Josh heaved a sigh and shook his head, then fell silent a moment. “Dude, there’s no easy answer here. I can tell you that if I were in your situation and I’d missed out on as much as you had, I wouldn’t settle for being a part-time father. There’s no reason you couldn’t hire a nanny and have her on the set with you. How much time do we spend sitting around picking our noses because the directors are brainstorming or the cameramen are setting up? That could add up to a whole lot of quality bonding time with your little girl. You could even have her tutored by the onsite teaching staff. Hell, I know kids who blew through their high school curriculum by the time they were twelve. Sure, there can be unsavory elements on a set, but there are unsavory elements in public schools too, and on a set, you’d be there to control them.”
“All good points,” Zach said.
“But?”
He paused. “But they don’t include Tessa.”
“It could. Does Tessa feel the same way about you?”
Zach thought about that for a minute only to realize he wasn’t sure. When he’d told her he was crazy about her the night before, she hadn’t responded in kind. Even when they lay together after sneaking wicked-hot sex on the sofa, she hadn’t opened up to him about how she felt.
“I don’t know,” he admitted.
A moment of silence stretched. “Well,” Josh said, “at the end of the day, she’s your daughter. Your flesh and blood.”
“But Tessa’s raised her. Tessa’s more of a mother to her than even her biological mother was.”
“Which is commendable. But it doesn’t change the fact that you’re her father, that you’ve met her and risen to the occasion and that you want her in your life. The situation has changed, and maybe it’s just me, but I don’t like the way you’ve accepted the fact that it’s okay for Tessa to take Sophia back to live in DC with her, but not okay for Sophia to live here with you.” Josh lifted his hands, palms out. “I’m just saying, bro. I know Tessa loves her, but it seems to me that she’s only willing to make concessions that suit her.”
That pinched. His natural inclination was to defend Tessa. To tell him that Tessa was just putting Sophia’s best interest first. But his frustration kept those words in his mouth, because the reality was that Tessa hadn’t made any offers to adjust her lifestyle or schedule to include Zach. To this point, she’d expected Zach to make all the changes.
“Daddy!” Sophia’s call dragged his gaze to the sliding glass doors where she stood dripping on the threshold. “Come watch me dive.”
Zach’s smile was instant. His love all-consuming. That was his baby girl, and letting her go would be soul crushing. “Coming, baby
.”
Josh slapped Zach’s shoulder. “Consider connecting with Ellen one more time before Tessa and Sophia head east again?”
Zach nodded but didn’t immediately follow Josh outside. He needed a minute to get his heart and his head in the right place.
Tessa picked at the fruit salad in her bowl as she watched Zach in the pool with Sophia. He had her on his shoulders where she played three-way catch with Wes, Jax, and a beach ball.
The other women were chatting about their jobs and travels, about where they lived in Southern California, and their men. But Tessa only listened with one ear. Zach’s spontaneous “I’m so fucking crazy about you” had been playing over and over in her head since last night.
Part of her wanted it to be true—so badly. Another part of her told her that Zach’s definition of “crazy about you” meant he loved the sex, but her brain kept sabotaging her by pulling up memories of the way he wrapped himself around her while they’d slept in the extra bedroom. The way he’d combed his fingers through her hair. The way he’d woken her up twice more during the night and made love to her. Slow, sweet love, while looking into her eyes, while kissing her. His whispers in the dark swept through her memory like angel wings.
Even with Sophia in the next room, it had been a night of ultimate nirvana.
“When do you go home?” Lexi’s question drew Tessa from her thoughts, but the topic wasn’t a pleasant one.
Her phone buzzed with a text from Gordon. “Mmm,” she said around a grape. “Speak of the devil.” She ignored the message and smiled at Lexi. “Way too soon.”
Sophia squealed, drawing Tessa’s gaze to the pool just as Zach launched Sophia into the water.
“What did you and Zach work out for Sophia?” Rubi asked. “When do we get to see her again?”
The idea of having all these new people vying for Sophia’s time was uncomfortable. And knowing her daughter now had this new group of friends and family, like aunts and uncles, was foreign to Tessa. For so long, it had been just Corinne, Tessa, Abby, and Sophia. No family. Very few friends. All Corinne’s so-called friends had disappeared as soon as they’d heard she had cancer. Tessa’s boyfriend had moved on for greener pastures and her friendships had withered to those few colleagues she worked closely with at her firm.
“We haven’t yet,” she told the women. “It’s sort of”—impossible—“tough.”
“One of my friends told me about a service that you can hire to have someone fly with your child if you can’t be there,” Rubi said.
“Really?” Tessa said while her internal thoughts ran more along the lines of over my dead body. “That’s interesting.”
“We don’t need a service,” Lexi said. “With the way we all travel, we could just arrange Sophia’s visit around our flight schedules.”
“Oh my God,” Rubi said, with a roll of her eyes. “Do you even realize what a chick magnet that little angel will be?”