The Daddy Project

Now the stupid condom had become the elephant in the room—

The bad analogy practically had him groaning out loud.

“Tomorrow morning’s good,” he said. “Nine o’clock. I was planning to work at home anyway.”

“Great. I’ll put together a proposal tonight and we can discuss it then.”

She reached for her camera, and as she got close he backed away, sensing it was a bad idea to get too close to a woman who smelled like a cross between an English country garden and a Hollywood starlet’s boudoir. Not that he knew anything about the latter, but he was a man after all, and he did have an imagination. She must have been thinking the same thing…about getting too close…because she hastily backed away, too.

“Thanks. And, um, I’m sorry about the water, and for taking you away from your work. I’m usually not this clumsy.”

He didn’t believe her. In spite of her polished appearance she seemed to have a knack for running into things, tripping over them. Oddly, it made her even more captivating. He had no business being captivated, though. She might not have a husband, but the condom in her bag meant she was involved with someone. And if she wasn’t…well, he didn’t want to know what it meant.

“Is there anything else I can tell you about the house?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I don’t think so. I’ll just take a quick look at the bedrooms and let myself out. I assume they’re down the hallway off the foyer.”

He nodded.

She whirled around and once again his nose filled with her heavenly scent.

She crossed the family room like it was a runway, the flippy hem of her skirt flirting with her knees and the heels of her shoes making a crisp, sharp sound against the hardwood. Just before she left the room, she smiled at him over her shoulder, as if to say she knew perfectly well why he was still standing there.

“See you in the morning.” And then she was gone.

You’re wasting your time, he told himself. She’s not your type.

Did he even have a type? He’d thought it was Heather. She had been every bit as attractive as this woman was, just in a more down-to-earth, practical way. No swirly skirts and purple cupcake bags for her. Heather had been studiously working toward a doctorate in psychology when they’d started dating. They hadn’t talked about marriage, but it was the obvious thing to do after they’d found out they were expecting.

The pregnancy had taken a heavy toll on Heather’s health, but then the girls arrived and they seemed like such a gift, such a natural extension of their lives that neither of them had given much thought to any scenario other than Heather getting better. She hadn’t.

He’d been left with a lot of questions. Would she have married him under any other circumstances? Would he have married her? Those were questions with no answers, only regrets. Would she still be alive if not for the pregnancy? Of course she would. It took two people to make a baby and the rational scientific part of his brain knew that. The part that housed his conscience was another matter. It ate at him with a relentless appetite.

As for the beautiful woman who had just disappeared down the hallway, the one who might be walking into his bedroom at that precise moment, he had questions. Truth was he shouldn’t have any, but that wouldn’t prevent him from looking forward to seeing her tomorrow morning and maybe getting the answers to some of them.

Chapter Three

The next morning Kristi yawned and poured herself a cup of tea, then settled in at the kitchen table with her laptop. She had stayed up far too late last night, going over the photographs of Nate McTavish’s house and drafting a design plan. She was not a morning person at the best of times, and agreeing to meet him at nine o’clock had been a bad idea. Now she had just over an hour to review her proposal, check her email and make the twenty-minute drive to the university district.

Hercules nosed her ankle. He sat on his haunches and cocked his head when she smiled down at him.

“Hey, Herc. Do you want to sit with me?”

He danced on his hind legs, tail wagging, and she swept him onto her lap. From beneath shaggy brows, his black-button eyes sparkled up at her.

“Sit and be good or I’ll put you down.”

He settled in, and Kristi opened her email.

She wrapped one hand around her teacup and breathed in the heady jasmine-scented steam rising from it. After a quick scan of her in-box, she clicked on a message from her business partner Claire DeAngelo.

Thanks for sharing your photographs and design plan for the McTavish house. Love your ideas! Knowing you, the place will be organized in no time. Let’s see what Sam says about the renos you’ve suggested. The “greenhouse” definitely has to go, but the professor looks like a keeper. C.

PS: remember our 10:30 conference call.

The message ended with the emoticon for a wink.

