Daddy Daycare

He remembered his grandmother as a warm, simple woman. Her home a barely standing two-story, three-bedroom hodgepodge of additions. A day into his and Marlie’s visit, their grandmother had introduced them to the neighbor girl, Kit. From that moment on he’d been smitten by the long-legged brunette’s many charms.

For an endless summer he’d been part of the small town community. Felt as if he’d genuinely belonged.

If he were brutally honest, Kit had been his first love. Hell, maybe his only real love. And his feelings hadn’t been about the physical—the making love—that had drawn him to her. Everything about her from her cute accent to her casual clothes to her unabashed belly laughs had been miles from his stuffy, painfully polite upbringing. Her carefree spirit had reeled him in from her first friendly hello.

On a sweltering August Sunday, at this same airport, saying goodbye to Kit and her uncluttered way of life had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Sure, they’d promised to write, but after a couple letters apiece, as much as he’d still cared for her, the guys at his private school had ribbed him mercilessly for his summer fling with an Arkie. And so, bowing to peer pressure—something that still deeply shamed him—he’d put Kit, their magical summer and an unobtainable longing to be part of a real family from his mind.

Until now, when Kit was the only tangible link to anything he’d once known. Sure, there was Libby, but she barely knew him. And yet, from this moment on, due to a tragic twist of fate, he was to be her father. Father. How could he be good for Libby when half the time he wasn’t all that sure he was doing such a hot job raising himself?

“Hey,” said Levi, dressed in faded jeans, a red T-shirt and white Razorbacks cap. He held out his calloused hand for Travis to shake. “You must be that hotshot CEO brother Marlene was all the time talking about.”

Travis winced. Was that how his sister saw him?

With a partial smile, Travis returned the man’s handshake.

“Sorry about Marlene and Gary,” Levi said, taking Travis’s lone black bag and setting it in the truck’s bed. “They were a great couple. Everyone loved them.”

Travis’s throat tightened.

Thankfully, after a few awkward moments of silence, Kit said, “Well, guess we should get going.”

“Yeah.” Levi opened his door. “I left old Ben in charge, and you know how he is about getting so wrapped up in his afternoon soaps that he forgets we even have customers.”

On the way to the passenger side of Kit’s fiancé’s pickup, Travis asked the obvious. “Why not get rid of the TV? Or old Ben?”

“Simple,” Levi said, climbing behind the wheel. “The women who come in watch TV while their husbands shop, and I give them popcorn popped with the special coconut oil I sell. Since adding the TV and snacks, plus a few shelves of girlie knickknacks, my overall sales have gone up thirty percent.”

“Sweet,” Travis said, removing his suffocating suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves before climbing into the too-small cab beside Kit.

“Where to first?” Levi asked.

Kit said, “Travis wants to see Libby.”

“You’re evidently a very brave or a very stupid man,” Levi said, starting the truck, then putting it into gear.

“How’s that?” Travis loosened his tie, wishing he’d had Mrs. Holmes look into a rental limo and driver from Little Rock. Sitting this close to Kit wasn’t good. Even sweaty, she smelled intriguing. Earthy. Like the meadow where she’d taken him on a surprise picnic the afternoon after the night they’d first kissed.

Oblivious to his discomfort, Levi and Kit shared a laugh.

Kit patted Travis’s left thigh, causing still more inadvertent grief. “In meeting Gary’s parents—most especially his mother—you’re in for a real treat.”

“LIKE HELLYOU’RE TAKING my only granddaughter one foot outside city limits.” Beulah Redding, Marlene’s mother-in-law, was indeed turning out to be a treat. Five-eight and weighing a good three hundred pounds, she had a huge mass of Dolly Parton-style blond curls and a vast collection of windmills of every conceivable shape and size, including three real ones on the expansive front lawn and five out back. All that aside, the woman’s house was immaculate, as was six-month-old Libby, who was dressed in a cute pink jumper with her dark curls smelling of a recent washing and her skin scented with that baby-pink lotion Marlene had constantly been rubbing all over her.

“Be reasonable,” Travis said, helping himself to a seat on a blue velveteen sofa in the peach-colored room. “According to my sister and your son’s will, which Marlene had sent me a copy of for safekeeping in the event of…well, you know…” Travis couldn’t even bring himself to yet say the words. “Anyway, in the event we now find ourselves in, Marlene specifically named me as Libby’s guardian.”

