Daddy by Surprise

by Debra Salonen

  She swallowed a gulp of courage. He wants to shake your hand, not kiss you, you idiot.

  She squared her shoulders and held her breath as she gave him her hand. She tried not to notice how smooth and warm his skin felt. Not sweaty as Drew’s had been the first time he touched her—pulling her to her feet after accidentally bowling her over on the softball field. Or rough from working on engines the way Pete’s were to this day from his hobby of building hot rods. One quick, firm shake, then she yanked back. “Gotta go. If you don’t call, I’ll assume this yearning to get tattooed was the Jäger talking.”

  “Oh, I’ll be there. One more thing to cross off my list.”

  She knew all about lists—goals. She was one semester away from realizing a dream she’d set for herself when she was ten. She wanted to be a teacher and change people’s lives. The way Mrs. Findham—her fifth-grade teacher—had changed hers. Lois Findham. The first person to see Kat’s potential and praise her efforts. To a child caught in an emotionally brutal custody tug-of-war, the positive attention had given Kat a smidgen of hope.

  Not that Kat’s path had been quick or easy—thanks to the reckless choices she’d made—but she was so close to the end of the tunnel she could almost shout with joy.

  And shout she would this coming December after she completed her student teaching. In the meantime, the extra cash this R.U.B. was offering would come in handy. And despite the fact that she felt a dangerous level of swoo emanating from him, she wasn’t worried. She’d learned her lesson—twice.

  This was a business transaction, not a date. Besides, he really wasn’t her type. In fact, she didn’t even like motorcycles.

  JACK WATCHED Kat for a few moments longer as she made her rounds. A bright spot in an otherwise stereotypical bar decorated in an Old West style that was probably far, far from the real thing. He considered himself fairly well versed in Old West history and legend—enough to know that the facts behind the legend often got blurred in the retelling for the sake of the story. He didn’t expect to see much of the real Old West here—at least not during this hectic celebration, but he could buy a forest-service map and head into the Hills. Do some exploring. Wind up lost.

  He wasn’t sure whether the voice in his head was his mother’s or Jaydene’s. Frowning, he took a drink from the glass of water the waitress—Kat—had brought without him asking. It was cold and delicious. He hadn’t realized how parched he was. Maybe he was also drunker than he’d thought. Kat had seemed to think so when she’d urged him to get some supper.

  “So, how ’bout a fricken…shicken…fried chicken steak?”

  Brian chortled. “Okay.” He dug in his pocket for what Jack hoped was money, not car keys.

  “Lesgo,” he said, tossing a ten on the table.

  Jack added another twenty just to be safe. He’d lost track of their bill several rounds ago. He looked for Kat to thank her and confirm their meeting the next day, but she was nowhere to be seen.

  The disappointment he felt surprised him. She was pretty. And nice. But that didn’t mean he’d ever give in to the attraction he felt for her. He’d made it a rule never to date women with children. He didn’t like kids. It didn’t take a psychiatrist to figure out why. His father’s career as a dentist—and his life—had been ruined by a lying, conniving child who had been coached by his greedy, low-life parents to say Jack’s father had touched him inappropriately. And since Jack’s dad had been performing the dental procedure on a weekend—free of charge—to an underprivileged child, there hadn’t been any staff or dental assistant to say otherwise.

  Jack had been fifteen. Even in a city the size of Denver, the rumors had gotten around. His once respected, beloved, community-minded father found himself defending his honor, his veracity and his livelihood. The team of lawyers that represented his father’s insurance company had pushed for a settlement to avoid the cost of a jury trial. They’d argued that the scandal would blow over faster—and his family would be saved the humiliation of appearing in court and hearing the allegation voiced against him—if he agreed to settle.

  Money changed hands. The charges were dropped. His father was never the same. Nobody was.

  All because of a lying little brat.

  Jack paused in the doorway of the bar for one last glance over his shoulder. With any luck, she wouldn’t look as cute and appealing tomorrow when he went to her house to get yet one more thing crossed off his list. Dull and unadventurous Jack was going to get a tattoo. Sort of.

