Which was why Alana had refused to name him as her baby’s father. She’d been protecting him from prosecution.
At his mother’s insistence, Simon had volunteered for deployment shortly after he’d slept with Alana, to get himself as far away from temptation as possible. He’d died in Afghanistan just after Thanksgiving and his mother, honoring the love her son had said he’d felt, and knowing he could no longer be hurt by it, had tried to contact Alana. To visit her.
Only to learn that she’d died in childbirth. That the affair could have resulted in a baby girl.
She was requesting a DNA test to prove that her son was Diamond’s father.
And, assuming the test was positive, would be suing for custody. She was married. To a colonel in the air force. Was a schoolteacher. Simon had been their only child.
They had the perfect family unit in which to bring up a little girl.
On Friday he’d received a court order to provide Diamond’s DNA.
And as early as Monday or Tuesday, he could be faced with having to set up a time to make her available for a grandparent visit.
He wasn’t leaving the house at all that day or the next. He and Diamond were going to lie on her blanket on the floor and watch children’s movies. He was going to rock her. Feed her. Bathe her. Take pictures and video of all of it.
And come Monday, in spite of the fact that he had a pending restraining order against him, an ex-boss who suspected him of theft, no job and had been suspected of helping his convict mother finance the drug business that had put her in prison, he was going to fight like hell to keep Diamond and him together.
He could be a good father. And a good brother. Both at once. He knew that now.
No one was going to love her more than he did.
No one but him could raise her to understand the good that came from being Alana Gold’s child. Or teach her about the good that had been in Alana herself.
Diamond wasn’t just a convict’s daughter. She was the daughter of a woman who, though afflicted with the disease of addiction, had loved fiercely. Laughed often. Who’d listened to understand. Who’d always, always, come back.
And who’d taught him how to live with determination, not bitterness. To stand instead of cower. To carry dignity with honor even when others tried to strip it away.
She’d made him the man he was.
It was up to him to teach Diamond all the value to which she’d been born.
Because she wasn’t just going to be someone.
She was someone.
* * *
On the Tuesday of that next week, fourteen days before Christmas, Tamara joined Mallory at the Bouncing Ball after work to help her friend put up Christmas decorations. Saying that putting the tree up too early made the little ones anxious, Mallory always decorated for two weeks and two weeks only. If the day after Christmas was a workday, she came in Christmas night to take down the decorations.
Tamara had promised herself that she wasn’t going to mention Flint or Diamond Rose. Nor was she going to look for any evidence that either of them had been there.
If Flint wanted her to know anything about them, he’d call her.
He’d have answered his door.
Her spying days were over.
Which made it a bit difficult when, after they’d hauled the artificial tree out of the back of the storage closet, straightened its branches and were just starting to string lights, Mallory said, “Flint offered to stay and help do this.”
Mallory knew Tamara wasn’t friends with Flint anymore. Knew he’d quit her father’s company. Why on earth was she...?
And then it hit her. Flint and Mallory.
Standing on one side of the tree, she passed the long strand of stay-cool lights over to Tamara, who wrapped the two top branches in front of her and handed them back. Mallory’s tree always had lights on every single branch to make up for the lack of ornaments that she said just tempted little ones to reach out and touch.
Tamara had insisted that Mallory and Flint would be perfect for each other.