Suzanne McMinn - Make Room For Mommy

It was going to take a lot more than her word—or her smile—to convince Ryan that Maggie’s dedication to Brandy was genuine and lasting. The women’s outreach program might have sounded appealing to her on the face of it, but taking on the responsibility of being part of a child’s life could involve sacrifices and commitments that Maggie Wells wasn’t expecting.

Not everyone was willing to make those sacrifices and commitments. Especially for someone else’s child. More than one promising relationship had ended for Ryan after the women learned he had sole custody of a young child. The experiences had made him all the more protective of Brandy—and of himself. Neither one of them needed any more disappointments.

Maggie chatted with Brandy about the various things they might see at the show as Ryan continued to drive silently. Relief swept over her when they arrived downtown at last. The three of them filed in behind a crowd of exhibitgoers.

We look just like a typical little family, Maggie thought, the notion coming to her from out of the blue. These people probably look at us and think we’re married.

Now why did she think of that? She shook herself mentally and turned to Brandy, determined to focus on the little girl.

Brandy and Maggie wandered through the large open hall for several hours, stopping at every display table. Brandy peered and gasped with wonder at the intricate miniatures and the fancy dolls. Maggie enjoyed the light in Brandy’s eyes every time the little girl saw something that particularly excited her. Ryan followed along behind them slowly, staying just far enough back to make it almost seem as if he weren’t there.

“Look!” Brandy cried. “They’re real little playing cards! They have numbers and pictures and everything.”

Brandy leaned comfortably on Maggie and pressed her nose against the glass display case. Maggie turned around to find Ryan staring at her, his forehead knitted in thought.

She tried smiling at him, but he looked away.

Finally Brandy had seen everything except the children’s puppet show that played every half hour. Maggie settled her on the floor near the puppet stage and retreated to the back of the theater area where Ryan waited, arms crossed, a bored expression on his face.

Maggie stood beside him and stared at the puppet show with unseeing eyes, trying to ignore the fact that he was ignoring her. Five minutes later, she knew it was no use. She couldn’t stand it. She turned and faced his stern profile.

“Mr. Conner.”

He looked at her blandly.

At least he knows I’m alive, she thought.

“Ryan.” The word came out of his mouth in a short clip.

“Of course,” Maggie said. He does hate it when I call him Mr. Conner, she thought. Her lips curved upward slightly. “Sorry,” she said.

He turned away again.

“Wait a minute,” Maggie said. He looked back at her. “I think we should talk. I don’t know why you came here with us today, or what exactly your problem is with me. I just know that you agreed to allow me to work with Brandy. Obviously you decided I could provide something your daughter needs. You might as well let me do it.”

The words had tumbled out before she could think them through, but she knew they had to be said. Things couldn’t go on this way.

“Why do you disapprove of me?” she demanded when he didn’t respond to her outburst.

“Disapprove?” he repeated so softly, she could barely hear him over the laughter of the children.

“I don’t know. Disapprove, or whatever.” Maggie shook her head. “Look, you’re the one who told Mrs. Fletcher you wanted me to work with Brandy.”

“Brandy chose you, not I,” he corrected. “I want what’s best for Brandy. She doesn’t always know what’s best for herself. Sometimes I let her make her own decisions, but I don’t want to see her get hurt. I want to make sure that allowing her to make this decision was right.”

“You have to give me a chance if you’re ever going to find that out,” Maggie retorted hotly. “You don’t need to tag along with us or drive us around in your car.”

He cocked his head and, for the first time, Maggie thought she detected the glimmer of a grin on his face.

“I don’t find this amusing,” she said, surprising herself at the rising anger she felt. “I’m not playing games here.”

“Oh, no?” he questioned, all evidence of the grin gone. “You want to play at having a part-time daughter who you can put away and take out whenever you want to.”

“That’s ridiculous,” Maggie answered quickly.

“Really?” he asked. “Why aren’t you married, with a family of your own?”

Maggie was speechless for a moment. Who did Ryan Conner think he was, questioning her about her marital status? Her stomach tightened as she stifled the indignant question.

For Brandy’s sake, she’d stop before the conversation degenerated into a shouting match.

“You know, I think I’ll just wait in one of those chairs by the wall,” she said coldly, abruptly leaving Ryan.

Maggie was still fuming when Brandy rushed over, flushed with laughter, dragging her father behind her.

It’s going to be a long ride home, Maggie thought.

To Maggie’s relief, it was weeks later before she shared the same air space with Ryan in an automobile again. This time it was in her own car.

And she gained a perverse pleasure from the entire episode.

Ryan had not joined Maggie and Brandy on an outing since that first time until Brandy had requested that her two favorite “big people” go to the movies together with her.

Maggie firmly suggested they go in her car and restrained her laughter when Ryan acquiesced to Brandy’s request that she be allowed to sit up front with Maggie. He couldn’t have realized how small her back seat was when he’d agreed to his daughter’s plan, and Maggie felt no compunction to warn him. He hadn’t complained about the inconvenience, however, as he sat, knees hunched, in the back seat of Maggie’s sports car.

