Читать книгу The Instant Family Man - Shirley Jump - Страница 8
ОглавлениеTwo hours later, Luke sat in a lounge chair in the shade of the lanai roof at the back of his rental house, nursing a beer that should have taken the edge off his hangover, but instead churned in his stomach. Across from him there were splashes and laughter and bawdy jokes, but he stayed where he was, feeling older than dirt.
A kid. He had a kid.
He let the thought settle over him, but it didn’t become any more real or concrete. He’d seen the photo of Madelyne, seen his eyes in her wide blue ones, but still couldn’t compute him + Susannah = Kid.
Being a parent meant being responsible. Growing up. Stepping off the hamster wheel of parties and hangovers. Considering he had a party going on right in front of him while he was still battling the hangover from yesterday, Luke Barlow clearly wasn’t stepping off that hamster wheel anytime soon.
Except a part of him had been growing weary of the life he’d been leading, had been for some time. The problem was whether he was ready to change. Or if he was even capable of change.
Change like agreeing to spend time with a four-year-old? It didn’t sound hard—what did a four-year-old do anyway?—but it sounded like something better suited for a relative or a good friend or someone other than Luke. Someone with experience. Someone who knew what to do when a kid cried or fell down.
Except he was Maddy’s father. A father should know what to do. A father should have no problem spending time with his daughter.
A father who hadn’t known he was a father until Peyton showed up on his doorstep. From the minute she started speaking, the world had dropped away. Part of it was the bomb she’d exploded in his life, part of it was Peyton herself.
Hell, he hadn’t even recognized her at first. Gone was the geeky girl who had tagged along with him and Susannah. The girl who more often than not carried a book in her backpack and buried her nose in the pages every spare second. That girl had turned into a beautiful woman, the kind who stopped traffic, made a man forget every coherent thought in his head.
And lingered in his mind long after she had pulled out of his driveway.
Peyton had always had this way about her, an air his mother had called it, that wrapped people in a spell. Okay, maybe not people. Maybe just him. Because today he’d agreed to the one thing a man like him should never do—
To be a responsible role model and parent. Ha. Luke had his position in the family—sandwiched between his military hero younger brother and his overachieving CEO elder brother—serving as the family screwup. Yeah, he’d been good at sports, but he’d never been good enough to become a star player, the way Jack had been a leader in the military or the big-bucks moneymaker Mac was. Maybe it was because Luke hadn’t found his niche, his place in the world. Or maybe it was because he was no good at doing responsible or role model or anything even close.
He’d tried, once. Tried to be the kind of guy someone else could rely on.
And he’d screwed it up. Royally. No one talked about the fallout from that day, the accident that had left Jeremiah in a wheelchair. Nowadays, Jeremiah rarely left his house, rarely returned Luke’s texts, rarely did anything other than play video games in the dark and wait for his life to unwind.
Damn.
Luke twirled the beer in his hands, but didn’t drink. The weight on his shoulders hung too heavy for him to do anything other than sit there and wonder if Peyton had made a huge mistake in bringing a kid into his life.
Not a kid. His own child. His daughter.
Ben Carver plopped down into the seat beside Luke, clutching a nearly empty beer, his hair wet from the pool. Ben grinned, and the gesture lightened the heavy air around Luke. Friends for almost all their lives, Luke and Ben had been named Most Likely to Cut Class in high school, gone on more adventures in twenty-six years than most people went on in eighty and served as each other’s wingman almost every night of the week. They were bachelors—and damned good at it, if you asked anyone in Stone Gap. If there were ever two men in this town least likely to grow up, it would have been Luke and Ben.
Except now Luke had a child, and that changed things. A lot.
“You going to sit there all day or join the party?” Ben said. “There are some hot girls waiting for you to join them in the pool. Actually, they’re waiting for me, but they said you could tag along. Pity dates.”
“Yeah.” Luke tipped his beer in the direction of Tiffany and Marcia and...Beth? Barbara? He couldn’t remember. There were three other women in the pool, and two other guys Luke had known since high school. A typical Sunday afternoon at Luke’s house, a small rental he’d had for about a year now. He should have been enjoying himself. Should have been in that pool, living it up with Beth/Barbara/whatever her name was. But his mind kept straying back to Peyton, back to the earnest intent in her eyes, to the obvious protectiveness she felt for Madelyne and, most of all, to the way Peyton had dropped a detour into his life. “Nah. Got a lot on my mind.”
