Needed: One Dad

by Jeanne Allan

  “I don’t think,” Addy said in a dulcet voice, “a man who runs around in a blue shirt covered with black fingerprints is qualified to critique my wardrobe. I suggest you change it before Hannah sees it, or she won’t be quite as impressed with how honorable her grandson is as you are.”

  “At least,” Sam said, a muscle jumping in his tight-clenched jaw, “my shirt is buttoned.” The door closed behind him.

  Addy looked down. She’d replaced the cheap buttons on the fuchsia blouse with polymer buttons. She’d made them too small. Her blouse gaped open, exposing a wide expanse of freckled skin.

  She hated Sam Dawson. Didn’t she? Dejection settled over her as she faced an unpleasant truth. She should hate him, but she didn’t. Emilie had tumbled head over heels in love with Sam, and Addy was in danger of becoming infatuated with him herself. Infatuation. A disease for fools. Why couldn’t science come up with a cure for that?

  Addy stared at the wood-paneled door to the hall, her stained fingers moving restlessly at her side. A deep azure blue paint covered this side of the door. The same blue as Sam’s eyes before he kissed her. She didn’t like him. His looks simply appealed to the artist in her.

  His sensual mouth with its full bottom lip was all wrong for his face. Addy raised a trembling hand to her mouth. She wished she had bedded half the male population at the university when she’d been there. Maybe then she wouldn’t find Sam Dawson’s kisses so devastating.

  Addy’s panicked gaze flew around the room before settling on a framed picture of her sister. Her sister’s confident smile calmed Addy down. And reminded Addy of the one thing which mattered. “Don’t worry, Lorie. I’ll take care of Emilie for you. I won’t do anything foolish.”

  John Christain was tall, with fashionably cut black hair and gleaming white teeth surrounded by dark stubble. He drove a burnt yellow sports car, and his dark brown eyes gleamed with appreciation as he swiftly looked Addy over. Appreciation and a quickly disguised sense of relief.

  Addy smiled at him as he set up a lawn chair beside hers near the edge of Antlers Park in Colorado Springs. Discordant notes came from the improvised stage as the musicians warmed up. John Christain had undoubtedly dreaded the evening. He wasn’t the only one experiencing relief. There were no worries about an undesirable third on this date. Emilie had personally appointed Sam her baby-sitter for the evening.

  Pleasant, charming, and amusing, John entertained Addy with witty stories of hotel guests and diverting tales of his travels around the world. He thought Colorado the back of beyond, but submitted his current job was the price one paid for advancement. An advancement, he took pains to make clear, which was practically guaranteed.

  Glancing over Addy’s shoulder, John’s face grew puzzled.

  “What’s the matter?” she asked instinctively.

  “That man and his little girl. They’re acting like they know me, and I swear, I’ve never seen them before in my life.”

  Slowly Addy turned her head, knowing full well what and whom she’d see.

  Ten feet away, Emilie jumped up and down, waving with both arms. “Surprise!” she hollered. “Surprise!” Dissolving into giggles, the little girl collapsed on a blanket spread over the grass. Her baby-sitter smiled indulgently.

  Addy turned back to a mystified John Christain and mustered a weak smile. “My sister’s little girl. I’m raising her.”

  His gaze traveled from Addy to Emilie and back to Addy. “That her father?”

  “Her baby-sitter.” The look of disbelief on John’s face told Addy her brief explanation had created more questions than it answered. Perversely, she chose not to enlighten him. She was tired of baring her life for one and all to dissect.

  Excited giggles warned Addy she and John had a visitor. Two soft arms stole around her neck. “Sam and me gonna hear music.” Before Addy could respond, Emilie was gone.

  Not for long, of course. During the concert, Emilie practically wore a path in the grass between Sam and Addy. If Sam exerted the slightest effort to control his charge, it was not evident. John managed to maintain his composure in the face of stiff provocation. No doubt he had a great deal of experience in dealing with difficult hotel guests. And their equally difficult children.

  Not to mention totally useless baby-sitters.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  STANDING on the porch steps, Addy turned and held out her hand to John Christain. “Thank you for a lovely evening. I enjoyed the concert, and dinner afterward was delicious.”

