Daddy on Demand / Déjà You: Daddy on Demand / Déjà You

Her throat raw with the growing need to scream or cry, Sabrina asked, “Did she say where she was going? When she’ll be back?”

“Don’t know, don’t care, and you’re a dumber duckling than I first suspected if you wait for her, or waste another thought on that one. From the racket her and her man friend made, I don’t think their problem was anything that a drying-out spell in the Dallas County Jail wouldn’t fix.”

“I see.” And Sabrina did. Once again she had erred on the side of The Golden Rule and been burned. There was nothing to do but apologize again—this time profusely—and start over. She needed to get inside and get into a hot bathtub to ease her aching body, then get some sleep in order to plan how to repair the damage done to both her landlady and herself. “Mrs. Finch, if you’ll let me in, I promise you that I will work extra overtime and have the rent paid up within two paychecks, and I assure you that Jeri won’t be allowed in here again.”

“Nope. Done with the lot of you. Tired of promises. Tired of the noise and the trouble. You get out of here now or I’ll call the police on you.”

“But my things are in there.”

“No they aren’t. Your friend took your personal stuff and I’m keeping the furnishings as part of the rent owed. I’ve been walked over for the last time.”

As if things couldn’t get worse, midway through that pronouncement, a handsome, well-dressed man with wavy, ash-brown hair stepped beside Mrs. Finch and tilted back his head to gaze up at her.

“Oh, Lord,” Sabrina whispered.

Collin Masters? What on earth could compel him to come here—and why now for pity’s sake? Hadn’t he caused her enough humiliation and grief?

“May I be of some assistance?”

She didn’t buy his wide-eyed innocence for a second, or that pretense of concern even if it did sound more sincere with his pedigreed accent. Hoping he hadn’t heard everything, Sabrina started down the stairs at record speed ignoring the protests from her aching limbs. “No, you cannot. This is a private conversation.”

Ignoring her, Collin turned his thousand-watt charm onto Mrs. Finch. “Am I to understand there’s a matter of rent due?”

The diminutive woman’s eyes lit with hope as she leaned toward him to conspiratorially share. “A total of $1,350.”

“Wait a minute!” As Sabrina reached them, she skidded on the dirt-slick linoleum floor and had to brush her already untidy hair out of her eyes. “You said you’re keeping my furniture,” she told Mrs. Finch. “That should come off the debt.”

“If I can sell any of the discount junk, I’ll be lucky if it covers the expense of the locksmith and a cleaning woman to make the place presentable again.”

The hurt heaped onto injury stole Sabrina’s breath and she pressed her hand against her chest as she protested. “That’s not true or fair!” No doubt Jeri had her grandmother’s pearl earrings and her grandfather’s pocket watch, but what of family photos that had no price as far as she was concerned? Her personal papers?

“Allow me.” Collin reached into his suit jacket and pulled out his checkbook.

Keeping her gaze on Collin’s moving pen, Mrs. Finch told Sabrina, “What’s fair is being free of any more excuses from you and having to tolerate your partying friends. If they’d have spent less on liquor, you wouldn’t be in this mess.”

“I’ll make the check out for $1,500,” Collin said writing fast. “Does that sound fair to you, Mrs. Finch?”

The woman was part bloodhound; before Sabrina could open her mouth, she sighed and whimpered. “I suppose it will have to do. There’s the lost sleep and, being a widow woman, the constant fear someone will murder me in my bed, but that comes with the situation, doesn’t it?” Then beaming at Collin, she added, “You’re such a dear man. Exactly who are you?”

“A friend.”

“No, he’s not!” Sabrina glared at Collin before realizing her protest fell on deaf ears. Redirecting her attention to her landlady, she appealed to her compassionate side as a grandmother and mother. “Mrs. Finch, we’re talking about my birth certificate, my school records and tax receipts. You’re certain that was all taken?”

Accepting the check, the woman nodded. “Looks like a first-class case of identity theft to me, sweetie. You sure are a lousy judge of character.”

With a killing look toward Collin, Sabrina muttered, “Tell me about it.”

Pocketing the checkbook and pen, Collin extended his hand to her. “Let me get you somewhere so you can think clearly.”

