Starting Over (Paradise Place Book 3)

by Natalie Ann

  And with that going through his brain, he finished up his yardwork and went in the house where Livi was watching TV. He’d told her to stay put and out of trouble so that he could get the lawn taken care of. She’d wanted to be outside with him, but she was in the way more than anything.

  “Anything interesting on TV?” he asked when he noticed she was reading a book and not paying attention to the cartoons.

  “No. Are you done now? Can I go outside and play?”

  He should be happy that she wanted to be outside so much when so many kids would rather spend all their time on some electronic device.

  “You know what? Let me take a quick shower and then you and I can go to the playground.”

  “Yay,” Livi said, jumping off the couch and hopping around the room more than the Easter bunny did on delivery day. “Is it the one at my new school?”

  “No.” They hadn’t gone to her new school yet. Too much to do in his mind. “There is a playground just a mile from here in the development. I bet we’ll see lots of kids there and they probably ride the bus and go to the same school as you.”

  Which made him ashamed that he didn’t even think of that before and needed Carol to point it out. Guess this single father thing in a new hometown was a lot harder than he thought it was going to be.

  “I hope so. I’m kind of bored. I want to play with some kids. There’s no one on our street. I’ve been looking but everyone seems old.” She was wrinkling her nose.

  “Blair isn’t old,” he said. Just a few years younger than him, he was thinking.

  “But she’s not a kid either. There are two boys next door, but they drive. They don’t want to play with me.”

  “As they shouldn’t since you’re just a kid and they are in college.”

  “How do you know?” she asked, following him up the stairs. If he didn’t make his way to the shower they’d never get out of this house with the amount of questions his daughter asked. He supposed she could be considered a chatterbox too.

  “I was just talking to our neighbor next door. Her name is Carol and her husband is Ralph. She told me her sons are in college.”

  “What are their names?” Livi asked.

  “I didn’t ask. And if you don’t let me take a shower we will never get to the playground.”

  “I’ll go play in my room. That way I’ll know right when you’re done. I’ll be ready too, I promise.”

  He looked at her red shorts and pink and red T-shirt with rainbows on it. Her socks didn’t match—they never did—and he had no idea which colored sneakers she would put on but then told himself it really didn’t matter. She was a kid and she was happy.

  And wasn’t that the most important thing?

  12

  In Her Heart

  “Hi, Dad,” Blair said when the door to her backyard workshop opened. “What are you doing here?” She was expecting him today. She’d woken up this morning knowing he’d visit. Not because she hadn’t seen him in a few weeks but because she had an odd dream about him and water. No clue what it meant, but in her dream her father was here next to her, so that was enough for him to make an appearance.

  She looked at her father like she always did, trying to find any sign he was gay. He never looked gay to her. Then she wanted to laugh when that thought entered her mind once again. As much as she wanted to say people didn’t look gay, she knew there were signs many carried with their dress, mannerisms, and words.

  Not her father. Tyler McKay was a lawyer like her mother. A divorce lawyer, to be exact. Her mother and father even had some cases against each other, which always got tricky from what her father had often told her.

  Either way, her father wasn’t a big man in her eyes. Height, he was probably average at five foot ten, even weight. He was in good shape, he lifted weights religiously and made sure he didn’t have much of his hair out of place when he went to work Monday through Friday. On the weekends was another story.

  Like now, he was wearing old athletic shorts, a T-shirt that had seen better days and she was shocked Jake let him out of the house with it on. Jake, well, he was a bit more concerned about his appearance twenty-four seven. He managed a jewelry store and liked to be flashy at times. Jake, yeah, he stood out on his sexual preference a good mile away. His attire, his mannerism, his words…Jake was flamboyant.

  Her fathers were night and day, but they made it work through the years.

  “I thought I’d stop over and see if you needed any help with anything. I hate it when you are over here lifting and moving stuff around on your own all the time.”

  The same story she’d heard for years. Her father was so protective of her. “I’m fine, Dad. Where is Pops?”

  She hadn’t called Jake by his name since she was fourteen. He’d lived in the house for almost a year before she finally asked if she could call him Pops. Having two “Dads” in the house would have been confusing. And though her fathers weren’t married at that point, she didn’t need a dream to tell her they would be someday.

  Nope, she knew it in her heart. Anyone could see the two of them together and know how much they loved each other.

  “He’s working today like he always does on Saturday.”

  “Sorry. I forgot what day it was.” She was so used to working most days of the week in her backyard shop that she tended to lose track of when others worked.

  “Are you going into the store later?”

  He moved in and started to put labels on the jars of lotion she just filled right alongside of her. “I’ll probably stop in to just check on things like I always do.”

  “Do you ever take a day off?” he asked her, his eyebrows lifting, the lecture on the horizon for sure.

  “I’m closed on Sundays,” she reminded him.

  “But you are most likely in here working. So I’ll ask again—do you ever take a day off?”

  “The joys of a businesswoman.”

  Her father sighed. “You know we didn’t want this for you.”

  “It was Nana’s shop. How can you say that?”

