Dad's E-mail Order Bride

Graham finally looked over at her. “What other red flags?”

“Well, mainly the fact that Rachel only e-mailed me pretending to be you about twice a week. And she covered her bases by telling me how busy you were once fishing season started.”

“I am busy once fishing season starts,” Graham said. “But I’m still more at fault here than you are. I shouldn’t have been too busy to keep up with what my daughter was doing.”

“Thanks for trying to make me feel better,” she said. “But I insist on paying you for staying at the lodge this weekend. And I’ll certainly reimburse you for the plane ticket.”

“Absolutely not,” Graham said, shaking his head in protest. “If anything, I’m the one who should pay you for your inconvenience in flying all the way across the country. And for your mental anguish over all of this.”

“Mental anguish?” she repeated.

He’d obviously said the wrong thing. Her tone had changed from apologetic to terse. And the insulted expression on her face confirmed it.

“Look,” she said. “I don’t blame you for thinking I’m some desperate love-starved female because Rachel met me through an online dating site. But let’s not make this into some big catastrophe that it isn’t, okay?”

Graham started to say something, but she didn’t give him the chance.

“The way I see it, you and I are the adults here. And I’m pretty sure we’ll both survive the weekend without either of us having to go into therapy.”

Okay, she’d put him in his place.

Graham began backpedaling as fast as possible. “I don’t think you’re desperate, or love-starved, or anything else. All I meant by mental anguish was that no one enjoys being the brunt of a joke. I know I don’t. Rachel has embarrassed both of us. And I intend to teach her a lesson for being so thoughtless.”

She was making him extremely uncomfortable. First, saying how much the words he’d written had touched her. Then, her hand on his arm. Even her plea now to be easy on his daughter.

She was…dammit!

She was being too nice about the whole thing. Plus, she was a knockout. She was the type of woman who could knock him right out of his comfortable existence if he gave her half a chance—smart, sexy, bold enough to speak her mind.

But he’d been foolish to think she would spend one second lamenting the fact that Rachel had sent the e-mails instead of him. Career-focused or not, Courtney Woods was not the type of woman who had ever been lacking for male attention.

Graham tossed the e-mails onto the table, left his chair and walked to the window a safe distance away from her. It didn’t work. She walked up beside him.

They stood in silence, looking out over the cove.

“Rachel isn’t as brilliant as you think,” Graham said. “I inherited this lodge from my grandfather. He was the one who lost his hearing in one ear from an explosion clearing land for the lodge.”

He turned toward her and added, “But tell me the truth about something. Didn’t the hearing loss part bother you at all?”

“No,” she said. “In fact, I admired you. I found it heroic you hadn’t let the accident ruin your life.”

Graham let out a long sigh. “Well, at least you didn’t show up because you felt sorry for the poor deaf guy turning forty.”

“True,” she said. “I only felt sorry for the turning-forty part.”

They looked at each other.

And burst out laughing.

It was the icebreaker they’d needed to cut through the tension. And at that moment Graham realized Courtney could have been a real bitch about what Rachel had done. Courtney could have even threatened to sue him. And who would have blamed her? Instead, she was taking it all in stride, far better than he was at the moment.

“This whole thing really is funny when you think about it,” she said. “I can’t imagine what you were thinking down on the dock when I sounded out every word so carefully, making sure you could read my lips.”

Wisely, Graham didn’t mention the Russian hooker.

Instead, he said, “I know someone who’s going to be reading my lips when she gets home. I can promise you that.”

“And that’s what has me worried,” she said.

Graham looked over at her again.

Now she had her arms crossed, tapping the fingers of her right hand impatiently against her left arm. And that’s one thing Graham didn’t miss since he’d dropped out of society—the whole business of trying to figure any woman out.

It was exhausting.

However, if memory served him correctly, her ambiguous statement was his clue to say, “Meaning?”

She looked straight at him and said, “Meaning I’m not interested in being caught in the middle of a father-daughter fight all weekend, Graham.”

“So what are you suggesting? That I just pat Rachel on the head and laugh the whole thing off?”

“I’m suggesting you postpone any punishment until later,” she said. “Rachel has really worked hard on your birthday party tomorrow. And I shouldn’t tell you this, but she has a special surprise dinner planned for you tonight.”

“A dinner?” Graham repeated.

Courtney nodded. “Rachel planned out the menu herself, and I’m supposed to help her cook the meal. I hate to see all of her plans ruined.”

“You forget Rachel’s planning is the reason she’s in big trouble right now.”

An awkward silence passed between them.

She cocked her head in his direction. “You know, if you really want to teach Rachel a lesson, the best way to do that would be to beat her at her own game.”

“I’m not sure what you mean.”

“I think we’ve both figured out the reason I’m here is because Rachel thought if we hit it off, you’d be willing to move back to New York.”

“Tell me, Courtney,” Graham said. “Is there anything you don’t know about me and my daughter?”

She smiled. “I don’t know if you’re willing to play along with my idea yet.”

Okay, one thing he did miss since he’d dropped out of society was having a woman smile at him the way Courtney had done now—a flirty little smile, the type of smile only a dead man could resist.

“Keep talking,” Graham said.

“What if we let Rachel think her idea worked when she first gets home? But then we tell her instead of you moving back to New York, I’ve decided to move to Alaska to be with you?”

Graham laughed. “To quote Rachel’s favorite expression, she would totally freak out.”