Project: Daddy

Her father had been a robust, yet simple man whose life had revolved around planting and harvesting, watching the weather and gauging how many cubic feet of water he would need for irrigating his celery crop. Her husband Keith had been sweet and shy, eager to please absolutely everyone around him.

This man had more facets than a fistful of diamonds. She frowned at that poor analogy. There was nothing precious or jewel-like about him, though he certainly seemed to have the hardness of a diamond. Bemused, she prepared for bed.

Paris woke up when a small hand pinched her nostrils shut. Gasping, she jerked into wakefulness and reached out to grab Elly’s wrist and pull it away.

“You ’wake?” the little girl whispered, putting her face up close to Paris’s.

“I am now,” Paris admitted, struggling upward. She reached out to snap on the light.

In the sudden brightness, she and Elly blinked at each other. The little girl’s fiery curls tumbled about her face, her eyes were full of tears and her bottom lip trembled. She clutched a tattered stuffed rabbit to her chest and was holding one of its ears to her cheek.

“Simon wants to sleep with you,” she announced. “He’s scared and he wants to get in your bed. He wants me to be in your bed, too.”

“He does?” Trying hard to focus and clear sleep-fog from her brain, Paris looked around the room. It was empty except for her and Elly. “Where is he?”

Elly turned. “He’s goned,” she said, alarm rising in her voice as she scooted off the bed and hurried from the room.

Paris threw back the covers, grabbed for her robe and rushed after the little girl. She shoved her arms into the sleeves and fumbled for the belt as she shuffled into the hallway. Elly was already in her own room, frantically searching the playpen for her little brother when Paris joined her.

“He’s not here,” Elly wailed. “Somebody’s got him.”

“No, no, we’ll find him,” Paris assured her, sweeping Elly into her arms. The little girl immediately curled her arms around Paris’s neck in a stranglehold. A soft cry behind them told her where the little boy was. Paris turned and hurried back to the hallway, where she found Simon sleepily fumbling at the knob of Mac’s bedroom door. He couldn’t quite reach it, and his groggy efforts were heartrending to see.

Paris rushed to him. “It’s okay, Simon. Come with me,” she whispered, staggering slightly as Elly’s weight around her neck pitched her forward. She stumbled against the door just as it was swept open by Mac. Paris barreled into him.

“Oomph,” he grunted, taking the impact of her head against his chest muscles.

Paris bounced back, her ears ringing. Were his pectoral muscles made of iron, she wondered, as she struggled to keep her grip on Elly. Mac’s arm shot out automatically to hold the two females upright. His free hand slapped the hall light on and they all squinted in its brightness.

“Oomph,” Simon repeated softly, wrapping himself around Mac’s legs, then said “oomph” again as if the sound of it pleased him and his fright was forgotten. Calm now, he looked up to see what everyone else was going to do.

“What’s going on?” Mac asked, his voice low and knotted with sleep.

“The children woke, and…” Paris began, pushing away from the disturbing strength of his arms and clutching Elly to her like a shield. She wished she had a free hand to smooth her tumbled hair and make sure her knee-length robe covered her decently, then wondered why she cared. No one else did.

“We wanna sleep with you,” Elly said, bringing Paris back to the reason for these midnight wanderings. “Me and Simon.”

Paris blinked at her. “I thought you wanted to sleep with me.”

“Yeah.” Elly’s tangled curls bounced as she nodded vigorously. “We do. Don’t we, Simon? Elly and Simon want to sleep with you.”

“Seep,” Simon confirmed, and popped his thumb into his mouth.

“You can’t have it both ways, Elly. You can either sleep with your Uncle Mac, or with Paris,” she pointed out, automatically picking up on Elly’s habit of speaking of herself in the third person.

“Unka Mac and Pris,” Elly said, nodding as if the adults had finally understood and it was all settled. She lifted herself in Paris’s arms and tried to peer past the shoulders that were blocking the doorway. “Let’s go.”

The four of them in the same bed? Paris’s eyes widened then shot from the bed to its owner, who was treating them to his familiar scowl. He didn’t seem to like the idea any better than she did. Bolstered, she said, “No, Elly, we can’t do that—”

“Why not?” Mac interrupted.

Alarmed, Paris met his gaze. “Why, we just can’t, that’s all. It would…it would set a bad precedent,” she finished lamely.

