“How ’bout a good housekeeper?”
“People take care of their own homes. Or they get a relative to help out.”
“I’d be willing to adopt anybody who can take care of a five-year-old, cook, clean and isn’t opposed to long hours.”
“I don’t know of anybody. But maybe you could take a coloring book with you to the meeting and tell your daughter to entertain herself and to keep quiet. Karen is a good girl. Anyhow, I’ll see her tomorrow morning at the usual time.”
Adam mumbled a goodbye and hung up the phone. Mugs looked up from his morning nap.
Institute day.
Just three weeks before, he had thought life couldn’t get much worse than facing anacondas, machete-ing his way through the jungle or negotiating with local tribal lords. Or that it couldn’t get any worse than hearing that your boss wanted you to do a favor.
He picked up the quarter-inch-thick Deerhorn telephone directory off the kitchen counter and the portable phone from the dining-room table. Then he went upstairs to the spacious second bedroom. The walls seemed to be painted green—an illusion created by the heavenly canopy of trees that protected the house.
“Karen, come talk to me,” he said, leaning against the doorjamb.
“No, I want to stay here today,” said a voice from under the bed. “I heard you on the phone. It’s in-sue-hoot day.”
“I’ve got a meeting.”
“I don’t want to go to another meeting. I’m tired of coloring books.”
He didn’t blame her. Since J.P. had given him the Deerhorn project, Karen had been to fifteen housekeeper interviews—each and every one its own disaster—six business lunches, three dates—three women whose numbers he crossed off in his black book, sure they would never, ever, ever see him again because a five-year-old with a coloring book isn’t all that romantic—four meetings with the Lasser & Thomas crew that would convene in Deerhorn under his supervision and two rounds of eighteen-hole golf while he tried to persuade J.P. to change his mind.
He’d be pretty sick of coloring books and dot-to-dot workbooks, too.
“What about your secretary?” Karen asked. “Can’t I stay in her office?”
“She’s in Chicago. Back at the office. We’re in Wisconsin. A hundred miles away.”
“Thought we were going to Vegas.”
“I did, too.”
“I’ll stay under the bed today. I’ll be good.”
“Karen, do you have any friends at school you’d like to play with?”
“No, they’ve all got cooties.”
“Not all of them.”
“Yes, all of them.”
“Karen, you’ve only been in school for a week. You’ve got to give this a chance.”
“They’ve got cooties.”
“No, they don’t all—”
Adam glanced at his watch. Eight forty-five. And he was being drawn into a debate about whether all kindergarteners in Deerhorn, Wisconsin, had cooties. He was starting to think it was his housekeepers who had deserved the combat pay. And he had just become aware of a funny smell…
“Karen, darling, this is important. Do you have any friends here at all?” he said, sniffing. Smelled like the time Miss Venezuela used the hair dryer too long in the tent. “Karen, can you think of someone you might want to spend a few hours with?”
“Stacy!”
Adam crouched down by the bed.
“What’s her last name?”
“Tree.”
“Stacy Tree?”
His daughter slid out from under the bed, her pigtails covered with dust motes.
“No, silly,” she said, with an expression that let him know that he was a most exasperating daddy. “Her last name is a tree.”
CHERRY. Ash. Spruce. Pine. Maple. Oak. Willow. Hawthorn.
Adam ran through every tree name he could remember as he hustled his daughter down the stairs. He knew he was grasping at straws when he got to Weeping Hemlock and Buckthorn, but he had just twenty minutes before the mayor of Deerhorn would introduce him to the Village Council.
He was half-way down the stairs and all the way down the list of trees, bushes, shrubs and vines that he could think of without resorting to an encyclopedia, when he saw the smoke billowing out of the kitchen into the empty dining room.
“Pancakes,” he said, smacking his forehead.
He charged into the smoke, grabbed the pitcher of orange juice and dumped its contents on the griddle. A hiss, a crackle, a sigh—and the smell of burnt butter and citrus.
