Dad's E-mail Order Bride

“And there aren’t any hotels in Port Protection.”

“No,” he confirmed, “there aren’t.”

“So, basically I guess that means—”

“It means you can stay at the lodge until Monday.”

He’d saved her from saying “you’re stuck with me.”

But they both knew that’s what he was thinking.

He motioned toward the path leading to the lodge. “Let’s go inside,” he said. “I’ll make some coffee while we sort this out.”

Lace my cup with strychnine, Courtney prayed. All she wanted to do was curl into a ball and die!

CHAPTER TWO

GRAHAM TOOK THEIR coffee cups to the kitchen for a refill, trying to process everything Courtney had told him so far. She said Rachel had contacted her on an online dating Web site. And the minute Courtney said she was an advertising executive from New York City, Graham knew exactly why Courtney was the one Rachel had picked.

Rachel had been furious with him for months now because he refused to let her return to New York to finish high school. She’d even dragged his parents and her mother’s parents into the fight. Both sets of grandparents promised she could live with either of them and they would take good care of her.

Graham simply wasn’t willing to take that chance.

Rachel was his responsibility. She was staying in Port Protection and that was final. Having his parents and his former in-laws irritated with him was old news.

But he blamed himself for not paying more attention to what his soon-to-be-punished daughter was doing on the Internet. And he also realized he shouldn’t have dismissed Rachel’s accusation that he didn’t want her to have a life because he didn’t have a life of his own.

That was the real reason Courtney Woods sat in the great room of the lodge now. Rachel obviously assumed if he had a girlfriend from New York City he would give in and move back.

He had news for Rachel.

He would never move back to New York City. And until Rachel reached eighteen and could legally do as she pleased, neither would she.

Graham walked out of the kitchen to where he’d left Courtney. Her chair faced the cathedral-style windows that made up the front of the lodge. The view of the cove and the snowcapped mountains in the distance was spectacular. Yet, Graham suspected the view was the last thing on Courtney’s mind at the moment.

She had to be disappointed that love was not waiting for her in Alaska as Rachel had led her to believe. Instead, all he had to offer Courtney was a promise that Rachel was going to regret the day she decided to play around with other people’s lives.

“Thanks,” she said when he handed her the cup.

Graham sat on the chair beside her, aware he should say something—anything—to lessen the gravity of such an awkward situation. He just couldn’t think of anything to say.

She saved him the trouble. “You have to give Rachel props for masterminding such a perfect plan. The hearing impaired excuse for why we couldn’t talk on the phone was brilliant.”

“Yeah, Rachel’s a real mastermind, all right,” Graham grumbled. “We’ll see if she can mastermind her way out of being banned from the Internet for the rest of her life.”

She laughed and said, “Well, she definitely used the Internet to her advantage. Your Web site for the lodge, for instance. Rachel backed up her hearing loss story by pointing out your phone number isn’t listed on your site.”

Graham shook his head in amazement. “The phone number isn’t listed any longer because I spent the first six months after I launched the Web site answering calls from people who were only shopping around for rates. I only contact people who are serious enough to e-mail me.”

He thought for a minute and said, “Rachel used the Internet to her advantage another way, too. I pay a flat fee for phone and Internet service, so she had no long-distance charges to worry about. And Rachel living with the phone glued to her ear is normal. I had no reason to suspect she wasn’t talking to her best friend instead of you.”

“Only one thing still bothers me,” she said. “Some of the e-mails Rachel sent were…” She paused. “Well, to put it bluntly, they were too mature for a girl her age.”

Mature?

Graham gulped.

Did she mean things of a sexual nature?

And how advanced was Rachel in that regard? They’d had the sex talk when she was twelve. To his relief, the subject had never come up again.

Graham was still trying to summon the courage to ask what she meant by mature, when Courtney placed her coffee cup on the end table between their two chairs, bent and picked up her purse from the floor. After pulling out a handful of papers, she unfastened the clip and handed them over.

“Rachel said you could read lips, but I was still worried we would have trouble communicating,” she said. “I printed out my favorite e-mails. I wanted to show them to you and tell you how much they touched me. Read them yourself. And then you tell me if those sound like the words of a teenage girl to you.”

Graham looked down at the first e-mail.

How would I describe myself?

He winced when familiar words began jumping off the page.

When I look back over my life, I see a man content to let life happen to him, instead of charting his own path. A man who believed by making everyone else happy, he would eventually find happiness himself. But I’ve come to the realization that life is too precious to leave to chance and life decisions are too important to hand over to someone else. My mistakes have taught me this: choose what you want out of life or life will choose it for you.

“Why, that little thief!” Graham shouted, refusing to bring his now-red face up to meet hers. “Rachel took that straight from my journal.”

He shifted the papers to the next e-mail:

There are times when such a solitary life leaves me lonelier than I care to admit. Especially on endless, sleepless nights when I gaze at the ceiling, trying to remember how it feels to have the warmth of another body pressed close to mine. Those are the times when I long for a head on my shoulder, another heart beating close to mine, simply enjoying the still of the night.

And the next:

Troubles melt away here in Alaska. Living in such an unspoiled environment renews my spirit, gives me strength, and reminds me of how truly remarkable God’s gifts to man really are. The only thing missing is someone to share such an amazing experience.

“Unbelievable,” Graham said, shaking his head as he thumbed through the remainder of the pages. He was still too embarrassed to look at her.

Maybe Courtney had been honest enough to admit how embarrassed and how gullible she felt. She’d even explained that if her demanding job had left any time for a personal life, she never would have been curious about the online membership her best friend had given her for her birthday. Still, Graham’s embarrassment reached a much deeper level.

A complete stranger had seen right into his soul.

Graham felt as gutted as a fresh fish fillet.

“Let me guess,” she said. “Everything I saved came from your journal. Didn’t it?”

She’d guessed right.

She reached out and touched his arm, an innocent gesture—unless you hadn’t felt a woman’s touch in years.

“I don’t blame you for being upset about your journal, Graham. Just don’t be too hard on Rachel, okay? Be angry with me. I should have paid more attention to other red flags that kept popping up.”