The Baby Arrangement Page 18

  “I’m a fraud,” he said. “I lost my dad. And then Gonzo. I was only fourteen and I had to dig his grave. And my mom and sister... Mom could hardly cope after Dad left. And my sister, she blamed herself. I had to be strong.”

  Heart pounding, she sniffled. She put her hand on top of his and glanced at the kennel, too. They needed to call someone about the dog.

  And maybe about Braden, too.

  Had he really been living with a dead dog in a kennel for over a week?

  Shouldn’t it smell?

  She squeezed his hand, more in love than she’d ever been. When they’d first been married she’d known that Braden had depths people couldn’t see. She’d just known.

  When had she forgotten that?

  “I pushed you away,” he told her. “I couldn’t handle the pain of losing Tucker. Or the blame. I shut down on myself. And then you. I couldn’t handle it. I’m weak and a fool, Mallory, and I’m so sorry.”

  “You are not weak. You’re one of the strongest men I’ve ever known,” she told him. “And you most definitely aren’t a fool.” She felt the truth of the words to her core. But still she worried.

  Clearly Braden had had an extremely difficult eye-opening experience. But at what cost?

  She hadn’t ever meant to break him. Didn’t want to break him.

  “Bray, it’s okay. I never should have made the ridiculous mandate that we can’t be friends. Clearly we can’t not be friends.” She was crying softly but was able to instill all the certainty she felt in the words.

  He shook his head.

  “Where have you been all night?” He said he’d been up. Surely not driving around with the kennel.

  “At home. At my condo.”

  “You’ve been here, in San Diego?”

  “I had to have a place to take Lucky.”

  “Lucky.” The dog, obviously. He’d named a dead dog?

  “He got out of the hospital yesterday afternoon and needs around-the-clock care for the first couple of days. Knowing that he could die if I went to sleep, I didn’t.”

  And the dog had died anyway?

  She glanced down, afraid of what another loss on his shoulders had done to Braden’s psyche.

  And that was when she saw two big brown eyes peering up at her.

  “Bray! He’s not dead! Look!” She jumped up so fast it startled the animal, which moved suddenly and then whimpered.

  “Of course he’s not dead,” Braden said, opening the door immediately, reaching in first to pet the dog, talking soothingly, and then carefully lifting him out.

  He had a cast on one of his back legs. And a bandage wrapped around his torso where the fur had obviously been shaved.

  “I told you, I’ve been up all night caring for him,” he reminded her. “Which left me far too much time with nothing to do but sit alone with myself.” Holding the dog, he looked over at her and met her gaze fully. “I was scared to death he was going to die on me. Really scared. I couldn’t leave him there, go to work, go anywhere. I had no one to call. It was all on me. And it struck me how you’d felt in the nursery that night I came in there and found you holding Tucker’s penguin.”

  She was crying again, slow tears dripping down her cheeks.

  “Helpless, that’s how it feels,” he said. “And sometimes there’s not a damn thing you can do about it.”

  “Except sit with it until it passes. Trusting that it will pass.”

  “Sit with it,” he said, his eyes opening wider. “Sit with it. That’s right. Sometimes, loving someone means being able to sit in depths of despair with them.”

  She coughed, trying to hold back a sob, and failed.

  “That finally makes sense to me,” Braden said.

  She didn’t get the significance of the statement, but clearly it meant something to him.

  “I’m so sorry, Mal.” He pet the dog, but his gaze was on hers. “I let you down at the most devastating time in our lives.”

  “Shh.” She put a finger to his lips. “I let you down, too,” she said. “Even before that. If I hadn’t, maybe you wouldn’t have. Maybe you would’ve. But what matters is that for the four years since, we’ve been hanging on to each other. We’ve been trying. Together.”

  Even after they’d said they wouldn’t be friends she hadn’t been able to let go. Not with The Bouncing Ball. Not with his name on his daughters’ birth certificates.

  “It was your key on the counter that did it,” he said. “You rescued me, Mal.”

  “It sounds like I deserted you alone on a night of sheer hell.”

  “Nothing that could even come close to comparing to my emotional absence after our son died. I can’t promise that I won’t check out again at some point, for a time, but I can promise that I will always come back to you, Mal. That I will sit with you, and our daughters, no matter what you’re feeling. Please, Mal, say you’ll marry me. Please.” His eyes got moist and as uncomfortable as that might have made him, he didn’t seem to fight it.

  “Oh, God, Bray, I...” she started to cry, but was smiling, too. “You feel like a trip to Vegas this weekend? I thought... Anyway,” she threw her arms around his neck, careful of her belly and the dog. “Yes, of course I’ll marry you,” she said, kissing him with all of the need inside her.

