Kara Lennox - The Good Father

“So bring him to the office. Show off what you’ve built.”

“Maybe. We’ll see how it goes.” He looked at his watch. “I have to get going. You won’t be late to work, will you?”

“Huh, not a chance. I don’t want people saying I slept in because I was up all night boffing the boss. Even if I was.”

She walked him up to the deck, and they paused at the railing for one last, lingering kiss.

“Hi, Max!”

Max and Jane sprang apart as they both searched for the source of the cheerful greeting. Then Jane saw it; Kaylee was at a porthole on the Dragonfly, waving at them and grinning from ear to ear.

O F COURSE, Jane was left to deal with the fallout alone. Not that she blamed Max; he’d warned her when she invited him to stay the night that he had to leave early. But that meant Jane had to answer Kaylee’s thousand-and-one questions all by herself.

She showered quickly and dressed for work. By then, Allie had gotten Kaylee into her clothes and was ready to bring her home. They met on the dock for the handoff.

“She was no trouble at all,” Allie said. “Such a little angel, and so cheerful when she wakes up. I fed her a waffle.”

“Can you say thank-you to Allie for taking care of you last night?”

Kaylee hugged Allie fiercely. “Thank you.” But then she turned back to her mother. “Where’s Max?”

“He’s gone home, sweetie,” Jane said.

“Did he say thank-you that he got to spend the night with you?”

Allie snickered, and Jane shot her friend a warning look. “Yes, he did.” There was no point in denying she’d had Max as an overnight guest.

“Did you give him a waffle?”

“Is that what they’re calling it now?” Allie asked.

Jane decided she needed to leave before the conversation deteriorated any further. “We’ll talk to you later, Allie,” she said tartly as she took Kaylee’s hand and made her escape.

“Did you give him a waffle, Mommy?” Kaylee asked as Jane washed the child’s face and hands and got her into some clean clothes. No time for a bath, but she was marginally clean.

“No, I didn’t have waffles.”

“Did you give him cereal?”

“No, he didn’t eat breakfast.”

“Won’t he be hungry?”

“I’m sure he’ll eat something when he gets home.”

“Where does Max live?”

“He lives in a condo. It’s like our new apartment that we’re moving to.”

“Can we go there?”

Jane hedged. She didn’t want to come right out and discourage Kaylee from her attachment to Max, because that might make her want it even more. “Maybe some time he’ll invite us over and we can see it.”

“Why doesn’t he live here?”

Jane prayed for patience and guidance. “Because this is our home, and he has his own home.”

“When we move to our new ’partment, will he live there?”

“No, it’ll just be the two of us. Just us girls.”

Kaylee frowned, and she wiggled her foot making it nearly impossible for Jane to tie her shoe. “I want him to live with us.”

Jane groaned inwardly. “He can’t live with us, sweetie. He’s not part of our family.”

“Why not?”

“Because…because families are made up of mommies and daddies and children and…and…” Oh, God, how did she explain this?

“Max could be my daddy.”

Oh, boy. “Kaylee, you already have a daddy.” A rotten daddy, but Jane still hoped that Scott would straighten up and form a decent relationship with his daughter once the sting of the divorce had worn off. She wouldn’t do anything to ruin that for the future.

“But my daddy’s not here.”

“True, but that doesn’t mean he’s not your daddy.”

“Then I could have two daddies. Joanie at school has two daddies.”

Ay-yi-yi. “Kaylee, please, can we talk about something else? Max is a good friend, and he’s my boss, and we owe him a lot, but he’s not your daddy and he doesn’t live with us.”

Kaylee’s big blue eyes welled up with tears. “Why not?”

“Oh, baby.” She gathered her little girl into a hug and squeezed her tight. “I know it’s tough that we don’t have a daddy living with us. But I’m your mommy and I love you enough for all the daddies in the whole world. A hundred daddies couldn’t love you the way I do.”

Jane braced herself for a tantrum, but it didn’t come. Instead, Kaylee cried quietly, almost silently, as if her heart had just been broken, and maybe it had been. Maybe she finally understood that her daddy wasn’t coming back. Jane had thought her daughter’s transition from two parents to one had gone a little too smoothly.

It was all Jane could do not to cry herself. Seeing her daughter skin a knee or bump her head was hard enough; Jane died a thousand deaths every time anything hurt her baby. But seeing her with her first real, true emotional hurt was almost more than Jane could stand.

By the time she arrived at the Montessori school, Kaylee had stopped crying, but she still looked and sounded sad and nothing Jane could say would cheer her up-not even promises to take her to her favorite pizza place.

Miss Martha, Kaylee’s teacher, waved from the porch as Jane got Kaylee out of her car seat.

“Give me a hug, and I’ll see you at five-fifteen at Mrs. Billingsly’s.”

Kaylee hugged her, but trouble still brewed in her eyes. “Mommy, will you ask him?”

“Ask who what?”

“Ask Max if he wants to be my daddy.”

Now Jane’s eyes did fill with tears. “I can’t, sweetie. I know you don’t understand, but the world just doesn’t work that way. But he can still be your special friend.”

Kaylee firmed her mouth in a mutinous line, clearly not buying the comfort Jane offered. She ran off toward Miss Martha without a backward glance.

Jane got back behind the wheel and moved the car forward, but she didn’t go far. She turned onto the first quiet side street she saw and parked while she pulled herself together.

She spent several minutes parked there, working through every conceivable solution to this problem, and every time she reached the same conclusion.

This wasn’t going to work. If she didn’t want to disappoint her daughter over and over and over again, she was going to have to stop seeing Max.

It was best to find out now, she reasoned, before they’d gotten in too deep. But then she realized she was kidding herself. They’d been involved since the moment she’d walked into his office looking for a job-maybe from the moment he’d first flirted with her, earning Scott’s wrath. Yes, they’d only recently consummated their feelings in bed, but that didn’t mean what they had was slight or shallow.

She was already in deep. And she had to get out.

Not only was she losing Max, but she was losing her job, as well. Oh, Max wouldn’t fire her. At least, she didn’t think he would. But it would be too painful to continue working so close to him when she couldn’t have him.

She would have to resign.

“E DDIE !”Max spotted his older brother at the baggage claim. They strode toward each other, shook hands in a contest of who could squeeze harder, then broke down and hugged.

“Man, you look great,” Eddie said. “You got a tan!”

“I got that before I started the agency,” Max said. “It’s fading fast now that I’m working eighty-hour weeks.”

“I hear ya.” Eddie, dressed in perfect business casual, grabbed his leather clutch from the baggage carousel. “That’s all. Where to first?”

Max thought it a little odd that Eddie was letting him call the shots. Normally Eddie was an in-charge kind of guy, scheduling his time down to the minute. Max half expected his brother to produce a typed itinerary and had rehearsed how he would insist that he had his own schedule to keep-meetings and obligations. Max was the in-charge guy now, and he wanted his brother to know it.