  He captured her hand and pulled her closer. “I thought I was doing Mrs. Rater a favor, but she did me the favor. I’ll pick you up tomorrow night about seven.”

  Addy stifled a sigh. John Christain presumed a great deal, but one couldn’t blame him. Belle had practically served Addy to him on a silver platter. “That would be nice,” she said politely, compelled to agree by her promise to go out twice with each man who asked her. “What did you have in mind?”

  “You.” He gave her a slow, sensual smile which reeked of practice. His brown eyes reflected the gleam of the porch light.

  Addy’s heart beat at its usual steady rate. Nothing throbbed, nothing pulsed. “Me?”

  “I don’t like going blind into any situation,” he said. “I asked around. Everybody in town knows you’re a single mother with no man in the picture. It must be harder’n Hell to find anyone around here who shares your mature, healthy attitude toward taking care of your sexual needs.” John lightly traced the lines in her palm.

  Addy’s normal breathing never altered. “Emilie is my niece,” she said coolly.

  “You can call her your uncle if you want. Believe it or not, I grew up in a small town. I know the lengths a person has to go to to appease narrow-minded hicks. That’s why I’m ideal for you.” His smile deepened. “Meaningless sex suits me perfectly. I’ll meet your needs, keep your secrets, and then be on my way with no awkward emotional entanglements.”

  “I think you’d better be on your way now.” The hard voice came from the other side of the screen door.

  John Christain’s gaze flicked past Addy. “The baby-sitter, I presume.” His gaze returned to Addy. “Sorry, Addy, I guess I didn’t see the whole picture.” Before Addy could set him straight, he turned and walked to his car.

  “We can cross him from our list,” Sam said.

  “Thank you for nothing.” Opening the screen door, Addy barreled past Sam. “John is now convinced you and I sleep together. It will be all over town we share more than your grandmother’s house.” She stomped up the stairs, spitting words over her shoulder. “I could have handled him. Didn’t harassing me at the concert provide you with enough amusement?”

  “I thought you’d approve of a little practical experiment.” Sam’s voice masterfully conveyed hurt feelings and misunderstood intentions. His dejected footsteps trailed Addy up the stairs.

  Addy reminded herself his parents made their living on the stage. “What was your experiment supposed to prove? That an adult male can act like an overgrown, spoiled child?”

  Pushing open the door she tried to shut in his face, Sam followed her into her sitting room and flopped down on her sofa, his legs hanging over one end. “That’s the problem with an experiment where all the variables can’t be controlled,” he said, rearranging the pillows to stack them under his head. “Bound to have unexpected side effects. Such as Christain turning out to be a sex-crazed adolescent disguised as an adult.”

  Addy shut the bedroom door after checking on Emilie. “I’m talking about you. You deliberately set out to ruin my evening.”

  Sam gave her an astonished look. “You’re angry with me?”

  “I allowed Emilie to call you her baby-sitter tonight because Hannah and Belle would be here if you had any problems. You did not have my permission to take Emilie anywhere.”

  “I didn’t realize I needed a written note from ‘Mama’ before I exposed Emilie to a little culture.”

  “Culture,” Addy snorted. “You took Emilie to
the concert to make mischief and have a good laugh at my expense.” She curled her legs beneath her in an armchair. “You knew how she’d act.”

  “Like a four-year-old. Face facts, Adeline. When you climbed into his expensive sport car, Christain wiped off your fingerprints. A man like that doesn’t want any snot-nosed kids. Everything about him from the body sculpted in the hotel’s fitness center to the tanning-saloon tan says he’s fixated with himself. I’ll bet he spends a fortune getting his hair cut and the clothes he wore came straight from a catalog on what the best-dressed man wears for leisure. Christain isn’t the type to buy a station wagon and shoot hoops with his kids.”

  “You don’t know—”

  “I didn’t. I do now. That’s why I ran my little experiment with Emilie. To test my hypothesis that Christain dislikes kids. Which he does. He hides it well, but even you couldn’t have missed how he flinched whenever Emilie came near him.”

  “Considering you brought peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and no damp cloth to clean her hands after she ate, anyone with the barest minimum of good sense would have fended her off.”