  “Because I saw how much she worked. I told her I was going to make it so she didn’t have to work anymore and what does she do? Sells the business to you. But even Grandma didn’t make the products like you. She had local suppliers.”

  Blair laughed. She wouldn’t really say the business was sold to her. At least not at what it should have been. Her father knew that because his firm handled the legal end of it.

  “I’m young and can handle it. There’s more profit this way too.”

  “But you won’t always be young and you might want a family someday.”

  She turned and leaned her hip on the counter. “Do you think I’m getting old? Are you afraid I’m going to do what my mother did? I can assure you that isn’t going to happen. I want a family the traditional way.”

  He grinned at her. “You always say that. Even your mother did.”

  “I don’t have big career aspirations like she did.”

  Her father started to laugh. “Look around you. This place is packed full of merchandise. That pile over there is probably orders you need to get out by Monday?”

  “They are. Instead of standing around and gabbing, why don’t you start to fill them?”

  He shook his head and walked over to pick up the order, then a box, and packaged it the way she’d shown him before. “Are you happy, Blair?”

  “Of course I am. Why would you say that?”

  She grabbed an order and started to walk around the shop to fill it too. She normally did her orders all for the weekend on Sunday when she had time and if she didn’t then Michele would do it for her on Monday as more orders always came in at all hours.

  “Sometimes Jake and I wonder if we did right by you.”

  “That is such a crazy statement. You guys did everything right. I turned out better than half the girls in my class that had a mother and father at home.”

  “Well, I would hope so,” he said stiffening. “Some of your friends
left a little to be desired back then.”

  “Can I help it if I attracted all the strays and brought them home?”

  She did have a bad habit of doing that. Maybe it was because there were so many times she didn’t feel like she fit in that she just wanted to grab other misfits in her class and bring them all together. It normally backfired in the worst way on her though. “Someone had to befriend those girls.”

  “At least you stuck to the girls and not the guys.”

  “I’ve got enough problems getting a guy that I don’t need to pick up strays and misfits there.”

  “Are Jake and I the problem?” he asked. “You don’t talk about it often, but I’m curious if it’s that or something else?”

  She didn’t want to talk to him about this. She didn’t want him to feel bad about it.

  “It’s a number of things. Some guys find it odd I’ve got two fathers. Personally I think they suffered from low self-esteem and couldn’t handle it. Maybe they thought they’d have two men coming after them with shotguns for touching their daughter.”

  He laughed like she hoped he would. “Jake wouldn’t touch a gun unless it was to beat a spider with the handle.”

  “He wouldn’t even do that, Dad. Pops doesn’t like getting his hands dirty.”

  Her father was the handy one around the house. Pops like to decorate, he liked to paint, and he liked to hang things on the walls. Her father did all the dirty work. Though Pops would come over and pack orders or move boxes if she asked him to. She didn’t though, knowing he’d rather cook her dinner than work on his day off.

  “No, he doesn’t. I love him just the same though. We all have our callings in life. Jake’s is to make sure the house doesn’t look like two dudes live in it.”

  “It never looked like that,” Blair said, thinking back to how much Pops liked to help her decorate her own room several times a year. It never stayed the same for long. “I might need Pops to come over and give me some advice on a few things I want to do in the house here.”

  Her father groaned. “Don’t get him started. If you do that he’ll get the itch to change more in our house. I barely made it through the half bath last month.”

  “It looks great with the new sink and wallpaper.”

  “I hate wallpaper,” her father said. “I think he did that on purpose. He thought he could do it himself and then got one piece up and realized it was horrible. I had no choice but to finish it. He always bites off more than he can chew because if he asked me to do it I wouldn’t. But I wouldn’t leave it looking horrible either. It’s a game to him. I know it is.”

  She smiled. Those were antics Pops had done her whole life. It was the way he got things done. “He has your number.”

  “He sure does. Who’s the little girl on the top of her swing set staring at the shop? Is she looking for you?”

  Blair moved over and saw Livi standing in the little fort on her swing set indeed looking into her yard. “That’s my new neighbor, Livi. She and her father, Philip, moved in a few weeks ago.”

  “Livi’s mother?” he asked.

  “She died a few years ago.”

  “And you’ve taken the little girl under your wing?” he asked when Blair waved through the window and Livi waved back and then disappeared down the slide.

  “I have. She’s a sweetie. And I bet she is going to be at the back fence right now. Hang on.” She walked out the door to see Livi standing there jumping up and down.

  “Hi, Blair.”

  “Hi, sweetie. What are you doing?”

  “I came out to play. Daddy’s cursing over a leak in the kitchen and I laughed. I don’t think he was happy so I came out here.”

  “Smart move,” Blair said.

  “Are you going to introduce us?” her father said.

  “Livi, this is my father, Tyler McKay. Dad, Livi Aire.”

  “Nice to meet you,” her father said over the fence.

  “I’d let you come keep me company and put you to work, but I want your father to know where you are.”

  “You’ve got company,” Livi said.

