The Trick To Getting A Mom

Sean hoisted the stationary bike out of the mud and onto the porch, savoring Kit’s stunned expression.

Only to meet the equally astonished gaze of his daughter. Alex stood on the porch, her arms wrapped around a bunch of soggy stuffed animals, cheap carnival prizes. The look she gave him saw right through him. She’d seen how he’d lost himself in this woman.

This would never do. Kit wasn’t any part of his plan to keep his daughter safe.

“It’s coming down bad, squirt.” Affecting a nonchalance he didn’t feel, he stuck his hand out into the river of rain running off the gutterless porch roof.

Alex plunked the stuffed animals onto the uneven flooring. “This is just like the time Seafaring Cecil was in Hong Kong and the vegetable seller’s sampan sank. Cecil didn’t leave till he’d helped get all the stuff out of the harbor. Remember, the guy was so grateful he gave Cecil a duck to roast?”

Sean chuckled.

Alex whooped and jumped off the top step into the yard. Her boots created splashes that reached her tiny waist as she made a beeline for a lamp molded in the shape of a naked woman.

“Are you two crazy?” Kit cried, racing up the steps with an ugly painting of an almost-naked Elvis. The velvet background was so wet and whorled, Elvis looked pitifully cowlicked. “Why are you still here?”

“Because it seems pretty damned important to you to save this stuff.”

She looked at him as if no one had ever taken into consideration what was important to her.

At that moment Sean wanted to tell her he was sorry for standing her up nine years ago. It hadn’t been at all the way she must have imagined. But, he couldn’t give in to the attraction he’d always harbored for her. He needed his parenting wits about him, and Kit, he felt sure, had the potential to drive him witless.

“Hey, look at this!” Alex bounded back up onto the porch, carrying a plastic laundry basket full of Hollywood fan magazines. “It was sticking out of the bottom.” Nearly bursting with excitement, she took out a scrapbook. “It’s full of stuff about Seafaring Cecil.”

There were clippings about the gonzo travel writer’s adventures, his interactive Web site and the merchandise his adventures, site and books had spawned.

Alex turned to Kit, her eyes sparkling. “If this is part of your yard sale, I wanna buy it!”

Kit looked overwhelmed. “I…I…don’t know.”

“Is it yours?” Alex persisted.

“It must be my mother’s,” Kit replied. The rain drummed on the porch roof as her fingertips hovered over the scrapbook. “I never knew she took any interest in me.”

“You?” Alex flipped through the pages. There were no photos of the intrepid fisherman-traveler. “This is about Seafaring Cecil.”

“I know, kid.” Kit looked squarely at Alex. “I’m Cecil. It’s my working name.”

CHAPTER TWO

ALEX COULDN’T STOP grinning. Could the lady in front of her really be Seafaring Cecil? The man—no, the person—who’d traveled the seven seas and a few rivers thrown in for good measure? The person who’d eaten stir-fried bugs and drunk snake’s blood? The person who’d helped Dad and her plan their ultimate-awesome-when-they-won-the-lottery trip?

Funny, but Kit looked just as cool as Alex had imagined Cecil to be. Only he was a lady.

Still, her dad had taught her not to believe everything people told you.

Crossing her arms over her chest, she looked up at Kit and issued her challenge. “Prove it.”

Give her credit, Kit didn’t back down. “Did you ever look at the copyright page in any of the books?”

“Nope.” Alex shook her head. “We always got right to the good stuff.”

Kit smiled and Alex noticed her front tooth was just the tiniest bit crooked. She imagined it got that way when Kit had to open her emergency rations with her bare teeth. Maybe. It could happen. Cecil didn’t live like ordinary people.

“If I had a book here,” Kit said, “I could show you. It would say, ‘Copyright by Kit Darling.’ Me.”

A brilliant idea popped into Alex’s head. “We have Seafaring Cecil books at our house. Everyone.” She tugged on her dad’s pocket. “Can Kit come to supper tonight? We could check it out then.”

Dad looked like he’d been turned to stone with a voodoo curse.

“That’s okay.” Kit was acting funny, too. She probably wasn’t used to eating at a table with knives and forks. “I should be making supper for you. For your help. But I’m fresh out of duck for roasting. Plus the utilities are off.” She gave Alex a wobbly smile.

