Father Found

by Judith Arnold

  He tucked Samantha under his arm like a football and hurtled down the hall to the kitchen, wondering why there was never a pro scout around when he was performing with the flair of a Dallas Cowboys running back. Shifting Samantha to his other arm, he flipped through the phone directory as if he had a prayer of finding anything listed under “babysitters.” He had less luck this time than he’d had searching for private investigators in the Yellow Pages. “Baby-Sitters,” it said, “See ‘Child Care Providers, Day Care Services, Nannies, Nurses.’”

  He’d love to see one particular nurse. He’d love to take her out for dinner and talk to her about anything but babies. But without a baby-sitter, that objective seemed unattainable.

  He hoisted Samantha onto his shoulder and stalked back to the spare room he’d converted into a makeshift nursery. He’d left the window open, and a balmy breeze wafted through, spinning all the propellers in the helicopter mobile. For a moment he was dazzled by the spectacle. Samantha didn’t even spare it a glance. She nestled against his shoulder, smelling like cool bath water and clean clothing.

  He fell still, standing in the slanting evening sunlight, watching the brightly colored rotors whirl and feeling the soft weight of his daughter against his chest. For a moment he found himself unable to breathe. How could the tiny human in his arms be simultaneously the bane of his existence and the most awe-inspiring creature he’d ever encountered? How could this little girl be so sweet and peaceful and clean—and yet be destroying his chance for romance with Allison Winslow?

  If it weren’t for Samantha, Jamie wouldn’t be racing around like a maniac, late for his date with Allison. He wouldn’t be frantic for a baby-sitter. He wouldn’t be standing in Samantha’s room, his mood growing dismal as he lowered his gaze from the festive mobile to the sodden bed sheets in the crib below it.

  On the other hand, if it weren’t for Samantha, he would never have met Allison in the first place.

  Propping the baby more securely against his shoulder, he used his free hand to swipe the sheet and blanket off the crib. He had thought the saleswoman had simply been trying to separate him from his money when she’d insisted that he buy two complete sets of bed linens for the crib, but now he was grateful that she’d persuaded him. He put Samantha on the floor for the minute it took him to make the crib with a fresh sheet, and by the end of that minute, she was revving up to scream. Once again he propped her in one arm and scooped up the sheets with the other. He carried them to the laundry room—a room he’d never given much thought to before last Monday—and then returned to the kitchen to consider his options, ghastly though they were.

  He could call Allison and cancel their date. He could call and tell her he was going to be late, quite possibly extremely late, because it might take hours for him to dig up a baby-sitter.

  Or he could bring Samantha with him.

  She was cuddling into his neck again, her head snuggled into the hollow of his throat and her wispy hair tickling his chin. When she wasn’t exuding body fluids and blaring vocal offensives, she was actually nice. If luck was with him—and damn, he’d already had enough bad luck—Samantha ought to fall asleep right about when he and Allison entered Reynaud, the elegant French restaurant where he was planning to take Allison in the hope of making a better impression on her than he had thus far.

  He could lower the back of Samantha’s stroller and cover her with a blanket, and she would sleep through dinner. Surely no one in the restaurant could complain, especially if they recognized the excellent quality of the stroller. It was either that or cancel the date.

  He knew other women. He had an active social life, and one dinner date more or less wasn’t going to matter much in the grand scheme of things… except that Allison was special. She could save his butt, and he was close to worshiping hers. More important, he understood that if he didn’t go on this date, Samantha would have won. He would have been defeated by fatherhood. He would have lost the life he’d been living, the life of a successful single guy.

  “Okay, Sam,” he murmured, reaching for his backpack and a box of diapers. “Let’s see how badly you can screw things up for me tonight.”

  It took him another five minutes to pull Samantha’s car seat from the Miata and install it in the back seat of his Range Rover. He hated driving the Rover in the summer, but the Miata was a two-seater. Unless he locked Samantha into the trunk, which was admittedly a tempting idea. He raced back into the house to retrieve the directions Allison had given him to her home, which was about two miles from the hospital. When he returned to the garage, he was lugging the stroller and the baby.

