he’d regressed. Right back to his eighteen-year-old self, the kid who’d been crazy for her. Who’d known, even then, that she had the power to bring him to his knees.
When all he’d ever wanted, all he’d needed, was to stand on his own two feet.
“I thought about what you said last night,” he said.
Watching him over the rim of her cup, she sipped her coffee. “That’s it? You supposedly had some big paternal epiphany and that’s all you’re going to tell me?”
He nodded once.
She straightened. “Sorry. Not good enough.”
And, as he’d predicted, she made to shut the door on him. To shut him out, of her home and their daughter’s life.
For a moment, he considered letting her. Just...walking away. But he couldn’t. Bree was his daughter, too. His responsibility.
The door hit his foot and it took all he had not to kick it a few dozen times. He pushed it open, held the edge so she couldn’t shut it. “What do you want from me, Maddie?”
“Right now,” she said, her lips barely moving, “I just want you to let me close my own damn door. God, it is way too early in the morning for this.”
But she didn’t give in. Not Maddie. She turned and put her back into it, trapping his foot between the door and frame.
“Shit,” he muttered, wishing he had on steel-toed boots instead of sneakers. Was that a bone he just felt crack? Grimacing, he shoved, giving himself enough room to wiggle his foot free but not letting up so much that she won.
No way he’d let her win. Not today.
She grunted and yanked the door open so suddenly, he fell forward. “Fine,” she said as he caught his balance. “You want to know what I want. How about some honesty.”
“You want honesty?” he repeated.
“It’d be a nice change of pace.”
He shut the door behind him with a quiet snick. See? He was still in complete control, of himself and the situation. “You were right.”
She smirked. “Well, that’s nothing new. It’s also nothing I didn’t already know.”
Christ, but she was something. An arrogant, cocky smart-ass.
He shouldn’t find it appealing. Shouldn’t let his appreciation for the way she tackled challenges push him into giving her more than he could risk losing.
But this wasn’t about Maddie. It was about Bree. And his daughter deserved for him to admit the truth.
“Last night,” he said, choosing his words carefully, “I couldn’t stop thinking about what you said, about Bree needing more from me. You were right.”
“So now you’re here, at the crack of dawn, to bond with her?”
“I want to spend the day with her.”
Maddie raised her eyebrows. “And you wanted to get a jump start on that?”
He stood with his legs apart, his hands clasped behind his back. “I thought we’d go for a run.”
She choked on her coffee, coughed to clear her throat. “You want to train with your eleven-year-old daughter? Oh...I get it,” she said softly, her eyes flashing with enough heat to set him aflame. “This isn’t about you having some crazy yen to spend quality time with Bree. You want to fix her.” Maddie glanced at the doorway leading to the hall as if checking to make sure Bree hadn’t magically appeared out of thin air. “All that talk about Gerry being worried was bull. It’s you. You’re embarrassed about her weight.”
Not true.
Was it?
He gave a mental head shake. Didn’t matter. He was doing this for Bree. She needed him.
“I’m concerned for her health,” he said. “Childhood obesity is a real problem in this country and overweight kids are at risk for heart disease—” he ticked off items on his fingers “—high blood pressure and diabetes. Plus, teens with weight problems often have low self-esteem—”
“Well, telling her we think she’s fat,” Maddie whispered harshly, “should be great for her self-esteem.”
“She needs to lose weight to be healthy. Did you know eighty percent of kids her age who are overweight become obese adults?”
“Someone spent last night on the internet.”
“I read up on a few things,” he said, sounding defensive. “And it convinced me that the sooner we tackle this problem, the better it’ll be for Bree. It’s important for girls her age to have a healthy self-image and to love their bodies.”
Maddie set her cup down onto the table with a sharp crack. “And you think the way to accomplish that is to show up at the butt crack of dawn, drag her out of bed and force her to exercise?”