Needed: One Dad

by Jeanne Allan

  “A word to the wise, Ms. Johnson.”

  Letter to Reader

  Title Page

  Dedication

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  Copyright

  “A word to the wise, Ms. Johnson.”

  Sam shook his head. “I have all the dates I want, and when I marry, the bride will be one I select, not one chosen by my female relatives. And she sure as hell won’t be a freckle-faced, wildly dressed gypsy with a ready-made family.”

  “I may have freckles,” Addy retorted, “but at least I’m human, which is more than can be said for you.”

  Dear Reader,

  Celebrating the milestones of our lives Joyfully affirms the choices we make as we stumble along. A personal milestone is this book, my fifteenth published by Harlequin Romance. In the book, Sam and Addy illustrate a favorite romantic concept of mine—opposites attract.

  This year my husband and I will celebrate the thirty-second anniversary of a marriage most people said wouldn’t last a week. We differ on religion, political affiliation, music, raising kids, spending money, vacationing, frying eggs, wine and how to eat potatoes. I drink coffee; he drinks tea.

  We share love and laughter.

  For Sam and Addy, and for you, I wish the same sustaining love and laughter.

  Needed: One Dad

  Jeanne Allan

  TORONTO • NEW YORK • LONDON

  AMSTERDAM • PARIS • SYDNEY • HAMBURG

  STOCKHOLM • ATHENS • TOKYO • MILAN

  MADRID • WARSAW • BUDAPEST • AUCKLAND

  For my aunts, D, E and C.

  Thanks.

  CHAPTER ONE

  “SAM! Where are you? I want you. Can you hear me?”

  Addy shook her head tolerantly. The warm July day meant wide-open windows in the old Victorian house, and no doubt the whole of Ute Pass heard Emilie shouting to her toy bear. Addy picked up a sharp surgical blade to slice off a thin slab of the angel-patterned polymer clay cane for the bead she was making.

  “I’m Sam. Who are you and what do you want me for?”

  In the all-female household, the deep, male voice answering Emilie came as a distinct and unpleasant shock. Alarm coursing through her, Addy dashed into the second-floor hallway.

  At the other end of the hall, a giggling Emilie sat on the top step of the staircase, looking down. “You’re not Sam, silly, Sam’s my bear.”

  “Would he be the young fellow I saw sprawled out on the front porch?” the deep voice asked gravely.

  Addy raced down the hall to where she could see part of the foyer. The man standing in the front doorway had a jacket slung over his shoulder, magazines under his arm, and carried a bulging, black briefcase with the look of expensive leather. A canvas bag sat at his feet. Faded blue jeans clung to lean hips and long legs. Addy had never seen him before. Her heart skipped a beat as he casually shut the front door with his elbow.

  “You found him!” Emilie jumped to her feet and skipped down the stairs.

  “Emilie, stop!” Addy called sharply, running to the top of the stairs. “What have I told you about talking to strangers?”

  The four-year-old halted obediently and turned to look up at her aunt. “I hafta get Sam.” She giggled again and pointed downward. “He says he’s Sam.”

  Addy ignored the man. “He’s a stranger, and you know you are not supposed to talk to strangers. Come back up here.”

  “Addy,” Emilie wailed, “I want Sam.”

  “Upstairs. Now.”

  Emilie slowly, reluctantly dragged her feet up the stairs. Large, crystalline tears spilled from blue eyes to wash down pink, porcelain cheeks. She stopped in front of Addy and stamped her foot on the faded blue Oriental carpet running the length of the upstairs hallway. “Sam thinks you’re mean.”

  “Sam doesn’t like it when you talk to strangers, either,” Addy said.

  “Sam loves me.”

  Emilie didn’t mean anything by her words, but the implication Addy didn’t love the little girl never failed to hit a sensitive nerve. Evenly she said, “We both love you, but we don’t like you doing things you know you’re not supposed to do.”

  “Ask the man if Sam’s crying. He must be very, very, very lonely.” More tears cascaded down the pleading face.