“It would mean we’d all get some sleep,” he responded.

Paris swept a stunned look over his face and across his chest. Oh yeah? She barely kept herself from voicing her skepticism aloud. “No, it would be best if I took the children into my bed, and we slept there.”

Simon grunted to be picked up. Mac glanced down, looking momentarily baffled, then realized what the boy wanted and bent to lift him into his arms. Simon didn’t curl trustingly against Mac the way Elly was doing with Paris, but he did reach out and begin twining his fingers through Mac’s chest hairs, plucking at them happily.

“Ouch,” Mac said, starting to pull the baby’s hand away. Realizing that hurt worse because of Simon’s grip, he winced and gingerly peeled the little fingers off instead. He looked from one child to the other. “How about it, kids, do you want to sleep with Paris?”

“No,” Elly said firmly. “Pris and Mac and Elly and Simon.”

Mac yawned. “Makes sense to me. Come on. There’s room for all of us.”

He stepped into the room and Paris could see his bed. His room was the only one she hadn’t entered that day and she didn’t look at it now. Her gaze sought out the bed and stuck there.

Indeed, there was room enough for all of them. It was king-sized with fluffy pillows and a puffy burgundy-colored comforter that had been thrown back in his haste to scramble from bed and see who was at his door.

Room or not, she still didn’t want to do this. “I really don’t think this is a good idea.”

“I’ve been up almost every night. This is my opportunity to sleep and I’m going to take it. The kids wouldn’t sleep with me in here, so I slept on the floor in their room. My back aches from it and I’m by dam…darned going to sleep all night in my own bed if there’s any way at all that I can do that. Now drop your objections, don’t fear for your chastity, Paris, and get into bed.”

Paris opened her mouth to object, but she caught sight of Elly’s worried face. The little girl looked as if she thought this was going to escalate into a real argument. Guiltily, Paris realized she was only making this harder. Finally, she answered meekly, “All right. I’ll just go turn off the light in my room.” She deposited Elly in the middle of the bed, where Mac had also placed Simon, then went back to her room to switch off the light and make sure that her robe was belted snugly and tucked up around her chin as high as possible.

What on earth was she thinking? She couldn’t sleep in the same bed with a man she’d only met that day! It was crazy. Unimaginable. Wrong.

She hadn’t slept with any man since Keith’s death, or any man other than Keith, for that matter. Her hands flew up to her hot cheeks. She didn’t want to be that close to Mac, to be that vulnerable. These thoughts ran through her head, convincing her she should reverse her decision and try once again to talk Mac out of this, but when she heard Elly’s distressed whimper calling her name, she knew she had to do it.

Wondering how this whole situation had managed to go sideways on her, she went back down the hall to his room, reluctance dragging at her feet. When she reached it, she saw that both children were snuggled in the center of the bed and Elly was looking expectantly at her.

“Come on, Pris. Get in.”

Mac stood beside the bed, his arms folded across his chest and his dark gaze on her. If she’d thought him capable of smiling, she would have been suspicious of the twitch of his lips. His dark eyes traveled from her disheveled hair to her knees, which developed some kind of nervous tic that insisted they knock together beneath the hem of her robe. Mentally, Paris forced a little starch into them.

“Yeah,” he said at last. “Get in and let’s all settle down.”

Paris didn’t answer, but lifted her chin and gave him a direct look which managed to note and be thankful for the fact that he wore a pair of sweatpants. She intended to keep her robe on. Let him think what he would.

With a nod, she swept the covers back and lay down, though she couldn’t relax. He gave her stiff-as-a-board posture a sardonic look as he turned off the bedside lamp. The bed dipped and resettled, then all was quiet.

Paris felt some of the stiffness going out of her spine as Elly scooted in close. She put her arm around the little girl, then reached over to give Simon a reassuring pat. Instead of soft baby skin or a diapered bottom, she encountered the hair-dusted back of Mac’s hand which he’d placed over the baby.

Her fingers sprang away and she heard him sigh in annoyance. “Relax, Paris. You’re safe here.”

Oddly enough, she believed him.

CHAPTER THREE

MAC stood in the master bathroom doorway, rubbing his damp hair with a towel, and marveling at the three people occupying his bed. It had never seemed small before last night, though truthfully, he’d never shared it with anyone before. It had been the one thing he’d bought new when all his other furniture had disappeared along with his ex-fiancée.

