Daddy Lessons

by Stella Bagwell

  “No. I’m not. Why?”

  Savanna shrugged again. “Just curious. Megan mentioned a housekeeper. I wondered if her stepmother was at work or something.”

  Joe heard her speaking but the words barely registered with him. He didn’t know what it was about her, but she was the first woman he’d really wanted to look at in a long time. Which didn’t make a bit of sense. She wasn’t his type at all.

  Still, he couldn’t seem to stop himself from noticing the most minute things about her. Like the tiny pearl earrings she was wearing. He had the strangest urge to see what it would feel like to nibble it loose and sink his teeth into her earlobe.

  Irritated by his unexpected thoughts, Joe cleared his throat and said, “No. There’s no stepmother around to come between me and my daughter.”

  Savanna looked at him curiously. “What makes you think a stepmother would come between you and your daughter? A second mother figure might be just what she needs.”

  Maybe so, Joe thought, but a wife was the very last thing he needed or wanted. “And what makes you think you know so much about children? Are you a mother?” he asked.

  “No. But I was a child once.”

  Grimacing, he picked up several pieces of correspondence. “Everyone is a child once in their life.”

  She was beginning to wonder if Joe McCann had ever been eight years old with freckles on his nose and a gap between his front teeth. “It’s unfortunate some of us forget what that’s like,” she couldn’t help replying.

  With a warning glint in his blue eyes he thrust the papers at her. “Here’s a few letters you can begin working on. I’ve attached notes to the things that need immediate replies. You might attend to those now.”

  Relieved to be out from under his scrutiny, Savanna carried the letters over to the empty desk. Before she had time to put her things away, the telephone rang. It was Megan again, who seemed very surprised when Savanna informed her that her father was allowing her to walk with her friend to the library.

  “He really said I could go?”

  Megan screeched the question with disbelief and Savanna could only wonder if Joe McCann was actually that strict with his daughter or if Megan was simply displaying typical teenage exaggeration. She hoped it was the latter, but from what little she’d seen of her boss this morning, she thought he probably ruled his daughter the way he ran his office. With a stern hand.

  “Yes. As long as you’re back in an hour and a half. I’ll be calling then to make sure you’re home.”

  “Wow, I can’t wait to meet you, Savanna! Edie would never have talked Daddy into letting me go!”

  Savanna glanced over at Joe, who’d now taken a seat at his desk. His attention seemed to be focused on a long piece of green graph paper with a bunch of squiggly lines that looked something like an electrocardiogram. However, Savanna got the feeling that he was actually listening to her instead of studying what she figured was a seismograph report.

  “I wouldn’t say that,” Savanna said carefully. “It really wasn’t that hard.”

  Megan giggled then and Savanna tried to picture the child in her mind. She sounded impish and sweet and full of life. Nothing like her father, she thought as she glanced once again at Joe McCann’s bent head.

  “You don’t know him yet! But you will after today.”

  “Serious, huh?”

  Megan groaned. “Look up the word in the dictionary, Savanna, and you’ll find Daddy’s picture beside it.”

  Savanna could hardly keep from laughing at the teenager’s old joke, but she managed to clamp her lips together just as Joe looked up at her. “Uh, I’ve got to go to work, Megan.”

  “He’s giving you one of those looks, isn’t he?”

  Savanna breathed deeply. Joe was giving her some sort of look. Whether it was the kind Megan meant, she didn’t know. She only knew it was sending a peculiar sensation up and down her spine.

  “Sorta,” Savanna told her.

  “Okay. Talk to you later. ’Bye!”

  Savanna hung up the phone, then began searching for an empty drawer to store her purse.

  “I take it that was my daughter on the phone?”

  Savanna glanced over at him. “It was. She was very pleased that you’re allowing her to go.”

  Leaning back in his chair, he regarded his new secretary with a speculative look. “The two of you seemed awfully chatty.”

  Savanna’s brown eyes glided over his face. Was that surprise she heard in his voice, or disbelief? And why did it matter to her what he was thinking, anyway?