  Setting aside for the moment her niece’s middle name ought to be Manipulation, not Adeline, Addy said, “Wash your face, and find a book to read in our sitting room. And, Emilie, stay there until I come for you. I mean it, Emilie. Stay there. I’ll take care of Sam.” Both Sams, she thought, steeling herself to confront the man who’d walked brazenly into the house.

  Grateful for the lethally sharp blade she clutched, Addy moved slowly down the staircase, her gaze never leaving the intruder. An edgy whipcord toughness about him told her he hadn’t come to sell magazines or collect for charity.

  He wore his dark blond hair short and parted on the left side, a cut which suited the good bone structure of his face. The artist in her appreciated the contrasts in a lean, ascetic face which ended in a pugnacious, forward-jutting, squared-off chin. Somehow the disparate parts combined to form a devastating package of masculinity. The faintly rebellious wave in his sleek hair, a full bottom lip, and the slight droop of his left eyelid added an air of brooding sensuality. A hint of familiarity teased Addy’s brain as the man watched her descend.

  Her gaze met his, and the look of mixed anger and contempt in his eyes abruptly halted Addy several steps from the bottom of the staircase. The man blinked away all emotion, the blue eyes which matched his shirt turning watchful. His control frightened her more than his anger. Terrifying possibilities bombarding her mind, Addy hovered indecisively on the stairs.

  “You’re not quite what I’d visualized.” The man studied her coolly. “The odds against a con woman having freckles must be staggering, although you might make it work—” his penetrating gaze moved slowly over her, pausing at her bare feet “—if you did away with the Gypsy-fortune teller costume and went after a wholesome, all-American, apple-pie look.”

  Upstairs a book fell to the floor. Emilie. Only Addy stood between the four-year-old and the stranger. Drawing herself up to look taller than her five feet, seven inches, Addy ignored the implied insult to her blue blouse and flounced green skirt and spoke with a firm self-assurance which hopefully belied her quaking insides. “We don’t want whatever you’re selling. If you think you can talk Mrs. Harris into giving you her life savings or any money at all, think again. Hannah might be eighty years old, but she’s too savvy to be taken in by the likes of you.”

  He lifted an eyebrow. “But not the likes of you?”

  She frowned at the odd remark. “I don’t know who you are, but you are tres—”

  “I’m Sam Dawson. Dr. Samuel Peter Dawson.” He barely inclined his head. “My middle name comes from my grandfather Peter Harris. As in Peter and Hannah Harris.”

  “You’re one of Hannah’s grandsons.” Relief made her light-headed. No wonder he looked familiar. He starred in the framed photographs on Hannah’s fireplace mantel. Ignoring the adrenaline pumping through her veins, Addy gave him an apologetic smile. “I’m sorry, I didn’t know who you were, and walking in as you did, you startled me. Hannah’s not back from bridge club. You must be early. She didn’t mention you were coming.”

  “She didn’t know. I wanted to surprise her.” He paused half a beat. “And you. I assume you’re Adeline Johnson.”

  “Surprise me?”

  “I didn’t want you disappea
ring in a puff of smoke.”

  Addy frowned in puzzlement. “Why would I disappear?”

  “Disappearing before the family figures out what’s going on must be the first thing crooks and charlatans learn.”

  “What’s going on,” she echoed as the trend of his remarks forcibly struck her. “You seem to be accusing me of something, Dr. Dawson. Why don’t you quit hinting around and tell me exactly what I’m supposed to have done?”

  His white teeth flashed. “Honesty is so disarming. I almost admire your style, Adeline.”

  “Ms. Johnson to you.” A smile so clearly reeking of contempt should not have the power to send one’s stomach dipping precipitously downward, no matter how white and even the teeth.

  His eyes glittered icily as he tossed his jacket on a straight chair in the hall. “Ms. Johnson.” He leaned over his briefcase, opened it and flipped through some papers. Extracting one from the middle, he handed it to her. “Read this.”

  The typewritten letter was addressed to Dr. Samuel Dawson. “‘I saw your address on Hannah’s desk, and I didn’t know how to contact your mother,’ ” Addy read aloud, “‘so I’m writing to you about something I think Hannah’s family should know about. She has taken into her house a very strange woman and a child the woman claims is her niece.’ ” A chill crept up Addy’s spine.

