Dating a Single Dad (8 page)

“Brynn, this setup is awkward enough already, what with you living here and working for my family.”
Not to mention the fact that I have now seen you far closer to naked than I ever should have, or that my mother would be delighted if she knew about it.
“I think we need to keep the lines as clear as we can. No more dinners or unexpected visits. If she wants to pop in once a week or so, that’s great, but she needs to set it up first. Otherwise I’m never going to be able to keep her away from the cabins. You can imagine the problems that could create.”

“But I’m right here, and it’s really no bother, and it makes so much—”

“Brynn.” It came out a little harder than he intended, but maybe that way she would listen. It wasn’t like she was used to people refusing her. “I’ll manage.”

She seemed ready to argue, but after a moment she bit her lip and nodded. “Of course. You’re right.”

Yep. He was right, and he was doing the right thing. No need to feel like he’d just taken slippers from a helpful puppy and tossed them across the room.

He shoved his hands in his pockets. “For the record, I understand why you want to have the festival here. I’m not thrilled, but I’ll live. And...yeah, I guess it will be a good kickoff for the place.”

Her smile looked only 50 percent fake instead of the 90 or so he probably deserved. “Okay.”

“Okay,” he agreed. “I’ll take my kid and get out of your way.”

She nodded. He gathered up Millie, who stared at the floor while offering the world’s least sincere apology, and a minute later they were headed back to the job—though he detoured to grab his laptop and a Disney movie. He didn’t want to reward Millie, but neither could he really blame her.

Just the same, it was probably very wise for both him and his daughter to stay as far from Brynn as was humanly possible.

CHAPTER FIVE

B
RYNN
CLOSED
THE
DOOR
behind Hank and Millie, stomped to the bedroom and let loose with a Tae Bo kick that would put the guy on the DVD to shame. Then she fell to the bed, grabbed the pillow and shrieked out a string of words that made no sense whatsoever, but absolutely fit her mood.

“Mother-loving candy maggot freakomatic numskull!”

Where the hell was her brain? She knew he’d been checking her out again. Actually, she’d sensed that more than seen it, because she had been too busy scoping him out herself. She’d been damp and flushed and naked beneath her robe and instead of feeling shy, it made her bolder. She had been irresistibly aware of the skin peeking through the rips in his jeans and the holes in his chamois shirt. There had been one spot above his navel, just the right size to hook a finger through. She’d stared at it and wondered what would happen if she were to snag it with her pinkie and yank. Hard. Hard enough to pull him closer, hard enough to shred that fabric and reveal the muscles hiding beneath his shirt, exposing his skin to the cold air and then pressing her own still-hot-from-the-shower body against him.

And then—because fantasizing about knocking him into the dying snowbank hadn’t been enough—she had dragged him down the hall and thrown out words like
proposition
with that overly tempting bed just three steps away. She’d pulled him into that tiny space where a deep breath meant they would be almost touching, and she’d caught him peeking at her clothes—
oh, like you
really
forgot your bra was lying on the bed, Catalano?
—and her hormones had jumped to a level that usually required candlelight, wine and some serious adventures in foreplay. If it had been up to her body she would have cued up an endless loop of
MythBusters
for Millie, then dragged her daddy into the bedroom to create a few explosions of their own.

Thank heaven he’d frozen her out when she offered child care. Not that she enjoyed being made to feel like a kid who couldn’t get a clue. Far from it.

Get out of here, Brynn. You’re not needed.

She shook her father’s voice out of her head. Hank’s refusal hadn’t been condescending or patronizing—just brusque enough to slap some common sense back into her.

Well, at least back into her brain. Her body still hadn’t gotten the message—probably because it had been busy ogling his biceps.

She needed a distraction. A punitive, unpleasant, totally gag-worthy one that she could remember the next time she was breathing in the sawdust scent of Hank North. One that would help her remember that she was here to make things
less
complicated, not more.

She grabbed her phone and sent Taylor a text.

Shopping?

As she’d expected, the response was swift and affirmative. She closed her phone with a determined nod.

So she was hot for Hank North. Now that she was painfully aware of that fact, she could work around it. Accept the facts and respect his boundaries and move on. It was only a couple of months. She could last that long.

In the meantime, there would be shopping, God help her, then ice cream and a long talk about the ways to put distance between a screwed-up female and a totally unsuitable man.

And Taylor would never know that the lecture would be aimed at Brynn even more than at her.

