A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8)

by Victoria Pade

  Dylan and Cade did some grumbling about it but conceded that it would probably mean more to Sawyer, and also to his father who was really the wronged party, than giving Sawyer the financial rewards of working directly with Camden Incorporated.

  “It might not get him to stop stirring up trouble for the opening of every new store,” GiGi said, “but it might persuade him to feel a little more kindly toward us. That’s a step in the right direction.”

  There was more grumbling between Cade and Dylan about how they didn’t see that improving anything much when it came to the roadblocks Huffman Consulting caused.

  “I’m still working on that, too,” Lindie assured them. “I don’t think there’s much hope that he’ll actually take us on as a client but I do keep bringing it up.”

  “But he isn’t going for it,” Dylan interjected.

  “Not so far,” Lindie confirmed. “But I’m also seeing through his viewpoint how important it is that we do some things differently when we go into a community. If we can minimize the damage, it gives him less ammunition against us in the long run, doesn’t it?”

  “If we aren’t his client he’s still going to mount a campaign to keep us out because that’s what his other clients pay him to do,” Cade pointed out.

  “But it’s still important for us to go into these communities conscientiously,” Lindie maintained.

  “Nobody’s going to fight you on that,” Dylan said with a resigned sigh. “But sometimes, Lindie, that Girl Scout in you is a pain in the neck.”

  “I know,” Lindie acknowledged.

  “So,” Cade said, “not only does it look like you aren’t going to get Huffman to back off, but now you want us to fix all the collateral damage? We already go in in advance and offer to buy out—”

  “We aren’t doing enough,” Lindie said before he could go on.

  Dylan sighed and looked at GiGi. “I’m thinking Lindie was not the right choice for this particular mission.”

  “Or maybe,” GiGi said as she picked up an appetizer tray and headed for the door to the dining room, “she’s the perfect choice.”

  Dylan only growled in reply before he snatched another green tomato off the tray and followed GiGi out of the kitchen.

  That left Lindie alone with her cousin who was frowning at her. She wondered if what she’d just told him was enough to make him think she was being disloyal.

  One way or another it was how she continued to feel.

  Then he said in a resigned tone of voice, “I’ll put the wheels into motion first thing tomorrow morning with the dental insurance to see if we can get this guy on as a provider. Email me his name and address.”

  “As soon as I get home tonight,” Lindie promised, grateful that no one seemed to be holding it against her that she hadn’t gotten them the deal they’d wanted.

  “But, please, do something that gets this guy to cut us a little slack.”

  “I’m trying,” she said because it was true.

  What was also true was that she’d just done something that wasn’t altogether easy for her.

  When Sawyer had told her that Sam might be moving to Vermont, a part of her had thought that that might be a small loophole in her feelings against getting involved with someone who had a child. That a child who was far away, who would only be a guest a time or two a year, might not present the same complication as a child nearby who was a constant pull.

  Then she’d realized how selfish that thought was and she’d pushed it away before diving into her research to see if there were wheels she could put into motion to keep Sawyer from losing Sam to Vermont.

  But if it worked, it kept Sawyer firmly on her no-fly list. And plugged up that loophole to put her right back where she’d started.

  * * *

  What followed was another long week.

  Well, a long four days until Thursday that felt like a full week to Lindie. And then there was Thursday itself that almost felt like another week as time seemed to inch by until she could see Sawyer again.

  She hadn’t heard from him on Sunday but he’d called on Monday night from Idaho. And Tuesday night. And Wednesday night.

  Each call had begun under the guise of business. They’d talked about problems he was projecting would happen there if a Camden Superstore went in.

  But that portion of each call hadn’t lasted long before he’d asked how her day was, before they’d settled into meaningless chitchat that had been more about flirting than anything.

  Then Thursday dawned and still it had felt as if there was so much to get through—work, her meal preparation group at the community center, then Marie’s barbecue. All of it either nowhere around Sawyer or in near proximity with a lot of other people in the mix. Even carpooling with him from the center to Marie’s. Because there was a minimum of parking space at the house, it had meant sharing him with another volunteer who’d asked to catch a ride.

  Then there was the barbecue itself before they were finally back in his SUV. This time, thankfully, they were alone since the other volunteer’s husband was picking her up.

  And maybe Sawyer had felt the same frustration that Lindie had because he didn’t rush to turn the key in the ignition. Instead, once they were in the quiet of his car with the doors shutting out the rest of the world, he turned toward her, put his arm along the top of her seatback and said, “Hi,” as if he was seeing her for the first time in a very long while.

  “Hi,” Lindie answered the same way.

  She was wearing a red-and-white, polka-dot halter jumpsuit that buttoned in front to a high throat-hugging collar. The collar seemed more prim than the cut-in arms that bared an enticing amount of her shoulders might suggest.

  It was to one of her bare shoulders that his gaze dropped before it raised to her eyes again. “I probably shouldn’t say this, but I didn’t think we were ever going to get away from everybody.”

