The house was filled with the pastel colors and fussy decorations feared by even the most confident heterosexual man. Her flowery couch had lace pillows that matched the curtains. There were vases of daisies and roses and baskets of dried flowers. Some of the photographs sitting around had angels on the silver frames. He kind of liked that and wondered if he should worry about himself.
“I’ve got some good stuff,” the little girl said as she pushed a miniature shopping cart made of orange plastic into the living room. She sat on the couch, then patted the cushion next to her.
Feeling even more out of place, he sat next to Georgeanne’s little girl. He looked into her face and tried to determine how old she was, but he wasn’t any good at guessing a kid’s age. Her makeup job didn’t help any.
“Here,” she said, plucking a T-shirt with a dalmatian on the front from her basket and handing it to him.
“What’s this for?”
“You have to sign it.”
“I do?” he asked, feeling huge next to the little girl.
She nodded and gave him a green marker.
John really didn’t want to sign the kid’s shirt. “Your mom might get mad.”
“Nuh-uh. That’s my Saturday shirt.”
“Are you sure?”
“Yep.”
“Okay.” He shrugged and took the cap from the marker. “What’s your name?”
Her brows lowered over her dark blue eyes, and she looked at him as if he were a few sandwiches short of a picnic. “Lexie.” Then she pronounced it again just in case he didn’t get it the first time. “Leexxiiiie. Lexie Mae Howard.”
Howard? Georgeanne hadn’t married the child’s father. He wondered what kind of man she’d been involved with. What kind of man abandoned his daughter? He flipped the shirt over as if he were planning to write on the back. “Why do you want me to ruin your perfectly good shirt, Lexie Mae Howard?”
“‘Cause the other kids got stuff that you wrote on and I don’t.”
He wasn’t sure what she meant, but he thought he’d better ask Georgeanne before he marked up her daughter’s shirt.
“Brett Thomas has lots of stuff. He showed me in school last year.” She sighed heavily and her shoulders drooped. “He gots a cat too. Do you have a cat?”
“Ahh… no. No cat.”
“Mae gots a cat,” she confided as if he knew Mae. “His name is Bootsie ‘cause he gots white boots on his feet. He hides from me when I go to Mae’s. I used to think he didn’t like me, but Mae says he runs away ’cause he’s shy.” She grasped the end of her boa, held it up for him to see, then shook it. “This is how I get him, though. He chases it and I grab him real tight.”
If John hadn’t known before that this little girl was Georgeanne’s daughter, the more he listened to her talk, the more obvious it became. She talked quickly about wanting a cat. Then the subject moved to dogs and somehow progressed to mosquito bites. While she talked, John studied her. He thought she must resemble her father because he didn’t think she looked all that much like Georgeanne. Maybe their mouths were similar, but not much else.
“Lexie,” he interrupted her as it occurred to him that he might be talking to Virgil Duffy’s daughter. He never figured Virgil for the type of man to abandon his child. Then again, Virgil could be a real jerk. “How old are you?”
“Six. I had my birthday a few months ago. My friends came over and we had cake. I got the movie Babe from Amy and so we watched it. I cried when Babe was taken from his mommy. That was really really sad, and I got sick. But my mommy said he got to go visit on weekends, so I felt better. I want a pig, but my mommy says I can’t have one. I like that part when Babe bites the sheep,” she said, and then began to laugh.
Six, but he’d last seen Georgeanne seven years ago. Lexie couldn’t be Virgil’s child. Then he realized that he’d forgotten the nine months she would have been pregnant, plus if Lexie had just had her birthday a few months ago, she might very well be Virgil’s child. But she didn’t look anything like Virgil. He looked at her more closely. Her laughter turned to a big smile, and a dimple dented her right cheek. “I’m a sucker for that little pig’s face.” She shook her head and began to giggle again.
In another part of the house, the water shut off, and John’s heart stopped beating in his chest. He swallowed hard. “Holy shit,” he whispered.
Lexie’s laughter stopped on a scandalized breath. “That’s a bad word.”
“Sorry,” he muttered, and looked beneath the makeup. Her long lashes curled up at the very end. As a boy, John had been relentlessly teased about lashes like that. Then he stared into her dark blue eyes. Eyes like his. An unexplainable current ran though him and he felt as if he’d stuck his finger in an electrical outlet. Now he knew why Georgeanne had behaved so strangely last night. She’d had his child. A little girl.
His daughter.
“Holy shit.”
Chapter Seven
Georgeanne unwound the towel from around her head and tossed it on the end of her bed. She reached for her hairbrush sitting on the dresser, but her hand stilled before she grasped the round handle. From the living room, Lexie’s childish giggles mixed with the unmistakable low pitch of a man’s voice. Concern overrode modesty. She grabbed her green summer robe and shoved her arms through the sleeves. Lexie knew better than to let a stranger in the house. They’d had a nice long talk about it the last time Georgeanne had walked into the living room and found three Jehovah’s Witnesses sitting on her couch.
She tied the belt around her waist and hurried down the narrow hall. The scolding she planned to unleash died on her tongue, and she stopped in her tracks. The man sitting on the couch next to her daughter hadn’t come to offer heavenly salvation.
He raised his gaze to hers, and she looked into the dreamy blue eyes of her worst nightmare from hell.
She opened her mouth, but she couldn’t talk past the shock clogging her throat. Within a split second, her world stopped, shifted beneath her feet, then went spinning out of control.
“Mr. Wall came to sign my stuff,” Lexie said.
Time stood still as Georgeanne stared into blue eyes staring back at her. She felt disoriented and unable to fully comprehend that John Kowalsky was actually sitting in her living room looking as big and handsome as he had seven years ago, as he had in all the magazine pictures she’d ever seen of him, as he had last night. He sat in her house, on her couch, next to her daughter. She placed a hand on her bare throat and took a deep breath. Beneath her fingers she felt the rapid beating of her pulse. He looked out of place in her home, like he didn’t belong. Which, of course, he didn’t. “Alexandra Mae,” she finally managed on a rush of air, and shifted her gaze to her daughter. “You know better than to let a stranger in the house.”
Lexie’s eyes widened. Georgeanne’s use of her proper name let her know she was in very deep trouble. “But-but,” she stuttered as she hopped to her feet. “But, Mommy, I know Mr. Wall. He came to my school, but I didn’t get nothin‘.”
Georgeanne didn’t have a clue what her daughter meant. She looked back at John and asked, “What are you doing here?”
He slowly rose, then reached into the back pocket of his faded Levi’s. “You dropped this last night,” he answered as he tossed her checkbook to her.
Before she could catch it, it bounced off her chest and hit the floor. Rather than bend down and pick it up, she left it lying there. “You didn’t have to bring it by.” A small measure of relief soothed her nerves. He’d come to bring her checkbook, not because he’d found out about Lexie.