thought you’d be going back to New Jersey tomorrow, if not sooner.”
“You mean you wished I was.”
She didn’t deny it.
“I’m not going anywhere until we figure this out,” he assured her.
“Unless duty calls,” she guessed.
“I have almost two months.”
But the skepticism in her eyes warned that she knew it was a promise he couldn’t make and confirmed that Paige’s apparent disapproval of his career was about more than the possibility of his deployment interfering with his ability to get to know Emma.
“Then I guess I’ll see you tomorrow,” she said.
“What time is good?”
“Not oh-five-hundred,” she warned.
He smiled. “How about oh-nine-hundred?”
“A much more civilized hour.”
Zach wished her a good-night and made his way to the door.
His first meeting with Paige Wilder hadn’t gone as well as he’d hoped. But nothing had gone quite as he’d expected since his plane had touched down at McGuire Air Force Base twenty-eight hours earlier. From the shocking news revealed by Olivia’s letter to his unexpected and undeniable reaction to Paige Wilder, his life was suddenly FUBAR.
Yet, as he made his way to his SUV, he realized he was whistling and already looking forward to tomorrow.
Zach had spotted a couple of hotels on Main Street when he’d driven through town earlier, so he started to retrace his route, figuring he would check into the first one that he came across. He found “Hadfield House—A Bed-and-Breakfast” first. The sign outside promised private baths and hot breakfasts, but Zach only cared that there was an empty bed because he was too exhausted to go much farther.
Thankfully he always traveled with a duffel bag packed with a change of clothes and some basic toiletries—he certainly hadn’t planned on staying overnight. He hadn’t planned on being gone more than a few hours—just long enough to make the trip into Syracuse, talk to Olivia, demand an explanation for the letter and her silence, and try to figure out what the hell they were supposed to do now.
The news that Olivia was dead had been as much a shock as her revelation about the baby. And although he grieved the death of the vibrant young woman, he was also frustrated by the realization that he wouldn’t ever have the opportunity to confront her and demand answers to the questions that crowded his mind.
Early that morning, when he’d read Olivia’s letter—and reread it over and over again, as if doing so might somehow change the words that were written—he’d tried to call her, but both her home and cell numbers were out of service. At the time, he’d been more annoyed than concerned by the realization, but he’d decided that the conversation they needed to have should be face-to-face, and he’d driven to the apartment building she’d lived in while they were dating.
When he got there, he found that her name was no longer on the tenant directory and his inquiries of the landlord only revealed that she no longer lived there. His next stop was the law firm where she worked, and when he walked through the heavy glass doors of the law offices of Wainwright, Witmer & Wynne, he’d been confident that he was getting closer to the answers he sought.
It was the receptionist—Louise Pringle, according to the nameplate on her desk—who’d told him, with tears in her eyes, that Olivia had been killed in a motor-vehicle collision more than five months earlier.
He’d had to swallow around the lump of guilt and regrets that had lodged in his throat before he could ask, “Did she have her baby with her?”
“Oh, no. Paige was babysitting the little angel, and thank the good Lord for that.”
Relief shuddered through his system, assuring him that, although the news about the baby had rocked him to the very core, he wanted a chance to know his child, to be a father to his little girl.
“Paige?” he prompted.
“Paige Wilder. She’s another one of the attorneys here. She has legal custody of Emma now.”
“Is it possible for me to see Ms. Wilder?”
“She’s out of town,” the efficient Louise had said, consulting the schedule on her computer. “But Victoria Lawrence might be able to squeeze you in around two o’clock tomorrow.”
“Thanks, but I really need to see Ms. Wilder,” he had said. “Do you have a number where I could contact her?”
The older woman had started to shake her head, but then she eyed the uniform again and paused. “I really can’t give out that kind of information,” she said. “Maybe if you left your name and number and the reason you want to speak with her, I could contact Paige and ask her to get in touch with you.”
“It’s a personal matter.”
The furrow in her brow deepened, but when she looked up at him again, her eyes suddenly widened. “Oh, I didn’t realize.”
“Didn’t realize?” he prompted.
“You’re Emma’s father.”
Her matter-of-fact assertion had taken him aback. Although he had originally gone to the law offices to see Olivia about that possibility, he’d been completely unprepared to hear a stranger echo his short-term girlfriend’s allegation.
“What makes you say that?” he asked, as wary as he was curious.
“She has your eyes,” Louise told him.
“Crawford blue” was how his mother had always referred to the color that each of her children had inherited from their father.
Although blue was a common eye color, he’d had enough people comment on the unique shade of his to realize that “Crawford blue” was distinctive. But he couldn’t say for certain whether or not Olivia’s child had the same color eyes because she’d been asleep when he arrived at Paige Wilder’s door.
He hadn’t looked at her closely enough to see if there was any other resemblance. Maybe he hadn’t wanted to. He was willing to do the right thing by his child, if Emma was his child, but, if he was honest with himself, he wasn’t sure he was prepared to tackle fatherhood and everything it entailed at this point in his life. He hadn’t thought much about having kids at all, except in the vaguest of terms and somewhere in a still-distant future.
He was thirty-seven years old, long past the age when most of his contemporaries had settled down with a wife and kids. Some of them were even on their second or third wives, which was not a path he had any desire to follow.
But if he’d fathered a child, as Olivia claimed, he would be a father to that child.
And so he’d taken the address Louise had discreetly slipped to him and he’d found Paige Wilder and Emma.
He’d found his daughter.
And seeing
