Buch lesen: «If I Loved You»

CHAPTER ONE

“HOW DO WOMEN ever manage?”

Brig Collier had no clue. In the past twenty-four hours, through seven and a half time zones, he had seen females nowhere near his size juggle crying infants, fussy toddlers and screaming five-year-olds without breaking a sweat. He figured it had something to do with different elbow joints and pelvic structure.

Even getting out of a cab was a major ordeal. Worse, now he was talking to himself. After fumbling for his wallet, his brain fogged from travel, he paid the fare, then heaved himself from the taxi’s rear seat into the pouring rain.

He reached back in for the overstuffed diaper bag and, finally, for the baby. He lifted her out of the mandatory car seat she’d been sitting in, but Laila just didn’t fit in the crook of his arm. One tiny leg insisted on poking out from her blanket. Poor kid.

Brig felt like a total failure. Never mind his expertise with the black-ops stuff that was his bread and butter. He was still trying to deal with the shock of becoming all too suddenly a stand-in father.

He waited while the driver unloaded their bags from the trunk. One for him, three for Laila. By the time she reached kindergarten, they’d probably be traveling with a U-Haul.

The cabbie couldn’t hide his smirk. “Good luck, mister.” He probably had a dozen kids and could handle six at a time. As he pulled away in his cab, he called out the window, “The first one’s always the hardest.”

Brig frowned. Could it be more obvious that he didn’t know what he was doing? He always knew what he was doing. His life depended on it...and so, unfortunately, did the lives of others. As if he needed that reminder, now he had Laila, and Brig meant to do right by her.

He gazed around, but for one jet-lagged second he couldn’t remember where he was. Oh, yeah, not in Wardak province, Afghanistan. No bullets whizzed past his head here. This was Liberty Courthouse. Small-town America in the heartland of Ohio.

His heartbeat settled. He was looking straight at his parents’ neat suburban house, the safe place he needed for Laila.

The baby whimpered. Cold water dripped from Brig’s hair, making him shiver. And he realized he was standing in the rain like a turkey with its mouth open. Laila was getting wet, too. Brig hurried up the walk to the modest house he’d once called home.

It looked...empty?

Alarm flashed through him. How could that be? After he leaned on the doorbell a third time, he realized no one must be inside.

Brig hadn’t been here in a while. He had no door key to the house.

What to do?

Laila would have to have a bottle soon, dry clothes, a clean diaper.

Other than his absent parents, he had no relatives in town. His friends had moved away. As for the neighbors...he’d burned that bridge long ago, especially with her.

Nonetheless, the next minute he was picking a path across the sodden lawn anyway with Laila in his arms. He’d left her car seat and most of their luggage on his parents’ doorstep to lighten his load, but the insistent memory of a brown-haired girl with laughing green eyes weighed him down at every step. Molly. He’d be lucky if she didn’t kick him across the street.

The very picture of a desperate man, he carried Laila up the sidewalk to Molly’s house. She probably no longer lived here, either. But no doubt her dad still did, except the man would likely greet him with a shotgun.

Brig climbed the steps, one foot slipping on a wet slate tile. Startled, he lost his balance, nearly tossing Laila and him into the rain-flattened peony bushes that flanked the porch.

He grabbed the railing to steady himself at the same time a blast of noise from inside the house assaulted his eardrums. A party? Not in his honor, for sure.

Maybe he shouldn’t have come back to Liberty.

But he had to consider Laila’s welfare now, not that of the men under his command. Not his own.

* * *

MOLLY DIDN’T BELIEVE in bad omens. As if there were any other kind, including the rain that now slashed the windows. She was already running late, and even the red-and-white banner stretched over the dining room archway didn’t bring her usual smile. The party guests in the living room, ranging in age from six months to sixty years, had begun arriving early, well before midday—had she put the wrong time on the invitations?—and most of them seemed to be talking at once. Every minute or two, the doorbell rang again.

Normally Molly loved parties. At least, she had loved them when there was something to celebrate with that special someone. Now, in the midst of her annual Valentine’s Day bash, she was merely going through the motions for other people.

What else could go wrong?

Maybe the romantic holiday itself had unsettled her.

February was no longer her favorite month, and except for her dad, Molly had loved only two other men in her life. The first she’d rather not think about. The second, sadly, was gone, too.

