Czytaj książkę: «Special Forces Father»

Chapter One

“It’s princess hair.”

Really bad princess hair, Dani Cooper thought as she looked at herself in the hand mirror that her four-year-old hairstylist Evie Freelander brought her.

But she said, “Oh, I feel like a princess now.”

“That’s not princess hair,” Evie’s twin brother, Grady, decreed when he looked up from his coloring book to assess his sister’s work. “Princess hair looks pretty.”

“It’s pretty because Dani is pretty!” Evie insisted.

“Thank you,” Dani said with a laugh, turning her head from side to side to get the full view of her long dark mahogany hair. Evie had attempted to braid four different clumps of it and then secured those clumps with neon hair clips haphazardly around her head.

Dani had applied light makeup that April morning to accentuate her golden-brown eyes, her thin nose and her full lips, and that was still in place this evening, but she was glad no one outside the Freelander home would be seeing her like this.

“Okay, clean up now,” she said. “It’s time for our ten-minute dance party to get the wiggles out, and then it’s pajamas and your wind-down for bed.”

“Dance party!” Grady shouted, quickly putting his markers in their box while Evie made a face and fell back on the sofa as if in a faint.

“Can Grady help me?” she moaned.

After three years as the twins’ nanny, Dani knew this routine. “Nope,” she answered Evie. “Grady is picking up his stuff and you need to pick up yours. Or we’ll dance without you!” she finished with a cheery reminder of what the consequences would be.

Evie groaned again, sat up as if it was a chore for her and gathered the mirror, toy hairbrush and what remained of the clips to put away.

“I’ll meet you in the dance room,” Dani called after them when they headed for their rooms to return their things.

The Freelander house was a large, starkly contemporary structure of glass, steel and concrete. It sat far back on a huge lot at the end of a cul-de-sac in one of Denver’s upscale gated communities in the Cherry Creek area. The distance from the street allowed for some privacy despite the undraped windows that comprised almost the entire front of the house.

The twins’ mother had taken ballet lessons several times a week as her workout and the in-home studio occupied one of the front-facing rooms. The kids liked to cut loose there. They got a kick out of the echo. So that was where Dani let them have their dance parties.

As she went into the dark room she could see outside, where the curved drive was illuminated by in-ground lighting. But the minute she turned on the lights the windows reflected only inside the room.

She got the music started just as the four-year-olds ran back in.

“Ready?” she asked them before all three of them launched into some free-form jumping, footwork and wiggling around that amounted to wild gyrations more than anything that resembled dancing.

Their ten minutes were nearly up when the doorbell rang.

Dani’s friend Bryan had said he might stop by tonight after the kids were asleep, so she hadn’t yet turned on the security system. He was early.

At the sound of the doorbell the dancing stopped and, as Dani turned off the music, both kids went to the window, where they bracketed their eyes with their hands and pressed their faces to the glass to see out.

“It’s a so-dyer,” Grady announced.

“A soldier?” Dani repeated the word he’d mispronounced.

“It is,” Evie confirmed.

With the twins following behind, Dani left the studio and went to the marble entry hall, certain that the eight-foot-high steel front door was locked. Beside the door were an intercom and a small screen that displayed the images picked up by the camera outside.

“You’re right, it is a soldier,” she mused, convinced by the officer’s service uniform and the straight, stiff military stance of their visitor that made him look as if he were at attention out there.

She pushed the button on the intercom and said, “Can I help you?”

“I’m Liam Madison. I got a message from someone named Dani Cooper. I’m looking for the Freelander house...”

Ohhh, she knew the name Liam Madison.

Not the man but the name.

But since she didn’t know the man and she was very protective of the twins, she said, “Do you have some identification?”

He produced a military ID, complete with a picture, and held it up to the camera.

Holy cow, he was handsome!

And that was only his ID picture.

She’d been distracted by the uniform, but when he took the ID away from the camera lens she took in the sight of his face, realizing that he was definitely hella-handsome. He also was, indeed, Liam Madison, and since it was Dani who had reached out to him, and the twins who were in need of him, she unlocked the door and opened it.

“Hi,” she said simply, taking in what neither the four-inch security screen nor the ID picture had done justice to.

Not only was the guy gorgeous, he was also over six feet tall, broad shouldered, toned and muscular. His hair was closely cropped and the color of unsweetened chocolate. His face was a masterpiece of chiseled bone that gave him refined cheekbones, a sharp jawline, a sculpted chin and a nose that was kept from being completely perfect by a bit of a boney bridge. He had slightly thin lips, and the bluest eyes she’d ever seen, streaked by silver to make them even more remarkable.

“I’m Dani Cooper,” she introduced.

“Ma’am,” he said formally to acknowledge the introduction.

