An Unlikely Daddy

She managed a stiff nod and tried to eat some more bagel. The baby kicked, then she felt a little foot or hand trail slowly along her side.

“Anyway,” Ryker continued after finishing half a bagel, “we do it for a variety of reasons. I wanted excitement. Exotic places. A sense of mission and purpose. Adrenaline junkie, I guess.”

“And Johnny?”

Ryker spread his hand. “By the time I met him, I couldn’t have guessed a thing about why. By then he was one of us. And as you so correctly said last night, by then he wouldn’t have been happy with a tamer life. Somehow, I guess that’s how we’re built.” He frowned faintly and looked past her. “I don’t know if I can make you understand, or even find the right words. But there’s a point where the mission becomes everything. It motivates every breath we take. Not for everyone, mind you. But for some of us...well, we get hooked. We don’t just carry the sword, we are the sword.” He shrugged and picked up another piece of bagel. “Unfortunately, the world needs swords. I’d have made a lousy plowshare, I guess.”

The reference didn’t escape her. Her stomach turned over, and for a few seconds she felt so nauseated she wondered if she’d have to run to the bathroom.

But memories floated back, instants out of time, just brief things she had heard or seen with Johnny, moments when he had seemed almost like someone else. Moments when she glimpsed the sword. They always passed swiftly, wiped away by a ready smile, but she’d seen them. She just hadn’t wanted to remember them.

But recalling them now, she felt just awful that Johnny had felt the need to hide a very big part of himself from her. She’d have loved him no matter what. Hadn’t he trusted her?

“We also get older,” Ryker continued. “So we change some more. I’m nearly forty. Too damn old for this business. Johnny was starting to feel the same way. So after I moved over to State, he asked me to let him know if something opened up.”

“How could you give up the rush?”

Another faint smile. Her insides prickled with unwanted awareness of him as a man. She shoved it quickly aside, and guilt replaced it. At least he was speaking.

“It’s possible to get one without being the pointy tip of the sword. Besides, it’s important to know when the time has come. You can shift without giving up the mission or your sense of purpose. It’s safer for everyone. Johnny had started to think more about you, about being with you more.”

Her breath caught. “He told you that?”

“Actually, yes. When he asked me to let him know if there was a position for him, he said it, Marisa. He said he was thinking about all the time he’d missed being with you, and that he was ready to start down a different road. Unfortunately...”

“Yes,” she said tightly. Unfortunately. Johnny had said the same thing when he told her was trying to get a job with the State Department. We’ll have more time together. We’ll even be able to travel together once in a while. I’ll need to work my way up a little higher on the food chain, but think of the places we could visit.

How much of that had been real? “Just last night you said he knew it could be dangerous.”

“It’s always dangerous,” Ryker said bluntly. “Always. But I didn’t think it would get him killed.”

Nor had she. In her blissful ignorance, she had forgotten all the places in the world where a State Department employee would be unwelcome. No, she’d been thinking of London, Paris, Tokyo...not little out-of-the-way consulates in dangerous countries. But of course Johnny wouldn’t shy away from the dangers. He never had.

She needed to get away from this, at least for now. Ryker was shifting her mental images around like a puzzle, and she wasn’t sure she would like the new picture. “So, more about you,” she said.

“I was born,” he said.

Despite everything, she felt her mood rising to a much lighter place, and realized she desperately needed it. “That’s it?” she asked, surprised to hear a tremor of humor in her voice.

“No, of course that’s not it. I had, still have, family. I grew up like a normal kid, two parents and a sister. My parents are retired now, and my sister lives in New Zealand. I get to see her once every few years. And that’s where normal ended, I guess. The military called to me like a siren. My imaginings were very different from reality. But I think I mentioned that. Anyway, since then my home has been my job.”

None of that told her very much, but what had she been expecting? “That could be lonely.”

“I haven’t noticed it, except occasionally.” The way he spoke led her to believe there had been times when it had been incredibly lonely. She wondered if Johnny had felt that way sometimes, too. And why.

“So you’re going back to teaching in the fall?”

