Date With a Single Dad

by Ally Blake

He sank to a crouch close enough he could touch her if he just reached out his hand. But even though it killed to do so, he held back. ‘Meg, sweetheart, I came here today because it has become all too clear to me this week that you are my family. I choose you.’

  Her eyes softened. Hope sprang within them. Until she shook her head. ‘Well, you can’t have me. You don’t want me anywhere near your daughter.’

  Zach’s jaw clenched. Now she was being nonsensical. ‘Meg, I told you, I’m past that. You helped me get past that. And Ruby adores you—’

  She shook her head harder. ‘Zach, please. If she’s anything like I was at sixteen you’ll lose half a head of hair.’

  ‘Let me worry about my hair.’

  She spun on the ottoman so her knees faced him square on. ‘Then worry about this. I ditched school at sixteen. I went clubbing every night. I drank daiquiris like they were lemonade. They let me in because of who I was, because of who my father was. When I chipped this tooth on a champagne flute I was sitting up front at a comedy bar, already on my second three-hundred-dollar bottle. Sixteen years old. That same night I was pulled over for drunk-driving, driving without a licence, under age, and a bag of pot was found in my glove compartment. I had friends in the car with me. Friends I could have killed had I not been stopped. Friends who for some reason are still my friends today. That could have been the end of me, but somebody put pressure where it was needed and I was let off with a warning. Somebody paid off every paper in town so that none of it ever came to light.’

  ‘Somebody,’ he said, still trying to filter the rest. ‘Somebody meaning your father.’

  She breathed in deep, ragged breaths. Her hands began to shake. He placed a gentle hand over hers, but he wasn’t sure she even knew he was there.

  Her voice sounded so small as she said, ‘My trust fund wasn’t meant to be mine until I was twenty-five. It was signed over at eighteen. I figured it was his way of finally washing his hands of me. That same day I approached my first doctor. But even I, with my glorious name, and glorious money, and batting baby blues had to wait until I had undergone six months of intensive therapy before a doctor would agree to—’

  Her words ended on a choke and that was when his confidence took its first tumble. ‘Agree to what?’ he asked, needing to know even though he knew he’d regret it when he did.

  ‘I’ve had my tubes tied, Zach.’ She looked up at him then, at the end of her rope. ‘It’s irreversible. I can never have kids.’

  Holy hell.

  If Quinn Kelly weren’t on death’s door Zach feared in that moment what he might have done to the man.

  Meg stared at him as if she half expected him to shake her senseless. Or run as fast as his shoes would carry him. But all he wanted to do was to take her in his arms and hug her. To hold her until she absolved herself. Until he got his head around what it meant to him. Until he stopped thinking what might have happened had Isabel done such a thing and Ruby had never been born.

  ‘Aren’t you going to say something?’ she said, her voice tight, angry, desolate.

  Zach ran a hard, fast hand over his face. What the hell could he possibly say?

  ‘Zach?’

  He stood and paced in a tight circle. ‘I need a minute.’

  ‘I should never have told you.’ She shook her head so hard he was sure her brain must have been knocking against her skull.

  ‘Hang on now, Meg. You know you’ve just thrown me a hand grenade there and I get the feeling you’re certain I’m about to run for cover. I’m not, but I still need a minute.’

  She stood and paced on the other side of the ottoman. ‘You didn’t have to know any of it. Nobody ever did! But you had to appear in my life and be all unimpressed by it and make me like you. And then you had to add Ruby to the mix. And then more and more and more of you. There. Everywhere. Not letting me have a minute to think about what we were doing. So if this—’ she waved a hand over her chest ‘—is too hard for you to take, it’s your own fault!’

  ‘Meg, you picked the wrong man to try to push away. I’m not running. Not any more.’

  ‘But see now, that’s the thing. You are still running. You just don’t know it,’ she said, her voice suddenly so calm he wondered if he’d ever been in control of the conversation, even for a single second.

  Zach brought his back foot to rest beside his front, feeling as if he needed to be upright for what was coming. ‘This ought to be good.’

