Substitute Daddy

“That was a wise decision.”

“After high school Leigh wanted an urban setting and a big school, so she left here to go to the Philadelphia area and went to the University of Pennsylvania. My aunt and uncle advised us and they steered Leigh away from a lesser school in Baltimore.”

“Another good choice. See. Our values aren’t all that different.”

She held up her hand. “I said Leigh. I stayed here and went to Saint Mary’s College. Ever hear of it?”

He shook his head.

“Not many people have. It’s a good school. Small. Quiet. Perfect for me. We reached these decisions together. Leigh and I headed in completely opposite directions and to diametrically opposed environments. And we were identical twins.”

But they’d been alike in so many ways. Their feelings toward marriage and family for instance. Yet Brett knew Leigh had loved the hustle and bustle of city life and Melissa was clearly a country girl. Country woman, he amended with slightly clenched jaw. He was still so affected by her that it hurt to look at her knowing if he had been a different sort of man she could have been his. He didn’t want it to bother him but he was honest enough with himself to admit that it did.

“You two weren’t the same at all, were you?” Brett said, trying to cast aside old regrets.

Melissa shook her head.

“So you’re saying that if you couldn’t handle attending the same university as your identical twin, a parent would be wrong to unilaterally decide where their child goes based on the school’s reputation alone.”

“Exactly. And it goes further than that. I know you think money’s a deciding factor to a choice of a career, but it isn’t the only factor to consider either. In public relations, Leigh would easily have been able to pull down the kind of salary you mentioned.” She fingered the soft-looking cotton of her dress, a wistful expression settling on her pretty features. “But she met Gary and he and a life together became more important to her. Leigh cut back on her workload by moving to a smaller, less-prestigious firm. And Gary’s whole reason for starting his own business was so he could set his own hours. They were happy.

“I’m in the middle of getting my decorating business up and running again.” She pointed to the barn that sat toward the front of the property. “I’m also about to convert that barn over there into the antique shop I once told you I wanted to open. And I’m going to stay right here where I’m happy and raise my baby. I might not set the world on fire financially or the shop and business might blossom beyond my wildest dreams. But whatever happens, I’ll consider myself successful if my child has everything it needs, and if I look forward to my days at work when I put my feet on the floor each morning.”

Melissa was staring at him when he looked back from a quick glance at the barn. He’d never seen her look more impassioned. Explaining this to him really mattered to her.

She continued, “I always considered Gary extremely successful because he liked what he was doing, and he and Leigh were deliriously happy. That’s success, Brett, but your family called him a failure and a fool. By the standards you set a few minutes ago, that’s your opinion of him as well.”

Brett shook his head and sank into the chair across from hers. Gary hadn’t been a failure or a fool. But had Brett treated him like one? He honestly didn’t think he had but… Could that be the reason Gary had kept the secret about Leigh’s upbringing from him? Brett was a lawyer for God’s sake. He kept secrets all the time. Secrets that were a lot more complicated than where and how someone had grown up. Had Gary thought Brett would ridicule Leigh and him?

“Brett? Are you happy?” Melissa asked, calling him back to the issue at hand. “Do you even know what it is to be happy?”

Happy? Brett stared at her, his mind this time devoid of an answer. Apparently, happiness was a concept he wasn’t at all familiar with. He wasn’t unhappy. Was he?

Brett shrugged. “I suppose happiness is one measure of success,” he allowed, however uncertainly.

Melissa shook her head. “No. For me, it’s the measure. And that’s my problem with accepting any money from you. If I take one penny, you’ll think you have the right to influence or dictate how I raise my child. I know Gary spent a miserable childhood. I don’t know how you felt about it, but he resented the hell out of it.”

Brett just couldn’t expose his feelings to her. She unsettled him too much already. Held too much power over him, though she didn’t seem to know it. It was difficult to even think straight in her presence. She made him uncomfortable in ways he hadn’t felt since discovering R-rated movies in his early teens.

He’d always contended that if he’d known how inexperienced Melissa was the night he’d nearly seduced her, he never would’ve touched her. He’d consoled himself for years with that claim. But now he wasn’t sure. And that was a very scary conclusion because it meant he didn’t know himself very well.

He was about to assure Melissa that all he wanted was for her to accept the trust fund, but all at once he knew that would never be enough. Though he was certainly not father material, he couldn’t stand the thought of just staying on the fringes of this child’s life.

Melissa sat across from him trying to look stern and tough and all the while he could see incredible love for her child shining in her eyes and peeking out of her careful defense of her way of life. He didn’t have a clue why he felt all the needs today that had exploded in him five years ago but there was little sense in denying that those feelings raged through him once again. He was drawn to every aspect of her personality he’d been taught to disdain, and he knew he should stay away from her.

But he couldn’t be a part of her child’s life without her cooperation. And she hated him. Which meant he had to find a way to change her mind. Charm her. Make her need him. See him as indispensable. That was it! He never failed at that.

His parents needed his help in maintaining Bellfield. The firm needed his growing reputation. Women were never the ones to leave even with all their complaints about his workload and tendency to remain aloof. And that was because he gave them anything they wanted but his heart.

