From Friend to Father

  Rose was awake.

  * * *

  REECE WIPED DAMP PALMS down the legs of his jeans for the third time in as many minutes. He was sitting in his car in front of Sarah’s house trying to work up the nerve to ring the doorbell and see his child for the second time.

  Vanessa’s child.

  Sarah’s child.

  Was he crazy, thinking this was going to work out? Thinking he could see Sarah every day and still successfully battle his guilt—over abandoning her and over the feelings he had for her that wouldn’t go away? Thinking he could be a decent father to Rose?

  Maybe he was insane, but it was too late for second thoughts. Too late to peel away from the curb. He’d never be able to live with himself if he took the easy way out.

  With a deep breath for courage, he got out and walked slowly to the front door. No need to rush, after all, when he knew what lay on the other side of the door.

  Or at least he thought he did. The door burst open before he’d taken the first step up to the porch and Johnny and Justin rushed out. “Uncle Reece, Uncle Reece, did you buy us something?”

  “I sure did.” He held up the bag from the toy store he’d stopped at before coming over. It was filled to the brim with stuff for the two boys. Sad to say there was only one thing in there for the baby—a soft, pink stuffed bunny that he hoped would go with the nursery.

  He’d planned on buying more for little Rosie, lots more. But as he stared at the aisles of baby toys he’d realized he was woefully unprepared. Little boys he could handle, but baby girls were way out of his league. He had no idea what toys she already had, didn’t even know which toys—if any—would interest her. So he’d picked up the rabbit, hoping it would work and made a plan to talk to Sarah about providing anything else the baby might need.

  “Really? What is it?” Johnny jumped up and down as he tried to peer inside the bag.

  “Johnny Martin, get away from that bag this instant.” Sarah’s voice cut like a whip as she came to the door and he was relieved at how much better she looked than she had the other day.

  She was still too thin, but it was obvious she’d gotten some sleep. Her short blond hair was washed and styled, her clothes actually fit—and looked good on her five-foot-ten frame—and the circles under her eyes looked less like bruises. She still looked different from the woman he’d known before all this had happened, but at least she was more recognizable now.

  “You know better than to behave so rudely,” she continued, staring her son down with a scowl Reece couldn’t help but admire even as he battled against the familiar warmth working its way through him.

  “But, Mom.” Justin stuck up for his adored, older brother. “Uncle Reece promised there were presents for us.”

  “Oh, really?” She sent him an arch look over the boys’ heads and Reece felt himself flush as if he were being scolded. “Well, let him in and we’ll see what he brought you.”

  “Yeah! Come on, Uncle Reece. Come on.” Johnny did everything but get behind him and push him through the door.

  “How was school today?” he asked the boys as he put the bag on the floor and kneeled next to it. Their little bodies were quivering with excitement and he had fun drawing out the moment.

  “It was good. Our teacher’s nice,” Johnny answered impatiently.

  “And were the two of you good?” he asked, reaching a hand inside the huge plastic bag, but not taking anything out of it. Yet.

  “We’re always good, Uncle Reece,” Justin told him. “The teacher says we’re very smart, but pre-pre—”

  “Precocious,” finished Johnny. “She tells Mom we’re precocious. Whatever that means.”

  “It means you’re lively,” his mother said with a smile. “Perhaps a little too lively.”

  “Well, I guess that’s a good enough report. For this.” He pulled two giant dinosaurs out of the bag and watched as the boys’ eyes lit with delight.

  “A dinosaw, Mommy!” cried Justin happily. “A real dinosaw.”

  “Indeed.” Sarah nodded. She was smiling, but Reece realized her eyes were wary. He was sorry for any concern his sudden reappearance was causing her, but he didn’t know what else to do. It was past time for Sarah to have some help…and for little Rose to have a father.

  He deliberately kept his eyes on the bag, refusing to look around the room for the baby. He’d work up to that slowly, give himself a few seconds to adjust to the idea of her before he actually had to interact with her. His heart was racing, his hands shaking, but he refused to give in to the fear. He would handle Vanessa’s child and not turn into his father. He would not be overwhelmed by grief or inadequacy.

