The Daughter He Wanted. Kristina Knight

or how Paige looked in the abstract was one thing. Talking about Dee... Alex couldn’t seem to talk to Dee anymore and he certainly wasn’t going to talk about what she might or might not have wanted. “I’m not attracted to Paige.” And maybe, if he repeated that to himself enough times, it would be true. “She’s pretty but she’s also the mother of the child I don’t even know. We’re barely acquaintances, much less anything more.”

      Tuck held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, got it. So when do you meet the kid?”

      “Don’t know yet.” And damned if that didn’t irk him, just a little bit. He got it. If a strange woman appeared on his doorstep determined to meet his kid he would react the same way. Even if there was a biological connection. But it still irked. He had a good job, no criminal history, a good family and friends. On paper he was perfect dad material, even if part of him worried he couldn’t make a connection with the little girl. That somehow he would mess up her life.

      Tuck didn’t need to hear all that, though.

      “We’re having coffee to talk about it this evening.” And just this morning he’d swabbed his cheek and sent the sample to the clinic.

      Alex flipped the hours sign on the office door to Closed and marked the time they would be back in the morning. He grabbed his keys from the hook behind the door and started for his truck. He’d let Paige lead the way. For now.

       CHAPTER THREE

      PAIGE SQUEEZED HER hands—hard—around her phone and then hit the delete key on her last text. The one that read Sorry, something suddenly came up. She couldn’t do that to him.

      To her.

      The sooner she figured out what kind of man Alex Ryan was, the sooner her life could start forming the new normal it needed. DNA testing would take a few weeks, but if physical looks were anything to go by, she didn’t need that confirmation. Kaylie was practically a miniature Alex. Still, she’d swabbed her daughter’s cheek the night before and dropped off the strip at the clinic this morning. Maybe soon she could go to the grocery store without wondering if Alex would be buying grapes in the produce section or if her neighbors had figured out that there was more to the man sitting outside her house than met the eye.

      Alex buzzed back that he would meet her there and before she could retype the blow-off message, Paige tossed her phone into her bag.

      It was ridiculous, really, all the weird scenarios that had played out in her head over the past two days. Since inviting him into her home, she’d had a nightmare that he fought her for custody, and then a made-for-TV dream about them falling in love and living happily ever after, complete with more tawny-haired, crooked-smiling kids in her house. Her fifth graders were studying a unit on the human body and Paige caught herself drawing Alex’s image as the model for the male face.

      Now she’d have to grade at least two dozen renditions of Alex’s warm eyes and full lips. Paige sighed. This was not how a mature adult would react. A mature adult would hammer out the details of visitation through lawyers. The only lawyers Paige knew were friends of her parents, though, and she wasn’t about to call that kind of drama into her life.

      She could do this on her own.

      Kaylie wandered in the door, dragging her Lalaloopsy backpack in one hand and her jacket in the other. “Hi, Mama.” She tossed the light pack and jacket on Paige’s desk, folded her arms and leaned against it. “Guess what we did today in circle time?”

      Kaylie attended preschool at the small school where Paige taught. She pushed thoughts of Alex and joint custody aside to focus on the little girl.

      “What?”

      “We learned a new song about the days of the week. And I can teach it to you so you know, too. Ready?” Paige nodded and waited. Kaylie snapped her fingers twice and then began singing to the tune of The Addams Family theme song, “There’s Sunday and there’s Monday...”

      Paige watched her daughter, singing and snapping, and felt tears welling up in her eyes. He was going to love her, love her and want more and more time with her. Paige wasn’t sure she knew how to share her daughter. Didn’t know that she wanted to. She hurried around the desk and wrapped Kaylie in a tight hug. The little girl wiggled and pushed away.

      “Too tight! And I’m not done yet.” Paige released her, reluctantly, and Kaylie finished the song. “Think you can remember that?”

      Paige nodded. “You are a very good teacher, sweetpea,” she said mock-solemnly.

      Kaylie looked at her expectantly.

      “What?”

      “Hug now.” And she held out her arms. Paige wrapped her back up, hugging her tightly while Kaylie burrowed her head against Paige’s neck, like she’d done since she was an infant.

      It didn’t matter how cute Alex Ryan was, Paige realized. It didn’t matter that on paper he seemed like a good enough guy to be Kaylie’s father. She couldn’t drop her guard, couldn’t let her attraction get in the way. Attraction as much as rebellion had led her down too many wrong paths in her youth.

      There was the twenty-five-year-old who took her to Texas over spring break when she was sixteen, and then an aspiring rocker who hit her. After that a football star who tried to turn her into a beauty queen, and the band instructor at her boarding school. The one thing all four had in common was her parents’ hatred of them.

      It was the younger man—one of her father’s students—whom she dated the year after earning her degree that had made Paige take a hard look at what she had been doing with her life. He accused her of using him as an accessory when all her life she’d felt like the accessory her parents used to make their family seem perfect. Until that night she had floated from dead-end boyfriend to dead-end job, not using her degree, not practicing her own art, because at least when she was underachieving it annoyed her parents to the point they would call to tell her how much potential she was wasting.

      That was when she took a substitute teaching job at the school, stopped looking for a new guy in every grocery aisle or bar and decided she wouldn’t hedge her future on the chance her parents might approve of her, hell, might pay attention to her, now.

      She’d turned her life around, but she couldn’t erase the memories of those mistakes. Paige couldn’t allow Alex to be another in her long line of romantic misadventures, not when Kaylie could be the one hurt this time. She squeezed once more before letting Kaylie go.

      “So, kiddo, Alison’s picking you up tonight because Mommy has an appointment.”

      “But Auntie Al picked me up—” Kaylie beetled her brows and then snapped her fingers like she had when she was singing “—Wednesday. That’s when she took me swimming.”

      “I know, and now it’s Friday. But I have a boring, grown-up appointment and Auntie Al says she has a craving for pizza and maybe a princess movie. Sound like a good trade-off?”

      “Two princess movies. Merida and then Belle, because they are the best princesses ’cept for Princess Amidala.”

      Paige laughed. “You’ll have to talk that over when she picks you up, sweetpea. But I do agree with you on the Amidala-Merida-Belle thing.” She glanced at the clock and realized Alison would be there in just a few minutes. She pulled Kaylie’s class papers out of her backpack and ooh’d and ahh’d over her coloring and name-writing skills until Alison poked her head around the corner.

      “Sweetpea! You ready for Princess and Pizza Night?” Alison came into the classroom, wearing tapered trousers and a tuxedo blouse with her long red hair wrapped up in a bun. She worked at a local winery in the HR department and always looked put together. Paige looked at her own pencil skirt and cap-sleeved shirt. At least she didn’t have chalk on her butt today.

      “Merida and then Belle, Auntie Al.” Kaylie threw her arms around Alison’s hips, hugging her. “And if there’s time, maybe