  “Trudy needed a ride and it was nice of Marie to have the dinner for the volunteers,” she said as if she hadn’t been thinking the same thing.

  More people came out of Marie’s house, which seemed to spur him to sit straight in his seat, start the engine and put some distance between them and the “everybody” he wanted away from.

  It also seemed like Lindie’s cue to say, “I’ve done something I hope is okay.”

  He took his eyes off the road to peer at her. “Sounds like you think it isn’t.”

  “I mentioned it on Saturday night when you told me what was going on with Sam’s stepdad selling his dental practice, but we didn’t actually talk about it. Then I did some research and found out that Harmon wasn’t a provider on our company plan so we got the insurance company to invite him to become one,” she confessed.

  Another glance. This one showed her his eyebrows were arched. But she couldn’t tell if it was in pleasant surprise or alarm.

  “That was fast, Ms. Fix-it,” he said, still giving her no indication of how he was taking this news.

  “Sometimes the Camden name makes people jump,” she confessed somewhat under her breath.

  “And an insurance carrier with an account like Camden Incorporated is likely to do about anything you want them to do to keep your business.”

  She shrugged at the truth in that.

  He went back to watching the road as he headed for the community center where she’d again left her car. She didn’t get the sense that he was grateful but she felt inclined to finish what she’d begun. “He signed on with them. And we put up announcements in employee lounges at every superstore within twenty miles of here saying he was accepting new patients, and giving his address and phone number to steer people his way.”

  Still no response.

  “I don’t know if it will solve the problem,” Lindie went on anyway, “but I thought that if his practice starts to pick up because he gets a lot of new patients from us, he’ll forget the idea of moving and you’ll still have Sam here.”

  “Or you just made the practice more appealing to buyers and
gave Harm the chance to raise the price so he’ll want to sell all the more.”

  Everything stood still for Lindie for a moment as that struck her. “Oh. I didn’t think of that.” The same way she hadn’t thought that opening her purse to a panhandler would turn into a mugging.

  But it had.

  Sawyer reverted to silence and Lindie worried that her good intentions had backfired. She pivoted in her seat to look at him, trying not to appreciate what a great profile he had or how good he looked in the pale yellow sport shirt he was wearing with khaki slacks.

  “I was trying to help,” she said. “Usually men in my life want that. I know you didn’t seem to, but I didn’t think it could do any harm. I guess I should have cleared it with you first.”

  He took a deep breath and sighed as if he was resigning himself to the way things stood now. “I know your intentions were good. I guess your idea is worth a shot,” he said, relieving at least some of her stress. “I suppose if anything might keep them here it’s a surge in Harm’s practice.”

  “That’s all I was thinking. I’m sorry if I made it worse.”

  More silence took them all the way to the center where he pulled into the lot and went to the parking spot next to the only other car there—hers.

  Lindie had been hoping he might suggest they go for coffee or something—anything—that would give her a little more time with him. Now she wondered if she’d really blown it and he was just going to want her to say good-night and get out of his sight.

  But while he didn’t suggest they go anywhere else, he did turn off the engine.

  That was better than nothing.

  “Are you mad?” Lindie asked.

  He unfastened his seat belt and turned toward her, putting his arm across her seatback again. “No, I’m not mad. I can see that you thought this might help. And to tell you the truth, if we had talked about it ahead of time, I probably would have told you to go for it. I want Sam here. Bottom line. But Harm’s family is pressuring him to move to Vermont and I don’t know if anything is going to stop him from going.”

  “But we can keep our fingers crossed?”

  “We can keep our fingers crossed.” Then he shook his head, frowned at her and said, “You really do have a do-gooder problem, though, don’t you? You just can’t resist getting into the middle of things and trying to fix them.”

  “I’m so sorry. I really, really am,” she insisted.

  “Men in your life have wanted you to do this?” he asked as if he found that difficult to believe.

  “For a couple of them it was actually the only reason they wanted me,” she said under her breath. It wasn’t easy to admit that. “And with a couple others it just sort of happened in a way that wasn’t planned—those two I fixed right out of my life.” She’d tried to joke but her delivery was feeble because the memories were painful.

  “Two guys only wanted you for your fix-its?” he asked.

  She hadn’t wanted to talk about her past relationships and she still wasn’t eager to. But she also didn’t want him reaching conclusions that might paint her in an unflattering light. Especially since she was worrying that he might think she was a meddler or a pushover. So she opted to explain.

  “I met Jason at the end of him getting his master’s degree when we were both volunteering for Habitat for Humanity. He wanted a foot in the door of Camden Inc.’s executive training program.”

  “I’ve heard about that. They’re coveted slots.”

  She acknowledged that with a slight nod of her head. “What I guess he didn’t count on was that we do an extensive background check on applicants.”

  “And his was different than what you knew of him?”