  “Go on.”

  She took a deep breath and looked back down at the letter. Her hand shook slightly. “‘A person reads in the newspaper about so many horrible crimes these days, and Hannah is so trusting. Hannah’s husband left her a sizable trust fund and there’s lots of valuable antiques in her house. I think someone in Hannah’s family should investigate this woman.’ ” Disturbed and angry, Addy thrust the letter back at him.

  “You didn’t finish it.”

  “I don’t have to. It’s a bunch of garbage.” As he reached for the letter, the writer’s name leaped off the page at Addy. Her knees deserted her, and she sat down hard. The sharp blade slipped from nerveless fingers, falling between the staircase rails to land with a clatter on the wooden floor. She leaned against the railing, battling hurt and disbelief. How could the elderly woman she considered a friend write such spitefulness?

  Addy’s gaze darted around the foyer touching on the oak-paneled staircase and walls papered in blue and rose. Comforting warmth and faded gentility normally embraced her, but this man and the mean-spirited letter brought a jarring note into the familiar setting. Addy stared at the elaborate gold-framed mirror hanging over a narrow table pushed against the opposite wall. A pair of heavy silver candlesticks sat on the table, one on either side of a low silver bowl stuffed with full-blown pink and peach and yellow roses. Addy had picked those roses this morning from Cora’s garden. A few fallen petals lay wilted on the polished wood. “Cora McHatton,” Addy said in a hollow voice. “I can’t believe Cora would...I thought she liked me.”

  “Cora’s known my grandmother for over fifty years.”

  “I never had a clue she felt like that.”

  “Pulling off a scam must share the same success rate as drug discovery. For every winner, lots of losers. I have no idea how you schemed to fleece my grandmother, but you can consider this venture a loser, Ms. Johnson. You will remove yourself from these premises immediately.”

  Addy barely heard him as she sought to make sense of Cora’s behavior. “I wonder if she could be growing senile. Last week she locked her keys in her car, but I didn’t think anything about it. Everybody acts absentmindedly at times.”

  “You’re good. I should have known you would be. Grandmother isn’t easily fooled.”

  Her head snapped up at his comments. Late afternoon sunshine streamed through the colored glass inserts over the front door, casting eerie patches of red and green and blue on his lean, uncompromising face. Addy repressed a shudder. Hannah’s grandson had come halfway across the country in response to some babbling nonsense written by an elderly woman obviously suffering from senility. He’d come for one reason. To kick Addy out of the house. And Emilie. For Emilie’s sake, Addy couldn’t allow him to intimidate her. “You should have called Hannah. She could have told you the things Cora insinuates aren’t true.”

  “I doubt Hannah has a clue what you’re up to.”

  “Unlike clever you?” Addy used the stair rail to pull herself shakily to her feet. “I could have sworn Hannah said you’d earned your Ph.D., but I must have been wrong. Only idiots jump to incredibly stupid conclusions based on absolutely no evidence at all. If you’d been Albert Einstein, we’d all go around thinking rocks moved by themselves.”

  He frowned. “What do rocks have to do with anything?”

  “You know,” Addy said impatiently, moving down to the foyer. “Things not moving don’t move.” Detouring around him, she went out the front door and retrieved Emilie’s stuffed bear from the porch. He remained rooted in the same spot when she came back inside. Ignoring his presence, she started for the stairs.

  “Ms. Johnson,” he said in a voice as flat as the eyes locked on her face, “you obviously believe you have ingratiated yourself into Grandmother’s good graces to the extent she’ll believe anything you say.”

  Addy willed herself not to stop and plead, not to let him see her doubts and fears. A hard-won smile of self-assurance curved her mouth. “Yes, I do, so if you thought you could fly out here and throw your weight around and I’d fall on my knees admitting guilt and begging for mercy, think again.” With an exaggerated swirl of skirt, she ran lightly up the stairs.

  “Ms. Johnson.”

