Heart of a Hero: The Soldier's Seduction / The Heart of a Mercenary / Straight Through the Heart

Phoebe was having trouble getting out words. Her chest felt like there was an enormous weight bearing down, preventing her from taking one good, deep breath. “Good.”

Angie nodded and went to the phone. A moment later, she said, “He’s on his way.”

“I’ll walk out with you.” One more minute. Just one more minute to plan what she was going to say. Her hands were shaking as she followed the sitter to the end of her driveway. Angie’s brother was already rounding the corner and walking toward them, and Phoebe returned his wave as Angie moved away.

Then she took one last stab at a deep breath and turned toward her home again.

Wade stood framed in the doorway. His face was in the shadow, and golden light from her cozy little home streamed around him, illuminating the tall, unmoving figure. It looked right, she thought. Then she immediately censored the notion. There was no point in wishing for the moon.

Phoebe mounted the steps and he moved aside to let her enter. His brow furrowed as he watched her close the door behind herself. “You have a housekeeper?”

“No.” She took a deep breath. “No, I don’t. Angela is my nanny.” It wasn’t, perhaps, a perfect opening line, but she might as well jump in. She had to get this over with.

She watched the expressions move swiftly across his face: simple acceptance of an answer, then shock, and a growing incredulity as he took in what she had said. “Why do you have a nanny?” He looked around as if to confirm the obvious conclusion, but the books and toys had been put away in the large basket beneath the window, so there was no obvious evidence of a child in residence in the living room.

“I have a daughter.”

“I see.” His expression had gone so noncommittal she wondered what in the world he was thinking. Of all the reactions, calm acceptance wasn’t the one she’d anticipated.

“Wade?”

To her shock, he had started for the door. “This was a mistake,” he said. “Goodbye, Phoebe.”

“Wade!”

He stopped halfway to the door without turning around. “Yeah?”

“Don’t you even want to know about her?”

There was a long moment in which she held her breath. Then he turned around and in his eyes she saw a sadness so deep she couldn’t fathom what was wrong. Surely the existence of a child couldn’t be that terrible, could it? Maybe it reminded him of what he would never have with Melanie—

“No,” he finally said. “I don’t.”

“But—”

“What we did—after the funeral—meant something to me.”

And she had known it would. He’d had a sense of honor a mile wide as long as she’d known him. It was one of the reasons she had been so loath to tell him she was pregnant. Even after she’d gotten past the hurt and the anger that he’d never contacted her after what they’d shared, she’d feared his reaction. She knew Wade well. He would have felt obligated to ask her to marry him.

The last thing she wanted was a man who felt forced into a loveless marriage with his child’s mother. But dear Lord, if he’d asked her to marry him then…she wasn’t sure she’d have had the strength to turn him down.

“I assumed it meant something to you,” he added.

“It did!” He was the first and only man she’d ever been with. He couldn’t possibly know what that meant to her.

“But you’ve moved on.” He laughed, but it wasn’t a sound of humor. “You’ve moved on in a big way.”

She couldn’t follow…. “I didn’t have a choice,” she said.

“Is the father still in the picture? I presume you’re not married or you wouldn’t have gone out with me tonight. I hope,” he said coolly.

She blinked, completely thrown off stride. He thought she’d—he thought Bridget was—”No,” she said. “You don’t understand. There is no other man.”

“Maybe not now, but—”

“She’s yours.”

Three

Wade froze, his face a classic mask of disbelief. Finally, as if he were sure he hadn’t understood what language she was speaking, he said, “What?”

“She’s your child,” Phoebe said. She probably should have been angry at his initial assumption that there’d been another man, but he looked so totally poleaxed now that she couldn’t summon much outrage.

“Are you kidding me?” He sounded as shocked as he looked. “We only—that one time—”

She nodded sympathetically, understanding his shock. “That’s how I felt when I found out, too.”

“When you found out.” He pounced on that like a cat waiting for the mouse to come out just far enough, shock morphing into anger right before her eyes. “Just when in the hell did you find out? And why didn’t you bother to tell me?”

She forced herself not to stammer apologetically. Instead, she indicated the couch. “Would you like to sit down? I’ll explain it all.”

