Single Dad

Single Dad

Jennifer Greene

www.millsandboon.co.uk

Contents

One

Two

Three

Four

Five

Six

Seven

Eight

Nine

Ten

Eleven

One

“Well, of course you’re shook up that this guy asked you to dinner, Jeanne. You spend all day with serial killers and werewolves. You haven’t been off that computer in so long that you’ve probably forgotten what a real, normal human male looks like....”

The shop bell tinkled. Hugging the telephone receiver to her cheek, Ariel Lindstrom glanced through the doorway of the back room, but she didn’t see any customers.

“...An invitation to dinner doesn’t mean you have to marry him, for Pete’s sake. Just go out and have fun. What’s so hard?...of course you don’t have anything to wear. You haven’t been shopping since the turn of the decade. Come on over. I’ll find you something in my closet...so my taste is a little wild. It wouldn’t kill you to break out a little....”

Ariel was on a roll—giving advice was so much fun—but her gaze still searched the main room of the shop. Someone must have come in. The bell only rang when the door opened—yet there wasn’t a soul in sight. The afternoon had turned blistering, broiling, butter-burn hot—unreasonably hot, even for a Connecticut July summer day. Everyone in Woodridge had holed up behind their air conditioners or fans. Her partner, Dot, had the day off and the shop had been as quiet as a tomb since lunch.

“...So what if he gets the wrong idea? I hope he does. When’s the last time you were kissed? The Civil War? It’s about that long since you pried yourself away from that book you’ve been working on....”

Ariel rose on tiptoe and craned her neck, but nothing seemed to be stirring in the shop. When the phone first rang, she’d been soldering the sterling clasp on a 1914 lavaliere. Old jewelry was the specialty of the gift store; the first two aisles of the shop were packed with nests of baubles displayed on velvet. The stock also ran to the gaudy, bright and whimsical. Crystal dragons and unicorns had a special niche in a sunlit corner. Stained glass doodads shot prisms of rainbow colors from another nook. Beyond the door, she’d set up a “magic corner” for kids, with crystal balls and wands and magic tricks.

There. Ariel’s gaze narrowed. She couldn’t see the body from this angle, but peeking out from the edge of the magic aisle was the tip of a tennis shoe. A laceless, orange fluorescent tennis shoe—distinctly a child-size. She almost chuckled aloud. “I’m not through with you, Jeanne, so don’t think you’re off the hook. But I’ll have to call you back. I have a customer.”

Her friend sounded enormously relieved to escape the conversation. Ariel hung up the receiver and headed straight for the telltale shoe.

The entire world knew she was a sucker for kids, but this one was a true heart stealer. The child raised huge, stricken, guilty eyes the instant she spotted Ariel. The urchin was maybe five. A girl, dressed in a Red Sox T-shirt and stringy cutoffs, with two straggly brunette pigtails jammed under a backward baseball cap. Her nose had a smudge. Both knees had healing scrapes. Her face was downright plain—except for those liquid chocolate eyes—but lack of cuteness certainly hadn’t affected her self-confidence. Her whole belligerent posture spoke of smart-aleck bravado.

It wasn’t hard for Ariel to relate. She’d never been short of attitude herself at that age. Ariel crouched down by the child. “Hi there. What’s your name?”

“Killer.”

“Killer, huh? Well, if that isn’t a great name, I don’t know what is. Are you shopping for anything special today?”

Those skinny shoulders pulled off a huge shrug. “I just wanted to look at stuff. Like the magic tricks and things like that. I wasn’t gonna take anything—”

“Hey, I never thought you were. It’s a great afternoon to mess with magic. I’ll show you a couple of tricks if you want. Too hot to be playing outside, isn’t it?” Ariel tacked on casually, “Where’s your mom, sweetie?”

The question was never meant to be complicated. The neighborhood kids often made Treasures into a pit stop on a lazy afternoon. It was a middle-class suburb; lots of moms worked, and the hillside shop was within easy walking distance from the schools. Ariel only asked about the missing mom because she wanted to make sure the little one had permission to be here. She never expected the child to take the question so literally.

“My mom split. She took off because she didn’t want us kids anymore. We all made too many messes and drove her crazy.”

