Marrying the Single Dad

by Melinda Curtis

  “Good morning.” Reggie’s words were flat and she smiled without showing any teeth. “Cleaning house?”

  “We’re making room for Brit’s workshop.” Phil held a trembling hand toward Reggie, an invitation to come closer. “She’s booked full up. Busy, busy, busy.”

  Reggie kissed Grandpa Phil’s leathery cheek and then looked down her nose at things. “You’re setting up a beauty station here? Can’t you take all your appointments at the beauty salon?” She paused and gave a little laugh. “Oh, did I say salon? I meant barbershop.”

  Nothing like a little punch below the belt to welcome the morning.

  But this time, Brit was more worried about what Grandpa Phil would think than her own feelings. He was touchy about his shop.

  “You’ve misunderstood me. Your sister is busy with commissions for her art.” Phil’s brows lowered under the weight of frown wrinkles. “She’s going to have a permanent outdoor art display over by the highway bridge. And the winery is interested in using her mermaid on a label. Not to mention Arlie asked me if Brit would consider making mermaid lapel pins or whatever it is you females stick in scarves. She thinks she can sell them at the boutique in town.”

  Brit wanted to kiss Phil for coming to her defense, and then rejected the idea of pins of any sort involving mermaids.

  “Let’s hope she’s not giving her images away like those free cookies I saw at the bakery. There’s a lot of money to be had in licensing Keira’s image.” Reggie’s smile was stiffer than the meringue on the mini custards Tracy had been pedaling at the shop yesterday.

  “I know how to make a business deal,” Brit said, finally feeling her patience fray. “And when to pass up a bad one. I’m not going to be your partner in the B and B.”

  “Leona told me about your offer.” Phil tsked. “Now, there’s a bad deal in the making.”

  “Why would you say that?” Reggie asked. “We have a chance to get in on the ground floor of something huge.”

  “We?” Phil cut his glance to Brit.

  “When Reggie says we, she’d really like it to mean me.” Brit closed the flaps on the sock box and shoved it toward the rest destined for the crawl space. “I’m not interested.”

  “Dad wanted to run a B and B here,” Reggie said stiffly. “And we feel...” Finally, Reggie stumbled over the truth. But when she continued, her voice had hardened as if it was Brit who was in the wrong. “I feel Brit would be making a better choice for her financial future by taking the reins.”

  “Brit run the B and B?” Phil laughed once, a short, loud sound like a burst balloon. “That’s ridiculous. She can’t even keep my refrigerator stocked.”

  “Hey, I’ve been busy.”

  “My point exactly.” Phil threw up his hands and in the process tossed the sock package over his head. “Brit has more than enough on her plate.” He pushed to his feet, shaking so badly he nearly tripped over a box of Christmas lights at his feet. When Brit would have steadied him, he waved her off. “Robert hated it. And to tell you the truth, so do I.”

  Reggie jerked back a step on her killer heels.

  “Hear, hear.” Brit applauded.

  Exhausted by his tirade, Phil plopped back down in his chair. “Leona was raised in the Victorian. She has memories and an attachment to it unlike anything the rest of us can feel. She loves that house more than she loved me or your father. And trust me, your father was smart. He knew it. That’s why he joked about it.”

  Brit’s breath caught in her throat.

  Reggie looked as if her swan-like wings had been clipped.

  “Don’t shackle yourself to the Victorian.” Phil shook his head. “Robert never meant for either one of you to run that place.”

  Brit took one of his hands in hers. “If you hate the house so much, why are you still pining for Leona? She’ll never choose you.”

  “If that house is her one true love, she’s mine.” His eyes brimmed with unshed tears. “You can’t choose who your heart wants, girlie.” He squeezed her hand. “Enough of being maudlin. Who’s up for coffee and checkers at Martin’s?”

  Brit was the only taker, because Reggie had gone.

  * * *

  “BARBIE CALLED.” SAM STOOD in the parking lot of the garage, watching Joe reverse park the towed party bus into a service bay. She wore flannel pajama bottoms and Joe’s high school football jersey, which fit her like a large, shapeless dress. “She wants her pink bus back.”