Alex felt a stab of disappointment. “I should have known a big shot like you wouldn’t—”

“Hey, it’s not like that. I’m no big shot.” Kit knelt before her on the porch. The rain all around made it feel like they were marooned in the middle of the jungle. In Brazil maybe. Or Thailand. Up close, Alex got to look at Kit’s cool vine tattoo. Had a rain forest tribesman given it to her?

“I’m only in town for a short while,” Kit explained. “I have a long list of appointments. Lawyers, mostly.” She made a face. “Then I need to get back on the road again. New places to visit. New things to write about.” She looked kinda sorry. “But I do want to thank you for your help. And for being a Cecil fan. Perhaps tomorrow you could bring me your books and I’ll autograph them. We could have a picnic lunch on the boulder out back while your dad’s working. It would give your aunt a break.”

Alex held her breath, looking at her dad. He cleared his throat.

“I don’t think so,” he said. Sean had pinched lines between his eyes. Like he had a stomachache. “You see…Alex has been suspended from school for two weeks. The suspension doesn’t include picnics.”

Now why did he have to bring that up? Just when she was about to make friends with Seafaring Cecil.

Kit inwardly cringed at the reluctance she heard in Sean’s voice. Of course he wouldn’t want his daughter associating with her. Kit the Pariah. In full view, at Babe Darling’s. Mother Pariah. Without her pseudonym, she was still a Darling. One of two town outcasts.

“I understand.” For Alex’s sake she wouldn’t make a scene. She smiled at the little girl with the big spirit. “You check that copyright page when you get home.”

She extended her hand to Sean, determined to show him his brush-off didn’t faze her. “Thanks. For your help.”

“Seems like you could use more,” Alex offered. “I could come down tomorrow and help you spread this stuff out to dry.” She stared up at her father. “That would be community service, Dad. Not a picnic.”

Kit looked around at Babe’s soggy possessions, now mostly piled on the front porch. She didn’t know if anything was salvageable, if it ever had been in the first place.

“What are you planning to do?” Sean asked, his voice brusque and his body poised to get the heck out of Dodge.

Kit glanced at him. She didn’t like the look in his eyes. Pity, maybe? She didn’t need anyone’s pity, least of all his.

“I’ll just call a junk man to haul it all off,” she declared airily. Maybe a junk man would give her something for the lot. Seafaring Cecil had only recently begun to make a real, if modest, living for Kit. She didn’t have a cushion to soften the fallout from her mother’s defection. “Yeah. A junk man.”

“See.” Sean looked at his daughter. “All taken care of.”

Kit got the impression he wasn’t only speaking of Babe’s junk.

Alex seemed unconvinced, but she remained silent. An interesting kid. There was more to her than met the eye.

The downpour stopped as quickly as it had begun, leaving the yard awash in mud. The few stray belongings they’d failed to retrieve and the yard sale sign had been swept into the street. There was nothing to keep Sean McCabe and his daughter any longer, and Kit felt an unexpected and unwanted twinge of disappointment.

She tried to shrug it off by picturing an adoring wife and mother waiting for them back home. His high-school sweetheart perhaps. The one he’d stood her up for.

“Come on, Alex.” Sean put his hand protectively on the back of his daughter’s neck. “We have to check in with Aunt Emily. Then I’m taking you to the pound where Pop and Uncle Jonas can help me keep an eye on you.”

And where was the wife? Kit wondered, forced to remind herself she didn’t care.

Sean made a move toward the porch steps, landing on one of the cowboy boots Kit had kicked off earlier. There wasn’t much maneuverability in the heavy boots he wore and he grabbed at the rickety railing. It gave way under his weight. In seconds, he toppled backward off the porch and into the rain-drenched hydrangea.

“Dad!” Alex shrieked and flew off the porch, landing in the muddy front yard. She lost her footing, too, and slid down the sloping yard.

Kit didn’t know where to help first until Alex sat up with an enormous mud-spattered grin. Sean, however, lay flat on his back.

As quickly as she could without becoming a casualty herself, Kit made her way down the two shallow front steps barefooted. If she weren’t so concerned that he’d broken or ruptured something, she might find the situation funny.

Mud oozing between her toes, she slipped, then fell to her knees. She crawled the rest of the way to Sean. “Are you all right?”

“My ego’s shot to hell,” he muttered. Flat on his back and vulnerable, he looked far sexier than upright and in charge. He glowered at the offending red cowboy boot that teetered on the edge of the porch. “That nearly killed me.”

Gingerly, Kit stood, dug her bare feet into the mud, then extended her hand.

He eyed her doubtfully.