The child’s tone was matter-of-fact, no bid for sympathy, yet Ariel felt an instant, violent tug of kinship. Divorces were so every-day common that another broken-home story was hardly headline news, but growing up, she’d had ample experience being shrapnel in the divorce wars. At twenty-nine, she had no faith in the institution of marriage and even less belief in “forevers.” Still she hated to see a mite-size urchin stuck learning those painful lessons so young.

And could the mite talk. Eek. Once the urchin began chattering, she barely stopped for breath.

Her real name was Patrice, but no one called her anything but Killer. Her last name was Penoyer. Her great-grandfather was Hungarian, but he’d been dead for just about forever. She was six. Her dad couldn’t braid hair worth squat. Her two older brothers couldn’t play any girl games. She was supposed to start first grade in the fall, but her brothers had filled her in about the boring school business. She wasn’t interested and she wasn’t going. Ever. Her best friend was Boober. Boober was nine feet tall and liked magic, which was a secret she was keeping from her dad. “Because my dad doesn’t believe in magic. At all.”

“He doesn’t, hmm?” By then, Ariel had shown her the disappearing scarf trick and miraculously made a fifty-cent piece appear from behind the child’s left ear. She didn’t mind ignoring work and entertaining the little one. Give or take the unknown gender of the imaginary friend “Boober,” there didn’t seem to be any females in the child’s life, and she was clearly lonesome for some company. Only the clock over the antique cash register kept ticking, and the child showed no signs of winding down or leaving.

“Honey, are you sure it’s okay that you’re still here? No one’s expecting you at home, are they?”

Those liquid chocolate eyes turned stricken again. “Uh-oh. Can you read me the time?”

“It’s just after four o’clock,” Ariel told her.

“Oh, cripes. Oh, double cripes. I gotta go!

That was it. The child galloped for the door; the bell tinkled, and then she was gone, rounding the corner of the building down the alley and out of sight.

Ariel rubbed the back of her neck, amused and bemused by the whole encounter. It wasn’t hard to understand why she felt such a fast, fierce emotional bond with the gregarious little smart aleck. The child reminded her of herself at that age, but it would be silly to take the bond too seriously. Who knew if she’d ever see the urchin again?

And playtime was over. She’d brilliantly managed to avoid doing a lick of work all afternoon—no guilt there; she’d never been plagued by either ambition or practicality—but bills refused to disappear by osmosis. She pivoted on her heel and started walking toward the back room...when she suddenly noticed the missing unicorn.

The crystal unicorns had become a favorite with collectors. Because each tiny figure was unique, Ariel had decided to display each piece on its own tiny mirror. The mirror with nothing on it stood out like a beacon.

No one had been in the shop but Killer, and the price tag for the missing unicorn was forty-five bucks. A little late, Ariel recalled finding the child at the corner between the magic aisle and the crystal display—and the stricken, guilty look in those chocolate eyes.

Damn.

For a short five seconds, Ariel debated tracking down her miniature thief. The little delinquent had mentioned her last name. Penoyer? Wasn’t that it? Nothing so common that scouting a telephone number should be too challenging—if she wanted her unicorn or her forty-five bucks back.

The mental debate didn’t last long. The money was no big deal; the principle mattered more, but the red-line truth was that she’d rather chew rats than get the child in trouble. The image of that dad who didn’t believe in magic—”at all”— prowled through her mind.

Killer’s dad sounded like a hard-core realist. Stern. Unbending. An unyielding rule lover. Basing her judgment on the few comments the child had made about him was hardly fair, but it didn’t really matter if she was right or wrong. She’d never know him. One lost unicorn simply wasn’t worth the risk of getting the child in trouble, and that was that.

* * *

“Ariel!”

“Hmm.” Ariel heard her partner calling, but she didn’t look up from the workbench. The chances of Dot actually needing her for anything were about five million to one. It was nearly seven—closing time—which Dot could handle blindfolded in her sleep.

Spread in front of Ariel was a tray of seed pearls. She adjusted the gooseneck lamp for the third time. The coral cameo brooch was a real find. A little cracked, but not too bad. The brooch was circled with seed pearls, a style common around 1910, but two pearls had been missing when the piece came in. Fixing it was no challenge, but finding two seed pearls of the right color and size was a real blinger.

