An Unlikely Daddy. Rachel Lee

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СКАЧАТЬ face, then he said bluntly, “It’s been hell. Not your kind of hell, I’m sure, but it’s been hell.”

      She felt a little warmth for him then. Though she hadn’t thought much about it, Johnny must have left other people grieving, too. Like an old friend named Ryker Tremaine. “You want to talk about him?”

      “If you want to.”

      “I have some gaps I’d like filled in.”

      Again that odd hesitation from him, but then he explained, “Within the bounds of operational secrecy. You must have heard that from John.”

      Words she had come to hate, because they had left her with huge holes in her memory of Johnny. Things she would never know, things he couldn’t share. Maybe even some things he didn’t want to share, which she could understand. But now, with an empty future in front of her, she was hungry to fill in that unknown past. Things he had done and seen but had never mentioned.

      She rocked a little more, feeling her child stirring inside her. She laid her hand over her belly, feeling the active little pokes. A girl. She’d kept that to herself, as well.

      “Johnny didn’t know we were going to have a baby,” she said. One of her greatest pains, laid bare now to a stranger. “I called to tell him, but he wasn’t there, and then...”

      “I just heard about it recently. Evidently John wasn’t the only one who didn’t know.”

      She nodded, absorbing the betrayal again. He should have at least known about his baby before he was killed. It seemed so wrong that he didn’t.

      “He’d have been happy,” Ryker offered.

      “I suppose.” Another resentment bubbled up inside her, one she tried to bury, but one she couldn’t quite quell. “He was gone a lot. Did he tell you how we met?”

      “You grew up together.”

      “Not quite. He was older. A senior in high school when I was in seventh grade. I had a crush on him, but he didn’t know it until much, much later. I was in my last year of college when he came home on a visit and noticed me. Really noticed me. We were married the day after I graduated. Then he was off again.”

      “It was hard on you.” It didn’t sound like a question.

      “Of course. But he laid it all out. I knew what it would be like. What mattered was that we loved each other.”

      Ryker nodded. “Of course. I know he loved you more than anything on this earth.”

      She felt her mouth twist. “Not quite. The Rangers were his first love. No competition there.”

      Ryker surprised her then. He leaned forward, putting his elbows on his knees. “I wouldn’t say that. I listened to him talk about you. Man, did he brag when you got your master’s degree. When you started teaching at the college here. He was so proud of you.”

      “I was proud of him, too,” she answered simply. “I still am.” Then the grief speared her again. “When he took the job with the State Department, I thought he’d be safer!”

      “He should have been, Marisa.”

      Anguish twisted her gut. The baby reacted, kicking hard. “Well, he wasn’t.”

      Ryker didn’t answer, not that she could blame him. How did you respond to that? She had no answers for herself, so how could anyone else? She leaned back in the rocker, giving her lungs a little more room, feeling the baby’s agitation like scalding criticism. She had to remain calm for her daughter.

      Ryker remained silent, a sphinx full of secrets he was no more likely to share than Johnny had been. Why had he come? Because of Johnny? Probably. But to what purpose? What could he possibly do to make any of this better? “I don’t see the point of you coming.”

      “To help in whatever way I can. Just to talk if that’s all you want from me. But I’m going to stay in town for a while, Marisa. I know my arrival is a shock, and I’m sorry. But I owe something to John.”

      “John’s past caring,” she said bitterly.

      “Not for me he isn’t. And if there’s anything I can do for you, I’ll do it, even if it’s just knocking down the icicles out front.”

      She looked at him again and couldn’t mistake his determination. Wherever Johnny’s loss had forced her, it was clearly pushing this man, too. So they had something in common. Little enough.

      She closed her eyes again, rocking gently, feeling her baby settle down, the pokes lessening. Peace returning. A hard-won peace. Acceptance hadn’t come easily, but it had come, although it hadn’t eased her grief one bit yet.

      If there was any blessing in all of this, it was that during her marriage she’d grown accustomed to Johnny’s long absences. She didn’t expect to see him around every corner, didn’t expect to wake to find him beside her in bed, didn’t keep listening for the sound of his voice. Not every waking moment prodded her with reminders of his absence.

      But the grief, anger and sometimes even despair often rolled over her like a tsunami, irresistible and agonizing. For all the holes in the past, there was a bigger one in the present.

      Let it go, just let it go. The man nearby was grieving, too. Maybe together they could find some answers for each other. Not that life offered many answers. Things just seemed to happen.

      She looked at Ryker again. He studied his hands, or maybe the floor. She couldn’t tell which. “How long will you be in town?”

      “I don’t know. I do know that I’m not leaving immediately. And I have quite a bit of time.”

      Meaning what, exactly? “So you were with Johnny in the Rangers, too?”

      “We worked together on a number of missions.”

      She accepted that, for now at least. “When he joined the State Department, I thought we’d be traveling a lot. I was looking forward to it. Only he got sent somewhere families can’t go.”

      “I know. There are a lot of those places, unfortunately.”

      “So what do you do?”

      His smile was almost crooked. “Security. Keeping the embassy or consulates safe, and most especially the people who work there.”

      “Johnny was a translator.” But of course he knew that. Her husband had a gift for languages. He soaked them up the way the grass soaked up the rain. She’d never found out exactly how many of them he knew. But then she’d never asked him to count them for her. When they’d been together, other things had seemed so much more important, the sharing and caring and lovemaking. The occasional time with old friends, but mostly... She lifted her head. “Our marriage was like one long honeymoon. When he was home we might as well have been on our own planet.”

      Ryker’s face shadowed. “That’s wonderful.”

      “I thought so. We never had enough time to take one another for granted.” Why was she telling him this? Was she reminding herself? Was it important somehow? “But one thing I took for granted was that we’d have a future. No СКАЧАТЬ