  He told himself if he liked the looks of it—and the way it made him feel—he might get the real thing done later on. Changing his image might be the first step in changing his life. Maybe Jack would no longer be a dull boy.

  Maybe.

  CHAPTER THREE

  “HI, MOM.”

  Kat looked up from the washing machine, where she was fishing for a gray sock plastered like a leach to the enamel basket. The voice wasn’t the one she’d been expecting. She’d heard a car pull into her gravel drive and the sound of the neighbor’s dogs barking—an early-warning system she didn’t have to feed—and had assumed it was Char bringing Jordie home from his first overnight powwow.

  Char had already called twice that morning to explain why they were running late and apologize for missing Jordie’s art class. Kat had been quick to assure her that the activity was on a drop-in basis, so Char could take her time. “Keep him,” she’d teased. “I had the house to myself last night. You wouldn’t believe how well I slept.”

  A lie. She always returned from work keyed up, so she’d spent several hours online researching PPD, contact dermatitis and other side effects of so-called black henna.

  “Tag!” she exclaimed now. “What are you doing here? Are you okay? Did something happen?”

  Her son heaved his disappointed-old-man sigh—that was what she called it—and dumped his backpack on the peeling vinyl flooring. “Aiden got poison ivy. Him and Dad are meeting Michelle at urgent care. Dad said I could come home, instead of hanging around the waiting room for who knows how long. I’m gonna see if there’s anything on TV.”

  He didn’t ask for permission, nor did he offer her a hug. He used to. Until last year. She really hated the distance that came with growing up.

  “Not so fast, young man.” She ripped a dryer sheet in two and tossed one half into the dryer. “Give your mom a hug or she’ll hide the remote.”

  He rolled his eyes but complied.

  He smelled awful—sweat, campfire, musty sleeping bag and fish—and wonderful. She squeezed him tighter than she knew he liked and as expected he protested with a groan. “Mo-om.”

  “Sorry,” she said, plucking a twig from his white-blond hair. He was growing it long—to get his dad’s attention, she figured. His father hated long hair, of course.

  A horn beeped.

  “Dad wants to talk to you.”

  To apologize for inconveniencing her by bringing Tag home early? Yeah, right.

  She exited the door Tag had just entered and crossed the five-foot-by-four-foot porch her landlord euphemistically called a patio-slash-deck. It had been tacked to the double-wide modular home before Kat moved in, and in his opinion warranted an extra seventy-five dollars worth of rent. Kat didn’t agree, but she paid it, anyway because the location provided easy access to both Sentinel Pass, the town she called home, and the northern Black Hills communities of Lead, Deadwood and Spearfish where she worked and went to school.

  She took a deep breath of fairly cool morning air as she trotted down the slight incline to the driveway. “Hey, what’s up?” she asked, rising on her toes to look inside the older Ford Explorer. “Not feeling so hot, Aiden?”

  The boy in question, slim and dark-haired, was strapped in a booster chair in the backseat. Although the same age as Jordie, Aiden had his mother’s slight build. Michelle was half-Korean, and Aiden had thick black hair and dark brown eyes. Nobody who saw Tag and Aiden together believed they were half brothers.

  The child shook his head
and squirmed uncomfortably, although Kat couldn’t see any visible evidence of red patches on his skinny arms or legs.

  “It’s around his butt,” Pete said, as if reading her thoughts. He looked more irked than sympathetic, but it was hard to tell, thanks to the two-day growth of stubble on his jaw and neck. A neck that had thickened considerably in the years since their divorce.

  “He had to take a crap when he and Tag were hiking and he used leaves to wipe.”

  “Ooh.” Kat cringed, remembering when something like that had happened to Tag. His genitals had become so inflamed he’d had to sit in a special soak for several days. “That’s too bad, Aiden. But it’ll go away with the right medicine.”

  Twin tears welled up in the boy’s eyes and his bottom lip started to quiver. Kat knew her ex-husband well enough to know he wasn’t cutting Aiden a lot of slack.

