Distracting Dad

Allie rose in disgust. “Men. What was God thinking of?”

He could ask the same about women, Nate thought, but had the good sense to keep the sentiment to himself. “Look—”

“And where’s the darn mop? There’s no point in even starting on my place until yours is taken care of. It’s just going to keep dripping down otherwise.”

You had to be impressed. He towered over her, yet she didn’t back away. It was as if Allie didn’t even notice the size difference. Nate opened his pantry door and got out a mop. “You, uh, have any unmarried female relatives in the forty-to-fifty age range?” he asked as he began sopping up water. “Mother? Aunts?” Any female biologically related to this termagant would have no problems keeping his dad under control. Nate would bet the business on it. Same gene pool, after all. Same domineering attitude, he figured.

Allie had gone into the bathroom to raid his clothes hamper. She had several dirty bath towels in her hands, which she threw on the floor. “Unmarried female relatives? What are you talking about?”

Nate squeezed out the mop over the bucket he’d retrieved. “Nothing,” he mumbled, and was mortified to feel a blush creeping up his neck. When was the last time he’d blushed? Good grief. His father had him so crazed, he wasn’t even filtering his thoughts. They were simply entering his head and exiting his mouth. “Nothing at all.”

Allie gave him a suspicious look before picking up a sodden towel and twisting it over the bucket. “You need to do your laundry,” she said. “Your hamper’s full.”

“I know,” he replied humbly, not willing to argue with the termagant. She was on a roll and with good reason, Nate grudgingly admitted to himself. He had ruined her apartment, after all, which meant that when he finished his own lengthy cleanup, he’d be only half-done. With that thought, Nate excused himself and called his father.

“Pop, get over here,” he said into the receiver. “We’ve got a problem.” He stressed the plural pronoun. “And there’s somebody you’ve got to meet.”

The senior Mr. Parker showed up in time to watch the last bucket of water being dumped down the toilet. He entered the condo with windblown hair and a lot of grumbling over the abrupt summons. He’d been studying his computer manual, he groused. Had just started getting the hang of those little icon things and what the heck was so all-fired important?

Nate had gotten his blue eyes from his father, Allie noticed. And probably his hair color as well, though it was hard to tell from the older man’s graying crop. Allie would guess Nate to be in his late twenties to early thirties, which meant his father was at least somewhere over the midcentury mark. The man had aged well. Physically fit with broad shoulders and relatively flat stomach, Nate’s dad still had all his hair, excellent posture and only faint crow’s-feet extending from the corners of his eyes. If Nate took after his father, his wife would have no complaints thirty-odd years down the road.

His dad’s handshake was firm when Allie stuck out her hand. “How do you do, sir?”

“Ted,” Nate’s father corrected. “Call me Ted. And I do fine.” He frowned at his son. “Most of the time. When this one’s not giving me ulcers.”

If anybody was giving anyone ulcers, Nate thought irritably, his dad was doing Nate’s stomach lining in, not the other way around. “Your timing is impeccable, Dad,” Nate said. “The dirty work is over.”

Allie frowned. “Don’t forget about my place.”

Nate smiled painfully. “Right. How could I?” He sighed. “Dad, you take the clothes basket down to the laundry room and get a load of towels started, will you? There are quarters in my top bureau drawer. I need to go downstairs and see how bad Allie’s condo is.”

But his father wouldn’t hear of it. “No, I’ll go. I caused the problem, I guess, although I can’t believe it since I didn’t touch the pipes. I only worked on the garbage disposal, which is not leaking, from what I understand.”

Nate rolled his eyes. The pipes were only right next to the garbage disposal.

“Still, I’ll check out Allie’s place. You go ahead and get your laundry taken care of. Allie and I will be just fine.” With that pronouncement, Ted took Allie’s arm to lead her out of the condo. “So, my dear, how old are you?”

“Twenty-eight, Ted.”

Nate narrowly missed dropping the heavily laden hamper on his foot. Twenty-eight? No way. He thought he’d been generous with a guess of eighteen.

“Really?” he heard his father say. “My, my, getting up there. Any boyfriends? Serious ones, that is. Little thing like you could use a man to look after her, right?”

“Actually I’m quite capable of looking after myself.” Allie glowered over her shoulder at Nate. “That is, unless some big strapping male with nothing better to do with his time decides to flood my condo.”

