Marrying the Single Dad

by Melinda Curtis

  They both knew he wouldn’t accept.

  It was hard work and took a long time. Irwin and Rex came by when it was almost five.

  “What have you got there?” Irwin scanned their finds. “A lawn mower. What used to be a couch. An empty rum bottle.”

  “Yo-ho-ho.” Rex leaned on his walker. “Hardly seems worth the effort.”

  Had Joe been clearing the vines for anyone else, he might have agreed. But Brittany was fascinated with each treasure and after Sam completed her homework, she’d joined them with just as much enthusiasm.

  Brittany remained calm under their fire. “But look at this bumper. Isn’t it a beauty?” It’d been what she’d found behind the Volkswagen.

  “That’s a 1930s Packard bumper guard,” Sam piped up. “Worth hundreds of dollars. I looked it up on Dad’s phone.” The enthusiasm drained from her voice. “It’s Brit’s.”

  “But this is a bottle of soda that was discontinued in 1980.” Brittany held up the bottle, which was labeled Orange Soda, although the liquid was now brown. “Sam found it.”

  “I’m going to sell that online.” Sam practically danced like Rose. That alone was worth the sweat and thorny piercings. “Forty or fifty bucks.”

  “What’s that?” Irwin pointed to what Joe was holding.

  “It’s a motorcycle engine.” The size of a deflated basketball, it was rusted like one of the old girders beneath the bridge, but who knew what it was like inside. Joe hadn’t been able to put it down since he’d tripped over it twenty minutes before.

  “Antique.” Brittany nodded. Her smile was as soft as a rose petal. “Joe’s going to use it to restore a motorcycle.”

  He hadn’t said what he was going to do with it, but her idea resonated with him. Talk about putting the chicken before the egg. He’d always started with a car body and looked for an engine, not the other way around.

  “What motorcycle?” Irwin elbowed Rex and forced out a hearty guffaw. “He doesn’t have a motorcycle.”

  “I’m going to look for one that needs this.” He held it up to eye level, checking for some indication of make or model, but the rust was too thick. “An Indian maybe.”

  “Don’t you mean Harley?” Irwin’s question confirmed he knew nothing about motorcycles. “My next bike is going to be a Harley.”

  “Whatever makes you smile.” Brittany’s smile wasn’t going unnoticed by Sam. “I might be willing to make a trade, Joe. My Packard bumper for the BMW grille.”

  Joe nearly dropped the engine. To be safe, he put it down. Finders keepers and all.

  “I’m up for that.” Sam handed Joe his phone. “Check out the price, Dad. Then shake on it before Brit changes her mind.”

  “She can’t have it.” He met Brittany’s gaze squarely, and didn’t look away when her smile crumpled. “I don’t know who that car belongs to. Legally.”

  “I know where this is going.” Clearly disappointed in him again, Sam wandered over to the riverbank.

  “I understand.” Brittany mustered a smile for Irwin and Rex. “I don’t suppose either of you remember who owned the BMW over there.”

  The two older men shook their heads.

  “That kind of car isn’t par for the course around here.” Rex moved at a slow pace toward his golf cart. “Sorry to break up the party, but I’ve got to get on home for my shows.”

  Irwin’s phone beeped. “And it’s time for my meds.”

  At least the circus was leaving town.

  “Maybe we shouldn’t come back tomorrow,” Rex said, plodding ahead with his cane. “Nothing happened here.”

  “But he’s a Messina,” Irwin protested. “Don’t you remember what it used to be like when they lived here before?”

  “I suppose it wouldn’t hurt to give it another day.” Rex collapsed onto the golf-cart seat.

  “You’d see more action if you recommended the garage to your friends.” Brittany sounded more like a schoolteacher reprimanding boys on the playground than a beautician-artist-trespasser-thief. She rounded on Joe. “You should always ask for referrals.”

  “Ask? Is that what you call it?” She hadn’t just asked. Joe received a scowl for his attempt to lighten the mood.

