“No, Karen, I’ll take care of it. I told you that you’re a good kid and I mean it. You are. Every kid occasionally forgets things. That’s why they invented adults. How many cupcakes do you need?”
“Thirty Plus one for the teacher.”
He groaned.
“And one for the janitor. Daddy, I’m so sorry.”
“It’s okay. Thirty cupcakes.”
“Thirty-two.”
“We can buy them at the bakery on the way to school.”
Her face fell.
“Everyone else does homemade.”
“I’ll set my alarm early and I’ll make them.”
“It’ll be too hard! Look what you did with the pancakes.”
“Cupcakes will be a snap,” he lied. “That’s why they call things that are easy ‘a piece of cake.’ I’ll have them made before you get up. You go to sleep. Take Mugs with you for company.”
Mugs lurched from his spot at the end of Adam’s bed and followed Stacy down the hall.
That night Adam dreamt that he was surrounded by cupcakes. Every time he brought one to his lips, it became Stacy’s mouth that he devoured.
He awoke to a 6:00 a.m. alarm. He was a strong man, used to pushing himself to his limits. Although he ached to hit the snooze button, he got up right away and put on jeans and a work shirt.
On the way downstairs, he considered the items necessary for the production of homemade cupcakes. Flour, butter, sugar, eggs, baking powder and those funny little paper cups—and wasn’t there a special kind of pan? To say nothing of icing.
He went out to the front porch to get the paper. There on the stoop was a clear-wrapped plate with thirty-two cupcakes frosted with chocolate icing and white confetti sprinkles. He picked up the plate and wondered how she knew.
He looked up, noticing the newspaper boy rocking on his bike seat at the end of the drive. Was he imagining things or did the boy have a particularly sly look in his eye?
He waved and the paperboy slammed his foot down on his pedal, riding off without a backward glance. Adam put the plate on the kitchen counter and went upstairs to his study.
A fax had just come in from Lasser. Its tone was urgent and not a little whiny. “Meeting—this afternoon. This project has got to be finished up but soon.”
He groaned as he read it, then crumpled it up and scored a three-point basket in the trash.
He waited until eight o’clock before calling Stacy.
“Let’s go dancing,” he said. “As soon as I walk Karen to school. Oh, and thanks for the cupcakes. How’d you know about Snack Day?”
“Karen told me.”
Chapter Nine
“I can hardly believe this!” Marion shrieked. Stacy held the phone away from her ear. “The fact that I have to hear it from Nancy Tigerman when I picked up the newspaper outside my door is simply too humiliating. I pretended I knew all about it while inside I was crying. My own big sister wouldn’t tell me herself! Stacy, I’m not so young that I wouldn’t understand if you have needs—I’m a married woman, after all.”
Stacy sat on the living room couch, wearing a freshly ironed white cotton blouse and an olive-green cotton gabardine skirt. She was as jumpy as she would have been had she chugged seven cups of coffee—which she hadn’t. And not just because Marion was having a hissy fit.
Item #23—Dance.
Did that mean they were going to dance? Right in her own home? And in the morning, which sounded particularly indulgent?
Wouldn’t it be embarrassing to see him again? Would she have trouble looking him in the eye? Would she blush—in her not-at-all-delicate, lobster-red way?
She decided that the most wonderful thing about Adam Tyler was that he was leaving in two months.
What if he talked?
What if he had already talked? And to Nancy Tigerman, of all people. How’d he know Deerhorn’s only beautician?
“Uh, was Nancy shocked?”
“Absolutely! You’ve never done anything like this before. Stacy, people rely on you to be stable and unchanging—especially me. Not running around with the first man who comes into Deerhorn…”
“He’s not the first man to come to Deerhorn.”
“All right, the first drop-dead handsome one.”
“How do you know?”
“Last week at the Village Hall when I was getting Jim’s new business permit. He’s a looker. So this morning Nancy told me—the whole story.”
The whole story?