Determined not to slide further into a slump, she turned to finish with the decorations, hoping no one would notice her disorganization. She should have stayed up later last night, but then, she hadn’t expected the horde to get here this soon. She stuck another heart-shaped decal on the back of a dining room chair. And gave thanks for the blessings she still had.

Her friends. Her family. Her widowed father. Thomas—also known as Pop—was already in his element, riding small children on his knee, telling corny jokes to the teenagers, ignoring his diet to drink a beer or two with the men. Molly wouldn’t spoil his fun.

The family—most of all Pop, who still mourned her mother—relied on her. She was great at holding them together, and proud of it. If this was her fate in life now, instead of a house full of babies to care for and a husband to love, so be it. Molly didn’t expect to find love again. Her family and her day care center, Little Darlings, had to be enough.

And they would be. Molly already needed to expand the center. If all her current plans went well, she could take in more children, hire more assistants to improve her already good teacher-to-student ratio and enhance her program.

Still, she couldn’t shake this stubborn foreboding, her feeling that something was about to happen that would change her life again.

And as if someone had just been cued, the doorbell chimed once more.

In a last attempt to alter her mood, she dabbed one remaining shiny red heart decal at the corner of her mouth, like a beauty mark. Then she shoved the now-decorated chairs back under the table and went to greet her newest guest, determined to enjoy herself if it killed her.

But when she plowed through the crowded living room and opened the front door, her smile vanished. Molly froze. She knew exactly why she had felt such foreboding.

In the doorway stood a tall, all-too-familiar man. His piercing blue eyes met her gaze of recognition, equally shocked.

Molly’s heart tripped on itself as too many memories flooded her mind. She tried to focus on his rain-dampened hair, dark and sleek against his head, but his gaze kept drawing hers back. She had to admit he was still the most attractive man she’d ever seen.

Molly exchanged a glance with her sister, who stood on the other side of the living room, a party hat in one hand. Ann lifted her eyebrows, and Molly stifled the urge to flee. She was no longer a naive twenty-two-year-old. He might still be handsome, but at thirty and a widow, she was immune, she reassured herself. Why let his abrupt reappearance shake her?

Yet the bluish circles of fatigue under those eyes threatened to undo her. If only she could hide behind the red heart pasted at the corner of her mouth, cool the heat that rose in her face. The last person she’d expected to see was the man she had once loved to distraction, the man who hadn’t wanted to make that final commitment to Molly on their wedding day. Brigham Collier. Her ex-fiancé, the first terrible loss in her life, had come back.

Holding a baby!

* * *

THE PARTY WENT downhill from there. After Brig walked in, Molly was definitely not in a festive mood. The good thing was, nobody noticed except Pop, whose back went rigid with disapproval as soon as he spied Brig. Apparently he hadn’t forgotten, either, what had happened eight years ago.

“Look at this adorable baby,” one of Molly’s cousins cooed, crossing the room with her arms outstretched. “Take off that soaked trench coat and give this poor child to me.”

Looking disoriented, Brig didn’t move except to relinquish the baby. Like Molly, he seemed numb. He was an only child, and his smaller family never had get-togethers of such utter chaos. Then, too, he wasn’t a homebody like Molly, who had never been out of Ohio. No. Brig had left Liberty Courthouse right after he’d run out on her. To this day, according to his worried mother, he preferred flying around the world, getting in and out of trouble on behalf of some quasimilitary outfit no one was supposed to know about. Trying to get himself killed.

Brig was all about risk.

Molly, who had suffered enough loss, hated the very thought of risk.

For years, she reminded herself, she and Brig had literally been worlds apart. The last she’d heard, he was somewhere in Afghanistan.

If he expected her to welcome him warmly, he had some nerve. She peered behind him but didn’t see a wife, which didn’t mean he didn’t have one somewhere. Before she had all her defenses in place, Brig walked right toward her, his gaze as piercing as a laser.

His deep voice sent an unwanted shiver down her spine.

“Hey, Molly.” He bent as though to kiss her cheek, but Molly stepped back to avoid contact. Seeming to sense her rejection, Brig glanced away. “I didn’t know you’d be here,” he said. “Or that you’d still be putting on this show every year. Sorry to burst in—”

“No, really, it’s a party. The more, the merrier.” She pasted a smile on her face but folded her arms across her chest. “Actually, I haven’t been here,” she went on, “but things change...life changes...and now I’m back.”