Nate immediately pointed the finger at his father. “Hey, don’t look at me. This was his doing, every bit of it. Everything was working fine until he stuck his nose under my sink.”

Allie arched an eyebrow. “Aren’t you a little old to be passing the buck?” she inquired.

“I am not passing the buck,” Nate said. “It’s the truth.” He waved a frustrated hand in an erasing motion. “Oh, never mind. It doesn’t matter. Just go down and show my father the mess, will you? I’ll get this load started and be right there.”

“You shouldn’t leave your clothes in the laundry room,” Allie informed him. “Someone might steal them.”

“Out of a working machine?”

She nodded. “Yes. It happened to me in my college dorm.”

Oh, yeah? And what was her degree in? Mother hen-ism? Writing advice columns? “I’ll chance it,” Nate said with a forced smile. “You’ve got enough problems,” he advised her. “You really shouldn’t worry your pretty little head over mine.” He smiled condescendingly, knowing he’d just gotten her goat but good.

“Wouldn’t think of it,” she said. “Just don’t knock on my door when you need a towel so you can take your shower.”

“Wouldn’t think of it,” Nate responded just as insincerely. He rolled his eyes and took off for the laundry room before this ridiculous nonconversation went any further.

Nate dumped soap into the bottom of a couple of washing machines then started tossing lights into one, darks into the other in a rather haphazard fashion. He only shrugged when he noticed a dark sock had gotten in with his underwear, not bothering to retrieve it.

“All right, so I wrecked her bed, her ceiling and quite possibly her floor,” Nate muttered to himself as he gave the controls a vicious twist. “I said I’d take care of it, didn’t I?” Nate’s stomach clutched at the sound of water running into the machines. He ran his palm over his abdomen soothing it. “Just like a woman. Get a hold of something and never let it go. Probably thinks I won’t make good on it,” he continued to mutter as he stacked the detergent box into the empty clothes hamper. “Well, she doesn’t need to worry. When Nathaniel Parker says he’s going to take care of something, it’s as good as done.”

Self-righteously he picked up his supplies and, with one final baleful glare at the filling machines, turned away. “I’ll tell you what, anybody takes anything out of those machines before I get back and that woman gets to say I told you so, they’re dead meat. Dead meat,” he repeated, almost wishing someone would try. He was in the mood to take somebody on, no doubt about that.

Nate bounded back up the stairs. He dropped his hamper off at his place, grabbed the mop and bucket and headed down to 2H. No point in putting off the agony.

The door to Allie’s condo wasn’t closed tightly and Nate nudged it open with his foot as his hands were full.

“Yes, well it’s like I was saying, my son seems to be having trouble finding himself a good woman, Allie. Course, he’s looking in all the wrong places. Singles bars.” Ted made a disgusted sound. “What do you get when you pick up somebody at a bar? An alcoholic, that’s what. A good woman doesn’t hang out in a bar, for God’s sake.”

Nate had obviously caught the end of a conversation. Sad, sorrowful and deep, that was definitely his dad and, unless Nate missed his guess, dear old dad was on another one of his rolls, with Nate once again the topic of choice.

“And a man needs a good woman. A wife can make or break a man,” Ted continued to expound. “God knows I’ve tried explaining that simple concept over and over, but Nate just doesn’t seem to get it. I don’t suppose, since you don’t have anyone special…no? Well, maybe you have a friend?”

Nate dropped the bucket on his foot.

He couldn’t believe it. His father was sneaking around behind his back trying to marry him off! If that wasn’t the most underhanded, conniving, manipulative thing the old man had tried yet, Nate didn’t know what was.

And besides, he’d thought of it first.

Chapter Two

With the sound of the clattering bucket, two heads poked into the room. “Wha—oh, uh, Nate, you get your laundry started already?”

Nate righted the bucket, then stood up and looked at his father. “Yeah, Dad, I did. Can I talk to you for a moment?” Nate gestured to the open condo door. “Out in the hallway maybe?”

Ted cleared his throat. “Well now, nothing I’d rather do than have a heart-to-heart with my one and only son, don’t you know. But little Allie here was showing me her bedroom. I gotta tell you, son, it’s a mess. Yes, indeed.” Ted pointed behind him. “I’m afraid our little talk will have to take a back seat. Here, have a look at this.”