  “I’ve got something else in here for you guys.” He pulled out the Thomas the Tank Engine train set he hadn’t been able to resist—along with the fifteen trains that would run on it.

  Choruses of “Thomas” and “choo-choo” rang out for the next few minutes, interspersed with some pretty authentic-sounding dinosaur roars. When there was finally a lull in the noise level and all the toys had been opened, Sarah said, “Why don’t you two take your new toys upstairs to play? I bet your dinosaurs would love to see your bedroom.”

  “Mom.” Justin giggled as he climbed to his feet. “My dinosaur’s not alive.”

  “It isn’t?” she asked with mock disappointment. “I thought it was a real dinosaur.”

  “A real, play dinosaur,” Johnny answered as he headed for the stairs. “Come on, Justin. Let’s see if they can fit in our rocket launcher.”

  Reece watched them go with a grin. “Dinosaurs in space?”

  Sarah laughed. “Something like that.” She studied him for a minute. “You came back.”

  Tension filled the room, so thick he was sure he could breathe it in. “I said I would.”

  “I know you did.” Her lips twisted into a little smirk that told him his word wasn’t worth much. Which kind of ticked him off, even as he told himself his behavior for the past several months had given her a pretty sound basis for her opinion.

  “Look, Sarah, I screwed up.” He wasn’t sure where the words were coming from, but he knew he had to say them. Get them out, so that they could move on. “I’m sorry. You have no idea how sorry I am. But I’m here now and I’ll do better. I won’t leave you—” he swallowed the bile rising in his throat “—you or Rose hanging again. You have my word on that.”

  Sarah studied him for a minute, her blue eyes more intense than he’d ever seen them. Was she finally going to let him in? Finally going to trust him. Then, just when his nerves were stretched to the breaking point, she opened her mouth to say something and he felt his stomach tighten in anticipation.

  But Rose chose that moment to begin crying and Sarah’s response was lost in her rush to comfort the baby. His lungs tightened in his chest, frozen so that the act of breathing was nearly an Olympic event. His daughter was crying. His daughter.

  “Do you want to hold her while I fix her bottle?” Sarah glanced over her shoulder at him as she lifted the baby from the swing.

  It was a test. But knowing that did nothing to prevent his hands from growing damp or his breath from hitching. What if he hurt the baby somehow? What if he dropped her? She was so small.

  His hesitation must have registered, because Sarah’s smile faded. “Never mind. I’ve got her.”

  “No. I want to hold her. I just—”

  “Just what?”

  “I don’t know how.” It grated to admit to what was yet another failure, but what was his pride worth when the alternative was unwittingly hurting his child?

  She stared at him in disbelief. “You’ve never held a baby?”

  “Not one that small.”

  After studying him for a minute, she nodded as if she’d made some kind of decision. “Okay. Sit on the couch and I’ll hand her to you.”

  “All right.” He sat as Sarah and Rose came closer. Everything narrowed to this one moment, each of his senses perfectly tuned to his daughter and her mother.
br />   Sarah laid Rose gently in his arms and the sweet scent of baby powder tickled his nose. She was a soft, warm weight, barely more than a sack of groceries or one of his design books.

  She’d stopped crying the second Sarah had handed her to him and now stared at him with big, blue eyes as if she was as curious about him as he was about her.

  “Watch her head,” Sarah cautioned, and instantly he shot his elbow up so that his forearm lent support to the baby’s neck. One tiny fist flailed around before being tucked inside that rosebud pink mouth. His heart melted into a soft, runny puddle in his chest.

  This was his child. His daughter. His beautiful baby girl. He could barely take it in. His eyes burned and he closed them for a minute, swallowing hard in an effort to keep from making a fool of himself in front of Sarah.

  She must have understood, though, because he felt a gentle hand on his shoulder as she murmured, “I’ll go get that bottle now.”

