Building the Perfect Daddy

by Brenda Harlen

  She looked away, embarrassed and ashamed that she’d been so foolish. “I just signed the papers where he told me to. I didn’t even read them.

  “And now—” she fought against the tears that burned behind her eyes “—if I let the bank foreclose on the business, they could take the house, too.”

  “Then we need to come up with a plan to save the business,” Jordyn said.

  “And since my brain functions much better when I’m relaxed, we’ll brainstorm some ideas after the spa.”

  “I already told you, I can’t—”

  “You can’t say no,” Tristyn interjected. “Mom made all the arrangements—and paid for it.”

  Lauryn sighed. “She shouldn’t have done that.”

  “She didn’t just do it for you, but for all of us. Because she knows how much we all enjoy the monthly ritual.”

  Because it was true—and because she loved being with the women who weren’t just her sisters but her best friends—Lauryn gave up her protest.

  * * *

  Sweet Serenity Boutique & Spa was located in a renovated three-story Colonial Revival home in Northbrook, offering different services on different levels. The three sisters were on the lower level now, continuing their conversation as they perused the selection of polishes for their pedicures.

  “I had no idea things were as bad as they are at the store,” Lauryn confided. “Rob didn’t let me see the books. He said it was because he wanted to take care of the business, to prove that he could take care of us.”

  “And a piss-poor job he did of both,” Jordyn said bluntly.

  Lauryn could only nod. “But I loved him. Maybe I was naive but, for a long time, I really did love him.”

  “I know you did,” Tristyn said sympathetically.

  “And you’ll fall in love again,” Jordyn told her.

  “Jesus, I hope not,” Lauryn said.

  Her recently—and happily—married sister frowned. “Why would you say something like that?”

  “Because I have no desire to repeat past mistakes.” She sipped from her glass of cucumber-and-lime-infused spring water.

  “You wouldn’t,” Jordyn said confidently. “Your relationship with Rob was a learning experience.”

  “Most importantly, I learned that I don’t need a man to complete my life.”

  “As if he ever did,” Tristyn remarked dryly.

  “I didn’t think I’d fall in love again,” Jordyn confided. “I didn’t think I could. And then I met Marco.”

  Lauryn couldn’t help but smile at that. Marco Palermo had fallen head over heels for Jordyn and immediately set his sights on winning her heart—not an easy task. Four years earlier, Jordyn had been only weeks away from her wedding when her fiancé was killed in a car crash. As a result, she’d put up all kinds of barriers around her heart, refusing to let any man get too close. Until Marco.

  While he wasn’t at all the type of guy that Lauryn would have expected to steal her sister’s heart, he was absolutely perfect for her. And they were perfect together. Lauryn was thrilled for both of them, and just a little bit envious. Because when she was with Jordyn and Marco, she realized that she’d never shared that kind of soul-deep love and connection with her own husband. But even as she lamented that fact, she wasn’t looking for the same thing now—she had more important concerns.

  “I just want my kids to be safe and happy and know that I love them.”

  “They are and they do,” Jordyn assured her. “And while that’s a legitimate and even admirable goal, you can’t live your life for your children.”

  “Why don’t we table this discussion until you have kids of your own?” Lauryn’s tone was a little harsher than she’d intended, but neither of her sisters really understood what she was going through. They couldn’t know the joy that filled her heart every time she looked at her children—or how much pressure she felt always trying to do what was best for them.

  Thankfully, Jordyn wasn’t offended by her sharp retort. And the thought of a baby—Marco’s baby—was enough to make her deep green eyes go all misty and dreamy.

  Unfortunately, Tristyn wasn’t so easily distracted. “But what do you want?” she asked Lauryn.

  I want to not worry that my bank card is going to be declined at the gas station because I just bought diapers and formula.

  Not that she would admit as much to her sisters. Telling them about the business was one thing; whining about her personal finances was something else entirely. Her mistakes were her own and she was determined to fix them on her own. Of course, now that the bank had rejected her proposal, her options had gone from limited to almost nonexistent, but she wasn’t ready to give up yet.

  “Well, I have been thinking about making some changes in my life,” she finally confided. “Maybe dyeing my hair to test the old adage about blondes having more fun.”

  Her sisters exchanged a look, and she knew they were both thinking of Roxi—the perky blonde yoga instructor that Lauryn’s husband had run off with.

  “Or red,” she said, because the color didn’t matter as much as the change it would symbolize.

  Tristyn shook her head. “Do you remember when I went red—or tried to? It took my stylist three hours to undo what I’d done, and he made me promise that if I ever wanted a drastic change I would stick to the color on my toes.”

  Lauryn looked at the pale pink and white polishes she’d chosen for her standard French pedicure.

  Tristyn handed her the bottle of sparkly purple that she’d selected. “Go wild,” she advised. “But in a way that won’t do any long-term damage.”

  Lauryn looked at the color—equal parts intrigued and wary—and decided it was time to step out of her comfort zone. At least a little.

