An hour later, the most painful dinner of my life was over.
“Can I go?” Charlie asked, already picking up her plate.
“Did you want to show Logan your fort?” I grasped for anything that might put a smile on her face. All through dinner, I’d been trying to find a topic that would connect Logan and Charlie but nothing had worked.
Any time Logan had tried to make conversation, she’d try to hide behind her plate of noodles. Nothing either of us had said could get her to mutter more than one or two words throughout the whole meal.
She hadn’t even been impressed by the sunflowers.
Charlie had shut down the minute Logan had mentioned the idea of moving. The only thing that was going to get her to emerge from her shell was time.
“I want to play in my room,” she whispered, sliding off her chair.
“Okay. I’ll come up in a little bit and we can do your bath.”
“I’m glad I got to have dinner with you tonight.” Logan forced a smile and stood from his chair. “Good night, Charlie.”
“Good night.”
She dropped her plate in the sink, then disappeared upstairs with sad eyes.
When the sound of her footsteps faded, I looked up at Logan. “I’m sorry.”
“I think I failed that test.” He ran a hand through his hair and sank back into his chair.
“She’ll come around. She just needs some time.” I stood and began clearing dishes from the table.
“Thank you,” he said. “Dinner was delicious.”
“I guess none of us was all that hungry.” Our plates were all still half full. Food had been pushed around during the awkward silences instead of eaten.
“She’s not like other kids, is she?”
“Not like most,” I said over my shoulder as I rinsed a plate. “It takes her a while to warm up to new people and change. She’s not really shy, just . . . wary. For years, her world consisted of only me, Hazel and Jackson. She just needs time.”
“Time I don’t have.”
Because his life was in New York. And ours was in Lark Cove.
I shut off the water and turned away from the sink, leaning back against the counter. “I guess we’d better come up with some sort of plan.”
“Yeah.” He nodded. “Would you ever consider moving back to the city?”
I shook my head. “I’d do it if I had to, but I’m hoping you won’t make us.”
“Make us?”
“It’s no secret you could bury me under a mountain of lawyers to get custody of Charlie.”
His eyes narrowed. “I told you last night I wouldn’t do that.”
“I know.” I held up my hands, hoping to calm the rising tension in the kitchen. “I’m just laying it out there. If you wanted her in New York, you could make that happen. I’m hoping you won’t because we’re happy here.”
“She could be happy there.”
“Yes, she could. But she is happy in Lark Cove.”
He frowned. “I can’t come back and forth to Montana all the time.”
My stomach sank. I knew without asking that he wouldn’t consider moving an option. I didn’t blame him. I knew leaving the city would be asking too much. But that hasn’t stopped my foolish heart from hoping.
I wanted him to choose Charlie over everything else. I wanted him to prove that she was his most important priority.
I wanted the impossible.
“What do you want to do?” I asked quietly.
“I don’t know. I wish . . .” He sighed. “I wish she would have liked me.”
The ache in my chest came back with a fury. “She will, Logan. Just give it time.”
“I don’t have time, Thea.” He stood from the chair and planted his hands on his hips. “I have to leave on Sunday. I have one week. One week to get to know my daughter and build something of a relationship with her. Then I need to wrap this up and get my life back to normal.”
My blood pressure spiked. He wanted to wrap this up in a week? He thought in seven days he’d have a loving father-daughter relationship. It took me longer than a week to decide if I liked a new shampoo.
And what was normal? There was no such thing. His life, the one he was so desperate to get back to, would forever be different. As of yesterday, it wasn’t about him.
“Wrap this up and get your life back to normal?” I repeated.
He shook his head. “That came out wrong.”
“Good,” I snapped. “I’m sorry this has disrupted your life, but you’re going to need to find more than a week for your daughter.”
“Which would be easier if you were in New York.”
“I’m not taking her to New York! She’s starting first grade in the fall. She has friends here. She has family. I can’t give her the life she has here in the city.”
He pointed to his chest as he stepped closer. “I am her family too. And if it’s about money, you don’t need to worry. You’d have the best of everything. So would she.”
We were his charity case now? I pushed off the counter and met him in the middle of the kitchen. “It’s not just about the money. It’s about her lifestyle. It’s about where I want her to grow up.”
