Building the Perfect Daddy

by Brenda Harlen

  He’d never before experienced the simple comfort of being with a woman without any particular plan or agenda—he’d never thought he wanted it. Until Lauryn. And although he was missing her, she deserved this time with her sisters, and he was glad—for a lot of reasons—that she’d taken it today.

  When the kids were finally settled into their beds later that night, he had a whole new appreciation for what she did every day. Being a single parent was definitely not a job for the fainthearted.

  He was picking up Barbie clothes and Candy Land pieces when he heard her key in the lock.

  “Hey, you,” he said, meeting Lauryn at the door.

  “Hi,” she responded in a whisper that matched his. “Where are the kids?”

  “Sleeping.”

  She glanced at the watch on her wrist. “I didn’t realize it had gotten so late.”

  “It’s not all that late—just past their bedtime.”

  “Did they settle down without any trouble?” she asked.

  “Without any trouble,” he confirmed. “Although I have to confess—I wavered on the one-bedtime-story rule.”

  “How many did you read?”

  “Three,” he admitted.

  Lauryn shook her head, but she was smiling. “Pushover.”

  He didn’t deny it. “Did you have a good day?”

  “I did,” she confirmed. “Maybe the most surprising part is that I didn’t worry about Kylie and Zachary at all. I thought about them, of course, and about you. But the whole time I was gone, I didn’t worry because I knew you were taking care of them.”

  “I’m glad,” he said sincerely.

  “So what did you do with your day?”

  “We went to the park, played twenty-three games of Candy Land, watched some princess movie and made peanut butter cookies.”

  “You made cookies with the kids?”

  “With Kylie,” he said. “Zachary was napping.”

  “What did you have for dinner?”

  “Peanut butter cookies.”

  She looked so appalled he couldn’t help but chuckle. “I’m kidding. We had chicken fingers and French fries with carrot and celery sticks, then peanut butter cookies for dessert. There are some left in the kitchen, if you want to try them.”

  “Maybe later,” she said, sliding her palms up his chest. “Right now, I want to take you upstairs to my bed.”

  Her touch had an immediate and predictable effect on his body, but he tried to focus on their conversation while he still had some blood in his head. “And right now I really want to be taken upstairs,” he agreed. “But there’s something I need to tell you first.”

  She brushed her lips against his. “I’m listening.”

  “You had an unexpected visitor today.”

  “I’m not interested in anyone but you right now,” she promised, starting to unfasten the buttons on his shirt.

  He really didn’t want to distract her from what she was doing, but he knew she needed to hear this. “Not even your ex-husband?”

  “What?” Lauryn dropped her hands and took a step back, her playful mood gone. “Why would you bring him up now?”

  “Because he was here,” Ryder said.

  She shook her head, refusing to believe it. “He’s in California.”

  “No, he’s not,” he said. “He showed up at your front door today, around three o’clock, grumbling about his key not working and demanding to know where you were.”

  “Are you sure it was Rob?” she asked, clearly hoping that he’d made a mistake.

  “How many other men are there who would claim to be your husband?”

  “Ex-husband,” she said, firmly emphasizing the “ex.”

  But he could tell the news was finally starting to sink in, because she moved into the living room and lowered herself onto the arm of the sofa.

  She looked up at him, the earlier sparkle in her eyes replaced by wariness. “He was really here?”

  He nodded.

  “But...why?”

  “I don’t know,” he told her. “He didn’t share his reasons with me.”

  She folded her arms over her chest, an instinctive and protective gesture. “Did Kylie see him?”

  He shook his head. “No. She was in the kitchen, up to her elbows in peanut butter cookie dough, and I didn’t let him past the front door.”

  She breathed out a weary sigh. “Thank you for that. I don’t know what it would do to Kylie to see her father now, just when she’s finally gotten used to him being gone.”

  He was more concerned about what it would do to Lauryn to see her ex-husband again. Yes, they were divorced, but he suspected that a piece of paper hadn’t magically erased the feelings she’d had for the man she’d married—and the father of her children. And while he wasn’t generally insecure, he couldn’t deny that their shared history made him a little uneasy.

  “If he’s come back to see them, I don’t know that you’re going to be able to keep him away,” Ryder warned gently.

  “He left without even saying goodbye to Kylie,” she reminded him. “He left before Zachary was even born.”

  “He’s still their father.”

  She nodded, unable to deny that basic truth. “Was he a jerk to you?”

  “Not really,” he said. “He referred to me as the babysitter, but I don’t think he meant to be deliberately insulting.”

  “I’m sorry,” she said.

  “Why are you apologizing?”

  “Because I don’t know what else to say—what to think,” she admitted. “When he signed the separation agreement, I assumed that was it, that we were done forever and I wouldn’t ever have to see him again. I certainly never expected that he would just show up at the door, and when I asked you to stay with the kids today, I didn’t anticipate that you’d have to deal with him.”

