“Good. Because we’ve been eating them and I didn’t keep track of where they came from.”
“He can’t make pancakes,” Karen piped up. “They turned black and smoked up the kitchen.”
“I’m still learning,” Adam said.
With the skill one develops as a Sunday school teacher to a class of boys who can’t tie their own ties, Stacy put Adam’s to rights. She let her hand linger at the pulsing vein at his throat. Just as she had hoped, his skin was smooth as silk—and yet oddly magnetic. He was so addled, trying again to check the time on a watch he didn’t have, that he gave no flicker of surprise when she patted his lower lip with her finger.
“Go on to work,” she said, pulling the watch from his suit-jacket pocket. He took it sheepishly. “We’ll have a fine day.”
“Here’s some phone numbers where you can reach me,” Adam said, holding out a scrap of paper with one hand, using his other to buckle the watch. “I’ll be at the mayor’s office. His number is…let me see if I can find it…”
She called off the numbers.
He did a double take.
“And his secretary’s name is…”
“Betty Carbol,” Stacy said. She put her arms around Karen, and with just a glance reassured the girl that they were going to have a great play date.
“And Betty’s extension, if you need to call for anything, is…”
“Two oh three.”
“You can tell her that I’m in the meeting on—”
“The new elementary school.”
He crumpled up the paper.
“Is there anything about my morning you don’t already know about?”
“It’s the mayor’s birthday today,” she rambled on. “He likes eclairs from the bakery, but his wife’s got him on a strict diet—” Then she stopped herself.
A woman of mystery, the kind men admired, wouldn’t go running off at the mouth like this, but she couldn’t help wanting to be helpful. That was her nature. Or wanting him to listen. That was his handsomeness—which stunned her into wanting him to just stand there, and if talking about the mayor’s habits made him available for her to admire, so be it.
“So do I get him the eclair or not?”
“If you get him one, he’ll pretend he’s only eating it to be polite, and he might even look a little annoyed, but that’ll just be for show. Deep down, he’ll be thrilled and if he doesn’t eat it in two bites, I’ll be surprised.”
“I think that means yes.”
She nodded urgently.
Adam unlocked his BMW and shoved his briefcase onto the passenger seat.
“And where is the bakery?”
“Corner of Willow and Linden. Two blocks east of here. It’s called Deerhorn Patisserie. The owner’s name is Leslie.”
He climbed in and stuck his head out the driver’s side window. “How do you know all this stuff?”
“Deerhorn is very small. Everyone knows everything about everyone else. Or, at least, they like to.”
“Fair enough. I’ll be two hours. And thank you.”
He backed up the drive and zoomed off in the direction of the bakery.
“Will we only have two hours?” Karen asked.
“Oh, no, we’ll have all day,” Stacy said, giving her a hug. “The Village Council members really like to hear themselves talk.”
Karen smiled mischievously.
“Do you think my daddy’s handsome?”
Stacy caught her breath sharply.
“Of course he is, Karen,” she said, knowing in an instant that any affair would have to be kept secret from Karen. As it would be from every other man, woman, child and dog in Deerhorn. She added airily, “Your father is the kind of man who gets women throwing themselves at him all the time. You must have to sweep dozens of them off the porch every morning just so you can get your paper from the sidewalk.”
“Oh, we do,” Stacy said proudly. “We have to use the very biggest brooms. But are you going to throw yourself at him?”
“No,” Stacy said, although she wondered if just plain asking counted as throwing.
“Would you marry him if he asked you?”
“He would never ask,” Stacy said.
“Why not? I could use a mom.”
“Oh, Karen, I think your father just needs to get used to being a dad. Being a husband’s even rougher, I’d imagine,” Stacy said, guiding the girl and the dog toward her house. “I have a few clients to visit this morning. Want to go with me?”
Karen pulled a face.
“Clients? Eeeeooow. My dad has clients. Do I have to bring a coloring book?”
Mugs stood up and shook the compost off his body.
“If you want to bring a book, you can,” Stacy said. “But my clients don’t expect little girls to be quiet.”
“Really?”
“Oh, not quiet at all,” Stacy shook her head. “They like girls who shout and sing and like to play in the mud and who get their clothes really, really dirty and don’t mind taking a good, long bubble bath after the meeting is over.”
Karen pondered this with a fist shoved up under her dimpled jaw.
“That’s the kind of girl I am.”
“And they like dogs who yawn and drool.”
They both looked at the dog.
“That’s the kind of dog Mugs is. He yawns and drools…and farts!”
“Then my clients want to see both of you.”
“They sound like nice clients.”
“Oh, they are,” Stacy assured. “They really are.”
Chapter Four
Deerhorn’s mayor was known to his constituents by a nickname acquired during his reign as Wisconsin’s Featherweight Golden Gloves champion a quarter century ago. The honorable Eugene “Lefty” Pincham had traded the boxing ring for the campaign trail and his renowned left hook for the tools of the political trade.
He talked. Interrupted. Asked a “just supposing…” question. Offered an anecdote related to him by one of his town’s many citizens. Reminisced about his personal experiences. And put in his two cents’ worth.
