Kayla's Daddy

by Laura Bradford

  It was the stuff you couldn’t see that turned him off. The aloofness that came and went depending on who was around. The unwritten sport of one-upmanship between close friends. The look-but-don’t-touch aura that clung to so many like overbearing cologne. The puffed out chests of the über-rich.

  He preferred the kind of people he’d grown up with—quiet, unassuming, hardworking types.

  “The kind who turned their back on you, buddy,” he mumbled to himself as he rang the bell to the left of the Dolangers’s massive oak front door.

  A dignified-looking man of about sixty pulled the door open and welcomed him inside. “Your name, sir?”

  “Tate. Tate Williams.”

  “I will let Mr. and Mrs. Dolanger know you have arrived, Mr. Williams. Please make yourself comfortable.”

  He followed the man’s gesture and started down a long hallway, noticing the unusual lines and details of the home. Although the money was in designing state-of-the-art office buildings for corporations, his heart was in smaller projects where creativity and experimentation had freer reign.

  A burst of laughter from a room off the left side of the hallway made him stop. He poked his head through the doorway and looked around at the sea of unfamiliar faces, at the guests engaged in conversations in every professionally decorated corner of the large living area.

  He kept walking.

  If Regina were here, she’d tell him he was in a foul mood. That it was time to shake off whatever was bothering him and get on with things. And she’d be right, as always.

  Problem was, he wasn’t quite sure where the mood had come from.

  He’d finished the plans for Dolanger’s building and presented them to the CEO and his board earlier that day. Their enthusiasm and immediate approval had been the validation he’d expected. The sketch was dynamite and he knew it. Having his boss there to witness the accolades had been the cherry on top in terms of furthering his likelihood of being named a partner in the firm.

  So really, Tate had no reason to be anything but all smiles.

  Yet he wasn’t.

  Because the moment he’d stepped out of Dolanger’s board meeting, the one thought he’d been avoiding all week resurfaced with a vengeance.

  His dad.

  Ever since Phoebe Jennings had appeared on his doorstep with the letter, his mind had been toying with the question of who’d sent it. And why.

  No one called his father Tate. Not even his mom.

  Tate rounded the final corner of the hallway and stopped.

  Somehow, in the middle of what felt more like a museum than a house, was the most welcoming room he’d ever seen on this side of Cedarville. The walls were of wood paneling with stone trim, the ceiling traversed by thick wooden beams that stretched from one end to the other. Wrought-iron chains hung sporadically from the space between the beams, each strand holding an old-fashioned lantern. Three picture windows had cushioned window seats—the kind you could lose yourself in for hours with a good book. Large mahogany bookcases were scattered throughout the room, each one boasting as many framed pictures and special family heirlooms as they did actual novels and story collections.

  It was the kind of room his mom would have loved.

  Tate wandered across the quiet room to the fireplace, a large stone affair with a mahogany mantel that ran the entire length of the wall. But it wasn’t the unusual stone that was used or the thickness of the mantel wood that held his attention. It was the portrait that hung above it, a warm, loving, beautifully painted likeness of Shane and Cara Dolanger with their three children.

  Suddenly, the people who lived in this home seemed real. The kind of people who sat on a couch and watched television as a family, vacationed at amusement parks and spent hours hunched over a Monopoly board together. The antithesis of what he’d imagined as he’d viewed the rest of the house.

  The sound of soft footsteps made him turn, his eyes widening as he took in the woman standing quietly behind him. Her slender yet curvy body was smartly clad in black slacks and a white dress shirt, and she was holding a serving platter.

  “Miss Jennings?” The disbelief in his voice mirrored the look in her eyes as she pulled her attention from above his head and fixed it on his face.

  “Oh. Wow. Mr. Williams. I’m—I didn’t know anyone was…I didn’t know you were in here. I’m sorry.” She turned to go.

  “Wait. Don’t leave on my account.” Without thinking, he reached out and touched her arm, turning her gently. “I didn’t know you’d be here.”

  She held the tray in his direction. “Would you like some caviar?”

