One Sexy Daddy (13 page)

“Huh?”

“Everclear's lead singer has this hair.”

“That's very helpful in a baby-sitter,” Adam grumbled.

Bob's cheeks crimsoned.

“Hey! I'm qualified to baby-sit. I took the Red Cross course in CPR and lifesaving. Last summer, I was a camp counselor at the Geneva YMCA camp. And since I'm out of school for this summer and most of the kids 'round here work on their family farms, I might be your best bet. Besides—” and here Bob grinned “—my mom leaves me with Pam all the time and I haven't lost her yet.”

“Adam is very grateful,” Stacy said. “He doesn't have any other alternatives. I have to take care of Marion.”

“I heard she got injured. How are you doing, Mrs. Brandweis?”

“Pretty poorly,” Marion said, sighing. “They've got me on painkillers.”

“Aspirin,” Stacy pointed out.

“Still.”

“How come you fell off the trellis of the Peterson house?”

“Accident.”

“And while we're at it, how come you and my dad got into it?” Bob asked, sticking his bleached head into the car.

“Nothing that would concern you,” Adam said.

“Okay, okay, forget I asked. But the next time an adult asks me what's going down, I'll remember that line. ‘Nothing that would concern you.' Now, you want me to baby-sit your kid or not?”

Adam looked over at Stacy.

Please
, his gray eyes begged.

Nothing doing
, she said with the slightest shake of her head.

“All right, you're hired,” Adam said reluctantly. “But if there's any problems—”

“No worries, man,” Bob said and walked back into the house.

“He'll be fine,” Stacy said. “I baby-sat him when he was a baby. Didn't you baby-sit him too, Marion?”

But Marion's attention had already returned to the most pressing topic—Stacy's chores.

“—and you'll need to make the beds, feed the dog, take Sammy to his dentist appointment at three—”

Adam drove the two women to the Brandweis house.

“Marion, can you get into the house on your own?”

Marion looked from Adam to Stacy to Adam again.

“I'm not going to jump her,” Adam said firmly.

“Well, I never!” Marion cried, and with a great suffering moan, slid out of the car.

“Adam, I know what you're going to say.”

“No, you don't.”

“You're going to say that we can still be together in secret.”

“No, I—”

“And that we just have to be more discreet.”

“No, that's not what—”

“And that there's no reason why we shouldn't make love when we want up until you leave.”

“That's not it at all.”

“And that—”

“Would you let me talk?” Adam demanded. “I'm not from Deerhorn, so you don't know what I'm going to say next.”

“Okay,” Stacy said, chastened. “Sorry. Why don't you tell me?”

“I was going to agree with you,” Adam said. “Agree with you completely.”

“You were?” she asked—slightly, just so slightly, disappointed.

“Yeah,” he said. “You know, I've never given my brain a chance to overrule my body on the
question of whether it's all right to make love when you're not committed to someone.”

“And now you have?” she asked—barely, ever so barely—surprised and shaken.

“I wouldn't go that far,” Adam said.

“Really?” she asked, regaining some of her equilibrium.

“Yeah. My body's pretty adamant about what it wants. I want you. I want you so much that if it were up to me, we'd be sneaking off right now to that little piece of heaven on the second floor of your house.”

“Really?” Oddly pleased, yet ready to scold if it got any further than a wish.

“Absolutely. I won't make any bones about that. But I can understand where you're coming from and respect you enough to honor your decision.”

He held out his hand.

She shook.

“Friends?” he asked.

She nodded.

“Just friends,” she agreed.

She slid out of the car and slammed the passenger door.

He couldn't see that tears had started to well up in Stacy's eyes.

He started the engine, backed out of the drive and sped down Oak Street.

It was several minutes before she composed her
self and walked up to the split-level house to give her nephews their hugs and take phone calls for the Brandweis Plumbing Service & Supply Company.