Throughout the afternoon he remained his usual quiet self. The nearly two months since he had met Maggie had made him no less distant than he’d been that day in Mrs. Fletcher’s office. With that confrontation in the exhibit hall still replaying itself in Maggie’s mind, she hadn’t been eager to instigate conversation herself. Fortunately, moviegoing naturally necessitated little talk. And Brandy took care of filling what otherwise might have been silence in the car.

“Can we stop and look at the alligators, Daddy? Please!” Brandy begged on their way home from the movie theater, turning to her father with pleading eyes.

Maggie glanced back and witnessed the harsh planes of Ryan’s face softening as he smiled at his daughter. She knew now that it hadn’t been her imagination that Ryan Conner had a soft side.

She just couldn’t figure out why his daughter was the only one who got the benefit of it.

Ryan nodded his agreement to Brandy’s plan, and Maggie pulled her car over onto the dirt just past the narrow two-lane bridge that spanned a swamp. Brandy had shown her the spot and talked her into stopping to look for ’gators several times already since they’d first met.

As the car rolled to a halt, Brandy jumped out, ran to the guardrail at the side of the low bridge and peered over. Maggie held back a smile as Ryan uncurled his muscular length from the back seat. He rose to his full height, then bent to rub the back of one knee. He straightened and looked up, meeting Maggie’s amused gaze.

Serves you right, she thought.

“I hope you weren’t too uncomfortable back there,” she said aloud in a sweetly solicitous voice.

“Not at all,” Ryan replied evenly. Eyeing his daughter, he called out, “Be careful, Brandy. Don’t lean over too far.”

Ryan had spied the twinkle in Maggie’s green eyes that told him she found it highly entertaining that he’d endured a ride in the back seat of her sports car. He knew he should by all rights be irritated with her. But he wasn’t.

Instead, he’d spent the afternoon absorbing how wonderful she was with his daughter, what a genuine rapport they’d clearly developed. In the weeks since she’d been matched with Brandy, Maggie had kept to her word about meeting with Brandy every two weeks, and had determinedly sought out activities that the little girl enjoyed.

The bottom line was that Brandy had never seemed happier. Ryan was forced to give the credit for that to Maggie.

Waiting by the car, Ryan watched Brandy. Not immediately spying any alligators, the little girl grabbed Maggie’s arm and pulled her across the empty road to try the other side. Ryan followed and stood quietly beside Maggie as Brandy ran up and down the guardrail searching for signs of reptilian life below.

Maggie smiled as she glanced at Ryan standing beside her. The warm early March breeze, carrying a hint of the ocean’s salty scent across the inland swamp, softly ruffled his dark hair. He is handsome, Maggie thought as she watched him, remembering her first conversation with Emma about Ryan. She noted how relaxed Ryan’s face appeared, not stern and tense the way she usually saw him.

She found herself noticing little things, such as how long his eyelashes were for a man. Then she observed the tiny laugh crinkles around his eyes that suggested a man of better humor than he had so far displayed to her. He was not as cold as he seemed, Maggie thought. She almost felt guilty for laughing to herself about his being scrunched up in the back seat.

Ryan turned and looked at her. She realized that she was staring—and that she had been caught.

“I’m sorry,” Maggie said with a shaky laugh. “I was just thinking.”

“About what?” Ryan asked, his eyes strangely gentle as he looked into hers.

Maggie retreated from his uncharacteristic friendliness by transferring her gaze to the murky green water below.

“I love the way the swamp looks different every time I drive by it on the way out to your house,” she said, dissembling. She looked back at Ryan. “It’s always changing, with each breeze. See, it’s moving even now.” Maggie pointed to a huge lily pad bordered by tall fur-topped cattails that shifted with the spring wind.

“Yes,” Ryan agreed. “That’s what I like about it, too.” Then, so softly Maggie had to lean toward him slightly to hear it, he added, “It’s very peaceful and uncomplicated.”

For just a few seconds, she saw the familiar expression that he seemed to normally reserve only for his daughter.

You’d almost think he wanted to be friends, she pondered. Or at least to start over as something other than enemies.

“How’s school?” Maggie asked suddenly, afraid to let the moment of fragile rapport slip away. She had never heard him talk about his work, but she often chanced upon him grading papers or buried in books when she dropped by on the weekends to pick up Brandy.

“Good,” he replied in a noncommittal tone, then, surprisingly, he smiled. A smile that lit his face and sparked an odd tingle in the pit of Maggie’s stomach. “It’s always a challenge trying to make kids like reading the classics,” he continued. “And it allows me to have school holidays and summers to spend with Brandy.”

“I can see that means a lot to you,” Maggie observed warmly. “It sounds like you really enjoy the work, too. I loved literature in high school myself. I still remember my twelfth-grade English teacher. I admired her so much that for a while I wanted to be an English teacher, too. I even went so far as to minor in English at college,” she told him.