Darcy and the Single Dad

by Stacy Connelly

  In even this faintest light of day, he was now certain he’d imagined the come-on in her gaze last night, that her offer of coffee had been nothing more than an offer of coffee, and he’d made a total ass out of himself with his nearly virginal protest.

  God, he was an idiot! If the two-mile hike into town was what it would take to get his butt home, then he deserved every soggy step along the way. But as he leaned against his good-for-nothing SUV, the rumble of a diesel engine broke through the faint drip of lingering rainwater and birdsong. Nick watched Sam’s tow truck chug down the small street. What had Darcy told him last night? How sweet the mechanic had been, giving her rides into town when she needed them?

  Yeah, well, Nick would see just how sweet Sam was this morning about making sure he had a ride to town and that Darcy’s car would be fixed and back in her driveway today.

  The tension drained from his shoulders and his hands unclenched as he caught sight of the mechanic behind the wheel. It was not his brother, but instead the teenager Sam had hired to work with him over the summer. The tow truck pulled up behind Nick’s SUV, but Willson Gentry didn’t immediately climb out. While Sam taking on an employee had caught Nick by surprise, his brother’s choice of apprentice had not. The seventeen-year-old kid had been hanging out at Sam’s garage after school, eager to learn all he could about cars, long before he could even drive.

  From what Sam said, the teenager had a quick mind, picking up everything Sam taught him—something a few folks in town might have found hard to believe, thanks to Will’s extreme shyness. It was no surprise that the quiet, awkward boy had taken one look and fallen hard for Darcy Dawson or that Darcy would see the boy as sweet.

  Hell, if Nick had followed Willson’s M.O. and kept his own mouth shut, he’d have been better off. “Hey, Willson,” Nick said as the boy finally climbed from the oversize cab.

  Ducking his head and hiding beneath the brim of his baseball cap, Will mumbled something Nick took as a hello. “I came by to help out Ms. Dawson with her dog, and when I went to leave, my battery was dead,” he said casually, cutting out a few details along the way—like that his attempt to leave had taken place the night before. “She said she’s been having some car trouble, too.”

  Nick couldn’t see much of Will’s face, but his ears, left exposed by the baseball cap, turned bright red. Taking pity on the kid, Nick said, “I told her my brother’s shop is the best around and I’m sure her car will be fixed and back in her driveway by the end of the day, right?”

  The bill of Will’s cap bobbed once. Pushing away from his SUV, Nick said, “Good. Now that that’s settled, I need a jump start and to get back to town.”

  He had to give Will credit. The kid knew his stuff, and Nick’s SUV was soon running without a problem. As he was climbing into the front seat, Will spoke for the first time.

  “You, um, won’t say nothing, will you?”

  Nick read the worry on the kid’s face through the still open driver’s side door, his blue eyes big in a fair-skinned face that still held a few freckles from childhood. Nick didn’t know what Will was more concerned about—Nick saying something to Sam...or Nick saying something to Darcy. Either way, it didn’t matter. He had no intention of talking or even thinking about the past twelve hours again. “Not a word. But Ms. Dawson’s car—”

  “In her driveway. Today.”

  “Nothing to talk about then, is there?”

  Will nodded again, but as his lovesick gaze drifted over to the small house, he gave an audible sigh. Slamming shut the SUV door, Nick drove off with his own focus straight out the windshield in front of him.

  * * *

  “Thanks again for watching her overnight,” Nick said to MaryAnne Martin as he stepped into her living room.

  “Oh, you’re welcome.” The short brunette smiled, her eyes bright and sharp despite what had to have been a sleepless night, judging from the sound of a half-dozen preteen girls still giggling upstairs. MaryAnne eyed him closely. “Looks like you had quite a night, too. What was that emergency again?”

  “A, um, dog owner with a mama dog having her first litter.” He told himself MaryAnne’s curiosity was only that—interest in a vet emergency that had kept him out overnight. His own conscience was adding sexual innuendo that didn’t exist. “But everything turned out okay. Two boys and two girls.”