  “No can do.” Joe hopped out of the tow truck. “It doesn’t run and we’ve been hired to make it work.”

  “Seriously?” At his nod, she grinned. “My Saturday just got a whole lot better.” She ran upstairs to change. A good night’s sleep and an engine to fix were just what the doctor ordered to cure her funk.

  “Shouldn’t we have more customers by now?” Sam asked hours later when they’d diagnosed the party bus with a bad starter. Despite it being a warm spring afternoon, Sam wore a hoodie over her baggy blue coveralls.

  “Sometimes it takes a while for a business to take off.” Joe had called around and found the part they needed in Santa Rosa. They could pick it up later. “Why don’t we go into town and be sociable?”

  Her bangs fell forward over one eye. No wonder she’d been slicking her hair back. “You mean show people you don’t bite and hit them up for business?”

  “That, too.”

  “Can we go see Brit? Lisa went there with her grandma after school on Thursday and said she had free cookies.”

  Joe agreed, glad of an excuse to see her.

  They parked in front of Mae’s Pretty Things boutique. Sam paused in front of the window, staring at a thin pink sweater with silver threads, very similar to the one Brittany had been wearing the first day they’d met.

  Dad Failure struck Joe square in the chest. Sam wouldn’t be mistaken for a girl in that sweater. But even the promise of a paycheck and driving gig weren’t enough to change Joe’s mind about spending money on clothes when she already had a closetful. Or make promises he couldn’t keep if the mayor’s plan didn’t work.

  “Come on, Sam,” he said gruffly.

  “Hey, that’s the sheriff.” Sam pointed to a tall man leaving bills on a table across the street at El Rosal’s outdoor dining patio. “He and the old fire chief gave us a safety lesson at school.”

  The law. Joe hoped the man hadn’t been contacted by the FBI to watch him.

  The sheriff looked up, noticed Sam and waved.

  Muted laughter reached them from the barbershop. An elderly woman with shiny silver curls stepped carefully onto the sidewalk. Her blue polyester slacks and shamrock sweatshirt hung from her too-thin frame. She put a hand on the fender of a white 1970s sedan for balance as she moved off the curb. She did a shallow shuffle to get the door open and then sat daintily behind the wheel. The engine turned over and caught rougher than sandpaper on tree bark.

  Joe jogged across the street as the driver cranked down her window. “Excuse me.” He tried to catch her attention without sticking his head in her face and scaring her with all his tainted Messina black hair. “It sounds like your car needs a tune-up.”

  On cue, Sam appeared at his side with her salesman smile and handed the woman a flyer. “We fix cars.”

  The woman’s eyes were a wide, faded blue. Her gaze fixed on Joe’s long hair, making him glad she couldn’t see the tattoo on his bicep. “My car runs fine.”

  The sedan backfired and died, refuting her statement.

  Another old woman, sporting pink rollers, came out onto the sidewalk. She clutched her cell phone as if prepared to dial 911.

  “No need,” Joe told her, raising his hands in the surrender position. “The sheriff is headed this way.”

  The sheriff walked with the disciplined steps and posture of former military. But he was still halfw
ay up the block.

  “What do you think, Dad?” Sam said eagerly. “Gunky carburetor? Timing off?”

  “Clogged air filter?” Joe added, because the woman seemed as if she could barely breathe. “Bring it down to the garage tomorrow and we’ll have a look. Free of charge.”

  The driver stared at Joe’s hair again. “I’ll...um...ask my husband.” She started the car again. This time it didn’t die.

  Sam and Joe moved to the safety of the sidewalk, waving goodbye as if the driver was leaving on a cruise and they were wishing her bon voyage.

  The woman with curlers scurried back into the barbershop. Neither woman’s reactions boded well for Joe being the front man of the mayor’s dial-a-ride service.

  “That’s promising,” Joe said for Sam’s benefit. “Maybe our luck is turning.”

