One Sexy Daddy (4 page)

The toenails skimmed with the lightest pale color.

He crouched, looked under the bed and found his daughter sleeping with her hand clasped tight to Stacy Poplar's.

She was perfect, he concluded, rubbing his index finger along the smooth, dust-free floor.

Perfect.

The neighbor lady was perfect for his house. For his daughter.

But the delicate little feet, so incongruously groomed, stirred up a mild worry.

Was there something more to Miss Stacy Poplar than simply being a baby-sitter and a housekeeper?

Who cared, as long as he got out of Deerhorn by September?

“All right, you two, come on out.”

The tiny pink-lacquered feet jerked back under the bed.

“Don't want to come out,” Karen said groggily. “I'm having a good nap.”

“Karen, please,” Adam said.

A muffled conference followed, concluding with Stacy sliding out from the side of the bed. Adam reached down and helped her up. Her red-golden curls had pulled away from a scrunchie and the freckles dotted across her nose seemed more pink than the pale brown he recalled from the morning. Her overalls tugged at all the right places.

Betty Carbol was absolutely right. She was obviously good with kids, pets, and if her garden wasn't professionally landscaped, plants.

She was beautiful, if you went for that sort of beauty, and he wondered what had prevented her from marrying. But it was clear that Deerhorn was much like the rest of the world he had seen in his
travels: women married young, and a twenty-eight-year-old single woman might be considered unusual, eccentric, a spinster or past her shelf-life. In Chicago and other big American cities, an unmarried woman this side of thirty-five or even forty was just…single.

“I'm sorry I'm late,” he said. “I kept saying I needed to call home and the mayor would say—”

“Right after I tell you this one story,” Stacy finished for him.

Adam nodded. He thought of his former housekeeper's ire. Affie wouldn't have been so forgiving.

“I'd like to make it up to you,” he said. “You saved my life.”

“I didn't do anything special,” she said, glancing over at Karen who had emerged from the other side of the bed. “Well, I did spend a special day with my special friend.”

He stared. Karen had freshly combed hair, a smile on her face, and for the first time in three weeks, her knees weren't black and her fingernails were clean. She wore a dress—a pink cotton shift with daisies embroidered at its hem. A little fancier than absolutely necessary for a summer afternoon, but, hey, getting Karen to change her clothes at all had been enough to send him to the Deerhorn Public Library last weekend to leaf furtively through the parenting books until the librarian told him that children were not allowed in the stacks unescorted.

He looked at Stacy. Stacy the Wonder Woman shrugged as if to say “How hard is it to get a kid to take a bath and change her clothes?”

“How about dinner?” he asked.

She shook her head. “I shouldn't.”

“No, wonderful lady, don't say no. Say yes. Tanglewood?”

“No thanks. You're too kind.”

Okay, only a little more negative than a polite oh-you-shouldn't-have refusal. Still, he thought he understood how she could be a Deerhorn native and still single at such an advanced age.

A guy had to work hard to get a date with her.

It's not a date, he reminded himself.

“I made reservations.”

She looked at him.

Sure you did, her expression read.

“At least, Betty did. Same thing.”

“Why don't you take Karen?”

“Is Tanglewood fancy?” Karen asked, putting her arms around Adam's waist.

“Only the fanciest place in town,” Adam enthused.

The response was less than overwhelming. In the week before leaving Chicago, Adam had taken Karen with him to the Pump Room, the Ambassador East dining room, the Union League Club Promenade Room, the University Club Twelfth Floor Gallerie…former clients, future clients, buddies from the office, subcontractors, building per
mit experts—they'd all make a fuss over Karen in the first thirty seconds and then spend the rest of the meal trying to ignore her. And her coloring books.

Karen made a face.

“Why don't you have a relaxing evening at home?” Stacy suggested.

Wait a minute—women didn't say no.

Adam smiled reflexively. That smile. The one that made secretaries happily type his reports, make a hundred copies, collate them and laminate their covers. The one that made ticket agents graciously reassign other passengers so that Adam could get a seat on the first flight out. The one that had gotten him women, so many women.

“Karen, I'll just head home now,” Stacy said, slipping past Adam and his smile.

Funny, that smile didn't work in Wisconsin, Adam thought, following Stacy and Karen down the stairs.

“Uh, thank you,” he said. “And about the kitchen—it doesn't always look that way.”

She looked at him with wide amber eyes.

She knew.

He knew she knew.

She knew he knew she knew that the kitchen was like that every day—every day that he was in charge.