“Ariel! There’s someone out here to see you!”

“Hmm.” Using tweezers and a magnifying glass, she held up another seed pearl to the light. Dot had been handling customers for several hours, the same amount of time she’d buried herself in the back with repair projects. She was determined to finish this last one before calling it quits.

The two-day heat spell hadn’t broken, and the airconditioning just refused to reach back here. She’d jettisoned her shoes hours ago, piled and pinned her long blond hair off her neck, hiked up her skirt and unbuttoned her blouse. She was still hot. And beginning to suffer from starvation.

She studied another seed pearl in the lamplight, but her mind was indulging in a lustful, dawdling daydream about bathtubs and butter-brickle ice cream. The daydream wasn’t as good as a nice, wicked fantasy about sex—but almost. Her apartment was over the shop. If she ever finished this blasted brooch, she just might climb the stairs, lock the door, strip and immerse herself in a cool scented bath, a spoon and a pint of ice cream in hand. So it was a little decadent. Who’d know? Who’d care?

And she could already taste that to-die-for-delicious butter brickle.

“Ariel, for heaven’s sakes, didn’t you hear me calling you?”

“Hmm? Oh. Sorry, Dot, my mind was in another universe....” She spun around, expecting to see her partner in the doorway—which she did. But Dorothy, with her short-cropped Afro and bifocals and tastefully tailored clothes, had always been the stable member of their pair. Why she was standing there, winking and rolling her eyes, was beyond Ariel. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing.” Dot shot her another “meaningful” wink. “I just wanted to tell you that I’m leaving. The register’s locked and the Closed sign is up, so you won’t be disturbed. I’ll be in tomorrow at nine.”

“Fine, see you tomorrow.” Ariel still hadn’t fathomed what all the winking was about, until her six-foot friend shifted past the doorway.

There were two people just behind Dot. A man and a child. Ariel recognized the miniature female delinquent in the orange fluorescent tennies in a heart’s blink—she’d thought about Killer more than once over the past two days. But it was Killer’s dad who riveted her attention.

She didn’t have to guess about the family connection—the physical resemblance was unmistakable. Mr. Penoyer had the same shock of thick unruly hair, midnight black, and the same liquid dark eyes as his daughter. But the squirt must have inherited her homely bones from some other source, because her daddy was one hell of a looker.

Ariel’s complete distrust in the institution of marriage never meant she was antimen. It had been a while, though, since she met a lightning bolt who inspired her feminine hormones to a 911 red-alert status. He wasn’t huge, maybe five feet ten, but the package was all lean, wired muscle. Apparently he’d come straight here after a day of working in the heat, because he carried a hard hat in one hand, and he was dressed in jeans, a worn navy T-shirt and scuffed work boots.

Judging from the character lines etched around his eyes, he was in his mid-thirties. Judging from the scowl cut deep as a well on his forehead, he was smoking with tension and temper. It wasn’t hard to figure out that he didn’t want to be here. The phrase “volatile powder keg” shot through her mind, followed by the disgracefully wayward thought that he’d be an incredible handful in bed—dangerous and exciting and unpredictable.

Not that his skills as a lover were relevant to anything. She wasn’t prospecting. It was just an objective observation.

In those same few seconds, he seemed to make some instantaneous objective observations about her, too. Those dark eyes laddered up her bare feet to her hiked-up skirt to her open-collared shirt to her wildly disarrayed blond hair. Modesty hadn’t been her concern in the privacy of the back room. Actually, modesty was rarely a front-line priority with her anyway—good grief, a body was a body. But hers suddenly felt different, alive and aware and definitely exposed. Heaven knew what he’d expected, but his gaze reflected the same kind of wariness he’d show an open vial of nitro.

“You’re the owner of this place? Ariel Lindstrom?”

He sounded so doubtful that she was tempted to offer him ID. “Yes.”

“Well, I’m Josh Penoyer. Patrice’s father.” With two firm hands on her shoulders, Killer was ousted from the safe hiding place behind his legs. “My daughter has something to say to you.” Killer clearly wasn’t fond of this plan, because she burrowed straight back for her daddy’s arms. “Patrice.” There was no meanness to his tone, but it wasn’t hard to identify the immobility of rock. Dad wasn’t gonna budge. The little one lifted dread-filled eyes. Sotto voce, he prompted her, “We’re sorry....”