  What a date—showing up at a woman’s house with a stroller. He’d have to do better than that. He’d have to leave Samantha and the stroller in the Rover while he explained the situation to Allison: “Hi, Allison. I know how important fatherhood is, and to prove my commitment to my child, I brought her along for the evening.” No.

  “Hi, Allison. Samantha was in the mood for Reynaud’s bouillabaisse, so I brought her along.” Not quite.

  “Hi, Allison. Once again, I’m doing everything wrong—but I mean well, so I’m hoping you’ll cut me a little slack.” That would be honest, at least.

  Honest or not, it wasn’t particularly romantic. Flowers might help. A single rose would be appropriate. A single long-stemmed beauty, along with a sheepish smile and a plea for forgiveness.

  Allison might consider a single rose a cliché, though. Maybe he ought to go for something playful—a bouquet of daisies to put her in a childlike mood. Or sultry—orchids, pansies, something like that. But then Allison might assume he was trying to send her an erotic message. Which, admittedly, he was.

  He wound up spending ten minutes he didn’t have at the flower shop. He wound up spending fifty dollars. “You really must have done something terrible,” the florist teased as she wrapped the enormous bouquet in green cellophane paper. “Most men buy atonement for a lot less money.”

  “This woman is worth every penny,” Jamie insisted, even though he had no way of knowing if that was true.

  He arrived at Allison’s home fifteen minutes late. She wasn’t pacing the small brick front porch or standing in the window with a shotgun aimed at his privates. In fact, the modest gray-shingled house looked welcoming, its windows bright with light and the lamp above the front door glowing amber. The house was exactly the opposite of his: small but organized, no strange annexes, no architectural whimsies. The lawn was neatly mowed and edged, and daffodils lent their sunny yellow color to the front walk.

  Samantha was sighing and blowing saliva bubbles as he rolled down a window and got out of the car. “Behave yourself,” he warned her as he gathered the huge bouquet, which seemed to weigh more than Samantha. He strode up the walk, trying to recall which justification for Samantha’s presence sounded the least lame.

  Maybe, just maybe, Allison wouldn’t care about his having brought Samantha along. Maybe she would be so happy to see Jamie that nothing else would matter.

  Sure. And maybe pigs could fly.

  He climbed the steps to the front porch and rang the bell. After a moment it was opened by a tall, thin, elderly woman with startlingly clear green eyes and a scythe-sharp chin. Despite the cane she leaned on, she looked almost dangerously vigorous. Her hair was a thick, wavy mane of silver interlaced with reddish strands, and her apparel—a cardigan sweater, a blouse and summer-weight wool trousers—seemed youthful.

  Jamie must have rung the wrong bell. He glanced over his shoulder at the roadside mailbox beside which he’d parked. The number on it was the number Allison had given him. This had to be her house.

  So who was the elderly woman? Whoever she was, her eyes grew round as she studied the flowers. “For me?” she said. “You shouldn’t have.”

  “I…uh…”

  “Never mind. They’re probably for Allie, aren’t they.”

  Allie. He liked that nickname. It made Allison seem a little less daunting. Allisons knew everything a person
needed to know about babies, whereas Allies got down on their hands and knees and played with babies.

  “You’re late,” the elderly woman accused.

  “I know.” Was she going to invite him in, or was his punishment to be denied entry?

  “If Allison were a weaker soul, your tardiness might have broken her heart.” She pivoted to face the flight of stairs that rose behind her. “Allie? The fellow with the broken zipper is here, and he’s brought enough flowers to decorate a funeral parlor.”

  Jamie shifted from one foot to the other. Even if the woman hadn’t invited him in, even if he had no idea who she was, he decided he liked her. Her comment about his zipper puzzled him, though. He glanced down to make sure it was shut, then lifted his gaze just as the old woman stepped aside.