  The clomp of footsteps down the hardwood stairs preempted MaryAnne’s response as his daughter came down. A recent growth spurt had erased the last stages of babyhood, leaving behind an almost gangly girl who reminded him of a young colt—all long limbs and awkward joints seeming to work independent of each other. He winced at the clatter on the stairs, but fortunately it was only Maddie lugging a pale pink suitcase behind her, and not the sound of her tumbling down the stairs. The luggage had been Carol’s idea, as if their daughter was a world traveler instead of a little girl whose belongings could have fit just as easily in her school backpack.

  “Hey, honey.” Nick tried not to wince as he caught sight of his daughter.

  Her dark brown hair was sectioned off with multicolored ribbons woven into a dozen tiny braids. He’d learned far more about ponytails, pigtails and braids than he even thought he’d know as a thirty-three-year-old man, but he was already cringing at the thought of trying to untangle the knots she’d tied into her shoulder-length hair.

  “Ready to go?”

  She nodded, and before he could remind her to thank her hostess, Maddie dropped the handle of her suitcase and threw her skinny arms around the woman’s plump waist. “Thanks, Mrs. Martin.”

  “You’re welcome, sweetie.” MaryAnne dropped a kiss onto his daughter’s head, an act completely casual and comfortable.

  His own mother was the same way, a hugger who expressed her love so easily. He could imagine his sister, Sophia, would be like that when her own child was born. Was it a female thing? Nick wondered. Something that came so naturally to women but seemed so forced whenever he tried to show his daughter any affection? He loved Maddie with his whole heart, but he’d never lost the awkwardness that plagued him from the moment she was born. When she first came home from the hospital, she’d been so tiny, so fragile. He’d had to be so careful of his every move, unable to ever fully relax or shake free of the fear of doing something wrong, of failing.

  Maddie wasn’t a newborn anymore, but as he watched her cling to MaryAnne, his failure to keep their family together made his stomach churn.

  Hoping to cover his own discomfort, he reached for the hot-pink handle on his daughter’s luggage. “I’ve got it, Dad,” Maddie insisted, breaking away from MaryAnne’s hug to grab the suitcase.

  The show of independence, even the use of the term Dad instead of the more recent Daddy, had Nick holding back a sigh. Thanking MaryAnne again, he held open the door for his daughter, half expecting her to insist she was the type of woman to open her own door.

  Once they were on their way in the SUV, he asked, “Did you have fun?”

  Twirling the end of one braid, Maddie mumbled, “Uh-huh.”

  “What did you girls do? Other than each other’s hair?”

  She turned to him then, her brown eyes wounded. “You don’t like it?”

  “Sure, it’s...colorful.”

  The lame compliment didn’t get him very far, and Maddie slumped back in her seat. Trying again, he asked, “So, Mrs. Martin said you all stayed up pretty late.... You must have done something. Watched movies? Played games?”

  “We just did stuff. You know.”

  No, and that was part of the problem. Nick couldn’t get a handle on the kind of stuff that interested Maddie now. He wouldn’t say it had ever been easy, but there’d been a time, not long ago, when cartoons, stuffed animals and dolls had fully captured his daughter’s imagination. Now, though, she spent more time on the phone or playing video games or listening to music with her headphones on.

  Shutting him out. Of course Nick remembered when Sophia was the same age that it was all a part of litt
le girls growing up. But it didn’t ease the fear of loss building inside him, the worry that one day he’d reach for Maddie and his daughter would slip through his fingertips.

  “So what do you want to do today?” Though he was never completely off the clock, on call even when the office was closed, Nick tried to keep his weekends free for Maddie. “We could go see the movie in town.”

  “We saw it before I left to visit Mommy.” She sighed as if he couldn’t remember that far back.

  What he remembered was when she used to want to see any kids’ movie that came to the theater half a dozen times without ever tiring of it. But now...

  “There are like a hundred movie theaters in San Francisco with all these huge screens and they have all the new movies, not just one.”

