The Instant Family Man

A tentative smile filled Madelyne’s face, and to Luke, that smile felt a lot like winning the lottery. “Okay.”

A second later, the three of them were heading down the hall. Like a family, he thought, though they were far from any such thing. He was still the stranger, uninvited at that, tagging along on the visit to the pool.

“Well, you clearly passed her test,” Peyton said.

“I think the kid grades on a bell curve.”

Peyton laughed. “Maddy’s pretty easy to please, most days. Plus, she figures anyone who loves dogs is okay. That’s her big criteria for everyone she meets.”

“I’m lucky she sets the bar low.” He tossed Peyton a grin. She returned it, and the dark, threadbare hall seemed brighter for a moment.

“Charlie to the rescue again,” she said. “That dog is quite the miracle worker, and he doesn’t even know it.”

“That he is.” Luke’s gaze went down the corridor, but his mind reached into the past. To the days after he’d found Charlie, the dark days that haunted Luke still, when he would sneak Charlie into his room at night and whisper his regrets into the mutt’s caramel-colored fur. The dog would lean against him and listen, patient and true.

“Honestly, I think that dog saved me rather than the other way around.” The admission slipped from Luke’s lips before he could stop it.

“What do you—” Peyton’s question was cut off when Madelyne dashed ahead, reeling back when Peyton called out to her to take it easy, to walk instead of run. Dash, slow, dash, slow. It was like watching a yo-yo.

Luke turned to Peyton. “She always this hyper?”

Peyton laughed. “Hyper? Honey, this isn’t hyper. This is normal.”

Something inside him tripped at the word honey. He knew it was an offhand comment, a word Peyton probably hadn’t even realized she’d said. He shook it off. He was here to figure out how he was going to be a father to a kid he never knew he had, not get wrapped up in the way Peyton looked or the words she used.

Madelyne started skipping from diamond to diamond on the patterned rug while she sang a rhyming song about a whale and a lemon. She was wearing a pink-and-white polka-dot one-piece swimsuit with a ruffled skirt, matching sandals, and even had pink ribbons tied in bows around the twin braids in her hair. She seemed awfully dressed up just to get in the pool. Reason number five hundred and seventy-two why Luke wasn’t going to be very good at this fatherhood thing. He couldn’t braid hair or tie ribbons or color-coordinate shoes and bathing suits.

But the more he looked, the more he could see himself in her eyes, her mannerisms. He saw Susannah in Maddy’s impish smile, in the way she danced down the hall. No doubt—this was his daughter.

“I gotta warn you, I have zero experience with kids,” Luke said. “I could screw this up without thinking twice.”

Peyton shot him a smile. “You’ll be fine. Spending time with a four-year-old can be challenging, but it’s also not as hard as you think. I’ll be right there the whole time, ready to give you plenty of instructions and worried-auntie input.”

He watched the girl stop and twirl in the hall, spinning and spinning and spinning while she went on and on about the whale and the lemon, and their new friend, a lime. Those braids spun out from Madelyne’s head, loosening a ribbon. Without missing a beat, Peyton stepped forward, retied the bow and sent Madelyne on her way.

Maddy pushed on the door handle, flooding the hall with sunlight. “Wait, wait,” Peyton said, running up to Madelyne and putting a cautionary hand on the little girl’s shoulder. “Remember, you can’t just run out there. You need to take Auntie P’s hand.”

“But I’m a big girl,” Madelyne said. “I can walk.”

“Uh-huh. I’m sure you can. But it’s slippery around the pool.”

Luke watched Madelyne slide her hand into Peyton’s and realized he would have never thought to hold the kid’s hand when they were near the pool. Heck, he probably wouldn’t even have stopped her from running in the halls. All clear signs that he would be a terrible babysitter. An even worse father. Was that even something he could learn? Was there a Dummies book he could read overnight? Or was he better off just staying clear of this whirling, busy girl?

What if something happened to her? What if she ran into the street or tried to climb on the countertop? What if he wasn’t as attentive as he should be? Things could happen when he looked away, he knew that too well. The conviction that he could handle this—handle his own child—began to slip. “Peyton, we should talk.”

“Can it wait a minute? I’ve been promising Maddy that she could go swimming all day and we only have an hour until I need to feed her lunch.”

“Uh, okay.”

Peyton led Madelyne outside, then pulled some kind of blown-up triangular things out of the bag on her arm and slipped them onto Madelyne’s forearms. Madelyne flopped her arms and giggled. “I’s ready now.”

“Okay, give me a second.” Peyton reached down and tugged the hem of the white knit dress, sliding it off her body and tucking it into the bag.

Luke swallowed hard. Holy hell, Peyton looked good. Amazing, in fact. She filled out the dark green fabric of the bikini in a perfect hourglass. He had to force himself not to let his jaw drop, or to say any of the numerous stupid things a man could say when standing beside a beautiful woman in a bikini.

Peyton took Madelyne’s hand and led her toward the pool. The little girl lingered on the top step, her eyes wide and worried again. Peyton kept going, the bottom half of her body disappearing into the shallow end.

Luke pulled off his t-shirt and tossed it, along with his car keys and wallet, onto an empty chair, then slipped into the pool beside Peyton. “Water’s a bit cold.”

Peyton grinned. “Are you saying the big, strapping football captain is feeling a little wimpy?”

“Not at all.” Though he was feeling a little pleased that she’d called him big and strapping. Jeez. He really needed to start thinking with the parts of his brain that existed above his waist.

“Come on, Maddy girl. Your turn.” Peyton put out her arms.

Madelyne stood on the first step, water swirling around her ankles. “I just stay here, Auntie P.”

“Come on, you can swim with me. I’ll hold on to you. You’ll be safe and snug as a bug in a rug.”

Madelyne shook her head and toed at the water. “I just stay here.”

“You can do it, sweetie pie. I know you can.”

Madelyne dropped onto the edge of the pool and swished her feet back and forth, creating little ripples. Her mood had shifted into reserved and distant, her shoulders tensed. “I just stay here,” she repeated.

Peyton sighed. “Are you sure? Because Luke and I are having fun in the water.” Peyton sat back, sweeping her hands back and forth. She arched a brow in Luke’s direction. “Aren’t we?”

“Oh, yeah, uh, sure.” He did the same as Peyton, but felt like an idiot pretending to have fun in the shallow end. He forced a grin to his face even though the water was about ten degrees too cold. “Lots of fun.”

“Swimming is awesome, Maddy. And the water is warm.” She glanced at Luke.

“Yeah, warm.”

“A little enthusiasm, Mr. De Niro,” Peyton whispered to him.

He widened his grin. “It’s super warm!”

Peyton shook her head and bit back a laugh. “You are hopeless. Don’t quit your day job.”

Madelyne just kicked her feet back and forth, watching the adults make fools of themselves. “I just stay here. I swim next time, Auntie P.”

Sadness flickered across Peyton’s face, then she smiled. “Okay, sweetie. That’s fine.”

“She doesn’t swim?” Luke asked.

Peyton shook her head, then lowered her voice. “She’s scared of the water. I don’t know where she got that from because Susannah and I loved the water.”

He remembered. A lot of his best memories centered around those times at the lake with Susannah and Peyton. Those were the best summers he could remember, before his life had taken a left turn he hadn’t seen coming. “That summer of senior year, I swear the three of us spent every single day at the lake. Me and Susannah and...” He flicked some water at Peyton. “Tagalong.”