The Marine's Baby Blues
Autor
Victoria Pade
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9
HarlequinChapter One
“Please, please, please stop apologizing, Gloria. It was not your fault!” Addie Markham said to her late mother’s best friend, one please added for each of Gloria’s so-sorrys today alone.
“But it was me who recommended Stephanie—”
“Because at the time you were doing a good deed for her and for me. And I appreciated it, and that does not make you responsible for the way things turned out. What’s done is done. Let’s put it behind us,” Addie begged of the woman she’d always liked and thought highly of.
Putting this latest bombshell behind her was something Addie was eager to do.
It had been six days since she’d been left at the altar. The original plan had been for Addie and fiancé Sean Barkley to have a Sunday afternoon ceremony and reception in the lovely backyard garden that Gloria had offered as the wedding site.
From there they were to spend their wedding night at the bed-and-breakfast in their small Montana hometown of Merritt. Monday and Tuesday they planned to return wedding paraphernalia and clean up Gloria’s yard so it would be in the same shape they’d found it, and leave on Wednesday for their honeymoon.
Best-laid plans. Instead, here Addie was on the following Saturday afternoon, unmarried and on her own.
Sean had taken off on “their” honeymoon without her. And since Addie felt strongly that it wasn’t fair to make Gloria suffer any more inconveniences, all post-wedding duties had landed on Addie alone. Along with the task of packing up her infant niece Poppy’s things and hers to move out of Sean’s apartment and into her late grandmother’s house before Sean returned tomorrow.
With Addie’s closest friend, Kelly, signed on to babysit Poppy until Addie could get her head above water, she’d spent the first post-wedding day returning rental chairs and tables that she would otherwise have been charged a late fee for, and dealing with all the uneaten reception food.
But after that she’d needed to accept Gloria’s patience so she could switch her attention to her grandmother’s old house that was sorely in need of a complete overhaul.
Since Tuesday Addie had been working at clearing cobwebs and cleaning. She’d gotten one of the house’s two bathrooms in operating order, either repaired or replaced kitchen appliances and the water heater, and begun to deal with the lead paint that needed to be encapsulated in order to make the house safe for the two-and-a-half month old she was now guardian of.
So far she hadn’t been able to repaint more than the room she’d designated as the nursery, and wanting to make the nursery less dismal than the rest of the house, she’d also put a little time into decorating it.
Now Addie was concentrating on the wedding gifts. They would all have to be returned, but until she found the time for that, she was transferring them from Gloria’s place to the house.
Gloria’s arthritis had forced her to agree not to do any of the post-wedding work herself and she was being very understanding of Addie’s inability to do everything immediately, but Addie knew it was an imposition to have the presents piled in the older woman’s living room. It was bad enough that she hadn’t yet been able to put the yard completely back in order; she wanted her mother’s friend to at least have things out of the way inside.
What Gloria was insisting on helping with today, though, was to load Addie’s small sedan, stringing one apology after another along the way and prompting Addie to beg her to stop.
They returned to the house where Addie picked up as many gift boxes as she could carry and Gloria took a large unwrapped silver tray as they retraced their steps outside.
“This is just a minor setback for you,” the older woman said along the way. “You’ll find someone even better than Sean, just wait and see.”
Oh no, on to the pity part, Addie thought, hating that. Sympathy was one thing—there had been a lot of that during the last year, first over the death of her dad, then her mom, then Della. For the most part that had been comforting, supportive, helpful.
But pity was something else altogether. It made her seem pathetically weak and helpless. And she wasn’t weak or helpless, and she certainly didn’t want to be considered pathetic.
So she didn’t say anything in response to Gloria’s assurance, merely continuing to load the boxes into her back seat.
Once she had, she turned to take the tray from Gloria. But rather than handing it over and stepping back, Gloria held it up like a mirror and said, “Just look at you—new men will be clamoring after you.”
Cornered in the L of the car’s open door by the older woman, Addie couldn’t escape her own reflection.
And the image that stared back at her was evidence enough that Gloria was just being kind. Addie could see for herself that she looked the worse for wear.
She’d been too swamped to put any effort into her auburn hair since the wedding that wasn’t. Beyond shampooing it and brushing out the below-her-shoulders mass, she’d merely caught it all straight back into a serviceable ponytail.
There was almost no color in her face and since she’d eaten very little this week, her cheeks had taken a slight dip.
The brown eyes that had been voted Best Eyes by her high school senior class seemed unspectacular to her without liner or mascara, and while her lips were a natural mauve, she judged them blah now, too. Especially adorned with nothing but colorless lip balm.
