Convincing the Rancher (35 page)

“Would you like some iced tea?” Prim and proper and not at all what she wanted to ask. She wanted to be direct, tell him he had no business here. That he needed to leave. Something held her back.

Alex shook his head and Paige motioned him to sit at the island counter while she refreshed her glass. She wasn’t thirsty but it was something to do with her hands so she fussed with slices of lemon and added more ice before putting the pitcher back into the fridge.

Finally there was nothing left to do so she turned back to the man at the counter, trying to ignore the assessing way he watched her. Despite the casual clothes, Alex Ryan was the mirror image of everything she had left behind in her parents’ home, from the set of his shoulders to the judgment she saw in the thin line of his mouth. Rigid standards and rules she could never live up to. Expectations that had left her heartbroken and wounded. She didn’t need his approval, she reminded herself. It wasn’t like she’d asked him to come into her home and disrupt her life.

It wasn’t as if she’d had his permission to use his semen, either.

The clinic sent a file with his pertinent information, but Paige couldn’t force herself to read it. A small piece of her had hoped that if she ignored the report the man would ignore her. Now she wished she had read it cover to cover instead of putting it in her bottom desk drawer.

Her gaze caught on the picture of Kaylie at her fourth birthday party, cake frosting up to her eyebrows, princess crown askew, charging after the boys with her blue lightsaber.

Kaylie was the reason for all of this. Paige had wanted a family, so much so that on her twenty-fourth birthday she’d decided to take life by the horns and create the family she dreamed of. The sweet, smart, silly girl was everything Paige needed. No men needed to apply and since Kaylie had been born, not even a handful had stuck around through dinner.

And here was one more. A man so afraid of commitment he hadn’t known whether to get out of his car or run screaming into the warm Missouri afternoon.

No, that was unfair. She didn’t know anything about Alex Ryan.

A man so gorgeous the rebellious part of Paige, the part of her she couldn’t get rid of no matter how much she tried to pretend it didn’t exist, was glad her daughter wasn’t here. Wanted to flirt. Wished they’d met at a bar or under any other circumstances so that she could flirt and touch and see if the attraction she felt for him, he felt for her, too.

She glanced at her watch. Just over an hour until her best friend, Alison, would bring Kaylie back from her swim lesson at the rec center. The principal at her school required impromptu meetings now and then; today Alison was able to step in and help Paige. She was grateful. Alison was her biggest supporter and cheerleader. Paige hated missing the lesson, but Alison liked playing auntie for Kaylie from time to time. This introduction needed to get moving and get over with because, until she knew exactly what Alex Ryan’s intentions were, he was not getting anywhere near her daughter.

“So, this is awkward.” She blurted the words out, not sure where else to start. “We have a child together but I don’t know anything about you.”

He offered her a half smile, making his eyes crinkle at the corners and accentuating a little scar at the corner of his full lips. The tension she’d felt when he’d brushed past her ratcheted up a notch and she admitted to herself it wasn’t fear at all. It was flat-out excitement. Want. She couldn’t remember the last time she’d felt such an instant attraction to a man. Attraction was bad. Very, very bad. Attraction meant throwing all her rules about relationships out the window. Attraction led to mistakes and mistakes could hurt Kaylie.

Hurt Paige.

She gulped some tea, hoping it would put out the sizzle of heat that seemed to grow with every second Alex was in her kitchen.

He shrugged, the motion defining his upper arms—as if they needed more definition—and her heart seemed to skip a beat. “I always figured if I were to have a conversation like this it would be because of a drunken night in Cabo, not because a fertility clinic marked my, uh, sample, as ‘anonymous donor’ rather than ‘IVF candidate.’” He gave a chuckle, and the deep sound sent another hot zing across her nerve endings, as if her ears were now an erogenous zone.

She was going to need a lot more than tea.
Focus on the tea,
she ordered herself. But the way his muscular arms filled out his short sleeves was an even bigger distraction. She focused on a picture of Kaylie on the back wall, her daughter smiling at the camera with Mickey Mouse ears atop her head.

That did it. Seeing her baby’s smiling face did more for Paige’s focus than the past fifteen minutes of ordering herself around had. Kaylie was important—not Paige’s hormones.

