Daddy Daycare

“Sure.”

“Because otherwise she would’ve meant us as a couple, only Marlene was never really the match-making type.”

“No. No, she wasn’t.”

“Besides which, she knows I’m happy with Levi.”

“Right. And that I’m not the relationship type.”

“Of course.” He’d braked for another stop sign, and though cars whizzed along the paved highway they faced, flooding the truck’s cab with much-needed breeze, for Kit, the temperature under Travis’s hooded gaze blazed as hot as ever.

His dark eyes were beseeching. As if he desperately wanted, needed something from her, but wasn’t sure what.

So she gave him a nudge when she asked, “Beyond losing Marlene, what’s hurting you, Travis?”

Chapter Three

“Excuse me?” Travis squinted at Kit, making her feel about as needed as a pesky fly. Obviously, as in her disastrous fling with Brad, she’d totally misread the current situation. Travis most likely didn’t need or want for anything but a refreshing, cool shower and a light meal. Least of all, he didn’t want her, making her feel silly and stupid and sentimental for even having asked the question. Most of all for the brief flash of wanting something from him—namely the comfort of just being near him. Of knowing that, in his own way, he’d loved his sister every bit as fiercely as she had.

“Nothing,” Kit said, fussing over the lace trim on Libby’s jumper. Why did she always want to fix not only things but people? Especially people who didn’t need to be fixed. Travis was the embodiment of success. He was one of the top CEOs in the country. He had brains, talent and immense wealth. What could he possibly want from her?

“You as bone-tired as I am?” she asked, blaming exhaustion on her odd mood.

“Yep.” He pulled onto the highway, heading toward the airport.

“Did you forget that Marlene and Gary’s new house and our latest daycare are a few miles in the other direction?”

“Nope.”

“Then where are you going?”

“Home.”

“What do you mean home?” she asked, angling on the cramped seat as best she could to face him. “As in Chicago?”

“Come with me. At least for a little while. I’ll need help with Libby for the first few days. Hell,” he said with a swipe of his hair, “make that the first few years. I don’t have a clue what I’m doing, but I’ll—we’ll—figure it out.”

“Hello?” she said, flashing her hand in front of his deadpan gaze. “Marlene and Gary’s funeral is in two days. And what about court order don’t you understand?”

He snorted. “We’ll fly back for the funeral. And my lawyer got his degree from Harvard. Beulah’s no doubt got his on the Internet. Who do you think’s going to win?”

Lips set in a grim line, Kit shook her head. “Not that it’s any of my business, but I think you’ve sorely underestimated the power of your adversary.”

“You can’t be serious? The woman collects windmills and cans pickles. How tough a foe can she be?”

“Have you ever canned pickles in the heat of summer?”

“Can’t say I’ve had the pleasure.”

“And that seemingly derelict windmill alongside Beulah’s weeping willow? It’s fifteenth-century. She had it shipped over from England. Reassembled it piece by piece all on her own. Trust me, the woman’s tougher than you think.”

“Yeah,” Travis said with a wink, “but I’ve got deeper pockets.”

“True. But seeing how decades ago Beulah’s family moved to IdaBelle Falls to start a thorough-bred cattle business, after having already made a fortune off Oklahoma oil, I wouldn’t be so sure her lawyer isn’t also a Harvard grad—or at the very least, Yale.” Kit sent him a wink of her own, grinning at his incredulous expression.

AN HOUR LATER, AFTER Kit had changed his mind about leaving, Travis wandered through the stuffy gloom of his sister and brother-in-law’s closed-up house while Kit changed Libby’s diaper—she’d insisted, arguing there’d be time enough for him to take a turn—it finally hit him. Marlene was gone. She wouldn’t be back to use the hairbrush set on the bathroom counter. Or to complete the to-do list tacked to the fridge door with a cookie-shaped magnet.

