For the Girls' Sake - By Janice Kay Johnson Page 0,40
hesitated. "I know today wasn’t what you had in mind."
"Actually," he said, "I didn’t have anything in particular in mind."
"You would have preferred a movie or a day at the beach."
"I thought the girls might," he corrected her, knowing he was lying.
"Real life, remember?"
"What about you?" he challenged. "Was this a good visit?"
"Yes." She sounded surprised. "I’m not totally comfortable with you sometimes, but otherwise...yes."
"Will things get better between us?"
"I’m sure they will." But she wasn’t meeting his eyes. "Once I’m sure you won’t try to take Shelly from me."
Adam felt an instant of disappointment that irritated him when he realized its source: he’d wanted her to admit she felt an attraction to him that was a problem. Either she was being less than honest, or she didn’t feel any of that edgy awareness that had him concentrating on her face so he didn’t imagine wrapping his hands around her small waist.
"We have an agreement, don’t we?" he said.
"We have nothing in writing. Nothing that will keep us out of court."
"Goodwill."
"I don’t trust it. I want to trust you, but I don’t completely. How can I?"
He did trust her, he realized somewhat to his shock. Lynn Chanak didn’t have a deceitful bone in her body.
"We could do a written parenting plan."
She sighed. "No. I just need time. And...and a routine. I’m happiest when I know what’s coming."
"Like a child."
"I suppose." She tried to smile. "Living on the edge is not for me."
"And yet," he said softly, "you must feel as if you are all the time."
"Financially, maybe."
"Is your ex-husband helping?"
"He was. Until this happened." She gestured toward Shelly’s bedroom, where silence had finally settled.
Adam frowned. "He quit paying child support?"
"I’m okay without it."
"The jerk."
"Took the words out of my mouth." Another of her almost-smiles hid a world of hurt. "He figured you wouldn’t want his child-support checks."
"I’d shove ’em down his throat," Adam growled.
"Obviously, I made a mistake there. Except..."
"For Rose."
"Yes. I wouldn’t change things if I could."
"Do you have a picture of him?"
"Sure. There’s one in the hall. After all, he’s Shelly’s dad. Or she thinks he is."
Adam wanted, violently, for his daughter to know he was Daddy. Always and forever. Patience, he counseled himself.
Lynn came back in a moment with a framed photograph of a handsome young man with a confident grin, Nordic blond hair and vivid blue eyes. Although he had noticed it earlier, Adam took it from her and studied it closely.
“Not much of him in Rose," he decided, glad.
"Except his eyes. No," Lynn agreed, "there’s even less of his personality in her. I always thought Shelly took after him. He mountain climbs and does that dangerous freestyle skiing and rides motocross. Unlike me, he enjoys taking his life in his hands. Shelly can be so reckless. At eighteen months old, I heard her sobbing in her bedroom. When I raced in there, I found she’d managed to climb out of her crib and scale her dresser. She was perched on top, finally scared."
"Rose never did get out of her crib. After I bought her a twin bed, I had to sit next to her until she’d gone to sleep the first few nights, because she was sure she’d fall out." He had tried to hide his impatience, not understanding her timidity. He’d tried to justify it by the loss of her mother. She hadn’t gotten it from either him or Jenny.
"She sounds so much like me," Lynn said quietly. "Finding our daughters the way we have, I keep being hit by how much is innate instead of environmental. Rose is mine and Shelly yours, no matter how much we want it otherwise."
A clamp squeezed his chest. He couldn’t deny a word she’d said, however desperately he would have liked to. Rose is mine and Shelly yours. He adored his Rosebud. He wouldn’t let her be someone else’s.
"We’d better go as soon as Rose wakes up," he said with brusqueness calculated to hide his disquiet. Staying was no longer an option. He needed distance to think about this. To figure out whether he really did trust this woman.
“Sure," Lynn said, with a faint ironic smile. "I assumed you would."
"But you’ll bring her over in two weeks? And stay?"
"Of course I will."
"We have each other over a barrel, don’t we?"
Their eyes met, stark honesty between them for once. "You could say that." Was it bitterness or fright that made her voice momentarily tremulous. "You have Rose, and I have Shelly."