  Chapter Five

  Ryder loved his job. Of course, he’d prefer doing it without cameras recording him every step of the way, but he’d long ago accepted that as a necessary trade-off for being able to do the work he wanted to do. Ryder to the Rescue was currently one of the top-rated programs at WNCC, with a viewership that continued to grow with each successive season, but Virginia Gennings, the producer, wanted to keep the show fresh and the Room Rescue contest was her latest brainstorm.

  Ryder’s only real objection had come when Owen had delegated the task of choosing the contest winners to him. Three winners out of more than nine hundred entries from as far away as Texas and Seattle, with requests that ranged from a modest bathroom rehab to the complete reconfiguration of a floor plan. Owen’s criteria for selection: stories that would appeal to viewers. Which meant that Ryder’s original plan—to put all of the entries in a box and draw three at random—fell by the wayside as he spent hours reading application after application, sorting them into three distinct groupings of Maybe, No and No Way in Hell.

  The majority of applications that went into the third pile were those that included naked pictures and explicit offers to express appreciation for his work when the cameras were gone or, in one notable case, with the cameras still rolling. The requests for free renovations by home owners who could well afford to pay for the work they wanted done landed in the No file. And then there was the Maybe group, from which he selected the winners.

  Lauryn Schulte’s application had appealed to him for several reasons, including her reference to the husband who didn’t have time to do the renovation. Because the existence of a husband meant it was much less likely that he’d have to fend off the attention of an overzealous fan—a sticky situation that was occurring more frequently, seemingly in direct correlation to the show’s increasing popularity.

  According to Virginia, Ryder was the whole package—smart, sexy, strong and charismatic—and the female viewership of Ryder to the Rescue was so high because women trusted him and wanted to invite him into their homes. But Ryder liked to keep his private
life private. Okay, so maybe he did date a lot of women, but he didn’t dish about any of them and he made it clear that if they dished, they were history. As a result, for the first few seasons that the show was on the air, he’d mostly managed to keep a low profile.

  Until the previous spring when he’d agreed to help Carl, one of his cameramen, build a deck on the back of his house. It was a simple project—a few hours’ work on a sunny Saturday afternoon—and he hadn’t hesitated when Carl asked if he was available. But it was a sunny and hot Saturday afternoon, and it hadn’t taken him long to decide to strip off his T-shirt, as the other guys had also done. But he was the only one whose name was in the title of the show, and one of Carl’s wife’s friends had snapped a photo of #shirtlessRyder #summerdays and tweeted it to all of her friends. Apparently, the damn photo had gone viral, resulting in an endless discussion on social media about his #yummymuscles. He’d been appalled when Carl sheepishly brought it to his attention; Virginia had been delighted.

  Since then, he’d been heralded not just as America’s Hottest Handyman but also the Sexiest Man on WNCC. As a result, he’d become the target of much female admiration and media attention. And when WNCC launched the Room Rescue contest and had let it be known that all applications would be personally reviewed by the show’s host, it was an opportunity for women to throw their pictures and phone numbers at Ryder in the hopes that, even if he didn’t bring his construction crew to their homes, he might call.

  He didn’t.

  The first project chosen was a master suite reno for a young couple near Anderson, South Carolina. The second assignment took his crew to Montana to finish a basement apartment for the college freshman son of a forty-seven-year-old widow in Miles City. The final winning application was Lauryn’s.

  Kitchen and bathroom renovations tended to be popular because they directly added to the value of a home, providing a good return on investment when it came time to resell the property. As a result, he’d done a lot of kitchen upgrades and remodels on the show. And while he wasn’t overjoyed at the thought of starting yet another one, he was happy to finally be back home and able to sleep in his own bed.

  Of course, he now knew that one of the main factors that had weighed in favor of Lauryn’s application was no longer valid—the husband who had never found the time to do the renovation work was gone from her life. On the other hand, her two children obviously kept her busy enough that he didn’t anticipate she would be an impediment to the project. She’d also shown less than zero interest in his celebrity status or #yummymuscles, making it clear that the only reason he was being allowed access to her house was that she desperately needed the new roof he’d promised to provide.

  So what was it about the single mother that made her so unforgettable? With her long, dark hair, creamy skin, gray-green eyes and perfectly sculpted mouth, she was undeniably beautiful, but he’d met a lot of beautiful women over the years without becoming fixated on any of them.

  Or maybe his fascination was with the kids rather than their mother. Because when he looked at Kylie and Zachary, he couldn’t help but think about his sister and himself and the scars that were a result of growing up in a broken home. But Kylie and Zachary had one clear advantage over Avery and Ryder: an amazing mother who, despite the weight of so many responsibilities on her slender shoulders, did everything she could to ensure her children felt loved and secure.

  And they were great kids. Zachary was an adorable and affectionate child with big blue eyes that seemed to take everything in. Kylie was a dynamo with silky dark curls and the sweetest Cupid’s-bow mouth that was always quick to smile. She was fearless enough to climb up an open staircase into a dark attic, smart enough to be uncertain about making the trip back down and trusting enough to let him carry her out again.

  Her mother wasn’t nearly as trusting—but maybe she had reasons to be wary, having been abandoned by her husband when she was pregnant with their second child. Not only that, he’d gotten the impression that she hadn’t heard from the guy since. Ryder shook his head, wondering what kind of person walked out on his family. But why did he care? Why did he wish he could make things better for her? Especially when she’d given no indication that she wanted or needed anyone to take care of her.