Adding to it the fact that she’d always wished she was taller than her five-foot-three-inch height, and did not have what anyone would consider a voluptuous chest, she was all the more convinced that Gloria was merely trying to boost her morale with exaggeration. Her mother’s friend was still at it. “You’ve grown up to be the prettiest of all the Markhams. If I’d looked like you do at your age...the fun I would have had... A natural beauty, that’s what you are. And other men will take notice. Just be prepared!”
“I don’t really want them to,” Addie said honestly. “I was with Sean before Poppy came along, but now that he’s out of the picture I need to focus on her, on being her mom, on the little family she and I are now. The only family I have. It’s going to be a long time before I let anyone else into that—for her sake and for mine.”
Addie was wearing an old pair of torn jeans and a white tank top that she’d covered with a striped shirt until the heat of the June day and all the moving had made her too hot. Now the shirt was tied around her waist and, as if to give her statement more oomph, she pulled on the ends of the knot to tighten it.
“I know that’s how you feel because you’ve been so horribly hurt,” Gloria said with more of that commiseration Addie hated so much. “But you’ll change your mind. I promise you will. When the right man comes along—”
Right or wrong, a man did come along just as those words left Gloria’s mouth.
Or at least a man in a big white pickup truck pulled into the curb behind Addie’s car and directly in front of Gloria’s house.
The attention of both women was drawn in that direction by his arrival.
“Someone to see you?” Addie asked Gloria because she didn’t immediately recognize the man behind the wheel. But he’d pulled up so close to her rear bumper that he seemed to be joining them, and anything or anyone who could put an end to this conversation was welcome as far as she was concerned.
“I don’t know who that is...” Gloria said, sounding as clueless as Addie was.
The truck door opened then and out climbed the driver.
Who was one heck of a man...
He was well over six feet tall—probably four inches over—and dressed in military boots, camo pants and a tan crewneck T-shirt that also looked military-issue but fitted him like a second skin.
It crossed Addie’s mind that maybe T-shirts weren’t made large enough to be any looser on him, because his shoulders were a mile wide, his chest was as broad and muscular as they came, and his biceps were enormous works of art.
His remarkable torso did shrink down to a narrow waist and hips, only to show more muscles in thick thighs.
“Hubba-hubba,” she heard Gloria whisper, making Addie realize that she’d taken in the body before the face. She adjusted her view upward.
Only to agree with the older woman’s dated assessment.
Because the man’s face was enough to make her eyes widen.
Precision-cut short dark-brown-almost-black hair framed a square-ish forehead with full eyebrows arched over eyes that were a unique blue.
A piercing, penetrating cobalt blue that gave Addie her first inkling of who the man was, because the only eyes she’d ever seen like that belonged to the Camdens.
But which Camden was he?
Not the oldest, Micah, who had returned to Merritt several months ago to start a small batch brewery. Addie had run into him in town numerous times. So this had to be one of the triplets.
One of the triplets who—like his older brother only better—had grown into a staggeringly handsome man with a somewhat narrow, very straight nose; a not-too-full, not-too-thin mouth that gave nothing of his emotions away; and an all-round bone structure that chiseled his cheekbones and his cleanly-shaven jawline into starkly masculine and undeniably gorgeous angles.
“Are you Addie Markham?” he asked, his focus steadfastly on her, his voice as deep and commanding as his body was impressive.
What now? was her first thought because so much had been thrown at her in the last year that she’d begun to instinctively expect the worst.
But denying who she was wouldn’t help, so she said, “I am.”
And then logical reasoning kicked in. If this guy was one of the Camden triplets stopping to talk to her, it was likely Della’s old high school sweetheart looking to give condolences.
She relaxed.
“Tanner Camden?” she guessed as he strode purposefully from the side of his truck toward Addie and Gloria—who had stepped far enough away to free Addie from being cornered and was also facing their new arrival.
He nodded just once to confirm his identity.
“Oh, that’s right, I heard you were home for a visit,” Gloria said then.
In all the turmoil of her wedding that wasn’t, Addie hadn’t heard that.
Gloria’s comment drew his glance to the other woman, though. “Miss Gloria,” he greeted. “How’ve you been?”
Gloria giggled like a girl and skipped the list of health problems she usually told everyone about, to say in a vaguely coquettish voice, “I’m just dandy.”
“Happy to hear that,” he said politely before putting on just a little charm to say, “Could I ask a favor of you? Do you think I might talk to Addie alone?”
“Oh, of course!” the older woman said, partly as if she was eager to please him, and partly with more of the compassionate tone that made Addie think Gloria had come to the same conclusion—that Tanner was there to express his sympathies for Della’s death.