  He instantly forgot all about her, about his zipper and about the disaster awaiting him as he attempted to pull this date off with his daughter in the back seat of his car. His entire consciousness zeroed in on the woman coming down the stairs, visible through the open doorway. What he saw first was legs—long, slender, beautifully curved, shamelessly flaunted legs. The woman descended another few steps and he saw the hem of her dress, a dark green sheath that ended somewhere above her knees and shimmied upward along her hips. Another few steps and he saw her hand clutching a small black purse. Another few steps and he saw the indentation of her waist, the swell of her bosom, the decadent spill of auburn hair against her shoulders, framing her pale, swanlike neck. Another few steps and he saw her face.

  Allison Winslow was beautiful. So beautiful he was convinced his luck had changed. So beautiful he wanted to skip dinner and just stare at her…and then maybe strip off that seductively chic green dress and stare at her some more.

  And then, when his eyes had had their fill, he wanted to make love to her, every inch of her, every way, until she was capable of only one coherent thought, and that thought was Jamie McCoy.

  Far behind him, through the open window of the Range Rover, Samantha wailed.

  Jamie McCoy immediately scratched lovemaking from his list.

  CHAPTER SIX

  THE MAîTRE D’ glanced down at the stroller and then back at Jamie. “Your reservation is for a party of two, not three,” he said in a voice that sounded as if it was filtered through fourteen-karat-gold sinuses.

  Allison might have made the same criticism. Whether or not she considered this dinner date a “party,” she had definitely been under the impression that it was going be limited to her and Jamie.

  Even without Samantha’s presence, though, Allison had little hope of anything good coming out of the evening. Her entire day had hinted at doom. She’d put in a morning shift at the hospital that had included delivery of a borderline preemie—the baby’s prognosis was good, but emergency deliveries at thirty-four weeks were always nerve-racking. At two o’clock, Allison’s shift had ended. She’d raced home, washed her hair and discovered, only after the thick, tangled mop was dripping water down her back, that her hair dryer wasn’t working. The phrase bad-hair day had been coined for just such disasters. She’d done the best she could to unravel the wet, tangled mess, but an hour of brushing, combing and towel drying had produced something resembling a cross between the Bride of Frankenstein and Medusa.

  Giving up on her hair, Allison had tormented herself over her outfit. Jamie hadn’t specified where they would be going for dinner, so she hadn’t known whether to dress up or down. At six o’clock, staring at the array of outfits spread across her bed, she’d telephoned Molly, who’d spoken three words: “The green dress.” Agreeing with Molly was always easier than arguing with her, so Allison had worn her green dress.

  Now she worried that it was too short, too snug, too…suggestive. How could she think otherwise after Jamie had ogled her so blatantly when she’d come downstairs to greet him?

  She would have been amply stressed out about this entire affair without his showing up late and presenting her with a bouquet nearly as big as he was. The flowers were flattering, but they put her on red alert. When she’d heard the feeble wail emerging from what appeared to be a huge military vehicle parked at the curb and then seen Jamie’s guiltstricken smile, the alarm system inside her ratcheted up to super-double red alert with siren.

  Maybe it was just as well that Samantha was along to chaperon the date—and to help Allison maintain her perspective. Every time she glimpsed Samantha, or heard her, or smelled her baby lotion scent, Allison was reminded of why she should avoid any sort of involvement with Jamie. He was a man who had fooled around and been careless. He was a man who had flown off on a vacation and engaged in sex with a stranger. Allison shouldn’t even have accepted his invitation for dinner.

  Not only were his morals questionable, but his wealth made her uneasy. The military truck she’d spotted at her front curb had turned out to be the sort of vehicle billionaires drove to their ski chalets in Aspen. And the restaurant he’d selected for their outing was the fanciest, priciest eatery in Arlington. Allison had read a review of Reynaud in the Gazette a few months ago. It had received three stars, and she’d been unable to identify most of the dishes the critic had named.

  Perhaps the food was good, but the maître d’ seemed of two minds about whether to let Jamie and Samantha enter. Dressed in a jacket that had to have cost more than Allison’s dress, he gazed haughtily at the stroller and then at Jamie. “We don’t serve chicken fingers here, you know.”

  “She won’t be eating,” Jamie said, adjusting his knapsack higher on his back.

  “Nor do we have high chairs available."

  “She won’t be sitting, either.”