  “Something I’m curious about—”

  “You’re worse than Emilie. Curiosity is a disease with you. Remember, curiosity killed the cat.”

  “Curiosity also led to penicillin, landing on the moon, and—” he slanted an ironic glance at the brown and red smears on his blue chambray shirt “—peanut butter.”

  “Not to mention the atom bomb,” Addy said. “If you scientists wouldn’t be so insufferably curious, and occasionally thought about where your snooping was taking you, the world wouldn’t be cursed with car radios blaring at every stoplight and plastic bottles littering the landscape.”

  Sam grinned. “Good try, but you’re not diverting me down that path. Scientists are also persistent and single-minded, so you may as well satisfy my curiosity. There’s something strange about these poor slobs’ willingness to be sucked into this scheme. Christain’s proposition indicates Grandmother et al aren’t hawking you as a prospective wife, so what’s the hook? Why do these guys eagerly get in line? No offense, Adeline,” he added, in a patently superficial concession to her feelings.

  “What’s wrong with lonely men wanting to meet single women?” Addy hadn’t asked what pressures the four women brought to bear on the men. She hated to see grown women lie. “Just because you took one look and decided bubonic plague was more attractive than me, you needn’t think all men find me repulsive.”

  “Annoyed because I avoided Mother’s and Grandmother’s trap, or mad because I refuse to sleep with you?”

  “If I wanted to sleep with anyone,” Addy noted with pleasure, “lovers are a dime a dozen, as John proved tonight.”

  Sam frowned at her. “You brought his behavior on yourself, wearing that black outfit. You might as well have doused yourself with male-attracting pheromones.”

  “You told me to wear trousers.”

  “I didn’t tell you to wear skintight pants.”

  “They’re stretch pants,” Addy said stiffly. Belle had borrowed the outfit from a teenage neighbor. “They’re supposed to fit snugly. It’s not my fault men drool like Pavlov’s monkeys every time they see a female between the ages of six and sixty.”

  “Snug.” Sam made a disgusted sound. “A flea couldn’t fit in there with you. And your sweater is three sizes too small.”

  “I didn’t realize you’d earned your doctorate in female fashion. What did you expect me to wear—a lab coat?”

  “At least,” he said coldly, “a lab coat wouldn’t outline and accentuate every freckle on your body.”

  Sick and tired of his constant taunting about her freckles, Addy jumped up from her chair. “Go away.” She locked her hands behind her to keep from slugging him. “It’s late and I’m tired.”

  Sam rose slowly from the couch and moved to stand in front of Addy. She’d left her hair hanging loose about her shoulders tonight, and he reached for a long strand, wrapping it around a finger. “You should have taken some science classes in school.”

  Addy stood very still. Except for her heart, which tripled its beat. Not because of fear. Because—she didn’t know why. She forced herself to say, “I took biology and chemistry and—”

  Sam took possession of her lips. When he eventually lifted his head, he said, “You must have flunked them.”

  Addy’s mouth tingled from his kiss. The artist in her wondered if it was possible to duplicate the fascinating shade of blue of his eyes. On the heels of that crazy thought came the realization his kiss had scrambled her brains. She took a deep breath, concentrated on a button in the middle of his blue shirt, and somehow picked his last comment out of the air. The direction of his thoughts drove the wobbles from her knees. “If you’re intimating there’s some kind of chemistry between us, you’re wrong.” Taking hold of his wrist, she freed her hair. “I only let you kiss me because I didn’t want you to cause a scene and awaken Emilie.”

  “Chemistry,” Sam repeated thoughtfully. “Labeling what’s between us a chemical reaction probably isn’t too inaccurate. I’m willing to admit you hold a weird fascination for me.”

  “Although I’m intensely gratified to hear I’m on a par with dead frogs and earthworms, I’m not interested in being stuck under your microscope, so go practice chemistry with one of your Boston beauties. And I got A’s in all my science courses.”

  Laughter crinkled the corners of Sam’s eyes. “Believe me, you’re much more kissable than frogs and worms.” Proving it, he dropped a light kiss on her nose. “Even if you don’t know Pavlov used dogs to study conditioned response. He trained them to expect food every time he rang a bell, and eventually they salivated whenever they heard a bell even if no food appeared.”