Beulah switched off Jerry Springer, then settled into the recliner opposite the sofa. Kit, who sat on a brown floral sofa on the opposite wall beside a gurgling windmill fountain, looked every bit as uncomfortable as Travis felt. Lucky Levi had been dropped off at his store to supervise old Ben.

“I don’t care what the will says,” Beulah said, smacking the copy she’d been carrying around ever since plopping Libby into one of those baby activity seats bursting with knobs and squeakies for tiny fingers to explore, “I know in my heart he wished for me and his father to be Libby’s guardians. That way she can be raised right here with us. Learning our values—not your big city ways.”

As if he were negotiating a difficult business arrangement, Travis counted to ten in his head, then calmly cast Beulah the same always-in-control smile he’d used for his last magazine cover shoot. “While I appreciate your unique interpretation of the will’s true intent, as well as your fine home, you must know I can give Libby things—show her things—that would never be possible here in IdaBelle Falls. The Eiffel Tower. The Great Pyramids. Broadway.”

Beulah notched her chin higher. “I can show her how to can my prizewinning bread-and-butter pickles. How not to get snookered when buying windmills off of eBay.”

Travis cleared his throat. “That’s all well and good, but I’ll provide a world-class education.”

Sitting straighter, Beulah said, “You implying our teachers here in IdaBelle Falls are somehow lacking? Because if you are, you can go right back to that big city of yours and ask how many of their schools had a record thirty-five students out of a graduating class of fifty go on to college. And most all of them on scholarships, I might add.”

“While that’s an impressive statistic,” Travis noted, fixing the woman with his best boardroom stare, “I’ve faxed the will to my corporate attorney, and he assures me that no matter your objections, I have the legal right to pack up Libby and take her wherever I please.”

“No offense to your high-and-mighty corporate attorney, but in case you’ve forgotten, I’m contesting that will,” Beulah fired right back with a saccharine-sweet power smile of her own. “My legal counsel filed a court order barring you from taking my granddaughter outside county lines until a judge has time to hear both sides of our dilemma. Meaning, my granddaughter will remain with me until a formal decision is made.”

“Look…” Clenching his jaw and trying his damnedest to remain even-keeled when what he really wanted was to blow, Travis stood and walked the five feet to Beulah’s recliner. “I have no wish to make this ugly, but apparently on her deathbed my sister told Kit that she wanted me to raise Libby. I loved my sister very much and want nothing more than to abide by her wishes.”

“Oh,” Beulah said, also rising to her feet. “And seeing how you loved her so much, is that why you’ve only seen Libby once since she was born? And that was only because Marlene and my son brought the baby to you. Libby doesn’t even know you, yet I’m with her several times a week. Now, logically speaking, who do you think is best suited to care for her? Me, her loving grandmother who’s already raised one child of my own? Or you, Mr. Callahan, a bachelor so selfish and concerned with his own agenda that he didn’t even have time to pencil in the occasional visit to his supposedly beloved sister. And another thing—have you ever in your whole life even changed a diaper? Let alone fixed a bottle or done a load of wash? We’re Libby’s family. With your history, do you even know the meaning of family? Why, I’ll bet—”

“That’ll be enough,” an older man said, stepping into their not-so-happy group. Extending his hand to Travis, he said, “I’m Frank Redding, by the way. I’d say it’s nice to meet you, but truthfully I’ve had better times meeting cottonmouths.”

Likewise. Travis clenched his fists along with his jaw.

Not that he’d ever come face-to-face with one of the supposedly nasty snakes, but he damn sure took offense at being compared to one of the mean little bastards. What bothered him most, though, was how much Beulah’s verbal attack stung. He knew damn well what a family was. And in his heart he also knew it hadn’t been selfishness keeping him away from his sister and IdaBelle Falls all these years but an uncomfortable, far deeper emotion.

Libby started to cry.

Both Travis and Beulah lunged for her, but Kit did, too, and seeing how she was closest, she won. “Listen to you, Beulah, going on about how you’re an expert on family and babies, yet raising your voice right here in front of poor little Libby, who’s already been through so much.”

“Sorry,” Beulah said. “I just…well, when I think about this stranger here, running off to Chicago with the apple of my eye, raising her with no one around but nannies, I can’t stand it.”

