Dad’s E-mail Order Bride

by Candy Halliday

  He had news for Rachel.

  He would never move back to New York City. And until Rachel reached eighteen and could legally do as she pleased, neither would she.

  Graham walked out of the kitchen to where he’d left Courtney. Her chair faced the cathedral-style windows that made up the front of the lodge. The view of the cove and the snowcapped mountains in the distance was spectacular. Yet, Graham suspected the view was the last thing on Courtney’s mind at the moment.

  She had to be disappointed that love was not waiting for her in Alaska as Rachel had led her to believe. Instead, all he had to offer Courtney was a promise that Rachel was going to regret the day she decided to play around with other people’s lives.

  “Thanks,” she said when he handed her the cup.

  Graham sat on the chair beside her, aware he should say something—anything—to lessen the gravity of such an awkward situation. He just couldn’t think of anything to say.

  She saved him the trouble. “You have to give Rachel props for masterminding such a perfect plan. The hearing impaired excuse for why we couldn’t talk on the phone was brilliant.”

  “Yeah, Rachel’s a real mastermind, all right,” Graham grumbled. “We’ll see if she can mastermind her way out of being banned from the Internet for the rest of her life.”

  She laughed and said, “Well, she definitely used the Internet to her advantage. Your Web site for the lodge, for instance. Rachel backed up her hearing loss story by pointing out your phone number isn’t listed on your site.”

  Graham shook his head in amazement. “The phone number isn’t listed any longer because I spent the first six months after I launched the Web site answering calls from people who were only shopping around for rates. I only contact people who are serious enough to e-mail me.”

  He thought for a minute and said, “Rachel used the Internet to her advantage another way, too. I pay a flat fee for phone and Internet service, so she had no long-distance charges to worry about. And Rachel living with the phone glued to her ear is normal. I had no reason to suspect she wasn’t talking to her best friend instead of you.”

  “Only one thing still bothers me,” she said. “Some of the e-mails Rachel sent were…” She paused. “Well, to put it bluntly, they were too mature for a girl her age.”

  Mature?

  Graham gulped.

  Did she mean things of a sexual nature?

  And how advanced was Rachel in that regard? They’d had the sex talk when she was twelve. To his relief, the subject had never come up again.

  Graham was still trying to summon the courage to ask what she meant by mature, when Courtney placed her coffee cup on the end table between their two chairs, bent and picked up her purse from the floor. After pulling out a handful of papers, she unfastened the clip and handed them over.

  “Rachel said you could read lips, but I was still worried we would have trouble communicating,” she said. “I printed out my favorite e-mails. I wanted to show them to you and tell you how much they touched me. Read them yourself. And then you tell me if those sound like the words of a teenage girl to you.”

  Graham looked down at the first e-mail.

  How would I describe myself?

  He winced when familiar words began jumping off the page.

  When I look back over my life, I see a man content to let life happen to him, instead of charting his own path. A man who believed by making everyone else happy, he would eventually find happiness himself. But I’ve come to the realization that life is too precious to leave to chance and life decisions are too important to hand over to someone else. My mistakes have taught me this: choose what you want out of life or life will choose it for you.

  “Why, that little thief!” Graham shouted, refusing to bring his now-red face up to meet hers. “Rachel took that straight from my journal.”

  He shifted the papers to the next e-mail:

  There are times when such a solitary life leaves me lonelier than I care to admit. Especially on endless, sleepless nights when I gaze at the ceiling, trying to remember how it feels to have the warmth of another body pressed close to mine. Those are the times when I long for a head on my shoulder, another heart beating close to mine, simply enjoying the still of the night.

  And the next:

  Troubles melt away here in Alaska. Living in such an unspoiled environment renews my spirit, gives me strength, and reminds me of how truly remarkable God’s gifts to man really are. The only thing missing is someone to share such an amazing experience.

  “Unbelievable,” Graham said, shaking his head as he thumbed through the remainder of the pages. He was still too embarrassed to look at her.

  Maybe Courtney had been honest enough to admit how embarrassed and how gullible she felt. She’d even explained that if her demanding job had left any time for a personal life, she never would have been curious about the online membership her best friend had given her for her birthday. Still, Graham’s embarrassment reached a much deeper level.

  A complete stranger had seen right into his soul.

  Graham felt as gutted as a fresh fish fillet.

  “Let me guess,” she said. “Everything I saved came from your journal. Didn’t it?”

  She’d guessed right.

  She reached out and touched his arm, an innocent gesture—unless you hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in years.

  “I don’t blame you for being upset about your journal, Graham. Just don’t be too hard on Rachel, okay? Be angry with me. I should have paid more attention to other red flags that kept popping up.”

  Graham finally looked over at her. “What other red flags?”

  “Well, mainly the fact that Rachel only e-mailed me pretending to be you about twice a week. And she covered her bases by telling me how busy you were once fishing season started.”

  “I am busy once fishing season starts,” Graham said. “But I’m still more at fault here than you are. I shouldn’t have been too busy to keep up with what my daughter was doing.”