Apparently so was he. But why? And for how long?

Not that it mattered to Molly.

“My parents weren’t exactly expecting us,” he said, then explained about new locks and the key he didn’t have. “Do you know where they are?”

She hesitated. “No, but since your dad retired, they come and go all the time.” Unlike Thomas, Molly thought, who stayed home way too much. She paused again, wishing Pop had other interests besides the house and, above all, Molly. “We invited them to the party. I thought they were coming, but maybe they made other plans.”

Brig frowned. “Do you or Thomas have the new key to their house?”

“I’m afraid not.”

Last summer Molly had watered the Colliers’ garden while they were on vacation, but that hadn’t involved her going inside.

She risked a peek at the baby in her cousin’s arms and felt a familiar, deep ache. Surely Brig’s parents would have spread the word about their first grandchild. If that had been Molly’s baby, Pop would have trumpeted the news.

As for Brig, she hadn’t heard a word about any wedding, either.

“I didn’t know you were married,” she murmured, unable to stop herself.

“Me? In my line of work? No, I’m not.” He shifted, looking uncomfortable at the reminder that he’d once left Molly. Across the living room the baby, who was being passed around and admired, began to cry. Brig quickly retrieved the tiny bundle and picked up a bulky diaper bag. “Long story,” he said with a harried glance toward the kitchen. “I’ll tell you later. She’s hungry. I need to fix her a bottle. May I—?”

“Follow me,” Molly said with a sinking feeling.

She didn’t usually turn away from people. Right now that meant Brig.

And, to Molly’s utter dismay, a tiny, helpless infant she couldn’t bear to even look at full-on.

* * *

BRIG STOOD IN the kitchen doorway, the diaper bag weighing down one shoulder and Laila fussing in his arms. Two laughing teenagers sat at the table, and Brig watched them swipe red frosting from a lopsided cake.

“Stop that, you two,” Molly said, but her tone was laced with affection. “I’m no gourmet chef, and you’re not helping my cake appear any better.” She smiled. “My cousins,” she told Brig. “Second cousins.”

Crooked or not, the cake made Brig’s mouth water. The whole room smelled of comfort foods: fried chicken, baked beans laced with brown sugar and onions, and, if Brig wasn’t mistaken, his favorite macaroni and cheese.

Red heart decals—the same kind Molly wore on her face—skipped gaily across the kitchen chairs, and in the dining room on his way through, a green balloon had bounced from the ceiling on his head.

He didn’t belong here. This was like all those birthday parties he’d gone to as a kid but had never felt part of. As though he’d forgotten to bring a present. With a father in the military, he and his parents had lived all over, and making friends became harder and harder as Brig grew older. It was the only life he knew and one reason he’d followed in his father’s and grandfather’s footsteps. Now, after hearing Dari and Pashto being spoken every day in Afghanistan, even the cadence of English sounded foreign to him. Brig kept losing words in what was being said.

Molly, on the other hand, fit right in. She handed the boy and girl a bowl of potato salad and a relish tray from the fridge. “Set these in the dining room, please.”

When the giggling pair vanished, she waved Brig toward a chair.

“Sit. You look like you need to.”

Brig put down the diaper bag but stayed on his feet, gently rocking Laila in his arms. His head ached.

All he wanted was sleep. All Molly wanted, he guessed, was to avoid him. She hadn’t taken one real good look at the baby, either, and like a cat, Molly maintained a deliberate space between herself and him. Obviously, she hadn’t forgiven him for breaking their engagement years ago. Not that she should. Not that he expected her to.

At the same time he couldn’t seem to stop staring at her. The instant he’d seen her, his memories and his guilt had overwhelmed him. His gaze traveled now from her blunt-cut brown hair—shorter than he remembered—to her trim sweater, her fitted jeans and her feet in scarlet socks. But the red heart by her mouth was what kept his eyes riveted. Thick honey seemed to flow through him. And what kind of jerk am I? Molly, with her warmth and openness, had always deserved more.

“Do you have formula?” she asked, still keeping her distance.

It took Brig forever to find a can in the overloaded bag, a clean plastic liner for the bottle and one fresh nipple. Juggling Laila, he managed to put the whole contraption together. Then, Molly eyeing him with obvious suspicion as he walked past her, he opened the microwave and stuck it inside. One minute should do it. He hoped.