“This is a surprise,” she said.

“I was granted an emergency family leave and just got off a plane at Buckley Air Force Base.”

“Even though you’re a—”

“Marine. Yes, ma’am.”

“Is he a so-dyer?” Grady asked, hiding behind Dani while Evie stood to one side of her.

“Soldiers are army,” he corrected.

He got points for understanding the word, but getting so technical with a four-year-old only made Dani smile.

Just before she remembered what Evie had done to her hair and how she looked meeting this man for the first time.

But if he’d noticed that she was unsightly there was no evidence of it. And there was nothing she could do about it now, so she merely said, “This is Grady and this is Evie,” nodding to each child in turn. “Guys, this was a friend of your mom’s. His name is Liam.”

Any mention of their late parents sobered them and this was no exception.

“Say hello,” she prompted when neither the kids nor Liam Madison responded to the introduction.

“H’lo,” both children parroted, eyeing him somberly the way they did all strangers.

“Nice to meet you,” the marine said as much by rote as the kids’ greeting had been.

It occurred to Dani just then that she’d kept their guest outside long enough. She invited him in and dispatched the twins to put on their pajamas.

“Get your blankets for wind-down and I’ll bring your yogurts and milk in just a minute,” she instructed as Liam Madison stepped across the threshold to stand at attention inside rather than out.

Hella-handsome but not warm and fuzzy. Dani was familiar with that military-instilled rigidity.

As the kids bounded out of the entry she closed the door, motioned behind her with a thumb over her shoulder and said, “Why don’t we talk in the kitchen? I’ll be able to hear them better from there.”

The marine nodded curtly and followed her as she led him in the same direction the kids had gone, to the rear of the expansive house.

“Can I get you something to eat or drink?” she asked along the way.

“Thank you, no. But you could tell me who you are, exactly.”

Like the rest of the house, the kitchen was industrial, and she offered him a seat on one of the metal bar stools at the stainless steel island in the center of it.

He didn’t accept the offer, remaining standing at one end of the island while Dani went behind it and got out bowls, spoons and glasses, and then took yogurt and milk from the fridge.

“I’ve been Evie and Grady’s nanny since they turned a year old and switched from a baby-nurse. Well, I’ve been their primary nanny. There was one who came in at bedtime for overnights, and another for the weekends. But after the accident—”

“What kind of accident?” he interrupted. “Your message said that’s how Audrey and her husband died but you didn’t give any details.”

Dani had no idea what kind of feelings this man might still have for Audrey, so she trod lightly when she answered. “It was a car wreck. I don’t know what you know about Owen, Audrey’s husband...”

“When she ended things with me she just said she’d met someone else,” he said matter-of-factly, giving no indication that he had any lingering resentments. Or tender feelings either.

“Owen Freelander was an acclaimed architect. He designed and built this place—it was his showpiece. His crowning glory just before he retired.”

“Retired?”

“He was a lot older than Audrey. He’d just turned sixty-eight a few weeks before the accident.”

“Sixty-eight?” the marine repeated in surprise. “Audrey was a year younger than I am so she was thirty-one... Her husband was thirty-seven years older?”

“He seemed like a young sixty-eight, but there was definitely an age difference. And even though he also seemed healthy, he had a heart attack driving home that night three weeks ago. He died when he lost control of the car and hit a tree. Audrey was critically injured. She only lived for two days...”

Still unsure how the marine felt about her late employer, Dani paused a moment and then said, “I’m sorry.”

“It’s a shock—this whole thing is a shock—but I haven’t seen or heard from Audrey in over five years. I didn’t wish her any harm but I moved on a long time ago. I don’t think I’m in line for condolences.”

Dani nodded as she finished spooning yogurt into bowls. “Audrey lived just long enough to tell me about you, to ask me to try to contact you to take the twins.”

“Because I’m their father?”

The guy seemed tough as nails until he said that, and Dani heard an underlying note in his voice, clueing her in to how dumbfounded and unsettled he really was by the prospect.

“She told me that she knew she was pregnant when she broke up with you but there was something about a phone call when she hadn’t been able to talk to you for months? Whatever you said to her made her know that was how it would always be?”

“I’m Force Recon... Reconnaissance... That’s US Marine Special Forces. When I’m on a mission I’m out of touch. I can’t be reached. That’s how it had been for a while before I had the chance to call her, after we’d seen each other the last time. It’s how every mission is, how my next mission was going to be. And I never know how long a mission will take. Plus I couldn’t ever tell her where I was or what I was doing either. She couldn’t know anything,” he explained. “No one can.”