  “I knew that.” She practically shouted the words at the closing door.

  “Addy, where’s Sam?” Emilie stood in the bedroom doorway, rubbing her eyes, Sam the Bear hanging by one paw.

  “He’s gone to bed. Where you should be.”

  Emilie trailed Addy back into the bedroom and hopped obediently into bed. “I like Sam. Do you?”

  “Yes,” Addy lied. Sam Dawson was the most insufferable, irritating person she’d ever met. Thinking about him and his kiss, her mouth softened and weird feelings ran riot deep in her stomach. Remember Pavlov and his stupid slobbering dogs. Sam’s kisses were merely bells making her drool. Which meant she had no more brains than Belle’s fat, slobbering, black lab, Lovie.

  A perfunctory knock at the open door announced Sam’s arrival. “Adeline, I want to talk to you right... What are you doing? It stinks of paint in here.”

  Emilie rushed to greet him, recklessly waving her paintbrush. “We’s painting.” She dragged Sam into the bedroom.

  Addy rolled paint on the bedroom wall. She had nothing to say to Sam Dawson, at least nothing she could say in front of Emilie. Furthermore, she had no desire to listen to anything he had to say. He appeared to be struck dumb.

  “Isn’t it be-yoot-i-ful?” Emilie gave a heartfelt sigh.

  “It’s rather...” Sam hesitated. “Pink.”

  “Fairy Princess Pink,” Emilie announced with deep satisfaction. “The paint man made it jus’ for me.”

  “No,” Sam shook his head, “the paint man told you the wrong name. It’s definitely not Fairy Princess Pink.” “Is so,” Emilie insisted.

  “No, it’s Emilie Pink.”

  “Emilie Pink!” The little girl took a couple of joyful hops, then wailed in dismay. “Addy! I boo-booed.” She pointed to a fat smear on the wall made by her waving brush.

  Addy studied the splotch. “Try painting a heart over it.”

  “OK.” With great concentration, Emilie turned the smear into a huge heart-shaped blob. Finishing, she put her brush in the paint and wiped her hands on the old shirt she wore backward over her clothes. “All done,” she announced. “Now you.”

  Addy laid the roller in the paint tray and walked over to Emilie’s side. With lo
ng flowing strokes she brush-painted a few words on the wall. A small heart formed the bottom of her exclamation point.

  Emilie bounced and clapped her hands in approval.

  Sam, watching curiously, read the wall. “‘Emilie loves Addy. Addy loves Emilie.’ You’re not going to paint this wall?”

  Emilie looked at him with horror. “Addy has to. It’s a secret message. Peoples can paint and paint but the message will. . . what will it, Addy?”

  “Endure for all time.”

  “That,” Emilie said triumphantly. “Then it’s a happy room and Addy won’t cry at night.”

  “Does Addy cry at night?” Sam asked.

  “Emilie Adeline,” Addy said at the same time. “We’ve discussed this before. You are not to tell people family stuff.”

  “He’s Sam, not peoples.”

  “Out of the mouth of babes,” Addy said dryly, before addressing Emilie. “Go wash the paint off you. You have a pink nose and a pink chin.”

  “Grandmother said to tell you she’s sewing on some buttons if you want to help,” Sam added.

  “Buttons!” Emilie tore from the room, her aunt’s shout to wash following her.

  “She doesn’t actually help. She loves to play with Hannah’s beautiful buttons,” Addy said into the enormous silence filling the room. She carefully spread more paint on the wall before nervously blurting, “Everybody gets colds and the sniffles once in awhile. That’s all it was.” More wide swathes of pink paint covered the old white paint. “If you supposedly-brilliant drug people would invent a cure for the common cold, the rest of us wouldn’t sniffle at night.” The excessive flow of words wouldn’t stop. “Even you must sniffle when you have a cold.”

  “Were you crying because of something I said last night?”

  “I haven’t given a second thought to anything you’ve said to me since we met.” The task of loading the roller with paint required minute attention. “I wasn’t crying. Emilie heard me when I had a cold. And not last night.”