  Tate reluctantly pulled his hand away and waved it in the air. “Nah. Hate the stuff. I’m more of a meatball, mini hot dog kind of guy.”

  He was rewarded with a shy smile.

  “I haven’t seen any meatballs or mini hot dogs, but I’ll keep an eye out for you.” Phoebe looked around quickly. “Technically, I’m not supposed to be in here. I’m assigned to the back patio, not the house. But I just had to see how it looked…”

  He watched as her eyes left his face and traveled over his head once again.

  “Um, don’t mind me. I better get back to my post,” she said, the inflection in her voice conveying a note of disappointment.

  “Wait! Don’t go.” Tate glanced over his shoulder quickly, realized she was looking at the same portrait that had drawn him across the room. “You came to see this, didn’t you? It’s phenomenal.”

  The woman’s high cheekbones reddened noticeably as she shifted the tray from one hand to the other. “You really think so?” she asked quietly.

  “How could I not? It caught my eye from over there—” he pointed to the arched entrance that led to the hallway “—and that’s pretty amazing for a guy who’d normally be drawn to the architecture of this room.”

  “Thank you.”

  Confused, he bobbed his head to the left to recapture her attention. “Thank you? For what?”

  She tried, unsuccessfully, to tuck a strand of hair into her bun as she seemed to contemplate his question. But just as she was starting to reply, a noisy group of four burst in through a different archway, chatting up a storm.

  “I better get back to work.”

  “Wait!” Tate knew he sounded like a desperate idiot, but he didn’t really care. He had questions to ask. “What are you doing here? I thought you were a painter.”

  For a few moments Phoebe was busy offering hors d’oeuvres to the guests. But when they moved on across the room, her gaze focused once again on him.

  “I am—by day. This—” she nodded at the tray in her hand “—is my second job.”

  “You work two jobs and take care of a baby?”

  A flash of something that resembled pain crossed her face. “You do what you have to do, Mr. Williams. Kayla knows I love her.”

  A moment of silence fell as his words came back to haunt him. “Wait. I didn’t mean that the way it sound—”

  She held up her free hand. “I need to get back to work.”

  Desperate to undo his rudeness and keep their connection, he said the first thing that popped into his head. “Hey. I know a friend who needs his rec room painted. I’d be happy to put in a good word for you.”

  “I don’t paint walls, Mr. Williams. I paint port—ohh, it doesn’t matter.” Her words were crisp and matter-of-fact as they emerged through lips that were no longer smiling.

  “But your clothes. Your car. I thought—”

  “You assumed, Mr. Williams. There’s a difference.”

  He felt his mouth drop open as Phoebe Jennings turned on her heel and walked briskly from the room. And in that instant, he felt an awful lot like the supercilious partygoers he’d been mentally slamming when he arrived.

  “Good going, Tate. Good going,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “Shane was right. That portrait is amazing!”

  His cheeks warm, Tate looked from the foursome on his right to the framed canvas above the fireplace,
Phoebe’s words echoing in his brain.

  “I don’t paint walls, Mr. Williams.”

  Suddenly it made perfect sense why she’d left her post to see the family portrait. Why her voice had grown quiet, yet strangely hopeful, as he’d praised the artwork hanging above the mantel.

  He was an idiot. A self-righteous idiot.

  Chapter Four

  The flow of money-making ideas had slowed to a crawl over the past hour, though not from a lack of trying. There were simply some suggestions that just wouldn’t work. Not with the Quinton Lane demographic, anyway.

  “I still think a dog wash could make a small fortune. There’s a lot of lazy people out there.”

  Phoebe forced her gaze to remain on her next-door neighbor’s face despite the urge to roll her eyes. Bake sales and knitting classes were one thing, but soapsuds and old people didn’t mix.

  “I think—” Phoebe nibbled her lower lip briefly, determined to squash further discussion of a dog wash once and for all. “I’m just afraid that if we did that, the soapy runoff would ruin the flower beds you worked so hard to plant, Mrs. Applewhite. And then we’d have to spend even more money recreating your hard work.”