  The curt summons stopped her with her hand on her sitting room doorknob. Moving to the banister, she leaned over and gave him an expectant look. “Yes? You want to apologize for calling me a crook?” His face told her nothing, but even from one floor up she sensed an unyielding toughness which promised trouble.

  “I’ll be staying with my grandmother for the next three weeks. You’ll be gone before I leave.”

  Addy shoved aside the swift angry fear which flared at his threat. “It’s so odd,” she marveled, folding her arms on the railing and looking down with an expression of great interest. “Hannah is a bright woman, yet she claims you’re brilliant. I can’t imagine how you’ve managed to fool her all these years.”

  His cool upward gaze never wavered. “Sir Isaac Newton.”

  “What about him?”

  “The laws pertaining to bodies in motion are commonly known as Newton’s laws for Sir Isaac Newton, not Albert Einstein.”

  Addy carefully did not slam the door to her rooms. When one lived in other people’s houses, one didn’t slam doors. No matter how great the temptation.

  “The nerve of my grandson thinking I’m an imbecile,” Hannah said heatedly. Her pencil point cracked the eggshell in her hand. “Sometimes the younger generation infuriates me. Not you,” she said to Addy, “but the nincompoops who think brain cells dry up once a person reaches a certain age.” She looked around the large worktable at the other three ladies, who along with her constituted Addy’s Wednesday morning crafts class. “Would you believe Sam thinks Addy is after my money? He not only told me so, he said he actually accused Addy to her face.” She nodded her head to a chorus of “no’s.”

  “Children,” Belle Rater said indulgently, sorting through a colorful pile of ribbons and trims.

  “He loves you, dear,” Cora McHatton declared. “He’s trying to protect you.”

  Sitting erect, Hannah glared at her seventy-six-year-old friend. “Who asked him to? Not me, that’s for sure.”

  “Who wrote the letter?” Phoebe Knight asked, pausing in her paper snipping.

  “I don’t know.” Hannah dismissed the question. “I refuse to dignify scurrilous trash by reading it.” She made a face. “I suppose I should have found out who wrote it so I can give him a piece of my mind. Do you know, Addy?”

  Addy shifted uneasily. She’d said nothing to Hannah about the letter, and when Hannah brought it up, Addy had assumed the older woman knew
who’d written it. Addy had thought bringing the subject up while they turned eggshells into Christmas ornaments was Hannah’s way of rebuking Cora without directly accusing her friend. “Why don’t you ask your grandson later?”

  “Because I’m asking you now,” Hannah snapped. “Obviously you think I’m going to be upset by knowing the truth, but I don’t appreciate my friends treating me as if I’m senile.”

  Her head bent, Addy concentrated on smoothing glue over her eggshell. “Cora,” she muttered to the tabletop.

  No one at the table suffered from hearing loss. Three pairs of outraged eyes turned to the plump, elderly widow. Affronted, Cora looked at Addy. “I didn’t write Hannah’s grandson any letter. Why on earth would you accuse me of such a thing, dear?”

  “Sam, that is, Dr. Dawson, showed me the letter.”

  Cora reached across the table and patted Addy’s hand. “I’m sure the letter upset you, dear, which must be why you incorrectly read the handwriting of the signature.”

  “It was typed.” Addy wiped glue from her fingers.

  “Weal, there you are, dear,” Cora said, “I can’t type.”

  The other women heaped scorn and abuse on a troublemaker who’d decoyed Sam out here on a wild-goose chase, attempted to blacken Addy’s reputation, and hidden behind Cora’s name.

  “Sam would have thrown away an anonymous letter,” Phoebe said in the measured tones of one who’d been pointing out truths in a law office for half a century. “By using Cora’s name, the man—or woman,” she added fairly, “made the letter credible. One can only ask what purpose the letter writer had.”

  “You talk about your grandsons a lot,” Addy said slowly to Hannah. “Maybe someone used the letter to get Dr. Dawson out here to Colorado to visit you.”

  “You mean I’ve been complaining too much about being old and useless—” Hannah waved off Addy’s denial “—and someone saw himself as a Good Samaritan.” She paused thoughtfully. “Someone who knew Sam prides himself on being a rational thinker. I’m not sure Sam understands about artistic expression.”