The Tycoon's Toddler Surprise (6 page)

And the result of that intensity was now happily
ensconced
in her father’s arms, chatting away and putting her small,
playground-grubby
hands on his cheeks to regain his attention each time he looked away from her.  Victoria, Kristen realized, was just as intense as her father who had done the exact same thing during their courtship.

Taking a deep breath, she accepted that she would have to approach her estranged husband and introduce him to their daughter, although Victoria was doing a good enough job of that herself.  As usual, she thought.  The little tike didn’t really have a shy bone in her body which was both a blessing and a worry.

“Hello,” she said
to him
when she was about five feet away.  She tried to remember all those speeches she’d come up with in the dark, lonely hours of the night when she fantasized about Mikhail finally acknowledging their existence once again and taking time out from his busy schedule to meet their beautiful and precocious daughter.  But as she tried to think, nothing sprang to mind.  All those speeches, both sarcastic, happy and otherwise, were blown away with his incredible presence. 

It had always been like this, she remembered.  Mikhail had
continually
been so larger than life she could barely think at times.  He wasn’t handsome, but there was an unmistakable power and energy surrounding him.  Co
mbined with his height and that
unmistakable
strength underneath all his perfectly tailored clothes
, not to mention
that sense of danger that told a woman, and a man, that he would crush anyone who stood between him what he wanted, and the combination was devastating.  She’d never been able to resist him. 

Kristen was just glad that Victoria was still in his arms at the moment.  This way, she couldn’t embarrass herself by throwing herself into his arms and sobbing out her anger, fear and happiness at seeing him again. 

“You look good,” she finally got out.

He bowed his head slightly in acknowledgment.  “So do you.”

She thought he was probably being sarcastic since her hair was pulled back into a pony tail high on her head, she had no makeup on and her
navy
blue down-filled jacket covered her from neck to mid-calf.  She flushed with embarrassment and something that frustratingly kindled inside her stomach, something she refused to accept was excitement.  This man had
abandoned
them at a time when she desperately needed him.  She refused to simply throw herself back into his arms until she heard his explanation.  And if he brought up how busy he had been as an excuse, she might just….well, she wasn’t sure what she would do.  A part of her didn’t even want to hear his excuse, afraid it might be more of all the frustrating excuses she’d heard throughout their brief marriage.  She hadn’t accepted them then, and with Victoria in the picture, she definitely wouldn’t accept them now. 

But he was Victoria’s father.  She knew other parents fought over small things that eventually impacted the children and she refused to let that happen with her.  Victoria was too important. 
Kristen knew she
had to rise above being petty so her daughter could get to know her father. 

Taking a deep breath, she smiled up at him in the watery winter sunlight. 
“You look cold.  I know you hate snow and cold weather,” she replied awkwardly.  “Our house is about two blocks away.  We can be warm in about five minutes if we walk quickly.

“We can be warm in thirty seconds if we return to the car waiting behind us,” he snapped.

Kristen’s eyes moved from him to the long, black vehicle running idle in the parking lot beside the park.  With a sigh, she remembered how Mikhail had always had his driver ready and waiting for him.  It had been one of the luxuries she’d enjoyed, and it had been hard to get used to being a normal person again once she’d come to Minnesota, especially during her pregnancy when it would have been wonderful to not walk through parking lots with the extra weight bearing down on her legs and back.  And then with the baby carrier, oh how lovely it would have been to have someone right at the curb each time she’d exited a building. 

Then painful, depressing reality intruded and she grimaced back in his direction. 
She quickly shook her head.  “Do you have a car seat already installed?”

“Of course not,” he quipped back.

“Then Victoria can’t ride in the car.  We’ll walk.”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” he snapped back. “You said it was only two blocks.”

“Too many accidents occur within a ten mile radius of one’s home.  I’m not risking it with Victoria.”  She reached up and took her daughter out of his arms, feeling the resistance a split second before he released their daughter to her arms.  “Come along, Tory.  It’s time for lunch.  How about some nice warm soup?”

Victoria looked at her mother with a squinched up face.  “Not tomato,” she said carefully and
adamantly
. 

Kristen hid her smile, knowing how much her daughter disliked tomato soup.  She’d much prefer chicken noodle soup but since it didn’t have enough nutrients, she got tomato often, much to Tory’s chagrin. 

“We’ll see,” she replied.

Tory turned to her new found father with an obviously irritated expression.  “That means tomato soup,” she explained to Mikhail with a grimace.

If she hadn’t been so nervous, Kristen would have laughed at the shock of amusement that flashed across Mikhail’s features. 

“We’ll see,” Kristen countered and started towards their small house two blocks away.  Mikhail could follow on foot or in the comfort of his car, she didn’t care.  Or at least she tried to convince herself she didn’t care.  In reality, she hoped he would get into his car and meet her at their house so she could have just a few moments to gather her thoughts and figure out how to deal with the
shock
of seeing
him
again.  In the back of her mind, she guessed he never would have come back to them so she wasn’t sure what she’d said in her last letter that grabbed his attention and pushed him to acknowledge them at this point. 

Kristen
set
Victoria onto her feet and walked over to the bench to grab her bag containing all the things a little girl could potentially need.  She wondered if Mikhail looked at the bag with disdain.  Kristen had never been one of those women who had a purse to match each different outfit, but she’d had two nice purses, a black and a brown that she carried depending on the outfit. 

