A Match for the Single Dad

They started again without noticeable success in being patient, but Maggie managed to follow along for the most part. A litany of complaints about their father was not-so-well buried in their babbling. She had already observed that he ran a fairly strict household, though it was obvious—to her, at least—that he was crazy about his girls. She suspected he was simply overwhelmed at times. His only assistance in raising them came from his mother and grandmother, who shared a house on the same block as the one in which Garrett lived with his daughters. From what little she had seen of the family, it seemed as though Garrett was almost as responsible for the older women as he was for his daughters.

This was a man encumbered by serious baggage.

Guitar case in hand, he approached with a faint smile. Why did she find the slight curve of his firm lips so much more appealing than Jay’s bright, beaming grins? She liked Jay very much, but there was just something about Garrett….

“Good morning, Maggie,” he said in his deep voice that never failed to elicit a shiver of reaction from her.

She liked to believe she’d become an expert at hiding that response behind a breezy smile. “Good morning, Garrett. The music was especially nice today.”

“I just play some chords,” he said with a little shrug. “Jay chooses the songs. But I’m glad you enjoyed it.”

“I was just going to tell her about my birthday plans, Daddy,” Kix said, bouncing up and down on her white sandals. “I’m so excited!”

Maggie smiled indulgently at the littlest McHale sister. As she almost always did, Kix wore her favorite pink, which clashed cheerfully with her flame-red hair but looked just right, somehow, on the adorable girl. “Sounds intriguing. What’s the plan, Kix?”

“We’re coming here,” Kix almost shouted in reply. “For a whole week! Isn’t that sweet?”

“Not quite a week,” her father corrected. “Monday afternoon through Sunday service.”

Kix waved off those details as unimportant. “Daddy rented a cabin and we’re coming a week from tomorrow. My birthday is that Tuesday and we’re going to have a party in the cabin—and you can come! And Grammy and Meemaw are coming, too. And we’re going swimming and fishing and hiking and boating and Daddy’s going to take the whole week off work and we’ll make s’mores and—”

“Kix,” her father interrupted firmly, “take a breath.”

“I hadn’t heard you were coming,” Maggie said in the brief ensuing lull. She wondered why the information shook her a little. After all, she saw Garrett—er, the McHale family—every Sunday, so why did the thought of him—er, them—being here every day for almost a week throw off her usual equilibrium?

“Kix just sprang this request on me last week,” Garrett admitted. “I was actually surprised a cabin was available on such short notice, especially considering it’s the Fourth of July week. I told Kix I couldn’t promise anything, but fortunately for us there was a late cancellation, so we were able to grab the reservation.”

“I’m glad we could accommodate you,” Maggie said automatically, then glanced at Kix. “So you wanted to spend your birthday week here, so close to home?”

“I wanted to go to the beach.” Payton looked and sounded utterly bored. “Like Padre Island or somewhere cool. But no, Kix had to come here where we come every single Sunday. Lame, huh?”

“But, Payton—Ouch!”

“Payton, did you just punch your sister?” Garrett demanded sternly.

“No, Daddy,” Kix assured him, innocently wide-eyed as she not-so-surreptitiously rubbed her arm. “She just sort of bumped into me.”

“There’s a bunch of geese swimming by the pier,” Payton said quickly. “Can I take Kix down to look at them?”

He hesitated a moment, then nodded. “Don’t get too close to the water. And we can’t stay long. I have things to do today.”

“You can talk to Maggie while we look at the geese,” Payton told him before turning to dash toward the lake with her sister.

Something in the teen’s voice made Maggie blink a couple of times. Surely Payton wasn’t trying her hand at matchmaking? But Garrett didn’t react, so she told herself she must have misunderstood. After all, why would Payton want yet another adult in her already oversuper-vised—according to her, at least—life?

“How have you been, Maggie?” he asked politely when they were alone.

“Fine, thank you,” she replied, equally cordial. “And you?”

He shrugged. “Busy. But fine.”