* * *

T
HREE
NIGHTS
AFTER
Millie pulled her disappearing act, Hank was finally starting to breathe easy again. They had hashed things out, drawn some lines. Much as he’d hated to do it, he’d had to remind her that not all their future guests would be like Brynn. Some wouldn’t want a little girl intruding on their privacy. Others might be very eager to welcome her for all the wrong reasons. Millie had to learn the boundaries and rules now, for the sake of both their future guests and her own safety.

So they had talked. They set up a schedule for Daddy’s work, and the rewards Millie could earn by letting him get his chores done. They decided what Millie should do if she wanted to visit Brynn—because he wasn’t fool enough to believe that he could keep her away completely—and sent Brynn an email with the plan. Her response had been crisp and agreeable, professional and responsible. All was as it should be.

Best of all, he’d seen Brynn only once since the day of the bathrobe, and she’d been on her way to her car, bundled and shapeless. There had been nothing to remind him, nothing to tempt him.

He could do this.

He was on his back beneath the kitchen sink in the Grindstone cabin, trying to determine the source of a particularly persistent leak and cutting out damaged wood, when Millie wandered over from her corner.

“Daddy?”

“Hmm?”

“I’m hungry. And my movie is done.”

Crap. They’d made a deal. He was only supposed to work for the length of one movie. If he didn’t stop now, it was going to cost him an extra story at bedtime.

“Okay, Mills. I need three minutes to finish up and get my stuff together. You pack up your things, I’ll do mine, and—” he glanced longingly at the pipes “—we’ll head home.”

“Okay.”

But as he pulled himself out from beneath the sink, she lingered.

“Daddy?”

“Yeah, babe?”

“When I get bigger, will I get...you know...bigger?”

He sat up with a groan and rubbed his back. There were days when he completely understood why Uncle Lou had given up on these cabins. “Well, yeah. That’s usually the way it works. You get taller and everything gets bigger and—”

“No, Daddy. I mean, like, here.”

As soon as he looked, he wished to hell he hadn’t. Because Millie, his beautiful, tiny daughter, was holding her hands in front of her lab-coated chest in the approximate position of breasts.

Hell and damnation.

He’d always known that they would have to have these talks. They’d already discussed, many times, why Daddy stood up to go to the bathroom while she sat down, why Daddy had parts that Millie didn’t have. And he’d always managed to swallow his discomfort to tell her that when she got older, her body would change and she would have breasts like all the women around her, like her grandmother and teachers and mother.

But none of those lessons must have carried the weight of spying a nude, generously endowed Brynn. Which made sense. Because thinking of what Millie might have seen had certainly been affecting him in powerful ways, as well.

He had learned long ago that awkward talks were better handled while the hands were busy. So he tossed wrenches into his open toolbox and focused on keeping his voice casual. “Yep. When you get to be a teenager, your breasts will get bigger. That’s part of growing up.”

“Oh.”

Her silence drew his gaze. She was drawing small finger circles on the shirt pockets.

“I only have little tiny points here.”

“Yeah, I know. That’s what you’re supposed to have now.”

“Brynn’s were bigger.”

He gulped and focused on the damp rags he was pulling from beneath the sink. “That’s ’cause she’s all grown up. A woman.” All woman, all enticing, all
totally off-limits, North.

“She has boobies.”

Holy— “Where did you learn that word?”

She stuck her thumb in her mouth.

“It’s not a very polite word. Try not to say it again. And take your thumb out of your mouth.”

The thumb slipped free, but she continued to rub the shirt fabric between her fingers. “Okay. But when I grow up, I will have them.”

He drew in a long breath. “Yeah. That’s right.”

“What if I don’t want them?”

He barely held back the snort as he tossed the last rag into the bucket. “Sorry, kid. You don’t get to choose. Like Grandma says, you get what you get and you like it.”

“But they’re so weird! They were pointy and jiggly, and the ends were all brown and—”

“Whoa, whoa, Mills, stop!” Sweet Jesus, he was doomed. “Listen, kiddo.” He grabbed the saw from beneath the sink. “You shouldn’t have gone into her cabin, and you shouldn’t have gone into her bathroom and you shouldn’t have seen her in the shower. But since you did, you really shouldn’t talk about what she looks like to other people, okay? That’s invading her privacy.”
And driving your father bat-shit crazy.

“Oh. I’m sorry.”

Her little head bent. One finger ran slowly over the edge of the toolbox.

Ah, crap.

His heart ached at the sight of her, quiet and forlorn. His Millie always seemed slightly out of step with the world. Not lagging behind, as he often felt, but definitely marching to a different beat. Long-term, he knew, this could be a good thing. She would have a much stronger sense of who she was once she got older and all the other kids were just waking up to the fact that there was a world beyond glitter and SpongeBob. But right now...