“Dude, it’s Sunday. Party day. Not the time to think about anything other than Coors or Yuengling.”
Luke propped his elbows on his knees, let the beer bottle dangle from his fingers. “You ever think we’re too old for this? That maybe it’s about time we grew up?”
“What is wrong with you? Hell no, we’re not too old for this. When your AARP card comes in the mail, then maybe it might be time to grow up.”
Luke smiled, but the gesture felt flat. “Jeremiah might disagree.”
“Jesus, Luke. What the hell is wrong with you? Why’d you go and bring that crap up?”
Luke saw his own reflection in the mirror of Ben’s sunglasses. The image seemed distorted, small, as if there was a lot more Luke could do to be a bigger presence. “Just thinking through my life choices, that’s all.”
“Well, that isn’t going to get you anywhere but depressed. And that doesn’t work on party day.” Ben clinked his bottle against Luke’s. “So come on, have another beer and let’s go join our hot friends.”
Luke glanced over at the others. “You go. I’m going into town. Pick up some snacks and beer.”
“We have plenty—”
But Luke was already out of his seat and heading into the house. He left the full beer on the countertop, threw on a T-shirt, then climbed into his Jeep and headed toward downtown Stone Gap. He didn’t need to go to the store. Didn’t need to do a damned thing today except mow the lawn, but for some reason, he couldn’t stay in that lounge chair for one more second.
All he could think about was his daughter. With her blond ringlets and blue eyes and a wide, toothy smile.
She still didn’t feel any more real. He needed to know, to see, to really believe. Luke drove for twenty minutes, passing through downtown Stone Gap, turning right at Gator’s Garage, closed on Sunday, as it had been for the past forty years, then another left and a right before he realized where he had ended up.
The Stone Gap Hotel sat atop a tiny hill a few blocks outside town. The white wood clapboard building wasn’t doing much to live up to its name, considering it held about twenty rooms and room service was provided by Tony’s Pizza across the street, but it was the only thing Stone Gap had for out-of-towners, and this, Luke figured, was where Peyton would be staying. Peyton’s mother, long divorced, had died a few years back, and that meant Peyton had no real family left in town, so the hotel was the most logical choice.
Luke tried to imagine that—a loss of the family that had surrounded him since birth. Two brothers, a mother, father, numerous aunts and uncles and cousins, a whole army of family at every holiday and gathering. Peyton had always been part of the little Reynolds crew of three, and now two of those three were gone.
Except for Madelyne, her niece. Susannah’s daughter. His daughter. A connection between two families, one big and boisterous, one so tiny it almost didn’t exist.
He parked, got out of the car and headed up to the front desk. The blonde behind the desk smiled when he entered the air-conditioned office. Karen Fleming had been a year behind Luke in high school and had dated half the football team—but not Luke. Something Karen tried to rectify every time she saw him.
“Why, if it isn’t Luke Barlow here to brighten my day.” She flashed him a broad smile and leaned over the counter, a move which brought the tops of her breasts into view. Any other day, Luke might have flirted back, but not today.
“Is Peyton staying here?” he asked.
Karen pouted. “And I thought you were here to see me.”
“Peyton?” Luke prompted again.
Karen sighed. “Room ten. Down the hall and on the right. What’s she doing back in town anyway?”
Luke was already heading away from the front desk. The maroon-and-gold-carpeted hall muffled his footsteps as he passed the other faux oak doors and stopped before room ten, his stomach doing backflips.
Sorry, Peyton, I’m not father material.
He shifted his weight. Tried another tack in his head.
Sorry, Peyton, but I can’t do this. I’m...busy.
Oh, yeah, that sounded even better. Just a simple Sorry, Peyton, I can’t was all he should say. Except that sounded empty, too. None of the three options captured what he really wanted to say—
No way, no how, do I want to be responsible for a kid that I didn’t know I had; a kid I have no idea how to connect with; a kid who is a mystery to me.
A kid who has no other living parent but me.
Well, hell. That was the truth, right there. Madelyne had no one but him, and her aunt. If he didn’t step up, then, for all intents and purposes, as Peyton had said, this child would be an orphan.
How could he possibly say no?
He raised his hand, but the door opened before he could knock, and the four-year-old from the photo came barreling out and straight into him. He let out an oomph.