“Hell, no, I don’t want to sit down!” The words exploded with fury. “I just want to know why you didn’t tell me you were going to have a baby!”

She wanted to shrink into a little ball and hide beneath the furniture, exactly like a frightened mouse. The guilt she had lived with since his death flared to life. “I don’t know,” she said in a quiet voice. “At the time, it seemed like the thing to do. Now—for some time now—I’ve known it was wrong.”

“So why didn’t you look me up and tell me?”

“You were dead! At least, I thought you were.”

He fell silent, clearly taken aback. “I keep forgetting that,” he said in a slightly milder tone. Then his eyes narrowed. “But I wasn’t dead when you found out you were pregnant.”

She had to look away. “No,” she said, “you weren’t.”

Silence fell. She wrapped her arms around herself and turned away, feeling the rage crackling in the room behind her.

“I want to see her,” he said.

“All right.” She swallowed. “Tomorrow after school—”

“Now.” The word was a whip and she jumped as it lashed her ears.

“She’s asleep,” she said protectively. But Wade’s face was stony and unmoved when she looked back at him. “All right.” She blew out a breath of nerves and exasperation, realizing she’d been stupid to imagine she could tell Wade about his child without letting him see her for himself immediately. “I’ll take you up to see her if you promise not to wake her.”

There was another tense silence. Finally, Wade said, “So let’s go.”

She turned on her heel and walked to the stairs on shaking legs, leaving him to follow.

She was extremely aware of his large presence at her back as she went up the steps and down the hall. At the door of her daughter’s room, she paused. Her chest felt as if someone were sitting on it and she couldn’t get enough air. She’d swear she could feel Wade’s breath on the back of her neck and she didn’t have the courage to turn around. Over her shoulder, she whispered, “Her name is Bridget. She’s six months old.”

The door was open just a shred, and she grasped the knob and carefully pulled it wide, then stepped aside and gestured. “Go ahead.”

Wade nodded once, a sharp jerk of his head, and she watched from the doorway as he took slow, almost hesitant steps toward the crib against the far wall.

He stood there for a long, long time, looking down at the sleeping baby in the low light she’d switched on. He didn’t move to touch her, didn’t glance around the room at the charming wallpaper border with the red-and-blue alphabet-blocks motif she’d found, the gingham curtains or the shelves filled with board books, stuffed animals and toys to stimulate a growing baby. He just…stood.

Finally, she entered the room and went to his side.

“Is she really mine?” His low voice was wondering and she understood he wasn’t trying to offend her.

“She’s really yours,” she assured him softly. “You can touch her.” His big hands were still, grasping the rail of the crib. He made no move but Phoebe could practically feel the longing radiating from him. Finally, she couldn’t stand it. She took his hand, and when he didn’t resist, she lifted it and tugged him forward so his palm rested flat against Bridget’s small back.

Phoebe found she had a lump in her throat. Her daughter’s body looked so tiny and fragile with Wade’s hand covering her whole back.

Her own hand tingled where she’d touched his skin. It wasn’t fair. Even an innocent touch like that set her pulse racing. In the years before and after Wade, she’d never met another man who could affect her so effortlessly. She doubted he even knew he’d done it.

But she knew. For the rest of her life, she’d always be comparing any man she met to Wade. She hoped to marry someday, but she was realistic enough to know that she wasn’t going to be able to offer a man the kind of all-consuming love she felt for Wade. She also knew she could never pretend to care for someone just to get a ring on her finger, and she feared that there might be many lonely years in her future, broken up by the joys of motherhood.

She was distracted from her morose thoughts by movement. Bridget had squirmed and twitched in her sleep, and Wade had automatically soothed her with gentle circles on her back. The baby gave a sigh and stopped moving, but he didn’t. He extended his index finger and very, very lightly brushed it over the smooth petal softness of his daughter’s cheek. He stroked it back and forth over the wild red curls that sprang from her tiny head. Then his hand moved to touch her much smaller one.

And Phoebe thought her heart might break when Bridget grasped one big finger and held on for dear life, still sound asleep. A lump rose in her throat and she fought not to sob aloud at the tenderness of the moment.

