Most Wanted Dad

He dropped a kiss onto Mattie’s discolored head and pushed up to his feet. “I have to go,” he said. “I’ll check on you in a couple of hours. Try to get some sleep please.”

She mumbled something indecisive and fixed her attention on the television screen. Evans walked toward the entry, then paused and turned back.

“By the way, the complaint came from next door.”

She rolled onto her side and propped her head on the heel of her hand. “Really? You mean somebody actually lives there?”

“I told you someone did,” he reminded her. “She’s pretty reclusive, apparently, but she’s in there.”

Mattie wrinkled her nose. “Probably some old crone who came in during the land rush.”

“Whoever she is,” Evans remonstrated mildly, “we have to get along with her. She’s a neighbor, and you know what the Good Book says about neighbors.”

Mattie rolled her eyes. “Yeah, yeah, love thy neighbor, and all that stuff.”

“Exactly. Now behave yourself.”

She mumbled again, and he had the feeling that he didn’t really want to know what she’d said. “See you later, sweetheart.”

“See ya.”

“And keep the door locked,” he called from the entryway.

“Why should I?” she came back. “I thought we were living in the Garden of Eden here.”

“There is no Garden of Eden anymore,” he told her under his breath, and he locked the door himself when he went out, just to make sure. Then he turned his attention to the house next door and took a deep breath.

Amy switched off the television and got to her feet, thrusting her arms into the sleeves of her bathrobe again as she moved toward the door. She was prepared to be gracious and properly thankful. She was shocked, instead, to find a wildly handsome stranger in the uniform of a city police officer standing on her doorstep. His cap was tucked under his arm, leaving exposed a headful of thick, inky black hair that glistened in the porch light.

He consulted the clipboard in his hands. “Mrs. Slater?”

“Yes.”

The clipboard went the way of the cap, then he was extending a hand. “I’m Officer Kincaid, ma’am, Evans Kincaid, and, um, I live next door.”

Next door? Amy’s mouth fell open. “Oh, my goodness.”

He nodded apologetically. “My daughter lives with me. She’s seventeen, and you know how seventeen-year-olds are about their music…. Well, anyway, we hadn’t seen anyone around this place and she…she thought the place was empty, so…”

Amy had to close her mouth before she could make a reply, and the very idea that she might be gaping at this handsome man for any reason other than outrage was, well, outrageous. “The house is not vacant!” she snapped. “I’ve lived here four years, I’ll have you know.”

“Yes, ma’am, and she was making entirely too much noise,” he said calmly. “My apologies.”

“Well, I should think you would apologize,” Amy huffed, feeling inexplicably disturbed, “leaving a child completely unsupervised like that.”

“She’s not exactly a child,” Evans returned. “Her mother was only about six months older than Mattie is now when I married her.”

Amy hadn’t been much older than eighteen when Mark had swept her off her feet, either, but she heard herself saying snidely, “I expect it’s too much to hope your child bride might be able to control her own daughter, then.”

Leaf green eyes suddenly blazed, a muscle flexed in his finely sculpted jaw, and even in the dim light on the porch, she could see dull red pulsing beneath his bronzed skin. It occurred to her that she had, indeed, gone too far, but rather than feeling fear or even shame, she felt an odd exhilaration, a kind of thrill, as she watched him master his anger. Breathing through his mouth, head slightly bowed, shoulders squared, he very deliberately took control of the emotion so obviously flooding him. In mere moments that sleek, dark head came up and the angry color receded, leaving behind only the flash of fire in yellow-green eyes.

“My wife is dead,” he said bluntly, “and my Mattie is as fine a young lady as you’ll ever find walking God’s green earth! Sometimes playing her music too loud doesn’t mean she’s out of control! Now, I’ve apologized, and Mattie will, too, at a more appropriate time. If that’s not good enough for you, I suggest you press charges. I’ll call another officer to take care of it for you if that’s what you want. You just say the word.”

Amy blinked at him. She hadn’t actually thought of pressing charges. It was just a stereo played too loud. No unauthorized party had been going on, after all. But pride wouldn’t quite let her back down, not in front of this proud, handsome man. She lifted her chin. “I’ll think about it and let you know.”

Those green eyes flashed bright. “You do that. Good night, then, ma’am.”

“Good night.”

