Worth Fighting For

She had the front door open before he knew it. “How come you were just standing there for a long time? My mommy won’t let me open the door unless someone knocks.”

He scanned beyond the doorway, looking for her mother, hoping Caitlin wouldn’t think he’d been waiting at the door trying to muster a little courage. Not seeing her, he lifted his bandaged knuckle, trying to sidetrack the child by reminding her that he had an injury. “It hurts to knock.”

“Then you should have ringed the doorbell.”

Smart kid. Too smart.

“Come in.” Her smile lit up her face in a warm welcome.

She was a cutie, that’s for sure. Her mom had pulled back the sides of her long, blond hair with brightly colored, kitty-cat barrettes and dressed her in a white top, pink-and-white striped shorts and little white sandals.

“Guess what?” Emily’s eyes danced like sugarplum fairies, and she answered before he could ponder her secret. “I got to butter the bread and shake the sprinkles on it.”

“Your mom is lucky to have such a great helper,” he said.

“I know.” The little girl took him by his good hand and led him into the house.

He hadn’t paid much attention to the decor when he’d come inside earlier, but he did now. The cozy living room had an overstuffed sofa with a floral print in shades of pink and green, an antique rocking chair by the hearth, framed photographs placed on light oak furniture and lots of girly doodads on the pale green walls.

“Mommy!” Emily cried. “He’s here.”

Brett’s pulse rate slipped into overdrive, as he waited for Caitlin to respond—a visceral reaction he didn’t want and hadn’t expected. Heck, she was just a neighbor.

Okay, so she was nice to look at. And she had a gentle touch, a lilt in her voice. That didn’t mean he was interested in her in a romantic sense. The single mom was too heavy-duty for him.

“Hi,” Caitlin said, as she walked out of the kitchen wearing a yellow sundress and a breezy smile—a perfect blend of Suzy Homemaker, Florence Nightingale and Meg Ryan. “I didn’t hear the bell.”

“That’s ’cause he didn’t push the button,” Emily interjected. “And his owies hurt too much, so he couldn’t knock.”

The heat in Brett’s cheeks suggested he’d turned a brilliant shade of red, but he shrugged off the embarrassment and hid his discomfort behind a grin. “Emily spotted me through the shutters and opened the door before I got a chance to knock.”

“Is your hand still bothering you?” Caitlin asked, nodding toward his bandage.

“Nah,” he lied. “It’s fine. The knee, too. I’m almost back to fighting weight.”

As she took his wrist and assessed her handiwork, he couldn’t help but study her. She had a light sprinkle of freckles across a slightly turned-up nose and dark, spiked lashes that were much longer and thicker than he remembered.

Standing this close, he caught a good whiff of her perfume, or maybe it was body lotion. Piña colada? Or some other tropical drink? Whatever it was smelled darn good.

“I’m not sure what you did to this,” she said, “but it’s damp and coming undone.”

A piece of tape had lifted, probably from the steam and spray of the shower he’d taken before walking over here. He had a feeling she would offer to redo it for him, and the thought of her fussing over him again didn’t bother him nearly as much as it should have.

Brett’s lifestyle wasn’t conducive to family life or happy ever after. He loved the Navy and flying choppers too much to give them up. And even if he bit the bullet and gave marriage or a one-on-one relationship another try, he wouldn’t look twice at a woman with kids. That kind of gig was built-in trouble and turmoil, as far as he was concerned. And it smacked of a future rife with disagreements, threats and family court.

No. All that baggage made Caitlin off-limits.

But, hey. What was a little hand holding while she tended his wounds? A man wouldn’t mind being sick or injured, just to have a woman like her hover over him.

She tucked a golden strand of hair behind her ear, revealing a pearl earring and a slender neck made for nuzzling and kissing, then glanced up at him with expressive, oceanic eyes. “I’ll get the first-aid kit, just as soon as I drain the spaghetti. It won’t take long.”

“Don’t worry about it now,” he said, knowing the TLC bit wasn’t something he should encourage. “You can just slap another piece of tape on it later. After dinner.”

“It needs a whole new bandage, but I’ll wait.” Then she turned and walked back to the kitchen with a determined step.

“Is there something I can do to help?” Brett asked, his voice chasing after her.

“Not a thing,” she hollered from the other room. “I’ll have dinner on the table in no time at all.”

“I already did all the helping,” Emily told him with little-girl pride. “Want to see what else I did?”

Brett nodded. “Sure.”

When Emily took his hand again, it did something sappy to him. Something that touched a part of him he’d kept hidden. A part of him that longed to connect to a child.

His child, of course.

But this particular kid, as cute and smart and precocious as she was, seemed to fit the ticket—for tonight, anyway.

He’d have to be careful, though, since the mother scared him.

All right. That wasn’t entirely true. Caitlin didn’t scare him at all. But his attraction to her left him a little unbalanced.

“See?” Emily said, pointing to the dining room table that had been set with plain, white everyday wear. Nothing fancy. No romantic touches to cause him to feel uneasy.

A water glass sat in the middle of the table, with three drooping daisies and a red blossom of some kind. And a child-sketched crayon drawing sat at each plate, indicating who sat where.

Brett smiled when he saw his place. Emily had spelled his name with a skinny B, no R, a leaning E and only one T. And she’d drawn his picture, adding a bandage on the stick man’s face and hand.

“The table looks great,” he told the little girl. “And so does the picture of me.”

“You can have it when you go home. And then you can put it on the ’frigerator so Fred can see it.”

“Sounds like a perfect place for such a special piece of art.” He offered her a smile, but his mind drifted to his own son, a boy who wore a red baseball cap and leaped over small hedges with a single bound.

Had Justin made pictures like that when he was Emily’s age? Did he like to color?

If so, did Kelly display the artwork on the refrigerator for all the world to see?

Brett figured she did.

Caitlin entered the dining room with oven mitts on both hands, carrying a bowl of spaghetti sauce. “Usually, I fill our plates in the kitchen. But I thought it might be best if we ate family style.”

The family thing might be kind of nice, he supposed.

When Caitlin reached to set the sauce on the table, the neckline of her sundress gapped a bit, giving him a glimpse of white lace and the soft swell of her breast—just enough for his thoughts to drift in a direction that wasn’t at all neighborly.

“I have a bottle of red wine,” she said. “Would you like me to open it?”