“You're welcome,” she said, handing him Karen's stuffed rabbit and opening the front door
in one graceful movement. “Don't hesitate to call again if you need help. Karen did some gardening today and she was quite the little worker.”

She gave Karen a quick hug and before Adam knew it, he was standing on his porch marveling at the back-and-forth movement of Miss Stacy Poplar's hips as she walked across the yard to her house. Mugs dropped his weight down on Adam's feet and loudly yawned.

Wait a minute! She was a woman. And a woman was supposed to say yes.

“I'm not in the market anyhow,” he muttered, before remembering that dinner had not been meant as a date but as a thank you for a favor he had desperately needed.

And an employment offer he had to get an acceptance on.

He craned his neck to watch as she bent over to pick up the mail left on the porch.

“I must be out of my mind.”

He shut the door, standing in the foyer for several minutes trying to figure out what made his neighbor attractive. Then, checking in on Karen as she played in her room and shutting the door to his office, he picked up a slim black leather book. He knew what he needed.

“Hello, Amber,” he said when a honey-sweet feminine voice answered the phone.

“Adam, darling. I haven't heard from you in almost a year! What are you up to?”

“You could find out for yourself. Come see me. I'll send you a plane ticket.”

“Oooh! Where are you? No, don't tell me. Let me guess. Mexico? Montevideo? I hope it's Palm Springs again.”

“Wisconsin.”

A long, excruciating pause.

“Isn't that where they make cheese?”

“They manufacture cheese,” he said, feeling unaccountably defensive. “And the state is known for its farming.”

“And it's boring, right?”

“There's lots of states that are boring. Like, Nebraska. Or Kansas.”

“Yeah, and I'd never willingly go to either one of those places.”

“Look, Amber, every place has got its quirks. Wisconsin is just very…family oriented.”

“So what would we do for a weekend? Besides the obvious—but stop me, because the obvious, with you, is worth a weekend.”

He hesitated, wondering what he and Amber had in common besides being very good between the sheets.

He could hardly have Amber here with Karen.

Or with anybody from Deerhorn, for that matter.

“Okay, I'll let you off the hook. Call me when you get a chance to come to Manhattan, darling,” Amber said with an indulgent laugh. “We'll do the new clubs. Gotta run.
Ciao
, baby.”

 

S
TACY SAT ON THE
living room couch. She pulled a small piece of lined notepaper from between the pages of a botany book on the coffee table. She unfolded it and read it carefully.

1. Divide plantings among neighbors.
   
2. Deed house to Marion. (Or should consider her request to sell house and divide proceeds? Which helps Marion more?)
   
3. Learn to dance.
   
4. H.a.a.
   
5. Put family photos in album. With captions—dates important.
   
6. Spend a day in Chicago.
   
7. Build a kite. One that can really fly.
   

There were twenty-three items on the list, things she had wanted to do but had never tried. Things she had put off for too long. Things that were silly. Things that were embarrassing. Things that were selfless and some that were not.

But it was the fourth one that was so vital to her. So vital and important—and yet, so embarrassingly personal that she couldn't even bear to write more than its initials in a note to herself.

Have an affair.

She had wondered about that fourth item, had assumed that it would be quite impossible to arrange without having to go out of town. After all, she would never consider a married, engaged or even just a going-steady or living-with-someone-off-and-on man.

If she excluded the librarian because he wore a toupee and affected aloofness around women, the sum total of men she could reasonably ask to help her was three. One was a gossip, another was a farmhand some townfolks called touched in the head, and the last was the ruggedly handsome owner of the dairy farm outside the city limits. The grocery clerk at Lakeside Foods had a blistering crush for him and Stacy hoped they might find happiness together. She'd never interfere with that.

Of course, that sentiment left her with nobody.

Not a single man in Deerhorn to whom she could turn for help.

Until she'd heard that Adam Tyler was moving in to Old Man Peterson's house.

If Stacy was only going to have one brief affair in her life, then why shouldn't she want to do it with a man as handsome as he? Besides, he must be experienced—the ease with which he carried himself, the way he smiled so confidently—he knew how to please a woman.

So why hadn't she said yes to going to Tanglewood, the swanky restaurant most Deerhorn residents used for anniversary dinners, birthday
brunches, graduation celebrations and Mother's Day luncheons?

That smile. Oh, that smile. She didn't have a lot of experience with men—all right, make it nearly zero, she thought—but what she did know was that Adam Tyler was the kind of man she could fall for. Fall hard.

And that wouldn't do for her purposes—not one little bit.

Having an affair just to have an affair was wrong, wasn't it? But if she was never, ever going to have a chance at love, was it really so wrong to do it once? Just to know what it was like?

