SEAL Baby Daddy

I tried to get over to her place at least once a week, usually on the weekends, but it had been a couple weeks now since we’d been out there. I was feeling guilty about it, so I stopped at the store along the way.

“Help Mama pick out some flowers for Grammie,” I said to Ava, lifting her up so that she could see all the different ones.

“Sunflowers, sunflowers!” Ava said excitedly.

“Sunflowers it is,” I said, smiling as I set her back down and grabbed a bundle of the flowers. I paid quickly, and we were on our way again.

Mom had brunch on the table by the time we arrived. “Thank goodness, I was starting to wonder if it had been so long since you’d been here that you had gotten lost,” she said snarkily as we arrived.

I rolled my eyes and leaned in to kiss her cheek. “Hi, Mom,” I said.

Ava was already chattering about everything she’d done since the last time she’d her grandma. Of course, there wasn’t really all that much, but you’d think that a whole lifetime had passed in those couple of weeks.

We sat down at the table, and Mom served everyone muffins and egg hash. “So what have you been up to lately, Mom?” I asked as Ava started to wind down.

Mom took a bite of her food, considering her words. “Just the usual,” she finally said, shrugging. “Petie and I still go for our run first thing in the morning. He’s stopped chasing after rabbits finally; I think he’s realized he’s never going to catch one of them. And then I’ve been involved with the local library, helping out with sorting the new books that come in.”

“That’s good,” I told her.

“What about you?” Mom asked. “I know things have been busy at work, but you’re taking time to have a little fun, too, aren’t you?”

“Sure, Maisie and I hang out every week,” I told her carefully. I knew that wasn’t what she was really asking.

Sure enough, she rolled her eyes, but she didn’t press me about my love life, not with Ava sitting right there. We finished our breakfast in peace.

Suddenly, I heard a familiar voice. I whipped around to see the television, which Mom usually had on as background noise. She’d been like that for my whole life, so I was pretty good about tuning it out. But that voice—I couldn’t ignore him.

Ace. There, on TV.

I stared blankly at him, wondering if he was doing this just to get under my skin.

“I’ve already told the whole story to Harper Dawson, with the Boston Globe,” Ace said, sounding irritated. “I’m sure everyone already knows the story by now.”

“They do,” the reporter said. “And they all think that you’re a hero. So, we were hoping—”

“I’m not a hero,” Ace interrupted, sounding crabby. I wondered why he had agreed to the TV interview if he didn’t feel like talking about what he’d done the other day in the café.

“You interviewed him?” Mom asked, watching my face carefully. There was something mischievous in her eyes. “He’s pretty attractive.”

“He’s a former SEAL,” I said without thinking.

Mom stared at his face on the screen for a moment and then looked at Ava. I could tell that she was probably putting it all together, analyzing Ace’s features and comparing them to those of my daughter. Our daughter.

Sure enough.

“Is he the one?”

“Yes,” I said shortly. There was no point lying to her about it. I’d never been good at lying to Mom anyway.

She cackled. “So he’s back, huh? Does he know?”

I shook my head. No, Ace didn’t know anything about Ava. He didn’t even know I had a daughter. And I planned on keeping it that way.

I didn’t exactly want to discuss that with my mother. I already knew exactly what she would say. She’d told my dad about me when she’d found out that she was pregnant. And Dad had married her. He’d died when I was young, and Mom had ended up having to raise me on her own, mostly. That was part of what made her so cranky, I thought.

When I’d finally got the guts up to tell her that I was pregnant, she’d tried to convince me to tell the father. I’d told her that it was impossible, that it was one of the SEALs that I’d met over in Kuwait, that I had no way of contacting him. And I definitely had no way of contacting him in secret. I knew that all of his letters probably got read before they reached him. And I knew he could get into trouble if they found out that he had slept with me.

That was just an excuse that I told myself, though. The truth was, I knew Ace didn’t want to have kids. And even though a selfish part of me wanted him to reconsider, to decide that he could have the perfect life with Ava and me, I knew that wasn’t fair to him.