Not that he was hostile to any of the elements of Adam’s presentation—quite the contrary, since, as he had devoured the eclair with a suitably pained look on his face and in two bites, nodding at Adam’s wishes for a happy birthday, Lefty considered himself Adam’s newest best friend.
It’s just, couldn’t this wall be taller and that wall shorter? Couldn’t Adam put this door there and that door here? And wouldn’t the whole building look better if the gymnasium was on the west side instead of the east side and the principal’s office was on the first floor instead of the second? And what about a little area for the teachers to give classes outside?
After all, one of his favorite memories was when his own teacher would take the children outside to listen to her read stories on the grassy knoll.
Adam took notes, nodded his head and figured Mayor Pincham could show the Brazilian government officials a thing or two about being difficult.
Lefty’s colleagues on the Village Council weren’t any less expressive. Sitting around a long conference table in the mayor’s office, the six men and women oohed and aaahed over the scale model for the new elementary school, insisted on telling Adam about the original one-room schoolhouse that had served Deerhorn into this century, took apart the scale model into pieces that couldn’t be rejoined and brought out pictures of grandchildren who would be going to the school that Adam would build.
“They haven’t got enough room for all the kids in the one-room school,” the Village Council president said. “So my little granddaughter gets bussed forty miles to Geneva to go to fourth grade. That works out to two hours on a bus every day.”
Adam nodded solemnly and wondered if Vegas was hideously hot this June.
“But there’s somethin’ missing,” the mayor declared when Adam produced the charcoal sketch of the school with an asphalt circular drive for dropping off pupils. “By the way, we’re not from the city—kids
walk home. Except, of course, for the kindergarteners who don’t have an older brother or sister.”
Adam scribbled a note to get rid of the drive, and wondered if Ryan Jennings was getting a chance to spend a few hours at any of the casinos. He wondered if Ryan’s wife liked casinos, concluded she didn’t, and decided that not only was he being wasted on Deerhorn but Vegas was being wasted on Ryan.
“Moms usually just pay a neighbor’s kid five dollars a month to walk the little ones home,” the Village Council president said.
Adam erased the asphalt drive. He remembered that the Luxor hotel had sent him a coupon for a free weekend. Wasted. Utterly wasted.
“Still looks too hard,” Lefty Pincham said.
“Hard?” Adam asked.
“Hard.”
“You took the word right out of my mouth,” the Village Council president said. “It’s not soft at all. It’s stark. Cold. Unfriendly-like. What kind of materials did you say you were using?”
“Granite. Brought in from Utah,” Adam said. “Finest granite available outside of Italy. And you’ll be paying just a fraction of its cost.”
At the word cost, the council members opened their presentation folders.
“I mean a fraction of its retail value,” Adam amended.
The folders closed.
“Granite,” Lefty said, nodding wearily. “There’s the problem right there. The school looks too stone-cold…like a prison. Not that I’ve ever seen a prison. That must be it. Don’t use granite.”
“What about glass?” Adam asked, producing one of the earlier drawings the Village Council had rejected. “J.P. thought you might like this one if we made a few changes. Perhaps putting a steel beam across the roof so the glass could extend up to the peak.”
The mayor looked as if he had bitten into a particularly sour apple.
“Meaning no disrespect to Lasser,” the Village Council president said, and all the council members ducked their heads at the mention of the man who had made this project possible. “But maybe we could use a softer material for the exterior walls?”
Adam rubbed his temples.
“You were thinking cotton, perhaps?”
“Well, that’s a possibility,” one of the council members said.
They nodded in unison, carefully considering what the school would look like cocooned in a layer of soft, fluffy cotton.
It was twenty minutes before Adam could convince each of them that it was a stupid idea, even if it was his.
By the time he put his plans in his briefcase and strode quickly past Betty Carbol’s desk outside the mayor’s office, it was four o’clock.
Two hours. Two hours!
Didn’t these small-town folks understand how to get things done?
The meeting had resolved nothing and in fact, as soon as the mayor had located his gavel in the middle drawer of his desk, he slapped it hard on his desk protector and announced an adjournment until the next week.
“TANGLEWOOD,” the secretary said.
Adam stopped short of the Deerhorn Township flag draped near the office door. He stared at the pert older woman behind the front desk. She had sky-high hair and an impressive collection of bangles around her wrists. She was applying a strident shade of coral to her lips in preparation for getting off work.
“Beg your pardon?”
“Tanglewood,” she said, scribbling an address on a Post-it note. “It’s the only decent place in town. You can’t take her to Burger Joint after all she’s done for you.”
“Who? Take who?”
Betty snapped her purse shut.
“Don’t you go telling me that you don’t remember who you left your child with!”
“Did she call?”
“Only to tell me that they had gone over to your house.”
He thought of the fresh-faced neighbor who had saved his life—after all, coloring books would have lasted an hour, two at the very most.
Stacy was a beauty, but not really his type of beauty. Didn’t wear any makeup, near as he could tell. Probably could do with a professional haircut and four salon assistants blow-drying those curls to a glossy flatness. And overalls on a woman looked too masculine for his tastes—although her curves handled the denim well. But while he was on the topic of making his neighbor over, he’d get her one of those miracle bras and a manicure.