  “Maybe you should call your cousin, the lawyer,” Ryder suggested.

  “I had a local attorney, Shelly Watts, handle the divorce for me,” she told him. “Not that there was much to handle, but she drafted the terms of our separation agreement, he signed it, and the judge granted the divorce.”

  “Then you should call her.”

  “Now?”

  He glanced at the clock. “Probably not now. Assuming your attorney has a life outside of the law, she might not want to be interrupted at nine thirty on a Saturday night. But definitely in the morning—to let her know what’s going on.”

  “How can I tell her what’s going on when I don’t have a clue? For all I know, he came back for the leather jacket he left in the back of his closet.”

  “Maybe,” he acknowledged. “But he introduced himself as your husband, not your ex-husband.”

  “So?”

  “So...” He hesitated, reluctant to even speak the thought aloud. But he knew that, as unpalatable as it was to him, she needed to consider the possibility—and so did he. “Maybe he came back because he wants you back.”

  She pushed herself up from the sofa and headed toward the stairs. Ryder followed her up to the landing, watching from the doorway of Kylie’s room as she tiptoed across the floor to check on her daughter, pulling up her covers and bending to touch her lips to the little girl’s cheek. Then she crossed the hall to Zachary’s room and followed the same routine with him.

  “I called Rob after Zachary was born,” she told Ryder now, her voice barely more than a whisper. “No one knows about that—not even my sisters.”

  “I don’t think they’d be surprised to hear that you reached out to your husband to let him know that you’d given birth to his child.”

  “Maybe not,” she acknowledged. “But it was more than that. I asked him to come home—no, I practically begged him to come home, to give us another chance to be a family.”r />
  He looked at the beautiful, strong, stubborn woman in front of him and his heart sank as he realized there could only be one reason she would do something like that. “You were still in love with him.”

  And if she was then, maybe she was now.

  But Lauryn shook her head. “I didn’t still love him. I didn’t even like him very much at that point. But I looked at my baby and I felt that I owed it to him to try to give him a real family.”

  “Do you think that’s why he’s back?” And if it was, would she be willing to give her ex-husband that second chance now?

  She shook her head again. “Rob’s never cared about anyone but Rob, and I don’t care where he goes or what he does,” she insisted, though the tears that shone in her eyes suggested otherwise. “But this is so unfair to the children. Zachary is such a happy baby, and Kylie hasn’t had a panic attack in weeks. And now...just seeing him could turn her whole world upside down again.”

  “What about your world?” Ryder asked.

  “My children are my world,” she reminded him.

  “And me?” he wondered. “What am I?”

  She was quiet for a minute, as if considering her response. “You’re my ‘one day at a time,’” she finally said, referring back to the conversation they’d had the first night they were together.

  And that was all he’d wanted to be then—or so he’d believed. But now... “What if I want to be more than that?”

  She closed her eyes. “Please don’t do this. Not now.”

  He wanted to press her for an answer, but she was right. This wasn’t the time. She needed to focus on her children and what her ex-husband’s return would mean to them. They would have plenty of time to figure out their own relationship later—he hoped.

  “Okay,” he relented. “Tell me what you want me to do.”

  She looked up at him, those beautiful gray-green eyes filled with desperation. “I want you to take me to bed and let me pretend that we never had this conversation,” she said, lifting her sweater over her head and tossing it aside, revealing a silky purple demi-cup bra and lots of tantalizing skin. “Help me forget about everything but the way I feel when I’m with you.”

  It wasn’t much, but if it was the only thing he could do for her, he would give it his very best effort.

  * * *

  Lauryn didn’t know what time Ryder left, she only knew that when she woke up in the early hours of the morning, he was gone. Her bed always seemed so much bigger and emptier without him, but this morning—with the specter of her ex-husband’s return in the forefront of her mind—she felt even more alone.

  She’d lain awake for half the night wondering why Rob had come back to Charisma, to no avail. What she did know was that if he was determined to see her, he wouldn’t wait too long to show up at her door again.

  As soon as she was up and dressed, she called Jordyn and asked her if she could take the kids for a few hours. He was waiting on the front porch—sitting in her favorite chair with his feet propped up on the railing—when she returned.

  She tucked her keys in her pocket, because she had no intention of unlocking the door and inviting him inside. “So the rumors are true,” she said.

  “You heard I was back,” he guessed.

  “Why are you here, Rob?”

  “California was too far away from my wife and kids,” he said, his tone as deliberately casual as his pose.

  “Ex-wife,” she said pointedly.

  “You asked me to come back,” he reminded her. “To give us another chance to be a family.”

  “That was eight months ago. I’d just given birth and still had a lot of drugs in my system,” she said by way of explanation.

  “Don’t tell me it’s too late,” he said, the plea accompanied by his most charming smile.

  That smile used to make her forgive him all manner of things, but it had no power over her anymore. “It’s way past too late, so why don’t you tell me what you really want?”

