Daddy Lessons

“Well, you’ll never know whether you can trust her until you give her the chance to prove herself,” Savanna told him.

Joe didn’t know anything about this woman except that she’d been late to work and didn’t have any qualms about speaking her mind. But she had managed to pacify Megan without sticking the phone into his hand. And after several days of his daughter’s endless calls, he could only see that as a major improvement.

“When she calls back, tell her she may go. But she has to be back in an hour and a half. And that you’ll call the house to make sure she’s returned on time.”

Smiling gladly, Savanna nodded.

That settled, Joe turned and headed toward a coffee machine situated in the far corner of the room.

Bemused, Savanna asked, “Does this mean you still want me for the job?”

He glanced at her over his shoulder, and Savanna didn’t miss the wry twist on his lips.

“Against my better judgment.”

Chapter Two

The smile faded from Savanna’s face as she folded her arms defensively over her breasts. “You really know how to make a girl feel needed, Mr. McCann.”

His eyebrows peaked at her remark. It had been a long time since Joe had wanted to make anyone feel needed, he realized. Especially a woman.

“Believe me, Ms. Starr, making you feel needed was not on my agenda this morning.”

Savanna’s nostrils flared and Joe watched her rose-colored lips purse with disdain. He’d never particularly liked short hair on a woman. Certainly not as short as Savanna Starr’s, which left her ears and neck exposed and a shock of thick blond bangs falling over her forehead. But he had to admit that it looked damn sexy on her.

“Having a flat wasn’t on my agenda, either,” she couldn’t help retorting.

Joe glanced over at his desk. Not because he was searching for something. He merely needed to get his eyes off her and remind himself that just because she had a cute little face with warm brown eyes and a body that curved in all the right places didn’t mean he needed her for a secretary. He already had enough on his mind without adding a woman to his problems.

But the way she’d dealt with Megan led him to believe she could actually help matters where his daughter was concerned. And right now that was the most important thing he needed to consider.

As though they couldn’t bear it any longer, his eyes traveled back to her. “Tell me, Ms. Starr, do you normally have flat tires on your way to work? Or can I depend on you to be here on time?”

Savanna decided not to let his gibes anger her. She didn’t like the wasteful emotion, and from what she could gather from the few minutes since she’d arrived, things hadn’t been running very smoothly for him. She could only wonder how long it had been since he and his daughter had actually lived in the same house. And what had happened to his marriage in the first place?

Dear Lord, had she lost her mind? Joe McCann’s past family life was none of her business. She shouldn’t be thinking of him as a man. He was her boss! And even that was a shaky deal.

Giving herself a hard mental slap, she said, “No, I don’t normally have flats and I’m rarely late.”

“That’s good. Because I don’t need you out on Interstate 40 waiting for some macho man to come to your rescue. I need you here.”

I need you. Why did those words blot out everything else he’d said up until now? Whenever she looked at him, why did she want to peel back the layers of his sarcasm and look for the real man she suspected was underneath? Changing that flat this morning must have addled her brain!

“I’ll tell you what, Mr. McCann. In the future, if I need rescuing on I-40, I’ll be sure to call you.”

He could tell from the impish light in her eyes and the curve of her lips that she was teasing. In spite of his sour mood, he found himself wanting to smile back at her. But he didn’t. He had serious things to consider. He couldn’t let himself be drawn into her teasing humor.

Turning his back on her, he reached for the coffeepot. By now the liquid was burned to a bitter black, but Joe poured himself a mugful anyway. After these few minutes with Savanna he figured a shot of Scotch would have been more fitting. But since he wasn’t a drinker, he’d have to rely on the caffeine to fortify him.

A few steps away, Savanna watched him swallow a mouthful of coffee, then allowed her eyes to slip down the hard-rock length of his body. He was dressed casually in blue jeans, laced-up work boots and a khaki shirt with the cuffs turned back against his forearms. He wore the clothes well, she decided. Too well for her peace of mind.

Joe took another sip of coffee, then moved back to his desk. Once there he motioned with his head for her to join him.