  “Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” she said. “But I insist on paying you for staying at the lodge this weekend. And I’ll certainly reimburse you for the plane ticket.”

  “Absolutely not,” Graham said, shaking his head in protest. “If anything, I’m the one who should pay you for your inconvenience in flying all the way across the country. And for your mental anguish over all of this.”

  “Mental anguish?” she repeated.

  He’d obviously said the wrong thing. Her tone had changed from apologetic to terse. And the insulted expression on her face confirmed it.

  “Look,” she said. “I don’t blame you for thinking I’m some desperate love-starved female because Rachel met me through an online dating site. But let’s not make this into some big catastrophe that it isn’t, okay?”

  Graham started to say something, but she didn’t give him the chance.

  “The way I see it, you and I are the adults here. And I’m pretty sure we’ll both survive the weekend without either of us having to go into therapy.”

  Okay, she’d put him in his place.

  Graham began backpedaling as fast as possible. “I don’t think you’re desperate, or love-starved, or anything else. All I meant by mental anguish was that no one enjoys being the brunt of a joke. I know I don’t. Rachel has embarrassed both of us. And I intend to teach her a lesson for being so thoughtless.”

  She was making him extremely uncomfortable. First, saying how much the words he’d written had touched her. Then, her hand on his arm. Even her plea now to be easy on his daughter.

  She was…dammit!

  She was being too nice about the whole thing. Plus, she was a knockout. She was the type of woman who could knock him right out of his comfortable existence if he gave her half a chance—smart, sexy, bold enough to speak her mind.

  But he’d been foolish to think she would spend one second lamenting the fact that Rachel had sent the e-mails instead of him. Career-focused or not, Courtney
Woods was not the type of woman who had ever been lacking for male attention.

  Graham tossed the e-mails onto the table, left his chair and walked to the window a safe distance away from her. It didn’t work. She walked up beside him.

  They stood in silence, looking out over the cove.

  “Rachel isn’t as brilliant as you think,” Graham said. “I inherited this lodge from my grandfather. He was the one who lost his hearing in one ear from an explosion clearing land for the lodge.”

  He turned toward her and added, “But tell me the truth about something. Didn’t the hearing loss part bother you at all?”

  “No,” she said. “In fact, I admired you. I found it heroic you hadn’t let the accident ruin your life.”

  Graham let out a long sigh. “Well, at least you didn’t show up because you felt sorry for the poor deaf guy turning forty.”

  “True,” she said. “I only felt sorry for the turning-forty part.”

  They looked at each other.

  And burst out laughing.

  It was the icebreaker they’d needed to cut through the tension. And at that moment Graham realized Courtney could have been a real bitch about what Rachel had done. Courtney could have even threatened to sue him. And who would have blamed her? Instead, she was taking it all in stride, far better than he was at the moment.

  “This whole thing really is funny when you think about it,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking down on the dock when I sounded out every word so carefully, making sure you could read my lips.”

  Wisely, Graham didn’t mention the Russian hooker.

  Instead, he said, “I know someone who’s going to be reading my lips when she gets home. I can promise you that.”

  “And that’s what has me worried,” she said.

  Graham looked over at her again.

  Now she had her arms crossed, tapping the fingers of her right hand impatiently against her left arm. And that’s one thing Graham didn’t miss since he’d dropped out of society—the whole business of trying to figure any woman out.

  It was exhausting.

  However, if memory served him correctly, her ambiguous statement was his clue to say, “Meaning?”

  She looked straight at him and said, “Meaning I’m not interested in being caught in the middle of a father-daughter fight all weekend, Graham.”

  “So what are you suggesting? That I just pat Rachel on the head and laugh the whole thing off?”

  “I’m suggesting you postpone any punishment until later,” she said. “Rachel has really worked hard on your birthday party tomorrow. And I shouldn’t tell you this, but she has a special surprise dinner planned for you tonight.”

  “A dinner?” Graham repeated.

  Courtney nodded. “Rachel planned out the menu herself, and I’m supposed to help her cook the meal. I hate to see all of her plans ruined.”

  “You forget Rachel’s planning is the reason she’s in big trouble right now.”

  An awkward silence passed between them.

  She cocked her head in his direction. “You know, if you really want to teach Rachel a lesson, the best way to do that would be to beat her at her own game.”

  “I’m not sure what you mean.”

  “I think we’ve both figured out the reason I’m here is because Rachel thought if we hit it off, you’d be willing to move back to New York.”

  “Tell me, Courtney,” Graham said. “Is there anything you don’t know about me and my daughter?”

  She smiled. “I don’t know if you’re willing to play along with my idea yet.”

  Okay, one thing he did miss since he’d dropped out of society was having a woman smile at him the way Courtney had done now—a flirty little smile, the type of smile only a dead man could resist.

  “Keep talking,” Graham said.

  “What if we let Rachel think her idea worked when she first gets home? But then we tell her instead of you moving back to New York, I’ve decided to move to Alaska to be with you?”

  Graham laughed. “To quote Rachel’s favorite expression, she would totally freak out.”