  “I wouldn’t call it chatty. Just getting acquainted.”

  His features suddenly growing thoughtful, Joe tapped a pen against the graph spread in front of him. “That’s strange. Megan wasn’t interested in getting to know Edie. In fact, they didn’t get on together at all.”

  “Well, I’m sure you know how it is sometimes. Some people just rub each other the wrong way.”

  Without even knowing it, his eyes left her face to travel slowly down her body. “And how do I rub you, Ms. Starr?”

  Stunned by his question, Savanna unconsciously took a step toward him. “I beg your pardon?”

  What in the hell had come over him? Joe wondered wildly. He didn’t talk to women that way! In fact, he didn’t talk to women at all, unless it was necessary.

  Clearing his throat he said, “I—that didn’t come out right. What I mean is—do you think we’ll be able to get along? To work together?”

  From the sound of his voice, Savanna could have sworn their working together had been the last thing on his mind. But she could be wrong. After all, it would be crazy to think Joe McCann was thinking of her in that sort of way. The man didn’t even appear to like her very much.

  Releasing a pent-up breath, she said, “I’m a flexible person, Mr. McCann. I’m sure we can get along without too much friction between us.”

  “That’s good,” he told her with a short nod of his head. The last thing he needed between him and this delicious-looking blonde was friction of any sort.

  Feeling suddenly awkward, Savanna said, “If that’s all, then I’ll get back to work.”

  Before he could say anything, the telephone rang. As he reached for it, he said, “I’ll answer it this time. You go ahead and do whatever you need to do.”

  Relieved, Savanna went back to her desk and began organizing her things. As she did, she noticed her hands were still grimy from changing the flat tire she’d had on her way to work.

  She found a rest room at the end of the same corridor she’d used to enter the office. As she scrubbed her hands clean, she looked at her image in the mirror hanging over the lavatory. There was a tiny smudge of grease along her cheekbone and she quickly wiped it away with a corner of a brown paper towel.

  Maybe Joe McCann had taken the black spot for a beauty mark, Savanna thought, then laughed to herself at that idea. She doubted her new boss had even noticed the dab of grease on her face. He’d been too busy chewing her up and spitting her out for being late.

  Well, he might come on like a bear, but deep down she didn’t think he really was so tough. She could deal with him, Savanna promised herself. Before her job here was finished, Megan wouldn’t have to beg her father to walk a few blocks to the local library and Joe McCann might even learn how to loosen up and smile.

  Chapter Three

  Joe’s home was in a quiet, residential area that had been established years ago before the city had grown to such mammoth proportions. The house itself was red brick and situated on a large cul-de-sac. He’d lived in it with his parents from the time he was five years old. When his father died several years back, his mother had moved to Florida to retire near her sister. Since then he’d lived alone. Until last week, when Megan had moved in with him.

  Tonight as he parked in the driveway and walked to the entrance, the tight ache between his shoulders reminded him how little rest he’d been getting lately. Hopefully he’d be able to eat supper and spend a quiet evenin
g before work tomorrow.

  The minute Joe stepped through the front door he was greeted with the loud blare of Megan’s rock music. Tossing his briefcase full of reports into an armchair, he walked down the hallway and knocked on her door.

  “Come in,” Megan called loudly.

  Joe pushed open the door to see his daughter lying on her stomach across the end of the bed, her elbows propped on either side of an open book.

  He stepped into the room, then stared around him in disbelief. “What the he—heck has been going on in here?” Joe demanded.

  Megan’s head of thick brown curls bobbed wildly as she jerked her head around toward her father. “What do you mean? Nothing has been going on.”

  Joe went over to the stereo system and jabbed a finger on the Off button. “I’m talking about these clothes!”

  Joe pointed at the countless number of garments strewn over the bed, the floor and part of the dresser.

  Unconcerned, Megan pushed herself to a sitting position, then with a negligent wave of her hand she said, “Oh, I’ve just been trying a few things on.”