“Right now I think it’s time we both got to work.”

Her hands laced loosely in front of her, Savanna walked over and stood in front of his desk.

“I don’t know how much Edie told you about the job you’ll be doing here,” he said, “but it’s mainly answering the phone, typing correspondence and making out the payroll. Delta, our dispatcher, works in the back of the building. You’ll be talking to her from time to time. Otherwise, you’ll be working in this room with me.”

For the first time since she’d arrived, Savanna took the time to glance around the long room. It wasn’t anything fancy. Calendars, charts, maps and photographs of gas and oil wells covered most of the paneled walls. In one corner there was a small table with a coffee machine, foam cups and a bag of stale-looking doughnuts on it. Next to the table were a couple of plastic chairs. On the opposite side of the room, a few feet away from where she stood, was another metal desk and typing-style chair.

As she looked at the desk, the first thing that ran through Savanna’s mind was that she’d be facing Joe McCann all day long. She couldn’t imagine what that would be like. She’d worked as a temporary for several years, and during that time she’d had all sorts of bosses. But none of them had looked like Joe. Nor had they raised her hackles the way he had in the very first minute she’d met him.

Still, she wasn’t about to tuck tail and run just because Joe McCann wasn’t the ideal boss. She was going to stick around and make him sorry for his sarcastic attitude!

Looking at her new boss, she said, “Your secretary explained the duties of my job and how the books are set up. I’m sure I won’t have any problems.” Unless it’s with you, she mentally added.

Joe looped his thumbs over the top of his jean pockets and continued to regard Savanna through narrowed eyes. “Edie said you’ve worked as a temporary for nearly five years and that you come highly recommended.”

He sounded as though he found that hard to believe. Savanna decided then and there he was going to make her prove her capabilities. Well, that was all right with her. She knew how to do her job. But more than that, she knew how to adapt to new places, people and situations. She’d been doing it for as long as she could remember. And she’d do her damnedest to show he was wrong.

In spite of Joe McCann, Savanna wanted this job. She believed working for a drilling company would be interesting and helpful to the career she planned to have in accounting. Petroleum was one of the state’s major industries, and gas and oil companies would always need CPAs.

True, she needed her degree in accounting before she could land a job of that importance. But Savanna only needed a few more hours of college to acquire it. And thankfully, the chance for her to complete her education had finally come to her here in Oklahoma City. She didn’t intend to let anything stand in her way of that. Not even a difficult boss.

Smiling as brightly as she could manage, she said, “I’ve never had any complaints.”

Edie had already told him that Savanna Starr was twenty-five. Yet as he looked at her smooth face and slender body, he found it hard to believe. A woman with her looks was usually married by that age. But then, maybe she was married. He hadn’t asked Edie. Normally that sort of information didn’t interest him and it irked the hell out of him that it did now.

“So why have you worked as a temp for so long? Wouldn’t you rather have a permanent job?”

Her eyes dropped to his desktop. He’d never know just how much she wanted—needed—permanency in her life. From the time Savanna had been a small child she’d lived her life on a part-time basis. Her father’s job had demanded the family move from one town and state to the next. As she’d grown older she’d planned to escape the vagabond existence as soon as she was old enough to make a permanent home for herself.

But things hadn’t worked out that way. Just about the time Savanna had planned to move out, her mother had suddenly died from a stroke. After that, she knew she couldn’t leave. Her father had a mild heart condition. He’d needed someone to look after him and make sure he took care of himself. Because she loved him, Savanna had stayed and never regretted it.

“Working as a temp fits my lifestyle. Since I’ve never really been sure where I was going to be living or for how long, temporary work was all I could commit myself to.”

So she was a gypsy, he thought. Joe couldn’t imagine such a life. He was a man who always stuck to his plan and never deviated for any reason. He couldn’t imagine flitting around from one place to the next, never knowing if he’d be able to find a job or not. He worked hard to keep stability and security in his life. Yet this past month both of those things seemed to be slipping away.