Right behind him, Molly almost stepped on his heel.

“You can’t warm a baby’s milk in there.”

“Why not?”

“The bottle might feel cool to the touch, but the milk could be too hot in spots and burn a baby’s mouth and throat.” With an efficiency he could only admire, she took the bottle to the sink and held it under the water. When she seemed satisfied with the temperature, Molly thrust the bottle at Brig. “Shake some on your inner wrist before you give it to her—to make sure.”

He sat down at the table, tried to nestle Laila into a good position, then watched her latch on to the nipple. He could hear the party noise swell from the living room, and the teenagers in the dining room were still giggling. When he glanced up, Molly was all but tapping her foot at his incompetence.

He knew she adored children, but how did she know about babies?

Brig guessed it was time to explain what he was doing with one. Or try to.

“This is Laila,” he began. “She’s two months old.” He smiled down at the baby’s intent expression as she drank, her dark eyes fixed on his face. He cleared his throat. “She isn’t mine, in case you’re wondering....” He trailed off, reluctant to call up the painful memories.

Molly waited for him to go on.

After a long moment Brig tried again. “I was on duty overseas. Hush-hush stuff, flying under the radar, the kind of thing we always do.” It was one reason he’d left Molly. He hadn’t wanted to worry about her worrying about him. At least, that was what he’d told himself then. “Long story short, Laila’s dad was one of my men, one of the team. Sean...fell in love there with a local woman.”

“And they had Laila,” Molly guessed.

Brig nodded, still gazing down at the baby. Her tiny hand closed around his little finger, and his heart melted, which happened about ten times a day.

“They had Laila,” he echoed, his tone husky. “Then, while she was still in the hospital with her mother after the birth, a bunch of insurgents hit the place. Boom. In the bombing, Laila’s mom died instantly.” He paused. “Her name was Zada. You know what that means?”

“No.”

“The lucky one. But that day she wasn’t so lucky...and Sean lived just long enough to make sure Laila was okay.”

Molly’s eyes had softened. “This must be hard to talk about. You don’t have to go on, Brig.”

Why was he surprised at her words? Molly had always been sensitive to other people. Once, she’d even been sensitive to him. Now he swallowed the pain that sometimes threatened to consume him. His anger over Sean and Zada was easier to feel and just as hard to forget.

“But I ask you, Molly—what kind of thing was that? A man goes to see his wife, his new daughter, the happiest kind of day for a young couple in love—a family for the first time—and he ends up dead. They do,” he added.

Molly seemed to be holding her breath. “What about the baby? How did Laila survive that ghastly explosion?”

“The nurses claimed they wanted to give Sean and Zada some time together. They took the baby back to the nursery at the other end of the building minutes before the device went off. She didn’t get a scratch, which is a miracle in itself. I spent the past two months entangled in red tape before I got permission to bring Laila to the States.”

Molly’s gaze brightened, as if a light had been turned on. “Your friend...asked you to keep her. If anything happened to him.”

Brig nodded again. “We all make wills,” he said, “before we deploy. Kind of a downer, wouldn’t you say? But necessary when you think about it. I’m officially Laila’s guardian now. Not the best choice of ‘parent’ for her in my opinion, but, yes, I promised Sean. Who would have guessed that he and Zada would both...that Laila...” How was Brig going to care for the little girl, though? She could stay with his folks when he was in the field, as they’d already agreed, but that arrangement would be temporary, and now he had to find them first.

Molly briefly touched his arm. “You’ve had a really bad time.”

“Not just me,” he said, wanting to change the subject before he totally fell apart. “I’m sorry about your husband. Mom told me.”

There was another long silence while Molly appeared to gather herself, and Brig wondered if she felt as uneasy talking about this as he had about Sean and Zada.

“Thank you,” she said at last, her voice husky. “Andrew was a great guy.”

And I wasn’t. She had a point, even unspoken. Brig couldn’t fault her for not wanting to dredge up her sorrow. But still he went on.

“I remember Andrew Darling from school,” Brig said, “but I didn’t know him very well. He was a couple of years ahead of me. Two, I think. He always seemed quiet, but he was friendly. A serious kind of guy.”

“He had this laugh, though,” she said. “It always surprised me—when he wasn’t the type for surprises. We were a lot alike, really, I guess. He was so steady, settled...”

