Page 55 of Knocked Up in Alaska

“I meant, you’re fine,” he continued his clumsy tip-toe through this minefield of a conversation. “I want you to use the office. You need a safe, comfortable place to take care of Shayla. I should have knocked. From now on, I’ll knock. I promise.” He squeezed past her through the narrow doorway, flicked the wall switch to flood the small room with buzzing fluorescent light, and snagged the crochet hook from the pencil cup. “I need to tell you your mom’s in the bar. She doesn’t know you’re still here. If you want to see her, talk to her, and introduce her to Shayla, I can bring her back—”

“No.” Her response came instantly and unequivocally. She looked down at her daughter, but not before he saw the sad slant of her eyes. “She made her position on me and my choices crystal clear. If she’s had a change of heart, she needs to let me know. Otherwise, I must respect her wishes.”

“Honey.” Suddenly weary to the bone, he tugged her back into the office, sat her in the chair, put the sleeping baby at her feet, and leaned against the desk, facing her. “Rose is a proud woman. She might not feel capable of coming right out and saying she’s had a change of heart. But she’s showing it in other ways.”

“How?” She eased the diaper bag off her shoulder and placed it on her lap. “By teaching Team XY how to knit?”

“Yeah, in part.”

“That means nothing, Ford. She likes you guys, and she likes to take charge of things. I can’t interpret her being out there tonight as a change of heart. She didn’t come to see me. She came to see you and the others.”

“Who do you think talked Ray into offering his cabin?”

That question brought a wary expression to her face. “I figured Don from The Castaway mentioned to Ray that I needed a place.” She responded with the hesitation of someone no longer sure of her answer.

Proceed with caution, his inner voice warned, because Lilah had her pride, too. “I found out by chance that Rose and Ray flew to Anchorage together the day Shayla was born. Well, early that morning. Rose tapped him to take her there and back for some shopping, which, by the way, included that crib Ray had at his place, the one he claimed he picked up from his cousin who had an extra.”

Her hold on the diaper bag turned to a white-knuckled grip. “Are you telling me I have my current place and a crib thanks to my mother?”

“Yes.” Because her color came up, he went on quickly. “Now, don’t go doing something that lets her know you know. She wanted to help, and she went into stealth mode to do it, as it made the help easier for her to provide and easier for you to accept. But it shows she cares, even if she can’t bring herself to say so in words.”

“Well, God.” Flags of red flew high on her cheekbones, but her voice held no fire. “I thought I’d had a streak of luck.”

“You did, but it was thanks to your mom manipulating fate in your favor.”

“Oh.” She still looked unsettled by the news, but not angry. “This is all very enlightening, but it doesn’t change much for me. She doesn’t want me to know what she did, so she clearly doesn’t want my thanks. She’s not opening a line of communication with these actions. She’s just, I don’t know, easing her conscience, I guess.”

Pride. Pride on all sides. Rather than point out it often came before a fall, he packed his own frustration away for the moment and moved on. “So what I’m hearing is you’re going out through the alley?”

“I think that would be best.” With her exit strategy decided, she rose, shouldered the bag, picked up the baby carrier, and started walking toward the kitchen.

He fell into step beside her and took the carrier. “It’s dark. I’ll walk you to your car.” As they crossed the kitchen—the exceedingly quiet kitchen—he wondered out loud, “Where’s Lou?”

She looked around. “He was here when I came around the corner to go to your office, but that was over an hour ago.”

The trash bins were empty, the floor and counters clean, the dishwasher churning through a cycle. The kitchen looked clean enough to make even the strictest county health inspector put his checklist away. Maybe he’d taken a break?

If so, he’d earned it, always carrying out his less-than-glamorous duties efficiently and without a complaint. The kid appeared 100 percent committed to staying clean and healthy. He’d even started looking better—arriving for his shifts more groomed, less haphazard. As they approached the door to the alley, another question struck. If Lilah was still here, where the hell was…

“Where’s Mia?”

Lilah paused at the door. “Oh, gosh. I don’t know. She was back here before, too. I told her I needed ten minutes. She planned to hang out and catch a ride with me, but it’s been way more than ten minutes. Maybe she decided to walk home?”

He wasn’t crazy about the possibility of her walking home alone in the dark. It wasn’t a long way, and local kids—even ones younger than Mia—routinely walked to and from town, though usually with siblings or friends. But Captivity wasn’t suburban Pittsburg, with its sidewalks and streetlights. They had terrain. And wildlife. “She needs to tell me if she decides to do something like that.” Yes. That sounded appropriate, but not over-protective. Definitely a new rule. One he’d call and inform her of after he escorted Lilah to her Jeep. Happy with his decision, he slapped his palm against the metal release bar across the door leading to the alley and held it open for Lilah to walk through first.

But she didn’t. She couldn’t. Two people stood on the other side, wrapped together like vines. Hands under clothes. Lips locked. Tongues tangled.

Surprise wrested a soft, “Oh!” from Lilah, not nearly loud enough to cover his not-so-soft, “Oh, hell no.”

Louis jumped away and turned a guilty shade of red. But Mia? Uh-uh. No jumping, no blushing, not even a flicker of shame on her face. If anything, he’d label her expression annoyed.

And maybe it was that utterly genuine annoyance more than the sight of his barely high-school aged daughter playing tonsil hockey with a guy who could earn his driver’s license before the year was out that short-circuited the wires to the part of his brain responsible for rationality. “You”—he pointed at Mia—“get your stuff. Lilah’s taking you home, where you’ll stay for the rest of the summer, because you’re grounded. And you”—he switched to Louis—“go to my office and wait there until I decide whether to castrate you or kill you altogether—”

“I’m not going anywhere.” Mia shifted to stand in front of Louis—who looked legit terrified—crossed her arms, and jutted her chin. “You need to chill.”

“Chill? Chill? You want me to chill? How about this? I’ll chill when my sixteen-year-old employee stops putting his hands all over my fourteen-year-old daughter.”

Louis’ fearful eyes went saucer-sized. The red leaked out of his cheeks, leaving him pale under his tan. “Aw, Jesus,” he muttered. “You told me you were in high school.”

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