  “You need to put yourself out there when you start a business.” Brittany unzipped her coveralls to her waist. The blue top beneath it had lost its sparkle. She tied the arms of her coveralls around her hips. “Work the few clients you have.”

  “Client. I have one client.” And he’d left his motorcycle. Of course, he’d be back tomorrow. “Rex is a bystander.”

  “He didn’t sound like a happy bystander.” She gathered her clippers, rake and bumper, then dragged them toward her truck. “Did you at least give him free coffee?”

  “Bystanders don’t deserve free anything.”

  She dropped the rake and clippers so she could lift the bumper into the truck. “I’m giving out free coffee and cookies. And you can bet I’m not going to ask if they’re having a service or if the only reason they’re in my shop is because they’ve offered someone a ride.”

  They’d never had free coffee for the customers at Messina Family Garage. At Turo’s shop in Beverly Hills, they’d had free espresso and scones. Joe hadn’t known what a scone was before then.

  She loaded the rake and clippers in the truck bed. “We made good progress on the vines today.”

  How quickly it’d come to this. Discussing mundane things like the weather. It was as if they’d broken up, when they hadn’t so much as started being friends.

  There were some long, thick vines still in the ground, but he’d cut down all the others to stubble. Not that it improved anything. In fact, the bank looked worse. The cut vines were piled high. Nearest the highway there were now chunks of concrete exposed, as if someone had broken up a sidewalk. The frame of the couch was an eyesore. And the Volkswagen... Sadly, its floorboards were riddled with holes. There was so little metal, it wasn’t even worth hauling to the scrap yard.

  “I’m not taking the debris to the dump.” Joe had to draw a line somewhere.

  “I’ll put Agnes onto finding someone to get rid of the vines and couch.” Brittany had a distant look in her eye, even though she was staring right at the Volkswagen. “I might have some use for the concrete. But I don’t think the car would survive a move.”

  The car had no visible identification number either. “So...what? You’re just going to leave the car here to rot some more?”

  “No. I’m going to...” She gave him a polite smile, like the kind doctors’ receptionists gave to patients who were troublesome. “Well, I’m beginning to see what I might want to do with it. I need to find out whose property this is.”

  “If you don’t move it, the vines will be back in a few weeks.”

  “I know. I’ll keep it clear.”

  He doubted that. Not wanting to stand there just looking at her, Joe moved to the top of the bank. “Sam, what are you doing?”

  She’d stacked river rock into two piles on the sandy shore. “I was trying to make Parish Hill.” She gestured to the looming mountain above the treetops to the east. “But the rocks kept tumbling down. So now I have two hills.”

  “Hey. That’s awesome.” Brittany moved past Joe, carefully going down the slope. “It looks like you made two dinosaurs.”

  Leave it to the “artist” to see something in a pile of rocks.

  “Two brontosauruses.” Brittany sank to her knees in front of Sam’s work.

  “Their tails are too round for that.” Sam pushed a rock out of the way. It clacked against other rocks on the bank.

  “Round.” Brittany stood and hugged Sam. She laughed and looked up at Joe, sparkling once more. “Round.”

  It made no sense. But when she smiled at Joe, it made no difference.

  Brit
tany chose a rock and climbed back up the hill. “Round,” she said when she reached the top. She drove away and Joe still had no idea what she was excited about.

  Shaking his head, Joe checked the time on his cell phone. “Sam, we need to get cleaned up for dinner.” And then he checked his call log for the number of missed calls, since there were no messages.

  No calls had been missed, but an hour ago, one had been answered.

  “Sam?”

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  “SAMANTHA ELLEN, GET up here now.” Joe paced the crest of the bank, dodging tree roots and scrub brush.

  “Why?” Sam stared up at him from the river’s edge with the wide eyes of the guilty.

  The river flowed past, as deceptive as Uncle Turo.

  Why? “Because I said so.” Joe stifled a groan. Because I said so? That was the worst response an adult could give a child. “I want to talk to you about the call you took on my phone.”

  Sam wasn’t making the climb. She picked up a stone and heaved it into the river, creating a fat splash. “It was just someone asking about the price of an oil change.” She didn’t look at him when she lied.

