The Single Dad Next Door

by Jessica Keller

  Maggie laughed. “Sounds like you better join them.”

  Kellen expelled a theatrical groan. “If the ladies insist.”

  And then he started to sing. It might have been only a silly song from a television cartoon about a princess deciding if she was ready to become a ruler—but Kellen sounded like a dreamy Disney prince. His voice was rich and clear. Better than half of the musicians who filled the CDs that Maggie owned. She wanted to close her eyes, lean back against the seat and smile. He had that type of voice.

  Unaware of the special talent their dad possessed, his daughters in the backseat belted out the words with unmatched gusto.

  Back in the yard a few minutes ago, she hadn’t at first been tempted to join the Ashbys on their adventure, but then Kellen had wrapped his arm around her and pulled her into their prayer circle. Such a simple, friendly gesture. One that had probably meant nothing to Kellen. But to Maggie—for the first time in a long while—she’d felt as though she belonged. He’d wanted to include her and wasn’t just doing it because she happened to be a third wheel along for the ride.

  She had tried to pack away her dreams of a family. Locked the wish up tight in an old chest in her heart and tossed the key. The days of hoping for a husband and longing for children were gone. Time had passed her by while she was tending to her aging grandma and sick mother.

  Yet in the car as she listened to Kellen and his girls, the dream almost felt attainable again. If she couldn’t have a family of her own, perhaps she could grow old next door to Skylar and Ruthy. Sure, it wouldn’t have the marriage part. No. A man like Kellen would never settle for a woman like her. Why was she even thinking about him in that light?

  Maggie stole a glance his way.

  With one arm perched on the open window and a hand hooked around the steering wheel, he looked over at her again. Their stares collided, and Maggie’s breath caught. Kellen was handsome. Ten times more handsome than any of the other men in Goose Harbor. Most men who’d grown up in the area were strong and semi-woodsy, like her friend Caleb Beck. But Kellen was different. Lean, but still manly. With his lopsided grin and spiking blond hair, he looked more like a male model found in catalogues for expensive clothing. A heavy peacoat and scarf wouldn’t look out of place on him.

  And then there was that voice...

  “Sing with us.” He winked again.

  Breathe, Maggie.

  “I...I don’t know the song.” Her gaze broke with his and skittered to look out the window.

  That was the crux of everything, wasn’t it? I don’t know the song. What did she know of love and romance? Nothing. That was what. By Goose Harbor standards she was a confirmed spinster who just needed to adopt four or five cats in order to seal the deal.

  Besides, a guy like Kellen probably wanted a woman who knew how to wear makeup and didn’t constantly have some sort of batter caked under her nails. Maggie was hopeless when it came to that. Or styling her curls.

  A beautiful voice, caring attitude with his daughters, capable business mind with the inn and cute smile couldn’t erase the fact that he hadn’t cared about Ida and her Bible. Moreover, he was Maggie’s boss and he held the power to ruin her life and destroy the only link she had left to her family.

  She had no control over those things. Not at the moment. As Kellen suggested, she could let go of those things—for now—and simply enjoy the drive and the fresh air for the next hour.

  Midafternoon sunshine played peekaboo through the waxy leaves that covered the towering oak trees lining the streets. How did trees that large survive in the sandy soil along the lake? Their roots dove so deeply into the earth that they’d become permanent fixtures.

  Local history said that there used to be a town bordering the southern edge of Goose Harbor. An old logging community—Glen Hollow. More than a hundred years ago, the people there had taken down most of the trees and sold the wood to the people of Chicago after the great fire that totaled much of that city. The people of Glen Hollow had become wealthy, and in their desire for more, they took down the rest of the trees. Without roots holding the dunes in place, the sand began to take over the town. Little by little, the dunes shifted—covering homes, businesses...everything. The once prosperous Glen Hollow had to be abandoned. These days a dune-buggy business owned the town, and tourists piled into their vehicles and used the huge dunes like roller coasters.