The bed seemed crowded now with Paris teetering on one edge, as far from his side as possible and the two babies snuggled up against her, her arm around them in comfort, her bright hair spread over the pillow and hiding her face. Only her chin peeked out as if to lead her through sleep the way it forged her way through life. He had known her less than twenty-four hours, but he’d quickly discovered that he didn’t much like being on the receiving end when that chin thrust forward.

What snagged his attention again and again, though, was her hair. He couldn’t keep his eyes off it, spilling its red-gold curls against the white pillow slip as if someone had trapped sunshine there.

Mac gave a violent start. Trapped sunshine? When had he started becoming poetic? Annoyed with himself, Mac shut the bathroom door and finished getting ready for work. The lovely Mrs. Barbour’s hair was the last thing he needed to be thinking about right now. He wasn’t going to be thinking about her in any way other than as the children’s nanny. He was grateful that she’d been willing to accommodate them, and him, last night by settling in together. She could have fought him on it even harder than she had, but she’d eventually given in.

He doubted that his solution was the conventional way the problem of restless and distraught children was usually handled. However, he didn’t know much about being a daddy and, in spite of her years of baby-sitting, she didn’t know much about being a nanny. Whatever method they used to get the children to sleep through the night seemed okay with him. At least he’d slept seven hours, more than he’d managed since Elly and Simon had come to him.

Mac tucked in his shirt, threaded his worn leather belt through the loops on his jeans, then sat on the side of the wide Jacuzzi tub and began lacing up his heavy work boots.

He wondered if the kids had ever climbed into bed with anyone before. He couldn’t imagine Sheila allowing her children to get into bed with her. She wasn’t the most approachable of mothers. In fact, a better word would be uninterested. It bothered him to think about the children returning to her. No doubt, she would be no more interested in them in the future than she had been in the past. They couldn’t stay with him, though. He’d be even worse for them than Sheila. As careless as she was, she was still their mother.

Mac pulled his mind from that unproductive thought. There was no point in taking mental slaps at Sheila. She was what they’d all made her, him most of all because he’d wanted to protect their parents from knowledge of her fecklessness. It worried him deeply, though, because now there were two children to think of. It had been different when Sheila had been alone in her flighty behavior, but now she was dragging Elly and Simon along with her. Once she came back and got them, he wouldn’t see them again, probably for months, or until the next time she needed him to care for them. Maybe that wouldn’t happen, though. Maybe his little sister would settle down, take the trust fund his parents had set up for her and finish college, make a career for herself and a life for her children.

“Yeah, and maybe pigs will fly,” he thought cynically as he left the bathroom and approached the bed. He tried to keep his eyes strictly on the task of scooping up his change and keys from the nightstand and tucking his wallet into his pocket, but his attention strayed to the woman in his bed. He wondered if she’d ever had children. He doubted it because it hadn’t been on her resume, and she’d said most of her experience had been in baby-sitting, not raising her own kids.

His lips twitched at the memory of that resume. Damned if he knew why he’d hired her given her minimal experience, but she’d fallen in love with the children right away, her concern for them seeming to spring to life full-blown, unlike his sister who’d had years to nurture her mothering instincts but they were still dead on the vine. He had a good gut instinct and after they’d made it through their original awkwardness yesterday, he’d realized he could trust Paris with the kids.

He left the room, closing the door quietly behind him so that if Simon woke and started wandering, he wouldn’t be able to get out without waking Paris, as well. Mac was surprised that he even knew to do that. Before their arrival, he’d never given much thought to the kinds of things a dad needed to do to ensure the safety of his children. Not that he was truly a dad, he corrected himself, or ever would be. Once the kids were gone he’d go back to his solitary lifestyle. He’d learned the hard way that it was best for him and everyone else if he did.

Besides, things were simpler that way. Mac grabbed a jacket and headed out to his truck, locking the house as he went, and ignoring the voice that told him he should be substituting the word lonelier for simpler in his mind.

Paris woke with a start when a small hand landed on her cheek. Her eyes flew open. Then she relaxed when she realized it was only Simon who had managed to scoot up to the top of the bed and now lay with his head near hers and his arms spread wide. At least he didn’t pinch noses like his sister.