  “Excellent point there, Phoebe.” Tom Borden shifted in his seat and cast a sly wink in her direction.

  “Flowers, schmowers,” Eunice Weatherby, declared. “With the way all of you shuffle around like wounded penguins, washing a dog would land someone in the hospital with a metal bolt in their hip, and the city would ding us for violating some unknown old people code.”

  Phoebe smacked her hand over her mouth in an attempt to stifle the laugh that threatened to earn her an evil eye or two. But she was too late.

  “Don’t you glare at Phoebe, Gertrude. You know I’m right.” Eunice pulled the flaps of her thin cotton sweater closer to her frail body and leaned back in the white wooden rocker. “Eighty-year-olds have no business washing dogs. We need something practical. Intelligent.”

  Leave it to the lone centurion to call a spade a spade.

  A sea of cotton-tops nodded in unison.

  “Eunice is dead-on. Though I must point out that I’m younger than the rest of you, you know.” Tom Borden’s face lit up with a mischievous grin, a comforting change to an expression that had looked so troubled only an hour ago. “We’ve got some good ideas but I still think we can come up with something better.”

  Again, heads nodded.

  “How about a Quinton Lane tag sale?” Phoebe suggested, as she looked from one spectacled face to the other.

  “You mean like a garage sale?” Martha Haskell leaned over and smoothed Kayla’s hair back as the baby stopped, midcrawl, to check out an ant.

  Phoebe gently clapped her hands together and smiled as Kayla left the insect in favor of a cuddle. Once her daughter was situated on her lap, busy with a sippy cup of juice, she turned her attention to the woman who cared for Kayla whenever Phoebe had to work.

  “It’s exactly like a garage sale. Only instead of having people walk from garage to garage, we could set our things on tables along the sidewalk.” Phoebe kissed the pudgy little hand that reached up to her mouth. “It would be a way to get rid of things we don’t need while earning some nice money for our project.”

  “Finally, we have something.” Eunice’s voice, shaky and low, cut through the various conversations that followed Phoebe’s explanation. “And it doesn’t involve slipping and sliding and the whoop-whoop of an ambulance. Though, the paramedics tend to be lookers, don’t they? Almost makes the bills worth it.”

  Phoebe quietly kissed the top of the baby’s head as laughter erupted around them. The youngest by almost fifty years, she never felt out of place with this crowd. They’d welcomed her and Kayla into the neighborhood with open arms, making them feel as if they, too, were natives of Quinton Lane.

  “I hate to break things up,” Gertrude Applewhite said, peering over her silver-rimmed glasses at everyone. “But what are we going to do with the money?”

  The laughter ceased and all eyes turned to Phoebe.

  Uh-oh. She hadn’t come up with actual plans for the green space project yet. The amount of money they raised would dictate the possibilities.

  Fortunately, Tom Borden voiced that very sentiment, encouraging everyone to take one thing at a time. And to stay positive. “Why don’t we all think of some ideas over the next few days and meet again next weekend, after we see how the tag sales does? In the meantime, I’ll call my friend at the paper and get word out on our sale. Think we can get it together for next Saturday? We don’t have a lot of time to play with if we’re going to get the city off our backs.”

  By the time the meeting was officially over, Kayla had drifted to sleep in Phoebe’s arms, her sippy cup resting lightly against her bottom lip.

  “She’s a real beauty, just like her mom.” Mr. Borden wrapped his hands around the sides of his walker and glided along beside them as they headed toward the two small steps that led to Gertrude Applewhite’s front walk.

  “Thanks, Mr. Borden.” Phoebe held Kayla’s head to her shoulder as she leaned over and brushed a soft kiss on the elderly man’s pale cheek. Her own grandfather had died long before she was born, and her relationship with her grandmother had been so special she’d never really stopped to think what it would have been like to have one. But if she had, she was fairly confident she’d have envisioned someone just like Tom Borden. Quiet and introspective, gentle and compassionate, patient and thoughtful.

  Phoebe waved goodbye to the rest of her neighbors then gently shifted Kayla in her arms as she turned toward home. She hadn’t gone two steps when she heard her name being called. Turning around, she groaned inwardly.