This bag was significantly different.  Gone was the lipstick and slim wallet containing a small amount of cash and credit cards.  Now the essentials included a container of
Cheerios
, fruit cut up into small, non-chokable pieces, a sippy cup and a change of clothes.  Not for her, but for Victoria in case of some minor catastrophe, which inevitably happened only when she’d forgotten to include the change of clothes.  Tory was now potty trained, but just barely and accidents happened, although not frequently. 

“How long have you been living here?” Mikhail asked as they walked down the sidewalk.

Kristen glanced up at him curious
ly
.  “I moved here after I left the hospital.  I told you that in the letter.”

She watched as his eyes became furious and she tensed for a fight.  But he seemed to pull himself together and suppressed whatever he’d been about to say.

“
The letter with a few sentences stating you couldn’t keep up the lifestyle? 
The last time I spoke to you was when you were lying on the bed telling me that I didn’t need to worry about the baby any longer.  I took that to mean that you’d lost the baby but obviously that isn’t the case, was it?”

Kristen turned to fully look into his eyes.  “I sent you a letter the day I left.  I had it messengered to your office.  I wouldn’t ever just leave you without giving you an explanation.”

“Except that’s exactly what you did!” he countered, unable to hide his anger completely.
“There was no letter sent by special messenger to my office, nor any indication of the direction you had taken when you left me three years ago.  Let’s not pretend otherwise and perpetuate obvious lies.”

She stepped back, surprised and frightened by his
fury
but Victoria didn’t like that one little bit.  “Daddy, are you mad?  You can’t be mad,” she said and looked up at him with her pretty blue eyes and smiled.  “I have so much to show you.  Momma cut out stories about you and we read them whenever we find them in the net,” she said, referring to the internet but her young vocabulary couldn’t form the word as easily.  “I know all about the sitions and mergers,” she explained,
mispronouncing
“acquisitions” and using a hard “g” instead of the soft for ‘mergers’.

Mikhail looked back up at Kristen.  “You told her about me?”

Kristen shook her head in astonishment but Victoria chirped up. “Of course she told me about you.  You’re my daddy.  I have your picture and everything.”  She took his hand and pulled. “
Come
on.  I’ll show you.”

Kristen watched the transformation occur in Mikhail as his heart melted with her tiny hand in his.  She could actually see the physical transformation as the tension changed from anger to something akin to amazement while his daughter entrapped him with her enthusiasm. 

He let her lead him down the street while Kristen followed a couple of steps behind.  She had tiny legs and she stared up at him, her neck cricked at an awkward angle because he was so much taller than all the other people she’d known.  After only a few steps, she dropped his hand and reached up, the silent signal that she wanted him to pick her up.

And just like the man she’d always known was down underneath that gruff, angry exterior, Mikhail picked her up and became mesmerized by the angelic child in his arms as she chatted away, regaling him with her knowledge of his business activities over the past several months, as much as her little brain could remember. 

Kristen walked a few steps behind, her mind still trying to grasp the fact that he was really here, in her life and their daughter was in his arms.  Right where she wanted to be.

Kristen stopped and looked around.  Where had that thought come from?  No, she definitely didn’t want to be in his arms.  She’d been there, done that, got the heartache, thank you very much.  She was not going down that path one more time.  Getting over Mikhail once had been difficult.  Even thinking about starting up with him sent shivers of fear down her neck because she couldn’t face the pain of losing him once again. 

“Come on, momma!” Victoria said and Kristen realized they were about half a block ahead of her and she was staring at Mikhail’s long legs. 

She sighed and shook her head.  Okay, she wasn’t staring at his legs at all.  Not when his butt was there right in front of her.  The man was built, that was all she could say as an excuse for her fascination.

As he turned around, the look in his eyes told her he knew exactly what she’d been staring at although how he knew, she had no idea.  Perhaps it was just experience, she thought as she moved ahead of them to unlock the door to her small, cottage style house.  When they’d been married, he’d not been shy about walking about the bedroom naked and she’d loved to watch him, especially as he walked away.  She’d been too naïve to hid
e
her fascination but she was older now and had a child.  She should know better!

It didn’t help that her face had flamed up with his knowing smile and she pushed against
t
h
e
door with a bit more force than was necessary to
get inside
.  The result was that she had to catch it befor
e it crashed against the half wall
that divided her family room from the kitchen in the front of the house. 

Dumping the toddler bag by the front door so it would be available when she needed it next, she hung her keys up on the hook and took the sippy cup of milk out of the bag, storing it in the refrigerator, glad to have the small, organizational things to occupy her mind as Victoria tugged Mikhail back t
o her room to show him her bedroom
. 

Kristen opened up a can of soup and made grilled cheese sandwiches, the perfect lunch for a cold, winter
Saturday afternoon
.  Placing the food on the table, she set it for three, but she wasn’t sure she could eat anything with her stomach churning like this. 

What did it mean that he was here now?  He couldn’t think he could just take up where they left off, did he?  Their marriage might still be legal, but it wasn’t real anymore. 

She was standing against the counter, her thoughts running rampant through her mind until the phone rang, startling her out of her reverie. 

Looking at the caller ID, she sighed as s
he picked up her phone.  “Hi Missy
,” she said, greeting her sister with resignation.  She knew exactly what her sister was calling about, since the playground grapevine was more effective than the national emergency response system in getting the word out on anything that was happening in the neighborhood.