The griddle was a soggy orange and black mess.
“P is for pancakes!” Karen exclaimed, clapping her hands. “Now I remember her last name. Poplar.”
“Great, but the house nearly burned down. And it’s a rental and J.P. would probably make me stay to rebuild it if it went up in flames.”
He wondered just how many breakfasts he had ruined in the past weeks.
“Is it a Pop-Tarts morning again, Daddy?” Karen said, sliding open a window. “Or is it one of the neighbor’s coffee cakes?”
Loosening his tie, he sat at the kitchen table and didn’t even scold Mugs when he hoisted himself up to his lap.
“Do you think Stacy’s mother would have you over in the morning if I offered to have you and Stacy play here in the afternoon?”
Karen put her index finger on her chin.
“I think so.”
Good enough.
He opened the directory, sending up a prayer of thanksgiving so heartfelt when he found an S. Poplar that he didn’t even pause to note the address. In seconds, he had a female voice on the phone.
“Is this Mrs. Poplar?”
“This is Stacy Poplar,” the voice cautiously replied.
“Can I speak to your mother?”
There was a pause.
“My mother died many years ago.”
“Sorry. I must have the wrong number.”
“Can she play?” Karen asked, tugging at his sleeve. “Can she play? Can she play?”
Mugs nosed around the stove and licked the dripping juice from the floor.
“Stop that, Mugs. No, Mrs. Poplar, not you,” Adam said, feeling a certain desperation creep into his voice but powerless to stop it. “I’ve made a mistake. My daughter thought she was friends with a child named Stacy Poplar. Do you know any family in Deerhorn with the last name of Poplar and a daughter named Stacy?”
“I’m Stacy Poplar and I might be your daughter’s friend. Who is she? And who are you?”
“Daddy, can she play?” Karen pleaded.
Mugs made a sour face as he spat a pancake out of his mouth. Adam shot him a look he hoped would be daunting. Mugs yawned.
“My daughter is Karen Tyler.”
“Oh, I met Karen yesterday.”
“Daddy, I forgot to tell you—”
“Not now, Karen. Mrs. Poplar—”
“Miss.”
“Miss Poplar, how did you meet my daughter?”
“She was at my house.”
“She’s been to your house?” Adam asked, glancing sternly at Karen. He knew he wasn’t a great single father, wasn’t going to win any awards for his cooking or cleaning or even, perhaps especially, not for his skills at laundry—but he could account for where his daughter was every minute of the day and he figured that fact would carry him through even the worst disasters.
Like the pancakes congealing in an Orange Glacé Flambé.
“Daddy, I forgot to tell you that she lives…” Karen whispered, pointing out the window.
Adam glanced outside to the property line, the row of hostas that separated his new home from the cottage that had once served as a carriage house to the broken-up summer home of a Chicago businessman.
He saw a woman, tall and thin, her coppery hair contrasting sharply with the early spring greenery. She wore a white T-shirt, yellow clogs and overalls that nicely failed to hide delicate curves. She held a cellular phone to her ear as she raised her face to his house. Even from where h
e sat, Adam could see her skin was pale and smooth.
“Daddy I forgot to tell you.”
“What?”
“She lives next door, Daddy.”
“Is that your friend Stacy?” he asked softly.
Karen followed his gaze. “Yes. That’s her!”
“Beautiful woman, you could save my life,” he blurted, before thought could get the better of words.
“I’m sure you’ve used that line a hundred times,” Stacy scolded good-naturedly. “And I’m sure it’s worked a hundred times.”
Right on both counts. Beautiful woman.
Not something she heard much any more, although she had gotten her share of compliments before she had turned into her father’s caretaker. Before the adjectives used to describe Stacy had become “caring,” “patient” and “sad, sad, sad.”
As in “such a caring daughter,” “such a patient young woman,” “such a sad, sad, sad story.”