Wanting badly to slap away his hand, she felt the cold draft called reality still her. Mrs. Finch had accepted his money. Now she was indebted to a man she despised.

“This can’t be happening,” she whispered.

“I’m sorry.” Placing a hand at the small of her back, he gestured to the front door. “My car is outside. I can follow you to wherever you would like to go or drive you and bring you back to your car after we eat and talk.”

Her numbness made her slow to react, but she shook her head. “I can’t.”

“Well, you certainly can’t stay here.”

“No…but I don’t have a car anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

It should have bothered her that Mrs. Finch was standing by soaking all of this in, too, but what value did pride have under these circumstances? “The lease ran out and I turned it in.” She looked at him with a last feeble surge of resentment. “Thanks to you, I couldn’t afford it any longer.”

“Now just a moment…I didn’t make you quit your job. If you remember correctly, I didn’t even lower your salary. You left all on your own.”

“Stanley Norbit has foul breath and was stalking me daily through that dungeon. He’s creepy.”

While Collin couldn’t see himself inviting old Norbit to his apartment for a dinner party, the eccentric man’s work ethic and performance was second to no one. “He may be a bit socially stunted, but he’s never let me down when I had an eleventh-hour request.”

“Try wearing a bra and shave your legs and then talk to me.”

“I respect my tailor too much to do that to him.”

Not at all amused by his attempts to make light of her latest catastrophe, Sabrina began to storm out of the building, but stopped at the front door to make herself clearly understood. “I would apply as a mortician’s apprentice before I would work for someone like him again. But first and foremost, you made me the laughingstock of the firm, and you never realized that. You don’t go from working on the top floor for the executive vice-president and wind up in the basement for a joke of a department head, who until then, ran a one-man operation. Not without everyone speculating as to why and drawing their own obnoxious and humiliating conclusions.”

Sabrina kept her chin raised, though fully aware that in dusty and tattered jeans, an oversize T-shirt recently used while painting her apartment and scruffy sneakers, she resembled a bag lady, not an executive’s assistant. Seconds away from long-repressed tears, she summoned the last of her dignity and declared, “I promise you, Mr. Masters, I will pay you back every cent of what you gave Mrs. Finch, but now, please leave me alone.”

Collin followed her out of the building. “At the risk of you slinging that cowhide version of a bowling ball at me, may I ask what you’re going to do without a place to stay, clothes to change into and money? I’ll wager you don’t even have enough cash in that purse to buy yourself a hot dog.”

Not even change to feed a parking meter—if she had a car.

Standing in the shadow of the ancient building, surrounded by the towering glass-and-steel high-rises that was today’s Dallas, and its future, Sabrina didn’t need a stronger sign that her future lay in his hands. It was an amber day full of glittering leaves and enough wind to finish pulling her hair out of her loose ponytail. She quickly rewound the elastic band around the honey-gold mass and tried to come up with a game plan. There was little she could do for the rest of the dust and grime after a day’s work of supervising restocking shelves—and doing plenty of that labor herself—at Bargain Bonanza’s main warehouse. Every morning as she dressed, ignoring aches and exhaustion, she had to remind herself that she was a “manager,” and that would look good on her résumé. But with the economy what it was, she wondered when she would be able to risk hunting for a job that actually used her brains more than her questionable brawn.

Collin ventured closer and studied her face. “You’ve grown very quiet. Do I need to worry about catching you in a dead faint? When did you last eat?”

“I guess sometime around…” She remembered buying some vending-machine sandwich that she’d heated in the break room’s microwave. Then she’d been called to some delivery paperwork problem in the warehouse. When she returned, a cashier trainee, who regularly snatched up any and all snacks or leftovers, was devouring her sandwich. One look at his grease-covered lips around her ham-and-cheese melt had killed Sabrina’s appetite.

“There’s a great bistro near where I live,” Collin said, carefully directing her to his black Mercedes parked directly in front of the building. “It’s open until people quit ordering, but should be relatively quiet at this hour.” He added almost gently, “I’ll bet they can make anything you could want.”

Humiliated by the reflection that she saw in his car’s window, Sabrina tried her best to make him leave by being her least gracious. Casting him a sidelong look, she countered, “And what do you want?”

