“Mr. Decker is finishing up with another client. It shouldn’t be long. Can I get you coffee or tea?”
“No, thanks. I’m fine,” Liam assured the attorney’s receptionist.
“Then if you’d just take a seat. There are magazines and today’s newspaper...”
Liam turned and went to a chair in the waiting area not far away. But he didn’t check out the reading material. He had enough on his mind to occupy him.
He’d arranged for the DNA results to go directly to his lawyer in order to make sure that everything was kept at standards the court would accept.
Early this morning, after one more round of lovemaking with Dani—well, two because they’d showered together before dawn—someone from the attorney’s office had called and left a message that the envelope with the DNA results had been delivered.
When he’d returned the call, the receptionist had given him an appointment that brought him here straight from the rehab center.
And now it was a matter of minutes until he would find out if he was Evie and Grady’s father.
Over breakfast with Declan, when he’d told him about the appointment, Declan had commented on how soon it was that Liam’s whole life might be changed.
Liam had made light of it, said Conor had said something similar about the game changing for him.
But the truth was that it felt as if the game, his life, already had changed.
It had hit him yesterday—that weird sensation he’d had when he’d initiated the conversation about the kids’ future with Conor and Kinsey. He hadn’t understood it at the time but as he sat there now, as he considered things to say to the attorney that he might want presented to the court, it began to sink in.
What had hit him wrong yesterday was the thought of anyone but him—or Dani—taking on anything to do with the kids.
Conor was right. He didn’t want to only be the facilitator when it came to Grady and Evie’s future. He had gotten wrapped up with the twins.
Maybe that was an indication that they were his, that his paternal instinct had kicked in. But regardless, he suddenly knew with calm, quiet certainty that there was no way he could just leave them with other people.
Thinking about it, he recognized when things had turned for him—the night in the mall parking lot when Dani’s ex had approached them all. When Evie had taken his hand, when Grady had leaned against his leg. It had done something to him.
Why, he didn’t know. But in that moment when the four-year-olds had been afraid of some guy being a jerk and had reached out to him, it had brought home just how damn small and helpless and vulnerable they were. It had brought home how much they needed to be protected so they could feel safe and secure and grow up the way he had—knowing his mother and Hugh were always right there for him.
But it still hadn’t sunk in until yesterday that it wasn’t enough for him to tap other people to do that for them. That he needed to do that for them.
For whatever reason, by whatever design, those kids had become his kids. And he needed to be the one whose hand was there to hold or whose shoulder they could lean on. He needed to take care of them and raise them. He needed to be who saw them through.
The receptionist interrupted his thoughts. “I’m sure it will only be a few more minutes.”
Liam glanced over at her and nodded but he had to fight the urge to just walk out. Not because he was tired of waiting, but because he kept thinking that he wanted to get out of there and get to Dani so he could tell her what he’d just realized. At that moment, that was a bigger deal to him than learning the DNA results.
He didn’t budge but he did marvel at how strong his urge was to get a hold of her right that minute to tell her, to talk to her about what the decision meant for his future. To hash it all out with her. To know what she thought about it. To let her know that she didn’t have anything to worry about when it came to the twins anymore.
She wasn’t the reason he’d made the decision. But it was important to him that it would ease Dani’s worries. And it was important to him to have contact with her at that moment, when his eyes had finally opened to what was going on with him.
Because she was important to him...
He wasn’t altogether sure where that had come from, but once it snaked its way into his brain, he couldn’t deny that it was true.
Dani was important to him, regardless of how things worked out with the kids. Yes, she was great with them and he knew that it would be great for them to go on having her in their lives, great for him to have more of her help with them.
But this was something separate from that. Completely and totally separate. Something that had only to do with what he felt when he was with her. What he felt about her...
Conor had made the comment that he was more than just hot for Dani. Now he had to admit that his brother had been right about that, too.
Although Conor had said it flippantly, the truth was the heat between them was no small thing—last night had proven that. Making love with her was like nothing he’d ever done before. Things were so hot between them that it was a wonder they hadn’t burned down even that steel-and-glass house.
And yet as combustible as sex with her was, it wasn’t just the heat between them that was causing what he felt.