  ‘That morning, at your house, Ruby gave me the card she’d made me.’

  ‘The card?’ Oh, hell, the card.

  ‘The pink card with the chocolate muffin picture and the fur and feathers and glitter.’ She swallowed before saying, ‘The one you wouldn’t give me yourself.’

  Zach stood rooted to the floor as the import of that one small choice sank in. At the time it had been a split-second decision. An insurance policy, protecting his daughter and himself, that one last, tiny little bit.

  In the end it might have cost him everything.

  When he said nothing, Meg continued, ‘Last week was something crazy. Something amazing and wonderful and I’ll never forget a second of it. But the card only proved what I already knew—that you’re nowhere near ready to take on the likes of me.’

  Zach shook his head. The both of them were so adept at talking themselves into whatever they wanted to believe, this was all about to go belly up on the back of circular conversation.

  He shut down reason and went purely on instinct, knowing if there was ever a moment to trust in the man he’d become this had to be it.

  ‘Watch me,’ he said, then shoved the ottoman out of the way with a foot and gathered her into his arms. As though she’d been holding herself up by nothing more than will power she collapsed against him.

  He kissed the top of her head. The edge of her ear. The lift at the edge of her lips.

  With a sigh she tilted her head and kissed him back, her lips clinging so gently, so tenderly, so lovingly to his.

  It took all of his strength not to lift her in his arms and carry her to the couch and prove to her in the most basic way that he was right and she was wrong.

  Far too soon she pulled away, looking down so he couldn’t see into her eyes. He snuck a finger beneath her chin and made her face him.

  Her chest rose and fell. Her eyes were as wild and blue as his lake amidst a summer storm. ‘Why don’t you hate me for what I did to myself?’

  ‘Because I know why you did it.’

  ‘Remind me, please. Right now I’m struggling to come up with a good excuse.’

  ‘You made sure nobody could ever reject you again as fully as you rejected yourself.’

  She swallowed and a big fat tear rolled down her cheek. He brushed her hair from her eyes and breathed through it lest he join her.

  ‘God, you were eighteen,’ he said, his voice rasping through his tight throat. ‘You were still a kid. Those blasted doctors should be hung. But it would be impossible for me to ever hate you. How could I when I love you so very much?’

  Her eyes glistened, flickering between his. He’d said it. He’d told her. He was her safe place to come home to.

  He thought he had her. Until she held out her hands in supplication. He could see in the utter transparency of her expression how much it meant to her.

  It just didn’t matter.

  He let her go as though his fingers had been burnt, rather than his heart. She wrapped her arms back about her body and headed back over to the French doors to watch the interplay below from a safe distance—the only family she thought she deserved, the kids she’d convinced herself she’d never have.

  ‘Please stay as long as you want while Ruby’s having such a good time,’ she said, polite as could be. ‘James will show you out.’

  There was nothing more he could do or say. He did as she asked and walked away.

  He’d spent his adult life protecting himself from just this situation, from blindly loving someone with no guarantee they’d love
him back. But Meg had smashed through that wall with all the subtlety of a wrecking ball, convincing him he’d found someone worth the risk.

  As he jogged numbly down the steps with generations of stubborn-chinned Kellys watching on he realised the one thing he hadn’t considered was that for her the risk of loving him might yet be too great.

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  AS THE sun set Meg sat out on one of the white cane chairs looking over the now-empty back lawn, the divine sound of kids just being kids echoing in the back of her mind.

  The rest of her felt like toast. Three-day-old burnt toast that had fallen butter-side down on the kitchen floor and been kicked into the dust-filled gap beneath the fridge.

  Zach had come to her daunting family home and left his precious daughter playing outside with her nieces as though if they were her blood they could do no wrong. He’d looked more dashing and beautiful and terrified than she’d ever seen him look. He’d offered himself up to the press, he’d heard her last and most devastating of secrets, a secret that meant she could never give him the kind of family he was ready for, and he’d still told her he loved her.

  There was nothing more he could have done to prove himself as the man she’d known he could be. And still she’d sent him away.