“I’ll help!” Alex materialized at Kit’s side.

Taking a hand each, Sean braced his boot heels in the mud.

“One, two, three!” Alex crowed.

They pulled as he heaved himself out of the bush, slamming against Kit. Gleefully, Alex danced away as the two adults fell once again.

Before they hit the ground, Sean grabbed Kit to him and rolled to his side. They slid like two harbor seals in a long mucky embrace down what once was—a very long time ago—a lawn. The wind knocked out of her, Kit couldn’t move, although she hated to think of the shape she’d be in if Sean hadn’t broken their fall—her fall—by flipping to his side. Pancake came to mind.

She felt the corded strength of his arms around her, felt the rise and fall of his rock-hard chest. Heard his ragged breathing and something else…something strange. The low, rusty beginnings of a laugh. The crinkles around his eyes told her she wasn’t mistaken. Holding her tightly, he threw back his head and roared. His teeth flashed stark white against his mud-daubed face.

His laughter proved infectious.

Return to Pritchard’s Neck had put Kit on edge, and the man who now held her hadn’t eased her sense of unbalance. This unintended pratfall pushed her over the brink. She flung back her head and gave herself over to a marvelous belly laugh as Alex performed a noisy dance around the two fallen adults.

“You’re a sight.” A broad grin lighting up his face, Sean brushed a clump of hair from Kit’s eyes. His mud-slick fingertips raised goose bumps on her flesh.

“No one’s about to ask you to tea at the Ritz,” she replied, picking a hydrangea blossom from behind his ear.

He caught her wrist, his merriment transferred into longing. A shiver of reciprocal desire ran down her spine.

“Alex! What are you doing?” A woman’s voice rang out with crisp authority.

Alex froze.

A look of horror on his face, Sean released Kit, and struggled to get up.

“Who’s she?” Kit asked as he helped her up. The woman wore a neat business suit and was standing beside a sedan, her arms crossed. She did not appear amused by what she saw.

“Candace Simmons,” Sean replied. He had the look of a schoolboy caught smoking behind the gym. “Alex’s principal. And my sister-in-law’s best friend.”

When the woman recognized Sean, her face registered disappointment. Slowly, with a long glance at Kit, she got in her car and drove away. And Kit saw her chances of getting out of town without starting any new rumors evaporate like fog before the morning sun.

“HOW COULD YOU?” Nine months pregnant and angrier than a hornet in a car wash, Emily McCabe leaned against her front door, her hands supporting her back. She stared at the two mud monsters. “How could you?”

Sean had stopped to tell his sister-in-law he’d found Alex and was going to take her to the lobster pound with him. Unfortunately, Candace had come and gone before them with the news of the spectacle in Babe’s front yard.

“Alexandra, do you have any idea how worried I was when I couldn’t find you?” Emily pushed a strand of lank hair out of her face. “Do you know how difficult it is for me to get around to look for you?”

“Yes’m.” Alex scuffed one toe of her boot against the other. She didn’t look at all sorry, Sean thought.

With difficulty, Emily knelt before Alex. “Honey, you scared me. If anything had happened to you…”

Sean felt guilty. He shouldn’t have bothered his sister-in-law in the first place, but he’d nowhere else to turn for child care. His sister, Mariah, was working overtime at the local landscape nursery to pay for night school. Pop and Jonas were working above and beyond their regular carpentry jobs to get the lobster pound open before the tourist season peaked. His oldest brother, Nick, and his family were in the process of moving back to Pritchard’s Neck, but they wouldn’t be settled in until the end of next month. Brad’s wife, Emily, had seemed Sean’s only choice.

Emily and Brad’s twins, Nina and Noah, were eight, and Olivia was six, which meant that they were away at school all day. So Sean had promised Emily that Alex would entertain herself, would be no trouble at all. He’d gotten the first part right.

“Do you understand why I was so upset?” Emily’s voice had lost its edge.

“Sorry.” Hugging her aunt, Alex finally seemed genuinely repentant.

“Then right around to the back, young lady, and hose off at the outside tap while I talk to your father.” Emily looked as if she wasn’t going to let Sean get away as easily.

Alex trotted around the corner of the house, a tiny smile turning up the corner of her lips, obviously already imagining she was on her way to water some trusty safari animal.

“She didn’t mean any harm,” Sean offered.

“She never means any harm.” Sighing, Emily smoothed the tent-like dress over her swollen form. “She’s in her own little world without consequences. A world you give far too much encouragement.”

