The Single Dad's Second Chance (11 page)

“I promised to take Scott and Trent to the Marbles Kids Museum.”

“Do you mind if Maura and I tag along?”

“Of course not. But I have to have the boys home by four, because they’re going to Kim’s parents for dinner.”

“That’s convenient,” he said, latching onto the opening she’d given him. “Because you’ve been invited to come for Sunday dinner at my parents’ house.”

She swallowed. “You’re inviting me to meet your family?”

“They’re mostly harmless,” he assured her.

“But we’ve only been dating a few weeks.”

“I want you to meet my family—and I know they want to meet you.”

“What did you tell them about me?” she asked warily.

“I didn’t tell them anything until my mother cornered me at work this week and demanded to know why I was so happy, which led to your name coming up and her insisting that I invite you to Sunday dinner.”

She’d been with Eric for a year and a half but had never met his parents. In fact, she’d only met his daughter after they’d been dating for six months—and she’d been introduced to his ex-wife at the same time because Wendy had insisted on being present when Summer met Rachel.

She probably should have realized then that her relationship with Eric was doomed. Or at least when she commented to him about the little touches and the secret smiles his ex was always giving him and he’d accused her of overreacting. Wendy might have chosen to end their marriage, but she still wanted to control her ex-husband. And he let her.

The more time she spent with Andrew and Maura, the more she realized how mistaken she’d been to ever compare him with her ex. He wanted her to have a good relationship with his daughter and happily included Rachel in their family activities. No, there were no problems from that sector—the problems were with the little girl’s maternal grandmother.

And now Andrew wanted her to meet the paternal grandparents. While she didn’t expect they would have the same issues as Carol Wakefield—who was undoubtedly trying to hold on to her only remaining link with her own child—she suspected that she would still be under the microscope, examined and compared, even if subconsciously, to the woman Andrew had married. And it was her own doubts and insecurities that made her worry they would find her lacking.

“Yes? No?” Andrew prompted.

“Is ‘no’ an option?”

“Not really. My mother’s sent me six text messages in the past twenty-four hours pressing for confirmation that you’ll be there.”

“Then I guess I’ll be there,” she agreed.

* * *

But she managed to put it out of her mind—mostly—while they were at the museum with the kids.

She was surprised to learn that Maura had never been there before. Of course, because her nephews lived in Raleigh, it was one of their favorite places, and they were thrilled to show Maura around.

They dressed up in costumes and played with building blocks and explored an obstacle course and pushed around life-size chess pieces. Most importantly, they had fun. And when it was time to take the boys home, none of them wanted to leave.

After she’d dropped off Scott and Trent, they stopped at Buds & Blooms on the way to his parents’ house so that Rachel could put together a pretty arrangement for his mother. Maura was fascinated by the numerous buckets of flowers, so she let the little girl pick out the ones she wanted to give to Grandma Jane. After she’d selected the appropriate greenery to add to the bouquet, she showed Maura how to tie the stems together with twine then wrapped it in clear cellophane.

David and Jane Garrett’s house wasn’t in the exclusive Forrest Hill neighborhood, as she’d expected. Instead, their ten acres of property straddled the border between Parkhurst and Westdale, on the southwest side of town. It was an old and established area, and the houses there had been built before developers started to cram enormous structures onto postage-stamp-size lots. Andrew explained that the house was actually an old farmhouse, renovated and added on to so many times over the years that it bore little resemblance to the original structure.

“My father keeps offering to buy—or build—something new, but my mother refuses. Because they bought the house when they were newlyweds and each of us kids took our first steps in that house.”

His father was a big man—easily as tall as Andrew and just as broad across the shoulders. He had dark hair liberally sprinkled with gray at the temples, the same green eyes as his eldest son, a quick smile and a firm handshake.

His mother was tiny in comparison to her husband. Maybe five-four, Rachel guessed, with a slight build, chin-length blond hair and blue eyes. She didn’t offer her hand. Instead, she enfolded Rachel in her embrace.

“I’m so pleased to finally meet you.”

“Thank you for inviting me to dinner,” Rachel said, offering her the flowers.