  Pete made a face when he looked in the rearview mirror, but he didn’t say anything. The scolding would come, Kat knew. Pete was as emotionally distant as Kat’s father, which was one reason she’d divorced him.

  “I’ll be back for Tag in a couple of hours,” he said. “I figured he’d be better off here than hanging around a waiting room.”

  She agreed, but she didn’t appreciate Pete’s treating her like a drop-in child-care center. “You should have called first, Pete. What if I wasn’t here?”

  He shrugged. “You know what reception is like around Deerfield Lake. It was faster to swing by. If you weren’t here, I’d have just taken him with me.”

  “I might have had plans.”

  He put the car in gear and eased back a few inches. “Do you want me to take him or not? I really don’t have time for this, Kat.”

  Well, neither do I, she wanted to shout. But she didn’t. Shouting was what her parents had done. Every time one had dropped her off at the other’s house there’d been shouting. She’d promised herself she wasn’t going to do that to her children—even if it made her look like a doormat.

  “He can stay, but keep your cell phone on. If I have to meet Char to pick up Jordie, I’ll drop Tag off in town.” She didn’t mention her potential tattoo client.

  “Whatever.”

  She waved at the sad little tyke in the backseat. Pete was always hardest on those he loved most, but how do you explain that to a six-year-old?

  She watched the car drive off, wondering as usual if she could have done things differently where both her ex-husbands were concerned.

  “Mom,” Tag called from the porch. “Jordie’s on the phone. He wants to stay longer with Char. He said he’s learning how to make arrowheads. How come I can’t do that? I never get to do anything fun.”

  Kat had to work to keep a straight face. “You were fishing and camping, remember?” she asked, dashing back to the house. She took the phone from his outstretched hand. “Char took Jordie to the powwow because I worked last night. You know that.”

  His bottom lip stuck out belligerently, but she sensed that his disappointment stemmed more from not being with his father than from not attending a Lakota festival. He shrugged and walked back into the living room, where he had a video game set up.

  Kat hopped up on the washer and put the phone to her ear. “Hello, son. Are you having a good time?”

  “Yeah. It’s cool. We ate Indian tacos last night.”

  Jordie loved food. “Mmm. Sounds yummy. What else have you been doing?”

  “Swimmin’. And dancin’, ’n playin’.” He bubbled on about his various activities in a way that made her smile. Her younger son was most like her, and the tenderness she felt toward him had the ability to bring her to tears at the strangest times.

  “I’m glad you’re having fun, honey. Can you put Char on? I don’t see any reason you can’t—”

  “Okay. I haffa go. We’re gonna make arrowheads. Bye, Mommy.”

  “Bye, honey boy. I love you.”

  There was a loud clunk followed by a laughing voice. “Wow, Kat, that kid is hell on wheels. How do you keep up with him?”

  “I don’t. That’s why I sent him with you,” Kat said, smiling. She slipped off her perch and tucked the phone under her ear so she could stuff another load into the washer. How two boys who had to be bribed to bathe could go through so much laundry was beyond her. “I fully expected you to be sick of him by now. Are you a glutton for punishment or what?” She and Char were close-enough friends to know when the other was kidding.

  “He’s having a lot of fun and everything is fine at the shop so I thought we’d stay another day, if you don’t care….”

  “That’s fine, Char. As long as you’re not sick of him, I’m fine with you keeping him another night. I’m a little surprised,” she said. Major understatement. “But…”

  “I know,” Char said. “I expected to be exhausted at the very least, but he’s a great kid, Kat. Really easy to be around, and the other children have sort of adopted him. Like a junior mascot or something.”

  Kat could picture it. Jordie was very good at blending in. Something he got from her, she figured.

  “Hey,” Char said. “I forgot to ask you earlier. How’d you do on tips?”

  Thanks to a certain tipsy R.U.B. she’d made double what she usually took home. “Pretty good. Enough to get my radiator flushed.”

  Char chortled. “Keep talking dirty like that and I’ll kick your kid out of my tent in favor of some young stud.”