“She saw the yard-sale sign down the street.” Sean stopped himself. Emily looked as if her physical strength and emotional patience had run out with her pregnancy. She didn’t need one more person challenging her. Not now, anyway. “She wanted to see if there were any books.”

“Books.” Emily rolled her eyes. “If it’s not books, it’s lobstering. If it’s not lobstering, it’s those wild travel fantasies you cultivate. Candace says Alex needs to focus more on—”

“I’m sorry she caused you grief.” He didn’t want to pick a fight with the woman who’d tried to do him a favor, but he didn’t need yet another lecture on child rearing. He was doing the best he could.

“You need to nudge her in the right directions,” Emily said gently. “Help her make more grounded choices.”

“Are you saying I’m not a good role model?”

“Mud wrestling with Kit Darling in public…?”

“I wasn’t mud wrestling.”

“If you say so, but…Candace was devastated.” Emily’s shoulders sagged. “And I can understand why. She has Alexandra’s best interests at heart. Yours, as well. And she has some expectations for her own.”

“Don’t go there, Emily. It was one dinner. A fix-up.”

“You didn’t give her a chance. She’s still hoping—”

“Candace isn’t my type.”

“Oh, but Kit is?”

“Look. I found Alex with Kit. When the rain started, Alex and I helped bring the yard sale stuff under cover. It was slippery. We fell. My eight-year-old happened to think it was funny.”

“Funny! Two adults down on the ground, groping each other in the mud. One of them a single father and the other…the other trashy Babe Darling’s daughter, no less.”

“Would it have made any difference if I’d been mud wrestling with, say, Libby Fisk? Or Heather Abernathy? Or Candace Simmons?”

“Oh, Sean.” Emily gave him a pitying look as if he were a lost boy. “All I want is for you to be happy.”

“I’m happy enough.”

“You know what I mean. I want you to have what Brad and I have. I want Alex to know a mother’s love.”

So did he, but finding the right woman for Alex—and for him—wasn’t just an easy search on eBay. “I don’t need a matchmaker, Em,” he said as gently as he could.

“If this afternoon’s any indication, I think you do.”

“So we’re back to Kit.”

“I don’t think she’s…your type.”

“I don’t know what kind of woman Kit is,” he admitted, keeping his tone even. “She hasn’t been back to town in nine years. She claims to be a travel writer.”

“Then she won’t be staying. You need a woman who’ll—” With one hand Emily grabbed Sean’s arm. With the other she clutched her belly.

“What?” He knew without asking.

“It’s time!” Emily gasped. “This is labor.”

“Are you sure?” Had he and Alex precipitated this?

“Of course I’m sure!” Emily said through clenched teeth. “I’ve had three children. Oh—” Reaching into her dress pocket, she withdrew a cell phone and thrust it at Sean. “Call Emergency Response.”

“I’ll call Brad.”

“There’s no time!”

He punched in 9-1-1 and requested the Emergency Response Unit, then turned his attention to his sister-in-law.

“I need to sit,” Emily pleaded, breathless.

As he helped her to the step, he tried not to think about Jilian’s difficult delivery. “Can I do anything for you?”

“Yes!” She clutched his arm. “Promise me you’ll see Candace tomorrow. Explain about this afternoon. She deserves an explanation.”

Emily was right. Candace did deserve an explanation. Maybe even an apology. She was a good person. Just not the woman for him.

Another contraction almost doubled Emily over. Still, she clung to his arm. “Promise.”

“I promise,” he said quickly to alleviate her obvious distress.

Looking up, he saw a dripping Alex standing at the corner of the house, fear etched on her face.

“It’s okay, punkin,” he said, extending his free hand to her. “Aunt Emily’s about to have her baby.”

“Here?” Alex squeaked, running to him, throwing her wet arms around his leg.

Emily let out a short laugh. “You two adventurers would appreciate a front-yard delivery, wouldn’t you?” She began to pant.

Sean put his arm around her and soothed her.

Within minutes the Emergency Response Unit arrived. Fortunately, the paramedics performed their duties seamlessly. Sean, with Alex plastered to his side, wouldn’t have been much help. He assured Emily he’d wait for her children to get off the bus, that he would bring them to the hospital. He’d also get in touch with Brad. Yes, he knew his pager number.

As the paramedics began to close the doors to the unit, Emily caught and held his gaze.

“Let me call Uncle Brad,” Alex chirped, patting the back pocket of Sean’s jeans. “Hey! Where’s your phone?”