Then, to Addie, she said, “I’ll just be inside, honey.”
Addie nodded and slid her gaze back onto Tanner, whom she hadn’t seen since she was eleven—when he’d still just been a reedy seventeen-going-on-eighteen-year-old whose skin hadn’t yet cleared and who hadn’t been any sort of preview at all of the man he’d turned into.
Despite Addie’s attention being on him again, he continued to watch Gloria until she reached her front door and went inside. Which seemed odd to Addie, because in all of the condolences for her father, her mother and Della, no one had needed privacy to convey them.
But only when he knew the older woman was well out of earshot did he refocus on Addie.
“You’ve been two steps ahead of me for a couple of days.”
“I have?” she said, surprised that he might have been so actively looking for her. She’d been thinking that he must have just driven by Gloria’s house on his way to somewhere else, spotted her and decided to stop.
“I’ve needed to talk to you, but for some reason no one is too sure where you’re living. I was told you’d been living with some guy, that I could check there, but every time I went to the apartment there was no answer. Then someone said you might be in an old house that I think used to belong to your grandmother. But that place doesn’t look livable, so I wasn’t surprised when you weren’t there—”
“It’s been a busy week,” Addie said without explanation.
“Somebody finally told me you might be staying with a friend, so I went there today, and she told me you’d either be at the apartment I’ve been going to or the old house or here. So I went back to the other two places, and finally, here you are.”
Apparently he hadn’t wanted to contact her by phone?
And had he been so diligently searching for her just to give condolences? Or was there more to it?
Maybe he was looking for some memento of Della to remember her by?
But with the way things between them had ended, Addie thought that seemed a little far-fetched. Unless he wanted something of his that Della had kept, something that Addie hadn’t realized was his when she’d gone through the stuff her sister had left behind. Which might be a problem if Addie had thrown it away...
“Well, you’ve found me,” she said, hoping he would get to whatever he was after so she could finish all she still needed to do.
“I understand Della...passed away,” he said more solemnly then, searching for the least disturbing euphemism like so many had before him.
“Two and a half months ago,” Addie answered quietly. Even anticipating this didn’t make it easy for her to talk about her late sister.
“I’m sorry,” he said. “I couldn’t believe it when I heard.”
“It was unexpected...a shock all the way around...” Because while Della might have been almost six and a half years older than Addie’s twenty-seven, she’d still been young and healthy and at no risk in having Poppy. Until her blood pressure had spiked during delivery and a previously undiagnosed aneurysm in her heart had taken her life.
“How did it happen?” Tanner Camden asked.
Addie told him.
“So it’s true...she did have a baby,” he said then, as if he’d been hoping it had only been a rumor.
“A little girl. Poppy,” Addie said, wondering why that seemed to be of note to him.
But he left her hanging while he closed his eyes as if he needed time for that information to sink in, slowly nodding his head as he did.
Then he stopped nodding, raised his well-sculpted chin and opened those beautiful blue eyes as he took a breath and exhaled with something that sounded like resignation.
“I also heard that Della wouldn’t say who the father was, so she died without anyone knowing... Any chance she told you?”
“No. She said after the baby was born she would, but...” Addie’s voice cracked and she cleared her throat of the emotions the memory caused. “She died before that could happen.”
“And no one has come forward?”
“I have,” she said firmly, wondering if he was considering some grand gesture like volunteering to take the unclaimed baby of his old girlfriend.
“Yeah, I also heard that you’d taken the baby on. But you haven’t found so much as a clue who fathered it?”
“Her,” Addie corrected with a bit of a bite in her tone. “No, I don’t know who fathered her,” she finished, the schoolteacher in her showing.
Tanner Camden’s broad shoulders straightened and became somehow wider, as if he was reporting for duty.
Then, just when Addie thought the grand gesture was coming, he said in a quiet, grave tone, “I think the baby might be mine.”
“Yours? Poppy can’t be yours!” Addie blurted out, thinking that a grand gesture made more sense than his assertion.
Clearly uncomfortable, he said, “Eleven and a half months ago I was in town on leave—”
“I know.” Although she hadn’t seen him and couldn’t recall the exact date, she had heard that he’d come to visit his grandfather. She’d heard about it from Della, who had not made any big deal of it. To Addie’s surprise and relief.
“Della and I spent the night together,” he confessed under his breath, as if he wasn’t proud of it.
“You did not!” Addie shot back. “You had coffee with her one afternoon—she told me. She said she’d wanted to tell you how sorry she was for all that drama when the two of you graduated high school. She told me that you accepted her apology, went your separate ways, and that was that. She said she didn’t see you the whole rest of the time you were here.”