She practically closed the door in his face, then gasped at her own impudence. She couldn’t think what had come over her! The poor man probably wanted to strangle her, and him a police officer, no less. A widowed police officer. Widowed. They had that in common, at least. She shook her head suddenly. Well, what of it? He might be good-looking, and he might have a quick temper—which he controlled admirably—but what difference did that make if he couldn’t even control his own daughter? Without even realizing what she was doing or why, Amy put Evans Kincaid out of mind, choosing instead to concentrate on the daughter. She wasn’t thrilled about having a wild teenager living next door without proper adult supervision. The sanctity and peace of her home were all she had left, after all. Was it too much to ask to be able to hear her own television set in her own house? In the middle of the night, no less! Oh, this was not going to work. She could already see that this just would not work, no matter how handsome, er, widowed he was.

Evans forked eggs into his mouth and reached for his coffee cup. Correction, milk cup. His daughter had decided that coffee would only keep him awake, and she was probably right about that. He was having enough trouble adjusting to this new schedule as it was, but it took real concentration to keep from making a face as he swallowed the white liquid. Across the table from him, Mattie nibbled on dry toast and sucked her milk through a plastic straw with a ridiculous number of curls and loops in it. He remembered buying her that straw at one of the amusement parks in Southern California. How old had she been then? Nine? Ten? Younger than twelve, for sure, because she had been twelve when her mother had died.

Had it been five years already? Or was it closer to six? Yes, definitely closer to six, for his little girl would be eighteen in October, and this was already the middle of August. He himself had seen forty in June, which meant that Andie would have been thirty-seven in May, though to him she would always be eighteen. She hadn’t changed one iota from the sweet, loving girl whom he had married during his senior year in college. Even on the day that drunk driver had jumped the median in his truck and skidded through the crosswalk to knock his Andie all the way through the intersection, she could have passed for a teenager. He wondered what she would have been like now. Certainly not like that crab next door.

Next door.

There was a feud sizzling there, and he had to find a way to defuse it before it exploded in his face. It was the last thing he needed, being new on the job. He sighed mentally, suddenly feeling very tired and every day of forty. He put down both fork and cup and pushed away his plate, looking at his daughter. As usual, she sensed his regard almost immediately.

“What?” she asked, looking up.

“You have an apology to make, young lady, and there’s no sense in putting it off.”

She was clearly shocked, her mouth dropping open. “You’ve got to be kidding! It’s the crack of dawn!”

He glanced at the clock on the front of the wall oven behind her head. “It’s eight thirty-five. The whole world’s up.” He pushed his chair back. “Come on, let’s get it over with.”

“Aw, Da-ad!”

“The sooner it’s done, the sooner we can get some sleep.”

“Rats!” Mattie grumbled, but she got to her feet, slinging her long hair over one shoulder.

Evans frowned at the spiked bangs, but he said nothing. Why comb out the bangs and leave the black eyeliner and the ghost-pale makeup? At least the dark red lipstick had worn off, along with the other makeup that made her look like a vampire. But he knew better than to say so. She’d simply accuse him again of not wanting her to grow up—and she’d be right, darn it.

He opened the back door and marched her through it, then off the porch and across the yard to the fence gate. It was already warm. He could hear a lawn mower farther up the street, but he doubted that would last long. Soon the day would blaze with three-digit heat. He’d been warned about these Oklahoma summers, and everything he’d been told was true. Not having to wear starched khakis in the heat of the day was the only good thing about working the night shift. On the other hand, it would be sundown before he could get to his own lawn, maybe tomorrow. It could go one more day.

The gate swung open easily beneath his touch, and he took pride in its smooth movement. It was one of the first repairs he’d made about the place. He liked to keep things in good shape, himself included. They walked side by side down the narrow drive, his late-model pickup truck safely locked inside the detached garage.

“This is dumb,” Mattie said sullenly. “If she was up at two o’clock this morning, she won’t be awake yet.”

“She will if she’d been in bed for a while before you woke her at 2:00 a.m.”

Mattie wrinkled her nose as they turned onto Mrs. Slater’s lawn. “But how do you know that?”

“Well, for one thing, she was wearing a bathrobe and, I presume, night clothes when I called on her.”

Mattie didn’t appear to want to argue with that, settling instead for a shrug. “What if she works? She’ll be gone already.”