With a sense of dread, he felt his empty pockets.

“It must have fallen out when you fell in the mud. At Kit’s.” Alex’s eyes lit up. “We’ll have to go back to look for it.”

“No.” He didn’t like that idea. “Not now. We can use Aunt Emily’s.”

Alex made a beeline for the phone abandoned on the front step. “But we’ll have to get yours sometime,” she declared with a grin. “And when we do, I’m bringing my books for Kit to autograph.”

Sean’s stomach dropped.

He’d thrown himself into Alex’s fantasy of travel and adventure because it was only pretend. And, therefore, safe.

Then Kit blew into town. A real traveler with iconoclastic baggage. He didn’t so much envy her travels as fear what she represented. She was the siren. Luring his daughter and enticing him with her song.

CHAPTER THREE

KIT SAT IN THE EMERGENCY ROOM cubicle, waiting for a nurse to return with her release forms. The stitched-up gash in her right forearm throbbed as the local anesthesia wore off. Biting her lower lip against the pain, she tapped the fingers of one hand into the palm of the other. It had been one long, frustrating day—starting with that blasted yard sale.

Sean and Alex McCabe had left her in a stew. Alex, because the kid reminded Kit of herself—or what she might’ve been like if she’d had the benefit of a remotely normal family. And Sean because…well, because Sean was Sean. Strong. Sexy. Self-confident. With an intriguing, barely suppressed anger—or an itch—that ran right below his responsible surface. He hadn’t changed much in nine years.

Except now he had a daughter.

Did that mean he also had a wife? He hadn’t been wearing a ring, but what lobsterman did? Around heavy equipment, a ring was a physical liability.

Why did Kit care about a ring or a wife?

Getting angry at herself for having given Sean McCabe’s marital status two thoughts had been Kit’s first mistake, she realized, thumping her heels against the examination table, waiting.

Hopping the neighbor’s chain-link fence to use their backyard hose as an impromptu shower-and-clothes-wash-in-one had been her second. As she’d scoured reluctant grass stains out of her jeans with her fingernails, she had remembered the feel of his body against hers. Remembered the sound of his laugh. The look of intensity in his eyes as he’d explained why he’d stayed to help.

Because it seems pretty damned important to you.

Sean shouldn’t have been her concern. Climbing back over the neighbor’s chain-link fence should have been.

And that was her third mistake. Her thoughts unfocused, she’d slipped and ripped her forearm.

Where was that nurse?

Her skin crawled under her damp clothes, still dirty, while her stomach growled. It was seven o’clock. Breakfast and her morning shower at the turnpike truck stop were a distant memory.

A plump nurse with pastel scrubs and a tiny, fuzzy koala attached to her stethoscope entered the examination cubicle. Kit didn’t know whether to resent Nurse Sunbeam’s well-fed perkiness or envy her cleanliness.

“We’ve filed your insurance. Here’s your release.” She handed Kit a yellow sheet of paper, then a second white one. “And here are instructions for taking care of that wound. If you have any problems, don’t hesitate to come back in.”

“I won’t have any problems,” Kit declared, sliding off the examination table. She’d been in worse situations without benefit of hospitals and antibiotics. Her stomach growled again. She needed to find the cafeteria. Clutching her papers, Kit headed for the elevator.

The elevator doors opened onto a bright and cheery food court. Just as Kit stepped out, a doll’s head rolled to a stop at her feet.

“Uncle Sean,” a child complained, “Alexandra’s not playing nice.”

How many Seans and Alexandras could there be in Pritchard’s Neck?

“But playing house is soooo boring,” a now familiar voice shot back. Alex McCabe’s. “I wanna play headhunters and cannibals.”

“Eeuuww!” girlish voices chorused in disgust.

Kit picked up the doll’s head.

Two little girls huddled on a plastic chair and tried to protect their family of dolls from a sword-wielding assailant. Make that a rolled-up newspaper-wielding assailant. Alex. Still dressed in mud-spattered overalls.

So where was her father this time?

A groan near a bank of soft-drink machines drew Kit’s attention to two jean-clad backsides—one adult, one child—which presented themselves to the world from an ignominious position on the floor. It seemed the two were trying to retrieve something from under one of the machines.

“Aha!” Rolling to a sitting position, Sean held aloft a plastic action figure. “Look, Noah,” he said, ruffling the young boy’s hair and handing him the toy, “just because Alex dares you to do something, doesn’t mean you have to—”