  Nick’s hands tightened on the wheel. “I know, Maddie. Isn’t it great that you get to go there and visit?”

  He hoped his words didn’t sound as if he’d had to chew them up like nails and spit them out, but that was certainly how it felt. No matter what his feelings for Carol, he refused to use his daughter as a pawn or try to make her choose sides. He only wished he could be sure his ex was following the same rules.

  Hitting the edge of town, Maddie sighed again. “It’s so boring here. There’s nothing to do.”

  “That’s not true. You just spent last night with your friends. Was that boring? And you’re going to be helping your aunt Sophia with her wedding. You get to be the flower girl. I wouldn’t call that nothing.”

  Maddie gazed out the window, and he couldn’t be sure anything he said made a difference in her eyes. He’d been through this all before. The churning in his gut turned into a full-bore tidal wave of worry and doubt. He recognized his own words all too well. Just as he recognized Maddie’s. Because, although the voice belonged to his daughter, the words were definitely Carol’s. And if his argument hadn’t worked with Carol, did he really think it would sway their daughter?

  * * *

  In the end, the offer to go for ice cream pacified Maddie for the moment. Proving he would never understand the female mind, not even an eight-year-old’s, he stood outside the shop while his “Clearville is so boring” daughter ate her vanilla cone. Despite a decent variety offered by the shop, Maddie never went for Double Chocolate Chunk or Very Berry Swirl. Once in a while, she’d ask for some sprinkles, but no matter what, she always wanted vanilla.

  He’d already downed a single scoop of chocolate mint, but he didn’t mind waiting while Maddie slowly licked the creamy rivulets from the softening dessert. He’d learned the hard way that kids, car rides and ice cream cones didn’t mix, having cleaned the sticky, melting substance off his dash more than once.

  Taking a look around, he smiled at the typical Saturday afternoon in downtown Clearville. Store owners had moved some displays outside to entice shoppers into their stores and to take advantage of the warm weather. Tourists walked up and down the street, cameras in hand to take photos of the Victorian houses. He could see a steady stream of shoppers coming in and out of The Hope Chest, the antiques store his sister had managed for the owner, Hope Daniels. With Sophia and her fiancé, Jake Cameron, still out of town, Nick assumed Hope was running the place herself today.

  He carefully averted his gaze from the empty shop a few doors down, but that didn’t stop him from wondering if Will had returned Darcy’s car. If she’d driven into town... If she was inside right now, planning her displays for mud masks and herbal moisturizers and whatever else she planned to sell.

  We’re really alike.

  Nick snorted, glad he’d already finished his ice cream so he didn’t have mint chip coming out his nose. Alike, yeah, right. Big-city girls and small-town boys had nothing in common. Carol had taught him that. His gaze slid to his own small-town girl, and he shook his head. Wild, multicolored braids and plain vanilla ice cream. He really didn’t understand the female mind at all.

  He’d just passed Maddie a napkin—she was far beyond the days when he used to wipe her sticky face and hands—when the sound of laughter reached his ears.

  “Morning, Nick!”

  Glancing over with a puzzled frown, he spotted three women he recognized as mothers of the girls at Maddie’s slumber party. “Morning, ladies.”

  Another ripple of laughter followed, and the mint chip he’d eaten seemed to settle like a block of ice in his gut.

  “We hear you had an emergency call last night, Doc!”

  An emergency call. That was what he had told MaryAnne Martin when he phoned her from Darcy’s house.

  The marvels of modern technology, Nick thought grimly. Even in tiny Clearville, the Martins cared enough about their privacy to have caller ID. Too bad MaryAnne didn’t care nearly as much about his. Just how many people had she told about him spending the night at Darcy’s?

  He still remembered the whispers, the curious and open stares from his time with Carol. First when he married her out of the blue and then, four years later, when she’d taken off pretty much the same way. He’d hated it then, and he’d done everything he could since to stay out of the Clearville limelight and out of the tangled mess of the local grapevine.