“Oh, my, these are beautiful.”

“I helped make the bouquet,” Maura said proudly.

“Then you should help me find a vase to put them in,” her grandmother suggested.

Maura took her hand and skipped off to the kitchen.

“Are Nathan and Daniel here?” Andrew asked his father.

“In the family room watching some game on TV. Kenna’s there, too.”

“Kenna’s a friend of Daniel’s from high school,” Andrew explained, leading Rachel to the family room to introduce her to his brothers.

She wasn’t surprised that Andrew’s brothers were good-looking. She was surprised how similar they were to one another, in height, build and appearance. She knew Andrew was the eldest, but he wasn’t the tallest. His youngest brother, Daniel, had about half an inch on him, and maybe a full inch on middle brother, Nathan.

Nathan’s hair was a little darker than both of his brothers, his eyes were gray rather than green, and dimples flashed when he smiled. Daniel had a slightly peaked hairline, stubble on his square jaw and a devil-may-care sparkle in his emerald eyes. Kenna was quite possibly the most beautiful woman Rachel had ever met. With pale blond hair, big blue eyes, a dazzling smile and long, lean curves. She looked like a Swedish swimsuit model—generally the type of woman any other female wanted to hate on principle, except that she was also genuinely warm and friendly.

When Jane Garrett called them into the dining room, everyone moved to their chairs around the table. Rachel was directed to sit beside Andrew and to the left of his father. Maura was on his opposite side, with her grandmother at the other end of the table. Directly across from the little girl was her uncle Nate, then Kenna and her uncle Daniel.

“Look at this,” Nate said, lowering himself into his chair. “Mom got out the fancy plates—and it’s not Thanksgiving, Christmas or Easter.”

Jane gave him a narrow-eyed stare as she passed the platter of baked ham to him. “We don’t only use the good china on holidays.”

“No, but the good china, candles and linen napkins?” Daniel looked at Andrew across the table. “Why didn’t you tell us you were dating royalty?”

Maura’s eyes went wide. “Like a princess?”

“A princess is royalty,” Andrew confirmed. “But Rachel isn’t a princess.”

“Oh,” the little girl said, obviously disappointed.

“Your uncles, on the other hand, are royal pains in the you-know-what,” he said, and made her giggle.

Rachel was smiling, too, as she accepted the bowl of peas from Andrew’s father and spooned some onto her plate.

“Now, in a deliberate change of topic,” Jane announced, “I was talking to Susan today—”

“My dad’s brother Tom’s wife,” Andrew said to Rachel in an undertone.

“—who heard from Kelly—”

“My cousin Jack’s wife.”

“—that Lukas and Julie have finally set a date for their wedding, so the invitations should be going out soon.”

“Lukas is Jack’s brother,” he continued his explanations. “They also have another brother, Matt. They’re cousins who live in upstate New York.”

Across the table, Nathan shook his head. “Three cousins and three weddings within twelve months.”

“My friend Kristy’s mom is getting married,” Maura told her uncle.

“Does she live in Pinehurst?”

The little girl shook her head.

“Nate thinks there’s something in the water up there,” Andrew explained to Rachel.

His brother shrugged, not denying it. “It’s the only logical explanation I could think of for three seemingly rational men choosing to strap on the ball and chain.”

Maura frowned. “What ball and chain?”

“It’s an expression,” her father explained, with a harsh look at Nate. “And not an appropriate one.”

“When is the wedding?” Daniel asked.

“The end of June, and I expect all of you—” his mother looked pointedly around the table at each of her sons in turn “—to be there. Matt and Georgia got married so quickly none of us were able to attend, and I understood that everyone couldn’t get away for Jack and Kelly’s ceremony because they got married on a Wednesday night, but there is no reason for anyone to miss Lukas and Julie’s wedding.”

“I’ll go,” Nate assured her. “But I won’t drink the water.”

“Maybe you could invite your cousins from Pinehurst to come here for a party before then,” Jane suggested.

“Mom and Dad’s fortieth anniversary is coming up,” Andrew explained to Rachel. “And Mom’s afraid that if she doesn’t remind us every couple of weeks, we might forget.”