  “Not likely.” The sheriff had reached them. He was as tall as Joe, but there the similarities ended. His hair wasn’t black as motor oil and he probably had never made a bad decision in his life, considering he was sheriff. “Her husband is dead.”

  “But she said she’d ask him.” Sam blinked up at the lawman. “Is she psychic?”

  “Nope. Just suspicious.” The sheriff ruffled Sam’s hair, possibly to distract her from the steam coming out of Joe’s ears. “Did you learn your emergency phone numbers? Did you make sure your outbuildings are secure so no critters or stray cats could get in?”

  “Uh...we’re doing that today.” Sam glanced at Joe and then quickly away. She hadn’t mentioned that assignment.

  “I hear you’re trying to identify owners of those cars on your property,” the sheriff said to Joe. He produced a business card from his wallet. “Give me a call to arrange an appointment at the jail.”

  “At the jail? Can I come?” Sam grabbed Joe’s hand. “I know someone in jail. My uncle—”

  “Sam.” Joe didn’t manage to cut too much information off at the pass. “I don’t think the sheriff has anyone we know in his jail.”

  “It’s Nate,” the sheriff said kindly. “The older residents call me Sheriff Nate, but it’s just Nate. And I’m sorry, Samantha, but I don’t have anyone in my jail right now.” He ruffled her hair once more. “Whoever you want to visit is in a different jail.”

  “Oh.” Sam was crestfallen.

  “Doesn’t mean I don’t like to have visitors.” Nate waved at the women staring at them from inside Phil’s. “Let’s talk, Joe. I have access to the motor vehicle database. We can enter pieces of information for each vehicle and see what comes up.”

  “That’d be great,” Joe said, meaning it.

  Who’d have known that a pink bus and a meeting with the sheriff would give him hope?

  * * *

  JOE AND SAM entered Phil’s just as Brit turned on the second hair dryer over Ingrid’s pin curls.

  The elderly ladies in the room gasped, which seemed silly. They’d all seen Joe outside talking to Patti before she drove off, and then to the sheriff.

  But Brit felt like gasping, too, if only for a different reason.

  Last night, she’d entered Joe’s number into her cell phone. Only that. His name and number. She hadn’t added him to Favorites or added a photo to his contact information. She had his number and that was that.

  And then she’d seen the shadow cross his face when Patti looked at him as if he was an ax murderer. She’d wanted to put him in her favorites file, fling open the door and shout, Stop being mean to my friend!

  Joe would’ve turned icy at a public display of loyalty and probably would’ve dropped one of those eggs he was trying to juggle.

  She didn’t want to make things any harder for him. Instead, she gave the Messinas the same welcome as anyone else who crossed Phil’s threshold. “Come on in for a cookie. Don’t be shy.”

  The chair hair dryer made a clicking noise, gasped and passed out.

  “Holy wet set,” Brit muttered.

  Carmen, her next customer, had already sat at her station. Laurelyn had returned to the first dryer after charging outside unnecessarily to rescue Patti from Joe. She’d be done in another twenty minutes. Brit needed Ingrid to sit under the second unit for at least thirty minutes or she’d be off schedule. And her schedule required her to be on time.

  Stoic Joe stood at the door trying to look invisible, while Sam wandered to the back counter for a cookie.

  Brit unplugged the troublesome unit, counted to ten, plugged it in again and turned it on.

  Clack-gasp. Clack-gasp. Sudden death.

  She turned it back off and counted to ten.

  “Is it broken?” Sam came to stand next to Brit, her hair slicked back beneath her ball cap, her mouth full of sugar cookie. “My dad can fix it. He can fix anything.”

  Joe took one step forward. “I can take a look.”

  Every woman in the room, except for Brit, tensed.

  Joe wasn’t wearing a tool belt, so the chances of him fixing the dryer were slim. But Brit couldn’t afford to fiddle with it while Carmen waited in her chair and Ingrid’s hair didn’t dry. “If you can fix this in fifteen minutes or less, you’ll be my hero. Again.” She shepherded Ingrid to Phil’s chair and hurried to the supply cabinet for Phil’s small toolbox while making a public-service announcement. “Ladies, this is Joe Messina, single dad, mechanic and the lifeguard who saved me from drowning in the river. His daughter, Samantha, is a sweetheart.” There. That ought to make her clients less tense.

