Second Chance with the Single Dad Read online

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘Angie’s sister in Katoomba is kicking up a fuss. Seems to think she has a claim on Nina. She doesn’t, of course. Legally she hasn’t got a leg to stand on. But the sooner I have Nina with me, the better.’

  Georgia’s blue eyes widened. ‘You mean you intend to bring Nina up by yourself?’

  ‘She’s my responsibility. I’m heading up to the Blue Mountains to pick her up and take her home.’

  ‘Whoa.’ Georgia put her hand to her forehead. ‘I’m reeling here. You’re going to be a single dad?’

  ‘I’m her father. She’s my flesh and blood. There is no choice.’

  ‘You’re sure Nina is yours?’

  ‘Have I done a DNA test? No time for that yet. But she’s mine all right. Looking at her is like looking into a miniature mirror. The social worker from the hospital laughed when she saw me. “No doubt about this little one’s daddy,” she said.’

  Georgia nodded thoughtfully, as he had seen her do so many times. ‘That’s reassuring. And she must be very cute if she looks like you. But have you really thought this through?’

  ‘She’s my child and I will do my duty by her.’

  He’d been orphaned at five years old. His time in foster care had marked him for life. No way in the world would any child of his go through what he had gone through. But he couldn’t tell Georgia that. For all the years of their friendship he’d never told her—or anyone from his ‘new life’ in Sydney—the truth about his childhood back in Melbourne. He’d made no secret that he’d been adopted. But as far as his university friends were concerned he’d been adopted at five by his wonderful parents. Not at fourteen years of age. Not after having found himself in a heap of trouble for doing what he’d thought was the right thing.

  ‘Good for you,’ Georgia said. ‘But it won’t be easy. I guess you know that.’

  ‘None of it will be easy,’ he said. ‘Which is why I’ve come here to ask you for your help. I need a friend—’ She started to protest but he spoke over her. ‘I know I probably don’t deserve your friendship, not after those years of radio silence. But I’m asking you anyway, Georgie. For moral support. Please come with me to Katoomba. Today.’

  Her eyes widened and she frowned. ‘Me? Why?’

  ‘You know about kids. You teach elementary school. You have nieces and nephews by the bucketload.’ He didn’t want to sound desperate. But none of his friends had started families yet. Not that he would expect them to put their own lives aside and rush to his help.

  Yet he expected that of Georgia. He pushed the uncomfortable thought aside. She had always been there for him. Until he hadn’t been there for her. But Nina needed him. And he needed Georgia.

  ‘That doesn’t make me an expert on babies,’ she said.

  ‘More of an expert than I am,’ he said. ‘I’d never even held a baby until the social worker handed Nina to me two days ago.’ He’d been petrified he’d drop her, despite the social worker’s reassurance.

  ‘I’m one ahead of you there,’ Georgia said with a wry twist to her mouth. She’d used to tell him she was the ‘afterthought’ in her family—eight years younger than her youngest sister, ten years younger than her oldest. They were both married with kids. She’d done a lot of babysitting. If anyone knew how to look after a baby, it was her.

  ‘That’s why I thought—’ he started.

  ‘Don’t you have a girlfriend?’

  ‘No.’ The relationship with Angie had burned him too badly to even contemplate dating.

  ‘There must be someone else who could—?’

  ‘There’s no one else I would trust.’

  She sighed, took a step back from him against the stack of boxes in the middle of her living room. Pushed her fingers through her riot of dark chestnut, wavy hair. ‘That’s not fair, Wil. After all this time you can’t just rock up here and—’

  ‘I’ve been a bad friend, I know,’ he said. Wil didn’t expect her to disagree and she didn’t.

  ‘I... We... Your friends thought you’d dropped us because when you struck it so rich with your inventions, you wanted to leave us behind.’ She looked up at him, her eyes huge with undisguised hurt and bewilderment. He hated that he had hurt her.

  ‘That’s not how it happened at all,’ he said. How could she have thought that of him? Yes, he had made a lot of money but it hadn’t changed things, hadn’t changed him. He clenched his hands into fists by his sides. He never wanted Georgia to think badly of him. ‘I felt obligated to do what Angie wanted. She was jealous of you. Thought the others looked down at her.’