  “My father’s not company. And I put him to work too.”

  Her father laughed, the smile reaching his eyes. A smile she hadn’t seen since she was a young girl in the house. Could her father be missing that in his life? Maybe wanting to know about her love life because he wanted a grandchild? She’d have to figure that out another day.

  “She did put me to work. It’s payback for all the chores I made her do as a kid.”

  “I’ve got chores too. They aren’t any fun. I don’t like putting my clothes away when I’m just going to wear them again.”

  “I feel the same way,” Blair said. “Which is why I don’t let my father in my room anymore because now that I live alone I still keep my clothes in the basket for several days.” Livi giggled. “My Pops really hated that, but I did it on purpose.”

  “You call your dad Pops?” Livi asked.

  Oh boy, now what should she do? Her father jumped in and helped out. “She called me all sorts of things. Some of them not for young ears.”

  And there was her father saving the day once again.

  Speaking of fathers, Philip opened the back door and she suspected he might wonder what was going on so she waved him over and thought now might be the time to make an introduction.

  “Daddy,” Livi yelled. “Come meet Blair’s Dad. She calls him Pops too. And many other names.”

  “Have fun with that,” her father whispered to her with a laugh.

  “He knows about you and Pops.”

  “He does?” her father said with a big grin. “Why is that?”

  “Shhh, not now. Philip, this is my father, Tyler McKay. Dad, Philip Aire.”

  “Nice to meet you,” Philip said. “Is Livi being a pain? I told her to not bug you.”

  “She’s fine. She waved to me and I wanted my father to meet her. She said you’re wrestling with a leak.”

  “And I’m losing,” he said back.

  “Maybe I can take a look for you,” her father said. “I’m the handy one of the house. Blair has me over here all the time dealing with her issues.”

  “I couldn’t ask you to do that,” Philip said.

  “You didn’t ask. I offered.”

  Philip looked at her and she grinned, then said, “Sorry. Let’s swap. I’ll take Livi off your hands and you can take my father off of mine.” And there was the other part of her dream coming true. Should she mention it to her father? He would be the only one she’d dare tell, but even then he might just say it was a coincidence.

  Best to let it play out on its own for now.

  13

  Big Mouth

  Philip had no clue how the hell he got roped into having Blair’s father help him with a leak in his kitchen.

  “So you’re spending time with my daughter?”

  Philip looked over as he and Tyler walked up the deck. “I’ve talked to her and she spends time with Livi,” he said, trying to play it coy. He had no idea how much Blair told her father about them.

  If there was even a “them” to talk about. They’d shared a few kisses and not much more. Much to his dismay.

  “She knows about you being a single father and why. She said you know about me and Pops.”

  “Pops?” he asked. “She said you were married to Jake.”

  “Yeah, Jake. She started calling him Pops a year after he moved in. Took her a while to ask him. Jake blubbered like a girl himself. I might have gotten a little misty eyed myself.”

  Not only was he trying to figure out how he ended up in his house with Blair’s father but now they were talking about the guy’s husband. He decided to just roll with it. Like he had much choice in the matter.

  “I could see where that might be emotional.”

  “You don’t know the half of it. And since Blair told you about me that means it’s more than neighborly.”

  “Is it?” Philip asked. “Blair seems like an open book.�
�

  “She’s pretty chatty and tends to talk more than she should about her life. Or she did. She stopped doing that years ago. At least with men.”

  Made sense how Carol might know. Then again Carol was asking a million questions so it was possible Blair just gave up and answered them.

  Of course Blair had lived here a few years so it wasn’t as if her life’s story had to be told in one sitting.

  “She told me some men had issues with it. I could care less. You’re her father. That is all I see.”

  Tyler grinned. “Just remember that. I am her father whether I share the same blood with her or not. And I could have but chose not to.”

  “What does that mean?”

  “It means Blair’s mother was like a sister to me. When she decided what she wanted she asked me for the…ah, donation. I said no. It didn’t seem right. I felt it would change our dynamic. I knew I couldn’t be detached enough to not call Blair my own.”

  “Does Blair know this?”

  “Of course she does,” Tyler said, laughing and grabbing the wrench, then lying on his back on the tile floor. “I wouldn’t tell this to a stranger and not my own daughter.”

  “Sorry. I guess I’m wondering why you’re telling me.”

  “Because you’re a father and I’m sure you’ll understand. Blood or not, Blair is my daughter and I’ll make sure she’s safe no matter what.”

  “I’d never hurt her,” Philip said, trying to keep the outrage from his voice. Getting in a pissing match with Blair’s father was a surefire way to not get his and Blair’s relationship off the ground for more than a few kisses.

  “Her heart. She’s smart enough to not get hurt other ways. But her heart has always been tender. That is the thing I worry about. Now let’s fix this leak of yours and call it a day.”

  The minute her father left, Blair came rushing over to see Philip. “I’m so sorry about that. I had no idea he would volunteer to help you. What happened?”

  “He fixed the leak I couldn’t. I feel like an idiot that I was working on the wrong damn pipe.”