Heart of a Hero (4 page)

She laughed. “Hmm. Sounds like personal experience speaking.”

“Fourth grade was the year I got sent to the principal’s office for putting a tadpole in Miss Ladly’s Thermos of iced tea.”

“I’ve heard that story before. Guess I’ll be checking before I take a sip of anything.”

They smiled at each other and a companionable silence fell for a moment. But then she broke the mood. “How long are you home for, and where do you go after that?” He probably had no idea that she could recite every move he’d made in the nine years since he’d graduated from high school.

Wade’s face suddenly seemed guarded, his gray eyes darkening. “I have a few more days left of my two weeks’ leave and then I’m being deployed to Afghanistan.”

Afghanistan. The fear she’d always lived with rose, almost choking her. “Oh, God, Wade.”

“I’ll be back,” he said. “Who would come around to bug you once in a while if I didn’t?”

She forced herself to smile. “Just be careful.”

He nodded, reaching out a hand and rubbing her arm. “Thanks. I will.”

“Hey there!” Her sister’s voice singsonged a flirtatious greeting Phoebe had heard her employ dozens of times before. And just like many of those other times, Wade’s head swiveled around and Phoebe was instantly forgotten.

Lowering her eyes, she stepped away and busied herself gathering a few items for her evening bag while Melanie threw herself into Wade’s arms and gave him a loud kiss.

For the rest of the evening, she avoided looking at Wade and her sister as much as she could. It was just too painful.

Not long after they arrived at the reunion, she lost herself on the other side of the crowd. Her best friend from high school, June Nash, had come. June still lived in town. She’d married a former classmate and was expecting her first child. Phoebe felt conspicuously alone as she looked around. Everyone seemed either to be married by now or to have brought a date.

But June was genuinely delighted to see her, and they spent the mealtime catching up on the years since high school. Although they faithfully
exchanged Christmas cards, their e-mails and phone calls had gradually slowed as their lives took different paths.

“So you’re teaching.” June smiled. “I bet you’re fantastic with children. I still remember how great you were when the student council helped with Special Olympics.”

Phoebe shrugged. “I enjoy it.” And the school district in which she taught was far enough from where she’d grown up that few people knew her as “the quiet twin.”

“That’s good.” June nodded her head in the direction of another group. “I see Melanie and Wade are an item again. I thought that ended a couple of years ago.”

Phoebe winced. “It did. But we’ve all stayed friends and Melanie invited him as her date tonight.”

Thankfully, the band began to play at that moment and she was spared any more discussion. June wasn’t dancing since her first child was due in less than two weeks and she said she felt like a hippo in a mud hole. But a group of girls Phoebe had known when they were all in the marching band dragged her up to the dance floor with them, and Phoebe decided she was going to enjoy what was left of the evening. She danced with a group of her classmates until the first slow song and then
moved to another table to visit, forbidding herself to look around the room for Wade.

An hour later, she’d had enough. She’d seen the people she’d wanted to see, had danced and laughed and done her best to give the impression that life was treating Phoebe Merriman well. Melanie, as always, was the life of the party. She had abandoned Wade for a guy Phoebe barely remembered, and the two of them were knocking back drinks with a like-minded group.

This time Phoebe did look for Wade. He was standing alone by the bar and, as she watched, he set down his drink and approached Melanie. After a brief exchange, Melanie laughed and Wade turned and walked away.

When she realized he was heading for the door, she panicked. Plain and simple, she couldn’t bear the thought of Wade leaving without at least speaking to him one more time.

“Wade!” she called out. “Wait!”

Two little words. She could still remember them. Two little words that had altered her life. And not just hers. Three lives had been altered by that evening, four if you counted Bridget. If Wade had left the dance when he’d intended to, Melanie might still be alive. If Melanie were still alive,
Phoebe and Wade would never have walked up to that cabin, would never have…and Bridget would never have been conceived.

Try as she might, Phoebe couldn’t regret those stolen moments of heaven she’d experienced with him. Nor could she imagine her world without her beautiful baby daughter in it.

“Would you like to go to a movie when we’re finished eating?” Wade smiled at her across the table. A movie. With Wade.

There was a time when she would have given an arm for that invitation. But things were different now. What she wanted and what was reality were two very separate things.

“Thank you, but no,” she said. “I have to get home pretty soon.”

He looked taken aback and, as she watched, the warmth in his eyes drained away. “All right.”

“Wade.” She leaned forward and took an irrevocable step. “I’d like you to come with me. There’s something I have to tell you.”

“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.”

W
ade 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?”

“You were dead! At least, I thought you were.”

He fell silent, clearly taken aback. “I keep forgetting that,” he said in a slightly milder tone. Then his eyes narrowed. “But I wasn’t dead when you found out you were pregnant.”

She had to look away. “No,” she said, “you weren’t.”

Silence fell. She wrapped her arms around
herself and turned away, feeling the rage crackling in the room behind her.

“I want to see her,” he said.

“All right.” She swallowed. “Tomorrow after school—”

“Now.”
The word was a whip and she jumped as it lashed her ears.

“She’s asleep,” she said protectively. But Wade’s face was stony and unmoved when she looked back at him. “All right.” She blew out a breath of nerves and exasperation, realizing she’d been stupid to imagine she could tell Wade about his child without letting him see her for himself immediately. “I’ll take you up to see her if you promise not to wake her.”

There was another tense silence. Finally, Wade said, “So let’s go.”

She turned on her heel and walked to the stairs on shaking legs, leaving him to follow.

She was extremely aware of his large presence at her back as she went up the steps and down the hall. At the door of her daughter’s room, she paused. Her chest felt as if someone were sitting on it and she couldn’t get enough air. She’d swear she could feel Wade’s breath on the back of her neck and she didn’t have the courage to turn around. Over her shoulder, she
whispered, “Her name is Bridget. She’s six months old.”

The door was open just a shred, and she grasped the knob and carefully pulled it wide, then stepped aside and gestured. “Go ahead.”

Wade nodded once, a sharp jerk of his head, and she watched from the doorway as he took slow, almost hesitant steps toward the crib against the far wall.

He stood there for a long, long time, looking down at the sleeping baby in the low light she’d switched on. He didn’t move to touch her, didn’t glance around the room at the charming wallpaper border with the red-and-blue alphabet-blocks motif she’d found, the gingham curtains or the shelves filled with board books, stuffed animals and toys to stimulate a growing baby. He just…stood.

Finally, she entered the room and went to his side.