If I Loved You. Leigh Riker
ELEVEN
“HOW DO WOMEN ever manage?”
Brig Collier had no clue. In the past twenty-four hours, through seven and a half time zones, he had seen females nowhere near his size juggle crying infants, fussy toddlers and screaming five-year-olds without breaking a sweat. He figured it had something to do with different elbow joints and pelvic structure.
Even getting out of a cab was a major ordeal. Worse, now he was talking to himself. After fumbling for his wallet, his brain fogged from travel, he paid the fare, then heaved himself from the taxi’s rear seat into the pouring rain.
He reached back in for the overstuffed diaper bag and, finally, for the baby. He lifted her out of the mandatory car seat she’d been sitting in, but Laila just didn’t fit in the crook of his arm. One tiny leg insisted on poking out from her blanket. Poor kid.
Brig felt like a total failure. Never mind his expertise with the black-ops stuff that was his bread and butter. He was still trying to deal with the shock of becoming all too suddenly a stand-in father.
He waited while the driver unloaded their bags from the trunk. One for him, three for Laila. By the time she reached kindergarten, they’d probably be traveling with a U-Haul.
The cabbie couldn’t hide his smirk. “Good luck, mister.” He probably had a dozen kids and could handle six at a time. As he pulled away in his cab, he called out the window, “The first one’s always the hardest.”
Brig frowned. Could it be more obvious that he didn’t know what he was doing? He always knew what he was doing. His life depended on it...and so, unfortunately, did the lives of others. As if he needed that reminder, now he had Laila, and Brig meant to do right by her.
He gazed around, but for one jet-lagged second he couldn’t remember where he was. Oh, yeah, not in Wardak province, Afghanistan. No bullets whizzed past his head here. This was Liberty Courthouse. Small-town America in the heartland of Ohio.
His heartbeat settled. He was looking straight at his parents’ neat suburban house, the safe place he needed for Laila.
The baby whimpered. Cold water dripped from Brig’s hair, making him shiver. And he realized he was standing in the rain like a turkey with its mouth open. Laila was getting wet, too. Brig hurried up the walk to the modest house he’d once called home.
It looked...empty?
Alarm flashed through him. How could that be? After he leaned on the doorbell a third time, he realized no one must be inside.
Brig hadn’t been here in a while. He had no door key to the house.
What to do?
Laila would have to have a bottle soon, dry clothes, a clean diaper.
Other than his absent parents, he had no relatives in town. His friends had moved away. As for the neighbors...he’d burned that bridge long ago, especially with her.
Nonetheless, the next minute he was picking a path across the sodden lawn anyway with Laila in his arms. He’d left her car seat and most of their luggage on his parents’ doorstep to lighten his load, but the insistent memory of a brown-haired girl with laughing green eyes weighed him down at every step. Molly. He’d be lucky if she didn’t kick him across the street.
The very picture of a desperate man, he carried Laila up the sidewalk to Molly’s house. She probably no longer lived here, either. But no doubt her dad still did, except the man would likely greet him with a shotgun.
Brig climbed the steps, one foot slipping on a wet slate tile. Startled, he lost his balance, nearly tossing Laila and him into the rain-flattened peony bushes that flanked the porch.
He grabbed the railing to steady himself at the same time a blast of noise from inside the house assaulted his eardrums. A party? Not in his honor, for sure.
Maybe he shouldn’t have come back to Liberty.
But he had to consider Laila’s welfare now, not that of the men under his command. Not his own.
* * *
MOLLY DIDN’T BELIEVE in bad omens. As if there were any other kind, including the rain that now slashed the windows. She was already running late, and even the red-and-white banner stretched over the dining room archway didn’t bring her usual smile. The party guests in the living room, ranging in age from six months to sixty years, had begun arriving early, well before midday—had she put the wrong time on the invitations?—and most of them seemed to be talking at once. Every minute or two, the doorbell rang again.
Normally Molly loved parties. At least, she had loved them when there was something to celebrate with that special someone. Now, in the midst of her annual Valentine’s Day bash, she was merely going through the motions for other people.
What else could go wrong?
Maybe the romantic holiday itself had unsettled her.
February was no longer her favorite month, and except for her dad, Molly had loved only two other men in her life. The first she’d rather not think about. The second, sadly, was gone, too.
Determined not to slide further into a slump, she turned to finish with the decorations, hoping no one would notice her disorganization. She should have stayed up later last night, but then, she hadn’t expected the horde to get here this soon. She stuck another heart-shaped decal on the back of a dining room chair. And gave thanks for the blessings she still had.
Her friends. Her family. Her widowed father. Thomas—also known as Pop—was already in his element, riding small children on his knee, telling corny jokes to the teenagers, ignoring his diet to drink a beer or two with the men. Molly wouldn’t spoil his fun.
The family—most of all Pop, who still mourned her mother—relied on her. She was great at holding them together, and proud of it. If this was her fate in life now, instead of a house full of babies to care for and a husband to love, so be it. Molly didn’t expect to find love again. Her family and her day care center, Little Darlings, had to be enough.
And they would be. Molly already needed to expand the center. If all her current plans went well, she could take in more children, hire more assistants to improve her already good teacher-to-student ratio and enhance her program.
Still, she couldn’t shake this stubborn foreboding, her feeling that something was about to happen that would change her life again.
And as if someone had just been cued, the doorbell chimed once more.
In a last attempt to alter her mood, she dabbed one remaining shiny red heart decal at the corner of her mouth, like a beauty mark. Then she shoved the now-decorated chairs back under the table and went to greet her newest guest, determined to enjoy herself if it killed her.
But