Firefighter Daddy (7 page)

Rory was reluctant to say, but her friend would find out one way or another. “Mitch Donovan.”

Nic took out her BlackBerry. “I’ll text Jonathan and see what I can find out.”

“No!” Rory grabbed her wrist. “He might get the wrong idea.”

“I’ll be subtle.” Nicola’s thumbs worked in frenetic tandem. “There we go.” She sent the message and set the device on the table in front of her.

Rory sighed. “What if he tells Mitch we’re gossiping about him?”

“Guys never talk about stuff like that.”

“That poor little girl,” Paige said. “Growing up without a mother.”

“I can’t imagine.” Maria ran a protective hand over her belly. “If her mother was anything like me, she was already thinking ahead to her daughter’s first date, high-school graduation…”

“Okay,” Jess said, “that’s depressing. Can we talk about something else?”

Nicola grinned. “Like Rory living under the same roof as a deliciously good-looking firefighter. You should ask him to come to the wedding with you.”

“No! And how do you know what he looks like?”

“I’ve seen the guys on the team. If he’s the one I think he is, he is beyond delicious.”

That would be Mitch.
“I’m not inviting him to the wedding. His daughter is one of my students, we live in the same house. That would be way too complicated, and I don’t do complicated.”

“Love doesn’t have to be complicated,” Maria said.

“Who said anything about love? I just met him!”

“One of these days you’ll fall head over heels for someone, and you’ll see it’s the simplest thing in the world.”

“For a widower with a seven-year-old? I don’t think so.”

Nicola’s BlackBerry buzzed. She picked it up and smiled triumphantly. “I was right. Mitch Donovan
is
on Jonathan’s basketball team. Too bad we didn’t invite those guys to the wedding.”

If Rory wanted Mitch to remain uninvited, she knew the best thing to do was to say nothing.

Nicola tucked her BlackBerry into her handbag. “And while I’m on the subject of weddings, we haven’t talked about my bridal shower.”

“I thought that was supposed to be a surprise,” Rory said.

“Don’t you dare surprise me. I do not want to show up for my shower in old blue jeans and no makeup.”

Like that could ever happen.

“That’s what you guys did to me.” Paige looked accusingly at Maria.

“I’ve apologized for that a dozen times,” Maria said. “What else can I say? It seemed like a good idea.”

“If you don’t want to be surprised, Nic, you’d better send me your schedule for the next couple of weeks,” Rory said. “We plan to have it here and Jess needs some advance notice—”

“Here? No way. Sorry, Jess,” Nic added quickly. “It’s a great place to hang out, but I
can’t
have my shower in a…a bar.”

Jess held up both hands. “No problem. I told her it was a bad idea.”

Rory tried to imagine a bridal shower in her new apartment. “My place isn’t big enough. Paige and Jess don’t have enough room, either, and Maria lives too far out of the city.”

“Call my mother. Here’s her number in case you don’t have it handy.” Nic jotted it on a cocktail napkin. “Our house is perfect for this sort of thing.”

Our house
being her family’s Cow Hollow mansion near the Presidio. Rory loved that house, especially its views of the bay, but she wondered if there might be another option. The only person in the world who was a bigger control freak than Nicola was Nicola’s mother.

Jess gave them all a sly wink. “So your mother’ll be okay with the male stripper?”

“You wouldn’t dare.”

“She just likes to bug you,” Rory said.

The bride-to-be wasn’t letting go that easily. “If you ever
do
get married, little Miss Sunshine, just remember who’ll be your maid of honor.”

“And I’ll be fine with a surprise shower here at The Whiskey Sour.”

Jess grinned.

“But no stripper.”

They all laughed at that. Easy for them, she thought. And so much for the idea that being a maid of honor would be easy. She hadn’t bargained on shoe-shopping with Jess or teaming up with Nic’s mother to throw a shower.

Maria covered a yawn. “I have to get going. This has been so much fun, especially finding out that Paige has a new man in her life and Rory is living with a handsome firefighter. Anything else I should know before I leave?”

“I almost forgot. You’re all invited to my mother’s opening.” Rory took a handful of cards out of her bag and passed them around.

