Why wouldn’t he go for it? She wouldn’t know if she didn’t ask. “Is it that hard for you to have anything to do with the past?”
“Don’t overanalyze me.” His voice, a low rumble invited no argument.
Nola stared out at the late-afternoon sky and found none of the beauty she’d enjoyed just minutes before, instead seeing more of a flattened meringue look. “I’m sorry if this wasn’t a good idea after all.”
“Ah hell.” He exhaled the curse. “Women have to make everything so complicated.”
He placed his hands on the yoke in front of him, feet on the rudders and she felt control slip away from her as he took over. And lookee there, those clouds poofed right back up, all pretty again.
Grinning, she lifted her hands away, slid her feet off and the plane continued on its path without so much as a bobble. His jaw flexed.
He didn’t look at all happy or peaceful. He looked more like the Biblical Jacob wrestling with his destiny.
The answers seemed so simple to her. “There’s not a doubt in my mind that you’re hurting your daughter with this ‘wait until I’m well’ attitude of yours.”
“Back off, Nola,” he barked without looking away from the horizon. “She’s my daughter. You don’t even know her.”
“No, I don’t.” She lounged back in her seat without once taking her eyes off the controls. “But I have a brain. I was a teenage girl.”
“So you have a few father issues of your own?”
He was far too perceptive for his own good. This flight was supposed to have been about giving him a moment of peace and here they were jabbing at each other. Maybe the flight and the call—and making love—had left them both feeling too raw for reasonable discussion.
“Okay, yeah, I’m strong enough to own up. My father walked and ignored me in lieu of his new bachelor footloose world. I was a messy loose end from his old life. He figured it was better to let me move on with my mom and her new husband, since it was a traditional family setup. Nobody ever thought to ask me. Now they’re all dead and I don’t have the chance to be with any of them.”
Much as she loved both her parents, she resented being shuffled around like a playing piece during her childhood. Could she help it if she felt a tug of empathy for Rick’s daughter?
“Nola, I’m sorry you’ve lost your family—” he offered her a nod of sympathy “—but one person can’t compare their life to another’s.”
Fair enough. She searched her mind for other possibilities for reasons for his distance. “Is your daughter some mega athlete?”
A grin tensed his jaw. “Hardly. Throw a ball her way and she puts her hands in front of her face and screams. She’s into theater and dance. She has an amazing voice. She’s more of a romantic.”
The pieces fell into place for her. “You want to live up to her heroic ideal of being a superhero Daddy who can save the world.”
His knuckles went white on the yoke. “Did you study how to go for the jugular or is it a natural instinct?”
Contrition nipped. “I’m sorry if I hurt you. I had a bigger point to make here if you would just—”
“Thanks, but no.”
Why couldn’t he see the heroism of his survival? Or that daddies were heroes to their little girls simply because they existed? “I would have given anything to have the chance to be a parent.”
He didn’t pull his gaze from the purpling horizon, but lifted one of his hands from the yoke and rested it on hers. “I’m so damn sorry you didn’t get to have your baby.”
She tapped the fuel gauge even though it was working just fine. “Aren’t you going to tell me how I should consider adoption?”
“It’s not my place to offer advice or platitudes.” And didn’t that comment speak volumes about how he would prefer to be treated?
The plane’s engines hummed in the stretching silence.
God, she’d been rude and he was being nice and perceptive. This really sucked because now she had to be honest when pissed off and sulking would have been so much easier.
Still, she did keep her eyes averted, thumbing moisture off every gauge. “Yes, I’ve considered adoption, but with my health problems I’m a poor candidate. Then there’s my travel schedule. When it comes to motherhood, I believe my time has passed.”
She didn’t appreciate the way the old hurt came up to bite her now, harder than ever, when she’d successfully stuffed down the heart-shredding regret countless times before. Maybe Rick’s daughter had gotten under her skin deeper than she’d realized if this young woman she’d never even met had the power to elicit so much heartache from the past.
His hand skimmed up to her shoulder, a steady weight, squeezing gently. Firmly.