She nodded. “I hope I’m ready by then. I’d be a lousy teacher right now.”

“How are you filling your days?”

“Trying to get through them.”

The words lay there, stark and revealing. More than she had wanted to say to this stranger, more than she had even said to her friends. The fact that hell lived inside her was not something she felt compelled to inflict on her friends. She tried to keep it to herself as much as humanly possible. She knew she didn’t do the best job of it, but she still made the effort.

“Everything’s okay with the baby, though?”

“Fine.” It wasn’t really his business.

“And a nursery? Have you put one together?”

She felt a prickle of guilt. Her pregnant friends had usually attacked the nursery business early and had things ready months in advance. For some reason she had been postponing it, as if she could stay in this state of stasis forever. Unrealistic. Ducking. Evading what she couldn’t have said. “No. There’s a crib in the basement that was Johnny’s. I thought I’d use that.”

“Need help getting it up here?”

It was clear he wanted to do something more than knock down a few icicles. Well, this was one task where help would be welcome. “Yes, actually I do.”

She had just given him a wedge to drive farther into her life. She hoped like hell she didn’t regret it.

* * *

Glad of a useful job to do, Ryker headed downstairs to the basement. Marisa had told him where to find the crib, and he didn’t have any trouble locating it. The basement was clean, scrupulously organized and stocked with every tool a man could wish for. The only thing that bothered him was that the laundry machines were down here. That meant Marisa was going up and down those narrow steps at least once a week, and when the baby came she’d have to do them even more often. He didn’t like it. The railing didn’t seem stout enough; the steps were too narrow. How often would she attempt them with a baby in her arms? He hated to think.

But as he carried the awkwardly sized pieces of the crib frame up one by one, he had the opportunity to think about Johnny and Marisa, and his opinion was changing.

Had Johnny even once considered how his death would gut his wife? Had he ever looked at her and wondered what would become of her? In just a short time Ryker had gleaned a decent impression of the price Marisa was paying, a price compounded by the impending arrival of a child she would now have to care for on her own. He had no doubt she could do it, but there’d be no handy dad to spell her when she got tired or needed a break.

Lots of women did it. He got it. But Marisa should have had Johnny to lean on. Of course, Johnny had been so busy pursuing his new goals that maybe he’d have been no help at all.

Thoughts such as these had been one of the main reasons Ryker had avoided every opportunity to settle down. It wasn’t just that women wanted to change him. No, they had a right to expect certain things from a husband, things he couldn’t provide.

And the lie. The big lie. That they would travel together? Johnny would likely have never been assigned to any station where he could take his family. Not with his skills.

And another lie, his own. He and Johnny didn’t work for the State Department. They worked for the CIA. State was their cover. He hated having to perpetuate that with Marisa. At this point she deserved something better than lies. She certainly deserved to know about a black star on a marble wall at Langley that would never bear Johnny’s name.

But the simple fact was, the agency would put up the star, but it might never acknowledge that John had been one of them. It had happened before and would happen again, and setting Marisa on a quest to break through that huge barrier to truth seemed fruitless. Some names were never inscribed in the book, which was guarded as well as the crown jewels. Some families were never invited to the annual memorial ceremony. Some were never told what their loved ones had done. Some were left forever with stories such as those Marisa had been told because even one slip might cause an irreparable harm.

He didn’t even know himself exactly what had happened to John. He’d never know. But he didn’t like giving her the cover story when she deserved the truth.

But maybe the truth would upset her more. Maybe knowing that all that talk about exotic travel had been most likely lies would only compound sins that never seemed to stop compounding.

He’d been at this business longer than John had; he was more used to deceptions that went with it. But he found himself getting sick to the gills of it. That woman up there reminded him that secrecy had repercussions. Horrible repercussions. At least if John had been killed in a combat mission with the Rangers, she’d have been given some information about where, when and how that was truthful. Instead, she’d been given a lie. A street mugging?

Not much closure, especially when she was right that John could have taken care of himself.