Megan’s arrival had definitely wrecked the stability of his day-to-day schedule. As for his drilling company, it desperately needed new revenue to stay afloat. Now, on top of everything else, he had to get used to a new secretary, one that created some strange sort of upheaval inside him every time he looked at her.

“So you move around a lot?” he asked. “You like that sort of living?”

From the expression on his face, Savanna figured he was summing her up as a flighty female who probably couldn’t hang on to a job, a man or a home. The idea irked her, but she decided now wasn’t the time to set him straight. She needed money for college tuition and rent for her new apartment. And this job with Joe McCann was the way to get it.

Shrugging, she said, “It’s been—necessary for me to move around. But now it’s not and I’m hoping to stay permanently here in Oklahoma City.”

Joe shuffled a stack of papers on his desk and tried his best to appear indifferent. “Why is that? Did you marry someone here in the city?”

Surprised by his question, Savanna shook her head. “Mercy, no! I’m not looking to get married. Actually, my father remarried a couple of months ago and—well, he doesn’t need me to travel with him anymore. So I’m free to sink my roots,” she explained, then cast him a speculative glance. “Are you married?”

This wasn’t a normal conversation between a boss and a new temporary secretary, Joe thought. He should have already pointed out her duties and gotten on with his work. But somehow one word had led to another and he still hadn’t found a stopping place.

“No. I’m not. Why?”

Savanna shrugged again. “Just curious. Megan mentioned a housekeeper. I wondered if her stepmother was at work or something.”

Joe heard her speaking but the words barely registered with him. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she was the first woman he’d really wanted to look at in a long time. Which didn’t make a bit of sense. She wasn’t his type at all.

Still, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from noticing the most minute things about her. Like the tiny pearl earrings she was wearing. He had the strangest urge to see what it would feel like to nibble it loose and sink his teeth into her earlobe.

Irritated by his unexpected thoughts, Joe cleared his throat and said, “No. There’s no stepmother around to come between me and my daughter.”

Savanna looked at him curiously. “What makes you think a stepmother would come between you and your daughter? A second mother figure might be just what she needs.”

Maybe so, Joe thought, but a wife was the very last thing he needed or wanted. “And what makes you think you know so much about children? Are you a mother?” he asked.

“No. But I was a child once.”

Grimacing, he picked up several pieces of correspondence. “Everyone is a child once in their life.”

She was beginning to wonder if Joe McCann had ever been eight years old with freckles on his nose and a gap between his front teeth. “It’s unfortunate some of us forget what that’s like,” she couldn’t help replying.

With a warning glint in his blue eyes he thrust the papers at her. “Here’s a few letters you can begin working on. I’ve attached notes to the things that need immediate replies. You might attend to those now.”

Relieved to be out from under his scrutiny, Savanna carried the letters over to the empty desk. Before she had time to put her things away, the telephone rang. It was Megan again, who seemed very surprised when Savanna informed her that her father was allowing her to walk with her friend to the library.

“He really said I could go?”

Megan screeched the question with disbelief and Savanna could only wonder if Joe McCann was actually that strict with his daughter or if Megan was simply displaying typical teenage exaggeration. She hoped it was the latter, but from what little she’d seen of her boss this morning, she thought he probably ruled his daughter the way he ran his office. With a stern hand.

“Yes. As long as you’re back in an hour and a half. I’ll be calling then to make sure you’re home.”

“Wow, I can’t wait to meet you, Savanna! Edie would never have talked Daddy into letting me go!”

Savanna glanced over at Joe, who’d now taken a seat at his desk. His attention seemed to be focused on a long piece of green graph paper with a bunch of squiggly lines that looked something like an electrocardiogram. However, Savanna got the feeling that he was actually listening to her instead of studying what she figured was a seismograph report.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Savanna said carefully. “It really wasn’t that hard.”

Megan giggled then and Savanna tried to picture the child in her mind. She sounded impish and sweet and full of life. Nothing like her father, she thought as she glanced once again at Joe McCann’s bent head.

“You don’t know him yet! But you will after today.”

“Serious, huh?”

Megan groaned. “Look up the word in the dictionary, Savanna, and you’ll find Daddy’s picture beside it.”