“It’ll be all right,” Gary’s father said, putting his arm around Beulah’s quaking shoulders.

Libby was still fitfully crying.

“Here’s what I propose,” Kit said, easing up beside Travis with the baby. He suddenly wanted to hold both girls. Libby represented his only flesh-and-blood link to his sister. And Kit, as Marlene’s best friend, would always hold a special place in his—what? Had he been about to think heart? Because if so, that was screwy; he hardly knew the woman. He was only feeling abnormally close to her because of his sister’s sudden death. Certainly not because of one hot summer he’d gotten over a long time ago. “Why not let Libby choose?”

“That’s ridiculous,” Beulah said with a put-upon sigh.

“Is it?” Gary’s father asked, looking intrigued.

“Whose side are you on?” she asked her husband.

“Libby’s,” the man said. “Until the judge has his say, I think it’s only fair the little gal has her own.”

“Fine,” Beulah said. “Hands down, I’ll win. But if this showdown makes y’all feel better, so be it.” She held out her arms to Kit. “Pass her over.” Cradling Libby, Beulah crooned and coddled, but no amount of talk calmed her.

“My turn,” Travis said a few minutes later.

“Be my guest,” Beulah said. “But when she gets like this, there’s no comforting her.”

“I’ll take my chances.” Travis took Libby into his arms, then headed for the rocking chair he’d earlier spied on the glassed in, air-conditioned front porch. Comfortably seated in the chair, tears stinging his eyes, he recalled a late-night phone call he’d had with Marlie when Libby had been two months old. The baby had been going through cranky spells in the middle of the night, and Marlene had said the only way she’d found to calm her was by rocking her, rubbing the small of her back and singing the Oscar Mayer wiener song—a ditty she’d accidentally discovered the baby enjoyed when it’d soothed her while Marlene had been up watching TV.

Humming the familiar strains, Travis clutched his niece as if his life depended on her. Hell, maybe his life did depend upon her. Ever since hearing of Marlene’s death, he’d been so wrapped up in the logistics of getting to IdaBelle Falls and making sure Libby ended up with him that it hadn’t even sunk in that his funny, opinionated, cute, talented sister was gone.

With Libby sound asleep against his chest, her slight weight and warmth bringing unfathomable comfort, Travis looked up to find Kit swiping at a few tears of her own.

“We have a winner,” she softly said.

Beulah snorted. “No one told me we could use the rocking chair. Oldest baby trick in the book. He clearly cheated. But seeing how I’m a God-fearing woman, I won’t be one to go back on my word. Long as you keep an eye on him, Kit, Travis’s welcome to take my grandbaby to her home. But if he so much as breathes a word about heading back to Chicago…”

“THANKS FOR YOUR HELP back there,” Travis said from behind the wheel of Levi’s truck. Libby was buckled into her safety seat on the passenger side, leaving Kit in the middle to care for her. Travis had to admit—out of Beulah’s earshot, anyway—he knew just enough to be dangerous when it came to caring for an infant.

When Marlene and Gary had named Travis as Libby’s godfather, he’d taken the title seriously, but it’d never occurred to him he’d actually wind up one day becoming the girl’s substitute father. In fact, the couple had often teased him that eventually, once he had kids of his own, he’d see there was more to life than business. Laughing, he’d always said, Yeah, yeah, that day’ll never come. Yet look at him now. An instant father halfway wondering if maybe Libby would be better off living with her grandmother.

“Not a problem,” Kit said. “I was winging it, hoping like the devil you’d remember Marlene’s wiener-song trick.”

“She never told Beulah?” Coming to a four-way stop on the dirt road, he cast a sideways glance at Kit. Back in the blazing heat, her skin glowed. She’d had her dark hair up all day, but sweat-dampened tendrils escaped. She’d raised her skirt above her knees, baring endless tanned legs that, on countless sweltering nights in Foster’s swimming hole, she’d wrapped around him, giving him teenage hard-ons so intense they’d hurt. Then, one thing had led to another and he was burying himself deep inside her. She’d made everything better. Good. Whole.

Why had he never told her how much she’d brought to his life?

With a sharp laugh, Kit said, “To say the two didn’t get along would be the understatement of the century.”