“We’re sorry. Very sorry we took your unicorn.” Said-offending unicorn came out of a shorts pocket, wrapped protectively in several miles of tissue, and was placed on Ariel’s workbench.

“Oh, sweetheart...” Ariel started to say, but she was cut off.

“We have a little more to say than that, don’t we, Patrice?”

“Yeah.” Killer had to take a huge breath before she could get out the rest of the prepared speech. “We unnerstand that you could call the cops and put me away for the rest of my life, but we’re hoping you won’t. Because I would never steal anything again as long as I live. And because I’m real sorry. And because you were nice, and that makes it extra bad that I stole something from you, and I’ll probably never be able to forgive myself, even in my whole life.”

Ariel couldn’t wait another second before pushing off the stool and crouching down to the child’s level. “Well, we certainly can’t have you feeling that bad. It takes a big person to own up to her mistakes, Killer, and it means a lot to me that you did that. You brought the unicorn back, and you apologized. That squares things with me just fine.”

She raised her eyes to Killer’s dad. “Really. The whole thing’s forgotten as far as I’m concerned, Mr. Penoyer.”

“Josh,” he corrected her, which was about the last word he said. His parental mission accomplished, he scooped up his daughter and gave her a riding seat on the back of his shoulders—where the little one was prevented from touching anything else in the shop, Ariel noted humorously. Less than a minute later, the two exited the store in a tinkle of bells.

From the window, Ariel watched him strap Killer into a dusty red Bronco, then take off. As hot and tired as she was, she stood there for a few more minutes. Belatedly she recognized that Josh had looked exhausted and hot, too, but that hadn’t stopped him from making his child’s problem a priority. That said a lot about his values as a dad. It said even more about him as a man.

She’d pegged him as a hard-core realist—positively her opposite in temperament—but Ariel had no problem admitting that she’d been charmed. Seriously and sincerely charmed. Killer’s behavior with her dad had been as revealing as a blueprint. Even when Josh had looked intimidatingly ready to blow the lid off that temper, the urchin had burrowed straight for his arms. He might get mad, but no way was his daughter afraid of him. The strong, loving bond between the two had been rich and rare, a measure of the man and his ability to love. Ariel hadn’t met a special man like that in a long time.

She abruptly turned around and headed for the back stairs. It was tempting to mull and muse all night about Josh—but far more sensible to force her mind back on butter-brickle. Her stomach was growling—a problem she could easily fix. And she’d learned young to steer clear of problems that she couldn’t. The chances of her seeing either of the Penoyers again seemed doubtful. It was best to forget them.

* * *

“She was pretty, wasn’t she, Dad? Didn’t you think she was pretty?”

Since it was the fourth time Killer had asked the question during the drive home, Josh figured he wasn’t going to get out of an answer. “Yeah, sure,” he said flatly. Truthfully, he thought that descriptive epitaph was an awfully pale peg for Ms. Lindstrom. Sexy. Wild. Flighty. Those were more like it.

“Did you like her, Dad?”

“Sure, I liked her.” He liked fireworks. He liked race cars and storms. And just because he was thirty-four and divorced didn’t mean he was dead from the waist down. He liked long-legged, long-haired blondes built with a memorable upper deck just fine. But a grown man didn’t have to dip his hand in flames to know there were unpleasant consequences to playing with fire.

“Wasn’t she nice? Didn’t you think she was nice?”

“Yeah, Ms. Lindstrom was nice. But if you think talking about her is going to distract me from what you did, you’re dreaming. I’m still mad at you. What you did was real, real wrong, Patrice.”

“I know.”

Aw, hell. Her lower lip was starting to tremble. Dammit, he hated it when the squirt did that.

Josh jammed a hand through his hair as he turned the corner. Calvin was fourteen, Bruiser thirteen. God knew they got into all kinds of mischief, but it was boy trouble, the kind Josh understood. The kind of stuff his daughter got into confused him. He was just no expert at six-year-old girls, and pretending he was qualified to be both Mom and Dad was a full-time challenge.

He sneaked another peek.