She had to be realistic. Pragmatic. Rational. She could get hurt. She could get too attached. She could misjudge him—perhaps he would be indiscreet and her reputation would be ruined and her silly desires held up for ridicule.

“Jeez, Stacy, you have to take chances if you're going to get what you want,” she muttered.

The phone rang and she guiltily shoved the list back between the pages of the botany book.

It would be Marion, reminding her that she had promised, crossed her heart and hoped to die, to pick a day when Jim could begin moving Stacy's belongings into the converted attic room in Marion and Jim's house. They would put the Poplar house up for sale, and frankly, Marion could use her share of the proceeds since Jim's plumbing business wasn't doing well.

That day was one Stacy dreaded and yet knew was unavoidable.

“If you won't do Tanglewood, how 'bout hamburgers?” A husky voice asked.

“Adam?”

“One and the same. We're heading over to Burger Joint. Please join us.”

She hesitated.

“It's just hamburgers. It's just a neighborly thank you,” he added. “You'd be under no obligation to me, if that's what you're worried about.”

“I don't know if I—”

“Karen says pleeeease.”

He lingered over the please and she nearly melted.

“Tell her she's always welcome to come to my house, and as for dinner, I'm not very hungry.”

“I have a business proposition I want you to listen to.”

“Business?”

“Just business. Nothing…untoward.”

She marveled at his hesitation—she wondered what he'd think if he knew what she had in mind. But he couldn't possibly. Or could he? Did he get this sort of proposition everywhere he went? Would he be shocked if she asked him?

Would she be shocked if she asked him?

“Let me change out of my overalls.”

“No, keep them on,” he said, adding cryptically. “Better that way.”

“Better that way?”

“Forget I said that. Wear whatever you'd normally wear to dinner.”

Burger Joint was a converted grain shack on the edge of the freight tracks. It brandished a neon sign purchased from a demo sale of a restaurant up near the highway, which is why it was called Burger Joint and claimed to be in the town of Renfrow. Its dining room boasted three booths, two tables, a Formica counter with red vinyl stools and a plastic picnic table out back for when the air conditioner was on the blink.

There was no menu because everybody knew you ate whatever Georgios Pappadapoulos decided to feed you—most of the year that was burgers and fries, with an occasional moussaka if he was in the right mood. During the summers, Pappa was known to pull trout or bass out of an ice chest out back, which he'd butter and bread—but only for customers he really liked.

“Stacy!” Pappa cried out when the trio entered the shack. He wiped his stubby fingers on his apron and gave her a big hug. Then he spoke with an
accent thickened with longing for his motherland that twenty years in America hadn't made a dent in. “I'm so sorry about your father. He was a good man with two good daughters. A man can be proud with that as his legacy to the world.”

“Thank you, Pappa.”

Pappa squinted at Adam.

“Who is this man you've brought here?”

“Adam Tyler,” Adam said, putting out a hand to shake.

Pappa regarded him skeptically.

“I'm building the elementary school,” Adam explained. “And this is my daughter Karen.”

Pappa winked at Karen. “New in town?”

“Just last week,” Adam replied. “You don't remember, but we've been here three times for dinner already.”

Pappa crossed his husky arms over his chest. “I remember every customer. But I don't remember you bringing Stacy.”

“This is a special occasion. She helped take care of Karen when I had a meeting today.”

“Yes,” Stacy said. And, sensing trouble, she added, “Adam isn't a picky eater. Neither is Karen. We'll eat whatever you have.”

Pappa pulled a quarter out from behind Karen's ear and gave it to her. Reaching past her shoulder, he turned over the sign on the front door.

“We're closed,” he said firmly. “Sorry. Closed
now. Only restaurant that is still open in town is Tanglewood. Go there.”

Stacy gasped. The three customers, farmers meeting for an early dinner, stared openly—their forks and sentences paused mid-air.

“Pappa, you're always open on Thursday nights.”

“New policy,” he said firmly. “Close early on Thursday.”

“Have we done something wrong?”

“No! But he has!” he roared, pointing an accusing finger at Adam. “First time you take woman out, you don't bring her here. You're a man of the world—you know better. Take her to Tanglewood. I call now for reservation.”

“It's not like that,” Stacy said, glancing at Adam.

He seemed more bemused than offended at Pappa's explanation. The farmers shushed one of their party who was crunching his ice—nobody wanted to miss a word of the confrontation.

“It's not a date,” Stacy said limply.