Very funny, Kristi thought. She had wanted Sam to see the pergola–pool house structure that Nate had converted into a greenhouse, but she shouldn’t have sent a picture with him in it.

She opened a folder on her desktop and clicked to open the photograph.

Turning the structure back into a pool house wouldn’t take much work, so there was really no justifying the amount of time she’d spent studying the photo last night. Claire was right. He looked ridiculously good. If anyone had asked her to imagine what a botany professor looked like, her imagination would have conjured up the exact opposite of this tall, fit-without-being-totally-ripped man with gorgeous eyes and a killer smile.

She quickly clicked to close the image and opened Sam’s email next.

I agree with Claire. Great house. Great ideas. Definitely looking forward to meeting your Professor Hottie. S.

Sam’s email ended with two winks.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Their comments were all in good fun, but Kristi rolled her eyes as she read them. She had given some sketchy background information on their new client when she’d sent the photographs and the proposal to her partners late last night. Sketchy details were all she knew. He was a single dad and a widower who found that one big house and two small girls were more than he could juggle with his demanding career.

Claire, recently separated and almost certainly headed for divorce court, had declared she was off the market. Besides, Nate wasn’t her type. Her ex was an investment broker with a taste for money and a penchant for keeping up appearances. Kristi had never liked him, had always thought Claire could do better, but her friend was totally type A when it came to organizing her life. Nate’s disorganization would drive her crazy.

Sam and the love of her life, recently married at a quiet ceremony with a small gathering of family and close friends, wouldn’t give another man a second glance, no matter how hot he happened to be. Kristi had been thrilled to share maid of honor duties with Claire, and they couldn’t be happier that their business partner was happily settled with her husband AJ and their young son, Will.

Claire’s and Sam’s teasing was strictly for Kristi’s benefit. That they had picked up on her immediate attraction to this man was a testament to how well they knew one another. They also knew she was determined to maintain control of her life, at least until her daughter was grown-up and off to college, and that meant not having a man in it.

Her deadbeat dad had abandoned her and her mother after he’d lost his job, remortgaged their home and gambled everything away. And then she’d made the same mistake her mother had. Let herself be swept off her feet by a guy who was all talk and no substance. Got pregnant right out of high school. Married the guy because of course that was the right thing to do, and learned too late that he couldn’t hold down a job, didn’t know how to be a husband much less a dad and had no interest in learning.

Now her mission in life was to set an example for her daughter and break the cycle so Jenna didn’t make the same mistake. Setting a good example meant not getting involved with a man, any man, but especially not another deadbeat, until Jenna was past the age of being impressionable.

Anyone could see that Nate McTavish was smart, decent, easy on the eyes and about as far from deadbeat as any man could be, but he was still a man. He had a lot going on in his life, including grieving the loss of his wife. Kristi would be the first to admit she had enough baggage of her own. To heck with taking on anyone else’s.

Once more she scrolled through all the photographs she’d taken, from the living room and dining room with their festive party streamers to the cluttered kitchen where a board game on the table was still surrounded by lunch dishes that hadn’t been cleared away.

One photo captured the refrigerator and a cluttered counter. Like hundreds of other homes, the front of the fridge was plastered with notes, calendars, kids’ artwork. It was the photo booth strip that leaped out at her, though. She enlarged the photograph and leaned closer to the screen for a better look. Four images of Nate and his girls, snapped in rapid succession, laughing and grinning and making silly faces at the camera. Her chest went tight, the way it had when she’d first seen the pictures yesterday. There had been more strips on a tackboard in the girls’ bedroom, one on Nate’s dresser in the master bedroom and several on the desk in his home office. None of them, at least none that she’d seen, had included the wife and mother this family had lost, but together they created a poignant record of Nate’s daughters as they grew up. Altogether she’d noticed eight or ten of the strips scattered throughout the house, and she felt sure she would encounter more as she drilled down through the layers of clutter.