“Sowwy,” she said, backing up and sending Peyton an uncertain glance.
And in that moment, there was no doubt. He could see his eyes, Susannah’s high cheekbones, in Madelyne’s face. She could have been a carbon copy of their baby pictures.
This was his daughter. The thought settled into him, not as foreign now.
“Madelyne, don’t run—” Peyton stopped in the doorway. Her eyes widened. “Luke. What are you doing here?”
“I...uh...” His brain cells misfired when he took in what Peyton was wearing. Earlier today, it had been a soft peach dress that swirled around her legs, with low heels, and her straight blond hair down around her shoulders. But in the interim, she had changed into a dark green two-piece bathing suit and one of those knitted cover-up things that seemed designed to entice a man with flashes of skin and swimsuit. Her hair was swept up into a clip, with a few tendrils tickling against her long, elegant neck. Holy hell, Peyton Reynolds had grown up. And done it well.
He cleared his throat, refocused his mind on why he had come here. “I wanted to talk to you.”
She put a protective hand on her niece. Madelyne stepped back, ducking her head and pressing her body against Peyton’s leg. Madelyne turned big blue eyes—the same eyes Luke saw in the mirror every morning—up toward the stranger at the door.
Her eyes widened and she shrank farther behind Peyton. Damn. The kid was scared of him. She didn’t know him.
And whose fault is that? a little voice whispered in his head.
That was the moment that cemented it for Luke. He might suck at being a father, might have just found out he even was a father, but no way was he going to let another four years go by with his kid thinking he was a scary stranger.
Peyton gave Madelyne a reassuring squeeze. “This is not a good time, Luke. We were just heading for the pool.”
Not that he’d expected some instant bond just because he and the kid shared some DNA. But her wide-eyed trepidation made him feel like an interloper.
If he had a snowball’s chance in hell of changing the look in Madelyne’s eyes, then he better start now. “How about I join you?”
Surprise colored Peyton’s features. “Don’t you have other things on your agenda today?”
The way she said other things almost sounded as if she was jealous. Which was impossible, considering he and Peyton had never been involved, never been anything more than friends.
“Not anymore,” Luke said, though he was pretty sure the party would go on, with or without him. Seeing Peyton now, in that teeny-tiny bikini partially hidden by the knit dress, made whatever was happening back at Luke’s house seem very, very far away. To his recollection he had never seen her wearing a bikini before. And it made him realize that Peyton Reynolds had some very nice curves.
Peyton gave him a dubious glance. “Okay. Let me grab another towel.” Maddy followed her, as close as an extra leg.
“Auntie P, who’s that man?”
Peyton, her hand halfway to the towel, turned and looked at Luke. Her eyes were wide and scared, like Madelyne’s had been a second ago. The look said Don’t upset this little girl’s world. She’s been through enough.
He wanted to tell his daughter the truth, but some instinct deep in his gut said springing the fatherhood connection on a preschooler wasn’t the best choice. What was it that Peyton had said? Maddy had had enough uncertainty for now.
It would upset her world, and that was the last thing he wanted to do. He might not be good at being a father, might not have the slightest clue where to start with a child he didn’t even know, but he knew this much—dropping that shocking news into the life of a kid who’d just suffered a major loss would be a stupid move on his part.
She needed get to know him first, and he needed to get comfortable with the idea of being a dad. He thought of his own father, of the impromptu wrestling matches in the living room; the way Bobby Barlow had cheered for each of his boys at every sporting event, all the times he’d taken them fishing or showed them how to fix a broken gate. That was being a dad. Walking into a room and announcing fatherhood was not. Right now, the truth was, he wasn’t a dad at all; he was just the sperm donor.
And as scary as it seemed, a part of him wanted to change that.
“I’m a friend of your mom’s and your aunt’s,” Luke said, taking a step into the room. Relief flooded Peyton’s features. “Just a friend.”
He bent down and put out a hand. “I’m Luke.”
Madelyne slid her tiny hand into Luke’s, her fingers as delicate as twigs. But she had a firm grip and her gaze was direct and assessing. It was weird, Luke thought, holding the hand of this tiny person who was half him.
“I’m Madelyne,” she said. “I’m almost four.”
“Nice to meet you, Madelyne.” He shook hands with her, then gave her a grin that he hoped spelled trustworthy and friendly. “Is it okay if I go swimming with you?”
