The Single Dad's Second Chance

by Brenda Harlen

  The statement only added to Rachel’s confusion. Was it possible that Andrew had mentioned her to his daughter? But why? And why had he never even hinted to Rachel about the existence of his child?

  She stopped inside the doorway of the theater and tried to organize her scrambled thoughts, but she didn’t understand any of this. Had he lied to her? Or just withheld information? And was the distinction even relevant? Obviously she didn’t know anything about the man if he’d kept such a monumental secret from her.

  Maybe it was her fault. Maybe she hadn’t asked the right questions. The next time she met a guy, she was going to ask him point-blank: do you have any wives or kids I should know about?

  She climbed the stairs toward the back of the theater and squeezed down the aisle toward Holly.

  Her friend looked puzzled when Rachel dropped into the seat beside her. “Popcorn?”

  She winced. “I’m sorry.”

  “You went to get popcorn...and you forgot the popcorn?”

  “I ran into Andrew on my way to the concession stand.” She shook her head. “No, not just Andrew. Andrew and his daughter.”

  Holly frowned. “I didn’t know he had a kid.”

  “Neither did I.”

  “Oh.”

  Rachel nodded.

  “I’m sorry, Rach.”

  She nodded again. She was sorry, too. Sorry and sad and angry. She’d honestly thought that he was different, that he was a good guy who might not trample all over her heart. She’d been wrong.

  She drew in a deep breath and forced herself to push all thoughts of Andrew Garrett to the back of her mind. The previews were just starting, so she figured the line at the concession stand would be gone. “I’ll go get our snacks now,” she whispered to Holly.

  But her friend shook her head. “Forget the popcorn. After the movie, we’re going to Marg & Rita’s.”

  * * *

  Marg & Rita’s was one of downtown Charisma’s hidden gems. Tucked beside the library and in the shadow of the town hall, it wasn’t obvious to someone who didn’t know it was there. But anyone who lived or worked in the downtown core knew about it.

  The restaurant was owned by two women—neither of them named Marg or Rita—and boasted authentic Mexican cuisine and more than twenty-five different flavors of margaritas.

  The male waiter offered menus, but Rachel and Holly already knew what they wanted: a plate of nachos supreme and two traditional margaritas. Their beverages were delivered almost immediately, and Rachel lifted the glass to her lips to take a long sip of the tart icy drink.

  “I’ve been thinking about this,” Holly said, after she’d sampled her own margarita. “Maybe it’s not as big a deal as you think.”

  “He has a child—I’m not sure any deal gets bigger than that.”

  “But you like kids,” her friend reminded her.

  “I do,” she agreed. “The issue isn’t his daughter...it’s that he didn’t tell me about his daughter.”

  “He told you he’d been married. You didn’t think to ask if they had any kids?”

  “No—I was too busy empathizing over the fact that his wife had died.”

  Holly winced. “Okay. I can see how that might have deflected any further inquiries.”

  The waiter delivered a heaping plate of crisp tortilla chips layered with spicy ground beef, onions, tomatoes and jalapeños, and covered in melted cheese.

  “Thank God—I’m starving,” Holly said.

  “Or you could thank the waiter,” Rachel suggested drily.

  Her friend glanced up at the server and gave him a wide smile. “Thank you—sincerely.”

  “You’re welcome.” He returned the smile.

  Rachel lifted her glass to her lips and realized it was empty.

  “Can I bring you ladies another round?”

  “Yes, please.” One of the other great things about Marg & Rita’s was that it was within easy walking distance of Rachel’s apartment.

  Holly dug into the plate of nachos with enthusiasm. Although it was one of Rachel’s favorite menu items, too, she wasn’t feeling very hungry tonight. But she put a couple of chips on her plate and nibbled on them.

  “Getting back to the topic of our conversation,” Holly said, and popped a jalapeño in her mouth. “I just think you should consider giving Andrew a chance to explain before you write him off completely.”

  “Okay.” Rachel dunked a chip in sour cream. “Considered and discarded.”

  Her friend shook her head, but a smile was tugging at the corners of her mouth. “It’s not like you to be so rigid and unforgiving.”

  “It’s the new me—the one determined not to end up with her heart broken again.”

  “But you know there’s got to be more to the story.”

  “And I’m not willing to get sucked in by another man’s story,” Rachel told her.

  “Another... Oh. Eric.”

  She nodded.

  Holly wrinkled her nose. “I forgot about him.”

  Rachel couldn’t forget, and she wouldn’t let herself make the same mistake again.

  She’d started dating Eric a few years earlier. She’d met him at a housewarming party for some mutual friends and she’d fallen for him hard and fast. He’d been upfront with her from the beginning, admitting that he was recently divorced and shared custody of his eleven-year-old daughter, Summer.

  Although she’d been eager to meet his child, they’d dated for six months before Eric had let that happen. Rachel understood his reticence, and she appreciated that he didn’t want his daughter to get attached to someone who might not be around for the long haul. He was trying to protect her from the disappointment she experienced every time her mother—his ex-wife—broke up with yet another boyfriend. So when Eric finally introduced Rachel to Summer, she thought it meant that he wanted her to be a part of both of their lives.