That night, most Deerhorn residents breathed a wistful sigh of relief as they washed up after work or spooned out mac and cheese at their kitchen tables. Sure, it would be nice if Stacy found a husband—she was so good with dogs, children and plants that she would make any man a wonderful wife and a great mother to his children. In fact, many Deerhorn men absently dried their hands as they recalled how they would have asked her out on a date were it not for her father being sick and now—here they'd surprise their wives with a kiss—it had turned out for the best, of course, but it was still too bad about Stacy.

Taking up with that man! Although many felt grateful for his work on the school—if it ever got built!—they nonetheless were of one mind: he had taken advantage of a lonely woman who had temporarily lost her senses. It must have been the grief of losing her father. It must have been that milestone birthday in the spring—twenty-eight?
Twenty-nine? Thirty? It must be how life was passing her by. And no one was without sympathy.

But everyone agreed that a woman alone was no match for a handsome man like Adam. The few men who cautiously opined that Stacey had done the asking were quick to shut their mouths when confronted with their wives' stony faces.

Karen liked her new baby-sitter, and in fact, was so excited to go to Pam's house to play that she seemed not to care about the romantic struggles of the adults around her—she waited until after dinner and asked if she could play at Stacy's the next day.

“She's not your baby-sitter anymore.”

“Not at all?”

“No,” Adam said uncomfortably.

“Oh, good,” Karen said, spooning up the last of her ice cream. “That means she can be my morn.”

Adam swallowed. Hard.

“What do you mean?”

“She always said she couldn't be my mom because she was my baby-sitter. But now that means she could be my mom…if she wanted, that is.”

“You don't need a mom, you've got me.”

“Daddy, I really want a mom,” she replied, as if he were the silliest, most doddering daddy of all not to know how important a mom could be. “I want Stacy to be my mom. And, Dad, I don't want to go to Vegas.”

“But we have to go.”

“I want to stay in Deerhorn.”

“Nobody lives in Deerhorn. Well, the entire world population minus 348 doesn't live in Deerhorn.”

Karen scrunched up her nose, losing all that sunshine on her face quicker than a summer storm taking over the afternoon.

“Karen, we can't stay in Deerhorn. Daddy's work takes him all over the world.”

But she was already upstairs, and when he found the bedroom empty he knew just where to look. He took his place by the doorjamb but then felt an unseen, barely imagined, hand direct him to the bed, an unseen hand that didn't get regular manicures but was small and slim and pink. It was as if Stacy were telling him that this kind of discussion didn't take place at a distance.

“Pumpkin, we'll make new friends in Vegas,” he said, crawling under the bed beside her. Mugs groaned as he tried to follow.

“I don't want new friends. I want old friends. And I want a mom. She said she'd be my mom if she wasn't my baby-sitter.”

“She did?”

“Well, not exactly—but I know that's what she meant.”

The phone rang.

“Maybe that's her!” Karen exclaimed.

Man, daughter and dog scrambled for the study—although Mugs was definitely the slowest.

“Hello,” Adam said, picking up the phone and winking at Karen.

“Adam, it's Lasser.”

“Oh, hi.”

Karen stuck out her tongue.

“Vegas. Now.”

“J.P., this is a surprise.”

“Yeah, well, not a good one for me. Your buddy Ryan's new firm approached the Vegas people with an offer to start by the weekend. I've got to outbid them. I'll send the jet for you and we can assemble the crew here in Chicago and be in Vegas by tomorrow evening with a counterproposal.”

When had the redhead from across the yard changed him? Because the Adam Tyler of a couple of weeks ago would have said “sure thing” and had his bag packed before Lasser could hang up. Instead, he stalled.

“What about the school?”

“What school? Oh, Deerhorn. They can wait.”

“The school year starts in two months.”

“They're getting it for free so they can just—”

“Not free. At cost.”

“Same thing.”

The old Adam would never have cared about the difference, but now he did. Every resident of Deerhorn was going to see a jump in their property taxes. They'd willingly pay, happily even, but they were paying.

“It's not the same thing at all, J.P.”

Long pause.

“Adam, what the hell's gotten into you? Are you coming out to Vegas or not?”