  It was a few minutes before either of them could speak. Braden kissed her so hard they fell back against the couch. When she’d been ready to take things to the bedroom, he pulled back.

  “And Lucky? You’re okay with keeping him?” She couldn’t believe it, but for a second there she’d actually forgotten about the dog.

  “I wouldn’t have it any other way,” she said, petting the animal who was sitting there like he belonged to them. Looking at them like they belonged to him.

  “I was thinking maybe I’d have William run the office in L.A. instead of San Diego.”

  She grinned through her tears. Leave it to Braden to have the logistics all worked out. God, how she loved the man.

  “And that I’d like to take you up on your offer and drive over to Nevada today and get married. I’d say fly, but we’ve got Lucky.”

  “Driving is good,” she said. He hadn’t mentioned any appointments he might have that day, but as for herself, she’d call Julia and let her know she wouldn’t be in.

  Braden continued to sit there, petting the dog.

  “Bray?”

  “Hmm?”

  “You can put the dog down and make love to me now.”

  He froze, then stared at her.

  “It’s just dawning on me how much it’s going to kill me if I ever lose you again.”

  “It’s not going to happen if I can help it, but even if it did someday, you’ll survive, Bray. Because that’s what love does. It gives you the strength to survive. No matter what.”

  She had to hand it to him. He had the wherewithal to set the dog gently on a blanket on the floor before he grabbed Mallory up, laid her down on the couch and proceeded to get emotional all over her.

  And in her.

  Because just like she’d told her daughters, as long as they existed, they were candidates to be recipients of a miracle.

  They just had to be patient until it arrived.

  * * *

  Don’t miss previous books in the

  Daycare Chronicles:

  Her Lost and Found Baby

  An Unexpected Christmas Baby

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  The SEAL’s Secret Daughter

  by Christy Jeffries

  Chapter One

  Getting out of bed was usually the easiest part of Ethan Renault’s day. It wasn’t only a promise of a fresh start, it was also a reminder that he was alive and healthy and had made it through the previous day without a single drop of booze.

  The real struggle didn’t begin until he padded barefoot to his kitchen and flipped on the switch of the coffee maker. That was when he started to think of how much he would prefer a swig of Jim Beam over a double dose of the strongest, darkest brew available in the coffee aisle at Duncan’s Market.

  Ethan had bought himself a top-of-the-line Keurig the same day he’d signed his discharge papers. Listening to the expensive machine gurgle water as it heated was his reward for all the times he’d had to endure the trumpet blast of “Reveille” to make him spring from his rack during boot camp and then again in BUD/S training.

  It had been six months since Ethan had officially left the United States Navy and landed in the small town of Sugar Falls, Idaho, to restart his life. Yet, except for the gourmet coffee maker sitting on the counter, the tiny kitchen in the apartment he’d rented above a downtown storefront was still just as sparse as the day he’d moved in.

  The place had come furnished with only the basics and every once in a while, Ethan might pick up a few things at the market to add to the fridge. But it wasn’t as though he enjoyed many meals at home. For some recovering alcoholics, socializing and eating at local restaurants with full-service bars might prove to be too much of a temptation. With Ethan, though, dining out provided him with more accountability—more eyes watching to keep him in line.

  Besides, when he was alone, he had too much time to think.

  As the coffee brewed, he made his way back to the bathroom and cranked the shower faucet to the highest setting. He was barely under the steaming spray long enough to get wet when he heard a pounding knock.

  It wasn’t even 0700 yet, so the chances of someone paying him a social call this early were pretty slim. They probably have the wrong apartment, he thought as he washed the shampoo from his hair. Yet, the knocking continued. Ethan debated staying in the shower and just ignoring whomever was banging on his front door. But what if it was a neighbor who needed a favor? Or a friend from one of his meetings who needed some encouragement?

  Stepping out on the cold tile floor, he grabbed a towel and made his way toward the hall as he dried himself.

  “Hold on a sec!” he yelled, crossing to his bedroom and grabbing a pair of jeans off the top of his dresser. The knocking paused briefly, but resumed before he could get his fly buttoned. Geez, what was this person’s major emergency?

  He tugged one of the thermal shirts off the hanger so quickly, the plastic triangle flew off the nearly empty closet rod. Ethan barely had his arms shoved through the sleeves when he finally yanked open the front door.

  A woman he didn’t recognize stood outside on the narrow landing, a lit cigarette hanging from the tight, thin line that was her mouth. She flicked the cigarette over the railing, not bothering to see where it landed below, and exhaled a cloud of smoke. “Ethan Renault?”

  “Can I help you?” he replied without confirming his identity.