  “Exactly.” She smiled again.

  It took Graham’s gaze right back to her moist, pink lips. Memories of that kiss on the dock didn’t help Graham’s common sense, either. And whether he liked to admit it or not, the knowledge that a beautiful woman like Courtney had flown across the country to meet him was a huge boost to his turning-forty ego.

  Why not go along with Courtney’s idea?

  She was right. It wasn’t fair to put her in the middle of their fight all weekend. The situation was already awkward enough.

  He’d honor Courtney’s request and keep things civil for the weekend. He owed her that much after what Rachel had done. But after Courtney left, Rachel’s life was going to change drastically.

  And that was a promise.

  Graham stuck his hand out. “Okay, it’s a deal. Let’s show Rachel what it feels like to be on the receiving end of a bad joke.”

  CHAPTER THREE

  THE MINUTE GRAHAM closed the bedroom door after bringing her luggage upstairs, Courtney fished around for her cell phone. She tossed her purse onto the bed and headed for the sliding glass doors that led out to her room’s private balcony.

  Beth would laugh her ass off at this situation.

  But Courtney’s mother?

  Courtney couldn’t even go there.

  In fact, coming to Alaska was the first time she’d ever truly crossed her mother, who also happened to be her boss and the owner of The Woods Advertising Agency, where Courtney was vice president. Her VP title, however, had nothing to do with being the CEO’s daughter. Courtney had earned that title by following faithfully in Lisa Woods’s workaholic footsteps.

  And she had no life to prove it.

  When she couldn’t get a signal, Courtney closed her phone and leaned against the railing, thinking back to the night of her birthday party—the real reason behind why she was in Alaska now. They’d celebrated at Courtney’s favorite restaurant; Beth, her mother and her mother’s constant entourage—the other executives at the agency.

  Beth had saved her gift for last. She’d stood to get everyone’s attention—as if that were necessary. Avant-garde described Beth in every sense of the word; her dark hair in a buzz cut; her jewelry and wardrobe so outrageous she turned heads everywhere she went.

  “Courtney likes to claim her being born on Valentine’s Day was Cupid’s idea of a cruel joke,” Beth had said. “She also likes to claim that the reason she’s still single is because there aren’t any real men left in the world.”

  Everyone had laughed.

  “So I decided to prove her wrong on both accounts,” Beth had announced proudly. “Love is out there waiting for her if she’ll look for it. And where better to look for real men than the last frontier?”

  That’s when Beth had held up a printed-out page with Courtney’s picture on it—a full-body shot Courtney had forgotten about. Courtney had posed for it when she did an interview for a magazine about the changing trends in advertising—dressed for success and leaning casually back against her desk with a confident smile on her face.

  “This,” Beth had said, handing Courtney the sheet, “is your new profile page on LoveFromAlaska.com. And when I checked the site an hour ago, you had thirty-five real men dying to meet you.”

  Courtney had thought Beth’s gift was hysterical. So had everyone else.

  Except, of course, Courtney’s mother.

  Her mother had remained silent all through dinner. She’d remained silent through the birthday cake dessert. She’d even remained silent during a heated debate about the direction they should take with a new ad campaign when they were having brandy later—and her mother remaining silent during any debate was unprecedented. It wasn’t until they were alone in her mother’s private town car on the way home from the restaurant, however, that Courtney had received an earful.

  “I expect you to cancel the membership t
o that disgusting dating site immediately before anyone sees it,” her mother had demanded. “If word gets out you’re peddling yourself on the Internet like some cheap tramp, it would be a total embarrassment to the agency.”

  “News flash, Mother. Online dating is the norm today.” Trying to appease her, Courtney had added, “Besides, it isn’t likely any of our clients will be checking out some dating site from Alaska.”

  “It isn’t a risk I’m willing to take,” her mother had snipped. “As vice president you have a reputation to uphold and I expect you to do that.”

  Courtney had assumed the discussion was over.

  She hadn’t been that lucky.

  “What I don’t understand,” her mother had said, “is where Beth got the idea you wanted some man in your life. If your so-called best friend knew you at all, she’d understand the agency will always be your first priority.”

  Like mother, like daughter.

  The thought had scared the hell out of Courtney.

  Within minutes of being dropped off in front of her apartment building, Courtney had her laptop open. And that’s when she’d found the first e-mail from Rachel.

  Reading what Graham had written about defining what you wanted before life defined it for you had been the equivalent of grabbing Courtney by the shoulders and shaking her until her teeth rattled. In every aspect of her life, in and out of the boardroom, she had the reputation of being assertive and confident—except when it came to her mother. At that exact moment, Courtney knew it was time to cut the cord.

  That’s why she’d really come to Alaska. She’d come hoping to find herself.

  But talk about material for a daytime talk show! She could already hear Dr. Phil now. “And how’s online dating working for you so far, Courtney?”

  Still, things could have been worse.

  Graham could have been a real ass about the whole situation. And who could really blame the poor guy? A crazy e-mail female from New York City had shown up on his dock, not only unannounced, but even demanding to know why he’d lied to her.