Holding up an index finger to beg her patience, Collin got her seated inside, then trotted around the front of the glistening mechanical indulgence, and climbed in behind the camel brown steering wheel. “Right now a triple Scotch would be sheer bliss.”

“No one asked you to write that check. What happened, did that Wynne, Wooster, what’s his name that you hired after dumping me make a pass at you?”

“Geoffrey Wygant is an excellent assistant and you’ll be happy to know is in a twenty-year relationship with his partner, Duke.”

The last Duke she’d known was a rottweiler on a farm neighboring her parents’ place in Wisconsin. Homesickness mixed with her shame and she shook her head with abject misery. “Excuse me. I shouldn’t have said that. I was just—”

“Dealing with shock and low blood sugar.” Collin spun the Mercedes into traffic and turned a sharp right at the next corner. “Geoff happened to be the first applicant since you who could spell as well as the kids on Are You Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? Most impressive is that he possesses an unbeatable knack for matching clients to restaurants.”

So much for her favorite bathtub fantasy where Collin Masters admitted his mistake and came with flowers and the keys to a white Porsche to beg her to come back. No matter how many magazines she read or how much Internet surfing of dating Web sites she tried at her brothers’ prodding, Sabrina could never compete with such experience and élan. She choked on a bitter laugh and ended up coughing.

“I’m serious.”

“It’s not that,” she wheezed for the second time. “I think I’ve lost the ability to breathe and think at the same time. Congratulations,” she added, hoping she sounded sincere. “Truly. I wish you a long and happy working relationship.” But that meant that she was back to square one regarding the reason for his intrusion into her miserable life.

As though reading her mind, Collin said abruptly, “Okay, to keep you from jumping out into traffic, I’ll answer your question about why I’m here. Cassidy is being deployed.”

“Oh, no!”

And here she thought things couldn’t get any worse. Not only did she like his sister, she had come to understand how close Collin was to his only sibling. This had to be his worst nightmare come true. At least she could work through her situation. What if…?

“I’m so sorry,” she added quickly.

“Thanks.”

Collin pulled into the restaurant’s parking lot and handed the vehicle over to an eager valet. There wasn’t time to talk again until they were seated in a quiet corner booth by the bar and they’d ordered drinks. “Everything is excellent here, but if you’re really hungry—and you look like you could use four, even seven courses—the prime rib would turn an acorn-loving squirrel into a carnivore.”

She was about to insist that he add the cost to her IOU, then recognized how petty that would appear, so she nodded. “Thank you. Then the prime rib it is.” Her mouth watered just saying the words. Thank goodness the waitress had already brought a loaf of bread and whipped butter with herbs and promised to quickly bring Collin’s salad choices for them. Then she saw the condition of her hands.

“If you don’t mind, I’d like to go wash up a bit.”

“Of course. Wait a minute—you aren’t going to sneak out on me, are you?”

Did he really think she had suddenly thought of anywhere else to go, or could afford to turn down such a dinner? Struggling not to forgive him completely, she gestured to her condition. “I’ve been rummaging my way through a super warehouse since dawn. Even if you had managed to transpose my head onto someone in a Girls Gone Wild video and it got back to my family in Wisconsin, I don’t think I would be upset enough to turn down this meal.”

“I’ll keep that I mind for the future should I need additional leverage.”

Trying not to smile, Sabrina made a hasty retreat for the ladies’ lounge. She sucked in her breath when she saw her appearance in the mirror behind the sink. The view under those lights was worse than she anticipated. Not one for the made-up look, the mascara and lip gloss she had put on first thing this morning had long worn off by sweat and nervous lip gnawing. As for her hair…all she could say for it was that it was relatively clean. She quickly grabbed a brush from her purse and gave her shoulder-length mop an energetic workout until the results were closer to a glossy if limp cape. Rinsing her face, she touched up her lashes and lips, but resisted anything else. It would seem too obvious to do more. Besides, she was trying to save him from losing his appetite, nothing else. Nothing at all.

“So how is Cassie taking this?” she asked slipping back into the booth.

Collin was already half through his Scotch. “Oh, she’s the stiff-upper-lip sort. You know she’s besotted about flying up in the skies with pigeons, ducks and whatnot. This is the downside of that.”