  “Try again.”

  “Dad.”

  “I know the number originated from Uncle Turo.” Agent Haas had probably listened in on her conversation. It would be just like Turo to tell Sam something she thought meant nothing, but was the key to the location of the stolen cars. Joe’s mouth had gone dry. He had to swallow twice to ask, “What did you two talk about?”

  “Nothing.”

  “Sam, this is important. You need to tell me the truth.” He was nearly shouting now. He never shouted at Sam. Unlike Brittany, Sam couldn’t take it.

  She started to cry.

  He sailed down that slippery slope faster than was safe, kneeling in the mud at the bottom and wrapping his arms around her. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, but I need to know.”

  He let her cry it out—she’d lost a favorite great-uncle, after all. And while he waited, he forced himself to breathe, to clamp down the anger and guilt, and counseled himself on the proper tone to use with children.

  “Uncle Turo...” Sam hiccupped. “I knew it was him.” She shuddered on an intake of breath. “The jail song ringtone...”

  So much for the passive use of irony. Choosing the ringtone had made Joe feel better, but look at the trouble it caused.

  “No one answer-er-er-ed when I said hello.” Sam wiped her nose on her sleeve. “But no one hung u-u-up either.”

  Three minutes. The call had lasted three minutes. “Did you say anything else?” Please say no. He brushed the short dark hair from her face.

  She nodded. “I told Uncle Turo we loved him. I told him we had to leave Beverly Hills. I told him I’d sleep on the couch if he came to live with us.”

  “That can’t be all you told him.” Three minutes!

  Sam nodded, wiping at the tears on her cheeks. “I told him over and over again. Until he hung up.”

  Joe sat back on his heels. The calls had to stop. He’d block the number from his phone. Erase it from his contact list.

  “He didn’t say a word.” She blinked fat tears. “Is Uncle Turo mad at me?”

  “Oh, no, honey.” Joe held on to her small shoulders. “Turo could never be mad at you. He probably didn’t know what to say.” Joe had gotten lucky there.

  And then her voice rose to a high-pitched, fragile thread. “Are you mad at me?”

  “No, honey.” Joe rose to his knees and hugged her once more. “I love you. You’re my favorite person in the whole world.”

  That calmed her. She drew a shaky breath, patted his back and whispered, “Everything will be all right when Uncle Turo comes home.”

  But it wouldn’t be all right. Uncle Turo would never forgive Joe for turning state’s evidence, for betraying family, for helping to put him behind bars.

  Although if Turo never forgave Joe, what harm would it do to ask him where the stolen cars were hidden?

  * * *

  “MAYOR LARRY OWNS that land.” Agnes cradled a cup of tea at Martin’s Bakery Tuesday morning. A bacon and horseradish scone sat on a small plate in front of her. “I say we ask him to pay for its cleanup.”

  “Seconded.” Rose blew at the foam on her latte.

  “It’s a discussion, Rose.” Mildred eyed the scone she’d been about to eat and dropped it back on her plate. “We’re not voting.”

  “Force of habit.” Rose drank deeply from her latte, giving her a foam mustache. She dabbed at it with a paper napkin.

  “Ladies.” Brit set down her mug of plain black coffee, trying to call order to the town council without seeming to lose her cool. All she’d wanted to know was who owned the land where she’d found the Volkswagen. The next thing she knew, they were prying out the reason behind her curiosity and taking charge of a project that Brit hadn’t fully committed to. “One step at a time.”

  The bakery was bustling, heedless of the doubt wrapped around Brit’s chest. The photographs of previous generations of bakers hung on the walls. Out of habit, Brit’s mind wandered to mermaids. These would be cast in plaster and mounted in the corners like the cupid frescoes she’d seen in an Italian art textbook.

  “Yes. Focus, ladies.” Tracy delivered a steaming egg sandwich to Brittany. “Brit has a great idea. A free outdoor art display. It’s like the Sundial Bridge in Redding. Or the CowParade in Chicago. People will drive here to see it. They’ll arrive for breakfast. Stay for lunch. Visit the boutique. And the winery. And enjoy Harmony Valley’s charm.” Her enthusiasm had everyone at the table smiling back and nodding. Everyone but Brit.