There was something special about it. Something extraordinary in what he felt about her, about being with her, that he’d never felt before.
In his time as a marine he’d seen too many things he wished he hadn’t. It had hardened something inside him and he carried that around. It sometimes colored his view, his thinking.
But the more he was with Dani, the more he seemed to be coming to a better place in the world and in his own head. A place where things were brighter and clearer, more hopeful. A place where some of the edges were softened.
She was caring and compassionate—things that had been trained out of him in large part. But being under her influence had helped bring back that side of him. It had changed him from the marine who had been looking in at this situation from the outside, to the man who now knew he had to act.
Thinking about her, he believed it was because of Dani that Evie and Grady were weathering their losses and grief and whatever fears and insecurities they had as well as they were. Dani made it seem as if everything would work out for the best.
She had the ability to take the worst of things—like what he’d found with Declan, like the missteps he’d taken at first with the kids—and not pass any judgments but patiently make suggestions, give instructions, guide to methods that might help.
And all with subtlety, without pushing. She just had a way about her that had somehow allowed him to let his guard down. To genuinely relax and loosen up. And it felt good.
It was no surprise that she was the first person to come to mind after making the biggest decision of his life. She was the first person he wanted to tell, the one he knew would understand it all, who would caringly point out to him where the difficulties might lie and how to wade through them the best way possible.
She was so much of what she’d described in her grandparents—affectionate, tender, generous. And she brought that into everything. Everything with the kids, with him.
And now that he’d had a taste of it, he knew he didn’t want to let go of it.
He didn’t want to let go of her.
Not for a day, a week, a month did he want to go without the sound of her voice, her laugh. Without being able to touch her, hold her, feel the silk of her skin or make love to her. He didn’t want to go a minute without being able to share everything he thought or felt with her.
It had never before seemed as if any woman was the sun and the moon and the earth to him. But that was what Dani had somehow become.
And with or without kids, he wanted her. He wanted a whole, full life with her...
The door to the lawyer’s inner office opened and Marvin Decker walked his other client to the outer door, saying goodbye and giving reassurances along the way.
Then he turned to Liam.
So the moment of truth had come.
But for Liam it had just become incidental to so many bigger things.
Bigger things that he was suddenly desperate to say to Dani...
* * *
“No? You said no?”
It sounded so harsh when Bryan said it. Or maybe it was the way he said it—a little loud, with utter disbelief. And maybe a little horror.
Dani was at their apartment when her friend and roommate got home from his office on Monday. It’s where she’d run after Liam had returned from the appointment with his lawyer. The DNA results had proven what Audrey had contended—he was Evie and Grady’s father.
Happy and relieved to hear that from him, Dani had not been so happy to hear the rest of what he’d had to say. And she definitely hadn’t felt relieved by it. Instead it had sent her into a tailspin that had resulted in her leaving him to watch the twins while she fled here.
“Explain this to me, Dani,” her friend said as he handed her the cup of tea he’d made for her because he’d said she looked like death warmed over.
Dani was huddled into a corner of the couch. She accepted the mug and took a sip before she said with a cutting edge to her voice, “In a nutshell? Marry the nanny safety net and then you don’t have to be on your own with kids you’ve just been surprised with. And I said no.”
Bryan sat on the opposite end of the sofa and angled to face her. “So it was a panic proposal,” he concluded sadly.
“No, there was no sign of panic,” Dani said. “He had worked out everything—everything. He said it didn’t matter what the DNA results were, he’d decided before he got them that he was going to resign from the marines so he could raise Grady and Evie himself. That there were other people who could do his job as a marine but it had to be him who stepped up for the twins. I guess he has some friend who retired a few years ago and formed a security company with an office here, and the guy has always let him know he has a job waiting if and when Liam leaves the service, too. He even called the guy on the way home from the lawyer and confirmed it. He already has a meeting to set it up.”
Bryan backtracked from that. “He’d made the decision to take the kids even if they weren’t his?”
“He talked about it with me the other night, about getting his brother and sister on board to become some kind of extended foster family for the kids if they weren’t his. But he said that didn’t feel right to him after he asked them, and today he figured out that it was because he wanted to do it himself.”
