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Two hours later his cell phone rang, startling Trace from a restless, dream-disturbed sleep. He fumbled for the phone, wondering who the hell could be calling him on Christmas Day. “McKinnon,” he growled once he finally managed to get the cell phone answered.
“It’s me,” Keira said in his ear, “so don’t think you can scare me off with your big, bad, bear imitation.”
Trace sat up and rubbed a hand over his face. He tried to see what time it was, but his eyes wouldn’t focus. “What time is it?”
“Never mind that,” his former partner told him sternly. “I have someone here who wants to say something to you.” There was a brief silence, followed by a faraway, “It’s Trace, Alyssa. Tell him what you want to say.”
Alyssa’s little girl voice gurgled in his ear. “Dank-oo, Dace.”
“You’re welcome, sweetie,” he managed. “I hope you liked it.”
Keira came back on the phone. “She loved it. You knew she would. But you’ve got to stop spoiling her.”
“Is she having a good Christmas?”
“All four of my brothers are here. My mom’s here. And Cody, of course. All dancing attendance on her. And Santa Claus left her a boatload of presents under the tree and a stocking filled with a dentist’s worst nightmares. But her ‘Dace’ isn’t here, so she’s miserable.”
Trace laughed. “Yeah, right.”
Keira laughed, too. “Okay, maybe I’m exaggerating a little. Hang on a sec. Cody, can you take Alyssa for a few minutes?” A deep rumble answered her, followed by a moment of silence, and then Keira came back on the line. “Okay, I’m back. Cody’s got Alyssa and I’m barricaded in the laundry room, so I might have ten minutes, tops.”
“Don’t interrupt your Christmas for me.”
“Please,” Keira said drily. “Don’t give me that crap. This is me, remember? Your former partner? The one you didn’t hesitate to ask if I was in love with Cody two and half years ago? The one you didn’t hesitate to ask if I was sleeping with him? Does that ring any bells?”
Trace winced. “Yeah. I seem to recall having the gall to ask you those questions.”
Keira’s voice turned serious. “Alec just told me Mara went back to Zakhar. Lock, stock and barrel.”
For a moment he’d let himself forget, but now it came roaring back, a freight train thundering down the track, smashing right into his heart. “Yeah.”
“He didn’t say, but he didn’t have to—I saw the look he and Liam exchanged when I told them you weren’t coming for Christmas dinner. You had something to do with it. Right?”
“Right.”
“Are you out of your ever-loving, freaking mind?”
Trace was startled into laughing again, a rusty sound that held echoes of pain. “Don’t pull any punches, Keira. Tell me what you really think.”
“I’ll tell you, but I’m not sure you want to hear what I have to say.”
He didn’t respond at first, just rubbed his hand over his face again, then he said slowly, seriously, his tone an indictment of himself and his actions, “Whatever you’re thinking, it can’t be any worse than I’ve already said to myself.”
“I wasn’t planning on calling you names. I was just going to tell you the real reason I wanted you to be Alyssa’s godfather, and let you take it from there.”
Trace hesitated. “Because you knew that if anything happened to you and Cody, I’d protect her with my life?”
“No. That might have been Cody’s reason, but it wasn’t mine.”
Puzzled, he asked, “Then why?”
He could hear her draw a deep breath in his ear and expel it slowly. “It’s two things, really. Because there’s a capacity for love in you far beyond most men. I don’t even know if you’re aware of it yourself, but I see it in you. And because you respect women. I mean really respect them, and not just as women, as people. If anything happened to Cody and me, I wanted my daughter raised by a man who could give her roots and wings. The roots that can only come from unconditional love, and the wings that can only grow strong when you’re allowed to fly free as far as they will take you.”
Trace squeezed his eyes shut and swallowed the lump in his throat that threatened to overwhelm him. But Keira wasn’t finished.
“I love my brothers, you know that. But I grew up with them. I know them inside and out. They would give Alyssa the roots she needs, but I don’t know if they would give her wings. And that’s why I wanted you to be her godfather and not one of them.”