  At the next table, Grandpa Phil played checkers against a short, frail Asian man with a walker, who kept sliding an appreciative eye toward Mildred. Word had it they were an “item.”

  “My granddaughter is one smart sugar cookie,” Phil said. “Can’t wait to see what she’ll do with the Volkswagen. I bet there’s a mermaid involved.”

  “Her mermaid is awesome,” Tracy said as she hurried back to the register for the next customer.

  “I just need to know—” Brit jumped back into the fray, unwilling to commit to mermaids. The bar had been set high with Keira and she wasn’t sure she could bring her beloved merman vision to life. That was the rub. Mermaids blocked her. Rock sculptures did not. “—if Mayor Larry will donate the use of the land and clean it up.”

  “Never fear,” Agnes said. “We’re on the case.”

  Brit wasn’t finished with her questions. “I’d also love to know who owns the cars in the field by the Messina Family Garage.”

  “We’ll head out that way today,” Mildred promised.

  “I’ll clean your glasses before you go, dear,” her beau said.

  The conversation deteriorated to how best to get rid of smudges from eyewear, the impact of a morning scone on a person’s cholesterol level, and the pros and cons of elastic waistbands.

  Brit’s cell phone rang. It was Reggie, so she sent it to voicemail. She made short work of her egg sandwich, accepted the box of frosted mermaid-shaped cookies Tracy brought over and asked Grandpa Phil if he was ready to leave.

  Phil blinked at her in surprise. “I’m in the middle of a game.”

  “But it’s almost time to open.”

  He blinked again.

  She didn’t want to tell him she’d never run a shop alone. She was certainly capable. It was just...every client scheduled for the day was new to her.

  A barrel-chested senior wearing a navy blue firefighter’s T-shirt came to stand beside Phil. “Next game.”

  “You can take over for me, Felix,” Phil grumbled. “My granddaughter needs me at the shop.”

  Felix turned to look at Brit. “It strikes me, young lady, that you don’t have a cat.”

/>   This statement was met with groans from the room.

  Phil stood up quicker than Brit had ever seen him move. “She’s living with me. You know I’m allergic to cat hair.”

  “So you say,” Felix countered. “I rescued some calico kittens last night behind the bowling alley in Cloverdale.”

  Phil grabbed a newspaper from an empty table and then took Brit by the arm. “Come along. We can’t open late.”

  Brit waited until they were outside the bakery in the bright sunshine. “I didn’t know you were allergic to cats.”

  “I’m not. Your grandmother is.” Typical Phil. Wanting nothing to stand in the way of Leona’s possible return.

  “I’ve always wanted a shop cat,” Brit said, only half joking. She tugged her jean jacket tighter around her. It may have been sunny, but the morning still had a chill.

  “You can wait until I’m dead and gone.”

  His statement seemed to throw a shadow over the sky. “Can you use another analogy?” Brit asked.

  He glanced down at her, which made him weave as if he’d been drinking.

  A lot.

  She smiled. “Specifically, one without death?” She was sensitive to the subject since her near-drowning experience and his coffin-like nap habits.

  Grandpa Phil gave a brief nod, righted his steps and said, “You can wait until I retire. Which, by the way, will be when I’m dead.”

  Brit sighed.

  A group of old women were bunched up outside Phil’s. The crowd was thicker than one waiting on a Black Friday door-buster sale.

  “They never lined up for me,” Phil grumbled.

  “There shouldn’t be that many.” Brit felt an anxious flutter in her stomach.

  “In this town, women are like rabbits. They find something they like and all of a sudden they’re everywhere.” Phil told the ladies to step aside, and considering the wobble to his gait, they must have cleared a path for safety reasons. “Let us get things set up, ladies. Then you can come in.”

  Brit wasted no time turning things on—lights, coffeemaker, music, barbershop pole. She set out the coffee creamer, checked the bathroom, the supply cabinet, the cookies.