  By the time he had realised Angie had purposely alienated him from the friends he cared most about, it had been impossible to make amends to them.

  ‘That wasn’t true,’ Georgia said.

  But she didn’t quite meet his eye. None of his friends had liked Angie. If only he’d listened to them, instead of being swept along on an ill-founded urge to be some kind of white knight and rescue her from the effects of her troubled past.

  ‘Fact was, Angie didn’t like me seeing you. Didn’t believe in platonic friendship between a man and a woman. No matter how many times I assured her we were just friends, that we could all be friends. That there was no reason for her to be so jealous.’

  ‘No reason at all to be jealous,’ she echoed. ‘We rode horses together. Saw indie bands that no one else liked. But there was never any romance.’

  ‘Angie didn’t believe me,’ he said. Instead she’d screamed awful, ill-founded accusations he had no intention of sharing with Georgia.

  ‘And after your marriage ended? Still no word from you.’

  He gritted his teeth. ‘I didn’t want to admit what a mistake I’d made by marrying her.’

  Georgia would never know how many times he’d got as far as the last digit in her phone number before hanging up. How many times he’d driven past this apartment, slowing down only to accelerate away at the thought of confessing what an idiot he’d been to be taken in so thoroughly by Angie. Because to do that would have meant revealing the truth about those hidden years of his life. And not even the comfort and understanding he might have got from his long-standing friend Georgia had been worth that.

  ‘Really,’ she muttered. But the icy edge to her voice was melting.

  ‘I’m sorry, Georgie. If I could go back and change things I would.’

  She blinked rapidly, something she’d always done when she was thinking deeply about something important. Finally, she spoke. ‘I’m not one to hold a grudge. I see things must have been difficult for you. And now—’

  ‘You’ll come with me to pick up Nina? That is, if you don’t have a boyfriend who has claims on your time.’

  ‘No. There’s no one.’

  ‘What about Toby? I thought for sure he’d have a ring on your finger by now.’

  ‘We broke up a year ago,’ she said, tight-lipped.

  Good. ‘I’m sorry,’ he said to be polite. He’d been convinced she’d marry Toby. He cursed under his breath. If he’d known Toby was going to exit her life, he mightn’t have made that rash decision to marry Angie.

  She gestured around her. ‘I’m in the middle of moving house. The landlord has put the apartment on the market and I’m going home to my parents’ until I find a new place. There are boxes still to pack, cleaning to be done. I—’

  ‘I’ll pay for packers, movers and professional cleaners. Please, Georgie.’

  She paused, looked up at him with an expression he knew of old, halfway between exasperation and affection, then sighed. ‘For past times’ sake,’ she said. ‘No, for the baby’s sake. Unless you’ve changed a lot in the two years since I last saw you, I’m not so sure you’d know which end was up on a seven-month-old baby.’ Her smile—that lovely smile that had always uplifted him—danced around the edges of her lips.

 
Wil didn’t realise he’d been holding his breath until he let it out on a whoosh of relief.

  ‘Thank you,’ he said.

  Now that Georgia was back in his life, he wouldn’t let her go again too easily. No matter what it took.

  CHAPTER TWO

  SO MANY TIMES during the years of her friendship with Wil, Georgia had escaped the city with him to head for the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney, to ride horses or bush walk. Only never with a rearward-facing baby car seat installed in the back seat of Wil’s car. Or four large packets of disposable nappies stacked next to it. ‘Just in case they’re all needed on the way home,’ Wil explained.

  Georgia laughed. ‘Unless the baby has a particularly explosive digestive system, I very much doubt that.’

  He scowled in a way she well remembered. ‘I told you, I know nothing about babies.’

  She almost said, You’ve got a lot to learn. But Wil seemed only too aware of that. She almost asked if he was nervous about collecting the baby, but the tight set of his jaw and the way his hands gripped the wheel so his knuckles showed white gave her the answer.