Savanna could hardly keep from laughing at the teenager’s old joke, but she managed to clamp her lips together just as Joe looked up at her. “Uh, I’ve got to go to work, Megan.”

“He’s giving you one of those looks, isn’t he?”

Savanna breathed deeply. Joe was giving her some sort of look. Whether it was the kind Megan meant, she didn’t know. She only knew it was sending a peculiar sensation up and down her spine.

“Sorta,” Savanna told her.

“Okay. Talk to you later. ’Bye!”

Savanna hung up the phone, then began searching for an empty drawer to store her purse.

“I take it that was my daughter on the phone?”

Savanna glanced over at him. “It was. She was very pleased that you’re allowing her to go.”

Leaning back in his chair, he regarded his new secretary with a speculative look. “The two of you seemed awfully chatty.”

Savanna’s brown eyes glided over his face. Was that surprise she heard in his voice, or disbelief? And why did it matter to her what he was thinking, anyway?

“I wouldn’t call it chatty. Just getting acquainted.”

His features suddenly growing thoughtful, Joe tapped a pen against the graph spread in front of him. “That’s strange. Megan wasn’t interested in getting to know Edie. In fact, they didn’t get on together at all.”

“Well, I’m sure you know how it is sometimes. Some people just rub each other the wrong way.”

Without even knowing it, his eyes left her face to travel slowly down her body. “And how do I rub you, Ms. Starr?”

Stunned by his question, Savanna unconsciously took a step toward him. “I beg your pardon?”

What in the hell had come over him? Joe wondered wildly. He didn’t talk to women that way! In fact, he didn’t talk to women at all, unless it was necessary.

Clearing his throat he said, “I—that didn’t come out right. What I mean is—do you think we’ll be able to get along? To work together?”

From the sound of his voice, Savanna could have sworn their working together had been the last thing on his mind. But she could be wrong. After all, it would be crazy to think Joe McCann was thinking of her in that sort of way. The man didn’t even appear to like her very much.

Releasing a pent-up breath, she said, “I’m a flexible person, Mr. McCann. I’m sure we can get along without too much friction between us.”

“That’s good,” he told her with a short nod of his head. The last thing he needed between him and this delicious-looking blonde was friction of any sort.

Feeling suddenly awkward, Savanna said, “If that’s all, then I’ll get back to work.”

Before he could say anything, the telephone rang. As he reached for it, he said, “I’ll answer it this time. You go ahead and do whatever you need to do.”

Relieved, Savanna went back to her desk and began organizing her things. As she did, she noticed her hands were still grimy from changing the flat tire she’d had on her way to work.

She found a rest room at the end of the same corridor she’d used to enter the office. As she scrubbed her hands clean, she looked at her image in the mirror hanging over the lavatory. There was a tiny smudge of grease along her cheekbone and she quickly wiped it away with a corner of a brown paper towel.

Maybe Joe McCann had taken the black spot for a beauty mark, Savanna thought, then laughed to herself at that idea. She doubted her new boss had even noticed the dab of grease on her face. He’d been too busy chewing her up and spitting her out for being late.

Well, he might come on like a bear, but deep down she didn’t think he really was so tough. She could deal with him, Savanna promised herself. Before her job here was finished, Megan wouldn’t have to beg her father to walk a few blocks to the local library and Joe McCann might even learn how to loosen up and smile.

Chapter Three

Joe’s home was in a quiet, residential area that had been established years ago before the city had grown to such mammoth proportions. The house itself was red brick and situated on a large cul-de-sac. He’d lived in it with his parents from the time he was five years old. When his father died several years back, his mother had moved to Florida to retire near her sister. Since then he’d lived alone. Until last week, when Megan had moved in with him.

Tonight as he parked in the driveway and walked to the entrance, the tight ache between his shoulders reminded him how little rest he’d been getting lately. Hopefully he’d be able to eat supper and spend a quiet evening before work tomorrow.