  Then she was gone and he was alone with his little girl for the first time in his life. “Hey there, little Rosie,” he whispered. “How’s my girl? How’s Daddy’s best little girl?” Her eyes widened and she stared at him, as if trying to determine if the voice she’d heard had come from him.

  “That’s right, baby. Your daddy’s talking to you. Yes, I am.” Instinctively, he bounced her gently in the cradle of his arms, just enough to soothe but not startle. “I’m sorry I haven’t been here before, but I’m here now. And I’m not going anywhere.”

  He leaned down and nuzzled her cheek with his nose. “No, I’m not. Daddy’s learned his lesson. Yes, he has. You’re my own darling girl and I won’t ever leave you again.”

  “Here’s her bottle.” Sarah’s voice sounded tight as she stood over him, the bottle in her hand.

  His stomach dropped to his toes. “You want me to feed her?”

  “Well, you are her father, aren’t you?”

  “Yeah, but—I don’t know how to feed a baby. What if I choke her or—”

  “You’ll do fine. Tilt your left elbow up slightly so her head is a little more elevated.” He did as she told him. “Perfect.”

  “Now what?” He knew he sounded panicked, but couldn’t help it. He was panicked. He couldn’t do this. He wasn’t ready for—

  Sarah didn’t give him a choice. She simply popped the bottle into the baby’s waiting mouth, then gestured for him to take it.

  “See, nothing to it.” Sarah settled into the chair opposite him.

  Easy for her to say. She wasn’t the one running very rusty knowledge of infant CPR through her head. What would he do if the baby choked?

  Despite his panic, everything worked fine. The baby sucked and swallowed, sucked and swallowed in a cute rhythm, her eyes growing heavier by the second.

  He was starting to relax, to get into the groove of feeding her when Sarah said, “Okay, that’s enough.”

  “But she only took half the bottle.”

  “She needs to be burped. Then you can feed her the rest.”

  His heart froze all over again. “Burped?”

  “Yep.” Sarah reached over and laid a receiving blanket across his chest and shoulder. “Just shift her up a little and rub her back. She’s pretty good at it.”

  “Shift her?” Clamping down on the instinctive panic, he reminded himself men all over the world did this every day. Surely he could manage one burping session.

  It wasn’t fast and it wasn’t pretty, but eventually he got Rosie positioned where he thought she needed to be. He rubbed her back in soothing circles, but nothing happened.

  Finally, he looked at Sarah in frustration and demanded, “What am I doing wrong?”

  “Nothing. But maybe try shifting her a little higher on your shoulder?”

  Higher? Was she insane? Much higher and Rosie would be in nosebleed territory. But he did what Sarah suggested—what choice did he have, really?—and was rewarded with a big burp. Few things in his life had ever felt as satisfying.

  “Okay, she should be ready for the rest of the bottle now.”

  Sweat rolled down his spine. He was going to have to move Rose again. Nodding, slowly, he began the torturous process of returning her to a proper feeding position. But by the time he got her down to the crook of his elbow again—with nary a head bobble in sight—her eyes were closed and her chest was rising and falling in a surprisingly rapid rhythm. “Is she okay?” he asked.

  “She’s fine,” Sarah said. “Babies have a much faster respiration than adults.”

  “Obviously.” He stared at his daughter, awe and love and more than a little fear filling his heart until it nearly burst from his chest. He counted her fingers, admired her long, black eyelashes and chubby, pink cheeks.

  “What do I do now?” he asked, when there was nothing else to look at, nothing else to catalog.

  “I’ll put her upstairs in her crib.”

  “Okay.” He looked into Sarah’s wary eyes, grinned in an effort to put her at ease. “And then we can talk?”

  “Yes, Reece.” Her voice was nowhere near as enthusiastic as his. “Then we’ll talk.”

  She was back before he was ready and Reece felt his carefully planned speech dissolve into nothingness. How did he tell Sarah what he wanted? How did he broach a subject so sticky, so final? Everything he’d thought of yesterday and this morning sounded like meaningless platitudes, but nothing else was coming to him.