  Until now—

  A faint tinkling chime echoed down the street, and Nick knew where the sound had come from. But knowing didn’t stop him from looking anyway, and he watched as Darcy pushed open her shop door and stepped out.

  The turquoise shirt she wore faithfully followed each curve from her breasts to just below her hips, where black leggings embraced the longest pair of legs he’d ever seen. Her hair was pulled back in a high ponytail, waving in the breeze like some kind of red flag, and every ounce of testosterone in his body was urging him to charge.

  As if she could feel his gaze, she glanced over in his direction. Their eyes met, and even from across the street, the impact hit hard—a swift kick of desire straight to his gut that had him sucking in a quick breath.

  Just the sight of her sent him back to that moment in her kitchen. A moment that he still couldn’t decide had really happened or was only in his imagination. But he did know one thing for sure—he should have kissed her. Whether she’d been waiting for him to or not, he should have kissed her. If he had, he wouldn’t be standing here, watching and wondering... He’d know.

  But the laughter was there again, reminding Nick that he and Darcy weren’t the only two people in the world. For a brief moment he’d forgotten about the giggling trio. He’d even forgotten about Maddie. A cold splash of guilt put his priorities back in order, and he glanced down at his daughter, who had been too busy chasing melting drips of ice cream down her cone to notice his lapse.

  He’d noticed, though. Darcy had that effect on him—making him forget his goal, making him lose sight of what was most important. And so what if, for that split second of time, he’d felt like a man interested in a woman? A man caught in the rush of a new, exciting attraction? A man free from worry of the future and the scars of the past? So what? He was not that man. He was a single father, worried and scarred. “You almost done, Maddie?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  She hardly ever ate the whole cone, but that didn’t mean he could ever talk her into getting a cup. “All right, then. Go throw that soggy mess away.”

  As his daughter went over to the trash can, he focused on a small billboard in front of the shop. Alongside advertisements of the flavor of the month, people had pinned various notices into the corkboard surface. A few help-wanted posts. An announcement about his sister’s upcoming wedding. A found dog poster...

  He stepped closer to the bulletin board. Beneath the words Found Dog was a photo of the blue merle cattle dog who’d had her litter of puppies in Darcy’s laundry room.

  Darcy had been telling the truth. The mama dog didn’t belong to her. And she wasn’t irresponsible. She was kind enough to take in a stray and try to find its owners, and he’d given her a hard time for it.

  Just one more thing to apologize for, Nick thought.

  He looked b
ack in Darcy’s direction a minute later when he heard the scrape of metal against concrete. Shaking his head, he watched as she awkwardly maneuvered a six-foot ladder out the doorway. She made too sharp a turn, hit the bottom of the ladder against the doorjamb, had to back up and try again. She cleared the doorway the second time around—barely.

  Seriously, what did she think she was doing?

  Not just wrestling with a ladder in front of a shop on Main Street, but what was she doing in Clearville? This might be where her family was from, but it certainly wasn’t where she belonged. It was so obvious to Nick, he didn’t understand how she couldn’t see for herself that she didn’t fit in.

  This was Small Town, U.S.A. People around here liked things plain and simple and quiet.

  You like things plain and simple and quiet, his conscience mocked, but deep down, Nick wasn’t even sure that was true. Maybe he’d simply spent enough years telling himself that, he’d finally believed it. And it had taken meeting Darcy to tear off the blinders and for him to see what he really wanted.

  And what he really couldn’t have.

  Chapter Five

  It was a good thing, Darcy decided as she stretched as far as she could from the top of the ladder, that she was afraid of dogs and not heights or she would never get the banner hung above her shop.

  The midmorning sun warmed her skin between hints of a cool breeze that teased the hair she’d swept into a high ponytail and made the pink vinyl banner dance in her hand. The right side had been easy. She’d maneuvered the ladder up against the side of the building and slipped the grommet in her “Grand Opening” sign over the hook. But the left side—

  She shifted on the rung, the muscles in her arms and legs stretching as she tried to extend her reach a little more without losing her balance.