“Well, I guess that conversation, learning that, convinced her that she didn’t want a relationship anymore with someone who wasn’t available to her. She’d found out that she was having twins. She’d met Owen and he wanted her to marry him. He was even willing to claim the babies as his own. Owen’s name is on the birth certificates as Evie and Grady’s dad.” Dani said that last part gently because she also had no idea how it might affect him.

He scowled but she wasn’t sure whether that was out of anger or hurt or what. But since he didn’t say anything, she went on answering his initial question about who she was.

“Anyway, Audrey told me that you—not Owen—are the twins’ father. She knew she wasn’t going to make it and neither Audrey nor Owen had any family to turn to for the kids. She said you were all they would have left and that I needed to let you know about them. To try to contact you through the marines...”

He was still just frowning, saying nothing, so she merely continued.

“There wasn’t even a guardian named in their wills, so when Audrey passed, Evie and Grady became wards of the state. But I just couldn’t see them go into foster care. I sent you that message right away and talked to Owen’s attorney so he could approach the court to ask that I be named the twins’ temporary guardian. I told the judge what Audrey had confessed about you, and that I’d sent you word, and asked that they let me do whatever needed to be done so Evie and Grady could at least stay at home, with a familiar face, until this gets sorted through. So that’s who I am—formerly their nanny, now their guardian.”

“We’re ready,” Evie called.

“I’ll be right back,” Dani said, taking a tray with the bowls of yogurt and the glasses of milk across the kitchen to the stairs that led to the children’s portion of the house. It was four steps down from the main floor and devoted to the twins’ bedrooms and a nanny’s suite she was using. There was also a play area and a living room complete with the kids’ own entertainment center.

“Is that man still here?” Grady whispered as she got them set up to watch the animated shows they were allowed before bed.

“He is. We’re talking in the kitchen if you need me.”

“He’s kinda scary,” Evie whispered, too.

“You don’t need to be scared of him. Remember he was a friend of your mom’s. She wouldn’t have been friends with him if there was anything to be scared about, would she?”

There was no answer, so Dani said, “She wouldn’t have been. I think he’s just a little sad that she’s gone—like we all are.”

Their expressions were skeptical but they were more interested in getting to the cartoons, so she started those and left them to watch while she returned to the kitchen and Liam Madison standing where she’d left him.

“So...” she said when she got there, hoping to prompt him to say something.

“It’s been over five years. Not a word, not a hint that I have kids...” he said.

“Yeah...” Dani debated whether or not to address that. Then she decided that he needed the whole story so she said, “Audrey told me that she’d planned never to tell you. She said when she met Owen he was at a time in his life when he regretted that he’d put everything into his career and didn’t have any family. She said you weren’t in a position to be a dad, and she had been afraid to raise kids on her own. She said Owen could be there for them all, that he could take care of the three of them, and that was something she needed. Something she wanted—to be taken care of...”

“That sounds like her,” he acknowledged. “She wasn’t the most strong or independent person.”

And there he was, as strong as they came and exuding the ability to protect. Knowing the kind of woman Audrey had been, Dani could see how she would have been drawn to that. Until she’d had to face the fact that he wouldn’t be around for long periods of time to fill that role.

Dani watched the marine take a deep breath and exhale slowly. “When I got your message I called my older brother. He’s here, in Denver. He got me a lawyer. The lawyer says the first thing that needs to be done is to prove that I am the father. There needs to be a DNA test.”

“The court will need that, too, or they won’t even consider giving you custody... If custody is what you want...”

He didn’t confirm that was what he wanted.

Instead, in a clipped, just-stating-the-facts voice, he said, “The timing tracks. I know it’s possible that I fathered Audrey’s kids. I don’t know that anything would have ever worked out between Audrey and me—there weren’t any plans, and we were just having fun—but if those kids are mine...”

There was resignation in that, but he wasn’t jumping for joy at the possibility.

“I’ll do what’s right,” he ultimately admitted.

“And what’s right might just be finding them a good, loving home with people who want them...” She felt the need to say it. After all, she was there to make sure the kids ended up in the best home possible, and she wasn’t convinced that even a biological father was the right choice if that man wasn’t thrilled with being a parent to them.

“I’ve thought about it, though,” he went on. “And even if they aren’t mine... Well, I considered Audrey a friend—”

A friend with benefits, apparently, Dani thought. But she didn’t say it.

“—and I know she didn’t have anyone. So even if her kids aren’t mine, I want to make sure that they’re taken care of in the best way possible. That they aren’t just left in a bad situation.”

That was commendable.

“And if they are mine,” he continued, “I should get to know them.”

“That’s probably a good idea,” she agreed. Especially since Audrey hadn’t seemed to have any doubt whatsoever that the twins were his.