“But the babies…”

“It’s been a few months since you’ve seen pictures.” He immediately reached for his billfold and flipped it open to a photo of the girls in miniature versions of Mommy’s flight suit standing in the doorway of their mother’s Pave Hawk surrounded by the grinning crew.

“Oh—how darling! They look more and more like her.”

“Well, Gena adores inheriting the curls to where she screams if someone comes near her with scissors, so Cass is rethinking the blessing in that. On the other hand if Addie keeps demanding hers be cut off, Cass has threatened to have what’s left of the mop mowed into a Mohawk.”

Sabrina smiled and took a sip of her wine. “So who is Cassidy entrusting them to while she’s gone? That has to be the world’s hardest decision.”

“It is.” Collin spun his glass between his hands repeatedly. “I’m glad you feel the same way I do.”

“Excuse me?” Something about his fixation on his drink and the fidgeting had Sabrina drawing a conclusion that sent her stomach into doing new flip-flops. “Oh, my—not you!”

“That was flattering. Who else would you expect?”

Granted they were all the other had relative-wise, but there had to be other options. “Didn’t you once say during a phone call to some client that your idea of a perfect Sunday was sleeping until noon and having girlfriends wearing panties labeled Monday through Saturday?”

“I’m in advertising, Ms. Sinclair. I say things to make clients feel better about themselves, their product and their ideas. The better they feel, the more lucrative the account, which—might I remind you—made it possible to pay you handsomely until you quit.”

“We’re talking about your own flesh and blood.”

Collin continued to work his glass like a worry stone. “Some adjustments will have to be made, of course. In fact, considering your passionate opinions, you’ll undoubtedly approve of Cassidy’s recommendations.”

“I’m almost willing to bet my next paycheck that I will.”

Laughing mirthlessly, Collin replied, “It’s you.”

“Excuse me?”

“Cass demanded that I hire you to help me. To move in with us.”

If the wineglass had been between her fingers, Sabrina would have snapped it into orbit. “She didn’t.“

“She’s been a fan of yours from day one. Surely you sensed that?”

“She was nice to me and I appreciated that. You’d be surprised how many of your snooty callers aren’t capable of being civil to anyone they deem lesser than themselves.”

Frowning, Collin replied, “Why didn’t you tell me?”

Frustration just made her all the hungrier and Sabrina beheaded the loaf of bread with one strong whack of the serrated knife. “Because I assumed by the way they acted that they were more valuable to you than I was. Tell Cassie thanks, but she’s wrong. I’m not cut out for the job.”

Clearing his throat, Collin continued. “She thinks of you as remarkably levelheaded and reliable. Hindsight being what it is, I can’t argue there.”

What had he objected to? That she was too sunny and glass-half-full for his cynical self? Considering the condition of the world these days, people like her were in short supply. But since he’d just performed a knight-in-shining-armor rescue, she bit back the impulse to tell him as much.

“Please thank Cassidy for me,” Sabrina said spreading butter onto her bread. “Tell her that she’ll be in my thoughts and prayers, but I couldn’t possibly accept.”

“You could, but you won’t.”

She leveled her gaze on him. “Can’t.” But seeing anxiety in his eyes, she immediately undermined herself by asking, “When does she leave?”

“Before Thanksgiving if not sooner. There’s some training courses she’s compelled to take. I don’t suppose you’d at least be willing to go shopping with me after we eat and help me pick out bunk beds and girly things like sheets and towels and whatever will make the second guest room seem less of the white space than it currently is?”

“Me? I can’t see that I’d be much help to you.”

“Remember the phone call I asked you to make when Addison felt jilted after her mother was unavoidably scheduled for an overnight flight and was late getting home? You had Addie convinced that there’d been an FAA computer glitch shutting down the entire southern part of the U.S. Not even Santa could have gotten through had it been Christmas Eve. Frankly, I should have put you into the company’s intern program then and there.”

“So why didn’t you? I was qualified. I have my degree.”

“Because…I don’t remember.”

“Liar.”

Collin reached for his glass, found it empty and sighed. “So I am. What if I promise to tell after Cass comes back?”