“She didn’t,” he said. “But my grandfather was giving me a ride to Billings to catch a plane at the end of my leave and it worked out better for him if I went the night before my flight and stayed in a hotel. I ran into Della again there, at the hotel. She said she was treating herself to a little time in the city before meeting a friend from college who was coming in the next day—”
“Della didn’t go to college,” Addie countered as if she was catching him in multiple lies.
But underneath it, her own fears were mounting.
Tanner Camden frowned in what appeared to be some confusion of his own now. “She told me over coffee that she went to UCLA. That she got a degree in business, came back here and went to work for the bank your dad used to manage. She told me she was about to be promoted to manager herself.”
“There was no college, no degree. Della never left Merritt. Dad got her the job at the bank. She started as a teller and she was still a teller...” Addie stalled, fearing the worst.
Working not to show any of her own trepidations, she went on. “So there was no friend from college for her to be meeting,” she concluded, once more as if nothing he claimed could be true and have led him to be Poppy’s father.
But Tanner wasn’t getting defensive, he just seemed to be perplexed. “She lied... Was it just an excuse to follow me to Billings?”
“I never heard anything about her going to Billings. She said she saw you for coffee and that was it,” Addie insisted, sounding defensive herself.
“Look, I’m not making this up. We ran into each other at the hotel,” Tanner continued matter-of-factly. “Over coffee in town she’d seemed to have her act together... I mean, I had the impression that she’d grown up, that our past was behind us. So when I saw her again and she suggested we have dinner, I said okay. Then we went clubbing. There was a lot of drinking. We ended up spending the night together,” he finished in a voice that was barely audible, again as if wasn’t proud of it.
Addie’s stomach was beginning to knot and she was very much afraid that denying what he was telling her wasn’t going to make it go away. Or him, either. And if it was possible that he was Poppy’s father, then suddenly she was looking at the potential of losing the baby she considered hers...
“Two months ago I was in Washington, DC,” he was saying. “And I ran into Scooter Thompson—he was in my class—”
“He’s our dentist now. He doesn’t like that nickname any more. He wants to be called Harvey.” As if that mattered...
Tanner ignored her footnote.
“He was visiting in-laws. Anyway, he asked me if I knew about Della, told me she’d died having a baby. A baby whose father Della had kept a secret...”
And you weren’t fishing for the information to see if you should step in and be a hero, Addie thought. You were hoping I knew, so you’d be off the hook...
She wanted to kick herself for not having realized that before. For not using whatever opportunity there might have been for her to lie and tell him she did know who the father was and it wasn’t him.
But she’d been honest...
It was her own fear that spurred her to say, “Poppy is mine! I was in the delivery room. It was my arms they put her in the minute she was born, while they worked on Della. I was at the hospital with her for the whole three days she needed to be there after the difficult birth. It’s my arms she’s been in ever since!”
“Is she okay?” he asked.
“She’s fine. She’s great. She’s mine!” Addie repeated, feeling as if she might break down and fighting not to.
Whether or not Tanner Camden realized what was going on with her, his voice took on a softness as he said, “But if I’m her father I have to know.”
Addie had lost too much in the last year; she wasn’t going to lose Poppy. “She’s my family. All that’s left of it!” she said in near panic.
“I have to know,” he repeated just as gently, but more firmly. “If you don’t know that someone else is her father then I think we have to have my DNA and the baby’s DNA compared.”
Was it too late to lie, to make up a story, to say she did know?
Addie desperately wanted to believe it wasn’t, but she knew better.
So instead, scornfully, she said, “Didn’t you use protection?”
Once more clearly uncomfortable, he said, “Let’s just say that Della took the lead with that...” He stalled, sighed, and then reluctantly and with embarrassment and a hint of anger, said, “If there was a...problem that could have caused this...she didn’t tell me.”
But Addie had no doubt that if there was a way to sabotage things and give herself even the smallest chance of trapping Tanner with a real pregnancy, Della would have taken it. Even all these years later.
Or maybe more so all these years later, after her sister’s succession of failed relationships and the continuing fantasy Della had had that she and Tanner Camden would still somehow have a happily-ever-after.
But Addie wasn’t about to say that.
“You don’t want Poppy anyway—I can tell,” she said instead, bargaining. “So why push it? I do want her. I love her. The court has appointed me guardian, I’ve filed to adopt her. I can support her, raise her. I want to support and raise her. In her mind I’m her mom. In my mind, I’m her mom. You can’t take her away.” And just that quick Addie’s throat clogged and tears flooded her eyes. Tears she furiously blinked back.