  But every time they had plans to do something together with his daughter, his ex-wife would interfere. It was a testament to how naive Rachel was that she didn’t realize he was still in love with Wendy. Every time his ex-wife called, he would jump. He would cancel plans with Rachel without apology in order to hang a picture on Wendy’s bedroom wall or perform some other menial task. Once, they’d been in the middle of sex and he’d answered a hysterical call about a mouse in Wendy’s basement—and then he left Rachel naked in his bed to go dispose of the rodent.

  Every holiday and birthday was a family celebration, which meant that Eric spent it with Summer and Wendy. Rachel had been willing to accept second place in his life—she understood that his daughter was his first priority, as she should be. But she’d sincerely resented that he was more considerate of his ex-wife’s feelings than he was of her own.

  “The situation with Andrew is completely different,” Holly said now. “He doesn’t have an ex-wife pulling his strings from behind the scenes.”

  “No,” Rachel agreed. “But I think I understand better now why it was so difficult for him to take his wedding band off. Nina wasn’t just his wife...she was the mother of his child.”

  “But he has taken it off,” her friend reminded her.

  “He still didn’t tell me about his child.”

  Holly sighed. “I just think you should let him explain.”

  Rachel had no interest in his explanations. In fact, she wouldn’t have minded if she never saw him or talked to him again.

  But when she slipped her key in her lock and realized that her phone was ringing, she automatically raced across the room to answer it because it didn’t occur to her tequila-clouded mind that it might be Andrew.

  “Hello?”

  “Hi.”

  He only said one word—barely one syllable—but she recognized his voice immediately. She sat down on the edge of the c
ouch and willed her head to stop spinning so she could focus. “Why are you calling, Andrew?”

  “I wanted to apologize.”

  “No apology necessary,” she said coldly.

  “I should have told you about Maura.”

  And she couldn’t help thinking that he would have told her if he’d ever planned on introducing her to his child. The fact that he’d never mentioned the little girl’s existence proved that Rachel didn’t matter enough to him to share the details of his life. They’d gone out a couple of times and shared a few kisses, but he’d obviously never intended for their relationship to go any further than that.

  “I handled the situation badly,” he acknowledged. “I’ve never been in the position of having to introduce my daughter to a woman I was dating, because I haven’t had more than one date with anyone since Nina died.”

  He sounded sincere, but she wasn’t going to let herself get sucked in. “So what is the magic number? How many dates did we need to have before you decided to tell me that you had a child?”

  “I wanted to tell you. I tried to tell you.”

  “When? Because I’m pretty sure if you’d said anything that even remotely hinted at the existence of a child, I would have remembered.”

  “Monday,” he said. “The reason I wanted to have lunch with you on Monday was to tell you about Maura. But then you couldn’t get away from the shop, and I didn’t want to dump that kind of news on you when you were obviously distracted by other things.”

  Thinking back, she did remember that he’d started to say something before Holly had interrupted him. But how could she really know what he’d intended to say? How could she know he wasn’t just making an excuse after the fact? And why hadn’t he made any other attempt since?

  “That was five days ago,” she pointed out. “And we’ve talked on the phone every day.”

  “I wanted to tell you in person.”

  She was wavering, and she didn’t want to waver. She wanted to stand firm and righteous and protect her heart. The more time she’d spent with Andrew, the more she’d realized that she could easily fall for the man, but that was a risk she was willing to take. Now she knew there was a lot more at stake.

  The sexy man was a father and his little girl was too adorable to resist, and falling for both of them would definitely lead to heartache. And she’d been there and done that once before.

  “Will you still have lunch with me tomorrow and give me a chance to grovel?”

  She wasn’t sure that was a good idea. She didn’t want to get drawn deeper into his world and start to care for him, only to find out that he was just like Eric.

  “Please,” he added, when she didn’t immediately respond.

  The single word—or maybe it was the sincerity in his tone—tugged at her heartstrings.

  “I’m only asking for an hour of your time,” he continued. “If, after that hour, you don’t want to see me again, I promise to respect your decision.”

  She wasn’t worried about him—she was worried about herself. That she would be willing to take whatever crumbs he was offering her. When would she learn her lesson? When would she realize that she deserved to be with someone who was willing to make her a priority in his life?

  “Will Maura be there?” she asked.

  “No, she’s going to a birthday party tomorrow.”

  If he’d said yes, she might have given him the benefit of the doubt. But it seemed more than convenient that he’d made plans with her when Maura would be somewhere else—it seemed contrived. He hadn’t intended for her to know his daughter—that part of his life was off-limits. And no way was she going there again.

  But she would have lunch with him tomorrow—so that she could tell him, face-to-face, that she wasn’t going to get involved with him. She was going to end their relationship before it really had a chance to begin, before she fell for him more completely than she’d already done.

  “Where did you want to go for lunch?”

  “Why don’t we decide after I pick you up?” he suggested.

  “I’d rather meet you.” That way, she could walk out when she was ready.

  “Okay,” he relented. “How about noon at Chez Henri?”

