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“I changed my mind.”
He understood her hesitance as she completed the drive and he got out of the car to go and fetch his daughter. She remained in the driver’s seat when he walked to the front door and knocked. Courtney greeted him with a smile and ushered Kaitlyn out the door as she handed Redmond the booster seat. A pang shot through his heart as his daughter looked at him with uncertainty in her eyes. Courtney matched the expression, and his confidence fell.
Maybe he wasn’t yet healed enough to have time with Kaitlyn.
Courtney dropped to her knees and gave Kaitlyn a kiss on both cheeks before pulling her into a tight hug. “If you need anything, sweet girl, I’m just a phone call away.”
Kaitlyn nodded and grabbed Redmond’s hand as they walked back to the car. Hers was a small, soft fist in his much larger one.
Redmond smiled down at her. “I brought a friend with me to meet you today.”
Kaitlyn’s expression turned to excitement in the blink of an eye. “Is it another firefighter?”
She’d loved meeting his firefighter friends, but he shook his head. “She’s not a firefighter.”
Kaitlyn froze and looked up. “Is she your girlfriend?”
The smile on Redmond’s face grew. He didn’t know how to categorize Chelsea—not yet—so he just shrugged and walked her the rest of the way to the car. When Kaitlyn saw the woman sitting in the driver’s seat, she gasped.
“Daddy, she’s so pretty. She looks like Mommy.”
Redmond snorted out a laugh, easily noting the resemblance they had to one another. And Chelsea, undoubtedly, was one of the most beautiful women he’d ever seen.
“She’s very pretty,” he told her. Redmond opened the door and slid the booster seat in the back of Chelsea’s car. Kaitlyn waited patiently on the sidewalk outside the car, walking along the street curb like a balance beam. He kept a close eye on her, but she stayed within a few feet of Redmond as he finally finished setting up the seat. “All right, squirt. Get over here.”
Kaitlyn rushed into the car and he made sure she was fastened into her seat carefully. She kept her eyes glued to the new woman in the driver’s seat, not saying a word. When Redmond finally finished, Chelsea turned and looked at Kaitlyn.
“Hi, sweetheart. I’m Chelsea.” Chelsea couldn’t have appeared more comfortable and at ease with meeting Kaitlyn, her smile generous enough that Redmond thought it may curb Kaitlyn’s shyness.
Kaitlyn blushed and looked down as she mumbled a hello.
Redmond climbed back into the passenger’s seat, and Chelsea drove them home, continuously talking to both as if it took no effort for her to do so. She changed topics, shifting from the weather to her experiences as a child playing soccer and dancing. Kaitlyn, to Redmond’s surprise, chimed into the conversation, asking about Chelsea’s skill playing soccer.
Redmond felt a sense of accomplishment deep in his chest as Chelsea and Kaitlyn talked animatedly to one another, and when they pulled up to the house, Kaitlyn followed her to the door, talking as if Chelsea had just become Kailyn’s best friend.
But Chelsea didn’t mind. She spoke to Kaitlyn just as animatedly.
They all walked into the house, and Kaitlyn paused beside his sitting room, looking inside. He recognized the change in her face as it happened. Her expression shifted from dread to excitement as she stiffened and toed her way into the room.
“No way,” she whispered, hand over her mouth.
Redmond knew he had to do something to make up for shattering all her pots and leaving the plants in a heap on the ground. He didn’t have the same green thumb as his daughter, so it took him hours to pack all the plants back into new, matching pots. Only two plants had fallen victim to Redmond’s abuse, so he downloaded an app on his phone to find the name of the plants, and he ordered new ones.
What Kaitlyn looked at with tears in her eyes was an entirely new setup of plants and matching pots. It was her dream indoor garden.
And Redmond, with the help of his coworker Shailene, had a watering schedule and a better understanding of how to care for the plants without Kaitlyn’s help. It was the only reason he’d been able to accomplish this.
“You did a great job with that,” Chelsea whispered as Kaitlyn walked through her plants and touched the vines and leaves.
“Chelsea, come here,” Kaitlyn beckoned, likely preparing to launch into a long conversation about the plants she examined with close scrutiny.
Chelsea gave Redmond a knowing look as she approached Kaitlyn and listened intently to everything his daughter said. Kaitlyn could have been Chelsea’s daughter for how much they resembled one another. Watching them interact told Redmond all he needed to know about what waited in his future, and he had no doubt it involved Chelsea.
They hadn’t talked about it. In fact, their conversations were typically one-sided without much contribution from him, but that would need to change.
9
Chelsea adored Redmond’s daughter.