His sister had been fiercely proud of this place, and he tried seeing it as the hopeful fixer-upper she would’ve imagined instead of as the run-down wreck it truly was. Two miles outside of town, the place was, according to his sister, one of the oldest brick homes in the county.

Though the two-story, white-columned abode looked grand from the outside, on the inside the place was a cramped, shoddy lesson in how not to restore a historic home. Plenty of cheap paneling over crumbling plaster walls and brown shag carpet hiding scratched wood floors. In the year Marlene and Gary had lived here, the only rooms they’d tackled were Libby’s pink fairy tale of a room and what Marlene called the master bedroom suite—an oasis of modern comfort in an otherwise depressing hellhole.

Travis sent Marlene thousands every month. Why hadn’t she used the money to hire contractors to do the work in a timely manner? Why had she insisted she and Gary do the work themselves? Didn’t make sense.

“You okay?” Kit asked him, Libby in her arms as she descended the staircase that split the entry hall into equal halves.

“Sort of,” Travis said with a sigh. “The way Marlene described this place, you’d have thought it was Gone With the Wind’s Tara, but…” He kicked a piece of drywall at his feet.

“They were happy here,” she said, glancing up at the stained-glass skylight lending the space an otherworldly bluish glow.

“If she’d wanted an old house, the mansion we grew up in would’ve been sufficient. Hell, aside from the servants who maintain the place for corporate retreats, it’s sat empty for years.”

“Ever stop to think,” Kit said from the bottom of the stairs, “that it wasn’t so much an old house she wanted but her own house? One that she and Gary worked on together.”

“Whatever,” Travis said, taking the baby, kissing the top of her sweet-smelling head. “I still don’t get it.”

“You wouldn’t.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Travis asked, chasing Kit down the long, dark hall leading to the kitchen.

Yellow light from the open fridge silhouetted her before spilling into the gloom. “Think about it,” she said. “Everything Marlene wanted had been handed to her by your grandparents or servants or you. But she wanted more than material things. She wanted not just to love her family and job but to create something with her own hands. To be able to sit back at the end of a long, exhausting day and think, with a satisfied smile, I did that. I made it, I painted it, I mowed it—whatever. She had to know her life mattered. That she hadn’t spent her days like some pampered lap dog but as a contributing member of society.” She grabbed a few items from the fridge, then slammed it shut.

“So what you’re essentially saying is that Marlene felt she was in danger of wasting her life? Like me?” Travis switched on a harsh overhead light.

Kit rolled her eyes, slapping a sealed package of bologna, then mustard, on the worn white laminate counter before taking a bread loaf from the freezer. “Libby’s formula is in the third cabinet on the left. Mind opening a can while I make us a couple sandwiches? And for the record, no—Marlene never once said or even implied you were wasting your life. She just had no interest in big business. She wanted to be more hands-on.”

“Whatever,” Travis said, too tired to even conceive of the luxury of having a choice. What if he’d up and told his grandfather he’d had no interest in running Rose Industries? What would’ve happened to their thousands of worldwide employees? All of their families and their families? Thinking of how many lives would have been affected by such a decision made Travis sick. He kept at it day after day because he’d had no other choice. It was as if his life had been preordained to be this way. And who knew? Maybe he’d get a kick out of occasionally plastering or painting a wall, but the sad fact of the matter was that he didn’t have time for anything but work. When Libby would fit into his schedule he wasn’t sure. He was taking this fatherhood gig minute by minute. “Where are Libby’s bottles?”

“Here,” Kit said, picking up the plastic kind that used disposable liners from a basket on the counter. “It’s tricky getting the liners in the first couple times, so pay attention.”

“Don’t,” he said, his voice dangerously low.

“What?”

“Treat me like I’m ignorant. I have spent time with Marlene and Libby.”

“Sorry,” Kit said. “It wasn’t my intention. I just wanted to share a few helpful pointers. You forget—while your business is wheeling and dealing, mine involves a little managing and a lot of hugs.”

The doorbell rang.