  ‘Sweetheart,’ her mother said, a hand curving over her shoulder. ‘Are you coming in for dinner?’

  Meg smiled up at her mother and stretched until her tight muscles began to feel useable again. ‘I’ll be in in a minute.’

  She felt her mum’s hesitation. ‘Your father’s alone right now if you wanted to have a chat. I’d noticed you haven’t been in to see him since you came home, and I thought, perhaps, now might be a good time.’

  Meg stilled, then tucked her feet onto the chair and wrapped her arms about her knees. Her mum was right about one thing: there was no time like the present. ‘Mum, can you sit for a minute?’

  Mary sat, perched on the edge of the seat as though ready to take flight. It made it easier for Meg to say what she needed to say, as she was almost sure her mum knew what was coming.

  ‘Mum, I don’t much want to talk to him. And I think you know why.’

  Mary clasped her hands together until the knuckles turned white. ‘Darling, he’s so sick, surely you can—’

  ‘Mum,’ she said gently, but it was enough for her mother to close her lips.

  Meg leaned forward and took her mum’s hands in hers. ‘You know how he treated me when I was a kid.’ Even using the endearing term ‘Dad’ felt wrong. It always had.

  Mary said, ‘He’s exacting, and puts as much pressure on all of you as he always has on himself. His work was so much more stressful back then. The business was in its infancy. His father was hard on him too. And everything he did was for the betterment of the family.’

  Meg nodded along. She’d heard it all before. ‘Is that why the two of you had me? For the betterment of the family?’ She swallowed. ‘To keep the family from falling apart when Dad had an affair?’

  Mary opened her mouth to deny everything, then something in her changed, relaxed, as though she didn’t have the energy to keep up the pretence any longer. She took a hand and cupped it under Meg’s chin. ‘You always were the most sensitive child. You were a blessing at a time we needed one most. But you can’t only blame your father. We both did things we shouldn’t have done.’

  ‘You had an affair?’ Meg asked, sitting up so straight so fast her back cracked.

  Mary nodded, her eyes filling with tears. ‘It was short-lived. It was foolish. But in the end only good came of it as it proved to both of us that we were where we wanted to be after all. We chose to be a family again.’ She reached out and tucked a curl behind Meg’s ear. ‘Having you after that was the best choice I’ve made in my life.’

  A choice. Meg had always wondered if she’d been a stopgap measure, never looking at it from the angle that she’d been a purposeful choice. The massive delineation rang so loud in Meg’s ears she almost couldn’t think. But it was fighting hard against the clang of another. ‘Am I his daughter?’

  Mary’s eyes grew wide with shock. ‘Of course you are. Look at you. You have his eyes. You have his pluck. You certainly have his temper. Your sweet temperament and endless capacity to forgive are definitely from my side.’

  Her mother leaned forward and kissed her cheek. ‘Now that’s the last we need to hear of that. Don’t be long. Dinner’s on soon. And your father is still up there alone.’

  Meg nodded, but stayed put as her mother walked away.

  Forgiveness.

  Zach had forgiven his foster parents for their weaknesses for the sake of his own family. Her mother had forgiven her father for his trespasses for the sake of her family. Her father had never forgiven himself and self-condemnation left only bitterness in its stead.

  Meg had to forgive herself the unhealthy choices she’d made at sixteen. The desperate one she’d made at eighteen. Only then could she fully embrace the many exceptional choices she’d made since then. The keeping of friends she’d had since school. Being an integral part of her family’s success. For unreservedly giving to those far less fortunate than herself.

  For falling in love with Zach.

  That had to be just about the smartest thing she’d ever done in her whole life. He knew her. He understood her. He loved her. But even more importantly, he’d helped her to realise how far she’d come in knowing, understanding and loving herself.

  Could he ever forgive her for abandoning him? Could she ever forgive herself? Before she had room to find out, there was one last person who needed to see how far she’d come too.

  Late that night, after a typically long, noisy, combative Kelly family dinner populated by her mum, all her brothers and their significant others, a dog-tired Meg made her way back up the stairs, past the wall of beautifully framed, lovingly tended family pictures, and she slid into her father’s room.