Rachel agreed that forty years was definitely something to celebrate, and she found herself wishing that she might someday share that kind of long-term commitment with someone. Maybe even the man she was seated beside right now....

Chapter Eleven

“W
ell, that wasn’t so bad,” Rachel decided, after they’d said good-night to Andrew’s parents and were headed back to her place. Maura was in the backseat, playing a handheld video game, and although her attention seemed focused on her screen, Rachel kept her voice low so as not to be overheard.

“Were you expecting that it would be?” Andrew asked, amusement evident in his tone.

“I didn’t know what to expect,” she admitted. “It’s been a long time since I went home to meet anyone’s parents.”

“I bet you it’s been a lot longer since I took anyone new home.”

She’d suspected as much, and she appreciated that his family had been gracious and welcoming. Well, his parents, anyway. His brothers had gone out of their way to embarrass Andrew, but she’d grown up with a brother who found pleasure in tormenting her at every turn, so she didn’t hold it against them.

But she was curious about something. “What’s the story with Daniel and Kenna?”

“There’s no story,” Andrew told her. “They’re friends.”

“Just friends?”

“Yeah.” He glanced over. “Why are you asking?”

She shrugged. “I just thought there were some...undercurrents.”

He shook his head. “They’ve known each other too long and too well.”

But Rachel wasn’t convinced. There was definitely something more between Andrew’s youngest brother and the woman he’d introduced as his best friend, even if neither of them seemed to be aware of it.

* * *

Maura didn’t usually mind homework. Daddy said it proved that she was a big girl now, so she’d sit up at the island in the kitchen and do her math work sheets or practice her spelling, usually while Sharlene was making dinner. But on Thursdays she had piano lessons right after school, so she didn’t get to her homework until after dinner.

She sat at the counter staring at the blank page in front of her and thought about what Mrs. Patterson had asked her to draw. She didn’t really like art—especially drawing. She could sometimes picture what she wanted to draw in her head, but it never looked right when she put it down on paper. She’d tried to draw a dog once, and Kristy said it looked like a cow. Mrs. Patterson had scolded Kristy for laughing and said that effort was more important than results.

Maura didn’t really care. She knew she was smart. Whenever Mrs. Patterson wanted something read out loud to the class, she usually asked Maura because she could read way above her grade level. At least that’s what it said on her report card.

She liked to read. She liked to imagine herself inside the stories. Right now she was reading the Harry Potter books. Not all by herself, but with her daddy. It was her favorite part of the day. He said it was a tradition that her mom had started when she was just a baby. She couldn’t remember reading with her mom, but she looked forward to reading with Daddy every night.

She wished she could be reading instead of doing homework now. And then she wished that she had a magic wand like Harry Potter and could make her paper disappear. But the page and the crayons remained stubbornly there.

Sometimes Mrs. Patterson let them cut pictures out of magazines if they didn’t want to draw. She frowned, trying to remember what her teacher had called the kind of picture that was a bunch of pictures put together. But it didn’t matter, anyway, because she said everyone had to make a drawing this time.

Most of the time she rushed to finish because it didn’t matter if she took her time and tried to be careful—her drawing sucked. But this time she was really going to try. Because she could see it so clearly in her mind, the one thing that she wanted most in the whole world.

* * *

Andrew knew that Maura disliked drawing. She was happy enough to color so long as it was a picture in a book, but she became easily frustrated when trying to draw something that didn’t look the way she wanted it to. So when she told him that her homework was to draw a picture, he figured she would be finished and packing up her crayons in less than fifteen minutes.

When she was still at the counter more than half an hour later, he went to investigate.

“Mrs. Patterson told us to draw a picture of what we wanted to do for spring break,” she told him.

“How’s it coming?”

“I think it’s okay,” she said.

Which was a considerable improvement over the “it sucks” that was her usual response.

“Can I see it?”

She nodded.

He stepped closer and peered over her shoulder. He recognized the basic shape of a castle in the background. Since their trip to Orlando the previous spring, Disney World had been her favorite place in the world.

