Page 6 of Sheltering Lily

“She’ll get to play with their son,” Lily said. “Austin, was it?”

“That’s right. He was a surprise.”

“Surprise baby?” Unexpected pregnancies certainly happened, but where was Colin going with this?

“Surprise to my brother.” Colin shot me a grin. “Zach had just gotten out of the service. When he came home, his former fiancée had a little boy.”

“His?” I asked. This was getting good.

“No doubt about it. Austin is a mini version of Zach. Turned out, she found out she was pregnant not long after they split up. She tried to get ahold of him, but she didn’t know that he’d changed his number after a teammate played a prank on him.”

“Teammate? Is he on a bowling team or something?”

“SEAL team,” Colin explained. “Just like me. Or since he’s the oldest, maybe I should say, I became a Navy SEAL just like him. He retired from service about a year and a half ago.”

“Wow,” I marveled. “Two SEALs in the family.”

Colin laughed. “Make that four. Our youngest brother, Alex, is a SEAL, too. And Chance used to be a SEAL. Not to mention, his brothers were Special Forces, too, in different military branches. Harris used to be a Marine Raider, and Lee was an Army Ranger. Alex is the only one still actively serving, though. Chance runs the garage with Mandy, Harris and his wife have a B&B in South Carolina, and Lee handles security for his wife—she’s a bigshot business tycoon.”

“Good Lord,” I said, shaking my head. “That’s quite a lineup. Your parents must be proud.”

He shot me a look that was dark and unfathomable, but I didn’t feel it was directed at me. Maybe it was his warning that I shouldn’t pry any more. I scooted a box across the floor toward the door, straightened, and dusted off my hands. But I was terribly curious about Sofia’s mother, and he had readily volunteered information about the rest of his family. Would he be as willing to open up about his own past?

He was watching me, hands on hips. I shouldn’t ask more questions, but what the heck?

“You don’t have to give me an answer, but I was wondering if Sofia’s mother is in the picture.” Would a mom show up at the house and want to see the toddler? I thought I ought to know that, in case it happened when Colin wasn’t home. I wouldn’t want to interfere with any custody arrangement they might have.

“She’s dead.” His tone was blunt.

“Oh, I’m sorry,” I rushed to say, regretting that I’d broached the subject. “I didn’t mean to?—”

“She wasn’t my wife or girlfriend, and Sofia’s not my daughter, biologically. I adopted her when she was a year old,” he said. “It was her mother’s dying wish.”

I cocked my head, silently encouraging him to explain and hoping he’d accommodate my unspoken wish. I’d burn up with inquisitiveness if he didn’t.

“I met her mother on a mission,” he continued, “from my time as a SEAL. The details are classified…but I wasn’t able to protect her. Before she died, she asked me to take care of her daughter. So after a whole lot of diplomatic wrangling, I became Sofia’s legal father.”

“You left the service to care for her?” I guessed, imagining how impossible it would be as a single dad and a SEAL. Still, giving up his career was a big thing.

He nodded but didn’t seem like he wanted to say more. I had a thousand more questions, but I kept them to myself. It was none of my business, I supposed, but I wondered about Colin.

It seemed my employer was an interesting and complex man in more than one way.

Colin

“That’s it,” Lily declared a few minutes later. “Ready to load them in the elevator?”

I glanced around the room. She had surprisingly few possessions. Maybe that was part of finding herself, not wanting to get weighed down by belongings. Suited me fine. I’d spent enough years on missions that traveling light felt natural. Among the things I’d found hardest to get used to about having a daughter was the sheer amount of stuff involved.

Lily and I worked together in comfortable silence as we transferred the boxes to the elevator and then to our vehicles, drawn up to the building’s entrance. Most went to my truck, since her car was a tiny subcompact. The car, in its outlandish color, suited its owner. She wasn’t a wallflower, but neither was she the kind of chatterbox who never let anyone else get a word in edgewise. In fact, she was surprisingly easy to talk to, She’d gotten me to talk about personal matters that I usually kept to myself. But it felt natural to open up to her.

If I’d met her two years earlier, I’d probably have asked her out. She was beautiful, interesting, fun to be with—everything I looked for in a date, back before I had responsibilities. But I did have responsibilities now. I needed to find Sofia a mother—and it couldn’t be Lily. She wasn’t even willing to commit to a job for the long term. I didn’t think any less of her for it—she should take all the time she needed to figure herself out. But if she wasn’t ready to settle into a job, then I highly doubted she was ready to settle into a lifetime commitment in her personal life. That made it perfectly clear that she wasn’t in the market for a serious relationship.

I slammed the tailgate of my truck and grinned when I saw her shoving a box onto the passenger seat of her car, her butt sticking out. I wasn’t going to ask her out, but I didn’t see any harm in enjoying the view. And what a view it was… Her ass was out of this world—but then, she looked good from any angle. Everything about her attracted me. I couldn’t decide if it was the dark-rimmed glasses that said sexy schoolteacher, or her quick smile and quicker laugh that I liked best. I’d heard the latter plenty when we’d played outside the day before. We’d taken turns running alongside Sofia while she careened down the sidewalk on her trike. At one point, Lily had collapsed onto the grass in a fit of laughter when she and Sofia collided. I’d thought they were hurt at first, but the giggles and happy squeals told me differently.

Lily was going to be good for Sofia. Her last nanny, Brenda, had been perfectly nice, but she’d also been quieter and far more reserved. I could already tell that Sofia was going to thrive under the care of someone who would really play with her.

A shiver ran through me, making me stiffen. I had the distinct sensation that someone was watching me. I turned my gaze up toward the building. No one was visible in a window, and no one on the street seemed to be paying attention to us, but that wasn’t enough to get me to let down my guard. When my instincts gave me a warning, I always paid attention.

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