This time Julie really did appear to have her doubts. “It does?” she asked, looking incredulously at her father.
“Absolutely,” Dillon guaranteed, trying to coax her to take the first step. He needed to have Maura in a decent frame of mind if they were going to come to some sort of an agreement about Julie.
“Okay,” Julie mumbled. “If it means that much to everybody, I’ll give her a hug.” She grimaced as she said the words.
The next moment, there was no more time left for any debates or waffling. Maura crossed the distance between herself and her daughter, threw her arms around the girl and hugged Julie close to her as she obviously struggled to keep from dissolving into a puddle of tears.
But after the hugging had passed, Maura looked angrily at her daughter.
“I thought something awful had happened to you, that you were dead, or—” Her voice broke and she was unable to continue for a minute.
“Maura, we brought her back the minute that she turned up. Anyone of us would have been worried sick in your place,” Dillon assured Maura. He wanted her to realize that they weren’t enemies in this, but on the same side.
Maura looked like she was resisting believing him, but then she must have reconsidered.
“Thank you,” she said in a small voice. And then she looked at her daughter. “But you shouldn’t have run away like that. Do you know what could have happened to you?” Maura’s voice went up as she contemplated the full implications of what she had just asked.
“The important thing is that it didn’t,” Dillon said, trying to get her to focus on the positive aspect of this reunion.
Maura suddenly became aware that there was someone else at this reunion besides Julie and Dillon. She glared at Hailey, then turned toward Dillon. “I’m sorry, who’s this?” Maura asked coldly.
“This is Hailey Miller, Mom,” Julie said, doing the introductions before her father could say anything. The girl smiled as she continued. “She’s in charge of the wellness spa that Dad built.”
“She’s also the reason that I was able to get Julie to come back to Fort Lauderdale instead of having her run off again,” Dillon told Maura.
Maura’s expression was difficult to read as she looked between Julie and Hailey.
“Really? Julie, is this true?” Maura asked her daughter.
“I was pretty angry at you,” the girl freely admitted, not attempting to hide the fact. “Some of my friends don’t even have dads. I have one and you wouldn’t even let me meet him no matter how much I begged you. So I decided to do it on my own,” she said, a little defiantly.
“She’s your daughter, all right,” Dillon said without any intended malice. “Headstrong to a fault.”
Maura’s eyes narrowed. “Are you trying to insult me?”
“No, in his own way, he’s giving you a compliment,” Hailey told her, playing peacemaker again. “It takes a strong, determined woman to raise a child on her own. If you hadn’t been as strong as you were, you might not have been able to make it. Or to go on to marry someone you fell in love with,” Hailey pointed out.
“Huh,” was Maura’s only initial comment.
She looked at Hailey for a long moment, silently going over things in her mind. And then she nodded her head, as if agreeing with the conclusion she had come to. Pulling her shoulders back, she said, “Would you like to come inside for some coffee?” she asked. Then, realizing that her question could be construed as only including one of them, Maura clarified, “Both of you.”
“Are you sure?” Hailey asked, glancing toward Dillon to see if he was all right with this, as well.
“I wouldn’t have asked you if I wasn’t,” Maura informed her pointedly.
“Well then, I’d love to come in for coffee. Our flight back to Texas isn’t for several hours,” she told Maura. She looked at Dillon. “How do you feel about coffee?”
“Definitely for it,” he answered, following the two women and his daughter into the house. For the time being, peace appeared to have been restored, mostly, he thought, thanks to Hailey.
Chapter Nineteen
Dillon found himself anticipating an explosion, or at the very least, name-calling when the initial dust had settled, but neither scenario materialized. Instead, he and Hailey wound up having an exceedingly civilized visit with Maura, who, it seemed, had actually had time to think the situation over. The woman grudgingly agreed that perhaps allowing Dillon to have regular visits with their daughter was actually for the best.
By the time he and Hailey were at the airport, Dillon finally had to admit that things were beginning to look positively rosy.
“That was really a surprise,” Dillon said to Hailey—not for the first time—as they began boarding their flight. “I honestly didn’t think that Maura would ever actually come around.” He couldn’t believe the amount of relief he was experiencing.
Hailey waited until they had made their way to their seats and sat down before she commented. It didn’t seem like the sort of conversation Dillon would appreciate having over the heads of strangers.
As she took her seat, she smiled at Dillon. She didn’t know how he had managed to get them seats next to one another at the last minute, but he had.
“How could Maura not come around?” she asked him. “She’s a mother, first and foremost,” Hailey pointed out. “And when Julie ran away, I think it finally hit Maura just how much her daughter was being hurt by this war she was waging against you. If Maura didn’t want to risk losing Julie again—or permanently—she knew she was going to have to change her tactics. In essence, Maura realized that she was going to have to loosen up,” Hailey told him.
Dillon nodded. What Hailey was saying made sense. But he knew from experience that sense and Maura didn’t always travel in the same circles.
“Still, this could have easily gone another way entirely,” Dillon told her.
That sort of mindset could suck him