  Flat against the wall she could hear his uneven breathing. Flat against the wall she wasn’t going to be able to do anything. She walked to his bed, and sat carefully on the edge.

  He looked old. Frail. His skin was like rice paper. Even his eyelids were wrinkled. Like this he seemed so harmless.

  He flinched, then looked into her face with his fierce blue eyes and turned a not too happy shade of pink as he bellowed, ‘Jeez, child, could you have snuck in here any more quietly?’

  ‘Don’t shout!’ she shot back, moving hurriedly to sit farther down the edge of the huge bed. ‘You’ll pop something and I doubt I’m the one you’d want trying to plug it up.’

  He tried to sit up, failed, swore to the high heavens, and then slumped gingerly back onto the huge mound of pillows. ‘What on earth are you doing here, girl? I was informed you were whooping it up on holiday.’

  ‘I’ve been back a few days now.’

  ‘Not for my sake, I hope.’

  ‘No. Of course not,’ she said, her voice droll. ‘The girls were one down on their backyard cricket side. I had to come back for the sisters.’

  His eyes were entirely clear when he said, ‘You’ve never been any good at cricket.’

  ‘Mmm, so you’ve taken great delight in telling me on numerous occasions.’

  Quinn scoffed. ‘Would you prefer I butter you up? Resting on your laurels never helped anyone.’

  ‘No,’ she said. ‘You’ve made well sure my laurels have never given me any rest.’

  And there it was. Back to square one. The two of them watching each other cagily from opposite corners of the ring.

  Meg flattened a sock-clad foot on the ground, preparing to get out of Dodge, when it hit her that heading out that door meant nothing would have changed.

  Unless she could make the break from her past she’d end up playing the ‘It-Girl’ for ever. Brushing off her blonde wig every time she did the kind of work that really gave her satisfaction. Dating men who never challenged her. Trying to pretend that Zach Jones never existed. Trying to convince herself that sharin
g every piece of herself, her fears, her joys, her body, her soul with him had been nothing but a holiday romance.

  Not good enough. Not any more.

  ‘Dad.’ She reached out and took his cool hand. It stiffened, but she didn’t let go. ‘It appears my Kelly blood runs deeper than I even knew. I do believe I’m going to miss you.’

  ‘Gallivanting off again, are you?’

  She almost laughed. Stubborn old fool. Instead she took his words at face value.

  ‘I will, in fact. I’ll be taking leave of my Kelly duties for a bit.’

  She would? Yeah, she thought with an inner sigh of relief, she would.

  He glared at her as though she’d said she was renouncing her name, her religion, and the old country just to be contrary. She raised both eyebrows and glared right on back.

  ‘The thing is, Dad,’ she said, ‘I currently volunteer at the Valley Women’s Shelter every week. Have been doing so for some time now. It’s tough, it’s terrifying and I love it madly. So much so I’ve decided my PR work for the family is going to have to slot in around that from now on rather than the other way around. In fact, I might even take a social work course, which would cut into that time even more.’

  He opened his mouth, no doubt to cut her down twenty ways from Sunday. She held up a hand and said, ‘Not this time. The decision’s been made. And there’s more. I’m in love, Dad, with an amazing man who knows everything about me—everything—and he loves me anyway. Can you believe it?’

  She could hardly believe it herself, but saying the words out loud finally made it all utterly, beautifully, intensely real.

  ‘I’m tired, child,’ he said, turning away. ‘Can’t you have this conversation with your mother?’

  ‘I will in good time. But I wanted to have it with you too. For you to know that I’ve reached a point in my life when I feel as though I might just be really, really happy.’

  ‘And you need to tell me this now in case I don’t wake up in the morning?’

  She lifted an eyebrow. ‘That’s exactly why. So now you know. Your daughter has turned out just fine.’

  He looked her in the eye, for the longest time she could ever remember him doing so. His eyes, so very like hers. His inability to forgive so far removed from hers. Then he settled deeper into his pillows and looked up at the fringing hanging off the canopy bed as though it held more interest than anything she’d had to say.