None of the adjectives ordinarily used to describe young women were applied to Stacy. It wasn’t that she had become un-beautiful. Or uncharming. Or even all that sad, although of course, the last days of her father’s life were a trial. She thought of herself only as caring as anybody else would be under the circumstances. She had days she was patient and days she knew she could slow down. And she was too cheerful to give in to sadness for very long.
But the most important quality of her life had become her obligation to care for her father, and that had prevented her from meeting men, dating or even marrying. No children, no home of her own and she was already twenty-eight—that made Deerhorn residents shake their heads with pity.
The adjectives used by Deerhorn’s residents to describe Stacy had been only slightly altered by Mr. Poplar’s death the previous month.
Added to “caring,” “patient” and “such a sad, sad, sad story” was “never married.”
A recent addition, but one which would surely follow her to the end of her days.
Never married.
It wasn’t ever worded as “not yet married.” Just “never married.” No one would be so crass as to say “spinster.” But the sentiment was the same—harsh and unyielding. Marriage was entered into through a window opening for a few short years in a woman’s life—in Deerhorn, the window had shut quietly on Stacy Poplar sometime during the past eight years, little noticed in the long days of her father’s final years.
And beautiful?
That word could be used perhaps in the past tense, as in “she was a beautiful girl, and could have married had it not been for Mr. Poplar’s stroke.”
She liked it much better the way her new neighbor said beautiful.
In the present tense.
Even if he had used the word a hundred times before and would use it a hundred times after he left Deerhorn, she liked it.
And then she put her hands on her hips and stared at Old Man Peterson’s house.
She had always been a no-nonsense person, very practical, and if anyone had asked, romantic or realist? she wouldn’t have hesitated.
Realist.
She had thought about the stranger coming into town in realistic, not romantic, terms on the Sunday she first found out he would be coming to build the school instead of Mr. Ryan Jennings and his family. And in those clear-eyed, realistic terms, she thought that Adam Tyler would work out very nicely.
Very nicely indeed, for her purposes.
And now her mind was made up, although there had been flip-flops over the last three weeks. It was the fact that he had said “beautiful,” whether he meant it or not. Because he wasn’t from Deerhorn, he didn’t add or subtract “beautiful” from “caring,” “patient,” and “sad, sad, sad.” And because he was charming, he put just the right inflection on the word, as if he were an explorer and she were a discovery.
She savored the word, as she stood with her hoe at the back of the bed of hostas and black-eyed Susans and waited for the Tylers.
Beautiful Stacy Poplar.
Chapter Three
Karen and her father charged over the red-pebble shared driveway. Karen wore a T-shirt, shorts and yellow rainboots, the last of which could be called inappropriate for an unseasonably hot and dry spring—but then Stacy remembered that Karen didn’t tie her own shoes. Her father didn’t look in any condition to tie them for her.
He wore a dark gray suit that was the sort of thing men in Deerhorn reserved for weddings, funerals and christenings. He had clearly made an effort on the tie, but had apparently been distracted mid-knot. Its ends flapped over his shoulder. His top shirt-button was undone, one collar point spiked upwards.
His eyes darted to his wrist three times as he checked for the time, realized he didn’t have his watch, checked again, realized he didn’t have his watch, checked one more time and then admitted defeat.
He was having a killer day. Still, looking at him up close, Stacy concluded he was handsome and he had an indefinable masculine aura that made her feel more feminine than she had in a long, long time. He was even better than what she could have imagined for herself.
Wild rumor, innuendo and half-fanciful gossip had preceded this man like a cloud of dust before a till tractor. The gossips standing outside Deerhorn Union Church after Sunday services had declared him a playboy, a rake, even to have possibly once been a pin-up model—or was it a Chippendale’s stripper?
All this because Mayor Pincham’s wife had accompanied her husband to Chicago to meet the Lasser & Thomas architects at their home office. There, she had chatted up a secretary, a receptionist, the entire mailroom staff and several draftsmen.