“So you’re upset.”
“Of course I am.”
“And how many other people know?”
“If Nancy Tigerman knows, you can best believe that every man, woman, child and dog in Deerhorn knows.”
Stacy took a deep breath. How could she explain to her little sister that she was sometimes, if only occasionally, more than a caretaker? That she wanted to experience lovemaking if only so she could understand what all of the hullabaloo was? So that she could be the stable and unchanging Stacy Poplar—with some memories to cherish? And that she had thought up all this, had even worked up the herculean courage to ask a man—a virtual stranger—and then, after only an hour’s reflection, reconsidered and called it off.
“And at Tanglewood, of all places,” Marion continued. “Nobody goes to Tanglewood unless it’s something special—or you’re a tourist who got lost driving up to Lake Geneva Resorts.”
Relief.
Marion didn’t know everything.
“It was just dinner,” Stacy said, confirming the limits of her sister—and Nancy Tigerman’s—knowledge.
“It was a date,” Marion countered peevishly. “And it’s okay if you date. It’s wonderful, in fact. Just I wish I would have known first. To hear it from Nancy is humiliating. By the way, do you think he’s the marrying kind? Because I’ve heard he’s got a love-’em-and-leave-’em reputation. I can have Jim sit down and have a talk with him.”
Oh, Marion, there’s not going to be any wedding bells, Stacy thought, but she merely said, “It wasn’t a date. He was saying thank you because I took his daughter yesterday when it was Institute Day.”
“Which reminds me—you could have called me,” Marion said. “The boys would have liked to have seen you.”
Oh, so that was what this was about.
“I’m sorry, Marion.”
Marion sighed wearily. “I couldn’t get anything done. I couldn’t be on the phone two minutes with a supplier without one of them attempting to murder the other. And when I sat down at my desk in the kitchen—oh, if I don’t send Jim’s bills out to his customers, we don’t get paid! And it’s not as if there’s all that many customers.”
Jim had a reputation as a plumber. A good one. In fact, so good that nobody in Deerhorn had ever had any plumbing problems of any significance. He seldom had repeat customers, but not because there was any problem or any other plumber to call.
“I’m sorry, I should have thought of you,” Stacy said. “I could take them off your hands today if that would help.”
She nearly added that the boys might like seeing Karen and that Karen could sure use some friends. But maybe it wasn’t such a good idea to tell Marion about the job quite yet. No need to add fuel to the gossip bonfire.
“I have a better idea. Jim’s got the truck for the weekend. He says he’s happy to spend Sunday moving your stuff into the room upstairs. Do you think you’d be ready by then? We would love to have you and that old house is too big for a single woman all on her own.”
And, Stacy guessed, Marion could use the money the two sisters would receive from the sale of the home they grew up in.
“I think this weekend’s just a little too soon for me.”
“Oh, Stacy, please hurry and make up your mind,” Marion said. “And don’t go out with that man again if you don’t want the whole town talking. Because they will.”
“What if I was working for him?”
“As what?”
“A baby-sitter.”
“
That’d better be all you’re doing for him.”
ON THE FRONT PORCH, Adam, relaxed and confident, waved a CD under her nose.
“Sinatra,” he said. “If I learned to dance to this, you can, too. The music is old-fashioned as all get out, but no experience necessary.”
“We’re talking about dancing, right?” she asked, staring at his shoes, feeling a hot blush exploding on her cheeks. Really nice shoes, actually. Work shoes. Worn but clean. Jeans that were faded nearly to white and a white oxford shirt with its top button undone. A smile as sexy as original sin.
Her eyes met his. She ducked her eyes and then thought Hey! This is my life! If I want to learn to dance, there aren’t too many men I can ask in Deerhorn.
“Just dancing,” she said, meeting his gaze levelly.
“I know my mandate. I’m only here to fulfill wish number twenty-three. I’ve been rejected for wish number four. Probably my lack of experience.”
She bit her lip so hard it darkened blood-red.