“I think he gets gold stars for that,” Bryan said tentatively, as if he was beginning to have trouble seeing the flaws that Dani’s tone implied were there.
“Well, sure,” she agreed, as if that wasn’t the point. “But he came at me with this whole plan that made me think of Garrett—”
“Controlling and demanding?”
“Well, no, to be fair there wasn’t anything controlling or demanding in any of it. But there was stuff about how he thought I’d be sorry if I sold the restaurant, that I should keep it and get my kid fix with Evie and Grady and however many other kids I’d want us to have—”
“So it was more of a suggestion? An observation that you might regret selling the restaurant?”
“I suppose. But that’s my decision.”
“A decision that you haven’t been able to make because you aren’t sure yourself if you’d regret it.”
“But it’s not up to him!”
“It doesn’t sound like he thought it was. Just that he was giving an opinion.”
“Whose side are you on?”
“Yours. Always yours,” Bryan assured, sounding increasingly confused. “But it seems like he was thinking about you. Garrett would have pushed or ordered or demanded that you sell the restaurant, with himself in mind. And he wouldn’t have cared that it might be hard for you—the same way he didn’t care that Gramma needed your help sometimes.”
Dani frowned. “All I know is, in the moment it made me think of Garrett—who I was engaged to until only three months ago, don’t forget that. I’m not ready for a new relationship, let alone to make a commitment this huge,” she contended so as not to lose her head of steam, piling on another of the reasons she’d said no.
Bryan didn’t respond to that. “Was it more like a business deal than a proposal? Or like he was hiring you? I know he can be kind of stiff and formal.”
Bryan was obviously trying to understand. And Dani was trying to make clear to him everything that had gone through her head when she’d been with Liam.
“No, he wasn’t stiff or formal. He was...like he is with me—which he said, something about how I make him free to be himself—so he was actually kind of laid-back. Happy. And he said a lot of nice things about how I was the first person he wanted to tell everything to, to share everything with. That I was the most important person to him. How great we are together,” she said, her tone still finding fault somewhere in all of it.
“Get him over here so I can shoot him!” Bryan said theatrically, facetiously. Then he frowned at her as if she wasn’t making sense and went back to his normal voice. “From what I’ve seen you are great together. And the four of you? It’s like a perfect little family—Adam and I talked about that after you left Saturday night. You and Liam seem good for each other. You both seem so good for the kids...”
“Yeah, he said that, too.”
“And that made you feel like he only wants you so he isn’t on his own with Evie and Grady?”
“No, he only said he wanted us to raise Evie and Grady together after he said how great just the two of us are together...” She flashed back to all of Sunday night. To the very early hours of this morning before they’d had to go their separate ways. To hours of him making love to her until she was weak and spent and yet still craved more of him.
But that certainly didn’t support her case so she said in an ominous tone, “He said that being a marine had hardened him but that I softened his edges and the way he saw things, his reaction to things. He said I had an effect on him that no one else ever had. He said stuff about how much he wanted and needed that now that he’s had it...”
“And you thought of your dad,” Bryan said as if a light had just dawned on him.
“That is what my mom tried to be for my dad. What she tried to do for my dad. I remember her telling him that she was his safe space.”
“And that helped him but it wasn’t always enough. And it terrifies you to think that Liam might have some of the issues your dad did.”
“And some of the same issues Garrett had from his high-pressure job, too,” she added. “Issues that just got bigger no matter how hard I tried to make them better,” she said, feeling as if her friend was finally beginning to grasp it all.
“Drink your tea,” Bryan said, as if he was buying time to think.
She did, certain that now he’d joined her point of view.
But then he said, “I think we need to separate your dad and Garrett. Because I never saw Garrett the way you did.”
“I know the two of you didn’t get to be friends. I hated that. He swore it wasn’t because you’re gay but—”
“He wasn’t homophobic, Dani. And I’m gonna tell you what I never told you before—I don’t think all his issues really came from his job or that he was as freaked out about your safety as he pretended to be.”