The minute Joe stepped through the front door he was greeted with the loud blare of Megan’s rock music. Tossing his briefcase full of reports into an armchair, he walked down the hallway and knocked on her door.

“Come in,” Megan called loudly.

Joe pushed open the door to see his daughter lying on her stomach across the end of the bed, her elbows propped on either side of an open book.

He stepped into the room, then stared around him in disbelief. “What the he—heck has been going on in here?” Joe demanded.

Megan’s head of thick brown curls bobbed wildly as she jerked her head around toward her father. “What do you mean? Nothing has been going on.”

Joe went over to the stereo system and jabbed a finger on the Off button. “I’m talking about these clothes!”

Joe pointed at the countless number of garments strewn over the bed, the floor and part of the dresser.

Unconcerned, Megan pushed herself to a sitting position, then with a negligent wave of her hand she said, “Oh, I’ve just been trying a few things on.”

A few things? It looked to him as if there were enough things on the floor alone to stock a whole boutique. “And none of them could find their way back into the closet. Is that it?” he asked.

Megan giggled at her father’s grim expression. “Oh, Daddy, you’re so funny. It’s just clothes. They’re not hurting anything. I’ll pick them up before I go to bed,” she promised.

Deciding it might be best to relent for now and wait to see if she kept her promise, Joe nodded toward the book she’d been so engrossed in when he’d come into the room. “Is that one of the books you got at the library today?”

She gave him a sweet smile. “Thanks, Daddy, for letting me go. The library was great! I found all sorts of stuff I want to read.”

He tilted his head in an attempt to read the title printed on the spine of the book. “You didn’t, uh—get anything with…”

“Sex, murder or corruption?” she finished for him, then, giggling, she shook her head. “No. I can get plenty of that stuff on TV.”

Joe could hardly argue that point and he realized how different things were now than when he’d been Megan’s age. Savanna Starr thought he didn’t remember being a child, but he did.

Unlike Megan, his parents had lived together. But they’d never gotten along. Joe knew his father was a big reason for that. Joseph McCann had been a tough man, who’d liked his liquor and the expensive gamble of wildcatting. Joe could still hear his parents’ shouting matches and how alone and miserable they’d made him feel.

There’d been times he’d looked at Megan and felt guilty because he hadn’t been able to hold his marriage to her mother together. But now when those thoughts assaulted him, he deliberately remembered back to his own childhood, and he knew that giving Deirdre the divorce she’d wanted had been the right thing to do.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked his daughter.

With a cheerful smile she jumped up from the bed and looped her arm through his. “Yes. But I’ll come fix your plate for you. Ophelia showed me how to heat everything up in case you were late.”

Out in the kitchen Megan made a big production of heating the casserole and preparing him a glass of iced tea. When everything was ready she carried it over to him on a plastic tray, then plopped down on a chair next to him.

Joe took a bite of the food, then glanced at his daughter. Her chin was in her hand and she was studying him as if she couldn’t quite decide whether he was her hero or the devil himself.

“Well, how are things going?”

“I mostly miss all my friends. It’s boring around here without anyone to talk to or do things with.”

“You’ll make plenty of friends once you start school this fall,” Joe said matter-of-factly.

Megan’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I doubt it. I don’t want to go to some dumb ole private school. I’ll have to wear some childish uniform and look like all the other nerdy girls there!”

Joe cast her a stern look of warning. “I don’t want to hear you call anyone nerdy. You don’t know what the girls at school will be like. You’ve never been there before.”

She lifted her chin defiantly and glared at him with eyes as blue as his own. “And I won’t go, either.”

Joe shoveled another bite of food to his mouth before he lost his appetite. “You’ll go if I say so.”

Megan jumped up from the chair and jammed her fists on either side of her waist. “Daddy, I want to be a cheerleader and go to football games! I want to go to proms and dances. You can’t do that without boys around!”

Joe put his fork down beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. He’d almost forgotten how quiet the house used to be before Megan arrived. Still, he loved her utterly, and more than anything he wanted the very best for her.

“You’re far too young to be thinking about boys. Besides, school is about getting an education, not playing sports and dancing.”