Madelyne bit her lip. Behind her, Peyton did the same, probably completely unaware she was mimicking her niece. There was a hushed anticipation in the air, a sense of worry and fear, and Luke got the feeling that this moment would set the tone for what was to come.
“I dunno.” She cocked her head, sending a few of those curls springing off her shoulder. “Do you like doggies?”
The non sequitur caught him off guard. “Uh, yeah, sure. I love doggies. Even have one of my own. His name is Charlie.”
That made her brighten a little. “Can he come swimmin’ wif us?”
“I didn’t bring him today, but if you come over to my house, you can see him. Would you like to come over sometime? With your aunt, of course.” He felt as nervous as a teenager waiting on Madelyne’s answer. Here he was, asking his own daughter, whose bright pink cheeks made her look like a porcelain doll, if she wanted to come over. If Madelyne said no, or shied away again, Luke would take it as a sign. Back away and leave her in the undoubtedly highly capable hands of Peyton.
Madelyne toed at the carpet, then met his gaze with her own. Her eyes were dark pools, unreadable and still. “You promise? I can play with the doggy? I love doggies. They’re so furry and soft and they give kisses and eat cookies and play lots.”
“I promise you can play with Charlie. Cross my heart.” Luke made the gesture across his chest, and for a second, he was four again himself, swearing allegiance to some pact he’d made with his brothers. Cross my heart and hope to die, they’d said back then, in that cavalier way of kids who thought the world lasted forever and mothers never died too young. “Sound good?”
A tentative smile filled Madelyne’s face, and to Luke, that smile felt a lot like winning the lottery. “Okay.”
A second later, the three of them were heading down the hall. Like a family, he thought, though they were far from any such thing. He was still the stranger, uninvited at that, tagging along on the visit to the pool.
“Well, you clearly passed her test,” Peyton said.
“I think the kid grades on a bell curve.”
Peyton laughed. “Maddy’s pretty easy to please, most days. Plus, she figures anyone who loves dogs is okay. That’s her big criteria for everyone she meets.”
“I’m lucky she sets the bar low.” He tossed Peyton a grin. She returned it, and the dark, threadbare hall seemed brighter for a moment.
“Charlie to the rescue again,” she said. “That dog is quite the miracle worker, and he doesn’t even know it.”
“That he is.” Luke’s gaze went down the corridor, but his mind reached into the past. To the days after he’d found Charlie, the dark days that haunted Luke still, when he would sneak Charlie into his room at night and whisper his regrets into the mutt’s caramel-colored fur. The dog would lean against him and listen, patient and true.
“Honestly, I think that dog saved me rather than the other way around.” The admission slipped from Luke’s lips before he could stop it.
“What do you—” Peyton’s question was cut off when Madelyne dashed ahead, reeling back when Peyton called out to her to take it easy, to walk instead of run. Dash, slow, dash, slow. It was like watching a yo-yo.
Luke turned to Peyton. “She always this hyper?”
Peyton laughed. “Hyper? Honey, this isn’t hyper. This is normal.”
Something inside him tripped at the word honey. He knew it was an offhand comment, a word Peyton probably hadn’t even realized she’d said. He shook it off. He was here to figure out how he was going to be a father to a kid he never knew he had, not get wrapped up in the way Peyton looked or the words she used.
Madelyne started skipping from diamond to diamond on the patterned rug while she sang a rhyming song about a whale and a lemon. She was wearing a pink-and-white polka-dot one-piece swimsuit with a ruffled skirt, matching sandals, and even had pink ribbons tied in bows around the twin braids in her hair. She seemed awfully dressed up just to get in the pool. Reason number five hundred and seventy-two why Luke wasn’t going to be very good at this fatherhood thing. He couldn’t braid hair or tie ribbons or color-coordinate shoes and bathing suits.
But the more he looked, the more he could see himself in her eyes, her mannerisms. He saw Susannah in Maddy’s impish smile, in the way she danced down the hall. No doubt—this was his daughter.
“I gotta warn you, I have zero experience with kids,” Luke said. “I could screw this up without thinking twice.”
Peyton shot him a smile. “You’ll be fine. Spending time with a four-year-old can be challenging, but it’s also not as hard as you think. I’ll be right there the whole time, ready to give you plenty of instructions and worried-auntie input.”