“A beautiful woman, a handsome man,” Pappa said, grabbing the phone from behind the counter. “You even have a little chaperone. In my country, they would call that a date. I don't know what you call it here. I don't want to know what you call it here. You have pretty dress, Stacy. I don't think I've ever seen it on you.”

“It's new,” Stacy said, although actually the
periwinkle sundress had spent the better part of a year in the closet.

But when she had put it on and undone the top button, the sheer dotted swiss cotton underlay seemed enticing. Just the sort of thing she needed.

It also seemed scandalous and made her self-conscious.

When she did up all the buttons, she felt a little like an extra on
The Sound of Music
.

All her buttons were buttoned.

She wasn't ready for scandalous.

But Pappa seemed way ahead of her.

“Dress like that means something special. Right, men?”

The three farmers at the table nodded solemnly.

“You
are
looking pretty fancy, Stacy,” the eldest said. “I don't think I've ever seen you not wearing jeans or overalls. Not outside of church.”

“Is your gentleman the one Mrs. Pincham was talking about last month?” another asked.

“What did Mrs. Pincham have to say about me?” Adam asked.

The farmers huddled.

“Uh, nothing much,” they lied uncomfortably. “No, nothing much at all.”

“But Pappa, I don't think you want to encourage any dating activity,” the elder one offered.

“Bah!” Pappa said. “I've always thought Stacy needed to live a little.”

“This is just dinner!” Stacy exclaimed. But no
body was buying that. The farmers nudged each other. Adam said he thought they should go. Karen asked how Pappa could do that trick with the coin.

Pappa dialed the phone, murmured quietly into the receiver and hung up.

“They already have you down for five-thirty,” he said. He held out a candy bar to Karen. “Here, little angel, this will tide you over until dinner. Keep an eye on them.”

“But this isn't a date!” Stacy wailed.

“We're closed,” Pappa said. He took off his apron, threw it on the counter and crossed his arms over his chest.

I dare you
, he said without a word.
I just dare you to ask for a burger
.

 

“W
E WERE MEANT
to have dinner here,” Adam chided mildly, looking around the Tanglewood dining room, which was done up to look like a Tyrolean village. “You should have said yes right from the start.”

“I'm really sorry about Burger Joint,” Stacy said, as the maitre d' silently offered her a menu. “I'm so embarrassed. I don't know what got into Pappa. I mean, Mr. Pappadapoulos. He's…eccentric.”

“He's entitled to his opinion,” Adam said.

He glanced at Karen who was lingering at the doorway; when she had told the maitre d' that Pappa had pulled a quarter from behind her ear,
the maitre d' had sniffed and said he had a much better trick to show her. The maitre d' had sauntered to the front desk. From the corner booth, it appeared the trick involved several linen napkins, a water glass and required four busboys to stand in attendance. The busboys and waiters looked as if they were having as much fun as Karen.

Adam figured it was time to clear the air, and to get his baby-sitter/housekeeper onboard.

“Stacy, I should tell you—”

“No, no, I know what you're going to say.”

“It's not like knowing what everyone's doing in Deerhorn—”

“But it's close. I know that you're going to tell me that you're not looking for a relationship.”

“Well, yeah, I am. I mean, I'm not. I mean that I've had a lot of relationships on the road. But they've been just that—relationships on the road. I'm not looking for more. And in fact, I'm not looking for anything because this town is small enough that I wouldn't be able to kiss you goodnight without everyone knowing. Including my daughter Karen.”

“Well, I'm not looking either,” she said, adding quickly, “no, really, I'm not. I'm too old for that sort of thing.”

Adam remembered the conversation with Betty Carbol.

“You're not that old. Twenty-eight isn't too old to get married. If, in fact, that's what you want.
Most women in the big cities are still single at your age. You could move to—”

“I'm not moving and I'm not in the market,” she said hotly. “And I know what my options are. I'm staying here. And I'm staying single.”

“I'm sorry, I was being too personal,” he said. “I have no right to an opinion on the subject. I'm only spending two months here, three if the weather doesn't cooperate and then I'm outta here. But during that time, I'm going to need help with Karen.”

“Karen goes with you wherever you go?”

“She hasn't in the past. But she will. I'm learning how to manage. I'm going to remember that most states require two Institute Days during the school year. And that pancakes can't be left alone.”

“But you're definitely leaving?”

He nodded.

“Town's too small?”

“Well, yeah, if you take a wrong turn anywhere, you're out of town in three blocks.”

“Not enough cultural advantages?”

He thought of Amber's derision. “I wouldn't know what to do with myself if I wasn't building a school,” he said.