He brought the springs up to the bedroom she had indicated. Her room, he guessed, at the back of the house. She wanted the child near. She was already working over the wood with a damp rag. He looked at the springs, though, and wondered if they should be replaced. A few rusty spots marred them.

“Can we get new springs for the crib?” We, as if he belonged.

She let it pass, though, and stepped over to look. “Maybe I should.”

“Can you get them in town?”

“I can order them. I know I need to order a mattress.”

But not a whole new crib. He didn’t need brilliant insight to understand that. “Let me measure them, then. Can you just call to order them?”

“Freitag’s?” She smiled faintly. “They’ll order anything anyone around here wants. We used to have a catalog store, but that closed. Miracle of the internet.”

“Where do I find a tape measure?”

He found it in the kitchen drawer she had directed him to and returned with it and the memo pad and pen from the fridge. He measured the frame, made notes about how it bolted to the bed, then joined her in wiping down the wood. At last she sat on the edge of her bed, holding her stomach and laughed. “That felt good!”

“Yeah? Somehow I think you need to tell that to your back.”

“How did you guess?”

“Because mine would have been aching after being bent over all that time.” He stepped back and looked at the crib. “It’s a very nice piece of furniture.”

“Johnny’s grandfather built it for him. Carpentry was his hobby.”

“A great heirloom then.” He looked again at the springs. “You know, I should probably take this back downstairs and work on it with some oil and rust remover. Maybe it doesn’t need to be replaced.”

She shook her head. “I want new springs if I can get them. Babies bounce when they get old enough to stand. I wouldn’t trust it.”

“Fair enough,” he agreed, and carted it back down to the basement. He could also put some wood slats in place to replace the springs, he thought. Peg them in so they couldn’t slip out.

But why was he even thinking of such things? He had no place here, and no sense of how long Marisa would tolerate him. Worse, with every passing hour he was building the wall of lies higher.

Sometimes he just hated himself.

When he got back upstairs, he found Marisa in the kitchen. She was nibbling on some carrots, and a plate of them sat at the center of the table as if in invitation to him.

“Mind if I get some coffee?” he asked.

“Help yourself. Make fresh if you want. And thanks for your help with the crib.”

“No big deal.” He filled a mug and sat across from her. She appeared pensive, so he waited for her to speak.

“You know, I don’t want to use springs in that crib at all. I shouldn’t need them. They look dangerous to me, and my friends all have mattresses that just sit on brackets around the outside of the crib.”

He summoned a mental picture. “That would work. I could add some more brackets for you easily enough. The way it looks now, you only have four of them.”

She nodded thoughtfully. “I’d need them all the way around so the mattress is higher. You know, so fingers or hands couldn’t poke out.”

“Easy enough.”

Then she smiled faintly. “And that’s part of the reason for crib bumpers, I guess.” A little shake of her head. “I need to get on the stick about this, don’t I?”

“You’ve got a little time.”

“Not a whole lot.” She held out her hand. “Pad? Pen?”

He’d forgotten he’d tucked them into his breast pocket and turned them over immediately.

“So, hardware for angle brackets and screws, right? Say eight of them?”

“Maybe twelve. And they should be wide, not too narrow.”

She wrote. “Then mattress, bumpers, sheets, blankets...” Her voice trailed off. “I let this go too long.”

“You’ve still got time, right?”

“Another ten weeks.”

“That’s plenty,” he said bracingly. “Your friends and I will help if you let us.” Then he took a leap into a potential briar patch. “I don’t like those basement stairs of yours.”

She looked up from her writing. “Why?”

“Too narrow, and the railing isn’t sturdy enough. “You shouldn’t be climbing them right now, but with a baby in your arms or on your hip...” He let it hang, and braced for her justifiable anger. Just who the hell did he think he was? She’d have every right to demand that of him.

She frowned, then sighed. “You’re right. I hate those stairs.”

“I can fix them.”

At that her head jerked back. “Ryker, you just dropped by to do your duty to Johnny. You checked on me. Are you planning to move in?”

A justified question. But he was feeling a need, a strong need to atone and make up for things, including the lies he kept telling by omission as much as anything. His answer, though, surprised even him. “For a change I’d like to actually build something.”