He watched the girl stop and twirl in the hall, spinning and spinning and spinning while she went on and on about the whale and the lemon, and their new friend, a lime. Those braids spun out from Madelyne’s head, loosening a ribbon. Without missing a beat, Peyton stepped forward, retied the bow and sent Madelyne on her way.
Maddy pushed on the door handle, flooding the hall with sunlight. “Wait, wait,” Peyton said, running up to Madelyne and putting a cautionary hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Remember, you can’t just run out there. You need to take Auntie P’s hand.”
“But I’m a big girl,” Madelyne said. “I can walk.”
“Uh-huh. I’m sure you can. But it’s slippery around the pool.”
Luke watched Madelyne slide her hand into Peyton’s and realized he would have never thought to hold the kid’s hand when they were near the pool. Heck, he probably wouldn’t even have stopped her from running in the halls. All clear signs that he would be a terrible babysitter. An even worse father. Was that even something he could learn? Was there a Dummies book he could read overnight? Or was he better off just staying clear of this whirling, busy girl?
What if something happened to her? What if she ran into the street or tried to climb on the countertop? What if he wasn’t as attentive as he should be? Things could happen when he looked away, he knew that too well. The conviction that he could handle this—handle his own child—began to slip. “Peyton, we should talk.”
“Can it wait a minute? I’ve been promising Maddy that she could go swimming all day and we only have an hour until I need to feed her lunch.”
“Uh, okay.”
Peyton led Madelyne outside, then pulled some kind of blown-up triangular things out of the bag on her arm and slipped them onto Madelyne’s forearms. Madelyne flopped her arms and giggled. “I’s ready now.”
“Okay, give me a second.” Peyton reached down and tugged the hem of the white knit dress, sliding it off her body and tucking it into the bag.
Luke swallowed hard. Holy hell, Peyton looked good. Amazing, in fact. She filled out the dark green fabric of the bikini in a perfect hourglass. He had to force himself not to let his jaw drop, or to say any of the numerous stupid things a man could say when standing beside a beautiful woman in a bikini.
Peyton took Madelyne’s hand and led her toward the pool. The little girl lingered on the top step, her eyes wide and worried again. Peyton kept going, the bottom half of her body disappearing into the shallow end.
Luke pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it, along with his car keys and wallet, onto an empty chair, then slipped into the pool beside Peyton. “Water’s a bit cold.”
Peyton grinned. “Are you saying the big, strapping football captain is feeling a little wimpy?”
“Not at all.” Though he was feeling a little pleased that she’d called him big and strapping. Jeez. He really needed to start thinking with the parts of his brain that existed above his waist.
“Come on, Maddy girl. Your turn.” Peyton put out her arms.
Madelyne stood on the first step, water swirling around her ankles. “I just stay here, Auntie P.”
“Come on, you can swim with me. I’ll hold on to you. You’ll be safe and snug as a bug in a rug.”
Madelyne shook her head and toed at the water. “I just stay here.”
“You can do it, sweetie pie. I know you can.”
Madelyne dropped onto the edge of the pool and swished her feet back and forth, creating little ripples. Her mood had shifted into reserved and distant, her shoulders tensed. “I just stay here,” she repeated.
Peyton sighed. “Are you sure? Because Luke and I are having fun in the water.” Peyton sat back, sweeping her hands back and forth. She arched a brow in Luke’s direction. “Aren’t we?”
“Oh, yeah, uh, sure.” He did the same as Peyton, but felt like an idiot pretending to have fun in the shallow end. He forced a grin to his face even though the water was about ten degrees too cold. “Lots of fun.”
“Swimming is awesome, Maddy. And the water is warm.” She glanced at Luke.
“Yeah, warm.”
“A little enthusiasm, Mr. De Niro,” Peyton whispered to him.
He widened his grin. “It’s super warm!”
Peyton shook her head and bit back a laugh. “You are hopeless. Don’t quit your day job.”
Madelyne just kicked her feet back and forth, watching the adults make fools of themselves. “I just stay here. I swim next time, Auntie P.”
Sadness flickered across Peyton’s face, then she smiled. “Okay, sweetie. That’s fine.”
“She doesn’t swim?” Luke asked.
Peyton shook her head, then lowered her voice. “She’s scared of the water. I don’t know where she got that from because Susannah and I loved the water.”
