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

“You mentioned that yesterday,” he said, but she noticed he seemed to unbend a little. “Sounds scary.”

She couldn’t even smile. “I hope not.”

They left the restaurant and he followed her minivan directly back to her house. She’d offer him a glass of wine first, she decided, and then… then she’d have to decide how to tell him. But none of her opening lines sounded good. And now she had a new worry.

What if Wade didn’t want to be a father? What if he rejected Bridget and didn’t want to be part of her life?

Since yesterday, Phoebe had been trying to brace herself for sharing Bridget with her father when he came East. Which could be quite infrequently. After all, the man was probably going to be out of the country most of the time. If Wade didn’t want anything to do with them, their lives wouldn’t change appreciably.

But it would break her heart if he didn’t find Bridget as miraculous and irresistible as she did.

He followed her into the house at her invitation.

And it was then that she realized the flaw in her plan. Duh. How could she possibly explain the presence of a nanny?

Angie rose from the couch and gathered up her schoolwork. “Hi, Phoebe. Give me a minute to get organized and call my brother. I have an econ test tomorrow.”

Phoebe managed a smile. “Do you think you’re ready?”

Angie shrugged. “As ready as I’ll ever be.” She glanced at the ceiling. “Everything went fine this evening.”

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?”