“But if I’m her father, that changes things. And I need to know,” he reiterated but in a kind voice that made her all the more sure he’d seen what this was doing to her.
But whether or not he realized what was happening to her, Addie wanted him to know that she wouldn’t take this lying down, so she squared her own shoulders and asked sternly, “And then what? How does it change things?”
“And then we’ll just have to go from there.”
Terrified that standing before her was the last straw, the straw that could break her, Addie knew there was nothing she could do to prevent him from going to court to request a DNA test. A request that she also knew the court would grant.
“Fine, have the test,” she dared in a voice that pretended it wouldn’t matter.
“I’ll set it up ASAP,” he said. Then he let that lay, pausing for a moment as if to give her a breather in all he was dumping on her before he said, “But since I’m the likeliest candidate for fatherhood... I took a three week leave, I’ve lost some days now getting here and tracking you down and I don’t know how long it’ll take to get DNA results. But since the clock is ticking on my time here I can’t afford to waste any of it. I’d like to see her.”
Of course he would. Damn him.
“And to maybe learn what it’ll take if she is mine, because I don’t know the first thing about babies,” he added, giving Addie what she thought was a look at the tiniest crack in his armor.
Was that something she could use?
“It takes a lot,” she warned, seizing the possibility and thinking about Sean’s surprise over how much Poppy’s care required. Thinking about how impatient and annoyed it had made him.
Which was when it occurred to her that maybe allowing Tanner Camden to experience all it involved to be a parent, to raise a child, might be her ace in the hole. It had scared off one guy. Maybe it would scare off this guy, too. Especially when he hadn’t given the impression that he was overjoyed at the prospect of parenthood...
An idea began to take shape in her mind, giving her a small amount of hope...
“Where are you staying?” she asked him.
He obviously didn’t understand the reason for the question but he answered anyway. “With my grandfather, out at the farm.”
“And how would you rate yourself as a handyman?”
Because why not kill two birds with one stone if she could, now that she vaguely recalled something else from the time he’d dated her sister.
“I worked construction growing up—I can do just about anything that needs to be done by a handyman,” he answered, again as if he was curious as to why he was being grilled.
But since he’d confirmed what she’d remembered, she forged on.
“Babies need care twenty-four hours a day,” she said then, once more with some challenge to it. “If you really want to know what it takes to care for a baby, that’s what you need to put into it.”
“Okay...” he said tentatively.
“My grandmother’s old house—the one you think isn’t livable? Poppy and I have needed to move into it and it does need a lot of work. If you really want to learn what it is to be a dad, I’ll trade you childcare lessons for help with the house. Poppy and I have rooms upstairs, but downstairs there’s a bedroom and another bathroom—if you can get it working. You could use those and stay with us.”
Tanner Camden stared at her for a moment, another frown on that handsome face, as if he was wondering what she had up her sleeve.
Then he said, “You’re not worried about inviting a strange man to live with you?”
“You’re not completely strange,” she said somewhat disparagingly, causing a faint smile to cross his lips. “And I’m not a kid anymore, I can take care of myself, so if you have any ideas about getting near me you can let them go here and now. Plus, I know your family, I know of you—I’ve heard your grandfather bragging about what a hero you are, so I don’t suppose I have to worry. And if you step out of line I’ll call Ben and tell him.”
That took the faint smile into a full one. Which only raised the appeal of his good looks. “You’ll call my grandfather and squeal on me?”
“In a heartbeat.”
“Well, that is a threat,” he said facetiously.
No matter how amusing he might be finding this, Addie was still all business. “So unless you’re afraid of living with me—”
He laughed. “I am but I think I can get through it.” More facetiousness.
Addie ignored it. “Then we have a deal?” she said with far more bravado than she was actually feeling.
Again his gaze stayed on her, seeming to assess her before he said, “Okay, sure. When do you want me?”
She didn’t want him. She had no desire to have another man around and certainly not one who posed a threat to her keeping Poppy. She just wanted the opportunity to bring home to him that parenthood was not a breeze—especially the diaper duty and sleepless nights that Sean had had particular problems with. And she wanted—needed—free help with her grandmother’s house.
“Tomorrow,” she decreed.
“Then tomorrow it is.”
“Do you have a cell phone?”
“I do.”
She held out her hand for it and when he gave it to her she put her number in it.
“Now you can just call rather than track me down...in case you change your mind and just want to go back wherever you came from and forget this.”
Please do that...she silently beseeched from behind the stronger front she was faking.
“Tomorrow,” was all he said, turning on his heels to go back to his truck.
And leaving Addie fearing that of all the bombshells that had dropped on her life this last year, the one Tanner Camden had just landed had the potential to be the worst.