Apparently Bryan could tell just by her expression she was going to refute that because before she’d gotten a word out, he said, “Yeah, sure, there was some of that. Of course he’d seen bad things and that caused him to worry about you more than someone else might have. The fact that there was some truth in it is how it got you sucked in. You connected the high pressure of being a cop with your dad’s military stuff and were particularly accommodating when Garrett showed he was worried about you. You wanted to make it easier for him, to help him—”
“I didn’t want him to get to the point Daddy got to.”
“Right. But I think once he saw that you were willing to give a little to make him relax, he ran with it. By the end I think he mostly just used it as a way to keep you under his thumb. Every time he fed you the line? About how he could only really rest if you were with him and that was why he couldn’t be comfortable, even if you were with me or Gramma or at the restaurant? I think he was working you more than looking out for you.”
“You really didn’t like him,” Dani said, seeing the extent of it for the first time.
“I really didn’t like that he wanted you all for himself. I didn’t think it was healthy. And I really didn’t like that he used your dad’s problems to his own advantage—because that’s what it looked like to me.”
Dani thought about everything that had gone on with Garrett from Bryan’s standpoint.
She could see where there was some merit to it. Especially when she recalled how much she’d come to feel manipulated by Garrett. About how, just when that was happening, he’d played up the things that reminded her of her father so she would ultimately indulge him.
“Okay,” she allowed. “Maybe you’re right. But what does that have to do with what’s going on with Liam now?”
“You saw something in what Liam said to you this afternoon that reminded you of Garrett and I don’t think you could be more wrong. I don’t see in him what I saw in Garrett. Yes, Liam keeps himself under some tight control, but unless I’ve missed something, he hasn’t tried to control anything else. I even asked Adam how he was with the kids at the park the other night and Adam said he kept a close eye on them, but he let them play just fine.”
She was glad to hear that.
“So I don’t think Liam saying that he thinks you should keep the restaurant and get your kid fix through Grady and Evie and other kids you might have should count against him.”
Putting Liam and Garrett side by side in her mind, Dani thought what Bryan was saying had some validity. She had to admit Liam had merely presented her with his suggestions today; he hadn’t been at all the way Garrett would have been about it.
And while he’d said he would hate to lose the restaurant and the warm, family-like feelings he’d encountered there himself, while he’d offered to do whatever he could to help her in whatever way she might need—like more maintenance and small repairs—he’d also still admitted that whether she sold out or not was up to her.
“Okay, maybe the whole restaurant thing was just him giving his opinion,” she conceded. “He did say he knew selling the restaurant was my decision, just that he thought it was so much a part of my growing up, so much a part of my life with my grandparents, that I would feel as if I was cutting off my own arm if I sold it.”
“A good point,” Bryan said. “And just as a side note—I have always thought that when you have kids of your own they’d be enough kid contact to satisfy you, so I can see where he’s coming from on that, too.”
Dani sipped her tea but didn’t comment.
“But that still leaves the other part of what got to you—Liam making you think he might have some of your dad’s problems. Have you seen signs of PTSD in Liam?” Bryan asked reasonably.
Dani gave it serious consideration. “I thought that’s what I was seeing the day he was withdrawn and quiet—that made me think about my dad because it was the way Daddy acted when he was getting into a slump.”
“But you said that was about Liam’s brother. The shock of seeing how injured he was for the first time.”
“Right.”
“And by that night Liam had talked it out with you and was okay again,” Bryan reminded.
“Right.”
“So that doesn’t really count. It would bum anybody out to have someone they’re close to injured, to see that for the first time. And he’s been doing what he can to help his brother—like what your family did to help your dad. Your dad was too messed up to be of help to anybody else.”
“He was.”
“But Liam is still a marine. Like your dad was,” Bryan said. “And he told you being with you makes him feel better.”
“Right,” she said apprehensively.
“But if he doesn’t seem to have PTSD, couldn’t it just be that he’s a normal guy who’s gotten to know you and like you and it feels good when he’s with you? If he wasn’t a marine and he’d said what he’d said about being with you, would you have heard it the way you heard it? Because Adam makes me feel everything Liam said you make him feel and I just see that as the reason our relationship works.”