“Yeah. On a few of her calls, Marlene intimated as much. Said Beulah didn’t approve of her cooking.” Even as Travis had spoken, he couldn’t take his eyes off the elegant column of Kit’s throat. He should’ve told her. Maybe before returning to Chicago he would. Assuming he found the right moment or—

“Um, Travis?” She glanced at him curiously. “You forget how to use the gas pedal? I’d like to get Libby out of this heat.”

“Oh, sure.” He checked the intersection again and pressed the gas.

Truth be told, Kit thought, who she really wanted out of the heat was herself—only the rising temps in the truck’s cab had nothing to do with Mother Nature and everything to do with the boy she’d once fancied herself in love with who’d turned into one heckuva hunk of man. Not that she found him more attractive than Levi, just that she felt an unexpected familiarity with Travis and, in the same breath, a rush of city excitement and attraction she’d thought forever gone. On many lonely nights, wished forever gone.

She’d worked hard to get over what her mother and friends had considered a high school crush. So hard that after graduation she’d fallen right into another impossible relationship with Brad Foley, a B-movie actor in town filming a period piece about moonshining. After being burned twice by city guys looking for a temporary good time, Kit had learned her lesson and was now glad for her long-standing engagement to a local who had no plans to leave IdaBelle Falls and had been there for her for as long as she could remember. He was her rock. Solid. Dependable. Like the big brother she’d never had—only kissable! Levi hadn’t wanted to set a wedding date until he’d built a proper nest egg, which he’d promised would be soon six months ago.

Heading down the dusty road, Kit was relieved to get her thoughts back to the current matter at hand when Travis asked, “What do you make of Beulah contesting Gary and Marlene’s will?”

Kit shrugged. “I don’t for a second believe she’ll win. Levi and I used to double date with your sister and her husband at least once a week, and as far as I knew, Gary thought his mother was sweet but smothering. Well-intentioned but hopelessly controlling.”

“Think the judge will toss her case?”

“Don’t know,” Kit said. “I can’t imagine Marlene ever wanting this. As she was dying, she begged me to make sure Libby stays with us.”

“Us?” He cast her a cautious half smile that reminded her so much of when they’d been kids. Back when it had taken her a minute to breathe after he’d shyly confessed his attraction for her.

“Well…” Kit licked her lips. “She said us, you and me together, but I’m sure she meant me in the short term, then you for the long term.”

“Sure.”

“Because otherwise she would’ve meant us as a couple, only Marlene was never really the match-making type.”

“No. No, she wasn’t.”

“Besides which, she knows I’m happy with Levi.”

“Right. And that I’m not the relationship type.”

“Of course.” He’d braked for another stop sign, and though cars whizzed along the paved highway they faced, flooding the truck’s cab with much-needed breeze, for Kit, the temperature under Travis’s hooded gaze blazed as hot as ever.

His dark eyes were beseeching. As if he desperately wanted, needed something from her, but wasn’t sure what.

So she gave him a nudge when she asked, “Beyond losing Marlene, what’s hurting you, Travis?”

Chapter Three

“Excuse me?” Travis squinted at Kit, making her feel about as needed as a pesky fly. Obviously, as in her disastrous fling with Brad, she’d totally misread the current situation. Travis most likely didn’t need or want for anything but a refreshing, cool shower and a light meal. Least of all, he didn’t want her, making her feel silly and stupid and sentimental for even having asked the question. Most of all for the brief flash of wanting something from him—namely the comfort of just being near him. Of knowing that, in his own way, he’d loved his sister every bit as fiercely as she had.

“Nothing,” Kit said, fussing over the lace trim on Libby’s jumper. Why did she always want to fix not only things but people? Especially people who didn’t need to be fixed. Travis was the embodiment of success. He was one of the top CEOs in the country. He had brains, talent and immense wealth. What could he possibly want from her?

“You as bone-tired as I am?” she asked, blaming exhaustion on her odd mood.

“Yep.” He pulled onto the highway, heading toward the airport.

“Did you forget that Marlene and Gary’s new house and our latest daycare are a few miles in the other direction?”

“Nope.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Home.”

“What do you mean home?” she asked, angling on the cramped seat as best she could to face him. “As in Chicago?”

“Come with me. At least for a little while. I’ll need help with Libby for the first few days. Hell,” he said with a swipe of his hair, “make that the first few years. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I’ll—we’ll—figure it out.”

“Hello?” she said, flashing her hand in front of his deadpan gaze. “Marlene and Gary’s funeral is in two days. And what about court order don’t you understand?”