“So... I don’t know... What would you say to me maybe coming here to stay with the three of you? That way I could help out with them, too, learn some of the ropes, just in case...” His dark eyebrows arched suddenly, showing how baffled he was by this whole thing. “This place is huge and I can bunk anywhere you’d be comfortable with... If you would be comfortable with sharing a place with a complete stranger.”

Dani had to think about that. He was right. She would be agreeing to share a house with a complete stranger. A big, muscular, handsome-as-all-get-out stranger. None of which told her that he was a person she could trust.

On the other hand, Audrey really hadn’t left any question that he was the twins’ father. He’d come from who knew where the minute he’d learned that he might have kids. And while he was obviously shaken by the news, he was still willing to take responsibility whether or not the kids were his, to make sure they were well taken care of.

None of those things spoke of character she shouldn’t—or couldn’t—trust. At least enough to put him in one of the rooms on the upper levels of the house.

And she did think that it would be good for the kids to get to know him. It would be a good idea for her to check him out, too, in case it came to handing Evie and Grady over to him.

“I think it would probably be okay,” she said then. “I’m staying in a room downstairs near the kids, but there are four empty bedrooms up another floor from here, and a guest suite that’s in that sort of box that sits a level higher than that—”

“I wondered what that was. It looks like a tower for an air traffic controller.”

“I know. It’s nice, though. Plush. Plus the view is something to see and there’s a deck to go out onto. The kids and I went up there to watch the city’s fireworks display last summer and it was like being in the sky at eye level with them. Unless you don’t like heights...”

“I’m fine with heights,” he informed her as if there shouldn’t have been any question.

“There’s also an elevator up to it if you don’t want to climb all the stairs,” Dani added.

“I think I’ll be fine with the stairs, too,” he said in the same way he’d said he didn’t have a problem with heights.

And of course he would be all right with the stairs with thighs the size of tree trunks inside those uniform pants, she thought.

But what she said was, “Do you want to stay tonight?”

“My brother and his fiancée are expecting me tonight. I haven’t seen any of my family in over ten months, so I need to check in. But tomorrow—”

“Sure, you can just move in whenever you’re ready.”

He switched gears then. “According to my lawyer we can go to a doctor or to a lab for the DNA tests—it’s just a couple of mouth swabs—but it has to go through channels in order for the court to accept it. The twins must have a doctor, right? I was thinking that if their doctor would do it—somebody they know—they might not be scared. If something like that would scare them... I don’t know.”

But he was thinking of them, of how to make things easiest on them, and Dani appreciated that. “I can call their pediatrician first thing in the morning and set it up. I’ll try for an appointment tomorrow so we can get it in the works,” she offered.

“Good,” he said with a nod and the return of those arched eyebrows that seemed to give away whenever the possible reality of being a dad struck and rattled him. “I got a cell phone when I hit the States. Let me give you the number.”

He did and Dani gave him hers, assuring him that she would let him know if they could get into the doctor the next day.

“Otherwise, what’s a good time for me to move in tomorrow?”

“The kids’ preschool is closed for spring break this coming week and next so I’ll let them sleep until they wake up on their own—eight o’clock at best. After that tomorrow is pretty open.”

“So maybe we’ll just play it by ear?”

“Sure.”

He nodded, keeping his focus on her so that Dani again remembered how weird she looked and wished she didn’t.

But he still didn’t remark on it or question her about it. Instead, after seeming to apply her appearance to memory, he said, “I’ll take off then, get to my brother’s.” He glanced in the direction of the lower level and said, “Should I say goodbye or something?”

Dani almost smiled at the confusion in his voice that said he was at a complete loss of what to do with kids.

“It’s up to you. If you want to. But they get pretty engrossed in their cartoons at wind-down and I wouldn’t expect too much from them.”

“I like that you just said I’m a friend of their mother’s, though. I wasn’t sure who to say I am...”

“Yeah, let’s just start there. They’ve had a lot to deal with since the accident. Keeping things as simple as possible seems to work best.”

“And if I am their father...we’ll figure out how to say that?”

“We’ll cross that bridge when we come to it.”

“If we come to it.”

So he had some doubts. She supposed he was entitled to that after Audrey kept him in the dark.

Dani walked him to the front door, opening it for him and realizing only then that there was a big, black rented SUV parked in the drive just outside the dance studio, so he must have seen what was going on in there when he arrived.

And thinking about how she just cut loose during dance parties with the kids—all while her hair was in the state it was in tonight—was a little disheartening and a whole lot embarrassing.

But she decided against saying anything and only said good-night.

Then she watched him walk out to his rental, unable not to notice that his backside was as good as his front.

But it didn’t matter. The guy had a lot to deal with, and she was only there to care for, advocate for and protect the twins.

And once that was taken care of, she had decisions of her own to make. Big ones.

So the way he looked didn’t make any difference.