  And make sure no one mistook Sam for a boy.

  Sam trailed after Brit. “Why is everyone wearing curlers?”

  “They like their hair a certain style.” Almost all of them. The monotony of pin curls was getting to her.

  Sam fingered a large pink roller in a plastic storage box in the cupboard. “Do you roll your hair?”

  Brit’s hair was down today, knotted in a long, thick mass over her right shoulder. “No. My hair is too heavy.” Unlike Sam’s, whose hair was fine and straight.

  Sam fingered the roller and made moon eyes at the other women.

  Brit’s heart melted. She delivered Joe the toolbox.

  “Sam, you don’t need your hair rolled.” Joe opened the box. “You’re not that kind of girl.”

  Geez, the man didn’t understand girls at all. “Oh, come on. Every kid should play dress-up. It fosters imagination.”

  He slid the dryer away from the wall. “Imagination doesn’t help you later in life.”

  That gave Brit pause, but only long enough to take in the disappointment in Sam’s eyes. The tween didn’t have the depth of feeling Joe did in her big brown eyes, but her feelings lived in those eyes all the same. Brit decided then and there that she was going to break some of Joe’s eggs. For Sam’s sake. “If you help me early tomorrow morning by the river, Sam, I’ll roll your hair afterward.”

  Sam held herself very still. And then she dropped to her knees next to Joe. “Oh, can I, Dad? Please?”

  “We don’t have haircuts in our budget.”

  Sam’s lower lip trembled.

  Now the other women in the shop were tsking, siding with Sam, too.

  Brit knelt next to the pair and lowered her voice. “I made Sam a friendly offer. No charge.” The poor kid probably slept in a blue race-car bed. “Just like you’re fixing my hair dryer. No charge. Friends don’t charge friends for an occasional helping hand.”

  Joe didn’t look up. He frowned. Brit got the feeling he wasn’t frowning at the innards of the dryer. He flipped the switch and it began running as smoothly as the other unit. When he met her gaze, it was with an icy, stormy stare, which was why his words surprised her. “I suppose everybody needs a friend sometime.”

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “YOU USED TO live here?” Sam stood outside the main house next to Joe.

  They�
�d returned from picking up the starter for the party bus. Joe had made an executive decision: homework before auto repair. Sam had to learn her emergency phone numbers and check all the outbuildings on their property to make sure there were no unwanted residents. Joe had thought it’d be easy. He hadn’t counted on the way his stomach soured just looking at his former home.

  “The house didn’t look so bad when I lived here.” It had only felt bad when Dad was inside.

  The ranch house was a faded gray color. The trim had been white once, but was streaked with dirt. The bushes in front had died sometime in the drought years and were barren sticks shooting up from the ground. The windows had a grimy film so thick they didn’t glint in the sunlight.

  “Let’s get this over with.” Joe’s stomach was beginning to turn.

  All the windows were shut and unbroken. The front door locked, although the wood was weathered and a top panel was cracked. The main garage door was padlocked. The side garage door secure.

  “Whose tires were these?” Sam stood nearly as tall as the four bald racing tires.

  “Vince’s. He built a drag racer one summer. Crashed it the next.” That hadn’t gone over well with Dad. And Mom had put an end to Vince’s racing career after that.

  They walked into the overgrown backyard. A small mowing tractor rusted in the corner. The swing set used to be white, but the chains were now dark and weathered. He could still remember Mom pushing him on the swing and him shouting, Higher!

  “Don’t even think about playing on that.” Joe turned away, following the uneven sidewalk to the back patio. “It’s not safe.”

  The redwood picnic table had survived, but the benches had blown over in the wind and had been eaten by termites. Joe tested the table with one hand. It creaked and a board popped loose.

  He knelt next to it and looked underneath. “Still there.”

  “G.M. loves M.Z.” Sam was on her knees next to him. “Why did Uncle Gabe carve that under here?”