Adam hesitated, looking at his daughter. He had never, ever given anything up for her. And yet, what was a father to do?

“Adam, this is the big leagues,” J.P. said. A funny and highly irregular desperation had crept into his tone. “Vegas is a huge project, the kind you've always wanted. I don't see why you're suddenly developing an attack of conscience about the people of Deerhorn. If it makes you feel any better, I'll send somebody else up there to build the school.”

“It's not just the people of Deerhorn,” Adam said. Karen bobbed her head up and looked at him. “It's me. I can't go. I'm not going to Vegas.”

Karen smiled. A dad liked to see his daughter smile.

“Adam, baby, I love you like a son. I hired you off the street when you were a college kid supporting your mom when your father ran off with a younger dame.”

Adam winced, remembering things he'd best like to forget.

“Adam, I flew you back from that job in Panama in my own jet to bury your mother three years later.”

“You charged me the landing fee for the jet.”

“At cost, Adam, at cost. And I gave you three
days off to get over it—pretty generous in my book. I've given you jobs in every part of the globe, never keeping you any place more than six months—just the way you like it. Come on, Adam, I'm telling you—Vegas is important. And if you look deep in your heart, it's what you've always wanted. Big project. Big city. Blondes with big—”

“I'm not going.”

J.P. whistled low. “Is this a woman thing?”

“Kind of. It's a daughter thing, too,” Adam said, and Karen wrapped her arms around him. She smelled like bubble gum.

“I forgot you had a daughter.”

“I forgot too, sometimes. And that's going to change.”

“And you're definitely not going?”

“No.”

“Then, son, I'm sorry. But you're fired.”

Adam listened to the dial tone and slowly put the phone down.

“Daddy, what happened?”

“Daddy's got some growing up to do,” he said.

1. Get to know Karen. Really get to know Karen.
   
2. Learn to make pancakes.
   
3. Ask out beautiful neighbor. Start with date. Move slowly.
   
4. Figure out what to do with rest of life.
   

T
HE NEXT MORNING
, the fire chief was quite decent about it. He said that his own wife had had a similar experience with a roast when they were first married.

“Don't remember if we had to call in reinforcements,” the chief said. “But I 'member having to use the extinguisher.”

He said that Karen was a hero for calling right away and that the Burger Joint had pancakes so good it wasn't worth anyone making them at home. But, of course, you couldn't tell Pappa that you wanted pancakes—you had to wait until he decided to give them to you. And he was mighty picky about who he gave pancakes to.

“But I'll put in a good word for you,” the chief promised. He hoisted his heavy frame into the truck. “Go on over there. You don't want to face cleaning the kitchen quite yet. Enough to 'moralize a man.”

No argument from Adam on that one, after a look around the kitchen at the sticky white extinguisher foam, the pancake batter, the charred ash in a thin layer over every surface.

“Let's go to Burger Joint,” Adam suggested.

They walked down the tree-lined main drag to the one-room shack. When they came in, Betty Carbol was seated at the counter, sipping her morning coffee and reading a woman's magazine with a nearly naked starlet smiling on the cover. She
slid her cat's-eye reading glasses off her nose when she saw Adam and Karen.

“I hear you had a terrible day yesterday,” she said coolly. “The mayor's still at home with his hand in a bowl of ice.”

“Sorry about that.”

“It was your jaw, but it was his hand. He ought not to have done that. On the other hand, the Pincham's living room couch is awfully uncomfortable. Isn't Bob Pincham baby-sitting you, young lady?”

“My Daddy got fired last night,” Karen said. “We don't need a baby-sitter anymore.”

“I'm sorry,” Betty said, eyeing Adam carefully. He asked Pappa for a cup of coffee and was told he'd get espresso. Adam hunched his shoulders up over the counter and waited.

“Don't be sorry,” Karen said. “It means he gets to stay at home with me. We're going to the beach today.”

“I see.”

Adam fixed a look on Betty like he was going to speak, reconsidered, and then did another about face.