  A few things? It looked to him as if there were enough things on the floor alone to stock a whole boutique. “And none of them could find their way back into the closet. Is that it?” he asked.

  Megan giggled at her father’s grim expression. “Oh, Daddy, you’re so funny. It’s just clothes. They’re not hurting anything. I’ll pick them up before I go to bed,” she promised.

  Deciding it might be best to relent for now and wait to see if she kept her promise, Joe nodded toward the book she’d been so engrossed in when he’d come into the room. “Is that one of the books you got at the library today?”

  She gave him a sweet smile. “Thanks, Daddy, for letting me go. The library was great! I found all sorts of stuff I want to read.”

  He tilted his head in an attempt to read the title printed on the spine of the book. “You didn’t, uh—get anything with…”

  “Sex, murder or corruption?” she finished for him, then, giggling, she shook her head. “No. I can get plenty of that stuff on TV.”

  Joe could hardly argue that point and he realized how different things were now than when he’d been Megan’s age. Savanna Starr thought he didn’t remember being a child, but he did.

  Unlike Megan, his parents had lived together. But they’d never gotten along. Joe knew his father was a big reason for that. Joseph McCann had been a tough man, who’d liked his liquor and the expensive gamble of wildcatting. Joe could still hear his parents’ shouting matches and how alone and miserable they’d made him feel.

  There’d been times he’d looked at Megan and felt guilty because he hadn’t been able to hold his marriage to her mother together. But now when those thoughts assaulted him, he deliberately remembered back to his own childhood, and he knew that giving Deirdre the divorce she’d wanted had been the right thing to do.

  “Have you eaten yet?” he asked his daughter.

  With a cheerful smile she jumped up from the bed and looped her arm through his. “Yes. But I’ll come fix your plate for you. Ophelia showed me how to heat everything up in case you were late.”

  Out in the kitchen Megan made a big production of heating the casserole and preparing him a glass of iced tea. When everything was ready she carried it over to him on a plastic tray, then plopped down on a chair next to him.

  Joe took a bite of the food, then glanced at his daughter. Her chin was in her hand and she was studying him as if she couldn’t quite decide whether he was her hero or the devil himself.

  “Well, how are things going?”

  “I mostly miss all my friends. It’s boring around here without anyone to talk to or do things with.”

  “You’ll make plenty of friends once you start school this fall,” Joe said matter-of-factly.

  Megan’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I doubt it. I don’t want to go to some dumb ole private school. I’ll have to wear some childish uniform and look like all the other nerdy girls there!”

  Joe cast her a stern look of warning. “I don’t want to hear you call anyone nerdy. You don’t know what the girls at school will be like. You’ve never been there before.”

  She lifted her chin defiantly and glared at him with eyes as blue as his own. “And I won’t go, either.”

  Joe shoveled another bite of food to his mouth before he lost his appetite. “You’ll go if I say so.”

  Megan jumped up from the chair and jammed her fists on either side of her waist. “Daddy, I want to be a cheerleader and go to football games! I want to go to proms and dances. You can’t do that without boys around!”

  Joe put his fork down beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. He’d almost forgotten how quiet the house used to be before Megan arrived. Still, he loved her utterly, and more than anything he wanted the very best for her.

  “You’re far too young to be thinking about boys. Besides, school is about getting an education, not playing sports and dancing.”

  Megan rolled her eyes. “You’re always so serious, Daddy. Don’t you know a person has to have some fun once in a while?”

  “Fun is knowing you’ve succeeded at achieving your goals.”

  Groaning with disbelief, Megan flounced over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can of soda. “Fun is going to the beach or the movies. But I guess you don’t do those things,” she said sullenly.

  He picked up his fork and stabbed it at the pile of noodles on his plate. Hell, if he let Megan’s temperament spoil his appetite every time he sat down to supper, he’d soon turn into a skeleton.

  Megan came back to the table and sank into the same seat she’d just vacated moments earlier. Swiping her hair out of her eyes, she said in a perkier voice. “Your new secretary sounds very nice. When am I going to get to meet her?”