Organizing a client’s personal mementos fell well outside the kind of work she usually did, but the mother in her wanted to do something special with those photographs. She wished she had started a tradition like that when Jenna was little. Suggesting it now would yield one of her daughter’s signature eye rolls and a “Mo-om, that’s so lame.”

Speaking of Jenna…

Kristi glanced at the clock. Darn. In a futile attempt to keep herself on track, she kept it set five minutes fast. Even deducting those precious minutes, they were running late and it was almost time for her daughter to leave for school.

She scooted Hercules off her lap and drained her teacup as she shut down her laptop and stuffed it into her bag along with the rest of her things. On her way through the kitchen she deposited her cup in the sink and hauled her bag to the bench by the front door. Now to find her keys.

“Jenna?” she called up the stairs as she scanned the surface of the small console table inside the front door. “Are you ready?”

“Almost. Do you know where my iPod is?” Jenna shouted back.

Kristi put her search for her missing keys on pause. Exactly where you left it, she thought. Ditto for my keys.

“Haven’t seen it, sweetie.” And she didn’t have time to look. Her daughter could survive for one day without Justin and Selena. She, on the other hand, couldn’t get her day started until she found her keys.

She should have taken less time going through photos, less time checking email and a lot less time fussing with her hair and makeup. Then she had put on her blue sneakers, realized they were scuffed and grimy from clearing out a previous client’s garage and changed to the pink ones. But her blue T-shirt didn’t go, so she changed to a white one, decided against it and dashed downstairs to retrieve a pink shirt from the dryer. Then she’d let herself get distracted and had folded the rest of the laundry and put it away.

How she managed to stay on task in a client’s home while being so disorganized in her own was a constant source of frustration for her…and an endless source of amusement for Sam and Claire. And now, because of it, she was going to be late.

Back in the kitchen she picked up a dish towel to see if her keys were hiding beneath it. They weren’t. This was rapidly turning into one of those mornings when nothing went the way she wanted it to. She quickly folded the towel, hung it on the handle of the oven door, moved on to the dining room table. No keys on the half she used as her office. The other end was Jenna’s homework space, and the two halves met in the middle in a muddle of personal items, assorted junk mail and a pair of hurricane candle lanterns, placed there to create a little ambience after their last cleaning session.

No sense looking there. Had she put the keys in her bag? Claire, the poster girl for organized efficiency, had suggested attaching a lanyard to the strap of her handbag and clipping her keys to that when she wasn’t using them. An excellent suggestion and it had worked like a charm, until she’d switched purses and didn’t transfer the orange lanyard because it didn’t match the purple bag. Note to self. Buy a lanyard to match every bag.

She retrieved her bag from the front hall and set it on the kitchen counter. Wallet, makeup bag, lint roller, dog leash, but no keys. She shoved those items aside and dumped the rest onto the counter. The loose contents included a handful of spare change, two Milk-Bone treats, the tube of lipstick she’d hunted for earlier that morning…and one condom.

She picked it up and stared at it, recalling in excruciating detail Nate McTavish’s embarrassment when he’d realized what he had in his hand. She had been every bit as mortified. Did he think she was one of those women who was always ready for a little action? Ugh. Nothing could be further from the truth. She avoided as many blind dates as possible, and the only action she saw when she did date was never more than an awkward good-night kiss. No condom needed.

Yesterday she had been even more embarrassed when Nate told her about his research. Something about poor reproductive barriers in flowering plants. She still didn’t completely understand what he’d been talking about, even though she’d tried to look it up on the internet last night. He might as well have been talking Greek.

“For sure he was talking geek,” she said, smiling at her own cleverness.

Fourteen years ago she had learned the hard way that at least one brand of condom had provided a very poor barrier to reproduction. Thank goodness she hadn’t revealed that yesterday. Bad enough she’d blurted out some nonsense about sperm. What had she been thinking? His laugh had been a few registers lower than his speaking voice, deep and sexy with a flash of perfect white teeth. He might be a geek, but he was a darned sexy one.

Jenna thundered down the stairs. “Mom? Are you sure you haven’t seen it?”