Maybe this was the time to find out why she had stopped wearing her lab coat to school.

He set the saw down to kiss the top of her head.

“Mills. It’s okay to ask things, and you can ask me anything, anytime. Never worry about that. But other people don’t need these kinds of questions. And even when you’re asking, or wondering, let’s keep the focus on you, not what other people might, you know, look like. Okay?”

“I can really ask you anything?”

“Anything, babe.”
And then we’re gonna turn the tables for a few minutes.

“Okay.” She lifted her face to his, her eyes wide and trusting. “Am I gonna get hair down on my privacy like Brynn, too?”

He was so frickin’ doomed.

“Yes, you will. I’ll be right back.”

The thud of his work boots echoed through the cottage, shaking the small space. A moment later he was alone in the bathroom, splashing icy water on his face in a vain attempt to shock some sense back into himself. He gasped and blinked and backhanded the drops from his cheeks, then stared at himself in the mirror.

“Millie,” he said out loud. He needed to focus on Millie. Talk to her. Find out what was happening with her. Bring the spotlight back where it belonged, not on...on...

Okay. So Millie had seen something and she had questions. That was normal. And good, really, that she was okay with asking him these things. Right?

He’d long since stopped missing Heather, assuming he ever had—fury tended to cloud the emotions—but damn. These were the times when he wouldn’t mind sharing the parenthood gig. Maybe he could try talking to her about this. She’d been a lot more open lately, less defensive than she used to be.

Of course, that didn’t mean she would appreciate hearing that he’d let their daughter see another woman naked.

Brynn. Naked.

His brain hazed over. Blood rushed south. His mouth went dry as he let himself imagine, just for a second, how it would feel to run his hand over Brynn’s curves, to lick that spot where neck met shoulder, to stretch her hands over her head and taste one of those breasts and—

A scream tore through the cabin.

“Daddy! Daddy, Daddy, owwwwwww!”

He was out of the bathroom before the panic had fully registered, pounding down the hall that seemed to triple in length while Millie’s cries bounced off the walls.

“Millie? Millie, what hap—”

He rounded the corner and froze. Millie crouched on the floor and cradled her hand, blood oozing from between her fingers, her face a terrifying shade of white while her mouth hung open in fear. At her feet lay the saw he’d been using. The saw he’d abandoned in his hurry to get away from the questions and images, the saw he’d left within reach of his curious child.

“Okay, baby. Hang on. Hang on.” He pried her good hand away, wordless prayers flooding his brain as he coaxed open her fist. “Let Daddy see what you did. Let me have a—”

Sweet Jesus. She’d sliced her palm. Bad. There was too much blood for him to get a good look but he didn’t need to see any more.

“Daddy, Daddy, Daddy, it hurts!”

“Shh, baby. I know. We’d better take you to the doctor.”

He pressed a corner of the shirt against the wound, cringing at the red wicking up into the fabric, then scooped her up, threw his coat over her back and headed into the icy night. Millie never stopped crying. Every sob, every hiccup, was like a scrape on his soul.

He ran up the path as fast as he could, cursing the darkness that made him second-guess each step. Nothing would be helped if he fell flat on his ass and they both ended up injured.

“It
hurts!
”

“I know, honey. Hang in there, okay?”

“But Daddy, it
hurts!
”

He moved a little faster, as much as he dared, but it still wasn’t enough. He needed light. He needed his keys. He needed to get something clean on Millie’s hand and put pressure on it and call the doc and drive and—

A light winked at him from between the trees. Brynn’s door opened.

“Hank? Is everything okay?”

He looked down at his sobbing child and admitted the truth.

“I need help.”

* * *

A
FEW
HOURS
LATER
Brynn held the door for Hank as he carried an exhausted Millie into the house. Brynn moved as quickly as she could, considering she’d never been inside, switching on lights and pulling back the covers on the twin bed in the small room crammed with stuffed animals, junior telescopes and an oversize stuffed Minion from the
Despicable Me
movies. She slipped out of the room as he got Millie settled and made her way to the kitchen. The polite thing might be to excuse herself and get out of the way, but the hell with that. First she would feed Hank. Then they were going to have a talk.

After a run back to her place and a few moments to acclimate herself in Hank’s cluttered kitchen, she had corn bread on a plate, chili in the microwave and water heating for the tea she so desperately needed. She grabbed a bucket from beneath the sink, filled it with cold water and set the bloodied lab coat soaking. By the time the microwave beeped, she had cleared school papers from one side of the tiny round table and had bowls ready and waiting.