He remembered. A lot of his best memories centered around those times at the lake with Susannah and Peyton. Those were the best summers he could remember, before his life had taken a left turn he hadn’t seen coming. “That summer of senior year, I swear the three of us spent every single day at the lake. Me and Susannah and...” He flicked some water at Peyton. “Tagalong.”
Her cheeks colored at the old nickname. “It was just because there wasn’t anyone my age at the lake that summer.”
“Jack and Mac were there.”
“Your brothers?” Peyton snorted. “They were always busy. Jack, off hanging with his own friends and Meri’s family. As for Mac, he never wanted anything to do with any of us. I swear, Mac was born an adult.”
Luke laughed. “Very true.”
Then he sobered, because he thought of how long Mac had been gone, how his older brother’s absence had created a vacuum in the family. When they were kids, Jack, Luke and Mac had been the three musketeers, as their mother dubbed them, in trouble more often than not. But as they got older, Mac became the serious one, the determined one. He’d worry over his grades, obsess over every word in an essay, work harder and more than anyone else to keep the T’s crossed and the I’s dotted. He’d been the one who butted heads with their parents the most, the one who thumbed his nose at curfews and rules. The black sheep with the straight As, which made it awful hard to justify grounding him. The minute he was old enough to leave, Mac headed out of Stone Gap, his returns on par with sightings of Halley’s Comet.
Luke glanced over at Madelyne, sitting on the step, prancing a Barbie doll around the edge of the pool. She was his daughter, though he didn’t feel a single thread of emotional connection to what was, essentially, a child stranger. He could see their link in her features, in the way she cocked her head to study him, in the offbeat way she assessed people’s worth. In those ways, they were alike. And maybe he was hoping for too much, expecting some instant bond.
Madelyne, he realized, had a hole in her life now, too. One that was never going to be filled by a quick visit at Christmas, a few checks here and there. What was it the statisticians said? Kids raised with a strong male and female role model did better. They were happier, more grounded. Madelyne clearly already had a strong role model in Peyton, but Luke—
Well, no one was holding him up as an example of what to be when you grew up.
“So, what does this spending-time-with-Madelyne thing entail?” Luke asked. “Exactly.”
Peyton grinned. “Don’t look so panicked.”
He waved a hand. “Does this face say panicked?”
She took a step closer to him, swirling water around their hips. She feigned deep scrutiny, peering into his eyes. Her perfume, something light and airy, wafted in the space between them. “Terrified.”
“Me? I’m only terrified of anacondas and great white sharks. Not kids.”
That made Peyton laugh. He’d never noticed her laugh before, but decided he liked the sound of it. “Wait till she’s having a complete meltdown because she wants to eat cake for dinner or stay up past her bedtime or buy that six-foot teddy bear at the mall. Then we’ll see how the big, brave bachelor reacts.”
“I’ll be fine,” he said, speaking with a confidence he didn’t feel. Hell, he could barely take care of himself. And the thought of being responsible for another person—
Damn.
“I’ll be fine,” he repeated, more for himself than Peyton.
The tease dropped from Peyton’s features. Her voice sobered. “You better be, Luke. A kid isn’t a watch you can return to the store because it doesn’t match your suit.”
“If you haven’t noticed, I don’t wear a watch or own a suit.” He tossed her a grin, slipping into the familiar role of class flirt. “And I’m still a big kid myself.”
“That particular fact I noticed.”
For some strange reason, the fact that Peyton had noticed anything at all about him made Luke smile. Years ago, he’d barely known she existed, except as a thorn in his side when he’d been trying to be alone with Susannah. But now, standing in the water with this older, sexier, more intriguing Peyton—
“Auntie P? Can I play with my other dolls now?”
“Sure, sure.” Peyton strode out of the pool, reaching for Madelyne as the little girl was heading for the table where Peyton had placed their things. “Wait, let me get the bag for you.”
Luke’s gaze followed the cascade of water running down Peyton’s back, over her buttocks, down her shapely legs. There were a few things that improved with age. Cheddar cheese. Red wine. And Peyton Reynolds.
He reminded himself he wasn’t here for Peyton or for anything other than his daughter. He was trying to be responsible, for once in his life, and being responsible didn’t include lusting after his kid’s aunt.
He was a father now, whether he was ready or not, and that meant being a whole other person than the one he had been for the past twenty-six years. He could only pray he didn’t screw it up.