“Betty, how does a guy get a woman around here?”

Betty touched a hand to her clavicle as if to still her shock.

“Adam, honey, you know what to do. You've already figured that out once.”

He gave Karen a handful of quarters from his pocket and told her to try the Indy 500 race car video game in the corner.

“That's the whole point, Betty,” he said, as soon as Karen was out of earshot. “I've figured everything out once. I've done a lot of things once, been to a lot of places once, made love to a lot of women once. But she's taught me the possibility of twice.”

“And you have a child.”

“I have a child I haven't tried hard enough for,” he said, bobbing his head thanks as Pappa put an espresso in front of him and a glass of chocolate milk at Karen's place. “What if I wanted to ask Stacy out? On a date. Not because she's a babysitter. Not because she's made—”

“Let's just leave it at not because she's a babysitter,” Betty said.

“Think I've got a chance?”

Pappa and Betty exchanged a glance.

“What are your intentions?” Pappa asked sternly.

“For the first time in my life, they're the very best kind.”

“Let's be a little more precise,” Betty said. “Bed or no bed?”

“Scout's honor. No bed.”

“Clothes or no clothes?”

“Clothes. Definitely. Wasn't even thinking…well, maybe a little, I was thinking.”

“Kiss?”

“Please.”

“Okay,” Betty conceded.

“Do I have a limit?”

“One,” Betty said. “Just one kiss. Don't look at me like that. It's a first date. And you're doing it the Deerhorn way. Not like a big-city rogue.”

“I'll make one kiss last me.”

“I'm sure you can.”

“Want me to make you pancakes?” Pappa asked gruffly.

“Sure.”

“Give me a few hours,” Betty said, slipping her magazine and glasses into her bag. She patted him on the cheek as if he were one of her grandchildren, but when her heels hit the pavement she didn't look a day over forty.

The florist, who was doing a wedding in nearby Geneva, left a bouquet of white tulips and purple irises at Adam's door. Tanglewood's maitre d' left a message on Adam's machine to say that booth five—by the window!—would be reserved for seven o'clock. The gas station up near the highway called to find out if Adam wanted a free car wash this afternoon—just so the Beamer would look special. Zengeler Dry Cleaners hung his suit on the door knocker—and the shirt—normally all shirts were sent out to a Milwaukee plant—was hand-pressed by Mrs. Zengeler herself. A set of children's videos was delivered to Betty Carbol's of
fice and she left the office early to invite Karen over for the evening.

“Ask now,” she advised Adam after she buckled Karen into the front passenger seat next to Pam Pincham. She rubbed a finger across his chin. “But shave first. And don't come home too early, but don't you dare try anything on a first date. Got it?”

“Yes, ma'am.”

She got in the driver's-side door, told Karen to wave to her dad and carefully backed out into the street.

 

F
ROM BEHIND THE CURTAIN
in the living room, she saw Adam stroll across the yard. He wore his gray suit, with a smartly pressed shirt and tie. He carried an abundant bouquet, and he whistled a confident tune.

She wiped away tears and shook her head.

Impossible.

Utterly impossible.

She should run upstairs, close the door to her bedroom and pretend not to be at home when he knocked. But instead, she stared. He was coming for her, and if she had to live a lifetime of the memory of watching him come for her, she would.

“Hi, I'm your neighbor,” he said when she opened the door. “Name's Adam Tyler.”

She reluctantly took his outstretched hand.

“Nice to meet you.” Playing along:

“I'm thirty-six. Unemployed. Live in that house
over there. Have a daughter who's five. And I'd like to take you to dinner. Tonight. I brought you some flowers.”

“I can't.”

They both looked down at the white-and-purple bouquet as if it were somehow at fault.

“Are you busy?”

“No, it's just—”

“Just what? Why can't you come to dinner?”

“I can't.”

“Is it because I'm unemployed?”

“When did you lose your job?”

“I refused to go to Vegas last night. So I was fired. I guess someone else is going to build the school.”