“What?”
“Can I call Jordan Daddy? I know he said at the wedding that he was my new daddy, but he didn’t say what I should call him.”
Kelly’s heart swelled with emotion at the plaintive request. If only Jordan really were her daddy, she thought with regret. “That’s up to you and Jordan. Why don’t you discuss it with him?”
“Will my real daddy be mad?”
Kelly doubted Paul Flint would much care one way or the other. Given how seldom he showed his face, it was doubtful he’d ever even know.
“I don’t think so, munchkin. I think he’d want you to do whatever makes you happy.”
It was a blatant lie, but Kelly would do whatever it took to keep Dani from ever discovering that, at least not until she was old enough to judge her father’s behavior for herself. She would have to be the one to put the labels—selfish and uncaring came to mind—on it.
“All right!” Dani enthused. “I can hardly wait to see Jordan. He’s the very bestest daddy in the world.”
Maybe not the bestest quite yet, Kelly thought, smiling as she watched Dani go racing off in the direction of the barn. But he was working on it. By the time they had a baby of their own—if they had a baby of their own, she corrected—she was convinced he’d have it down pat.
First, though, he had to give some serious thought to his motivation for parenthood. Hopefully, he would come back from his walk with all the right words. If he didn’t, if his reasons were as muddy as the ones behind his decision to marry her, she resolved that hell would freeze over before she would have his child.
And there would remain this huge empty space inside her, a space meant to be filled by all the love she had to share with Jordan’s children.
Jordan heard Dani’s shouts long before he spotted her. She was racing down the lane as fast as her churning little legs could carry her. He stooped down and held out his arms. She ran into them and flung her arms around his neck. Why hadn’t he ever guessed how being a parent would make him feel?
“I was sleeping when you came to get me last night and I never, ever, woke up until this morning,” she said.
“I noticed,” he said, loving the way she smelled of bubble bath, loving even more the fierce protectiveness she aroused in him.
“Did you miss me?” she demanded.
“Every single minute,” he confirmed. “But I’ll bet you didn’t miss me and your mom at all.”
“Sure I did. I even drew you a picture. Want to see it?”
“Of course, I want to see it,” he said as she reached into her pocket and pulled out a piece of paper that had been folded and refolded into a small, rumpled square. Jordan took it and spread it open. Tears sprang to his eyes as he saw what she’d depicted.
There, drawn with the brightest crayons in the box, were Kelly and Dani, standing in front of a lopsided house that was recognizable as this one. He was standing between them. In case the drawing itself wasn’t clear, she had labeled each of them in crooked letters—Mommy, Dani and Daddy. A fat black cat—or something that vaguely resembled one—was at their feet. A striped cat was clutched in Dani’s arms. Kelly was also holding something.
“What’s that?” he asked, though he had a pretty good idea.
“That’s my baby sister,” she said. “See the pink blanket? That’s how you know it’s a girl.”
Jordan nodded solemnly, since he couldn’t seem to squeeze a word past the lump lodged in his throat. Across the top Dani had written in large, tilting letters, My Family.
“Did you show this to your mom?”
“Not yet. I made it for you. Will you hang it in your office?”
“You bet I will,” he promised.
“Are we going to have a baby?” Dani asked worriedly. “I really, really want a sister.”
Jordan saw an opportunity to probe this pint-size genius’s mind for an argument he could offer Kelly on the same topic. “Why?”
“So we can play with our dolls together,” she said at once. “I tried with Angela, but she’s pretty little. She couldn’t even hold the doll.”
“Babies generally start out pretty little,” he mused.
“Couldn’t you and mommy have a big one?”
He chuckled. “I don’t think it works that way. So, tell me why else you want a sister?”
Dani’s face scrunched up as she gave serious thought to the question. “So we can love her to pieces. Mommy always says she loves me to pieces.” She looked up at him. “I think she loves you to pieces, too.”
An interesting tidbit of news, Jordan thought. “She does? What makes you think so?” he asked, pushing aside how pitiful it was to be pumping a five-year-old for information on his own wife.
Dani gave him a disgusted look. “Because she married you, silly.”
Realistically, Jordan supposed that was one explanation for Kelly’s decision, even if she’d never flat-out said it. His spirits rose a fraction. “Anything else?”
“She thinks you’re a saint.”
Jordan stared. “A saint? What makes you think that?”
“‘Cause she always said the only way she’d ever get married again was if a saint came along. And we learned in Sunday school that you should love saints, right?”
He found the logic a little convoluted, but essentially correct. It was certainly a topic worth discussing with his wife.
“Jordan?”
“Yes, munchkin?” he said distractedly, his thoughts already leaping ahead to the conversation he would have with Kelly the instant he got back to the house.
“I been thinking.”
“Oh?”
“I think maybe I should call you Daddy,” she said, gazing at him soberly. “What do you think?”
He gave her a fierce hug. “I think there’s nothing that would make me any happier.”
“Really?”
“Really, really,” he confirmed. He took her hand. “Why don’t we go back to the house and I’ll show you what I brought for you?”
“You brought me a present?” Dani asked, looking a little too