“And the people are too intrusive?” she asked hopefully.

Again, Betty Carbol came to mind. He nodded.
He was used to being anonymous—or, at least, feeling that way.

“And besides, you've never been the kind of man to settle down before?”

“Now that you put it that way, no, I haven't. I've never been married. I like to move around. I like to travel.”

“I see.”

Stacy was raised with good manners, even if her mother had died before she reached primary school. Her father had been firm—no elbows on the table, no pointing at others, don't reach across the table to get the saltshaker, say best wishes to a bride but never congratulations. And Stacy had turned out well.

So well, in fact, that her next actions were utterly un-Stacy-like.

She put her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hand and stared. Simply stared, scarcely noticing Adam's puzzlement at why he was suddenly the subject of such intense scrutiny. He jogged his tie. Flicked a piece of dust from his suit-jacket lapel.

“Perfect,” she murmured. “You're just so perfect for what I've got in mind.”

“You are, too,” he said, shifting uncomfortably. “You're perfect.”

“Are you thinking what I'm thinking?”

“I don't know. What are you thinking?”

Karen slid into the booth, snuggled up next to
Stacy and announced that the maitre d' had pulled an entire dollar out from behind her ear and had promised her four cherries in her Shirley Temple if she was a good girl.

 

D
URING A DELICIOUS MEAL
of roasted chicken, Stacy listened eagerly to Adam's anecdotes about his previous jobs: building a department store in São Paolo, Brazil, a skyscraper in Winnipeg, Canada, a casino on a reservation in rural New York.

Adam was a troubleshooter, usually brought into a project when it was bogged down in red tape, worker disputes or uncooperative weather.

He spoke Spanish, Portuguese and French with a decidedly Québécois accent. He knew when or whether and how to bribe a city official to hasten the issuance of a building permit. He knew which geological conditions were worth worrying about, which were fatal to a project and which didn't matter in the slightest. He knew how and why employees would become dissatisfied enough to protest, and while the home office would sometimes grouse about how generously he resolved those issues, they were always happy when he finished his projects under deadline.

There was something he liked about stepping off a plane with a backpack, a set of draftsmen's plans and a job to do.

It was the life he had lived, pretty much uninterrupted, since getting a degree in architecture that
was simply an add-on to the many years he had worked on jobs for Lasser & Thomas.

“This time you brought me and Mugs with the backpack and the plans,” Karen pointed out.

“Glad you came,” Adam's gray eyes met Stacy's. “I met Karen's mother in Miami when I built a dormitory complex for an off-shore oil rig. She's…doing other things now.”

“She doesn't visit me at all,” Karen said.

“My mother died when I was young,” Stacy said, reaching out to squeeze Karen's hand. Karen smiled gratefully. “So I know you can miss having a mother. But my father was a good man who did his best to be both mother and father.”

“Did you get lonely?”

“Yes. But you'll find friends here in Deerhorn.”

“We already have. Right, Karen?” Adam asked lightly.

Karen looked at her father and then at Stacy. “Yes, we have,” she agreed.

“Now tell us everything we need to know about Deerhorn,” Adam asked.

“It's small and everybody knows everybody else.”

“And everyone's so friendly,” Karen added. “Look at the people.”

She waved in the direction of the kitchen and the staff, who had gathered behind the swinging kitchen doors. They stared and, when caught, ducked. Karen slipped out of her chair, saying she
would like to ask the bartender for more cherries for her kiddie cocktail.

“Deerhorn neighbors like to keep up with what's happening,” Stacy said.

“I can see that,” Adam said. He smiled tentatively at the kitchen staff, who had crept around the door for another peek. “Will this be on the front page of the local paper?”

“It would if there actually was a newspaper,” Stacy said. “But we use the telephone. Most people will know the three of us went to dinner by tomorrow morning.”

After dinner, Adam drove them back to the house. Karen had fallen asleep in the back seat and Stacy helped him get her settled into bed.

“I'll walk you home,” he said.

She didn't protest, didn't explain that up until three months ago, as Mr. Gustav Peterson had declined, she had walked back and forth at all hours—keeping Mr. Peterson fed and his plants watered, filling out his insurance forms and doing his laundry when his own daughter couldn't get time off to help.

Instead, as she unbuttoned the top button of her sundress and fluffed the white underbodice, she gathered her courage.

And her intentions.

They walked along the flagstone path to her house.

“Adam, I think you need a little help taking care of Karen.”

“I'll say I do. I can't get a nanny from the service in Chicago who's willing to stay up over weekends, and there doesn't seem to be anybody in town who needs a job.”