Then he thought of the kitchen. His kitchen. The one that was the disaster area.
“Are you all right?” Betty asked. “You look a little peaked.”
“No. I mean, sure. She’s at my house? Actually in my house?”
Betty nodded.
“Called at one o’clock. Said she’d be there with Karen. Your daughter needed a bubble bath.”
“Okay, where am I taking her? Tanglewood?”
In that instant, he knew that any woman who caught sight of the disaster he had made of breakfast deserved dinner that very night. Even if she hadn’t taken his daughter for the day.
Good thing she wasn’t blonde or he’d be in some trouble.
“I called in a reservation for five-thirty. Thought I’d make it for a little later so you can give the two girls time to freshen up. Stacy gets her hands so dirty. You tell her I said to pull a nice dress from the closet. Not those overalls.”
“Thanks.”
Betty winked at him.
“Anytime, darlin’,” she crooned, adding as he was about to cross the threshold to the hall, “you know, she’s very pretty.”
“Yes,” Adam agreed warily.
“And she’s single.”
“Uh-huh.”
“And I pride myself on being rather cosmopolitan and you are a sophisticated man, too. I don’t think twenty-eight is so old for a woman, do you?”
“Uh, no, of course not.”
“And she’s good with children. And dogs. And plants.”
“All very good qualities.”
“Would make some man an excellent wife.”
Adam set his mouth tightly. Nothing, but nothing, was stopping him from picking his own assignments from now on. He might have missed out on Vegas but he was going to get payback for that.
“No doubt she will be a wonderful wife,” he said carefully.
“I don’t believe this stuff about her being too shy with men. She’s got a fire inside her. And it’s a shame with her father dying two months ago,” Betty continued, looking down at the magazine on her desk with all the nonchalance of a praying mantis. “Has that big house all to herself. Stacy being so fresh and innocent, not like some of the modern women these days who go traipsing around all over. And she’s a very practical, down-to-earth person, but I bet with the right man, she could loosen up. She might be quite a pistol in…”
He remembered J.P.’s promise. Get Deerhorn done. But fast. And under budget—especially since this was a gift project. No bad behavior from the crew. No mixing it up with the natives. And then Adam would never, ever have to pull this kind of duty again.
“Miss Carbol, I don’t mean any disrespect, but I’m not dating at the moment.”
Betty placed a blue-veined hand solemnly upon the wide shelf of her breasts.
“Why, I swear I wasn’t suggesting a thing!”
On the drive through Deerhorn’s streets, Adam told himself taking Stacy Poplar to dinner was the right thing to do. The good-neighbor thing to do.
And heaven only knew how many more days he might face an emergency.
In fact, he should ask her if she’d like a job. If he paid her what he paid the housekeepers in Chicago, he knew it would be better than what she could get around here.
He drove his Beamer into his garage and looked across the lawn to his neighbor’s house. Yeah, offer her a job. Every day after school. Weekends and holidays. If she was willing to keep Karen overnight, maybe he could slip down to Chicago and recharge his batteries.
With Amanda. Or Basha. Or Chynna.
Or any of the remaining twenty-three letters—make that women—of his black book’s a
lphabet. He wouldn’t even have to make love to these women. Just having the chance to go to a club, have a few laughs and a good meal would be enough.
He’d explain to Little Miss Tree that this morning wasn’t how he usually operated. He’d give her a bonus if she could clean or cook or do laundry.
He’d use his most winning smile.
And he’d never, ever touch pancake batter again.
He opened the kitchen door.
And stared, a mixture of horror and fascination coming over him.
The kitchen looked no different than when his real estate agent had showed it to him three minutes after he signed the lease agreement. Except it smelled better—like Windex and vanilla.
He stepped cautiously to the stove, swiped a finger across the burner panel that had been caked for a week with charred grease from an unsuccessful attempt at cheeseburgers.
The stove surface squeaked. His finger was as dry as if he had rubbed it with talc.
He opened the creaky-hinged dishwasher. Shiny plates and clear-as-crystal glasses with tiny beads of water shuddering from their rims.
He put his foot down here. There. Over here. Over there.
His shoes came up and went down on a floor that had been mopped to perfection. None of that spilled juice residue.
Hired, he thought. Hired.
“Karen? Miss Poplar?”
He walked into the living room, noting that the week’s worth of newspapers that he had couriered every day from his Chicago office were stacked for recycling—and tied with white string. The seven coffee cups, one for each day of the week, were cleared from the coffee table. The dust balls were gone.
He decided to chance a look upstairs.
Upstairs was even neater, smelled more subtly feminine, like peaches and talc. Each room revealed cleanliness of a sort he had only heard about—but his room, untouched, was the Before picture on this Martha Stewart makeover.
She knew not to touch his stuff, he marveled.
Knew not to move a pencil, contractor’s notebook, paint sample book. Even the crumpled pieces of paper scattered around his drafting table were preserved—well, a man never knew when he’d want a second look.
One Sexy Daddy Page 3