She swallowed hard several times until she felt she had enough control not to cry. Then she opened her mouth to whisper an apology, but when her gaze landed on his face, the words dried up in her throat.

Wade had tears on his cheeks. Silvery in the moonlight, they made gleaming trails where they fell from his eyes and rolled down his face. He didn’t even seem to notice them, not even when one fat tear dripped from his jaw onto the back of the hand that still clutched the side of the crib.

His sorrow hit her harder than anything in the world had since the news of his death. And guilt was right on its heels. She was the cause of this agony. She was the source of the sadness that gripped him. She hadn’t told him about her pregnancy when she’d had the chance, and then she’d lost the chance, she’d thought, forever.

Wade turned away from the crib and made his way from the room slowly. She followed him equally slowly, her own battle with tears completely lost. As they moved down the hallway, she swallowed the sob that wanted to surge up and said, “Wade, I—”

“Don’t.” He held up one large hand in a gesture of denial without even turning around. “I can’t talk to you right now,” he said as he started down the steps.

Shaken by both his tears and the controlled ferocity in the low tone, Phoebe stopped talking.

And watched, stunned, as Wade walked out the front door of her home without another word.

Wade knew she went to work the next day because he was sitting in his parked car down the street, waiting for her to come home. When she emerged from her little minivan, she walked around to the passenger-side sliding door and unloaded what looked like a fifty-pound satchel, presumably full of work to be graded.

The sight of Phoebe lugging that obviously heavy load up her front steps aroused two emotions in him. The first was an instinctive protective urge. She shouldn’t be lifting things like that. The second was another blast of the anger that had consumed him since last night, when it had fully begun to sink in that he had a child—and had missed more than half a year of her life because Phoebe had chosen to deny him the knowledge of his fatherhood. He didn’t even know his child’s birthday but he could guess approximately when she had been born.

God, if only Phoebe had told him when she’d learned she was pregnant…it might have made all the difference in the world.

He’d have married her. Hell, he’d known he wanted to marry her since they’d danced together at her class reunion and he’d realized what had been right under his nose for years. But then Mel was killed and things had gotten more and more out of control after that.

She’d been extremely drunk and upset that night and it had been his fault. The thought would haunt him forever, and he knew it had to have occurred to Phoebe. He could have stopped her from drinking so much. He could have gone after her faster. God, was it any wonder Phoebe hadn’t wanted to contact him when she’d found out she was pregnant? If she blamed him for Melanie’s death, how must she feel about having slept with him the very day of her twin’s funeral?

He took deep, calming breaths as he got out of his rental car and strode along the sidewalk to her house. A twinge in his hip reminded him that he wasn’t quite as healthy as he wanted to be just yet. He had to get a grip. Yes, she’d been wrong, but shouting at her wasn’t going to help the situation any.

Even if it would make him feel one hell of a lot better.

The door had barely closed behind her when he turned into her walk and bounded up the steps. He rapped briskly on the door.

Phoebe pulled it open a moment later. “Yes? Wade!” She clearly hadn’t expected it to be him. Maybe she’d thought he’d gone back to California. Think again.

He stepped across the threshold, forcing her to step back. Her babysitter was just getting ready to slip out the door but she paused, brown eyes alight with interest.

“Bye, Angie.” Phoebe held the door open and waved a hand, ushering the younger woman out. “See you Monday. Have a good weekend.” The nanny was barely through the door when Phoebe closed it behind her. Then she turned to face him. “Hello. Would you like to come in?”

He snorted at her sarcasm, but he’d been thinking all night and he wanted to get things straight right from the get-go. “Okay. The way I see it, we have two choices. We go back to California, or we stay here.”

Her blue eyes widened to the size of saucers. “We? You can do whatever you like but—”

“I’d like to take my daughter back to California to meet her only surviving grandparent,” he said harshly.

Her lovely face registered horrified shock. “You can’t just take off with my child.”

“No, but I can take off with my child,” he said.

He could see the moment that his earlier words registered. Phoebe’s forehead wrinkled and her eyes widened as she said, “One grandparent? Wade, has one of your parents passed away?”

“My mother.” Anger was preferable by far to the grief that still gripped him at unexpected times. “She died seven months ago.”