He snorted. “We’ll fly back for the funeral. And my lawyer got his degree from Harvard. Beulah’s no doubt got his on the Internet. Who do you think’s going to win?”

Lips set in a grim line, Kit shook her head. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you’ve sorely underestimated the power of your adversary.”

“You can’t be serious? The woman collects windmills and cans pickles. How tough a foe can she be?”

“Have you ever canned pickles in the heat of summer?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“And that seemingly derelict windmill alongside Beulah’s weeping willow? It’s fifteenth-century. She had it shipped over from England. Reassembled it piece by piece all on her own. Trust me, the woman’s tougher than you think.”

“Yeah,” Travis said with a wink, “but I’ve got deeper pockets.”

“True. But seeing how decades ago Beulah’s family moved to IdaBelle Falls to start a thorough-bred cattle business, after having already made a fortune off Oklahoma oil, I wouldn’t be so sure her lawyer isn’t also a Harvard grad—or at the very least, Yale.” Kit sent him a wink of her own, grinning at his incredulous expression.

AN HOUR LATER, AFTER Kit had changed his mind about leaving, Travis wandered through the stuffy gloom of his sister and brother-in-law’s closed-up house while Kit changed Libby’s diaper—she’d insisted, arguing there’d be time enough for him to take a turn—it finally hit him. Marlene was gone. She wouldn’t be back to use the hairbrush set on the bathroom counter. Or to complete the to-do list tacked to the fridge door with a cookie-shaped magnet.

His sister had been fiercely proud of this place, and he tried seeing it as the hopeful fixer-upper she would’ve imagined instead of as the run-down wreck it truly was. Two miles outside of town, the place was, according to his sister, one of the oldest brick homes in the county.

Though the two-story, white-columned abode looked grand from the outside, on the inside the place was a cramped, shoddy lesson in how not to restore a historic home. Plenty of cheap paneling over crumbling plaster walls and brown shag carpet hiding scratched wood floors. In the year Marlene and Gary had lived here, the only rooms they’d tackled were Libby’s pink fairy tale of a room and what Marlene called the master bedroom suite—an oasis of modern comfort in an otherwise depressing hellhole.

Travis sent Marlene thousands every month. Why hadn’t she used the money to hire contractors to do the work in a timely manner? Why had she insisted she and Gary do the work themselves? Didn’t make sense.

“You okay?” Kit asked him, Libby in her arms as she descended the staircase that split the entry hall into equal halves.

“Sort of,” Travis said with a sigh. “The way Marlene described this place, you’d have thought it was Gone With the Wind’s Tara, but…” He kicked a piece of drywall at his feet.

“They were happy here,” she said, glancing up at the stained-glass skylight lending the space an otherworldly bluish glow.

“If she’d wanted an old house, the mansion we grew up in would’ve been sufficient. Hell, aside from the servants who maintain the place for corporate retreats, it’s sat empty for years.”

“Ever stop to think,” Kit said from the bottom of the stairs, “that it wasn’t so much an old house she wanted but her own house? One that she and Gary worked on together.”

“Whatever,” Travis said, taking the baby, kissing the top of her sweet-smelling head. “I still don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Travis asked, chasing Kit down the long, dark hall leading to the kitchen.

Yellow light from the open fridge silhouetted her before spilling into the gloom. “Think about it,” she said. “Everything Marlene wanted had been handed to her by your grandparents or servants or you. But she wanted more than material things. She wanted not just to love her family and job but to create something with her own hands. To be able to sit back at the end of a long, exhausting day and think, with a satisfied smile, I did that. I made it, I painted it, I mowed it—whatever. She had to know her life mattered. That she hadn’t spent her days like some pampered lap dog but as a contributing member of society.” She grabbed a few items from the fridge, then slammed it shut.

“So what you’re essentially saying is that Marlene felt she was in danger of wasting her life? Like me?” Travis switched on a harsh overhead light.

Kit rolled her eyes, slapping a sealed package of bologna, then mustard, on the worn white laminate counter before taking a bread loaf from the freezer. “Libby’s formula is in the third cabinet on the left. Mind opening a can while I make us a couple sandwiches? And for the record, no—Marlene never once said or even implied you were wasting your life. She just had no interest in big business. She wanted to be more hands-on.”