“Is that one of the Disney princesses?”

“No. It’s Rachel.”

He could see it now. The long brown hair and the blue eyes, but it was the very round belly that made him break out in a sweat. Not sure he even wanted to ask about that, he opted to state the obvious: “Rachel didn’t go to Florida with us.”

“I know. But Mrs. Patterson said we could use our imagination to think about what we most wanted. This is what I most want.”

“To go back to Disney World?”

“To be a family. You, me, Rachel and a baby brother or sister.”

It was her earnest expression as much as the words that tore at his heart. She wasn’t asking for much—at least not from her perspective. She only wanted the same thing most of her friends and classmates already had.

But from his perspective, she was asking for the one thing he didn’t think he could give her. It wasn’t that he’d completely ruled out the possibility of getting married again or having another child—it was that he’d only been dating Rachel for a short while and his little girl was already thinking in terms of happily-ever-after.

“We could be a family if you and Rachel got married,” she told him.

“I have no plans to get married again anytime soon,” he said gently.

“Why not?” Maura demanded. “Kristy’s mom’s getting married again, so she’s gonna have two dads and I don’t even have one mom.”

“You had a mother, and she loved you very much.” He hated that he had to remind her of the fact, that her own memories were so faded they were almost nonexistent.

“But why can’t I have another one?”

He didn’t have the first clue how to answer that question. He blew out a breath and looked at her picture again, at the balloon shaped like a Mickey head that the little girl was holding.

“If you had a balloon and it popped or floated away in the sky, I’d be happy to buy you another one,” he assured her. “But a person isn’t a balloon. A person isn’t replaceable. When you lose someone who’s important to you, you don’t just find someone else to take their place.”

“But Kristy’s mom—”

“Stop it!” Andrew snapped. “I’m tired of hearing about Kristy’s mom.”

Maura’s chin quivered and her eyes filled with tears.

He scrubbed his hands over his face. “I’m sorry, Maura. I didn’t mean to yell at you. I just don’t know how to help you understand that the fantasy you’re imagining might not happen.”

Big, fat tears spilled onto her cheeks. “I’m n-never gonna get a new mom?”

“I’m not saying never,” he told her gently. “I’m just saying that you shouldn’t get your hopes up right now, because these things don’t happen quickly or easily.”

“B-but I thought you l-liked Rachel.”

Each sob was like a dagger to his heart.

“I do like Rachel,” he told her, and it was true. He enjoyed talking to her and being with her, and he really enjoyed making love with her.

But it was still a long way from that to wanting to spend the rest of his life with her. He’d made that commitment once, because he’d loved Nina completely. And losing her had left an enormous hole in his heart that he didn’t think would ever heal.

Being with Rachel had filled up most of that empty space, and he was grateful to her for that. But he wasn’t ready to get down on one knee.

“If she’s n-not gonna be my n-new mommy, why did you l-let me l-love her?”

Maura crumpled her carefully drawn picture in her fist and threw it to the ground before she raced out of the room, trampling his heart beneath her tiny feet in the process.

* * *

Rachel wasn’t expecting to hear from Andrew Friday morning. They already had plans to get together that night because he and Maura were leaving Saturday morning to go skiing in Colorado over the little girl’s spring break. So when she got his text message, asking if she could meet him for coffee, she wondered if something had come up to change his plans. Or maybe he was going to invite her to go to Aspen with them.

The possibility made her heart bump happily inside her chest. She wouldn’t be able to accept, of course. There was no way she could abandon the shop for a whole week, especially with no notice to Holly or Trish or Elaine. But the possibility that he might ask her filled her heart with joy and hope.

Maybe she was jumping the gun a bit—after all, they’d only been dating for a few weeks. On the other hand, he had taken her home to meet his family, and it didn’t seem like a huge jump from that to taking a trip together.

But when she walked into the Bean There Café, he didn’t look like a man who was excited about his vacation. In fact, he barely looked at her at all. And when their drinks were ready and they sat down, he didn’t say anything for several long minutes.