  ‘You’ll learn quickly,’ she said instead, making it her mission to encourage and support him as she’d always done as his friend. And avoid jokes about dirty nappies. He was facing completely new territory without much of a map to guide him. She fought the urge to reach out and place her hand over his to reassure him, but that had never been the way with them. No touching.

  ‘I guess I’ll have to,’ he said.

  Her friend had come back so unexpectedly into her life. She was churning with curiosity about what had happened in the two years since she had seen him. So many questions clamoured to be asked. But now wasn’t the time to ask them.

  Wil was essentially a very private person. It took time for him to confide in his friends. Things must have ended badly for him to have been so estranged from Angie he hadn’t even known she was pregnant. Georgia admired the way he had stepped up to his duty as a father. Not every twenty-eight-year-old guy would react the same way to news of a secret baby. But then she’d always thought of Wil as one of the good guys.

  She’d met him at orientation day on the first day of her first year at Sydney University. Thrilled by the newness of it all, she’d signed up for various interest clubs and had been searching for the equestrian club when she’d bumped into a tall, dark-haired guy doing the same thing. One glance had told her he was a country boy, his Western jeans, blue and white checked shirt and elastic-sided riding boots a dead giveaway. All that had been missing was an Akubra, the iconic Australian wide-brimmed hat.

  ‘They’ve closed the equestrian club for lack of interest,’ he’d said gloomily.

  ‘But I’m interested,’ she’d said.

  ‘So am I,’ he’d said.

  ‘That makes two of us.’

  Then they’d looked at each other—really looked—and laughed. ‘Why don’t we start our own club?’ he’d said.

  ‘Let’s go grab a coffee and talk about how we’d do that,’ she’d said.

  Excitement had hummed through her. He had been quite the hottest guy she’d seen on campus. But from the get-go it had been strictly a hands-off scenario. Wil had just started dating a girl and she’d still been seeing her high-school boyfriend. Despite that—perhaps because of that—she and Wil had fallen immediately into an easy friendship, talking non-stop for more than an hour. They’d done nothing about reviving the moribund university equestrian club. But the next weekend they’d driven up together to the Blue Mountains to horseback ride in the Megalong Valley.

  This time, their hour-and-a-half journey to the mountains took them to a suburban area on the wrong side of Katoomba. Wil told her that his ex-wife had moved up there after their final split. The streets were steep and hilly, lined with small, free-standing houses, the bush never too far away. Georgia laughed when they had to sound the horn at a small flock of sheep grazing at the side of the road. No dimple from Wil. He was obviously too focused on what was to come to engage in her speculation about whether the sheep had escaped, or it was considered okay up here for sheep to wander all over a suburban street.

  He pulled up in front of a shabby but tidy cottage, surrounded by a neat garden. ‘This is the sister’s place,’ he said. ‘She’s been looking after Nina since the accident.’ He made no move to get out of the car.

  ‘Nina is such a pretty name,’ she said.

  ‘Yeah. I like it,’ he said.

  Georgia let him sit there, his gaze focused on the bright blue front door of the house, until the silence got uncomfortable. ‘So, operation baby pick up,’ she prompted. ‘What’s the next step?’

  ‘The social worker Maree meets us at the house to facilitate the handover. She’s in there now.’

  ‘And then you’re a daddy,’ she said. It scarcely seemed real to her. He would walk out of that house with a baby in his arms. A baby for keeps.

  Wil turned to her, the colour drained from his face. ‘That’s what terrifies me. I want to do the right thing. But what do I know about being a dad? It’s not just the nappies or what to feed her. I’ll nail that. Suppose I haven’t got it in me to be a good parent?’

  The anguish in his face told her there was something more going on here. She’d often had the feeling there was more to Wil than he’d ever let on to her. Something, perhaps, to do with his upbringing. She knew he’d been orphaned as a young child. But as a friend she’d never questioned his past. Right now he needed morale-boosting more than anything else.

  ‘The fact that you feel responsible for her is a very good start. That you’re actually here is a huge point in your favour.’

  ‘Guys usually have time to get used to the idea of being a father.’ He drummed his fingers on the edge of the steering wheel. ‘I’ve been thrown in the deep end.’