  Kat smiled. Big talk from someone who practically qualified as a nun. Their mutual friend Libby theorized that something in Char’s past had caused her to protect her heart with a fierceness that scared away most men.

  “Jordie loves money. Maybe you could hire him to sell raffle tickets for the chance to woo you.”

  “Woo. Sounds closely related to your swoo. No thanks. So, what are you going to do with a night off by yourself?”

  “That depends on whether or not Pete comes back for Tag.”

  “Huh? What happened to the fishing trip? I thought that was supposed to last all weekend.”

  Kat explained about Aiden’s medical emergency.

  “Oh, man, that sucks. Sounds like a trick a big brother who knows what poison ivy looks like might have pulled on a littler kid he isn’t crazy about.”

  Kat hadn’t considered that. “You’re right. If I’d been more outdoorsy as a child, one or more of my half siblings probably could have sucked me into falling for that. I’ll ask, but I hope for Tag’s sake he didn’t. Aiden’s mother would make his life more miserable than usual if she found out.”

  Pete’s second wife, Michelle, tended to be very protective of her two children, Aiden and baby Cassidy, to the exclusion of her stepson. Kat gave Pete credit for including Tag in family outings as much as he did, because she was sure Michelle didn’t make it easy for him. Or Tag.

  She and Char talked a few minutes longer. Char had spoken to Libby the night before and had the latest scoop on another mutual friend and book-club member, Jenna Murphy. Jenna and Libby were in California at the moment but were due back soon.

  “So it looks like we’re still on schedule for our regular meeting,” Char said. “You’re hosting, right? Tell me the title of the book again. I’ll stop by the mall on the way home tomorrow.”

  “Water for Elephants. You’ll love it. I promise.”

  They hung up a few minutes later without Kat disclosing the fact that she’d scheduled a tattoo at her home. Maybe because she didn’t do impulsive things that involved strange men she met in a bar and her friend would assume Kat was desperate for money—which she usually was. But she preferred to think she didn’t mention the tattoo because more than likely the handsome R.U.B. would be a no-show. He hadn’t called, after all.

  A good thing, she told herself. She didn’t have time for men with potentially lethal swoo. Not when she was so close to finally getting her life on track. And as her mother had proved more than once, nothing could derail a great plan faster than the wrong man.

  Kat had just set down the phone when it
rang. Her hand shook slightly as she snatched it up before Tag could get the extension. If this was the biker named Jack, she preferred not to have to explain the call to her son.

  “Hello?”

  “Um…good morning. Is this Kat?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’m Jack. We met at the bar last night. By the way, thanks for trying to keep me from making a complete ass of myself. I’m sorry about that incident with the Three Stooges woman.”

  She snickered. “Mo. How’s your jaw?”

  “A little sore, but I think I have you to thank that I’m still talking this morning. Was that guy she was with as big as I remember or is that the booze talking?”

  His humility and embarrassment seemed in direct contrast to Pete’s attitude. “He was rather large.”

  “That’s what I thought.” He paused. “So, um…are we still on for that tattoo?”

  She swallowed the lump that suddenly thickened in her throat. He’s a client. Free money. You can do this. “I printed out the information about the black dye. This is nasty stuff and it can cause some really bad reactions. I’d like to go on record as one hundred percent against the idea of using it, but if you’re supplying the ink, I’ll give it a try. No promises.”

  “Great. Brian dropped the stuff at the front desk this morning. Apparently he handles his liquor better than I do, because I could barely open my eyes until about an hour ago.”

  She liked it that he was honest about his hangover. Most men of her acquaintance would have pretended they could handle anything.

  “I’ll do it, but I have a small change of plans. My son came home early from his camping trip and his father could show up at any time to pick him up. Since I’d planned on doing it outside…well, if having an audience makes you uncomfortable, we might have to reschedule.”

  He didn’t answer right away. “How old is your son?”

  “Eight. He’ll be nine in September.”

  There were a few seconds of dead air, then he said, “You’ll be there the whole time, right? I guess it’s okay.”