Angel Mine

“It’s true,” she insisted.

He returned her steady gaze with blatant skepticism. “What’s the matter, Heather? Can’t you cope with being a single mom, after all? Obviously you thought you could or you would have done the honorable, sensible thing and told me about our daughter a long time ago. Instead, you chose to cut me out of her life. Obviously you thought you’d both be better off without me.”

The fact that he’d hit the nail on the head grated. He shouldn’t be able to read her so well, especially not after all this time. She was supposed to be the unpredictable one, the one who kept everyone guessing.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake, not for me,” she snapped. “For Angel. She needs her daddy.”

His gaze narrowed. “What do you mean, she needs her daddy?”

“She’s a little girl. She needs you to be in her life, to know that there’s somebody besides me she can count on. Over the last three years, I’ve realized how important that kind of stability is for a child.”

Todd’s complexion paled. “No,” he said with a ferocity that stunned her. “Never. Get that idea right out of your head, Heather. You want money, okay. If Angel’s mine, we’ll work something out. As for the rest, forget it. It will never, never happen.”

And before she could react, before she could challenge him, he simply turned and walked away. Fled, really, without once looking back.

“Well, that was interesting,” she murmured as he disappeared from view.

It looked as if she’d finally found the one thing that could rattle Todd’s almost scary composure. Obviously this was precisely the reaction that Jake had anticipated. The only question was why the most self-possessed man she’d ever known would be so terrified of one little three-year-old who was his spitting image.

4

Todd headed home in a complete daze. Heather’s words echoed in his head, over and over in a deafening refrain.

I thought it was time you met your daughter.

Your daughter.

Your daughter…

At home, he tried to shut off the sound, but it was in vain. The words could even be heard over the music blasting through his small apartment. Not even work, which he’d become amazingly adept at using to block out emotional turmoil, helped this time the way it had when Heather had walked out on him in New York. The words on the papers he’d brought home blurred. The computer screen seemed far too bright, the blinking cursor an irritant, as if he was trying to view it with a blinding migraine.

She needs her daddy…she needs to know there’s somebody in her life besides me she can count on.

Count on.

Count on…

How could Heather not know that he was the last person in the world that little girl could count on? True, he had never told her about the tragedy in his past, couldn’t talk about it, in fact, but surely she should have seen how uneasy he was around the kids in the casts of the shows they’d done together. She should have known that he and any kid were a bad mix. But she’d either missed the signs or chosen to ignore them. The fact was, she was here and she had expectations.

For the first time in the four years he’d worked for Megan, Todd didn’t show up for work the morning after Heather had stunned him with her news. He couldn’t seem to make it out of bed. Not that he slept. Sleep eluded him like an artful puppy dodging its owner’s reach.

He was tormented by images of the woman he’d never expected to see again. Worse, he was plagued by images of a bright-eyed toddler reaching out her arms, expecting him to pick her up. He’d rejected her, turned away. He’d refused her simple request, his own daughter. Would it have been any different if he’d known? Probably not.

Even so, she’d accepted him as generously and unconditionally as her mother once had. A three-year-old with more kindness in her than he’d demonstrated.

Want Mama to give you a hug?

Her sympathetic words came back to haunt him. If only he’d known at the time who Mama was.

There had been a time not all that long ago when he’d craved hugs from Heather, when he’d responded to her free-spirited warmth and exuberance like a desert blossom suddenly exposed to a gentle shower. Now the arms that had once embraced him in passion seemed a lot more like a trap.

He should have known about the baby four years ago, when there were still options, he thought angrily. What would he have done if Heather had come to him then and told him she was carrying his child? He would have married her without hesitation, would have insisted on it, in fact. That was what a responsible man did under such circumstances, and he had spent most of the past thirteen years trying to prove how responsible he had become.

But he wouldn’t have been one bit happier about the prospect of fatherhood than he was now, he conceded with brutal honesty. Indeed, he would have been terrified. But obligations were more important than terror.

Of course, the marriage would have been a disaster, just as the relationship had been. Maybe Heather had been wise enough to see that. Maybe she’d sensed what he hadn’t been willing to admit, that he was lousy husband material and an even lousier candidate for fatherhood. Maybe it had all turned out for the best.

That was then, though. Now Heather was here, needing something from him that he was no more prepared to give than he would have been if he’d had the usual nine months to prepare for it. What the hell was he going to do? The right thing? He didn’t even know what that was. Based on his history rather than conventional wisdom, the right thing would be to steer clear of that little girl, protect her from the dangers of having him in her life.

Damn, this wasn’t getting him anywhere. Anger wasn’t solving anything. Recriminations were useless. He needed to sit down with a sheet of paper and methodically list all the options, then all the pros and cons for each. That was the way to tackle anything this complex—with cold logic and sound reasoning. He was a master of that. The prospect of breaking this down in such a familiar, practiced way reassured him, calmed him.

He showered, tugged on briefs and jeans, then headed for the kitchen and made a pot of very strong coffee to cut through the fog in his brain. He was seated at the kitchen table with a stack of paper, a neat row of sharp pencils and his coffee when the phone rang.

Grateful for the interruption, he grabbed it. “Yes?”

“Todd, are you okay?” Megan asked with the concern of a friend, rather than the anger of a boss whose employee had bailed out.

“I’m fine.”

“Then why aren’t you at work?”

Good question. An even better question was why he hadn’t bothered to call to let anyone know he wasn’t coming in. He didn’t do things like this. He was always focused, always on task. Responsible. Today that word grated in ways it never had before.

“Something came up,” he said finally.

“You’re working at home?”

“Not exactly.”

“Is everything all right?”

No! he wanted to shout. Nothing is all right. Nothing will be all right until there are hundreds of miles between me and this child who’s apparently mine.

Instead, he said, “I needed a day off. If you have a problem with that, dock my pay.”

Silence greeted his curt words, then Megan said quietly, “I’m coming over.”

“Don’t,” he said, but he was talking to a dead phone line.

Terrific. Now he’d stirred up Megan’s protective instincts. She would be all over him until she found out what had happened to turn the world’s most reliable executive into an irresponsible, grouchy nutcase.

He should have hauled his sorry butt out of bed and gone to work as he had every other day. Even if it hadn’t been the answer last night, maybe work was exactly what he needed today. Maybe if he simply ignored this whole blasted mess, it would go away. Heather would tire of Whispering Wind and go back East. She would take her daughter with her. And he could go right on living his life the way he liked it, alone and unencumbered.

Fat chance, he thought with a resigned sigh. Heather had never backed down from a challenge. Hell, the woman wanted to be a Broadway actress. She was steadfast and blithely determined to fight the odds against success. After all these years, she hadn’t given up, even when he knew for a fact that she hadn’t had anything closely resembling a big break. If she wanted him in her daughter’s life, then she was going to make it happen or die trying. It was not a comforting thought.

Nor was it especially comforting that his front doorbell was ringing, suggesting that Megan had made it into town in record time. Before he could so much as budge, he heard her key turning in the lock. Giving her that key had obviously been a big mistake. It had been meant for emergencies, but it was apparent now that their definitions of that were at odds.

“Todd?” she shouted as if he might be either comatose or farther away than the next county, much less the next room.