Nate shook his head in disparagement. No way was his father getting away with this. “Dad—”

“No, really, come have a look.”

Nate heaved a great sigh and pushed away from the mop and bucket. He could hold his own with the CFO of any major corporation, but with his own father, he was clueless as how to proceed. “Fine, Dad. Let’s see. Show me the mess.”

Allie’s condo appeared to be laid out exactly the same as his own, only reversed. But the décor screamed female in the house. They ought to get one of those decorator magazine editors in here, Nate decided as he reluctantly wound his way through the small foyer, to the efficiency kitchen, and on into the living-dining area and then the bedroom.

Nate took a last look around. Yeah, some editor could do a great series on how the same layout could look totally different with just a few changes in paint and furniture. Nate liked to think of his own place as, well, masculine. Little wonder, as it just so happened his condo was full of what Nate considered manly stuff. Guy choices. Tan carpet, brown leather sofa pit, modern pictures loaded with these really cool geometric shapes in tan, brown and black that didn’t try to be anything other than what they were: cool shapes. There wasn’t a candle in the place, no overburdened silk flower arrangements and definitely no little artsy-fartsy ceramic bowls brimming with stinky potpourri sitting around catching dust, making you sneeze. And pink? What was that? Certainly not a color in Nate’s vocabulary.

Allie’s place couldn’t be more girly girl. Pink might not be the only word in her vocabulary but it was darn close. And knickknacks? Good grief, the woman could open a store. She could stock it for a year out of her living room alone. Nate sniffed in dismissal, turned around and looked up at the bedroom ceiling.

Oh, God. He needed to check his insurance policy. The problem was, he knew he’d taken a high deductible to lower the rates. He hoped to heaven this type of thing was covered, because he suspected he’d exceeded even his exorbitant deductible.

“Holy cow.”

“Yes,” his father agreed. “It’s a mess all right.” He slapped Nate on the back. “Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us, son.”

Nate, his father and Allie watched as a drop of water fell from the stained ceiling and hit the bed with a sodden plop.

Ted scratched his head. “Probably take a while for the water that was already trapped between your floor and her ceiling to work its way through now that we’ve stopped the leak. I hope it doesn’t drip too much longer, though. The carpet’s pretty well saturated already. Know anybody with a wet vac?”

Allie volunteered to ring neighbors’ doorbells while Nate and Ted wrestled the mattress off the bed.

As they struggled to guide their sodden burden through the bedroom doorway, Nate mused that it wasn’t so much the mattress he minded replacing, it was the bed linens themselves. This room too was done in early Easter egg. Come on, pink and yellow and wimpy purple—no, lavender—that was what you called washed-out purple, lavender. Nate decided then and there to just give her the money. She’d have to replace the stuff herself. No way was he going to go into a store and buy pale purple anything. From the looks of things, this Allie woman didn’t have many guys staying over, that was for sure. No guy would sleep in a bed done up like a flower bower. And it smelled…girly in here. Wet, but still girly. Nate sniffed deeply and told himself he didn’t like it.

Ted looked back up to the ceiling as he helped Nate shove the box spring out of the room, and Nate’s eyes followed.

They watched another drop work its way loose from its moorings and do a free fall. Nate winced.

“Hey, look what I’ve got,” Allie called as she appeared in the doorway pushing what appeared to be a giant, lethal-looking vacuum cleaner. “A wet vac. Cool, huh? Mrs. Naderly had one. She said the basement in the house she used to live in before she scaled down to an apartment used to get water. She also has some floor fans to help dry things further after we suck up as much as we can out of the carpet.”

Nate gave her a halfhearted smile. “Great. That’s just really…great.”

Ted slung companionable arms around his son and Allie as though they were the best of buddies. “Tell you what. Let’s handle the carpet as best we can and then while we’re waiting for things to dry up some, why don’t we head to the hardware store? We can pick up what we need to repair the ceiling. If the seams in the drywall start to pop as it dries, we’ll be ready. Get little Allie here taken care of in no time.”

“I really think it might be better if we called in a professional, Ted,” Allie said.

“Dad, since when do you know how to repair plaster?”

