The Reluctant Daddy

by Helen Conrad

  The Kelseys were having their own New Year’s Eve party. Anna and Johnny weren’t much for drinking and partying, so years ago they had started the tradition of having a little celebration for the boarders and a few friends right there at the house. They played games and had eggnog. Shortly before midnight they turned on the television to watch the ball dropping at Times Square, and then they toasted one another with champagne, and had some light refreshments.

  Glenna was lending a hand this year, putting up streamers, helping her mother with the eggnog after she’d tucked her children in bed. But her heart wasn’t up for a party.

  Tomorrow would begin a new year, and, she hoped, a new Glenna. She was going to ruthlessly rid herself of all regrets. She was starting her own business, and her life would revolve around that and her children. There wouldn’t be room for anything else. Life would be full and rich.

  The party had barely begun when she received a telephone call from Liza Forrester.

  “Hey, Glenna?” Liza said in her usual animated manner. “Listen, I just had to call you.”

  “Happy New Year,” Glenna reminded her. “What’s going on?”

  “Cliff and I are on our way to Mom’s for dinner and we just stopped in at the diner to pick up a cheesecake I ordered. I told Mom I’d bring one of Marge’s to-die-for desserts. And guess what? Your boyfriend’s here.”

  Glenna’s heart jumped, but she quickly demurred. “Liza, he’s not my boyfriend.”

  “Oh, yeah? You could have fooled me. Anyway, he’s looking downright sad, is the boy—dark circles under his eyes, ordering food and pushing it around the plate. I think you ought to come rescue him from his misery.”

  Glenna couldn’t help but react to the news that Lee was back in town, but that didn’t mean she was about to run off and make a fool of herself again. “Liza, I can’t. You know that. I told you what hap—”

  “Wait a minute.” Liza broke in, hardly listening to Glenna. “Would you look at that?” Her voice rose dramatically, as only Liza’s could. “Oh my gosh, I can’t believe this is happening—right here in Tyler.”

  Glenna frowned and shook her head. “What are you talking about?”

  Liza’s voice was suddenly low and muffled, as if she didn’t want anyone in the restaurant to overhear her. “I’m talking about the girl who’s trying to seduce Lee.”

  “What?” Glenna could picture Liza talking on the wall phone at the diner, and Lee sitting at the counter. “Are you standing there watching every move he makes?”

  “She’s the one making the moves at the moment, honey. She’s blond, and she’s wearing angora. You get my drift? I’ll give you a running commentary on how she’s doing.”

  “Don’t bother!”

  “You’ve got to hear this! Here goes.” Liza paused for just a second, then went on, in classic Lauren Bacall style. “She simpers. She wiggles. She jiggles. She pouts prettily. She says something to him and makes a motion like she’s asking if she can join him. Our hero looks up. He gives her the briefest of smiles, listens, then shakes his head. Sorry, babe. Take a hike. I’m nursing a broken heart and you ain’t got the medicine I need to mend it. She goes off looking real disappointed.” Liza crowed. “Hah! You got that? He turned her down! And you know why, don’t you? Because he’s sitting there thinking about you.”

  Glenna felt color flooding her face and was very glad there was no one in the hall to see it.

  “Liza,” she said, her voice trembling. “I’m coming—”

  “Great! I knew you would,” Liza answered. “Happy New Year!”

  Glenna hung up and stood very still for a moment, staring into space, then she turned and hurried to the kitchen to find her mother.

  Anna looked up from playing gin rummy with Bob Quentin. “Where are you going at this time of night?” she asked.

  “Out. Please, Mother, can you keep an ear out for Megan and Jimmy for me? They should sleep through, but just in case...”

  “Of course. I’ll keep ’em monitored, don’t worry.”

  “Thank you. Thank you so much.” Glenna kissed her mother on the cheek. “Mother, in case I... Well, never mind. I’ll be back. Don’t worry about me.”

  Anna shook her head as her daughter ran off. “Don’t worry about me” usually meant you’d better start worrying. But what could she do?

  “Take care of the children,” she said aloud with a shrug. “What else?”

  * * *

  GLENNA WALKED THE few blocks to the diner, not trusting herself to drive. Outside the restaurant her courage almost failed her. She was so nervous, she missed the step up the curb and almost fell. But she steadied herself and looked through the café window, and once she’d seen him, she was okay. She was, in fact, resolved.

  Swinging through the doorway, she glanced around, noticing that the place was practically empty. There was a couple in a booth, obviously having a bite to eat before heading for a party, and Lee, his back to her at the counter. Marching up to where he sat, she plunked herself down beside him.