Rachel sipped her hot beverage and tried to ignore the tangling of nerves in her belly. When the silence became unbearable, she finally said, “Whatever it is, please just tell me.”

He looked up from his mug. “I think we should cool things down a little bit.”

Though she’d scorched her tongue on the latte, she knew he wasn’t talking about their drinks. What she didn’t know was what had precipitated this decision, why he wanted to cool things down only a few days after taking her home to meet his family.

“I don’t understand,” she said. “What’s changed?”

“It’s Maura,” he admitted.

“She doesn’t want us to be together?” she asked, trying to make sense of his response. Because the little girl had seemed more than happy whenever Rachel spent time with her.

“Actually, it’s just the opposite. She’s thrilled about our relationship—so thrilled that she’s started to fantasize about you becoming her new mother.”

And obviously that bothered him. Because he didn’t want his daughter to forget the woman who had given birth to her? Because he had no intention of marrying ever again? Or because he didn’t think Rachel would be an appropriate mother for his child if he did want to marry again?

She swallowed. “And you don’t see our relationship moving in that direction?”

“We’ve only been together a few weeks,” he reminded her.

She just nodded woodenly.

Only a few weeks, and he was dumping her. He could call it cooling off—he could call it whatever he wanted—but they both knew what it really meant.

“Maura started talking about wanting a new mother before she even met you,” he confided. “But now...now she’s focused on you. She doesn’t just want
a
mother, she wants
you
to be her mother.”

“And you just wanted sex without any messy emotional ties,” she noted.

He winced. “That’s not fair.”

“Really? You’re going to talk to me about what’s fair? Because this is exactly what I wanted to avoid, and your sudden concern about Maura now proves to me that you never really intended to let me be part of your life.”

“I did want you to be part of my life,” he insisted. “You were the first woman I’ve met since Nina died that I really wanted to spend time with and get to know better. You made me want to take a chance and risk my heart again...but I didn’t realize that I would be risking my daughter’s, too.”

“What about my heart?” she challenged.

He glanced away. “We knew the risks.”

“Yeah, and I knew that getting involved with a man who had a child would be complicated. But you made me want to give you a chance—to give us a chance.”

“I really am sorry, Rachel.”

She heard the anguish in his tone and knew that this hadn’t been an easy decision for him. But that knowledge didn’t make her heart ache any less.

“Not half as sorry as I am,” she told him, then pushed back her chair and walked out.

* * *

Andrew wondered what it said about him that, in the space of less than twenty-four hours, two females had walked out on him.

For the first few days after their talk about Rachel, Maura’s attitude had been chillier than the snow on the slopes in Aspen. Although she’d gradually warmed up to him again, he knew she was still confused.

Now they were home again, and he was staring into a shot of Jack Daniel’s at the Bar Down Sports Bar, and wondering how it was that he’d set out to do the right thing, to prevent his daughter from being hurt, and she was hurting, anyway. It was a safe bet that Rachel was still hurting, too. And, if anyone had asked, he’d have to admit it hadn’t exactly been a banner week for him, either.

Not that he expected anyone to ask. After all, a guy didn’t go into a bar all by himself at four o’clock on a Friday afternoon because he wanted to talk about how completely he’d screwed up his own life. No—he went into that bar because he wanted to get rip-roaring drunk and
forget
how completely he’d screwed up his own life.

Thankfully, Maura was with her grandparents this weekend, so rip-roaring drunk wasn’t out of the question.

He lifted the glass to his lips and swallowed the shot. He held the empty glass out for a refill.

Chelsea, the bartender and long ago girlfriend of his youngest brother, eyed him warily. “You driving?”

He shook his head. “I’ll give my brother a call to pick me up when I’m done.”

“Daniel?” she asked, almost hopefully, as she refilled his glass.

He shrugged. “Or Nate.” He tossed back the shot.

Chelsea looked at him and sighed. “You keep up this pace, your brother’s going to have to pour you into his car.”

“Just one more,” he promised.

“Woman trouble?” she asked.

“With a capital
T
.”

“Wouldn’t it be easier to buy her some flowers and tell her you’re sorry?”