“I’m still embarrassed about last night.”
“It takes a lot of courage to ask a man to make love to you.”
“I think it takes more to see him the next day.”
She glanced up and down the empty street, thought she saw Mrs. Pincham walking her dog, and reaching out her hand, jerked him inside before she slammed the door.
He looked past her shoulder to the dining room, with its heavy oak furniture and display of Blue Willow plates. Then to the living room on the other side of the hall. Cozy, one might even say cramped. Bookshelves full of her father’s botany texts. A green and yellow rug. A chintz couch with plenty of throw pillows. A watercolor her mother made of Poplar Landscaping’s first installation—hole eighteen of the Lake Geneva Resort golf course.
“You really think you can teach me to dance?” Stacy asked.
“Dancing is lovemaking with clothes, music and in an upright position,” Adam said confidently. “Don’t look so shocked. It’s true. And I’m good at it. I have to pick up Karen at noon. By that time, you’ll be as graceful as Ginger.”
She wrinkled her nose. The former Spice Girl?
“Ginger Rogers,” he amended quickly. “Now, let’s move that couch out of our way.”
She helped him shove the couch and two club chairs up against the wall and rolled up the rug while he put aside the coffee table.
“Don’t you have work to do?” she asked.
“I’m supposed to rework the plans for the school,” he admitted. “But it seems to me to be an impossible task. Your mayor is making things very difficult.”
“He’s a meddler,” Stacy conceded. “But he’s been mayor for a long time and police chief before that. He takes his responsibilities to the community seriously.”
She picked up a wooden chair and put it up against the wall.
“He’s making my job harder.”
“But that’s why you’re called in, I bet.”
“Right on that one,” Adam said, opening up his CD player. “I’m the one they send when the other guys can’t get past red tape, bureaucratic insensibility, or rugged conditions. I work fast. I work hard. I have a hand-picked crew that follows me around the world. I’ve never gone over budget. Never missed a deadline.”
“Then why are you here this morning?”
“Because I’m stumped. Your mayor’s got me completely baffled about what he wants. And there’s only one thing to do in the morning when you’re stumped at work.”
“What’s that?”
He stood up, holding out his arms at the first gentle stirring of Strangers in the Night.
“You have to play hooky.” He cocked his head and marveled. “Why, Stacy Poplar, you’ve never played hooky.”
“No, I haven’t. Not much chance of it when my father was alive. Not that I would have.”
“I added something to your list. Play hooky. A time-honored tradition. One that I’m very, very, very good at.”
He waited for her to come into his arms. He placed his right hand very gently on the small of her back and clasped her delicate hand in his left. Strictly speaking, he should have told her to put her left hand on his shoulder, but he liked it just where it was. High on his chest, where hard muscle met the bone. She could keep her distance if she wanted, which she wanted. A chaperone-pleasing six inches separated them.
“Follow my feet,” he instructed and stepped forward, wincing as her toe landed on him. “I mean your right foot should follow my left foot. Other right foot. It’s okay, you’re doing fine. We’re making a box with our feet, and when we’ve got the box figured out, we’re going to try to put some curve into it.”
She looked up at him with such innocent trust that he realized he could take her. Could, with only the slightest persuasion, open the four buttons of her butter-soft blouse and get her to give him her body. She could be his, right now. And rather than making her seem easy or cheap, the knowledge made her seem all the more precious, like a beautiful crystal vase whose rare beauty can be shattered by an uncertain or careless hand.
He let his fingers pull her closer, feeling at first a resistance in the lithe muscles crisscrossing her spine. But the combination of music and morning sunlight pouring through the white organza sheers softened her. She relented, her breasts squeezed against him, her head thrown back so that she could meet his approval. She followed him, he led, and by fits and starts, they went through every song on that CD and then hit the play button again for more.
“I’m dancing,” she said in wonder.
“Oh, yes, Stacy, you are truly dancing,” he said.