  He looked up and hardly seemed surprised. “Hi,” he said.

  She refused to let herself notice how blue his eyes were, how strong and hard his face, how adorable the twist in the corners of his mouth. She was here to do a job and she had to be tough to do it. Noticing that he was the sexiest man alive wouldn’t help get that done.

  “You are a coward,” she said straight out, leaning close and talking low.

  He looked surprised. “Why do you say that?”

  “And a hypocrite.”

  He frowned. “Both, huh?”

  “Yes.” She stared at him, not showing anger, only determination.

  His grin was slightly crooked as he glanced around the place to make sure the one waitress on duty was out of earshot. “How do you figure that?”

  “You don’t practice what you preach,” she told him firmly. “You told me this story about how you had this wonderful, idyllic family,” she went on, head held high, “and how you worked real hard to keep them that way and how they just got up one morning and said, ‘Who needs him?’ and took off. Isn’t that what you told me?”

  “Glenna, you’re talking about my life,” he said, grimacing painfully.

  “No, I’m not only talking about your life. I’m talking about my life.” This was the hard part and she had to steady herself before saying it. “I’m talking about our life.” She leaned even closer and told him in a voice barely above a whisper, “You want to throw away what we have between us, what we could have if we tried, just because somebody hurt your feelings.”

  “It wasn’t just ‘somebody’ hurting my feelings,” he interjected a bit brokenly. “It was my wife and my children. That’s a—a little more personal.”

  She put her hand on his arm, and suddenly her eyes were full of compassion for him.

  “I know it was hard,” she said softly. “I know it was bad. What do you think I felt like when Alan turned his back on me and the children? I know the feeling.” She waved a hand in the air. “I know you think I don’t understand what it was like to have your children turn on you like that. But you know what? I had to watch my husband turn on my children. I ached for them like I could never ache for myself. I know what kind of agony you went through, what you’re still going through.” Her hand curled around his arm. “But Lee, life goes on. And there are other people. And other combinations of people.”

  His big hand covered hers and he looked into her eyes, his own dark and filled with feeling. “I don’t think I could take it if things went that way again, Glenna. I really don’t.”

  She shook her head, fighting back tears. “Lee, Lee, you’ve got to set yourself free of that. Listen, do you remember something you told me the night of the Christmas party? Do you remember telling me I should get a dog for the kids?”

 
He nodded, frowning.

  “You were the one who said it was silly not to get a dog just because our first one died, one that we’d loved and were heartbroken over. You said that to deny ourselves the pain was also to deny ourselves the joy.” She nodded, seeing recognition in his eyes. “Well, guess what? We went out to the pound yesterday evening and adopted a beagle puppy. His name is Droopy and he slept at the foot of Jimmy’s bed last night. If we could do that—”

  He shook his head, trying to digest everything she was telling him. “You’re saying that your getting a dog is the same as my trying on a family for a while,” he said, his voice slightly incredulous. Something hot and liquid was pouring through him as he looked at her. Lord, she was a wonderful woman!

  “That’s what I’m saying,” she told him bravely.

  “Okay, let me say something, too,” he responded in a low growl. “About what I’m doing here in this one-horse town on New Year’s Eve, far from the bright lights of the city. I drove out here to find you and apologize—apologize for not trusting you throughout. No, let me say this,” he insisted when she wanted to interrupt. “I knew from the very first that you were everything I’d dreamed of in a woman—honest, caring, strong, sexy, beautiful inside and out. And that scared me silly. I grabbed at every excuse I could not to admit to myself that I’d fallen in love with you. But it’s true, Glenna. And if you can be this straight with me, I can be straight with you, too. I was just getting up my courage to go see you when you came barging in here.”

  Remembering suddenly where they were, Lee looked around the restaurant at the waitress pretending to wipe a nearby table, obviously trying to eavesdrop. He burst out laughing. Rising, he threw down a stack of bills onto the counter without bothering to count them and grabbed Glenna’s hand. “Come on. Let’s go somewhere else.”

  “Where?” she asked him breathlessly, hurrying to keep up with his stride.

  “Where we can be alone,” he told her, his eyes shining. “Okay?”

  Her smile could have lit up the midnight sky. “Okay.”

  In the end, they made love in his car, parked behind a thick grove of trees out near the Tyler cemetery. There was really no place else to go, and they needed each other so badly. Besides, it was fitting, in a way. They were near the resting place of many of the town’s ancestors, and as part of the current generation, they felt they belonged.

