Tempted By The Single Dad

Sam’s parents had let the lease lapse when he and Sue were teenagers, but when they died, he had approached Mavis and asked about the possibility of leasing again. She, he remembered, had been delighted, almost as if she was waiting for him to come back. Since then, the cottage had always provided exactly what the sign, swinging at the gate with letters so faded you could barely read them, promised.

Soul’s Retreat. Sam Walker was counting on this place to give him something that was in very short supply in his life right now.

Serenity.

Wisdom.

Wasn’t there a prayer about those things? Not that he was a praying kind of man, though given the desperation of the decision he had come here to make, he wasn’t going to rule out the possibility of becoming one.

What he didn’t need were any further complications to a life that was seriously complicated right now.

And this woman, Alicia—Allie—with her black-tipped hair, and a tiny bit self-conscious in her wet, too-large T-shirt, and trying hard not to let it show, had complication written all over her.

He was sympathetic about her grandmother. Of course he was. But, after tonight, she couldn’t stay here with him under the same roof.

She looked like she was still the artsy type that her hallway art indicated. She’d probably love to go to Paris for two weeks. There. Problem solved. He would offer her a round-trip, all-expenses-paid to Paris so he and Cody could have the cottage to themselves.

If only all of life’s problems were so easy to solve.

His more immediate problem was this: he had a very stinky dog and a very stinky kid on his hands. Neither of them liked baths.

“You’ve eaten, right?” Alicia asked, as she watched the shocking change in her life unfold before her very eyes.

Sam Walker stood in the bedroom she had suggested for Cody. The bedroom was not large, at the best of times, but now it looked positively tiny. Sam’s shoulders seemed to be taking up all the space. He was rummaging through the small suitcase Cody had dragged up the walk on his wagon.

Cody and the dog peeked out at her from under the bed. The man and the boy had identical eyes, large, dark brown and soft as suede. There was something in them that could weave a spell around the unwary.

Which she was not.

“Yeah, we stopped at Pizza Palooza,” Sam said, his voice a growl of unconscious sensuality. “Perfect Pal Happy Deals all the way around. Did they make me happy? No. I’m pretty sure that’s what the dog threw up. I wonder if I can sue for misleading advertising?”

Allie felt a jab of sympathy for him. She reminded herself to be wary of spells, and overrode the sympathy. Much more sensible to see this as a reminder that he had a team of lawyers at his fingertips, and presumably, he was not afraid to use them.

Still, she had to venture, “I don’t think the Perfect Pal Happy Deals are dog-designated.”

“Did you hear that, Cody? The Happy Deal is not dog-designated. No more feeding Perfect Pal to Popsy. So, how about a bath, buddy?”

Sam had extracted a pair of pajamas from the suitcase. They looked as if they would fit a good-size teddy bear, and they had fire engines on them. Allie was finding this level of adorable invading her home doing very odd things to her heart, wary as it was.

The dog and the little boy shrank back a little farther under the bed. The man shot her a look, then got on his knees, rear in the air—and a very nice rear, at that—and looked under the bed.

“Come on,” he said, his tone soothing, despite the exasperation Allie had so clearly seen on his features.

The boy scooted right out of sight. The dog made a sound that wasn’t quite a growl, more like a hum of dismay.

Allie backed out of the room to leave Sam to his challenges, which seemed substantial. She reluctantly closed the open patio door—a precaution against the possibility of a burglar in the neighborhood. She was aware she felt a little safer with Sam in the house, though this reliance on a man to feel safe made her annoyed with herself.

Allie retreated to her bedroom, taking her tablet and her guitar with her. The bedroom proved not to be any kind of retreat at all.

For one thing, the cottage, with the closed patio door, was hot, her tiny bedroom window open a tiny burglar-proof crack, was not providing much of a breeze. She would normally leave her bedroom door open, but with guests in the house, that wasn’t possible, especially since, as a defense against the suffocating heat, she stripped down to the bathing suit that was under her clothes. She appreciated its tininess, as much of her skin as possible exposed to the stingy breeze coming in her window.

