Angel Mine by Sherryl Woods Read Free Book Online

couldn’t seem to make it out of bed. Not that he slept. Sleep eluded him like an artful puppy dodging its owner’s reach.
    He was tormented by images of the woman he’d never expected to see again. Worse, he was plagued by images of a bright-eyed toddler reaching out her arms, expecting him to pick her up. He’d rejected her, turned away. He’d refused her simple request, his own daughter. Would it have been any different if he’d known? Probably not.
    Even so, she’d accepted him as generously and unconditionally as her mother once had. A three-year-old with more kindness in her than he’d demonstrated.
    Want Mama to give you a hug?
    Her sympathetic words came back to haunt him. If only he’d known at the time who Mama was.
    There had been a time not all that long ago when he’d craved hugs from Heather, when he’d responded to her free-spirited warmth and exuberance like a desert blossom suddenly exposed to a gentle shower. Now the arms that had once embraced him in passion seemed a lot more like a trap.
    He should have known about the baby four years ago, when there were still options, he thought angrily. What would he have done if Heather had come to him then and told him she was carrying his child? He would have married her without hesitation, would have insisted on it, in fact. That was what a responsible man did under such circumstances, and he had spent most of the past thirteen years trying to prove how responsible he had become.
    But he wouldn’t have been one bit happier about the prospect of fatherhood than he was now, he conceded with brutal honesty. Indeed, he would have been terrified. But obligations were more important than terror.
    Of course, the marriage would have been a disaster, just as the relationship had been. Maybe Heather had been wise enough to see that. Maybe she’d sensed what he hadn’t been willing to admit, that he was lousy husband material and an even lousier candidate for fatherhood. Maybe it had all turned out for the best.
    That was then, though. Now Heather was here, needing something from him that he was no more prepared to give than he would have been if he’d had the usual nine months to prepare for it. What the hell was he going to do? The right thing? He didn’t even know what that was. Based on his history rather than conventional wisdom, the right thing would be to steer clear of that little girl, protect her from the dangers of having him in her life.
    Damn, this wasn’t getting him anywhere. Anger wasn’t solving anything. Recriminations were useless. He needed to sit down with a sheet of paper and methodically list all the options, then all the pros and cons for each. That was the way to tackle anything this complex—with cold logic and sound reasoning. He was a master of that. The prospect of breaking this down in such a familiar, practiced way reassured him, calmed him.
    He showered, tugged on briefs and jeans, then headed for the kitchen and made a pot of very strong coffee to cut through the fog in his brain. He was seated at the kitchen table with a stack of paper, a neat row of sharp pencils and his coffee when the phone rang.
    Grateful for the interruption, he grabbed it. “Yes?”
    “Todd, are you okay?” Megan asked with the concern of a friend, rather than the anger of a boss whose employee had bailed out.
    “I’m fine.”
    “Then why aren’t you at work?”
    Good question. An even better question was why he hadn’t bothered to call to let anyone know he wasn’t coming in. He didn’t do things like this. He was always focused, always on task. Responsible. Today that word grated in ways it never had before.
    “Something came up,” he said finally.
    “You’re working at home?”
    “Not exactly.”
    “Is everything all right?”
    No! he wanted to shout. Nothing is all right. Nothing will be all right until there are hundreds of miles between me and this child who’s apparently mine.
    Instead, he said, “I needed a day off. If you have