“So, you weren’t a donor?” Once more she cursed herself for not reading the clinic file on Alex. The lawyer merely told her that the man whose donation she’d used would like to contact her. Over the next ten minutes, which seemed to take ten hours, Paige had worried he was contacting her to tell her he had cancer or AIDS or some congenital disease that might affect her precious girl.

Learning he only wanted to meet her was almost a relief until the implications hit her. He only wanted to meet her so that he could be part of Kaylie’s life.

“No, my wife and I were IVF candidates. It was after the first embryos were implanted that we learned she had cancer.” Sadness flickered in his eyes. “The embryos didn’t result in pregnancy and we decided everything, even the precautionary donations I made, should be destroyed.”

Thank God, he had a wife. Thank God she hadn’t made a move on him. Wait, a wife. And cancer. She sucked in a deep breath, ignoring the instinct pushing her to reach out to him.

“I didn’t realize you were married.” There, her voice sounded normal.

He smiled, but instead of crinkling his eyes, it left them bleak. “She died. Just over three years ago,” he said. Paige reached across the counter, brushing her hand across his and mentally castigating herself for the little snap of attraction at the contact. He was a widower, for crying out loud, and this was her kitchen, not the Low Bar. They were discussing the possibility of him creating a relationship with her daughter—not with her.

And, damn it, why couldn’t she keep her hands to herself? This man was a stranger who would mess up the pretty, uncomplicated life she’d created. He didn’t need her pity and she certainly didn’t need to feel this overwhelming need to comfort him.

She squeezed his hand. “I’m so sorry.” It was no wonder he’d come looking for her. No, for Kaylie. His wife died, then he learned his sperm was used and a child came of it. He was probably trying to recapture some of the joy he’d expected when he and his wife began IVF treatments.

And she still didn’t want him to mess with her kid, but this wasn’t some frat guy who suddenly decided to see if he had any progeny. This was a man willing to go through IVF and who knew what else with his late wife so they could have a child.

That was commitment.

This time the clench in her belly was less attraction and more fear. How could she share her daughter with a virtual stranger? A stranger who was the antithesis of everything she had decided she wanted when she left home.

“It was a long time ago,” he said, his deep brown eyes focused on her, as if he could see through the paint-splattered tee to the heart beating erratically beneath. Paige shifted, suddenly uncomfortable in her favorite tee.

“What is it that you want from me? Us?”

“Honestly, I don’t know. I couldn’t not try to find you, not after the clinic called.”

Not what she wanted to hear. Or was it? If he didn’t know what he wanted, maybe this one meeting would be enough. Maybe her world didn’t have to change.

“You work in the parks?”

“Ranger, so most of my days are spent hiking. Making sure the streams aren’t overfished. That kind of thing.”

“That explains the tan, then.” Paige’s eyes widened. “Not that I thought you were lazy or anything. I mean, you’re here in the middle of the afternoon but—” There was no way to recover. Alex laughed.

“Not even my closest friends call my job a ‘job.’ And the best part of it is that I’m not stuck behind a desk and I rarely have to wear a suit.”

“Both definite pluses, I suppose.” Paige laughed with him. Laughing got her through a lot of days, especially those when Kaylie was whiny or needed every second of attention Paige had. “I’m a teacher, so no suits, either. Although I regularly come home with paint or chalk all over me.”

“What grade?”

“Elementary school, art, actually. So I get to hang with the kids for an hour, do fun stuff and then send them back to homeroom.”

“You don’t look old enough to be a teacher.” Was that appreciation in his gaze? He watched her for a moment and Paige forgot to breathe. Then, the look was gone and he was just a guy sitting in her kitchen. A gorgeous guy, but just a guy. He cocked his head to the side and a half smile spread across his face, stretching that tiny scar near his mouth until it almost disappeared. “From what I remember all my teachers, kindergarten on, wore orthopedic shoes, had gray hair and liked to smack at my hands with a ruler.”

Nope, not just a guy. Alex Ryan was dangerous from the tips of his tawny hair to the soles of his booted feet. And all the muscled, tanned areas in between.