  The maître d’ seemed skeptical. He discreetly signaled a waiter to join him in the dining room’s foyer. Solemn and magisterial, they conferred over a seating chart for several minutes, discussing the situation with the intensity of United Nations negotiators working out new boundaries for the West Bank. At last they reached some sort of conclusion; the waiter lifted two leather-bound menus and a wine list and led Allison and Jamie to a table in the farthest corner of. the room, near the painted silk screen that disguised the entry to the kitchen.

  Allison sank into one of the deep armchairs flanking the table and observed as Jamie maneuvered the stroller against the wall, out of the path of passing waiters. He was dressed with casual elegance, in well-cut khakis, a linen shirt and loafers that looked soft enough to sleep in. Considering his car, his stroller and his choice of a restaurant, she could no longer deny that he was a very rich man.

  He didn’t act rich, though—at least, he didn’t act snobbish. There was a tinge of self-mockery in everything he did, an ambivalence, a sense that he didn’t take anything or anyone—particularly himself—-too seriously. He didn’t seem spoiled or polished or pedigreed. His hair was too long—not fashionably long, but long the way a man’s hair got when he skipped his regular visit to the barber. His nails were short, his hands large and blunt. He just didn’t seem upper crust.

  Still, his column must earn him a pretty penny. Allison had read it devotedly since the Arlington Gazette started publishing it a few years ago, and it never failed to make her laugh. His approach in the column seemed to be that guys were jackasses, but they were so adorable women had to love them in spite of their brainless behavior.

  He stashed his backpack on the shelf built into the stroller frame, took his seat across the table from Allison and sent her a smile that seemed to say she was all that mattered. But she wasn’t and she knew it. His baby mattered, too. And if he didn’t realize that, he was worse than a jackass. He was a lousy father.

  “So,” he said pleasantly. “Maybe the Daddy School should offer an advanced seminar in how to hire a baby-sitter. No one ever told me you have to reserve them two years in advance.”

  She understood his comment as attempt to put her at ease—and the fact that he felt it necessary to put her at ease emphasized how uneasy she was.

  She wasn’t sure what it was about Jamie that made her ne
rvous. He seemed to be handling the snafu with his baby-sitter well enough, even joking about it. His evening had started out as calamitously as hers: on the drive to the restaurant, he’d told her about Samantha’s having soaked through her diaper and all but flooded her crib while he was trying to scrounge a sitter. Yet he seemed as relaxed as Allison was edgy.

  It didn’t make sense. She was the one used to babies and their demands. She was the one experienced with their bodily functions and their bad timing. Why was she so edgy?

  She knew damned well why. She was edgy because of the way his gaze remained on her as if his thoughts were a kiss, his appreciation of her something full and whole and real. She was edgy because no man had looked at her that way in a long time, and Jamie wasn’t just any man. He wasn’t just a new parent, just her student, just a guy who got lucky nine months ago and unlucky nine months later.

  He was a smart, funny, undeniably handsome man whose thick, tawny hair was neatly combed despite its length, whose jaw was clean-shaven but whose eyes still wore the shadows of sleepless nights. He was a man who could afford to take a woman to this restaurant—she had to swallow a shriek of protest when she opened the heavy menu to the first page and discovered a list of appetizers that cost more than burgers for two at the diner across the street from the YMCA. He was a man who could make her feel desirable…and desired.

  “Other than baby-sitters, how are you doing?” she asked quickly, dismissing that last notion before it could take up permanent residence in her mind.

  “Smooth as silk,” he said, then let out a self-deprecating laugh. A patron at the nearest table, a good ten feet away, glared at him. “Oops. I guess we’re not supposed to laugh here.”

  Allison leafed through the menu, cringing at the prices, which became more inflated with every page. Despite Grammy’s advice, she couldn’t bring herself to order the most expensive item. To do so might jeopardize Samantha’s financial future. Some day, eighteen years from now, Jamie might find himself saying, “Sorry, Samantha, but college is out of the question. I squandered my life savings taking this nurse out to dinner at Reynaud when you were a baby, so now you’ll have to spend the rest of your life bagging groceries at the supermarket.”