Balancing Act

Her legs were crossed at her ankles and her hands were clasped around her knees, neat and pretty and careful. Hell, and his heart was beating so much harder and faster as he waited for her reply that he could actually feel it thumping inside his chest.

Why was he so scared about what he’d given away? Why was he instantly sorry he’d laid his beliefs on the table like that?

Because he’d intended to find out what she thought and felt first.

With unsteady hands, he took two of the cookies at once and ate them in a single bite. They tasted like Christmas morning when he was eight years old.

“Why would it be wrong, Brady?” she asked carefully, after a long pause.

It wasn’t the tack he had expected her to take. He was relieved about that, but still very suspicious, on shifting ground. Something didn’t ring true in what she’d just said. “Don’t you agree?” he asked her.

“There are plenty of kids that grow up as only children, these days,” she answered. Her chin was raised and her eyes were too bright.

“True, but—”

“I wouldn’t have adopted Colleen in the first place if I’d thought I couldn’t meet all of her needs,” she went on, gathering speed. “I refinanced my home and took a pay cut so I could work at a high-quality day-care center and have her there with me.”

“I’m not saying—”

“I used to teach kindergarten, but that wouldn’t have given us the time with each other that I wanted. She gets plenty of social interaction at day care with kids her own age. If I hadn’t entered her in that contest, she and Scarlett could have gone their whole lives not knowing about each other, and they’d still have been loved and nourished and happy. They’d have missed nothing.”

Her voice was high and sweet and very firm.

Too firm.

Her eyes, in contrast, were frightened and defiant.

Okay, he understood, now.

“You don’t believe a single word of what you’re saying,” Brady growled at her, and sure enough, she flashed him a startled look and her cheeks went bright pink. “You don’t,” he repeated.

There was a silence.

“Yeah, okay, you’re right,” she agreed quietly at last. Her clasped hands had tightened around her knees, and her shoulders were rounded, vulnerable looking. There was anguish in her face now. “You’re right. I don’t.”

She shook her head, and the tiny silver earrings that were nestled against her pink lobes flashed.

“You know,” she went on, “I’ve been saying it to myself every minute since your call on Monday. I’ve tried to make myself believe it doesn’t make a difference, but I can’t.” Brady could see how hard she found it to put her emotions into words. “We have to give them the chance to be sisters, don’t we? And we have to give ourselves the chance to love both of them. But you’re in Ohio and I’m in Minnesota, and I can’t begin to think about how we’re going to do it. It—it might have been easier if we’d never known.”

“I know,” he answered, then confessed abruptly, “All the way here on the airplane, I was wishing my mom had never seen that magazine.”

Chapter Two

“I can stay until Sunday,” Brady said. “We can think about it. There are options. You know, a lot of people manage shared custody of their kids after a divorce, even when they’re living in different states. People manage to have their kids visit far-away grandparents. It’s not insurmountable.”

“No, I guess it isn’t,” Libby answered obediently. She popped a little smile onto her face, then added, “More coffee?” and when he nodded and said, “Please!” it gave her an excuse to go into the house, where she could rebel in private.

She didn’t want Brady to see how much his words about managing “shared custody” had terrified her. One look at that little girl in his arms, identical to her own Colleen, had told her how easily she could come to love two daughters, but how could she share two daughters with a stranger?

Did he expect her just to hand Colleen over for weekends and vacation visits? Put her on a plane and send her seven hundred miles? Dear Lord, no!

Her own parents had divorced when she was eight, and she’d had to do that. Just step on a plane every few months. The memories weren’t good, and she didn’t revisit them very often. Mom had never really adjusted to the divorce and to being a single parent. She hadn’t been prepared for managing on her own, so they’d moved from Kansas City to Chicago to be closer to Libby’s grandparents, and it had taken Mom a long time to find her feet.

She’d been horrified when Libby had taken on the role of single mother voluntarily. “If Glenn was still alive of course I’d have loved a grandchild, but not like this, Libby. You don’t know how hard it’s going to be.”

But Libby had cherished her independence and her freedom to run her life the way she chose. She hadn’t had that same freedom in her marriage. And now Brady was talking about “shared custody” as if it was easy and safe, as if it was something they could both just slot into their lives. He had no idea!

I should have challenged him on it. But maybe if I work as hard as I can to make this weekend nice and fun and harmonious, we can talk on Sunday and we’ll find there is another answer.

Even as she thought this, she knew it was a cop-out on her part. The kind of cop-out she’d made before, and didn’t want to make again. But wanting something and achieving it were two very different things, she’d found, especially when life came at you sideways like a runaway train.

Still unsure of how she would handle the situation, she poured two fresh mugs of coffee and went back out to the rear deck. Brady had vanished from the deck chair, and a few seconds of panicky searching—he was a stranger, she knew almost nothing about him, and she’d left him with her precious daughter, was she crazy?—revealed him safely down in the yard with the girls.

Oh, mercy, what a sight it was!

Silently, she put the coffee mugs down on the barbecue table and watched. Somehow, he’d gotten himself horizontal on the damp grass, solid as a fallen log, and both girls were running to and fro, covering him deeply with leaves.

They were shrieking with laughter—identical laughter—tossing wild handfuls of color every which way and earning exaggerated protests from Brady which they clearly found hilarious.

“More leaves? We’re having more leaves?” he was saying in that gravelly voice she was starting to know. “What? I’m not buried deep enough for you, yet, guys? I swear—”

Then he caught sight of Libby and stopped abruptly, and she had to hide a laugh of her own at the sight of his face.

He was blushing?

No, it had to be the effort and exertion of all that protesting, followed by the sudden scramble to his feet.

“I…uh…” he said, and brushed himself down, strong shoulders moving beneath the gray fabric of his sweatshirt. “That was…you know…”

“I know,” she answered, still laughing. “They loved it.”

She wanted him to laugh with her, but he’d closed off, retreated somehow. Coming up the steps and reaching for the coffee mug she still held in her hand, he looked intimidating and serious, a construction company boss through and through, not the kind of man you’d ever catch horsing around with two little girls.

Libby was sorry, now, that she’d caught him out. She didn’t want to create more distance than necessary.

Their fingers touched briefly as he took the mug. As a piece of body contact, it was nothing. Quicker and lighter than the touch of a makeup brush on her cheek, or the flick of her hand when she shooed a mosquito from Colleen’s face. All the same, it was warm and physical and potent, and she wished it hadn’t happened.

Possibly he did, too.

If he’d even noticed it, Libby revised. She doubted that the imprint of it had lingered on his skin the way it was still lingering on hers. And she doubted that her scent was still wrapping around him, the way his had wrapped around her. It was clean and male, reminding her of freshly shaven wood, and it was mixed with the earthy scent of the leaves.

He could have had half a dozen better reasons for moving away from her so quickly, with that distant frown still on his face.

Brady knew he was frowning too much, knew it made him look distant—intimidating, even—and he didn’t care. Deliberately, he turned his back on Libby, took a big mouthful of coffee and stared down at the fall color carpeting the yard.

He shouldn’t have fooled around with the leaves like that. He couldn’t afford to have this woman think he was soft, lacking intelligence, easy to manipulate, easy to distract from his goals with a bit of pretty color, and ready to take care of everything as needed.

Even though he was soft. He knew that. When it came to Scarlett’s well-being, he was a pussycat. He turned to liquid inside, like a soft-centered chocolate candy, every time he felt her little arms around his neck, or saw her smile, or had to kiss a bump.