“I think we already have a commitment that night.” Nicola scrolled through the calendar on her BlackBerry. “We do. Dinner with one of the senior partners at Jon’s firm.”

“Tony doesn’t like me driving into the city alone at night, and I’ll never be able to drag him into an art gallery.”

“That’s okay,” Rory assured her. “The last thing we need is for you to go into labor on the bridge.”

“I’m here on Wednesdays,” Jess said.

“You don’t have to look so relieved,” Rory teased.

“No offense, but art’s not my thing.”

No kidding. Jess’s idea of art was a Han Solo poster and a neon beer sign.

“Paige, what about you?”

“I love your mom’s work and it would be great to see her again, but that’s the night Andy and I get together after work.”

“Sorry,” they all said in unison.

“No problem.” Just as well none of them were going, since Mitch and his daughter were.

“G
OOD NIGHT
, D
ADDY
.”

“Good night, princess,” Mitch said from the doorway of his daughter’s bedroom. “Want me to leave the hall light on for a while?”

Her head bobbed against the pillow. “Just till I fall asleep, ’kay?”

“You bet.” He closed the door partway so the light wasn’t shining directly on her face.

“Daddy?”

He leaned back into her room. “Yes?”

“Today was fun.”

More fun than he’d expected. “We’ll have to do it again soon,” he said, bracing himself for the inevitable request that next time included a ride on a cable car.

“And Miss Sunshine can come with us, right?”

Okay, he had not seen
that
coming. It might take some time, but eventually he hoped Miranda would accept that although Miss Sunshine was living in their house, she wasn’t part of their family. She had a life of her own and wouldn’t expect or even want to be included in their activities. “We’ll see,” he said.

“Good,” Miranda said. “Let’s ask her tomorrow.”

Do all kids do this? Hear one thing when they’ve been told something else?
“We’ll talk about it in the morning, okay?”

“’Kay. G’night.”

“Good night,” he said. “Sleep tight.” Then he quickly slipped out of the room before she had time to ask any more questions about Rory.

He still couldn’t believe that she, of all people, had moved into the attic apartment. He did not need the temptation of a beautiful woman living in the house, especially a woman who didn’t altogether approve of the way he was raising his daughter.

Downstairs, he made two restless circuits of the living room. Miranda was right. They’d had fun this afternoon, and yet he couldn’t shake the feeling that it had been a strange day. He felt as if things were changing again. He didn’t like change and he was only just getting used to the way things were now.

He needed something to do, he thought, wandering into the kitchen. He and Miranda had helped his mother clean up after dinner, then Betsy had gone down to organize some stuff in her basement studio. He could hear her clattering around down there and it sounded as though she might be a while, which was fine because he wasn’t sure he wanted company.

He poured himself a cup of cold coffee and stuck it in the microwave. After it pinged, he carried the mug into the living room. From the window he could see Rory’s van parked on the street in front of the house. He and Miranda had arrived home late in the afternoon to find the van parked at the curb, right where she’d left it that morning. Miranda had begged to go upstairs to see her, but his mother said Rory had taken the bus downtown because she and her friends planned to go for drinks after the dress-fitting. She scored points for being responsible about not drinking and driving. If only everyone was, he thought bitterly.

Today, fourteen months after the accident that had robbed him and his daughter of the most important person in their lives, the afternoon at Fisherman’s Wharf had been just what they needed. He’d been avoiding doing the things Laura loved, assuming it would be too painful—not just for him, but for Miranda, too. That hadn’t been the case at all. Miranda had held his hand and talked nonstop about school and cats and Miss Sunshine. The only time she mentioned her mother had been at the ice-cream stand. She was happy with her memories of her mother. Instead of trying to avoid them, he owed it to his daughter to preserve them. He hadn’t been doing that. If anything, he’d wanted to bury the memories along with his wife because it hurt too damned much to let them live.

So what had changed? Selling his place and moving back into his mother’s house? Getting involved at Miranda’s school? Meeting Rory?