“No need to bother some busy construction company when we can take care of this ourselves,” Ted insisted. “They’d never come for something so little, anyway. And how hard can it be?” He gestured toward the ceiling. “It’s not even real plaster, just that drywall stuff. Hell, we’ll go buy a can of that gunk you use, the kind that’s all premixed, and slap some up there. Have the whole thing back to normal in nothing flat. You’ll see.”

“Oh, God. Where have I heard those words before?” Nate asked the heavens.

His father turned on him. “I still say this has nothing to do with anything I did last night. It’s strictly coincidental that your water pipes decided to introduce you to your neighbor the day after I worked on the garbage disposal.”

“Yeah, right. Whatever.”

“It’s true,” Ted insisted.

Nate put his hand up in a “hold it” gesture. “Look, the how is no longer important. The situation exists. Let’s call a plasterer, let him deal with this and I’ll take you both out to dinner. What do you say?”

All Ted had to say was a chiding “Nate—”

Nate turned away from his father while he ground his teeth together. Then he spun back around to face him once more. “Dad, you really need to go back to work. Early retirement was a mistake. You need a life outside of—” Nate gestured up “—making me crazy doing this kind of thing.”

Ted shook a finger at him. “No. No, you’re wrong. All those years I concentrated on my career and for what? I missed my son’s childhood, my wife became a virtual stranger. She pulled all kinds of antics just to be noticed, is my guess. Then when I realized what had happened, arranged things so we could get to know each other again, it was too late. Your mom passed away.” Ted punctuated his words with vehement arm and hand gesticulations. “Well, I’ve learned my lesson and I’m telling you, this is what’s important. My son and the things that affect his happiness. You’re all I’ve got left. You may be a man now, Nate, but I’m still your father. And you know what they say.”

Nate gritted his teeth. “No, Dad, what do they say?”

“Better late than never, that’s what. I may not have always been there for you when you were a kid, but I’ve turned over a new leaf, learned my lesson. You can count on me. I’ll be here for you from now on. That’s a promise you can take to the bank.”

That’s just what Nate was afraid of.

“Now here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go to the hardware store and then the Sleep Factory. After that, you’ll take Allie and me out to dinner, okay?”

Nate clenched and unclenched his hands several times in frustration. His father really seemed to believe that making him crazy was in reality a way of a father reaching out to his son. How could you argue with a guy for trying to bond with his son? You couldn’t. You’d only lose and look like a heartless jerk in the process. Might as well save some time and cave right then and there. “Okay, Dad, you win,” he said, but he didn’t like it. “Let’s go to the hardware store.”

His father slapped him heartily on the back as Nate gave a last, disgusted look up at Allie’s ceiling. “That’s the spirit, son, that’s the spirit.”

Nate was pretty sure that Allie had called the situation earlier. They should just skip over the screwing-everythingup-royally part and go right to calling in a professional. Save a lot of time, effort and money. He’d seen his dad in action before. It wasn’t a pretty sight. But now, in an attempt to humor his dad, they were going to take a project that would take somebody else a day or two, complicate it, lengthen it and multiply the cost, all by a factor of at least two. Nate sighed to himself. Well, maybe it would work out. If he and his dad hung with Allie for a while, they might meet some of her friends or relatives. An unmarried older female relative with Allie’s spunk might work out real well here.

Nate commandeered the wet vac and extracted a good couple of gallons of water from the carpet while Ted and Allie bagged up her wet sheets, blanket and spread to take to a Laundromat, which had oversize machines that could handle the load, the next day. When Nate felt they’d accomplished as much as possible, he called a time-out. “All right, people, that’s it for a while. It’s getting late and I’m hungry. Let’s head on out of here.” Ted beat them all to the door. Nate assumed he was hungry, too.

Allie grabbed her purse as she passed through the kitchen area. She wasn’t that hungry, but she didn’t want to look at the mess her beautiful condo had become any longer, either. “Your father is such a sweetheart,” she said as she locked up.

Nate rolled his eyes. Sweet. Yeah, right. The old sweetheart had just about demolished Allie’s apartment. What was that all about? A major cavity caused by all that sweetness? “Listen, Allie,” Nate said. “I know this is going to be a big inconvenience for you, but I’ll make it up to you.” Somehow. “Dad means well and he really wants to try to fix things up for you. If you’ll just let him putz around in there for a while before we call in somebody else, someone who actually knows what they’re doing, I swear I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know how, but I will.”