She picked up her guitar and strummed it hopefully with her thumb, but it told her, with a certain sullen stubbornness, no. Which was too bad, because it might have covered the other sounds coming through the paper-thin walls of the cottage.

While she listened, the child was snared, a bath was run, the little boy splashing while his uncle made motor boat sounds.

There was something about Sam—so confident and so handsome—making motorboat sounds that made him all too human. He was a man way out of his element. And yet trying, valiantly, to do the right thing.

At some point Allie realized the little boy was not speaking, and it distressed her and made her realize she had not asked enough questions before allowing this pair, plus a dog, to share her home.

Why was she assuming Sam was doing the right thing? How did an uncle and nephew end up together on holidays? Why wasn’t the little boy speaking? Where were the mommy and daddy? Was Sam Walker really the child’s uncle? What if she had inadvertently embroiled herself in a parental kidnapping of some sort?

Though honestly, Sam didn’t look like he was enjoying the exercise in child-rearing enough to have used illegal means to experience it.

Sam Walker did not look like a kidnapper any more than he looked like a home invader. In fact, he looked the furthest thing from a man capable of any kind of subterfuge. There was something in his eyes, in the set of his mouth, in the way he carried himself—in the way he handled the child and dog—that made him seem like a man you could trust, even if you didn’t particularly like him.

Her grandmother had known him, she reminded herself. Had not just known him, but liked him enough to share an ongoing rental relationship with him for many years.

Still, Allie was aware that not only was she not sure what the type who became involved in a parental abduction would look like, but that she had an unfortunate history of placing her trust in people who had not earned it. While other people could trust their instincts, she had ample and quite recent proof that she could not.

Determined to not be naive, she put on her headphones to block out the noises coming from the bathroom and typed Sam Walker into the search engine on her tablet. Not too surprisingly, there were thousands of Sam Walkers. She changed tack and put in “recent abductions.” Also, sadly, way too many of them, though no photos of a curly-headed little boy who looked like Cody. No abducted children with dogs.

Giving up, Allie Googled the legal ramifications of rental contracts, only to find out lawyers were quite cagey about dispensing free information over the internet.

After that, she went through her grandmother’s documents, stored in a box under Allie’s bed, hoping for the rental contract, but found nothing.

Through the headphones, she heard the muffled sounds of the bath ending. She took them off and listened.

The bed in the room next to her creaked, a small creak, and then a larger one. Too easy to picture.

“Get off, Popsy, you stink. And you’re next for the bath. Don’t even think of hiding. Okay, where is Woozer, Wizzle, Wobble? Here it is.”

One bedtime story, read three times.

Again, that deep, sure voice, sliding over those silly words was all too endearing: “‘And then the witch said, woozer, wizzle, wobble and turned the toad into a donkey.’”

Ashamed to realize that she was acting like an eavesdropper and that the little scene playing out in the bedroom made her ache with that same weak longing the family on the beach had caused in her earlier, Allie put the headphones back on. She turned the music up.

She pointed her finger at her silent guitar. You are not my only source of music.

Then, she stretched out on her bed, and let the faint breeze play over her skin. Without any warning, the three nights of not sleeping suddenly caught up with her.

CHAPTER FIVE (#ufad726fc-0e45-5d3c-b449-7721a5647d7e)

CODY FELL ASLEEP before Sam had finished the third reading of Woozer, Wizzle, Wobble.He knew better than to stop. His nephew could rise out of a deep sleep, his neck swiveling like he was trying out for a part on an exorcism film, if he thought he’d been cheated of the entire third reading of his favorite book. For a kid who had given up on talking, Cody was remarkably adept at making his thoughts—particularly displeasure—more than apparent.

Sam finished the book, then slid out of the bed. Carefully, he undid the string that fastened the superhero cape around Cody’s neck. A tender protectiveness for his nephew rose up in him, but it was followed with brutal swiftness by his awareness that when it had mattered, he had not been able to protect Cody at all.

As happened sometimes, the memory hit him without warning. His brother-in-law, Adam, laughing, as he and Sam chased after a shrieking Cody trying to get the cape off him for Sue to put in the laundry. Cody, fresh out of the bath, had been naked, save for the cape.