  Lee swore he was going to take it easy, that he was going to go slow, but by the time they’d lowered the seat backs and maneuvered around the gearshift, by the time he’d kissed her warm mouth, her ear and run his tongue over the tantalizing skin of her shoulder, by the time she’d helped him peel out of his clothes and he’d pushed aside most of hers, they were both as eager and hot as any young lovers parked along a small-town lovers’ lane had ever been. Glenna pulled him to her right away, and he took her hard and long and thoroughly, until her cries of sensuous joy sounded in the steamy interior, and his groans of pleasure and release filled her ears and caught her up in the surf again, rising higher and higher, until they lay tangled together, panting and half-laughing.

  He loved her. He’d known it for a long time, but he’d been too screwed up to admit it to himself. Now, somehow, he seemed to be free of those restraints, and he knew it was Glenna who’d freed him. She had unlocked the gate and let his soul fly. All the careful concealing he’d been doing over the years she’d torn to shreds.

  “Thank God for you,” he murmured in her hair, and she sighed and turned awkwardly in the cramped convertible, to throw an arm over him and keep him close.

  He smiled. Somehow Glenna had made it all clear for him. When he thought back to his first marriage, he understood it better now. He realized that for all those years, he’d been the one who had done all the trying, not Shelley. He was the one who had tried to hold things together, and had succeeded for fourteen years or so. Shelley’s attitude had always been, “Oh well, if this doesn’t work, I can always move on.” And she finally had.

  Glenna was very different. Why hadn’t he seen that from the start? Glenna would hold them together if she had to forge the chain herself. She was committed to her children and now would be committed to him. He couldn’t ask for more.

  “I love you,” he said, his hand in her hair.

  “I love you, too,” she told him, raising her head to look into his eyes. “Forever.”

  “Forever,” he echoed, and he didn’t feel a twinge of regret.

  * * *

  THEY TOLD EVERYONE at the New Year’s Day brunch Anna prepared. Pam and Patrick were there, as well as Brick and Karen, Grandma Bauer and a crowd of friends. Glenna was walking on air, even though she’d received some bad news. Tony had phoned that morning with the rumor that Magna Publications had had some financial reverses, and there was some speculation that they might have to file for bankruptcy. But response to the tapes had been so encouraging that Glenna wasn’t devastated by the report. Even if negotiations with them fell through, she knew there would be other companies that would be interested. Nothing could mar her happiness today.

  Lee had a gruff sort of happiness on his own face, she noted. Others noticed that he didn’t seem to be able to keep his eyes off her, and told her that whenever they caught her alone. His gaze followed wherever she went, as though he’d suddenly seen her in a new light and couldn’t get over it.

  Glenna was seeing things differently, too. She was examining everything in her life and realizing how much everything was going to change now that Lee was a part of it.

  One big change was that her children were going to have a daddy again. It was so lucky they already liked him so much.

  Megan threw herself into Lee’s lap whenever he sat down, and she had a million things to tell him, only a few of which were understandable to the average adult.

  Droopy was introduced and promptly made wet spots that had to be cleaned up, causing great commotion.

  “You see?” Glenna whispered in Lee’s ear. “It’s not all a bed of roses with a dog.”

  “Of course not,” he whispered back. “And it won’t be with our marriage, either. But we’ll both be working on it. Right?”

  She smiled dreamily, running a hand through his thick hair. “Right.”

  Jimmy had only one thing on his mind. “Will you take me on a airplane?” he asked, staring up into Lee’s face.

  Lee stuck out a hand and shook his. “Yes. I promise.”

  Jimmy nodded. It was all settled in his mind and he had no doubts at all. “And could we take Mommy?” he asked, upping the ante.

  Lee grinned. “I think that could be arranged.” He ruffled Jimmy’s hair with quick affection. “What about Megan?” he asked the boy. “Don’t you want to take her?”

  Jimmy considered for a moment, a slight frown on his face. “She could stay with Grandma,” he suggested brightly.

  The room erupted in laughter, and Jimmy looked around sheepishly, then reached up to put his hand back in Lee’s. Tears came to Glenna’s eyes. Her children had a daddy, all right. The best she could find.

  Laughing softly, she let Lee curl his other arm around her and pull her to his side. It was going to be a perfectly lovely New Year. No doubt about it.

  * * * * *

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  ISBN: 9781460319246

  Copyright © 1996 by Harlequin Books S.A.

  Helen Conrad is acknowle
dged as the author of this work.

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  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental. This edition published by arrangement with Harlequin Books S.A.

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