  She frowned at the unfamiliar name. “Where’s that?”

  He rattled off an address on Evergreen Trail, which she realized could only be in Forrest Hill. No wonder she didn’t recognize the name of the restaurant—she didn’t spend a lot of time in that part of town. If Chez Henri had prices to fit its location, lunch was going to be an expensive meal.

  She experienced a slight twinge of guilt that she was going to let him buy her lunch and then never see him again, until she reminded herself that she’d tried—several times—to decline his invitation but he’d been insistent.

  The next day, Rachel followed his directions into a residential part of the exclusive neighborhood. It turned out that the address he’d given for Chez Henri wasn’t a restaurant at all but a two-story Georgian-style home.

  She might have thought she’d written the address down incorrectly except that she recognized his Infiniti in the driveway. That was when she suspected that he’d kept more secrets from her than the existence of his child. He’d said he was a carpenter, but the gorgeous home in this exclusive neighborhood suggested that he might be connected to a multimillion-dollar furniture company.

  * * *

  He hadn’t been sure she would come. Despite her agreement, Andrew suspected that as soon as Rachel turned onto Evergreen Trail and realized there were no restaurants in sight, she might turn around again. But because he was watching through the window, he saw the lime-green Fiesta slow down in front of his house, then stop in the middle of the road.

  He opened the front door and stepped outside, and after about half a minute, the car pulled into the driveway.

  He walked down the flagstone path to meet her. Spring had finally started to show signs of its arrival, and the sight of the crocuses poking their heads up through the soil almost made him forget the frigid temperatures of a few weeks earlier. Then Rachel got out of her car, and he found an even-better reason to appreciate the warmer weather.

  She was wearing a skirt. A softly flowing number in pale pink that swirled around her knees and drew his attention downward to deliciously slender calves and ankles. Over the skirt she wore a long-sleeved ivory top that dipped low at the front and tied at the side. Her feet were tucked into natural-colored pumps that added a couple inches to her height.

  His gaze skimmed over her again, from top to bottom, and if he hadn’t been so distracted by the mouthwatering sight of her shapely legs as she made her way toward him, he might have seen the steely glint in her eyes and anticipated her mood.

  “Chez Henri?” she queried.

  “Henry is my middle name,” he explained.

  “Any relation to Henry Garrett, of the furniture company?”

  “My grandfather,” he admitted.

  “You’re one of the Garrett Furniture Garretts,” she said, somehow making the words an accusation rather than a statement.

  He nodded. “Yes, I am.”

  “Which proves that I really am an idiot.” She shook her head. “I knew your last name was Garrett, but it never occurred to me that you might have any connection to Garrett Furniture.”

  “Can we talk about this inside?” he suggested, because so long as she remained standing in his driveway, he knew she was thinking about getting back in her car and driving away.

  She didn’t respond to his question. Instead, she said, “We used the company as a case study in one of my business courses in college. Garrett Furniture was cited as an example of a small company that proved it was possible to grow and change and continue to be successful while still employing local people.”

  “My father will be pleased t
o hear that,” he said. “But what I told you was the truth—I am a carpenter.”

  “For Garrett Furniture.”

  He shrugged. “It seemed disloyal to apply for a job somewhere else.”

  She didn’t crack a smile. “I don’t know you at all.”

  “You do,” he insisted. “My connection to Garrett Furniture doesn’t change anything. I just wanted a chance to get to know you without all the other stuff getting in the way.”

  “Other stuff?” she echoed, her tone filled with disbelief. “Would that other stuff be your job or your daughter? Or are there still other things that I don’t know?”

  “No, I think we’ve covered everything.”

  “Good.” She nodded and turned back to the driveway.

  He caught her arm and gently turned her around to face him again. “You came for lunch,” he reminded her. “I’m not going to let you walk away hungry.”

  Rachel wasn’t really hungry, and she knew that the longer she stayed the less likely she was to stick to her plan to say a final goodbye to him.

  “I just put the rosemary chicken and potatoes into the oven.”

  “You cooked?”

  He shook his head. “Sharlene prepped everything for me.”

  “Sharlene?”

  “My housekeeper.”

  “You have a housekeeper,” she said, and wondered why she was surprised. He was one of the Garrett Furniture Garretts—of course he had a housekeeper.

  “I hired her after Nina died,” he admitted. “I’m a lousy cook and I didn’t want Maura to starve.”

  She let him lead her into the house, even though she knew it was probably a mistake. She shouldn’t be here. She was happy with her life: she was a partner in a successful business—nothing even close to the scale of Garrett Furniture, but definitely holding its own—she lived in a nice if small apartment with a great view of Memorial Park, and she’d recently made the last payment on her car. Yes, she had a good life, but it didn’t belong anywhere near his world.

  A truth that became even clearer when she followed him down the wide hallway, peering into the doorways of the rooms they passed. Her first impression was that his house was surprisingly homey. It wasn’t overdone or ostentatious, but the art on the walls and the heirloom carpets on the floor quietly whispered money, a sound that was echoed by the glossy antique tables and richly textured fabrics of the furniture.