Daddy Daycare

G-Gary—he died instantly. But Marlene hung on long enough to—

Travis pressed the heels of his hands to stinging eyes.

The intercom buzzed. “Mr. Callahan, Helena Liatos is back on line two. She says it’s crucial that you—”

“Hold all my calls,” Travis barked into the system’s microphone.

Lips pressed tight, he shook his head. “I just talked to Marlie—what?—last week? So this can’t be right,” he said in reference to the press clip’s date. He tapped it. “I remember because she’d been yapping at me about coming down to Arkansas for the Fourth of July, but with this merger and everything I—”

“At the time of her death, police were going to call you, but I thought it’d be better—kinder-—to tell you like this. Face-to-face. She loved you very much.”

“Our grandparents always wanted her to come back. Her place was here.”

“She always said she had no head for business. You have to know she loved Gary—and her life in IdaBelle Falls—very much. She was happy. Working alongside you at Rose Industries wasn’t for her.”

“Nice she had a choice,” he thundered, turning to slam his fist on the desk. Out of a sense of duty he’d taken over the business, while, after inheriting their maternal grandmother’s place two years after graduating from Michigan State, Marlie had run off to Arkansas to play on the farm. He’d told her he didn’t mind, but deep inside he’d wanted her here. He’d missed indulging her rebellious streak since her every whim had shown him glimpses of what a less-structured life might be like. Her free spirit had filled him with just enough crazy urges to run off to Tahiti to make him see how asinine such a step would be. “Where does she think the money comes from to fund her laid-back country lifestyle?”

“I know you’re upset,” Kit said, “but that doesn’t give you the right to put her down. And, for the record, she never spent a dime of the money you sent her—well, not after we had the initial investment we needed to get the daycares rolling.”

“She’s not dead.”

She rose, tried awkwardly to slip her arms around him, but Travis shrugged her away before resuming his pace across the large room.

“This isn’t happening,” he said.

“I know. I mean, I know how you must feel. I was pretty out of it myself for a while. But there was Libby to consider, and—”

“Where is she? How is she?” he asked, staring out the windows. “My niece.”

“She’s fine. With Gary’s parents, but—”

Turning, Travis strode across the office to throw open the door. To his secretary he said, “Mrs. Holmes, please see if the corporate jet is available.”

Chapter Two

Oppressive July heat shimmered off a runway barely long enough to accommodate the plane. The terminal consisted of what was essentially a fancy shed boasting a sign that read IdaBelle Falls, USA. Rolling green hills lined with forest flattened into valleys of prime grazing pastures. Travis had been to IdaBelle Falls once since his sister up and moved to their maternal grandmother’s home. While her inheriting it hadn’t been a surprise, her leaving Chicago to live there had.

Though the gentleman that’d been drummed into Travis since he’d been a small boy offered his hand to help Kit down the plane’s short, steep flight of stairs, his mind was on matters other than how small and fragile her fingers felt in his. As Marlie’s best friend, Kit must be hurting. But part of his problem was how could he be of comfort to her when a large part of him still didn’t believe it was true—that his sister was really gone?

Marlene always had been trying to get him to come for a visit. So he could see how her “kinder, gentler way of life” was presumably so much better than his. She’d wanted him to be “real.” One thing he’d never gotten her to understand was his all-too real sense of duty to keep the family business in the family. More times than he could count, she’d urged him to cash out and spend the rest of his life having fun. Pursuing his own dreams—whatever they may be—not his grandfather’s. Sounded good in theory, but responsibility was so deeply ingrained in Travis, how was he supposed to turn beach bum now? Or, for that matter, take up a slower paced life here in the town Marlene had so loved?

Just thinking her name sent a pang ripping through him.

She can’t be gone, he thought, using every shred of willpower to keep his composure.

He’d watched out for her since they’d been kids. Their chronically battling folks had died young. Their adventure-seeking dad broke his neck while hang gliding off Baja. Travis had been thirteen. Marlie ten. Their mom died three years later from a drug overdose backstage at some Goth concert she’d been attending with her latest boyfriend, who had been twenty years her junior. Yes, their parents’ deaths had been rough. But as cold as it might seem, since he and Marlie essentially had been raised by their paternal grandparents and an endless succession of servants, they hadn’t missed their parents all that much.

They’d had each other. Yeah, a lot of times Marlene had been a pain in Travis’s ass, but most times she’d been a cute mascot he and his friends had enjoyed having around.

