.
No, that was unfair. She didn’t know anything about Alex Ryan.
A man so gorgeous the rebellious part of Paige, the part of her she couldn’t get rid of no matter how much she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, was glad her daughter wasn’t here. Wanted to flirt. Wished they’d met at a bar or under any other circumstances so that she could flirt and touch and see if the attraction she felt for him, he felt for her, too.
She glanced at her watch. Just over an hour until her best friend, Alison, would bring Kaylie back from her swim lesson at the rec center. The principal at her school required impromptu meetings now and then; today Alison was able to step in and help Paige. She was grateful. Alison was her biggest supporter and cheerleader. Paige hated missing the lesson, but Alison liked playing auntie for Kaylie from time to time. This introduction needed to get moving and get over with because, until she knew exactly what Alex Ryan’s intentions were, he was not getting anywhere near her daughter.
“So, this is awkward.” She blurted the words out, not sure where else to start. “We have a child together but I don’t know anything about you.”
He offered her a half smile, making his eyes crinkle at the corners and accentuating a little scar at the corner of his full lips. The tension she’d felt when he’d brushed past her ratcheted up a notch and she admitted to herself it wasn’t fear at all. It was flat-out excitement. Want. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such an instant attraction to a man. Attraction was bad. Very, very bad. Attraction meant throwing all her rules about relationships out the window. Attraction led to mistakes and mistakes could hurt Kaylie.
Hurt Paige.
She gulped some tea, hoping it would put out the sizzle of heat that seemed to grow with every second Alex was in her kitchen.
He shrugged, the motion defining his upper arms—as if they needed more definition—and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “I always figured if I were to have a conversation like this it would be because of a drunken night in Cabo, not because a fertility clinic marked my, uh, sample, as ‘anonymous donor’ rather than ‘IVF candidate.’” He gave a chuckle, and the deep sound sent another hot zing across her nerve endings, as if her ears were now an erogenous zone.
She was going to need a lot more than tea. Focus on the tea, she ordered herself. But the way his muscular arms filled out his short sleeves was an even bigger distraction. She focused on a picture of Kaylie on the back wall, her daughter smiling at the camera with Mickey Mouse ears atop her head.
That did it. Seeing her baby’s smiling face did more for Paige’s focus than the past fifteen minutes of ordering herself around had. Kaylie was important—not Paige’s hormones.
“So, you weren’t a donor?” Once more she cursed herself for not reading the clinic file on Alex. The lawyer merely told her that the man whose donation she’d used would like to contact her. Over the next ten minutes, which seemed to take ten hours, Paige had worried he was contacting her to tell her he had cancer or AIDS or some congenital disease that might affect her precious girl.
Learning he only wanted to meet her was almost a relief until the implications hit her. He only wanted to meet her so that he could be part of Kaylie’s life.
“No, my wife and I were IVF candidates. It was after the first embryos were implanted that we learned she had cancer.” Sadness flickered in his eyes. “The embryos didn’t result in pregnancy and we decided everything, even the precautionary donations I made, should be destroyed.”
Thank God, he had a wife. Thank God she hadn’t made a move on him. Wait, a wife. And cancer. She sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the instinct pushing her to reach out to him.
“I didn’t realize you were married.” There, her voice sounded normal.
He smiled, but instead of crinkling his eyes, it left them bleak. “She died. Just over three years ago,” he said. Paige reached across the counter, brushing her hand across his