“And what about what I want?” His voice got louder. “I should get a say too, especially since I haven’t so far. It wasn’t my fault that I missed the first five years of her life!”
“It wasn’t mine either!” I stood on my tiptoes, inching toward his face. My chest was heaving, almost touching his, and with an angry breath, I realized just how close we’d gotten.
His gaze was heated and the inch between us crackled. Even angry he was gorgeous. The pull between our bodies was just as strong as it had been years ago.
My eyes drifted to his lips. I remembered them being soft but hard. He’d used them as weapons against my skin to render me helpless.
He leaned in, just a bit, tempting me closer.
I wanted to kiss him and snake my hands up his arms. To shove all of my frustration into something raw and physical. I wanted to ignore the heap of problems at our feet and get lost in something sweaty.
But it wasn’t about what either of us wanted.
It was about Charlie.
I dropped my chin and took a step backward. Then another. “She has a lot of questions, and I don’t have answers.”
He rubbed his forehead. “I don’t either.”
“We have to find them.”
“I know.” He nodded. “Let’s talk tomorrow. I think it would be best for me to go before something happens between us that we’ll regret.” Without a good-bye, he turned and left me standing in the center of my kitchen.
Regret. His last word echoed off the red-speckled countertops and yellow-tinged cupboards. It burned my ears.
Logan would regret a kiss with me. Maybe he regretted ever stepping into that hotel bar.
And damn did that hurt. Almost as much as knowing he had no plans to change his lifestyle for our daughter.
After Logan left, while I washed the dishes and cleaned the kitchen, I pulled myself together. As I did my chores, I shrugged off the sting of his rejection. I reminded myself that only one thing mattered in all of this.
Charlie.
Then I went upstairs and down the hall to her room. She was sitting at her “art center” with her back to the door. Her center was nothing more than a short, square desk pushed into a corner, but it had a small drawer for her special drawing paper and a cup to hold her markers. These days, her legs were nearly too long for the child-sized chair.
That center was the only thing in the room that had any girly qualities. Charlie had shocked me when we’d gone shopping in Kalispell for the table. Instead of going for the white or royal blue as I’d expected, she’d picked pale pink.
The rest of her room was decked out in items from the boys’ section at Target. She had a green camo bedspread and matching sheets. Her bookshelf in the corner was in the shape of half a canoe. And there was a black teepee at the foot of her bed where she’d escape to read with a flashlight. Her bedroom resembled her fort outside more than it did a little girl’s room.
Everything was tomboy.
Except for that pink table.
“Hi, honey.” I knocked on the doorframe.
She looked over her shoulder and then went right back to coloring.
I crossed the room and knelt next to her chair. “What are you drawing?”
“Just a picture,” she mumbled as she used brown to shade in the roof of the house she’d outlined.
Our house.
She’d drawn the cottage along with three stick figures. One was me, judging by the long black hair. The other was Hazel with gray strands around her round face. And the last was Charlie, standing between us with a big smile.
Who wasn’t in the picture? Logan.
Like mother, like daughter.
Charlie used art to express her feelings when she couldn’t find the words.
“That’s a pretty picture,” I said, stroking her hair. “Can you take a break and look at me?”
She set down her marker and turned in the seat, her chin still tipped down. When she looked up, her brown eyes flooded with tears. “I don’t want to move far away, Mommy.”
“Don’t worry.” I pulled her off the chair and into my arms. “We’ll figure something out.”
She sat on my bent knees and buried her head in the crook of my neck. “Promise?”
“Promise.”
The knot in my stomach tightened. If Logan forced my hand—if he made us move to the city—I’d never forgive him for making me break my promise.
“Come on.” I hugged Charlie tighter, then let her go. “Let’s get cleaned up for bed. Do you want a shower tonight or a bubble bath?”
“Bubble bath.”
With her leading the way to the bathroom, I filled the claw foot tub with water and bubbles while she stripped off her dirty clothes and left them in a heap by the door. Then we went about our normal scrub down until Charlie was dirt-free and smelled like lavender instead of the outdoors.
As she splashed around and played with her bath crayons, I sat back against the wall, stretching my legs out parallel to the tub. I took a few breaths, fortifying myself for a heart-to-heart with my girl.
We needed to discuss her father.
