Heart of a Hero. Anne Marie Winston

Neighborly. That was the ticket. She could ignore her temporary lapse in judgment if she just concentrated on remembering Wade several years earlier as he’d been before—before anything had happened. They’d been friends. No reason they couldn’t continue to be friends.

      Wade still wasn’t looking at her although she had a feeling he knew exactly why she’d changed the subject. But he didn’t object, merely followed her cue. “Won’t a snack spoil her dinner?”

      “Not if it’s a small snack like a cracker. And we don’t usually eat until close to six.” And then they’d sit down to dinner together, just like a real family.

      A real family? What was she thinking? They were not a family. They were two people who had known each other for a long time and who now shared a child. But they hadn’t shared most of the other basic details that members of a real family would have.

      And they might not be a real family, but they certainly were going to be doing many of the things that families did. Her best bet, she decided, was to treat him as a tenant. Or no, maybe a boarder…he’d already announced he was moving in, so they were going to have to handle all the dumb little details, like meals and who bought toilet paper.

      And there was the fact that they hadn’t really talked about custody or visitation or any of the much bigger issues that had been haunting her all day. “I have to get dinner organized,” she said, knowing she sounded less than gracious. “Nothing fancy, just a roast I put in the Crock-Pot this morning.”

      “I love red meat. It doesn’t have to be fancy.” He said it with a straight face and perfectly innocent eyes. Was she only imagining the double entendre?

      She felt her face slowly heating and she turned away before he could see her blushing. “I’ll make dinner if you’d like to play with Bridget.”

      “What do you do with her when you’re alone?”

      “She comes into the kitchen with me. I used to put her in an infant seat and sing to her but recently I’ve been able to lay a blanket down and let her roll around on it.”

      “She looks like you.” He was watching Bridget again.

      “Until she decides she wants something. When she’s determined, she sets her jaw the same way you do, and her eyes get that intense look.”

      “I do not set my jaw.”

      Phoebe smiled. “Okay. I must have imagined it about a million times in the last twenty years.”

      He had to chuckle at that. “You know me well.” The amusement faded from his eyes. “And that’s another reason I need to be in Bridget’s life. She deserves to know how her parents met, that we grew up together.”

      How her parents met? He made it sound as if they were an old married couple. That thought hurt. Hurt enough that she couldn’t face him anymore, and she walked away without looking back. But when she reached the kitchen door and she did glance his way again, Wade was still standing there eyeing her with a speculative expression that made her very, very wary. She knew what he’d said about not fighting over Bridget…but could she trust him?

      She watched him walk over and lower himself to the floor, tailor-fashion. He was incredibly limber for such a big man. Any man, really.

      Bridget turned toward him with a delighted smile as he picked her up and set her in his lap. She promptly grabbed his finger and dragged it into her mouth.

      Wade looked at Phoebe over his shoulder with a pained expression. A chuckle bubbled up and nearly escaped, and she couldn’t help smiling as she moved into the kitchen. He was the one who’d wanted to get to know his daughter.

      But she sobered rapidly as she checked the roast. Dear heaven, what was she doing? She couldn’t just give in and let Wade live in her house!

      But she didn’t have a choice. If she didn’t let him have free access to Bridget, he’d go to a lawyer.

      In her heart, she knew she could never fight him on the issue, anyway. She felt terrible for keeping her pregnancy from him, worse that she’d never told him about his child. Guilt would kill her if she denied him one moment of time with his child.

      And she’d never forgive herself for not telling him—or his family, when she’d thought he was gone forever—and letting his mother die without ever knowing she had a granddaughter.

      Even if he’d been dead, as she’d assumed, she should have gone to his parents. She knew it, and she knew it was part of the anger that leaped in his eyes each time he dropped the carefully friendly facade.

      She shivered as she assembled ingredients for biscuit dough and got out broccoli. He would never forgive her for that. Never.

      The kid was a ball of fire. He sat on the floor of his daughter’s bedroom later that evening, listening to the sounds of her bath progressing. He wondered who was wetter, Phoebe or the kid. Bridget made noise nonstop, giggling, squealing and occasionally shouting. In the background, intermittent splashing indicated that the bath wasn’t quite over yet.

      A few moments later, he heard Phoebe’s footsteps in the hallway. She stopped in the doorway to the bedroom, the baby in her arms.

      Bridget was wrapped in some kind of white towel with a hood, and she sent him a cheery smile that showed her two front teeth. Phoebe set her down beside him, and her diaper made a funny plastic hiss when she plopped down on the carpet. She immediately began waving her little arms, opening and closing her fingers, her babbling beginning to escalate in pitch until Phoebe snatched up a book and thrust it into her hands. Bridget squealed, a sound so high-pitched that it made him wince.

      Yep, definitely a ball of fire.

      And he meant that almost literally, Wade decided, eyeing the brilliant curls, still damp from her bath, that peeped out from beneath the edges of the white terry cloth on her head.

      “Time to get you into your pajamas, little miss.” Phoebe came over and sank down beside them holding a set of pink pajamas. “Here,” she said to Wade. “If you want to keep her next week, you’d better start practicing how to get baby clothes on and off. Sometimes I think the manufacturers sit around and brainstorm ways to confuse parents. Hey, c’mere, you.” She deftly snagged the baby, who had begun to roll out of reach. “Oh, no you don’t. It’s bedtime.”

      Bedtime.

      If someone had told him he’d be sleeping under the same roof with Phoebe two days after he’d flown east, he’d have figured they were nuts.

      Bedtime. Phoebe.

      How the hell was he going to sleep knowing she was right in the next room?

      His daughter screeched as Phoebe set her in front of him again. “Go for it,” she said, smiling.

      “You’re going to enjoy this, aren’t you?”

      “Oh, yeah.” She chuckled. “I had to learn by doing, so it’s only fair that you have the same experience.”

      “Thanks.” He picked up the pajamas. There were snaps in places he didn’t even know snaps could be sewn. And his hands were about twice the size of the little piece of clothing. This was going to be interesting. To his relief, Phoebe returned to the dresser from which the pajamas had come and began putting away items from a clothes basket set atop it.

      Twenty minutes later, he breathed a sigh of relief. “There. I think that’s it.”

      She came over and knelt beside him to look, then raised her gaze to his and nodded. “You got it. You pass Clothing the Baby 101.”

      He snorted. “What’s 102?”

      “Well, 102,” she said, “is the class where you learn the Murphy’s Laws of Childrearing. Like, ‘a child does not have to go to the potty until after you have completely zipped, buttoned and snapped every loose fastener on a snowsuit.’”

      “Sounds like you already know them.”