Kristi shoved the small plastic packet into her bag and hastily put everything else back on top of it. “Have I seen what?”

“My iPod.”

Right. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“‘Crap’ isn’t swearing, Mom.” Jenna dropped her backpack by the front door and glanced around the living room.

Kristi didn’t have time to argue. “Do you remember what you were doing the last time you used it?”

“No. If I did…” Jenna was halfway across the room when she stopped. “Sleeping! I fell asleep listening to Katy Perry.” She whirled around and dashed for the stairs. “I’ll bet it’s still in my bed. Thanks, Mom!”

“You’re welcome.” Now if only the same strategy would work for her. She had come home from work yesterday afternoon, brought in a handful of mail, picked up the paper…aha, that was it. She must’ve left her keys on the coffee table where she’d deposited everything else.

Sure enough, there they were, under the newspaper. Jenna had flipped it open to check the movie listings, not wanting to wait until Kristi had finished uploading photographs to her laptop so she could check them online. Being a typical teenager, she had used the inconvenience as an opportunity to bemoan the fact that she was stuck with her mother’s retired cell phone instead of the iPhone she so desperately needed.

A car horn sounded in front of the town house and Jenna raced back down the stairs. “That’s my car pool. Gotta go.”

“I’ll be home early,” Kristi said, as much a warning to her daughter that she shouldn’t bring boys home after school. One boy in particular. That strategy would work until next week when school let out for the summer. Then she wasn’t sure how she would do her job and chaperone a teenager who was too old for a babysitter but too young to be left on her own all day.

“See ya later, Mom!”

“We’re having pasta for dinner. If you could make a—” Her request that Jenna make a salad to go with it was cut off by the slam of the front door. She could leave her a note, but Jenna would say she didn’t see it. Better to send her a text message. Teenagers never let a text go unread, and her daughter was no exception.

Kristi opened the door to their backyard patio and shooed Hercules outside. “Go on. Do your business, then I have to get out of here.”

While he was outside, she checked her bag to be sure she had everything she needed for the day, then glanced at her watch. She hadn’t packed a lunch, but if she left now she would only be a few minutes late. Ten minutes, max. She’d have to take a break at lunchtime and run out to grab a bite to eat, and that would waste more time. She opened the fridge and scooped up a couple of bottles of water, an apple and the makings of a cheese sandwich. Now she could work through lunch to make up for not being on time. She took out a plastic container filled with the cupcakes she had baked on the weekend. She hated to see them go to waste, and Nate and his daughters might like them.

“Come on, Herc.” She picked him up when he scampered inside, gave him a scratch behind the ears and set him in his bed. “Keep an eye on Jenna when she gets home. I have to dash.”

Worrying about being late was likely a waste of time, though. Nate McTavish didn’t seem like the kind of guy who paid any attention to the clock. He probably wouldn’t even notice that she was running a little behind.

* * *

NATE POURED HIMSELF a second cup of coffee and settled at the breakfast bar with his laptop. Behind him, Gemmy was sprawled on the family room floor, and Molly and Martha lay between her front legs and her back legs, using her ample girth as a pillow while they watched a daddy-approved program on television.

While he kept an eye on the clock, anticipating the ring of the doorbell, he opened the file containing the first draft of a research paper he was coauthoring with a colleague.

Kristi had said she would be here at nine, and it was now two minutes past. Actually, she said around nine, and it’s not like it matters. He would be here all day.

The doorbell startled him, even though he’d been expecting it. “I’ll be right back,” he said to the girls.

He hotfooted it to the front door and opened it to find his mother-in-law standing there.

“Alice. This is a…surprise.” And yet another affirmation of why he needed to move.

As always her dark clothing reminded him of a military uniform, and the pinched lines around her mouth made him think she needed to smile once in a while.

“These are the pageant applications. I wasn’t sure if you would get around to looking at the website before the deadline.” She handed a large envelope to him. “I know how busy you are.” Her tone implied otherwise.