He drained his mug and set it on the coffee table. A crash in the basement was followed by his mother’s voice, no doubt using some colorful language. He contemplated going downstairs to see if she needed a hand, then thought better of it. He’d grown up with a mother who could bake bread, change a flat tire and rescue the neighbor’s cat from a tree—and all before breakfast. If she needed help, she’d ask for it.

He put his feet up on the coffee table and leaned back against the sofa. He was tired from spending the day with his mother and daughter and the new tenant, but it was different from the way he felt after responding to a fire. This was mental exhaustion. Maybe a good night’s sleep was what he needed. After he climbed the stairs, he looked in on Miranda, who was sleeping soundly, then went into his own room and shut the door. As he pulled his T-shirt over his head and tossed it into the laundry basket in the closet, he heard a car door slam in front of the house. He glanced around the edge of the curtain in time to see a taxi pulling away and Rory walking up the front walk. He quickly let the curtain drop, hoping she hadn’t noticed.

The front door opened and closed, and he stood in the middle of his bedroom, stock-still, listening to her footsteps on the stairs. At the sound of her apartment door clicking closed, he gave his head a shake. He didn’t need to pay attention to her comings and goings, but having another person in the house would take some getting used to.

He turned on his reading lamp before turning off the overhead light, stripped off the rest of his clothes and slid between the sheets. Then he reached for a magazine on the nightstand and flipped it open.

A floorboard creaked overhead. He couldn’t hear her footsteps, but the ancient floor let him track her progress from one part of the apartment to another. And he wasn’t sure, but he thought he could hear her voice. She’d definitely come home alone—was she talking to herself? No, probably to the cat.

He perused the magazine’s table of contents, looking for a distraction. It was a parenting magazine he’d picked up at the grocery store the day he’d visited Miranda’s classroom. Laura had always seemed to know what to do, how to handle their daughter, and he’d been more than happy to trust her judgment. Their arrangement had been a traditional one, about which his mother had periodically made disparaging comments, but it had worked for them. Now, as often as not, he felt at a loss. He knew he couldn’t learn parenting skills from a magazine, but it was a start.

The sound of running water caught his attention. He was used to listening for Miranda but this time he knew it was Rory. In the shower? The thought tumbled though his mind before he could squash it.

The water stopped. Not the shower.
Not that it’s any of your business,
he told himself, wishing he hadn’t already formed a clear mental picture of Rory’s long wet blond hair falling over her bare shoulders.

“Get a life,” he said out loud to himself, even though he had no intention of following his own advice. The existence he had right now
was
his life.

Parenting, he reminded himself. That was what he should be thinking about. The article on teaching children to be tactful might be helpful. Was it possible to teach a child not to blurt out things like,
Then she died and we stopped going for ice cream?
Considering that certain adults didn’t mind talking about where they’d been conceived, wanting a child to be tactful seemed like a high expectation. Again, he tried to focus on the magazine. A health topic, like the item titled “Bye-bye Baby Teeth” might be easier to master. Especially since it seemed that for the next few years, he’d have to keep the tooth fairy on retainer.

The floorboards creaked directly overhead, followed by the sound of metal on metal and finally a dull thunk. Rory was opening the Murphy bed. Until that instant it hadn’t occurred to him that she’d be sleeping directly above him. She’d said she didn’t have a boyfriend, but what if she got one? What if he started spending the night here? There. Up there, in her bed. No way could he lie here listening to moaning bedsprings and whatever other sounds went with Rory being made love to.

Mitch groaned, not wanting to think about her sprawling naked on the bed, especially not with some other guy. He could certainly picture himself with her. Even before the idea was fully formed, he rolled the magazine into a tube and batted himself on the head with it.

Maybe he really did need to get a life, or at least get out a bit more. In spite of Miranda’s assumption that someday he’d marry again, he wasn’t ready for the dating scene. But a couple of guys from the station had been after him to go for a beer after their basketball game. When Laura was alive, he’d always wanted to get home after the game. After the accident, he hadn’t liked leaving Miranda with a sitter any longer than necessary, but now that they were living here, what could it hurt? Tomorrow morning he’d check to see if his mother would be available to sit with Miranda. It was time he stopped making excuses and started living again.