  Was she like the tall oaks of Goose Harbor? Unmoving, ready to hold strong as the world changed around her. Or was she poor Glen Hollow? So shaped by uprooted dreams and long-gone connections that she’d become completely lost in life? Surviving the worst only to exist, while the people around her enjoyed the ride that was their lives.

  If only Maggie knew.

  * * *

  “Stay close where I can see you. Don’t wander near the water. Understand?” Kellen tugged off Ruthy’s shoes so she could wiggle her toes in the sand.

  “See?” Ruthy wiggled her painted toes.

  “Very pretty.” Kellen squeezed her ankle.

  Skylar nodded enthusiastically. “We’ll be safe, Dad. Promise. We just want to build a castle.”

  “All right. You’ve got a half hour and then we’re going to head back.”

  “I like it here. We never had fun before.” Ruthy inched across the picnic blanket to hug him quickly before taking off after her older sister.

  A few feet away on the picnic blanket, Maggie collected the uneaten food and tucked it back into the basket she’d brought along. After she’d agreed to join them, she’d jogged over to the inn and returned a few minutes later carrying a basket full of food, drinks, a Frisbee for the girls and a blanket. Maggie always thought ahead. Kellen liked that about her. He wasn’t used to being around someone who constantly considered how to make the people around her comfortable. That quality made her a great innkeeper. If only she’d apply the same forethought to the business side of things, but that was where he came in—they had the potential to be an unstoppable team.

  That was, if she didn’t turn out to be an inheritance hunter. Even now, was she trying to get close to him?

  But he couldn’t believe that about her. Not now. Not after she’d given Ruthy a piggyback ride for the entire quarter-mile walk through the woods to get to the dunes. Not after she’d cut the crust off Skylar’s bread and played along with his girls’ games while they ate.

  His daughters glowed under her attention. Skylar and Ruthy weren’t used to a woman devoting time to them. Besides his sister-in-law and his mother, the other women who’d been in his life in LA ignored his daughters. Or acted annoyed by them.

  He’d keep his guard up for sure, but watching Maggie smile as she kept a maternal eye on Skylar and Ruthy made his mission very difficult.

  The food tucked away, Maggie pulled one of her legs up beside her and raised her eyebrows in his direction. “What did Ruthy mean when she said they never had fun before?”

  Kellen sighed. In a heartbeat he was back in a chair, sitting with his old counselor. Open up, Kellen. You’ll have to trust someone, someday.

  He could give Maggie a bit of his story. Sharing was one of the quickest ways to get the other person to start talking. And that was what he needed, right? A better handle on Maggie. Telling his story could be a means to an end. He wouldn’t need to give all the details, just enough.

  He ran his fingers through his hair. Even giving the CliffsNotes version would prove hard. “Like I said in the car, I used to work a lot.”

  “At a restaurant—is that right?” Maggie pulled up her other leg and wrapped her arms around them.

  And as a member of a touring band. Did she really not know? If she didn’t, that was great—freeing. But he couldn’t push away the sting of knowing Ida had never talked about him. Must not have been proud of him as she was his brothers. Why had she left him the house? Pity. It had to
have been for pity only.

  “Yes.” He swallowed and looked out over the water. The lake was stiller than the ocean tides he’d grown used to. He liked the calmer waters. And the whole no sharks part. “I managed a five-star restaurant in Los Angles for the past two years. On a slow week, it was a sixty-hour-a-week position. Needless to say, I didn’t see the girls all that often and when I did I was dead tired. I’m ashamed that they’ve spent a lot of their life in various day-care facilities.”

  Maggie rested her chin on her knee and stared at him for a long time. Her gaze moved from his hair to his eyes to his mouth. When she studied him, did she find him lacking?

  “What happened to their mother?” Her voice was so soft.

  Kellen straightened his spine. He should have known that question was coming.

  Dropping her arms from around her legs, Maggie turned to face him fully. “I shouldn’t have... You don’t have to answer that.”

  “It’s fine.” Kellen brushed his hands together, clearing sand that wasn’t there. “Their mother left us.”