“I assure you twenty-nine is old enough to be a teacher. For the record, you don’t look like those grumpy old guys in the Smokey the Bear hats, either.” He scrunched his eyes together, as if searching for something. Some kind of common ground, maybe. She would certainly like to find some.

“I’m thirty-two. Born and raised in Park Hills.” He mentioned a town only a few miles from Bonne Terre. Paige had driven through it many times in her life. “I’m surprised we’ve never run into one another.”

Paige wasn’t. Her parents had sent her to a private school near St. Louis when she was ten, telling her she deserved a better education than she would find in a small town. Then, at sixteen, they’d tired of her antics altogether and sent her to a Swiss boarding school known for discipline and year-round school. During the rare summer or winter breaks when she was allowed to come home, she made sure her parents knew she was there. Dating the wrong guys, ignoring curfews, whatever it took to make them notice her. But that wasn’t the conversation that would get them on more even footing.

“My parents sent me to boarding school. I was rarely here as a teenager.” It wasn’t a lie, just an omission of all the facts that might leave Alex with a bad impression of her. Paige reached for another glass. “Are you sure you don’t want tea? A soda?”

“Water?”

Paige nodded and filled the glass with ice and water, adding a slice of lemon at the last moment. Alex plucked the lemon from the glass and sucked it between his full lips, drawing out the juice. Her belly clenched at the action and Paige swallowed hard.

He sat up a little straighter and dropped the wedge back into his glass. “Sorry. Habit. I like lemons.”

So did Kaylie. She waved the apology away and hoped she hadn’t been looking at him like a missing hiker desperate for water.

“You’re a park ranger. I’m a teacher. How did we wind up here?”

Alex shook his head. “I’ve been asking myself that very question since the lawyer called.” He took her hand in his, held it for a long moment, and the world seemed to stop moving. The ticking of the kitchen clock faded into the distance. The breeze that had been blowing through her windows stopped billowing through the curtains. She forgot to breathe for a long moment. “When the lawyer called I didn’t want to know her. I didn’t want to know that she’s four years old. But now all I can think about is when is her birthday and what cereal does she like for breakfast and can she spell her name yet? Do kids even know how to spell at four?”

One meeting would not be enough, not with those kinds of questions, Paige realized.

The kitchen timer beeped, usually a reminder to put her paints away and start dinner for Kaylie. And just like that Paige’s world started spinning again, this time reminding her to finish this meeting and get Alex out of her house. He had so many questions, and none were what she had expected when the lawyer had called or when she’d looked out her window and seen the unfamiliar truck parked on her curb.

That didn’t mean she had all the answers; not yet, anyway.

“Not all kids can spell at four, but she can.” She withdrew her hand from his grasp because, while he seemed to be the opposite of every commitment-phobic man she’d ever known, that didn’t make him good date material. Getting a handle on this weird attraction she felt had to be her first priority. She tucked her hair behind her ear and busied herself with the empty paper-towel container. “Well, a few words.
Bat
,
cat,
that kind of thing. And she can count to thirty without mixing up too many of the numbers.”

Paige blew out a breath and then bit the corner of her lip. She took the picture of Kaylie off the windowsill and held it out. “This is her, last May on her birthday. She is kind and smart and the way she sees the world is...so funny.” Alex took the frame, holding it so tight the tips of his fingers turned white. “I know I’m biased because I’m her mom but she’s just...the best.” Paige bit her lower lip again. The impulse to ask him to stay, to get that first meeting over with was nearly too much to bear. He looked so lost and confused sitting at her counter and gazing at the picture of her—and his—daughter.

But her impulses had gotten her into plenty of trouble in her life and she’d learned to push them away.

Paige was Kaylie’s mom and not this man’s girlfriend or confidante. She would not fix his problems by endangering Kaylie’s stable world.

“What does she know about her father?”

“She’s never really asked so I haven’t told her anything. All the pictures in her baby book are of me and her. I thought I would cross Daddy Bridge when she started to ask questions.”

He traced his index finger along the image of Kaylie chasing the boys and smiled, a softer smile this time. No self-deprecation. No sadness. A sweet smile that she’d felt on her own face when Kaylie said her first word and took her first step.