The magic lasted exactly one more minute and then the doorbell rang.
Stacy froze.
“Ignore it,” Adam said, swaying gently.
“I can’t. The music’s loud enough, whoever it is will know I’m home.”
“So answer it.”
“I can’t. You’re here.”
“Is there some kind of Deerhorn ordinance that a woman can’t have a man in her house?”
“My reputation.”
He stared heavenward just to let her know what he thought of the local customs. Then he slipped into the kitchen.
“NANCY, IT’S SO NICE to see you,” Stacy lied, sticking her head out the door. “Shouldn’t you be at the shop?”
“I’m on my break.”
“How…nice.”
On her porch stood a squat, jowly woman wearing a blue nylon track outfit and a T-shirt that announced “Aged to Perfection.”
“I thought I heard music,” Nancy Tigerman said. “Was there music?”
“I was just listening to Frank Sinatra.”
“Didn’t know you were a fan.”
“Uh, I’m not really. But he’s a very good singer.”
“He’s a singer for romance, to listen to on a sultry summer night.”
“Can I help you with anything?”
Nancy craned her neck to see beyond Stacy’s head.
“No, I was on my break and I just brought two things. Your sister Marion sent a coffee cake. She came by the shop—second time this morning—to say you didn’t go on a date last night.”
“I didn’t.”
“Good thing. You do need a man. Don’t get me wrong.”
“All right,” Stacy said cautiously.
“And you need one right quick, because you don’t have too much longer before your sell-by date passes. If it hasn’t already.”
“I’ll just take that coffee cake off your hands. You just go on and enjoy your break.”
Nancy wiggled and waggled her finger in Stacy’s face, declining to give up the coffee cake before she had made her point.
“But you need a local man. Your new neighbor has been all over the world, I’ve heard. And you’re mighty innocent in the ways of the male species. He could take advantage of a woman as trusting and innocent as you.”
“Thank you for the coffee cake. And the advice.”
Nancy glanced down at the clear-wrapped pl
atter. It was Marion’s specialty—cinnamon cake with an orange-peel glaze.
“Don’t you want to cut a slice right now?” Nancy angled for an invitation. “I could use a little refreshment.”
“No, I think I’ll save it for tomorrow morning.”
Quite an unsatisfactory answer, as Nancy’s harrumph made clear.
“The other thing I brought by was a leaf from my rhododendron. It’s all brown. What’s wrong with it?”
Stacy dutifully inspected the leaf.
“Your rhododendron has got a fungus infection,” Stacy said. “I’ll come by tomorrow and clip it back and give you some fungicide to protect it.”
“That’s a good girl,” Nancy said, mollified. “Now when are you moving in with Marion? This house is too big for a woman alone.”
“Soon, Nancy, soon.”
And with a goodbye that was a tad quicker than Deerhorn’s good-neighbor policy or even internationally recognized etiquette rules would prescribe, Stacy closed the door. She turned around to find herself inches from Adam’s chest. He took the platter of coffee cake and dumped it on the hall console.
“I can’t take advantage of you,” he said. “I’m not that kind of man. I might have been around the world, but I’m not a cad.”
“There’s only one way I could be taken advantage of,” Stacy said. “And that’s if I expected something more than you have to offer.”
“Do you want what I have to offer?” he asked huskily, dropping his chin so his mouth was inches from her own.
“Are we talking about dancing lessons?”
“More than dancing lessons.”
“How much more?”
“Let’s find out.”
Her open-mouthed hesitation invited him, lured him close.
And so he kissed her, tasting the flesh of her lower lip. He was surprised and charmed when a poignant moan escaped from her throat. She pressed against him, her breasts taut and hard. She tasted like vanilla and honey. He wanted her.
When he opened his eyes he wasn’t seeing the same woman. He wasn’t seeing a baby-sitter. Or a housekeeper. Or even a young neighbor on a mission to become a non-virgin.
One Sexy Daddy Page 7