The lip was still trembling.

“Look, I can’t just forget it.”

“I know,” Killer said pitifully.

“We’ll go home. Have dinner. But after that, you go straight to your room. No playing. And no TV tonight.” His voice was stern, but he checked her face again. Was the punishment too mean?

“Okay.” A single tear dribbled down his daughter’s cheek, caught on a smudge of dirt, then drooled the rest of the way down her neck.

Josh glanced at traffic behind him, then reached over and gently wiped the tear away. “You have to have a punishment when you do something this serious. Could you try and understand that? It’s my job as a dad, for Pete’s sake. I have to do this, Killer.”

“I said okay.”

Maybe it was “okay,” but he saw another tear welling. Nothing with Calvin or Bruiser had ever been this complicated. He’d never hesitated to give the boys a swat on the behind at this age—like if they’d run in the street or broken a window—and for sure, stealing rated up there as a spanking offense. But somehow he’d never managed to lay a hand on Killer. Even when he was mad enough to strangle her—and God knew, the squirt could be exasperating—he had to work like a dog to even raise his voice. Something in those big brown eyes sabotaged him every time. They made him feel like melting. They made him feel like mush. They made him feel guilty.

Josh swung into the driveway, mentally damning Nancy for taking off on him and the kids. The divorce had been final for a year now. Whatever had gone wrong in the relationship, he hadn’t had time to figure out. He was too busy coping with work, bills, dishes, cooking, laundry, two teenage sons and a six-year-old daughter.

Still, as long as he ran sixty miles an hour, he’d really believed that he’d been coping—until a problem like this happened. “I still don’t get it. What possessed you to take that unicorn thing?” he asked his daughter.

“It was pretty.”

“Yeah? So? Lots of things are pretty, but if it’s not yours, you don’t touch it. You know that.”

“I know, Dad.”

Somehow he was failing to gain any comprehension of the six-year-old feminine mind. “Did you ever see me take anything that wasn’t mine?”

“No, Daddy.”

“Did you ever see me touch anything that didn’t belong to me?”

“No, Daddy.”

He was parked, the engine off, and she wanted out of the Bronco in the worst way. It wasn’t as if he were gaining any ground. “Okay, skedaddle. I’ll be in to make dinner in just a second.”

She skedaddled faster than a puppy with a burr, but Josh sat in the silence for a moment longer. Their house was at the end of a cul-de-sac on the hilltop. Matching frame bungalows lined the street, typical of a working-class neighborhood. Nothing fancy, but it wasn’t rough. The kids had a ravine and woods to play in. Clusters of old maples and ash and birch trees lined the block. Anyone could identify his house as being womanless, though.

Two rusty bicycles lay abandoned in the yard, not put away. The curtains in the front window didn’t hang the way a woman seemed to genetically know how to hang the blasted things. There were no flowers planted in the beds. And inside, Josh already knew he was going to find dirty glasses, thrown towels, shoes and clothes that reproduced in the strangest places, and a bathroom that risked being condemned by the health department. His bedroom may—may—have been left sacrosanct, but for sure the only company he was likely to find in that lonely double bed was one of the boy’s basketballs.

Josh sighed with exasperation. He’d screwed up plenty in his life, but he valued integrity and tried to pass on that value to his kids. The problem was, it was hard to climb all over his daughter for falling prey to an irresistible impulse...when he personally knew how easily that could happen.

He’d taken one look at Ms. Lindstrom and felt as if he’d stepped in a land mine of blatant, irresistible impulses. He’d bet the bank that silvery blond hair reached her waist in length. The green eyes and pearl skin and that soft mouth still lingered in his mind. So did the swell of her breasts peeking out of that open-throated shirt. He suddenly recalled—to the day—how long he’d been celibate, which sure as hell wasn’t his nature or his choice.

It wasn’t as if anything had changed. There wasn’t a sane woman on the planet who’d take him and his brood on. And assuming he had the time and energy to pursue a woman—which he didn’t—he’d never pick a flighty seller-of-magic. His kids needed stability. Hell, so did he. But one look in those almond-shaped eyes had sparked a chemical combustion that woke up every masculine hormone. He likened it to trying to sleep when someone was hitting you over the head with a club.