Sabrina took a sip of her wine, but decided she would leave it unfinished. If she was feeling halfway tempted by his offer, that was proof the drink was going straight to her head.

“What you just did for me back at Mrs. Finch’s,” she began, “that was kind and generous, but you can’t just crush a person’s dreams, then in the second you find yourself in a bind, expect me to forget the offense.”

“Nor should you. This would be a good time to talk salary.”

As he did, Sabrina grew increasingly conflicted. What he offered would not only guarantee that she could pay him back in a matter of weeks, but she could also save for a new place before his sister’s return. She doubted many nannies saw that kind of income unless they worked for one of Hollywood’s elite.

“What haven’t I said that would explain why I’m not getting some positive response from you?” Collin asked when she remained silent.

Their attentive waitress brought Collin another drink and Sabrina waited for her to leave before summoning the courage to speak the rest of her mind. “All right,” she began. “If I take this job, I’d like to know the truth about why I lost my position. Not later. Now.”

Collin slumped against the high-backed booth. “I see utter and complete failure in my future—and a likely trip to the E.R.”

“I’ve never committed bodily harm in my life.”

“Trust me, there’s a first time for everything.”

So it was worse than she thought? What could she possibly have done?

Looking everywhere but at her, he continued, “Okay. I want a promise that you won’t file legal action, or let what I say impair your decision.”

“Have you lost your mind?”

“The girls really need you and, therefore, I promise to act the perfect gentleman throughout.”

“Maybe being a full decade younger than you makes you think that I lack the ability to meet your standards in maturity—”

“Okay, so I’m laughable in that vein and should have stopped while I was ahead.”

“But if I accept a job, professionalism is guaranteed,” she said, folding her hands primly before her.

Collin had been slowly shaking his head since she began speaking and didn’t stop when she did.

“What is your problem?” she snapped.

“The truth is…the only reason I did what I did was…I found you too tempting to be around.”

Sabrina couldn’t believe her ears. “You didn’t just say that?”

“Speaking that once in one’s lifetime should be sufficient punishment. Sort of like dousing charcoal with lighter fluid.”

“But you made my life hell and ruined any chance I had for advancement by shoving me into a cellar where you knew I would have to quit.”

“Guilty.”

Instead of calling him the few choice names that flashed neon bright in her mind, Sabrina grabbed her purse and began to wriggle out of the booth.

“Wait! You promised.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I won’t slug you with this bag. I just wish I had known sooner what a lowlife you can be.”

“A coward when it comes to serious relationships and commitment, maybe, but I take exception to ‘lowlife.’ I once bent the entire frame on my car to avoid squashing a teensy squirrel. And remember how you cooed that I have current photos of my nieces in my billfold?” Collin urged her back into the booth. “Sabrina, does it matter at all that I have hated myself every day since?”

“No. You’d say anything to be rescued from having to care for those children on your own.” But inside, Sabrina’s heart was pounding. Like the most repressed lonely heart, her mind had locked in on one phrase: “I found you too tempting to be around.”

What was wrong with her? She hadn’t fallen for him or his so-called charisma, and knew exactly what an incorrigible flirt he was. Most of all she didn’t need a man in her life to feel fulfilled.

Raising her chin, she looked him straight in the eye. “If you’d been direct and honest with me, we could have saved each other a great deal of humiliation and embarrassment. Under further consideration, I’ll take the job—not only to help Cassidy with her babies, but also to make my point. As far as I’m concerned, you are entirely resistible.”

Chapter Two

“They’re too young for bunk beds.”

Rushing ahead of Sabrina to hold open the door to the furniture store for her, Collin thought of several replies he could make. So far on the drive from the restaurant to here, she had criticized or rejected ninety percent of his ideas for changing the third bedroom in his condo. While willing to take the heat for the offense that put him at the top of the food chain in her opinion, he was about to send out a “systems overload!” alert.

“You don’t know my sister’s kids,” he said with increased emphasis. “They’re three going on graduate school.”

“Three means their bones are still soft, and many a child that age sleeps restlessly or wakes in the middle of the night needing the bathroom, or in this case, missing her mommy. A fall from the top bunk could be dangerous, even fatal.”