  Whatever the reasons, he was suddenly looking forward to this project a lot more than he’d expected.

  * * *

  After the spa, Lauryn and her sisters browsed a few of the local shops. Jordyn oohed and aahed over the jewelry display in Zahara’s but didn’t buy anything. She’d always loved fun and funky accessories, but since her marriage to Marco, she rarely wore anything more than the rings he’d put on her finger.

  “Look at this,” Jordyn said, holding up a hanger with a purple satin demi-cup bra with matching bikini panties.

  “Why do you need something like that? You’re practically still on your honeymoon,” Tristyn noted.

  “I wasn’t thinking for me, but for Lauryn.”

  She eyed the lingerie warily. “I don’t think that’s quite my style.”

  “The color matches your toenails,” her sister pointed out.

  “Which is proof that I’ve ventured far enough out of my comfort zone for today.”

  “I think Jordyn’s right,” Tristyn said. “You need to make a statement. Be bold. Be sexy.”

  “Who am I making a statement to?”

  “Yourself,” Jordyn said. “You’re the only one who matters.”

  “I’m more of a white lace kind of girl,” she told them.

  “Because you like white lace or because Rob liked you in white lace?” Tristyn challenged.

  Realizing that the answer to her sister’s question was the latter, Lauryn impulsively grabbed the hanger from Jordyn’s hand. “You’re right—just because I’ve never worn purple satin doesn’t mean that I shouldn’t try it.”

  Tristyn handed her a red lace set. “Try this one, too.”

  After more shopping and dinner at Valentino’s, Jordyn went home to her husband, but Tristyn convinced Lauryn—who wasn’t in any hurry to go back to her empty house because the kids were spending the night with their grandparents—to go to Marg & Rita’s for a drink. They arrived as another group was leaving and immediately snagged the just-vacated table by the bar.

  Lauryn was sipping her second icy drink when Tristyn bobbled her own glass, nearly sloshing its contents over the rim.

  “Ohmygod—he’s here.”

  Lauryn glanced over her shoulder. “Who’s here?”

  Her sister sighed dreamily. “Hashtag yummy muscles.”

  She blinked. “Who?”

  “We really need to get you on Twitter,” Tristyn said, which didn’t answer Lauryn’s question at all. “Now he’s at the bar.”

  She shifted her gaze, but there were so many people crowded around that area she still had no idea who was the focus of her sister’s attention.

  “Chatting with the fake blonde in the red dress,” Tristyn told her.

  She found the blonde in the red dress more easily and nodded in agreement with her sister’s description. “Definitely fake.”

  Tristyn sighed. “Focus on the man.”

  Lauryn’s gaze shifted again—and her heart actually skipped a beat when her gaze fell on Ryder Wallace.

  “You have to introduce me. Please,” her sister implored.

  “You’ll meet him on Monday,” Lauryn reminded her.

  Tristyn wiggled her eyebrows suggestively. “I want to meet him tonight and have breakfast with him in the morning.”

  She shook her head. “When are you going to realize that you spend so much time ogling other men because you don’t want to admit that you have the hots for your boss?”

  “Eww,” Tristyn said. “My boss is our cousin.”

  “I was referring to the other half of Garrett-Slater
Racing,” she noted dryly.

  “Josh Slater is not my boss,” her sister said. “And I most assuredly do not have the hots for him.”

  Lauryn shrugged. “Go ahead—continue to live in denial.”

  Tristyn seemed happy enough to do that—and even happier still a minute later when she reached across the table to grab Lauryn’s hand. “He’s coming this way.”

  And only a few seconds later, he was standing beside their table.

  Lauryn sighed, wondering how she’d gone so long without knowing who he was, and now it seemed that every time she turned around he was there. “Ryder to the Rescue.”

  She didn’t know she’d spoken the words aloud until his lips curved.

  “Actually, my last name is Wallace,” he reminded her. “The ‘to the Rescue’ part is just for the show.”

  “I’m Tristyn,” her sister said, offering her hand and a big smile. “And a huge fan of your show.”

  “It’s a pleasure to meet you,” he said, taking the proffered hand. “And this is my buddy, Dalton.”

  Lauryn hadn’t even noticed the other man with Ryder, which proved she was as pathetic as her sister—only a little less obvious about it.

  “Would it be all right if we joined you?” Ryder asked.

  It would be rude to refuse when they were two people sitting at a table for four and there were no empty tables, but Lauryn was less interested in common courtesy than she was in self-preservation. The more time she spent in Ryder’s company the more aware she was of him, and she definitely did not need to be crushing on the man who would be renovating her kitchen.

  “Actually, you can have this table,” she said. “We were just on our way out.”

  “No, we weren’t,” her sister immediately denied. “And yes, you can join us.”

  Ryder took the chair beside Lauryn; Dalton sat beside Tristyn. Although she suspected that her sister was a little disappointed by the seating arrangement, she didn’t show it. She immediately started chatting with Ryder’s friend—who was, Lauryn finally noticed, almost as well-built and good-looking as America’s Hottest Handyman.