  “You want to take Rose, don’t you?”

  His startled gaze met hers. “No, Sarah. Of course not. I thought we’d settled that two days ago.”

  Her arms were crossed over her chest, her lips tight. “Well, what do you want, then?”

  “I want to be a part of her life. A part of your life and the boys’.”

  “You want visitation rights?”

  He sighed, ran a hand through his hair as he struggled, again, for the right way to bring up what he did want. “Not exactly.”

  “Partial custody?”

  “I’ve spent the past two days thinking about nothing but this and I really believe I’ve hit on the best way to handle this whole situation.” He swallowed over the lump in his throat, then bit the bullet. “I want to move in with you.”

  CHAPTER FOUR

  SARAH KNEW SHE WAS DOING a darn good impression of a flycatcher, but try as she might, she couldn’t seem to close her mouth—any more than she could force words through the tight lump in her throat. A lump that was growing tighter, and bigger, with every strangled breath.

  But Reece was staring at her, his dark chocolate eyes half-amused and all concerned. Almost as if he had really said what she’d thought he said. But surely—

  Her knees threatened to buckle, so Sarah grabbed onto a nearby chair. Focused on how it felt beneath her unsteady palm. Concentrated on her breathing. In, out. In, out. Again and again she repeated the process until the buzzing in her ears receded.

  “Move in?” It took everything she had to force the half-strangled words through her tight throat. “You want to move in? Here? With me?”

  “I do.” Reece nodded, his expression slowly relaxing now that she was stringing words together in a semi-coherent fashion.

  “Why?”

  He raised an eyebrow, as if shocked that she had to ask. But at this point, Sarah wasn’t taking anything for granted. Four days ago she hadn’t been able to get the man to acknowledge that baby Rose existed and now he was talking about becoming a permanent fixture—not only in Rose’s life, but in Sarah’s and her sons’, as well.

  “I thought that would be obvious, Sarah. It’s the perfect solution.”

  Her back went up at the condescension in his tone, even as she told herself she wasn’t being fair. She’d known Reece a long time and he’d never once treated her as anything less than an equal. Maybe it was her own issues that were making her take such affront at his words—and tone. It had been six years since she’d had a man living in this house, and based on how badly that had gone, she was less than keen to repeat the experience. br />
  “What exactly is it the solution to, Reece?” Memories of her marriage gave her words more bite than she had intended.

  “Well, it’s obvious you need help.” He glanced around the house as if it was one small step from being condemned. “I could—”

  “I do not need your help.” He’d hit her hot button and the explosion she’d felt welling up inside of her detonated before she could even try to stop it. For the three years she’d been married to Mike, she’d had to put up with being told how incompetent she was. How she needed him to do things for her. How she wouldn’t survive without him.

  She’d tolerated that because marriage had represented security and after the farce of her childhood, she’d clung to any and all she could find. But she wasn’t that woman anymore. Hadn’t been since the day Mike walked out on her and she’d realized she was better off without him. For Reece—for anyone—to try to cast her back in that role was untenable.

  “I’m sorry if my house isn’t up to your standards, but I am doing the best I can here. I don’t need a big, strong man around—”

  “I never said you did.” He shoved a hand through his hair in frustration, a familiar gesture from when Vanessa was alive. “But I want to be a part of Rose’s life, a real part.”

  “What’s wrong with regular weekly visitations like noncustodial parents?”

  “Because we aren’t like those other people. Because this isn’t a case of us being divorced. Or even involved.” He sighed, extended a hand out to her. For one long moment, she wanted to take it—to feel the strength and warmth and concern that she knew his touch would communicate.

  But it wouldn’t pay to count on him. His behavior in the past few months certainly hadn’t demonstrated reliability or dependability.

  “I don’t understand.” Because she still wanted to reach for him, Sarah rubbed her hands up her suddenly cold arms. “Why the sudden change of heart?”

  She could almost hear his teeth grind in frustration. “I want to help you. To be a full-time part of Rose’s life.”

  “For how long?” The words were out before she could censor them.