  Mrs. Applewhite.

  “Did you give Bart his letter yet?” The woman rested her wrinkled hands on her hips, revealing the plump waist that had been hidden under her brightly colored polyester housecoat throughout the morning.

  “No. Not yet. But that’s where we’re headed once naptime is over.”

  And it was true. They were. It just so happened Phoebe had already made a half dozen mental visits to the man over the past few hours. She’d envisioned the retirement community where Bart Williams lived, imagined his reaction when she handed him the letter, guessed at its contents again and again—

  “At least you don’t have to deal with his insufferable son any longer.” Mrs. Applewhite twisted on her heels and marched back up the porch steps.

  “If only it was that simple,” Phoebe mumbled to herself.

  Her neighbor was right. She didn’t have to see Tate Williams ever again. She had Bart’s address and she wouldn’t be serving at the kind of parties Tate attended any longer.

  But that was just it—it wasn’t about what she had to do, it was about what she wanted to do. And therein lay the problem.

  Sure, he’d been annoying when she’d first met him, but only because he was trying to be friendly and playful rather than compliant and forthcoming as she’d wanted.

  At the Dolangers’ house she’d even snapped at him. He hadn’t condemned her heavy work schedule, just expressed surprise. It was her own insecurity that had sparked the unfair leap. Tate Williams had no way of knowing her biggest fear in life was about not finding the correct balance between her dreams and her daughter. He wasn’t privy to the daily mental hammering Phoebe gave herself on that subject.

  And as for his offer to recommend her for a job, it was a thoughtful gesture, with no hidden maliciousness. He’d had no reason to think she was an artist. She was the one who’d refused to correct his wall-painting theory the first day they’d met.

  She owed the man an apology. A big one. And that alone was a good enough reason for thinking about him all morning. But she knew it was more than that. Much more.

  The desire to apologize couldn’t explain the way she’d mentally ogled him over and over while her neighbors brainstormed ways to save their green space.

  Lust and attraction explained that.

  T
ATE DROVE SLOWLY past each house, an undeniable mixture of peace and tension threading through his body. It was both comforting and unsettling to realize nothing had changed in the four years he’d been avoiding the place.

  In fact, aside from fairly massive tree growth, a few new roofs and a smattering of freshly painted porch railings, not much had changed since he’d been a little boy growing up on Quinton Lane.

  Some of his fondest childhood memories came from times spent in these homes, with the families who lived inside. Hide-and-seek in Johnny Haskell’s backyard, homemade lemonade on Ms. Weatherby’s front porch, designing birdhouses with Mr. Borden, ducking for cover from Mrs. Applewhite….

  It was the kind of past that seemed almost idyllic in nature. The kind of life experiences that formed a man. A good, solid, hardworking man.

  Yet somehow the neighbors hadn’t seen it that way.

  He felt his stomach tense as he neared his childhood home, a place that could be either warm and cozy or cold and distant, depending on something as simple as whether his mother had been home or not. It was a truth he still wrestled with even now that she was gone, any common ground with his father having died along with her.

  Suddenly Tate regretted his decision to come back. The past was just that—the past. He’d moved on. And there was no sense in looking back. He deserved better.

  Unfortunately, so did Phoebe Jennings. Which meant he had to tolerate a few memories whether he liked it or not.

  Shifting down, Tate slowly coasted to a stop across the street from Phoebe’s front door. The mere thought of the beautiful woman who lived inside had a way of making his core temperature rise and his mind wander to thoughts of kissing her exquisite lips and wrapping his arms around her tiny waist.

  Crazy, he knew. But an indisputable fact regardless of the sudden tightness in his pants.

  Great.

  If he didn’t knock it off he wouldn’t be able to get out of the car, let alone talk to the woman. An option he refused to accept. Instead, he forced himself to focus on something other than Phoebe Jennings while his lustometer settled down. Fortunately, the small crowd of individuals slowly dispersing from Gertrude Applewhite’s front porch was a great place to start.