Allie looked at him askance. “You’re being kind of mean-spirited, don’t you think? It’s not like he did it on purpose. It was a mistake. What are you, Mr. Perfect? I mean, maybe you don’t get along with your father, but you still shouldn’t downgrade him like that.”

Nate recoiled. She was attacking him? All he was trying to do was correct an error his father had made. Not Nate’s error, Ted’s. He felt justifiably put-upon. “Of course, it was a mistake. Nobody would do this kind of thing on purpose, and no I’m not perfect. I’m just saying I’ve dealt with my father all my life. You haven’t. I know what to expect here.” Chaos. Bedlam. Further disaster.

“He certainly sounds as if he knows what he’s doing.”

“Yeah, he does, doesn’t he?” And he’d seen his mother weep real tears over some of the repair jobs Ted had done for her. And they hadn’t been tears of gratitude. Nate held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. Not another word. We’re going to get the taping compound right now,” Nate informed her. “And then I guess we’ll see.”

“Yes, I guess we will.” And Allie’s expression stated more clearly than words who she thought would be getting their eyes opened.

“Come on, children, you’re dawdling.”

“Right behind you, Dad.” Nate lowered his voice once more. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so.” Nate held up one hand. “Maybe I’ll be proved wrong.” When pigs flew. “I hope I am. Honest, I do. But just in case, here’s how we’ll play it. We’ll let him play around a little bit, you’ll tell him what a great job he did—I hope you’re a good liar—we’ll wait a couple days for him to lose interest and stop checking on it to make sure his repair is holding, which it might, although it’ll look like garbage. Once he’s satisfied, that’s when I’ll call in somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. You know, a professional.” Nate held up one hand, palm out. His index and middle fingers were up, his thumb touching his bent fourth and fifth digits in an old scouting gesture of sincerity. His other hand lay on his chest over his heart. He had all bases covered. “I swear. Trust me.”

Allie glared at him. “You are being such a jerk.”

“I just don’t want you panicking, that’s all.” And she would. Nate grimaced, thinking of some of his father’s home repairs he’d witnessed. Would she ever. “So when the time comes, remember. I promise I’ll take care of it.”

Allie rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll remember.”

“What are you doing over there, reciting a boys’ group pledge? Come on, the poor girl’s probably starving to death. Look at her. A good stiff wind would blow her away. Why, she probably eats barely enough to keep body and soul together. I’m thinking we may have to take her under our wings, Nate. See to it she takes care of herself. Seems to me her family’s falling down on the job.”

“Oh brother.” Allie sighed softly. If he only knew. Allie was more than willing to let Ted do any repairs he wanted to attempt so long as they could keep her interfering family out of things. She’d be eighty and her father and brothers would dotter over on canes to smooth life’s little wrinkles for her. She loved them all dearly, but sometimes she felt so…smothered.

Nate opened the car door for Allie, waited for her to climb in, then chuckled as he circled the vehicle. This was great. He’d forewarned her, so Allie couldn’t say she hadn’t known what to expect. Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade. He’d just bought himself a whole bunch of relative peace and quiet while his father was occupied at Allie’s. Hot damn.

Oh sure, he knew what Ted was up to—and it wasn’t only a repair job. Nate was wise to him now, thanks to overhearing his conversation with Allie earlier. But Nate wasn’t worried about falling prey to any matchmaking. He was immune. But think about this. His father would be occupied for several days playing handyman and safely out of his hair. Unfortunately, it was going to cost Nate, at a time when his money should be plowed back into his new business, but the price would be well worth it. Heck, now that he thought about it, he was going to talk to Jared about deducting the repairs as a business expense. An extremely worthwhile business expense.

He drove to the hardware store, well aware of the disparaging glances Allie shot him from where she sat in the passenger seat. Well, good. He didn’t want her to like him. He wasn’t ready for anything permanent and this would keep things simple. He was grateful, yes, he was. If only she had a single mother, a maiden aunt he could recruit to keep Pop busy once the apartment repairs were taken care of, life would be perfect. He was on to his dad, but, heh-heh, he didn’t think his dad was on to him.