I wished I didn’t have to force this conversation. I wished I could put it off until tomorrow, after we’d both had a night’s rest. But since Logan was adamant about being here for only a week, there wasn’t time.
“We need to talk about Logan.”
Her splashing stopped.
“What didn’t you like about him?” I asked.
“I don’t know.” She shrugged and scooped up a handful of bubbles.
“You got pretty upset when he suggested that we move. Is that what scared you?”
“Yeah.” She nodded, stacking her bubbles in the corner.
“Was there anything else you didn’t like about him?”
She stacked two more handfuls of bubbles before she finally whispered, “No.”
My back sank further into the wall. If it was just the move, I could work with that. “Honey, I think you might have hurt his feelings tonight. When you didn’t want to talk to him at dinner. And when you said you didn’t want a dad.”
Charlie looked up from her bubbles, her eyes full of worry. “I did?”
She was so thoughtful and loving. I was exploiting those emotions tonight in hopes that they would lead to a better tomorrow. “Yeah. We’d probably better try to fix it, huh? Maybe we could try again with Logan. Would it be okay if I invited Logan to your soccer game tomorrow?”
Even though another dinner would give them more time to talk, I couldn’t endure a repeat of tonight. And maybe on neutral ground, the pair would find something to connect over.
“Okay.” Charlie nodded, going back to her bubbles. “He can come.”
“Good.” I relaxed. “Will you do something for me?”
“What?”
“Try to be extra, extra nice to Logan.”
She shrugged. “Okay.”
I smiled and leaned forward, skimming some bubbles into my palm. Then I carefully arranged them as a crown on her head. “That’s my girl.”
She giggled, filling our bathroom with her musical laugh and banishing away some of my worries. Then we spent the rest of the evening in her room, reading books, coloring orange dinosaurs and singing bedtime songs.
After an hour, she was tucked into bed and I was walking down the stairs just as the back door opened. As I rounded the corner to the kitchen, Hazel dropped her purse on the counter. “How’d it go?”
“It went.”
I crossed the cream linoleum floor, heading directly for the freezer. I yanked open the door, rifled through the frozen vegetables and ice-cube trays and moved things around until I found my coveted huckleberry vodka. With it in hand, I closed the door and sagged against the fridge.
“That bad?” she asked.
I nodded. “He suggested we move to New York.”
“Oh, no,” she muttered, taking a seat at the table. “I bet that didn’t go over well.”
“No.” I scoffed. “Charlie’s exact words were ‘I don’t want a dad anymore.’ ”
“Oh, my Charlie.” Hazel shook her head. “I knew I should have given Logan some pointers.”
“What?” My back straightened. I couldn’t keep up with her these days. “You met Logan?”
“He came into the bar this afternoon when I was there visiting Jackson. I chatted with him a bit. Told him about my research with Willa. Then he left to come over here.”
“Ah, I see.”
At least I didn’t have to explain Hazel’s stalking to Logan now. We had enough on our list of discussion topics as it was.
A throb was building behind my eyes, probably caused by the stress of the last day. With my free hand, I pinched the bridge of my nose, willing the pain away. Had it really only been a day since Logan had come to Lark Cove? It felt like so much longer. I hadn’t had this much happen in the course of twenty-eight hours . . . ever.
If there was a night for my special vodka, this was the one.
I opened the bottle and took a shot, wincing as it burned my throat. When the warmth reached my stomach, I tipped the bottle back and did it again.
“I think I’m going to head to my workshop for a few hours. Is that okay with you?”
Hazel nodded. “No sharp objects?”
“Not tonight.” I’d have to start a new project, because I wouldn’t be working on my spoon nest either. Blowtorches didn’t mix well with vodka.
Hazel pushed out of her seat and went to the cupboard where we kept the glasses. “At least drink out of this.” She handed me a tumbler. “Classy women don’t drink from the bottle.”
“On the classy spectrum, I’m near the trash end.”
She frowned. “One day, I’m going to wash your mouth out with soap when you use that word. Don’t run yourself down.”
I gave her a sad smile. “I’m not saying that to run myself down. Honest. I’m just being real.” I’d climbed far from where my life had begun, but we all had limits. Even birds knew when to stop flying higher. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
Then I walked out the door, leaving the tumbler behind.