“Oh, my God.” Phoebe looked stunned. Her eyes filled with tears. “I need to sit down.” Her voice was faint and she stepped backward until the couch hit the backs of her knees. Then she collapsed onto the cushion, her hands clasped together so tightly he could see her knuckles whiten. “Oh, Wade, I’m so sorry. What happened?”

“She had a stroke,” he said flatly. “Ten months ago. It was terribly debilitating and she didn’t want to live. Three months after the first one, she had another.” But if she’d known she’d had a grandchild, things might have been different. He could see in Phoebe’s horrified eyes that the thought had occurred to her as well.

She pressed the heels of her hands hard against her eyes, elbows resting on her thighs. “I am so sorry,” she said in a muffled voice.

He knew she wasn’t offering condolences. No, she was apologizing—again—for not telling him he had a child. “I want Dad to meet Bridget,” he said, “before much more time passes.”

“But…I can’t just quit my job and go off to California.”

“I didn’t ask you to,” he said evenly.

Phoebe’s face lost what little color it still had. “Are you…are you going to fight me for custody?”

He took his time answering, finding himself a seat in the comfortable armchair angled close to the sofa. “Are you going to force me to?” He waited until she met his gaze. “I want to get to know my daughter. I want to be with her every day—I can’t get back all the time I missed but I sure as hell don’t want to miss any more.” He closed his eyes against the surge of anger that shook him and waited for her to argue.

“Okay.” Her voice was small.

He was startled. “Okay?” The Phoebe he knew might be quiet and calm, but underneath she was a fighter when she believed in something.

But she nodded. “Okay.” She swallowed. “I was wrong not to tell you as soon as I found out, Wade. I’m sorrier than you’ll ever know.”

He didn’t know what to say to that. She was right—she had been wrong. Because she’d chosen not to tell him, his mother had died without ever knowing she had a grandchild.

He simply couldn’t utter the words to accept her apology yet. He liked to think he was a big enough man that he’d soon be able to forgive her…but he didn’t feel that magnanimous right now. Instead of answering, he stood and went out the front door to his car.

When he returned, Phoebe was still sitting on the couch with her hands clasped. She jumped up when he walked back in without knocking and dumped his duffel on the floor inside the door. There were tears on her face, which she hastily wiped away, and then she did a double take.

“What are you doing?” She already knew, and she was aghast.

“Moving in.” He shrugged. “It’s the only way to really get to know Bridget without taking her away from you.”

She nodded as if she saw the logic, but a moment later, she shook her head vigorously. “Wait! You can’t just move in here!”

“Why not? You and I have always gotten along well. We probably know each other better than a lot of couples do. And you have an extra bedroom. I saw it last night. I’ll pay rent.”

She opened her mouth, then closed it again and shook her head helplessly. Finally, she said, “This is outrageous. So how did you just make it sound so utterly logical?”

He grinned, feeling a lot more relaxed now that she hadn’t kicked him out first thing. “I’m gifted that way.” He’d hoped her obvious guilt would help sway her to his point of view and, apparently, it had worked.

Suddenly, he realized she hadn’t spoken. She was staring at him as if he’d grown a second head. “What?”

She shrugged. “That’s the first time I’ve seen you smile since you got off that swing yesterday.”

“I haven’t had much to smile about,” he pointed out.

Instantly, the angry tension was back in the room, humming between them like a downed electrical wire. He was about to speak again, to get more answers to the questions she’d never given him a chance to ask, when an odd whispering sound filled the air.

It was barely audible, but Phoebe reacted instantly, a blinding smile lighting her face. “Bridget is awake.”

His body reacted to that smile. But—

“A-ba-bah-bah-ba,” It was a little louder now. Wade glanced around the room and spotted a baby monitor on one end table. Aha.

Phoebe started for the stairs. “If I don’t get her fast, they’ll hear her down at the end of the street. I’ll be back in a minute.”

Wade smiled to himself as she took the steps two at a time. Bridget was six months old. That had to be a bit of an exaggeration—

“A-bah-bah-BAH-BAH!”

Whoa. His kid had a set of lungs on her like Pavarotti.

“Bridget.” Phoebe’s voice was a gentle singsong. “How’s my girl? Did you have a good nap?”