He’d have to control himself where Melissa was concerned while being so helpful and charming she wouldn’t be able to imagine her life without him. There was no reason to think he couldn’t do both even though at that moment Melissa looked about as pliable as a steel girder.

He needed to develop a strategy, but at least now he had the germ of a plan. He stood to leave and moved the chair back to where he’d found it. “Will you at least think about the advantages the trust fund could give the baby? I promise not to interfere with any value structure you set for your child,” he promised.

“I’m not a fool, Brett. I know money isn’t necessarily the root of all evil and that it’s also a handy tool in the right hands. It isn’t the money, but who it comes from that worries me. I don’t know if I can trust you to keep your opinions to yourself. I don’t want to spend the next eighteen or twenty years policing your influence.”

Chapter Four

Someone pounded on Melissa’s front door the following Saturday, waking her from a perfectly wonderful dream that Brett starred in. She couldn’t help being annoyed at whoever had snatched her from his arms. Then she realized what she was thinking and aimed that stupid anger straight at herself. What was with her and all these ridiculous dreams she’d been having lately? She’d positively gone around the bend!

In her half-awake state, she tossed on her robe and made her way down the steps. When she pulled open the door, she found Brett, but he wasn’t pounding on her door. He was standing on the ground at the skirt of the porch pounding on the porch floor from below with a hand sledge, loosening the deteriorating floorboards.

To further befuddle her already disordered brain, he was dressed as she’d never seen him—in worn jeans and a faded T-shirt. And there was more. The muscles of his arms stood out in stark definition beneath his tanned skin. She had never thought of Brett as a particularly physical man but that’s the way he looked in the early-morning light.

“What are you doing?” she asked for some reason, even though the answer was obvious. Anything to keep from acknowledging the heat she felt when she looked at him dressed like a man instead of a GQ mannequin.

This isn’t good, Melissa had enough sense to tell herself. She tried in vain to find that nice liberal dose of anger she’d been feeling only minutes ago. But then Brett looked up and smiled.

“I…” he started to reply, then stopped and just stared. It was as if his powers of speech had abruptly deserted him.

Melissa’s heart flipped in her chest when his burning gaze traced her body from her toes to her face. She couldn’t move. She couldn’t breathe. What she saw in his eyes was more dangerous than all the strings to all the trust funds in the world. She clutched her robe closed with a tighter grip and felt her face heat.

But then his smile mutated into that lady-killer grin of his. Fury flooded her brain. And she was free. Gloriously free.

Melissa didn’t say a word but turned and slammed the door behind her. Oh, no. He was not going to charm her the way he did his legion of women. He probably thought that was a way into her life with the baby. How could she have forgotten for even one millisecond the kind of man he was?

Again she asked herself, what on earth was the matter with her? First she dreamed of the man, then for a few seconds there she’d actually believed he was looking at her with desire and she’d liked it. She knew all about the swinging door on his bedroom and all the kiss-off gifts he’d given to those women. She herself had already felt the pain of his fickle-hearted rejection.

Her doctor had warned her that her hormones would go haywire, but she hadn’t thought he meant she’d lose all reason! She’d dreamed of Brett this week and, instead of waking annoyed, she woke feeling needy. It had to stop! Where women were concerned, Brett Costain was poison.

Trying to be completely honest with herself, Melissa admitted that her attraction to Brett was part of her reluctance to accept the trust fund. And there was something else bothering her too. Did she have the right to deprive Gary’s daughter of a relationship with her father’s best friend and brother?

Melissa would have no problem doing just that if she were convinced Brett’s influence would be a poor one. The problem came from a very real sense that her opinion of him was colored by what had happened between them the night they’d met and his rejection the next day.

The truth was she didn’t really know him. The only things she’d heard about him concerned his relationships with women. Other than that subject, Leigh had rarely spoken of Brett at all. To judge him entirely on the merits of his family was unfair. Gary, who was raised by the same parents, had turned out to be a wonderful man. It was altogether possible there was a lot of good in Brett that her sister had assumed Melissa wouldn’t want to hear. Leigh certainly hadn’t intended to keep Brett from sharing her and Gary’s life with the baby.

So what was Melissa to do?

She decided to step back from the problem and avoid him, putting off any decisions until she could look at him with a clear head.

She got down to work after making her decision and managed to catalog and tag every piece of furniture she intended to put in Country and Classics. As she finished scheduling a consultation with the daughter of an old client for early the following week, she glanced at her watch. It was five o’clock and Brett was still hard at work. She had studiously ignored him all day, which wasn’t easy with the sound of power tools buzzing in the background.

She fanned herself idly and realized how very hot it had gotten. Guilt crept in. She hadn’t even offered Brett as much as a glass of water all day. Ashamed and with Aunt Dora’s admonishment always to treat others as you want to be treated echoing in her head, Melissa poured him a glass of sweet tea and carried it to the porch.

Brett stopped pounding the second her shadow fell over him. He looked up and this time he didn’t smile. He didn’t grin. He just wiped the sweat off his forehead with the back of his hand and nodded a greeting.

“Is that for me?” he asked.

“I was working and I hadn’t realized it was so hot out here. Where did you learn to fix a porch?”