  “I’m hurt that you don’t trust I’m telling you the truth,” he said, his tone as false as the claim.

  “I learned the hard way not to trust anything that comes out of your mouth,” she said bluntly.

  He dropped his feet from the railing and stood up, moving closer to her. She had to tip her head back to meet his gaze, but she held her ground.

  “We were married for five and a half years,” he said, lowering his voice to a more intimate tone. “I don’t believe that your feelings for me are gone.”

  “Our five-and-a-half-year marriage ended when you ran off with the twenty-two-year-old you were screwing in your office at The Locker Room.”

  He finally took a step back. “Speaking of The Locker Room,” he said, pointedly ignoring the rest of her statement, “I went by the store and saw that you changed the name.”

  “I’ve made a lot of changes there, and in the rest of my life,” she told him.

  He nodded as he looked around. “New porch, new roof, new lover.”

  She narrowed her gaze on him. “Is there a point to this or are you just talking out loud?”

  “I was hoping you would deny that you’re sleeping with your babysitter.”

  “It’s none of your business who I’m sleeping with,” she said, pleased that her cool tone gave no hint of the fury churning inside.

  “I just never expected that you’d do something so...tawdry.”

  She shrugged. “I couldn’t find a hunky yoga instructor. And he’s not the babysitter—he’s Ryder Wallace.”

  He seemed surprised by this revelation. “The host of that home renovation show?”

  “Yes,” she admitted.

  He shrugged. “Well, he’s not your usual type, but I guess you saw the benefits of having a man around who didn’t mind banging up some drywall after he finished banging you.”

  She curled her fingers around the porch railing and managed to resist the urge to slap his smirking face. “You are every bit the ass that Tristyn always thought you were.”

  “You think I don’t know that your family never approved of me? That no one ever thought I was good enough for you?” he asked bitterly. “They all stood around watching me, waiting for me to fail.”

  She shook her head. “I’m not going to claim that everyone was overjoyed when we told them we were getting married, but they would have done anything to support us because you were my husband. You were the only one who felt the need to compete with my family.”

  Rob slid his foot along one of the new boards in the porch. “Did Daddy write a check for all of the work you’ve had done around here? Or did you have money hidden away that you failed to disclose when we settled our finances?”

  “There were no assets—only debts,” she snapped back at him. “And most of those were your debts.”

  “For richer or poorer,” he reminded her.

  “So it was just the faithful part of the vows that you couldn’t remember?” she challenged.

  “Let’s not throw stones,” he admonished.

  “I’d rather throw you off my property, anyway,” she shot back.

  “We bought this house together,” he reminded her.

  “With money from my parents.”

  “Money they gave to us in celebration of our marriage.”

  She shook her head. “Have you rewritten our entire history in your mind?”

  “We had a lot of good times together,” he said.

  “The good times were a long time ago,” she told him. “And memory lane is closed.”

  His tone grew cold. “I’m entitled to see my kids.”

  Which was what she’d both anticipated and feared. And while she wanted to refuse, she knew that she couldn’t. It didn’t matter that he’d been a horrible husband or a neglectful parent—he was s
till the father of her children. And when she’d talked to her attorney earlier that morning, Shelly had warned her that Kylie’s abandonment issues were as inconsequential as the fact that Zachary didn’t even know his father. Absent evidence of abuse, no judge would deny Rob access to his children.

  “They’re not here right now,” she said, grateful that it was true.

  “You can’t stop me from seeing them,” he warned her.

  “I don’t want to stop you from seeing them,” she said, although that wasn’t exactly true. “I just want to know the truth about why you’re here and how long you’re planning to stay before you turn their lives upside down.”

  “I’m here because I missed my family,” he insisted.

  “The daughter you barely spent any time with and the son you’ve never even seen because you took off before he was born?” she challenged.

  He dropped his gaze. “I panicked,” he told her. “I knew the business was in trouble. I was barely bringing home enough money to pay the bills and put food on the table, and soon we were going to have another baby and another mouth to feed. I just couldn’t bear to fail you.”

  “And screwing the yoga instructor somehow fixed all of that?” she asked derisively.

  “I made mistakes,” he admitted. “But I have the right to be with my kids.”

  “I’m not going to oppose visitation,” she told him. She would fight tooth and nail if he tried to go after custody, but she was going to try to play nice—for now. “If you really want to see your children, meet us at Oakridge Park at two o’clock.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  When Lauryn headed to the park with the kids, she didn’t tell Kylie that her daddy would be there. She’d learned a long time ago not to count on her ex-husband for anything, and she didn’t want her daughter to experience the same disappointment of being let down by a man she should be able to count on.

  After all, the first man any little girl falls in love with is her father, and she knew that Rob’s abandonment of his daughter had left deep scars. Thankfully, Kylie’s life was filled with men she could depend on: her grandfather, her uncles and now Ryder.