He didn’t want to get into it with her now, with the girls practically in the next room and Kristi due to arrive any minute. Now he really hoped she got held up somewhere and wouldn’t arrive until Alice was gone. “You didn’t have to go out of your way. I would have—”

“The girls’ photographs are in there with the application forms,” Alice said, cutting him off, saving him having to lie to her. “We had them taken the last time Molly and Martha spent the weekend. The applications have to include full-length poses and head shots. We know how busy you are, so we took care of it.”

Head shots? He resisted the urge to tear open the envelope.

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I’m on my way to have my hair done.”

Her dark silver coif was as smooth as a helmet, not a hair out of place.

He waved the envelope at her. “I’ll take a look at this.” No, you won’t, and you shouldn’t be letting her think you will. He needed to put an end to this insanely inappropriate plan to enter his daughters in a beauty pageant.

“Heather would have been okay with this.” And without waiting for him to reply, she strode down the sidewalk in her no-nonsense shoes, got into her gray sedan and drove away without a backward glance.

He didn’t give a damn what Alice said. Heather would not have been okay with this. What he didn’t understand was why this was suddenly so important to Heather’s mother.

“Who was that, Daddy?” Molly asked when he returned to the family room.

He slipped the envelope underneath his laptop, glad the girls hadn’t heard their grandmother at the door, and even more grateful she hadn’t asked to see them.

“Just a courier, sweetie. Dropping off some papers for me to look at.”

He sat on a stool and scrolled back to the top of the document and read the introduction for the third time. So much for his plan to get some work done before Kristi arrived.

Who was he kidding? Between Alice’s unexpected visit and Kristi’s impending arrival, he couldn’t concentrate anyway. Last night, after the girls were in bed, he’d spent an hour and a half taking down streamers, cleaning bathrooms and trying to catch up on laundry. Then he’d spent another hour looking at online real estate listings for smaller homes that were still close to the university and the girls’ day care, yet a safe distance from his in-laws. His findings weren’t impressive. For the first time since deciding to sell this place, he’d had some truly genuine misgivings, but Alice’s unexpected visit this morning strengthened his resolve.

The doorbell pealed…this time it had to be Kristi…and on his way to answer it, he reminded himself to play it cool.

“Good morning,” she said. In cropped black pants and a pink T-shirt and sneakers, she could be dressed for yoga class. She looked completely different from the woman who had breezed in here yesterday, taken up residence in pretty much every waking thought and occupied at least one of his dreams last night.

Wow. “Good morning.” He stood there, realized he was staring at her and hoped he hadn’t said “wow” out loud.

“I would have been here sooner, but I waited until my daughter left for school, and then I couldn’t find my keys....” She hitched the purple cupcake bag higher on her shoulder. “Sorry. I should have called.”

“That’s okay. I’m used to students who show up late for class.” Moron. How was that playing it cool? Had he forgotten how to have a normal conversation with a woman?

She seemed to find him amusing. “Well, I hope I don’t lose marks.”

She said it with just enough sass to put him in his place, but not so much that he minded.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside for her. This home staging thing was a complete mystery to him but he was more than willing to learn. It would be like being a student again, and he had a pretty good idea he was going to like his teacher.

* * *

KRISTI WALKED WITH Nate through the house, noting that the living room doors were open, the streamers were gone and he had even attempted to tame the kitchen clutter. Molly and Martha were sprawled with the dog in the middle of the family room floor, watching a children’s show she didn’t recognize. Something new in the years since Jenna was little.

“Good morning, girls. What are you watching?”

Molly angled her head and looked up at her. “The Cat in the Hat.”

Martha tugged her thumb out of her mouth. “Knows a Lot About That.” Back went the thumb.

Kristi looked to Nate for an explanation.

“The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! It’s a kids’ science show.”

Of course it was. This family was all about science. Nate’s T-shirt this morning read Evolution of a Botanist and had a series of silhouettes, starting with a chimpanzee, progressing through various human forms, and arriving at a man with a plant pot under one arm. She wondered how many botany T-shirts were among the items of clothing she’d seen lying around his bedroom. She hadn’t dared look too closely, but her money was on lots.