The baby gave a delighted squeal that just about split his eardrums. Did Phoebe have that monitor turned up too high?

“Hello, my sweet baby girl.” No, the monitor wasn’t too loud, because Phoebe’s voice sounded normal. “How was your nap? I’ve got somebody downstairs who wants to meet you.” He heard her chuckle. “But first we’d better change your diaper or he’s liable to keel over.”

He listened to the rustle of the plastic diaper and the baby cooing, to Phoebe talking and singing little nonsense verses. It sounded surprisingly right. But he shouldn’t be surprised. Phoebe had always had a sensible, motherly streak. Years ago, if someone had asked him if he could envision her as a mother, he wouldn’t have hesitated for an instant before saying yes.

A wave of intense sadness swamped him. And now she was the mother of his child. If he hadn’t been determined to find Phoebe, he’d never even have known he had a daughter.

Footsteps on the stairs alerted him that they were coming, and he shook off the moment of melancholy and braced himself for his first clear sight of his daughter. He knew from what he’d seen last night that her hair was some shade of red, but the low light of the nursery hadn’t yielded much more.

Phoebe’s legs came into view, and then the rest of her appeared. She was carrying a baby girl with the wildest red hair he’d ever seen in his life. Quirking in ringlets all over her head. Even at this young age, Phoebe had pulled the front of it atop her head with an elastic hair tie. Bridget’s hair was much lighter than Phoebe’s, and far more vibrant than Melanie’s pale strawberry had ever been. His kid’s hair looked like a live flame.

Her face was a pretty little oval with a slightly more determined chin than was probably good, her eyes blue and sparkling as they found him. His heart skipped a beat. He actually felt it trip and miss, and he took a deep breath. God, she looked a lot like Phoebe.

His throat closed up and he just stood there as they approached. Phoebe was talking to the baby as if she could understand every word she said, telling her about a friend of Mama’s from far away who was coming to stay with them for a little while.

A little while? Ha. She might not choose to accept it, but he was here for good.

He swallowed the thick knot clogging his voice. “Hi, Bridget,” he said. He was at a loss. What did you say to somebody this size?

The child grinned, a wide smile that sent a cascade of drool down her chin and showed him two tiny pearly white teeth on the bottom. Then she turned her head abruptly into her mother’s shoulder.

Before he could figure out what to say, Phoebe saved him. “Daddy,” she told his child. “Bridget, this is your daddy.”

The baby peeked out at him with one blue eye, then grinned before hiding her face again.

“Flirt,” said Phoebe. She walked across the room and expertly unfurled a large baby blanket while still holding the child on her hip with the other hand. Then she set the baby in the middle of the blanket.

Bridget wobbled for a moment, then seemed to find her balance and sit straighter. “She just started sitting up by herself two weeks ago,” she told Wade over her shoulder. “Why don’t you come sit down and play with us? She’s not usually shy and she should get used to you quickly.”

“All right.” He strove for a normal tone although his heart felt as if it were going to fly right out of his chest.

He joined them on the brightly colored blanket. Phoebe was building a tower of blocks. Every time she’d get three or four stacked up, Bridget swiped her hand and knocked them over, squealing and chortling. Once, when Phoebe stopped for a moment, the baby smacked her little hands together and yelled, “Ack!” in a tone that left no doubt what she wanted.

Wade hastily reached for another block. “Way to get what you want, kid.”

Phoebe chuckled. “She has a mind of her own. And if she doesn’t get her way, she lets me know about it.”

“Reminds me of Melanie.” He’d said it without thinking. The moment the words hit the air, he knew they’d been a mistake.

The happiness drained out of Phoebe’s eyes, leaving them guarded and sorrowful. “Yes,” she said quietly. “Bridget does seem to have a stronger personality than I ever had.”

He wanted to protest. There was nothing wrong with Phoebe’s personality. Just because Mel had been more vocal about everything under the sun didn’t mean Phoebe’s personality was any less pleasing. She just wasn’t loud and attention-grabbing, that was all. But he didn’t know how to say that in a way that made much sense, and he could almost feel the resistance in the air. She didn’t want to talk about Melanie, that much was clear.