She knew that in addition to taking care of his daughters, his mother and his grandmother, Garrett taught flying lessons and piloted charter flights out of the small local airport. During the past few months, Payton and Kix had told her he’d left the military, in which he’d most recently served as a flight instructor at Laughlin Air Force Base, after the unexpected death a little more than a year ago of their mother, his ex-wife. He had moved back to this area to be closer to his mother and grandmother.

Garrett and the girls’ mother had divorced when Kix was only a baby. They had shared custody afterward, though the girls had lived primarily with their mother. Their home with her had been in San Antonio, a three-hour drive from the base, so they’d seen their father on alternate weekends and holidays for the most part, which had meant a huge adjustment for all of them when he’d become solely responsible for them.

In listening to the girls chatter about their lives, Maggie had gotten the impression that they had loved their mother but had spent as much time with nannies and babysitters as with her. “She was gone a lot,” Payton had said simply. “She was a lawyer, so she worked long hours and she had lots of professional clubs and parties and stuff she had to go to most evenings. She liked to hang out with her friends on weekends, because she said she worked so hard during the week that she needed down time.”

Time away from her children, Maggie had interpreted in a knee-jerk reaction of disapproval she’d tried to suppress. She told herself she had no right to judge a woman she’d never even met based on perhaps-exaggerated stories from two children.

“Maybe you need a vacation as much as the girls do,” she suggested to Garrett. “We’ll try to make sure you have a good time while you’re here.”

She spoke, of course, as a representative of the resort. No personal messages intended.

“Thank you,” he said.

She cleared her throat silently. Darn, but this man made her teeth tingle. How very inconvenient of him.

“So, um, your grandmother is coming with you for the week?” she asked with a lift of her eyebrows.

His smile turned rueful. “She is. She doesn’t want to be left out, even though she has given me an earful about how she’ll be spending six days in enemy territory.”

Maggie couldn’t help laughing. Her grandmother, Dixie Bell, and his, Esther Lincoln, were lifelong rivals who saw each other as mortal enemies. It had begun back when they were in junior high competing for the attentions of the same boys, though Esther was a year ahead in school. The rivalry had continued when they participated in county-fair cooking contests after they’d married, competing for blue ribbons and each bitterly accusing the other of underhandedness.

“I’m sure Mimi will be a gracious host,” she said, mentally crossing her fingers. “They probably won’t see each other much, anyway. Mimi’s usually in the offices or the store.”

“I’ve already told Meemaw that she has to be polite while she’s here,” Garrett replied with a chuckle.

She found it incredibly appealing to hear this serious-natured, somewhat stern-looking ex-military officer talk about his “Meemaw.” But then, she found entirely too much appealing about Garrett.

He glanced at his watch. “I’d better collect the girls. I’ve got some appointments this afternoon. Nice to visit with you as always, Maggie. We’ll see you next Sunday morning.”

“Actually, I’ll be out of town next weekend. I’m visiting my sister in Dallas to spend some time with her and the baby while her husband’s at a conference in Chicago. But I’ll be back Sunday evening, so I’ll be around if your family needs anything during your stay.”

Garrett nodded, then looked at her with a bemused expression. “I have to admit Kix’s request to spend her birthday week here caught me by surprise. It seemed to come out of the blue. She said she didn’t even need another present, just the time here.”

“Maybe she just wanted to spend a week with her family without the usual distractions at home,” she suggested.

Garrett appeared skeptical. “According to her and Payton, they spend too much time with family as it is. Payton wanted to go to Padre Island for our vacation, but Kix was insistent on coming here, so Payton agreed since it’s Kix’s birthday.”

“That was nice of her.”

“Yeah.” But she noted that Garrett still seemed perplexed by his daughters’ behavior when he bade her goodbye and walked away.

She wished him luck dealing with two girls of that age. It was certainly more responsibility than she’d want to take on.

“Let’s go to the playground!” Kix hopped out of the SUV immediately upon arrival at the resort just after noon on the Monday of their vacation week. “C’mon, Payton, let’s see who can make it all the way across the monkey bars without falling.”

“Whoa. Hold up there.” Garrett moved to stand in front of her. “We have a ton of stuff to carry inside, and you’re helping.”