  With a sharp intake of breath, Maggie reached over and touched his forearm. “I’m so sorry.”

  He shrugged. “I’m not. Is that terrible?” He shook his head. “Cynthia never loved me. I thought she did—but I was young and blinded and she was very beautiful. You have to understand, I wasn’t walking with the Lord when I met her. Probably the furthest thing from that.”

  Maggie scrunched her eyebrows together as if she were working out a difficult math puzzle, but her hand stayed where it rested on his arm. “I thought you said your father was a minister.”

  The wind had picked up some since they arrived at the dunes. Sand peppered the breeze and scratched its way across his bare feet.

  “He was—is. But I’d rejected everything he believed in.” Kellen shifted, breaking contact with her. “Growing up in a minister’s house, you have this pressure to be perfect. And, Maggie, I’m not perfect. I dreamed of doing things with my life that my father’s congregation wouldn’t have approved of. I resented that I had to live under the microscope of the church. It was always ‘you can’t do that,’ ‘you can’t say that.’ ‘What will the elders think?’”

  He scooped up a handful of sand and let it trickle between his fingers. “So at eighteen I ran away and ended up in Hollywood like every other starry-eyed teenager. You can imagine how my life was there. The people I spent my time with. The parties I went to.”

  Unable to stop fidgeting, Kellen stood. “When I met Cynthia I really thought my life was on the path I’d always wanted it to be, so it felt like being with her was right. If that makes any sense. I wanted to prove that everything my parents believed was wrong. That they were wrong.” He walked a few feet away and turned his back to Maggie. “Then I started noticing how Cynthia would flirt with other guys. I wrote it off at first. Told myself she was just being outgoing. But I caught her doing more than flirting too many times to count. We already had two kids, though, so I tried to make it work.” He turned to face her. “Kids are supposed to have a mom. Except she was never a nurturing mother.”

  He met Maggie’s gaze as she looked up at him and didn’t find any judgment there. It was odd, how she didn’t jump in to talk or condemn him or change the subject—those were the normal responses he got with women. But Maggie was leaning forward, interested in hearing his story.

  How refreshing.

  He hooked his hand on the back of his neck and paced. “Life got...dangerous for my daughters, and I decided to make a change.”

  Dangerous was putting it lightly. He’d never forget the day Ruthy learned to walk. Finding her toddling around the tour bus with a used syringe in her hand had sent him into a panic. Even now, if he thought about it too much it made him nauseated. If he’d found her a minute later... In all his time playing with the Snaggletooth Lions, Kellen had never ventured into drug use, but the rest of the band had become addicts.

  At least that one lesson from his childhood had remained strong.

  The second he discovered Ruthy like that, he’d scooped up both her and Skylar and packed their bags. He couldn’t endanger his daughters any longer. Achieving a dream wasn’t worth it. Growing up under the pressure of the church was better than them seeing drug abuse, wild parties and their mother crawling out of his band members’ beds.

  He’d told Cynthia they were leaving and she laughed in his face. Called him a fool. Two days of trying to talk sense into her ended with her declaring love for the band’s drummer and shoving legal paperwork in his face. All her parental rights turned over for all his rights to the royalties.

  Easiest decision of his life.

  “Their mother refused to come with us. She’s bent on continuing with a lifestyle I’m not okay with exposing the girls to.”

  Maggie braced her hands on the ground. “Are you still in love with her?”

  He jerked his head back. “Cynthia? No.” Kellen dropped back down next to Maggie on the blanket. “Honestly I never was. I know that sounds terrible. She was exciting and she seemed to worship the ground I walked on, and to a young man, that sounded appealing. But I didn’t know what love was back then.”

  Down on the beach, Ruthy shrieked happily as Skylar chased after her with a clump of seaweed.

  “But you do now?” Maggie whispered.

  “I’d like to think so.” He watched Skylar and Ruthy as they shuffled in circles around the castle they’d built, giggling as though they didn’t have a care in the world. “Two years ago I showed up on my parents’ doorstep with my daughters in my arms and begged for their forgiveness. It was like the prodigal-son story all over again. They took me back without a second thought. Then as a twenty-seven-year-old man I took my dad’s hand and asked him to pray with me so I could become a Christian.”