Mrs. Pincham returned to Deerhorn with a lot of extraneous and scandalous stories about employees she had never met and which no one in Deerhorn would ever have the chance to verify. Lasser & Thomas provided its own crew of workers and they would be housed in trailers the company drove up from Chicago—she didn’t know much about them. Skilled electricians, carpenters and plumbers would arrive only when their particular expertise was required, but these men did not interest Mrs. Pincham.
It was the supervisor, Adam Tyler—for whom the company had rented the empty Peterson house—who was of interest.
Adam Tyler, Mrs. Pincham told her friends in a reverent yet appalled tone, had kept mistresses in every city he had worked in—and he was sent all over the North and South American continents—had a love child by a woman who unceremoniously dumped the baby on his desk, and he was always sent to the most difficult projects. This last caused many in Deerhorn to question the accuracy of Mrs. Pincham’s information since building a six-class elementary school didn’t seem on quite the same level as hospitals and office buildings.
He just might do, Stacy had thought to herself as she had quietly passed the gaggle of men and women surrounding Mrs. Pincham after church that noon. Mrs. Pincham was declaring that she, for one, would not approve of any woman falling under his sway for a “casual affair.” Fathers and mothers present vowed to keep their daughters under close watch, although most every female over the age of eighteen was already going steady, engaged or even married with children.
No one even thought of Stacy.
Stacy was, after all, never married.
She walked right by them, kept her head down, nodding demurely at the reverend’s raised hat and his nice-weather-we’re-having and walked home.
He’ll do, she had thought, going over the scandalous and not-so-scandalous items on her list. The list she had prepared after her father’s death.
Adam Tyler would do very nicely.
But, of course, a man like that would have other things to while away his hours with than teaching a Deerhorn spinster how to make love.
She had thought about Adam as she walked home and fixed herself a Sunday dinner over which she lingered unaccountably until three. Perhaps when she met him, she wouldn’t even be interested and she could move on to other items on her agenda, like learning to dance and arranging the photographs in the family album. Perhaps he would sa
y no, because he had other women in mind or she wasn’t his type or Mrs. Pincham had all her facts wrong. Perhaps she would lose her nerve and never breathe a word.
Lord knew that last one was a greater-than-even possibility.
But here it was three Thursdays later and he stood before her, or rather, hopped on one wing-tipped shoe and then another because his drooling, gray-muzzled dog was leaning in on his heels and his daughter was tugging at his arm and he couldn’t tie his tie while holding a spatula in his hands that smelled like burnt oranges and pancake batter.
He was broad-shouldered, slim-waisted and might very well have had a career as a beefcake boy—although there was something about his proud jaw that made her think he wouldn’t demean himself by stripping for money. His hair was dark brown, the color of the dark coffee Burger Joint served, and the thick mass invited a woman to run her fingers through it. His upper lip was slim and unyielding, but his lower lip looked bold and sensual.
He would be worth it.
He would give her what she wanted—if he agreed to give her anything at all.
He was better than she ever could have expected.
Wow!
Ask him, Stacy!
But, of course, one couldn’t ask a man to make love when he had a daughter tugging at one arm, a dog lapping at his heels and a meeting with the mayor in less than half an hour.
She remembered herself, remembered her manners, which were always impeccable, this present lapse notwithstanding. Luckily he hadn’t noticed that she had stared—and stared with her mouth wide open. She took the spatula out of his hand.
“I don’t do this every day,” he said, letting Karen’s backpack slip off his wrist into her other hand.
“I’m sure you don’t”
“Yeah, usually I have to do coloring books,” Karen complained.
The dog shook out his coat, yawned and shoved his drool-dripping muzzle into a patch of mushroom compost.
“And I never properly thanked you for the coffee cake you left on our doorstep the first day we moved here.”
“There were a lot of other coffee cakes,” she said mildly. “I counted six when I left mine. It’ll be tough for you to remember who to send your thank you notes to,” and then as she saw his stricken expression, she added quickly, “not that anybody in Deerhorn expects a thank you note just for being a good neighbor.”
One Sexy Daddy Page 2