Something passed over her face—whether sorrow or something else, he wasn’t sure. “Why should I trust you?” she asked finally. “You think I can’t tell you’re keeping secrets?”

“John kept secrets, too,” he said. “And by the way, John trusted me, or I wouldn’t be here now.”

She debated. He could see it. He wondered how much faith she’d lost in her husband just by the few things he’d told her. He’d certainly tried to avoid telling her that she’d been fed some outright lies. He didn’t feel good about it, but that was the job. Besides, he owed it to John to protect her from the ugly truths.

“What would you do to the stairs?” she asked.

“For one thing, the steps need to be wider. So it’ll stretch farther into the basement, but there’s room. And I’d give you a rail on both sides strong enough that if you grab or fall against them, they won’t collapse.”

She nodded slowly, giving him his first sense that he might actually be getting somewhere with her. “I’d like that,” she admitted.

He rose and reached for the jacket he’d slung over the back of the chair earlier. “I’ve imposed too much. See you tomorrow.”

Before she could answer, he headed for the door. Coming here hadn’t eased his sense of guilt in the least. He’d better watch his step before he carried that woman into another thicket of lies, a thicket worse than the one left to her by John.

He was, after all, still CIA. And while he might have a few months off, that didn’t mean he should spend them weaving another trap for an innocent woman. She’d paid a high enough price already for loving the wrong man.

Chapter Three

Ryker’s departure left Marisa feeling adrift again. Maybe she’d been too quick to take such a long sabbatical. No, she couldn’t have handled teaching in the fall, but now that months had passed, she itched at times to have a schedule, to have things that needed doing. A point, a purpose, beyond wallowing in grief and taking care of her health and the child in her womb.

Johnny’s death had inalterably changed her life, but she had managed his absences before by keeping a busy, full life. These days she’d all but cut off her friends.

And Ryker. He intrigued her. She felt the hardness in him at times, but she felt more there. As if he were reaching out for something, too. He’d helped her with the crib, and he said he wanted to fix her basement stairs. God, she hated those stairs. For years now she’d stood at the top of them and thrown her laundry down because she couldn’t safely carry it.

It would be nice to get them fixed, but his words had struck her even more: Ryker had said he wanted to build something for a change. If that wasn’t one of the saddest statements she’d ever heard...

He’d said he handled security for the State Department. She wondered if that job was even more dangerous than Johnny’s. Johnny, after all, had gone as a translator. But Ryker being involved in security sounded even more hazardous. Yet he seemed to accept those kinds of risks casually, which was chilling, in a way.

But then, hadn’t Johnny done the same?

She tried to fight the downward spiral her thoughts were taking again. Reality decreed she had to carry on. Indulging a grief that would never leave her didn’t seem to get her anywhere. One foot in front of the other. How many times had she reminded herself of that?

Julie showed up again in the late afternoon, an unusual number of visits for one day. Apparently Julie was concerned about something. Her? Ryker’s presence?

Anyway, it was a relief to see her cheerful face breeze into the house. Julie had apparently taken the bit between her teeth. While she gabbed humorously about her day with “those imps,” as she sometimes referred to her kindergarten class, she dove into the refrigerator and started pulling out food.

“I didn’t want to eat alone,” she remarked. “You up to a chicken casserole?”

“Absolutely.” Marisa sat back, enjoying Julie’s minor whirlwind.

“Just us, or will your new friend be here?”

“I’m not expecting him.”

Julie paused, package of skinless chicken breasts in hand. “Why not? Did he leave?”

“I doubt it. He wants to rebuild my basement stairs.”

“I love him already. Those things have been worrying me. So call him.”

“Call him? Why?”

“Because in this case three might be company. I mean, sheesh, Marisa, the guy came to look you up because of Johnny. How rude do you want to be?”

Marisa felt her stomach lurch. What was Julie doing? Was she being rude? She hadn’t asked Ryker to come visit; he’d just arrived without warning. She didn’t owe him a thing...or did she?

“He helped bring the crib upstairs,” she said slowly.