  That was enough. It would have to be, because telling even just that had drained him.

  Maggie jutted her chin in the direction of his daughters. “It looks like they bounced back.” Then she bumped her shoulder into his. “You will, too.”

  Kellen shuffled his heels against the sand like a nervous kid. “I don’t need to bounce. These days I prefer having both feet planted on solid ground. Safe. That’s all I want.” He bumped her back with his shoulder. “Enough about me. What about Miss Maggie West?”

  Only by a fraction, but he felt Maggie stiffen beside him.

  “There isn’t much to tell.”

  “I’m sure that’s not true.”

  “What do you want to know?”

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  Maggie ran her fingers over the lines on the picnic blanket. “No one ever wanted me.”

  Kellen pulled away to get a better read on her face. “Someone as caring and hardworking as you? I don’t believe that.” Sure, he questioned her motives about Ida, but he couldn’t deny how much she did for the guests at the West Oaks Inn, or how tirelessly she served people to the point of her missing out on sleep and fun for herself. Even today, she’d debated not coming to the beach in order to continue working. Maggie had drive.

  She let out a long stream of air. “I’ve only dated one man. One chaste relationship in my entire life. Pathetic, huh? He grew up in Goose Harbor, but we didn’t get to know each other until we were in our twenties. When everyone else left for college, I stayed home to take care of my mother and my grandmother, and Alan stuck around because college wasn’t for him.”

  “Because he wanted to be by you?”

  “No.” She laughed, once, clipped. “We weren’t dating when he did that. Alan’s an artist. He never felt like he needed school in order to succeed.” She rolled her eyes when she said “artist.”

  Good thing he hadn’t talked about his music.

  Kellen shifted. “So, what happened?”

  Maggie shoved hair out of her face. “He eventu
ally left Goose Harbor and I stayed. End of story.”

  “Did you love him?” Why had he asked that? Just to toss her question back at her? No. The hurt etching Maggie’s voice piqued his curiosity. Did Maggie still pine for this Alan guy?

  “I don’t know. I thought so at the time. But what do I know of love?” She laced her fingers together and stared down at where they joined. Wind whipped her curls in all directions, making her look wild—no, free. “My first date ever was at age twenty-three. I shouldn’t even tell you stuff like that. It’s embarrassing. It wasn’t love—at least, nothing close to what I imagine love to be. I was thrilled to have someone pay me a little attention, tell me my hair isn’t all that bad and hand me flowers every once in a while.”

  Maggie was pure. Completely.

  Kellen scooted away a few inches, afraid the dirtiness that was his past might tarnish her. “You deserve to be romanced. You know that, right? You deserve someone to tell you you’re beautiful and worth sticking around for.”

  She shook her head hard enough to cause neck strain. “I’m not foolish. I don’t need to be given a pep talk like I’m one of your daughters.”

  “I wasn’t giving a pep talk. From what I’ve seen so far, you’re a decent person, Maggie, and someone will notice that someday, and when you least expect it, love will knock on your door.”

  A smile slowly took over her face. “There you go, sounding like Ida. She always believed love would come my way, but it’s not like we get an influx of new people in Goose Harbor all the time. Tourists, sure. But they leave too quickly.”

  “I’m new.” Spotting some sand clinging to her cheek, Kellen had to chuckle. Maggie always had something on her. At first, the trait had bothered him—why couldn’t she slow down and take more time with things when she was cooking or gardening? Didn’t she care? But he’d come to realize that was exactly the issue—Maggie cared so much that she tossed herself into things entirely. Lost herself.

  With the backs of his fingers he leaned over and brushed the sand from her face.

  Maggie’s breath caught as his fingertips glanced over the soft skin on her jawline. She had the deepest eyes, so full of compassion. Kellen’s gaze landed on her lips. He drew closer. A breath away.