Page 6 of Healing Hope

Her breasts were damn distracting, though, swaying gently beneath the fabric of her tank. She didn’t need a bra, but the fact that she wasn’t wearing one was going to aggravate him. And those shorts were so short he’d caught a hint of neon pink beneath the hem. He prayed it was a bathing suit and not her panties he’d glimpsed.

“Did you just come from the beach,” he asked as he led her down the hallway to the spare room.

“No. I just flew in from New Guinea and haven’t had a chance to do laundry.”

Relief swept through him. That made sense. She hadn’t been able to dress properly because she’d been traveling. “You can use our washer and dryer any time. For now, I’ll show you where you can sleep, then we’ll go see Hope.”

“Let’s go see Hope now,” she murmured, “before she thinks she got away with being sneaky.”

Yeah, maybe that would be a better idea. He paused in front of Hope’s bedroom door, decorated with a unicorn she’d drawn and colored. He pushed open her door and looked at the form of his daughter on the bed. Though the body didn’t move, it looked like she was trying to hold the little dog still.

“Hope, wake up,” he said softly.

Ms. Swan stood in the middle of the room and just watched them. Paul moved across to the bed and rested a hand on Hope’s shoulder.

“Daddy?”

Hope sat up in the bed, rubbing her eyes. With Ms. Swan’s words playing in his head, he looked closely at the girl. She appeared much more bright-eyed than she probably should have been. It was obvious she had been play-acting when he’d checked on her earlier. Paul was a little hurt at the subterfuge, because he thought he’d been good to his daughter. Why was she running around taking advantage of his ignorance?

She’s barely five, he reminded himself. Parenting had a sharp learning curve and he would like to think he was better every day. Hope did nothing deliberately. “Hope, this is Ms. Swan. She’s going to be staying with you while I go to work.”

Hope looked at the young woman but said nothing. Then she glanced at Paul, and back to the woman. “I think Sophie needs to go outside,” she whispered.

Paul nodded and watched as his daughter, who looked so like him, slid out of bed and headed out the door, the little brown and white dog following along behind her. Paul looked at Ms. Swan. “We have a fenced backyard. I’ll show you the guest room, then you can join us out there for some playtime, if that would be all right.”

The woman nodded her head, and he turned to lead her from the room. The guest room had a decidedly masculine feel to it, but that couldn’t be helped. It was usually his buddies that stayed there. He didn’t think a woman had ever even stepped foot in the room, at least not since he’d owned the house. The sheets were clean, though. “You have your own bathroom and there are towels in that cupboard. If you need anything, just let me know.”

“I will. The bed looks soft. That’s all I care about at this point. I’ve been traveling for about forty hours over the past few days and I can barely keep my eyes open.”

He looked at her, curious. “That’s a long trip. Where did you come from?”

“I had a date in New Guinea,” she said with a yawn.

Paul stared at her, somehow not surprised. The woman was beautiful. There was no doubt about that. Stunning if he was honest with himself, with that sun-streaked tawny hair and her pale ocean green eyes. She sunned regularly, it looked like. He hated to generalize, but she seemed like the type to go from party to party. Or maybe date to date. “Quite a change from New Guinea to here, Ms. Swan.”

“You have no idea,” she laughed.

Normally, he was a pretty laid-back guy, or he tried to be, at least, but he felt a little defensive at her words. Was she deigning to come work for him?

Ms. Swan set her battered travel bag on top of the mattress and turned to him. “I can unpack later,” she said, giving him a slight smile. “I’d like to talk to Hope a bit before I go to bed. And please, call me Jess. I mean, I’m living in your house, so…”

Paul nodded once and led her from the room, not sure how he felt about calling her by her first name. He didn’t want to encourage anything more than a business relationship, but he supposed what she said was right. And it would probably ease Hope’s fears if they were on a first name basis. “And I’m Paul,” he said finally, embarrassed at the time it had taken for him to offer it.

They wound their way through the house and kitchen and through the French doors at the back. Hope was out in the yard with the little dog, but she glanced up when they came outside. Paul couldn’t read the expression on her closed-down face, but he could tell she was thinking hard. Looking away toward the dog, Hope walked to the back corner of the fence where she liked to hang out. There was an old pine back there, obviously old, that spread such good shade across the back lawn that Paul didn’t mind all the pine needles it shed every year.

Making a motion, they sat at the outdoor table. The sun was on its way down, but the redwood pergola that stretched over top of them had been built to block the harsh rays, making the back patio completely shaded. There was a gurgling fountain in the yard a few feet away, and it produced just enough white noise to drown out anything from the street. This was his favorite part of the house, and it had taken a lot of work to get it this way.

“It’s beautiful back here,” Jess said, scanning the yard. “I have to mention, though, I couldn’t even tell that a child lived here. I saw toys in the bedroom, but does she not have anything for outside?”

Paul blinked, surveying the lawn again. “I didn’t even think about it,” he admitted. “Our situation has been pretty fluid and I’m kind of playing catch-up in the parenting department.”

Jess nodded, like that had been obvious. “Do you mind telling me how you two came to be together this way?”

Paul didn’t feel like exposing himself any more than he had with this woman. “Hope’s mother and I had a relationship that didn’t work out. She kept Hope away from me for most of her life, and when I finally had investigators track her down, she took me to court to say I was stalking her. The judge took visitation away from me and ruled in her favor. I had four supervised visits in the three years after.”

Jess shook her head. “That’s terrible,” she said.

“It wasn’t until about two months ago that I got custody. Hope’s mother died in a car crash. Unfortunately, Hope was in the car with her, so she probably saw her mother die. She won’t talk to me about it.”

---