  “You the same Ethan Renault who went to Sam Houston High?”

  He narrowed his gaze, studying the woman before him. There were dark circles under her eyes and a permanent crease between her brows, as though she wore a constant frown. Had he gone to school with her?

  When he didn’t immediately respond, she continued. “Yep, it’s you all right. Your hair might be shorter, but you still do that twitching thing with your fingers that makes you look like you’re about to run off at the drop of a hat.”

  Ethan shoved his hands in his pockets and rocked forward on the balls of his bare feet. “Do I know you?”

  The woman gave a snort, as though she expected quite a different response when she showed up unannounced on a stranger’s doorstep this early in the middle of February. But Ethan patiently waited her out.

  It was then that he noticed someone else standing on the stairs behind her. A young girl with dark, tangled hair holding a plastic grocery store bag kept her head down, fixated at the hole on her canvas sneaker where her big toe was popping through.

  “I’m Chantal DeVecchio,” the woman finally said, her added eye roll conveying her annoyance at not having been recognized right away. “And this,” she said, gesturing to the girl, “is your daughter, Trina.”

  * * *

  “But I don’t have a daughter,” Ethan told the woman who no longer looked anything like the eighteen-year-old cheerleader he’d once taken to the prom. His chest felt as though it was caving inward and he had to straighten his back and brace a hand against the door frame.

  “She’s yours,” Chantal said. “And it’s about time you man up and take care of your responsibilities.”

  Ethan’s spine stiffened even more at the insult to his masculinity and the implication of his negligence. His eyes darted between his former high school girlfriend and the dark-haired child who appeared to only be interested in the patterns her sneakers made on the snow-covered steps. While he didn’t know much about raising kids, he at least knew better than to let them go running around without socks when it was only twenty degrees outside.

  “Why didn’t you call me?” What he really wanted to ask was why had Chantal waited almost twelve years to spring such a life-changing surprise on him. “Or tell me before now?”

  One minute, he’d been getting ready to head out for his regular breakfast over at the Cowgirl Up Café, wondering if today would be the day he’d finally convinced the shy server who waited on him every morning to go out on a date. The next minute, someone was banging on his front door and then accusing him of being a deadbeat dad to a child he’d never even known about.

  “Because I didn’t find out I was pregnant until after you’d joined the Navy and shipped out. It wasn’t like you left a forwarding address before you and your dad ran out of town that summer.”

  It was true, Ethan had enlisted right after graduation. His dad was in the oil rigging business, constantly on the move to different cities depending on the latest job. Ethan had already switched high schools five times in three years and, that summer, the only new start he’d been eager to make was the change that would finally begin his adult life.

  Scanning the alley behind the row of Victorian buildings that made up the downtown business district of Sugar Falls, Ethan realized that the local merchants would soon be fil
ling up those parking spaces. “Maybe you should come inside and we can talk about this.”

  “Nothing to talk about,” Chantal said, snatching the plastic sack out of her—and possibly his—daughter’s hand and tossing it into his entryway. A purple T-shirt spilled out and landed on his bare foot. “I can’t do this anymore. I’m just not cut out for motherhood. It’s your turn to step up and be a father.”

  She turned around and gave Trina’s shoulder an awkward hug. “I’m sorry, Trina,” she said, a hint of sadness creeping into her voice. “But it’s for the best. You’ll see.”

  Chantal then brushed past the girl and marched down the steps. Ethan took a few strides to chase after the woman, but only made it halfway down the staircase when he realized that the child wasn’t following. Or begging her mom not to leave her. The poor thing just stood there, looking as miserable as Ethan felt.

  Something was ricocheting in his chest with a thumping urgency, but his body remained perfectly still. He needed to do something, to say something, but all he could do was grip the wrought iron handrail until his brain and his body could work in sync.

  What he wouldn’t give for a shot of bourbon right about now. Or for a call from his AA sponsor. But no amount of booze or platitudes or even SEAL team combat training could’ve prepared Ethan for the blow he’d just been dealt.

  Not knowing what to do, his feet grew restless and the snow squishing between his toes began to sting, causing him to take a step toward the girl. Then he froze up all over again, like that time in Kabul when he and his buddy Boscoe faced an unexpected rainstorm of firepower. One wrong move could cause everything to blow up in his face. Worse than it already had.

  An engine turned over in the alley below his apartment and he looked over his shoulder in time to see Chantal speeding off in a Geo Storm that might’ve been yellow twenty years ago. The shredded end of a rope holding the hatchback down to the bumper dragged along the wet asphalt as she made her escape.

  A shiver started between Ethan’s shoulder blades and traveled its way down his back. He ran a hand through his still damp hair and faced the young girl huddled on his porch.