The Daughter He Wanted. Kristina Knight

found was his wife’s obituary and his picture on the Forestry Service website from when he was named Ranger of the Year two years before.

      “You were an only child?”

      Alex nodded.

      “Me, too.” So they had one thing in common. Well, other than Kaylie. “All my life my parents have jumped between complete indifference to me and total intrusion in my life. Their priority is what they want—for their lives and for mine. I know the pain she’ll feel if you aren’t willing to invest your time and energy into really getting to know her.” She watched him closely for a moment. His eyes were bright, his hands busy with the stirrer. A vein at his temple was pounding. She didn’t want him to implode the life she’d built but she also couldn’t just send him away. He was at the coffee shop because of a mistake, but he was also Kaylie’s biological father. Paige tried to lighten the mood. “So coffee with the baby mama you never knew. Going well?” She sipped her coffee.

      It took a moment but Alex laughed, a hearty sound in the quiet coffee shop. Paige looked around but no one paid any attention to them.

      “Since I’ve never had coffee with an unknown baby mama before, I can honestly say I had no expectations. Listen, I told you the other day I just want to meet her. I know that sounds cavalier, like I’m going to give her an ice cream and then stroll away forever. I don’t know how any of this is going to work. We barely know each other—” he waved his hand between them “—and we aren’t friends. I was trying to talk myself out of knocking on your door the other day.”

      Paige sat back in her seat. She’d never imagined he would admit he had reservations about meeting their daughter. It wasn’t the victory she’d expected, though. Instead of pumping her fist in a “whoop-whoop” she wanted to shrivel farther against the booth. God, it was like she was manic. Yay! He doesn’t want to meet her! one minute and holding back tears because he didn’t see what a gift Kaylie was the next.

      “I kind of thought that.”

      “What I realized, just before you stepped out on the porch, is that I can’t not be involved. Can’t walk away. Drive away. I need to know her, as much as you’ll allow. I won’t push, I promise you I won’t.” The promise was there, in his brown eyes. In the tension in his shoulders and his thumb flicking against the stirrer.

      “If you’re not pushing yourself into our lives, if you don’t know that you want to have a part in my daughter’s life, just what do you want?” It was the question she’d been dying to ask for two days. The question that had brought on both the nightmare and the silly movie-ending dream.

      “I’m not sure.”

      At least he was honest. “We can’t be a replacement for the family you lost.” The words were defensive so she gentled her voice. One thing she’d learned as a child was that histrionics didn’t make the point. Solid, calm rationality did. “Fertility treatments are rough on couples. You lost your wife before they could really get started, and I’m sorry about that.” She swallowed. “But no matter what you lost, Kaylie isn’t the replacement part that will fix it.”

      “I know that, too.” Alex bent the stirrer and then shoved it through the sip-spout of his coffee lid. “Whatever this is, it isn’t guilt-ridden. I got over my wife’s death a long time ago. I could have gone my whole life without knowing any of this, but I know. I can’t turn back the clock, not on any of it. I can’t forget that I have a daughter. All I’m asking for is a chance to get to know her. If not as her dad maybe as a friend?”

      A guy who is a friend. It would be less intimate. Safer for Kaylie, certainly. In Kaylie’s insular world friends stayed around forever, but maybe it would be simpler if they started with the friend card. For Paige, too. Friends had beer after ball games, not caviar by candlelight.

      Then, because she didn’t want to give him time to come up with an excuse, “Alison, the friend I mentioned the other day, and I have lunch every Sunday. This week it’s at her house. You could come by. Meet everyone. It’s informal. No pressure, and it’s a familiar place for Kaylie.”

      Plus, it was less than forty-eight hours away. If this man wanted a relationship with Kaylie, he would cancel whatever plans he had. And if he didn’t...better to understand his priorities now than later.

      “Sunday.” Alex crushed the empty coffee cup in his hands. “What time should I be there?”

       CHAPTER FOUR

      “I CAN’T BELIEVE you invited him,” Alison hissed through her teeth as she picked up the bowl of potato salad and pushed open the back door with her hip.

      Paige followed her onto the covered deck of the bungalow with a plate of condiments in one hand and a pitcher of sweet tea in the other. They started the tradition of Sunday dinners, switching between Paige’s home and Alison’s, after college. Sometimes friends stopped in. If Alison happened to be dating someone, he might stop by. Her parents were regulars since Kaylie was born, but they wouldn’t be here today. One hurdle at a time, she decided, and Kaylie meeting Alex for the first time was a big enough hurdle.

      “Scratch that, I can’t believe he showed up. From everything you said.”

      Alex sat under Alison’s maple tree with his large, muscled friend Tucker. It had seemed like an easy thing to invite him to the barbecue, a good way for him to meet Kaylie with few expectations and zero pressure on the little girl. Now that he was here, though, it was a different thing altogether. Because even though he seemed oblivious to the women on the porch and even though he wasn’t pushing himself at Kaylie, he was there. Making her feel itchy and self-conscious. “I didn’t say anything.”

      “And that was my point. When things are going well you talk, when things get hairy you clam up. It’s been your MO since we were kids.” Alison set the food bowls on the table and brushed her hands together. “So when you didn’t give me a breakdown Friday and when you didn’t say anything yesterday other than that you’d invited him, I figured the chances were slim he’d show.”

      “I tell you everything.” Having brought out the condiments and tea, Paige knew there was nothing left inside until the chicken was ready, so she sat on Alison’s bench.

      Alison rearranged the bowls of food on the table as she was no doubt arranging her next words. “You tell me about things when you’ve already made your decision. And that’s cool. I’m the friend, the supporter. The cheerleader. Not your priest or your mother.”

      Huh. Paige had never realized it, but Alison’s words rang true. She did like to have her ducks in a row, so to speak, before telling anyone about her plans. Probably because if she didn’t have logical, intelligent arguments for everything from a new bike to a new hairstyle as a child her parents automatically shot her down.

      Had she done that this time?

      “I never realized before now that I did that.” Paige popped an ice cube into her mouth and then put her glass back on the table. “And I know. I was going to be strong. I was going to shut him down and insist that Kaylie and I were fine on our own.” She picked her glass back up and rolled it between her hands. “I had this hope in the back of my mind that maybe he only wanted to make sure we wouldn’t file for custodial support. But he isn’t going away. He has a right to know Kaylie.”

      “He does. And you have the right to monitor those visits until you’re certain where he’s coming from.”

      “Park Hills,” Paige said automatically. “I know, that’s not what you were really asking. He’s from Park Hills, works as a park ranger and lost his wife to cancer just before Kaylie was born. And if this isn’t a supervised visit, I don’t know what is.”

      “True enough. And the cute friend?” Alison indicated Alex’s mountain of a friend sitting beside him under the tree. She flipped her head upside down, gathered her long red hair into her palm, grabbed the ball cap from the handrail and then slid her hair through the back opening. She waved