Dani stared into her tea.
Liam had said more even than she’d told Bryan, and when she remembered it all and forced herself to look at it without the shadow of her parents’ problems cast over it, she could see where Bryan might have a point.
Why exactly had it scared her? That being with her made him feel so good, so right, so at home, that he wanted to be with her all the time? That he wanted to marry her and have a life and a future with her? That together he wanted them to give Grady and Evie the kind of loving upbringing that she’d had from her grandparents?
It had all just come at her so unexpectedly, and on top of so many other things in her own life that she was feeling pressure to sort out and make decisions about, maybe it had pushed her buttons.
“And you know,” Bryan said after a minute, “that stuff about only being broken up with Garrett for three months? About not being ready for anything else yet? I don’t get either of those things, Dani. Sure, you might not have been out of things with Garrett for long, but so what? Who says you can’t meet the right person ten minutes after getting away from the wrong one?”
“I’ve only known Liam for about a total of ten minutes,” she understated to make a point.
“Yeah, it’s been quick.” Bryan didn’t dispute it. “But so what to that, too? From the minute you set eyes on that guy I’ve heard things out of you, seen things with you, seen the way you are when you’re with him, that have made me envious. It’s like from day one it just clicked. And call me silly, but I think that happened because you’re right for each other. Good for each other. Meant for each other. So I just kind of think you’re crazy for running from it.”
“What if he does just want a nanny?” she said quietly, falling back on that initial concern.
“Well then, that would be lousy. I don’t think that’s what’s going on, but if he gave you any indication that might be part of it, then yeah, I guess I’d say thank god he’s Evie and Grady’s biological dad and he wants them and they won’t have to go into the system. Take heart in that and put this whole thing behind you. But do you really think he was just sweet-talking you to get your nanny services? That he’s willing to marry you to get them?”
Hearing that from Bryan did make it seem a little farfetched. And everything Liam had said seemed genuine and heartfelt. So much so that it had triggered her fear he might need her as a crutch the way her father had needed her mother.
But she’d already discounted that idea and now she saw what he’d said in a much different light. A different light that allowed his words to actually reach her, to touch her, to make them mean so much more to her when they just came from the way he felt about her.
And he’d said he would want her, want a life and a future with her, even if the kids weren’t in the picture.
When she thought about the way things had been between them when they were alone, she knew just how big it was. How intense.
He’d become important to her, too. He was the first person she wanted to talk through everything with, too, and she’d come to value what he had to say as much as she valued what Bryan said.
As she thought about it, she realized having Liam around had made her feel better about any number of things this last week, so there hadn’t been any shortage of her needing him, too.
She had to admit to herself that he’d become her oasis. Something about that big, strong presence of his being there by her side made everything—even running the restaurant—seem less daunting.
And when it came to Evie and Grady...
She was so grateful that they wouldn’t be left defenselessly in the hands of the court.
But to have the chance not to lose them herself?
She’d been with them through every stage so far, through illnesses, now through grief and loss—her own and theirs. She did love them. She didn’t want to lose them at all. And while they couldn’t be the reason she would say yes to Liam, getting to raise them, to continue seeing them grow, to go on caring for them and loving them was very appealing. Especially when the four of them together this last week really had come to seem like a family.
“Am I crazy if I do this?” she whispered to Bryan.
“It comes down to what you feel for him, Dani,” Bryan said wisely. “Everything aside, is he who you want to go to bed with every night and who you want to wake up with every morning, no matter what?”
“He is,” she said without hesitation because, stripped down to that, it was the plain and simple truth. Especially after going to bed with him last night and waking up with him this morning—she didn’t want any day to end, any new day to begin that wasn’t with him.
“Then go fix your face, run a brush through your hair, and I’ll drive you back so I can wrangle kids while you tell him you just panicked.”
“You think he’ll let me in the door?” she said.
Bryan stood up and held out his hand to her. “If he won’t I’ll just beat it down to get you in,” he said with a laugh.
But Dani was more worried about it than that.
She had said no—vehemently.
And then she’d run away.
What if it wasn’t so easy now to just call a do-over...?