“There’s Levi,” Kit said, quickening her pace to the tall, lean man standing, arms crossed, beside a mud-splattered red pickup.

Travis inwardly groaned. Levi was Kit’s fiancé. During the hour-long flight, Travis had learned the apparently perfect man owned the town’s only hardware/lumber store and had helped renovate the big red barn Marlie and Kit purchased to house the latest of their six daycares, which were in neighboring small towns. Kit traveled to each center, acting in a managerial position and occasionally filling in as needed while Marlene had done the books.

Travis couldn’t fathom why, but it irked him seeing Levi hold Kit proprietarily close, planting a brief kiss on her lips before settling in for a long hug.

Kit had tried giving Travis a hug back in his office, but he’d sidestepped the affection. Now, alone on a hot runway that reeked of jet fuel, Travis could’ve very much used a hug. So far from his desk, he didn’t feel like a powerful CEO but like the kid who’d arrived at this same airport well over a decade earlier, about to meet his maternal grandmother for only the second time.

He remembered his grandmother as a warm, simple woman. Her home a barely standing two-story, three-bedroom hodgepodge of additions. A day into his and Marlie’s visit, their grandmother had introduced them to the neighbor girl, Kit. From that moment on he’d been smitten by the long-legged brunette’s many charms.

For an endless summer he’d been part of the small town community. Felt as if he’d genuinely belonged.

If he were brutally honest, Kit had been his first love. Hell, maybe his only real love. And his feelings hadn’t been about the physical—the making love—that had drawn him to her. Everything about her from her cute accent to her casual clothes to her unabashed belly laughs had been miles from his stuffy, painfully polite upbringing. Her carefree spirit had reeled him in from her first friendly hello.

On a sweltering August Sunday, at this same airport, saying goodbye to Kit and her uncluttered way of life had been one of the hardest things he’d ever done. Sure, they’d promised to write, but after a couple letters apiece, as much as he’d still cared for her, the guys at his private school had ribbed him mercilessly for his summer fling with an Arkie. And so, bowing to peer pressure—something that still deeply shamed him—he’d put Kit, their magical summer and an unobtainable longing to be part of a real family from his mind.

Until now, when Kit was the only tangible link to anything he’d once known. Sure, there was Libby, but she barely knew him. And yet, from this moment on, due to a tragic twist of fate, he was to be her father. Father. How could he be good for Libby when half the time he wasn’t all that sure he was doing such a hot job raising himself?

“Hey,” said Levi, dressed in faded jeans, a red T-shirt and white Razorbacks cap. He held out his calloused hand for Travis to shake. “You must be that hotshot CEO brother Marlene was all the time talking about.”

Travis winced. Was that how his sister saw him?

With a partial smile, Travis returned the man’s handshake.

“Sorry about Marlene and Gary,” Levi said, taking Travis’s lone black bag and setting it in the truck’s bed. “They were a great couple. Everyone loved them.”

Travis’s throat tightened.

Thankfully, after a few awkward moments of silence, Kit said, “Well, guess we should get going.”

“Yeah.” Levi opened his door. “I left old Ben in charge, and you know how he is about getting so wrapped up in his afternoon soaps that he forgets we even have customers.”

On the way to the passenger side of Kit’s fiancé’s pickup, Travis asked the obvious. “Why not get rid of the TV? Or old Ben?”

“Simple,” Levi said, climbing behind the wheel. “The women who come in watch TV while their husbands shop, and I give them popcorn popped with the special coconut oil I sell. Since adding the TV and snacks, plus a few shelves of girlie knickknacks, my overall sales have gone up thirty percent.”

“Sweet,” Travis said, removing his suffocating suit jacket and rolling up his sleeves before climbing into the too-small cab beside Kit.

“Where to first?” Levi asked.

Kit said, “Travis wants to see Libby.”

“You’re evidently a very brave or a very stupid man,” Levi said, starting the truck, then putting it into gear.

“How’s that?” Travis loosened his tie, wishing he’d had Mrs. Holmes look into a rental limo and driver from Little Rock. Sitting this close to Kit wasn’t good. Even sweaty, she smelled intriguing. Earthy. Like the meadow where she’d taken him on a surprise picnic the afternoon after the night they’d first kissed.

Oblivious to his discomfort, Levi and Kit shared a laugh.

Kit patted Travis’s left thigh, causing still more inadvertent grief. “In meeting Gary’s parents—most especially his mother—you’re in for a real treat.”