  ‘That’s true. You’ll have to learn on the spot. But you’re a clever guy. It seems to me that so far you’re doing great.’

  ‘She’s a baby now, but then she’ll be a little girl, then a teenager. I’ll be the father of a teenager, Georgie. How do I do that?’

  ‘It is a bit hard to imagine, isn’t it?’ she said. She and Wil had been teenagers when they’d met; it didn’t seem that long ago. ‘But you’ll grow with her and the next thing you know you’ll be giving her away at her wedding.’

  ‘Father of the bride? That’s a stretch too far,’ he said with a hint of that dimple finally appearing.

  There was something about his slow smile, the way it lit his dark eyes, that had always made her believe she was special to Wil—as a friend. She could only imagine what it might be like to have that smile directed at her in the sensual, exciting way that had had women flocking to him. But she had never allowed herself to imagine it. Too scared that if she ever acted on it he might kindly reject her. She wasn’t about to start now.

  ‘Wil, what you’re doing will be life-changing. There’s no way around that. But take it baby step by baby step,’ she said, returning his smile.

  ‘You always know the right thing to say,’ he said.

  ‘Not always.’ I’m afraid my give-a-damn quota has expired. ‘But in this case, I say just go in and get your baby. I’ll show you how to change a nappy if the need arises. How about that for an act of friendship?’

  He grimaced. ‘Changing nappies is one aspect of parenthood I’m not looking forward to. Prepared for it but dreading it.’

  ‘Hey, you muck out stables. You’ll get used to it.’ She certainly hadn’t, no matter how much she loved her little nieces and nephews. Maybe nappy-changing would be more bearable if the child was your own. Anyway, Wil could well afford to hire a nanny to help him with the practical aspects of parenting.

  ‘You’re right. I’m going in,’ he said. He unbuckled his seat belt with a resolute air, as if gearing himself up for action on a battlefield. Four days ago he had had no idea he was
a father.

  ‘Do you want me to actually come inside with you?’ she asked, trying to sound as if she didn’t mind either way. She wasn’t sure if he’d just wanted her company on the drive. Of course she was dying of curiosity to see what the baby was like, but mainly she wanted to be there for him—someone on his side.

  He turned to her. ‘Please. I don’t know that I can do this without your support.’

  ‘Of course you could.’ She undid her seat belt. ‘But there’s strength in numbers and I’m very happy to be your wing woman.’

  A drier heat than humid Sydney, crisp with the sharp scent of eucalypts from the thousands of acres of national park that surrounded the mountain town. The sound of cicadas serenading summer was almost deafening. She stood with Wil at the top of the driveway to the sister’s house and smoothed down the skirt of her grape-coloured linen shift dress. Teamed with a low-heeled court shoe, it was a favourite schoolteacher outfit, smart yet respectable. Just the thing to help her friend claim his child.

  ‘I want to do this,’ he said fiercely. ‘I’ll fight to have this child with me. She’s mine.’

  ‘I’ve never seen anyone more fearless on horseback. You can do it. You really can, Wil.’

  She didn’t want to admit she was nervous. This was so out of her experience, had happened so quickly. One minute she’d been packing boxes, just hours later she was in the mountains with Wil, whom she hadn’t seen for two years, to pick up his baby. The baby he hadn’t known existed. It seemed surreal to say the least.

  He turned to look down into her face, dark eyes sincere and warm with gratitude. It was so good to be with him again. ‘Thank you,’ he said slowly. ‘I’ll owe you one after this.’

  ‘You don’t owe me a thing,’ she said. ‘I’m happy to help. No exchange of favours required.’

  Who knew when she would actually see him again after this? He needed her today, what of tomorrow? Besides, New Wil could be very different from the Old Wil who’d been her friend. Now he was a single dad who’d gone through a nasty divorce and the death of the mother of his child. His life would now be focused totally on a seven-month-old baby. She doubted there would be a lot of time for going to see indie bands, or sharing a meal at a funky city café. There was a real likelihood it might be another two years until she saw him again.