  He glanced at his daughter with surprise. “Why would you want to meet my new secretary?”

  The teenager let out another loud groan. “Because everyone around here is a stranger to me. And she sounded like someone I’d like to know.”

  “How could you tell? You only talked to her on the phone for a few short minutes,” Joe observed.

  “Well, I could just tell. Is she pretty?”

  He choked on the tea he’d been about to swallow. “Pretty? Why in the world would you want to know that?”

  “Because if she was pretty, you might not come home in such a cranky mood,” Megan reasoned. “Is she married?”

  Knowing his daughter probably wouldn’t hush until he answered, he said, “No. Ms. Starr isn’t married. And yes, she’s very beautiful. But I doubt you’ll have a chance to meet her before Edie comes back to work.”

  Megan eyed her father over the rim of her soda can. “What if I go to the office for a while?”

  “Maybe later. I’ve got too much going on right now.”

  A grimace twisted her young face. “Then let’s invite Ms. Starr to supper. Yeah! That would be fun. Will you ask her, Daddy? Will you?”

  “No. She’s a secretary. Bosses don’t do that sort of thing with their secretaries. It isn’t—proper.”

  “Daddy, it’s not like you’re going to have an affair with her!”

  Dear Lord, did all thirteen-year-olds talk like his? Joe wondered. “And what do you know about affairs? That word shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary, yet.”

  Tilting her head to one side, Megan said, “Back home, my friend Amy’s father had an affair. After that, her parents got a divorce. Is that what happened to you and Mom? Did you have an affair with some woman you liked better than her?”

  Joe frowned at his daughter’s speculation. “No, neither one of us did anything of the sort. Your mother and I were simply too young to be married. Both of us wanted totally different lifestyles and because we did, we argued all the time. So we decided it would be better if we didn’t live together anymore. We’ve told you this before. Don’t you remember?”

  Megan nodded, while absently winding a strand of hair
around her finger. “Yeah, I remember. But I thought you might not be telling me the truth.”

  Joe reached out and gently touched his daughter’s face. She was so young and innocent and full of life. He didn’t want her ever to be hurt by anything. Especially from mistakes he’d made in the past or any he might make in the future.

  “Megan, I’ll never lie to you. Not about anything. Okay?”

  She nodded, then gave him an impish grin. “So why haven’t you gotten married again? I think you should.”

  A second mother figure might be just what she needs.

  Joe inwardly shook his head as Savanna’s voice came back to him. He’d thought the woman had been totally on the wrong track, that Megan would resent the very idea of a stepmother. Obviously he’d been wrong about Savanna and his daughter.

  “And why do you think that?”

  “You don’t seem too happy like this.”

  Savanna had implied the same thing when she’d compared him to that hound with a flea on its back. But just because two females made the same conjecture about him didn’t mean they were right, Joe told himself. He was happy, damn it. As happy as he could ever hope to be.

  “My job gives me a lot to worry about, Megan. Believe me, the last thing I need to make me happy is a wife.”

  Across town Savanna carried paper plates, sodas and iced glasses to a card table set up on a small patio outside her father’s apartment.

  A few feet away from her, in one corner of the tiny square of yard, Thurman Starr was turning steaks on a smoking barbecue grill. Beside him, standing a good foot shorter than his six-foot frame, her new stepmother, Gloria, swiped a hand across her damp brow.

  “I don’t know which is cooking the most out here, us or the steaks,” the older woman said.

  Savanna gave her father a teasing grin, then winked at Gloria.

  “I think Dad would haul that grill with him as far as the equator. When he’s barbecuing, he doesn’t know if the weather is ten degrees or a hundred.”

  Thurman laughed. “You two girls are getting soft on me. This is lovely weather. Couldn’t wish for better. Besides, I have to have my grill with me. Otherwise, every piece of meat Gloria gets her hands on turns into a piece of black shoe leather.”