door; a tiny little blonde girl barreled into the room. “Daddy!” she squealed. “Mr. Parker said you were back.” She jumped onto Hart’s lap.
He closed his arms around her. “You’re supposed to be sleeping,” he admonished. But the rebuke was gentle, as were his warm brown eyes as he stared lovingly at her.
Hart Fisher had a child?
How had Wendy never heard that?
The little girl noticed Wendy and shyly buried her face in the doll she grasped in her delicate-looking arms. Then she suddenly pulled the doll away from her face and held it up near Wendy’s. Her blue eyes widened with shock as she looked from Wendy to the stuffed doll and then back at Wendy.
“She looks like my dolly, Daddy,” she murmured, her voice soft with awe. “She looks like Annie.”
Wendy felt her face heat all over again with embarrassment. First, she was outed for crushing on her bodyguard like a schoolgirl. Now she was being compared to a rag doll.
Her ego had taken a hell of a beating—far more painful than anything Luther Mills or his crew could have doled out to her.
“My dolly’s name is Annie,” the little girl told her. “What’s your name?”
“Wendy,” she replied. An only child who’d grown up around the teenage football players her father had coached, Wendy wasn’t comfortable around little girls. Despite her mother’s best efforts by forcing pink and frills on her, Wendy had never been a little girl herself. She had always been, and probably still was, a tomboy.
“Winnie,” the little girl repeated—incorrectly.
Wendy didn’t correct her. She just asked, “And what is your name?”
“Felicity…” she said slowly, as if she struggled to pronounce her own name. It was quite the mouthful.
“That’s pretty,” Wendy said.
“You’re pretty,” the little girl said with that slow, shy smile.
Something wrapped around Wendy’s heart, tightly squeezing it. Felicity’s mother was reputedly a former beauty queen. Why in the world would the child think Wendy was pretty?
She was obviously just a very sweet girl.
“You are the pretty one,” Wendy said. Felicity looked like a doll, but the kind made of porcelain and kept behind glass—delicate and beautiful—not one made with burlap and bright red yarn.
The little girl scrambled off her father’s lap and climbed onto Wendy’s. She held out her doll for Wendy to admire. “Grandma made me this doll when I was borned,” she said. “Now Grandma is an angel.”
That grasp on Wendy’s heart tightened even more. “I’m sorry, honey,” she murmured.
“Why?” the little girl asked. She reached out and fingered a lock of Wendy’s curly hair. But her touch was tentative as though she thought it would be hot since it was so red. Wendy smiled reassuringly at her, and the little girl smiled back.
“People say that when they find out you’ve lost someone you love,” Hart explained to his daughter.
Wendy hoped nobody would have cause to say that to her. She could not lose her parents. Luther was just trying to scare her into destroying the evidence. Right? He wouldn’t actually harm them…
But then she remembered how the eyewitness and her bodyguard had looked when they’d joined the meeting earlier. They had gone out a window, too, but not like she and Hart had. No, Rosie and Clint had been forced to jump to avoid being shot to death.
She shivered and the little girl snuggled a little closer to her. Her long black lashes fluttered as her eyelids began to droop. She murmured to her father, “I’m sorry, Daddy…”
He touched his daughter’s cheek, which was uncomfortably close to Wendy’s breast. She tensed and drew in a shaky breath. But he didn’t touch her. He was focused only on his daughter.
“Why are you sorry, baby?” he asked. The love Wendy had seen in his eyes was in his voice now.
“For you, Daddy,” she murmured sleepily. “You’ve lost a lot of people you love.”
Her mother? Had he loved and lost her?
Not that Wendy cared. She didn’t care about anything but keeping her family safe. But she didn’t want Hart’s family to be in danger, either. She tightened her arm around the little girl and leaned close enough that her chin brushed the soft blond hair, asking him, “So is this Bring Your Daughter to Work day?”
His face flushed with a bit of color. “A babysitter should be showing up soon.”
“It’s a weeknight,” she said.
He nodded. “Yes, and she’s just turned four. She’s not in school yet.”
“But why do you have her now?” she asked.
His brow furrowed for a moment then cleared. “You think I’m just a weekend father?” He shook his head. “I have full custody.”
While she had no personal experience with it, Wendy had several divorced friends and acquaintances, especially since law enforcement was so hard on relationships.
The long hours officers worked…
The things they saw…
They all took their toll.
And usually because of those long hours, they weren’t granted much more than weekend visitations. But maybe that was why Hart had resigned from the police department. For his daughter…
Then why had he taken another dangerous job with long hours?
She wasn’t going to be responsible for taking him away from his child. Over the little girl’s head, she met Hart’s gaze and told him, “You can’t be my bodyguard.”
“I don’t want to be your bodyguard,” Hart admitted. He hadn’t been certain if his coworkers had been telling the truth or just teasing him about that crush, but he hadn’t wanted to take the chance that it was the truth and Wendy got her feelings hurt.
And she would get hurt if she made the mistake of falling for him. His ability to trust and love were gone.
Long gone…
He had nothing left to give anyone but Felicity.
Wendy expelled a shaky breath that stirred Felicity’s hair. But the little girl didn’t move. She’d fallen fast asleep in the arms of a stranger.
Hart couldn’t believe how his daughter had taken to Wendy Thompson. Felicity was always so shy, but never more so than around women. Her mother hadn’t ever been very patient with her. Monica never would have allowed Felicity to touch her hair. She would have been afraid the child would mess it up or make it sticky.
But