Not like me.

The next words almost stuck in his throat. “Were you happy, Molly?”

He needed to hear her say yes, so he wouldn’t continue to feel guilty for leaving. Yet he dreaded hearing her say just that.

“We were,” she said at last, “but not nearly long enough. While we were together, yes, we were happy. Can we stop talking about this now?”

She fell silent, as if lost in her memories, and Brig knew again that the topic would have been better left alone. Like Sean and Zada. Still, this was his and Molly’s starting point. A crazy sort of catching up.

In the next second Brig stiffened. Warmth had spread through his sleeve. But not from the touch of Molly’s hand, which had dropped from his arm. He held out Laila and saw a widening stain on the fabric.

“She’s wet,” Molly noted with that little frown he remembered so well. “When was her diaper changed?”

Already feeling guilty, Brig checked his watch. “About five hours ago.”

“Five hours?”

“On the hard floor in the customs area at JFK while we waited for our bags. I never had time between planes to buy more diapers, and at Frankfurt we ran low. I’ve been rationing Laila’s changes.”

Molly’s soft eyes had turned steely, and her face appeared pale under the festive red heart stuck to her face.

Both he and the baby must look like dirty laundry, wrinkled and thrown together. Now they were both damp and not getting any drier. To Brig, that meant he was losing his grip on the situation—which had happened the first time Laila had screamed on the military cargo plane out of Bagram airfield near Kabul.

“Overseas,” he said, “a local woman took care of Laila while I took care of business. Guess I’m not doing so well now.”

Molly raised an eyebrow. Her expression challenged every one of his insecurities.

“You can use the spare room upstairs to change her.”

Brig could hear the doubt in her tone, and his male pride kicked in. Their brief rapport—if it had even been that—was over. And here he’d thought he and Molly were doing okay as long as they avoided any mention of his betrayal of her.

“You think I can’t change a diaper?” he asked icily.

That was pretty close to the truth.

Not waiting for her answer, he took Laila, the half-finished bottle, and stalked out of the room.

* * *

“WONDERFUL,” MOLLY MUTTERED. “Why not just give a lecture or four or five to a man who’s already half dead on his feet?”

And clearly hurting. The loss of his teammate and the orphaned child had shaken Brig. Just as Brig’s questions about Andrew and Molly’s marriage had shaken her.

She had noted the weary slump of his broad shoulders, and how he held the baby to him like a security blanket.

But Molly pushed aside the observations. There was a party going on, and for the next few hours she had to play hostess. With the rain still falling, she supervised the younger children’s game of indoor tag. She refereed a fight over a TV basketball game. Pop should have known better than to get involved. She comforted her teenage cousin’s angst and soothed toddler tears.

She taught four-year-old Ernie Barlow how to play pin the tail on the donkey—or, rather, on a SpongeBob SquarePants poster—then pretended not to see how her sister, Ann, ignored Ernie’s dad, a new local sheriff’s deputy who seemed to have a thing for her.

And Molly tried not to notice that Brig never came back downstairs to eat or to show off the baby.

By evening, when the festivities wound down, the house resembled a giant trash basket filled with broken toys and exploded balloons. As her guests prepared to leave, every child under the age of five was crying—a sure sign in Molly’s experience of too much stimulation and total but happy exhaustion. For everyone but Molly, the party had been a huge success.

After all the guests left, she hurried upstairs. She found Brig in the spare room, where her offer to heat a late supper for him died on her lips. Brig lay sprawled on the double bed, sound asleep. Clearly he was down for the count. His face told her nothing, which was probably what he wanted after Molly’s earlier criticism. Lying beside him, with Brig’s arm over her like an anchor, the baby stared wide-eyed at the overhead light, flinching each time thunder rumbled in the night sky.

Now at last Molly gave in to the urge churning inside her during the party and slipped to her knees next to the bed. Brig must have dozed off in the midst of dressing Laila for the night. Her right arm was in one sleeve of an aquamarine sleeper, the other, still bare, waved in the air. Half the snaps on the sleeper were undone.

“You giving your old man a hard time?” Molly whispered.

At the sound of her voice, Laila turned her head as if searching for her. Molly reached out, brushing Brig’s arm without meaning to, and quickly touched the baby’s silky hair. Laila’s gaze, dark as a midnight sea, met hers.