“Good man. So you’re finally facing the inevitability. Great. And that means we can throw a baby shower for you. My gosh, girl, the presents have already been bought. We’ve just been waiting for you to agree. And if you don’t, you’re going to have the shower around your hospital bed. So don’t you think it’d be best to know what you already have before you start shopping?”

Marisa felt an urge to giggle rising in the pit of her stomach. “You sound manic.”

“Comes from dealing with five-year-olds. Can’t keep their attention for long. Talking rapidly is necessary. You never noticed before?”

“I guess not.”

Julie rolled her eyes. “Call the man. He must be at the motel. Besides, I want to size him up. Protective urges also go with being a teacher.”

And a friend, Marisa thought. But Julie had leavened her mood, and she decided she wouldn’t at all mind hearing Julie’s opinion of Ryker. Right now she herself couldn’t make up her mind about the man. He’d zoomed in from nowhere, and experience with Johnny had taught her that he’d zoom away again just as unexpectedly, and probably without any explanation except he had to return to work. She also wondered if Julie would sense the secretiveness in him, would also feel that Ryker was withholding important information.

Because, honestly, she didn’t quite trust the man, whatever his association with Johnny.

Julie left the food on the counter and got them both some coffee. Sitting at the table with her felt good and familiar. “Call him,” she said more gently. “A second opinion is good and, frankly, I’ve been wondering about him all day. Strangers make me uneasy. So let’s sort it out.”

With an almost leaden hand, Marisa reached for the wall phone and called the motel. One click, and then a voice answered. “Ryker Tremaine.”

“Ryker, it’s Marisa. My friend Julie and I wondered if you want to join us at my house for dinner. Nothing fancy, just chicken casserole.”

Julie grabbed the phone from her hand. “Hi, Ryker, this is Julie. Believe me, my chicken casserole is fancy. Say an hour? We can chat while it cooks. Thanks. Looking forward to it.”

Then Julie hung up the phone.

“Why did you do that?” Marisa demanded. She may have been living in a state of near paralysis for months now, but she was still capable of making a phone call.

“Because,” Julie said frankly, “you sounded like you didn’t want him to come.”

“Maybe I don’t!”

“Too late now.” Julie grinned. “I’m going to get you out of that shell before it hardens into an unbreakable habit. Anyway, I need to start cubing the chicken.”

Marisa’s curiosity overwhelmed her irritation. It always did with Julie. “What did he say? Did he hesitate?”

“No hesitation. Just asked for time to shower since he was out running.”

Marisa’s gaze drifted to the window, still frosty in many places. “In this?”

“The tough get going,” Julie tossed back as she rose and pulled out the cutting board. “Did you exercise today?”

“I forgot.” The realization shocked her. What had happened to the entire day? Had she just sat here brooding for all these hours?

“Bad girl. If you want to ride your exercise bike while I cook, go for it.”

Marisa had a recumbent bike to ride every day. It had become too risky to walk outside with patches of ice scattered everywhere, and the bike was designed so that she could lean back and leave plenty of room for her belly. “No. One day off won’t kill me.”

“Probably not, but you know what the doc said. More exercise means easier labor.”

“Like he knows for sure.”

Julie giggled. “It’s got to be better, and you know it. For bunches of reasons. But you’re right, one day off won’t kill you. Now enjoy your cup of coffee and watch me slave after a long day of sitting in chairs that are way too small for me and listening to piping voices that never quiet down unless I roll out the nap mats.”

However Julie talked about it, Marisa was certain that she loved teaching kindergarten. She’d had a chance to change grades more than once, but she stuck with her five-year-olds.

“Formative years,” Julie had explained once, but Marisa had always believed that Julie got a kick out of the little ones. She also believed that getting them young gave her the best chance to instill a joy in learning. “Not that some other teacher won’t knock it out of them,” she had added wryly. “But I can’t do anything about that. All I can do is give them the best start.”

“Well, they’ve sure lost their interest by the time they get to me,” Marisa had retorted.

“That’s your fault,” Julie had answered. “You should have majored in something besides the classics and dead gods.”