Over the months since she’d left Hadley, Paris had developed the habit of keeping her eyes closed for the first few minutes of wakefulness until she remembered exactly where she was.

She didn’t need to do that this morning because of the children in the bed beside her and because of the scent that drifted on the air. Mac’s aftershave lotion. She’d never smelled it before, but it couldn’t be anything else; somehow dark and woodsy overlaid with the tangy scent of the ocean. It was the essence of him.

He must have showered, shaved, and gone to work. It gave her a shiver of unease to realize she had been sleeping as he had moved around the bedroom, gathering his things, perhaps watching her and the children as they slept. At the same time, she felt a sense of unaccustomed serenity at the thought that he had been watching over them, even though he had made it clear that he viewed his role as strictly that of breadwinner and had no intention of being directly involved with the children.

He’d been willing to let the children sleep with him, she reminded herself, but a cynical little voice also recalled that it was so he could get some sleep himself.

Knowing she probably wasn’t going to figure Mac out too quickly, Paris slipped from under Simon’s tiny hand and left the room. With any luck, she would have time to shower and dress in the other bathroom down the hall before they woke wanting breakfast.

Ten minutes later she discovered that luck wasn’t on her side when the bathroom door banged open. With a startled squeak, she swiped shampoo from her eyes and peeked out from behind the shower curtain to see Elly standing there, holding Simon by the hand.

“Pris?” Elly asked in a fearful tone. “You in there?”

“Yes,” Paris answered, pulling the shower curtain around her. “If you two will wait in the hall, I’ll be out in a few minutes.”

Elly shook her head. “We wait here.” She sat down in the middle of the bathroom rug and tugged her little brother down with her. Simon, with his ever-present book under his arm, sat where she indicated, and popped his thumb into his mouth, content to wait.

Flabbergasted, Paris stared at them. They seemed quite determined to stay. Naked and dripping as she was, she had no way to dislodge them. She’d heard it said that mothers of small children forfeited all privacy. No one had ever mentioned that was true of nannies, as well. Resigning herself to her fate, she pulled the curtain shut and quickly finished, rapidly learning that she didn’t need all the time she usually took in the shower.

Once she was ready, she began dressing the children and realized that a four-year-old girl has more established fashion opinions than one might have expected. Her clothes had to match and her shoes had to be tied in precise double knots so they wouldn’t slip off. Then Elly had to supervise while Paris dressed Simon, who couldn’t have cared less how he looked as long as his precious book was firmly in his grasp.

By the time they were finished, Paris felt as though she needed to stop for a deep breath. She didn’t have time to put on makeup or blow-dry her hair as she usually did in an effort to tame the natural curl. Instead, she decided it would have to go wild and she shepherded her little charges to the kitchen where she fixed their breakfast. Glancing around, she saw no evidence that Mac had eaten before he’d left and was saddened by it. No matter what he said, Paris felt that she wasn’t earning her salary if he wasn’t being provided for, too. However, she wasn’t going to talk to him about it again. Instead, she would bake some kind of breakfast rolls and leave them where he could find them. Not that he would probably thank her for the effort, she thought grimly as she sat down at the table and began eating her own breakfast. He certainly seemed determined to accept nothing from her.

“Where’s Unka Mac?” Elly asked abruptly, looking up from a piece of pancake she’d been trying to spear with her fork.

“He’s gone to work,” Paris answered absently.

“Like a daddy?”

Focusing on the little girl’s interested face, Paris nodded. “That’s right.”

“That’s what daddies do,” Elly said with the air of an expert. “They go to work and the mom and the kids stay home.”

Paris grinned. “Have you been watching television shows from the fifties?”

“Huh?”

“Where did you hear this about daddies going to work and everyone else staying home?”

“From Sarah. She’s seven. She was my friend at my other house where I lived with my mommy. My mommy went to see elephants and when she gets back she’s going to take me and Simon to see them.”

Paris’s heart sank at the assurance in the little girl’s voice, but she could think of no words to answer her. She didn’t have to because Elly went on, “Sarah said that daddies go to work. That’s what Unka Mac does, but he’s not really a daddy.”

“Well, no, he’s not,” Paris admitted, wondering where this was leading.

“He could learn to be a daddy.” Elly bumped her feet against the chrome legs of the chair as she considered that. She nodded as if satisfied with her conclusion. “Because he knows how to read.”

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