  “Completely. It was nothing like his rags-to-college-on-loans-that-had-left-him-deeply-in-debt story. Jason’s parents were upper middle class, and he didn’t have any student loan debt at all. And then there was the engagement announcement for him and someone I’d never heard of in a Chicago newspaper. Funny thing,” she said facetiously, “but he’d gotten engaged to someone else at the same time he was talking to me about hoping to start with Camden Inc. so he and I could get married.”

  “Ouch.”

  Lindie took a deep, steeling breath and said, “He was just using me.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Thanks?” she said with a humorless laugh, not really sure how to answer that.

  “So that was one of the jerks. What about the second?” Sawyer asked gently.

  “Ryan James. A guy who seemed to try really, really hard and just never caught a break.”

  “Another sob story?”

  “Pretty much.” Lindie released a sigh full of self-disgust and embarrassment. “After Jason it would have been a red flag if Ryan had wanted a job. But he didn’t. He had a landscaping business of his own. A struggling landscaping business, but still...”

  Sawyer guessed. “You gave him money.”

  “He seemed so nice and he never asked for it. In fact, he’d always turn down what I offered until I insisted.”

  “Why did you insist?”

  She shook her head in self-disgust, still angry with herself for the way it had played out. “Well, I had money and he didn’t.”

  “So you paid.”

  “The longer we were together the more often I’d discover in roundabout ways that his business was on the brink of disaster or he couldn’t make his rent.”

  “He never told you outright himself?”

  “Never! Instead I’d hear him on the phone bartering for more time to pay a bill. Or we’d go to his place and the power would have been shut off while he was gone. And even then he’d make light of it, say it was nothing. A little glitch.”

  “So you paid for more than movies or dinner.”

  “Then his business tanked.”

  “And you paid for it not to?” Alarm was building in Sawyer’s voice.

  “There was no way he would let me keep it going. It just went under. He still didn’t want me to get him a job. He was determined to get one on his own. It was just that he’d been working outside, with plants and dirt and grass, and he didn’t have the right clothes for the interviews—”

  “So you bought him new clothes. How long did this last?”

  “A little over a year.”

  “And by then you really liked him.”

  “More than that. He’d actually started to talk about marriage. About how when he was on his feet again he’d buy me the kind of ring I deserved.”

  “Do not say that you bought your own ring.”

  “I thought about it. But before it got to that he said his mom was sick. I’d met her and really liked her. He said she needed surgery that was going to cost way, way more than her insurance would ever pay and she didn’t have the money and he certainly didn’t—”

  “Stop,” Sawyer pleaded. “I can’t take it if I have to hear that you wrote him some kind of huge check and he’s living on a beach somewhere now.”

  “I almost wrote him a check,” she admitted. “But I wanted to make sure his mom had the best care so I talked to GiGi and she got Virginia an appointment with one of her doctors. But it was a spur-of-the-moment thing—they were fitting Virginia in. So when I couldn’t get ahold of Ryan, I called Virginia directly. She didn’t know what I was talking about, she wasn’t sick at all, let alone in need of surgery.”

  “Goodbye, Ryan!”

  Lindie nodded sadly.

  “But again, it had to hurt to think the guy wasn’t in it because of you,” Sawyer said sympathetically, backtracking from his victorious good-riddance.

  “I was completely gun-shy for over a year after that.”

  “And then you weren’t?”

  “I met Ray. The nicest, sweetest guy. I had the best time with him and we had so much in common. He just never seemed to want anything...physical.”

  Sawyer’s handsome face scrunched up. “He was gay,” he said as if he had no other explanation for that. “You helped him out of the clo
set?”

  “Sort of. I introduced him to a friend who’s openly gay and they hit it off.”

  “Well, that was nice of you,” Sawyer said with a small, wry laugh, as if he wasn’t sure what other comment to make.

  “Then there was Brad. Who had a great job he was happy in and plenty of money and was clearly heterosexual.”

  “Look at you, playing it safe,” Sawyer joked.

  “Except for one thing. Brad was fresh from his wife divorcing him. Which Livi warned me about—”

  “But you saw this wounded bird and that made him all the more appealing,” Sawyer ventured another guess.

  “Maybe,” Lindie admitted reluctantly. “I did see how downhearted he was and I wanted to cheer him up.”

  “Of course you did.”

  “I suppose in a lot of ways I played shrink with him because we talked and talked about what had gone wrong in his marriage. He analyzed it all and he seemed really determined to do better the next time around. So I was thinking that it would all go into a better relationship with me.”

  “Instead?” Sawyer asked as if he saw the answer coming.

  “He went back to his ex because he convinced her that he knew how to be a better husband to her.”

  Sawyer blew out a long gust of air and smoothed her hair away from her face with the backs of his fingers, lightly brushing her cheek along the way and then settling his hand on the back of her neck. It was warm and strong and comforting and supportive and it felt so good to have him touch her.

  “Then to top it all off,” he said, “you got mugged trying to help a homeless guy. I think we can pretty safely say that when it comes to you, no good deed ever goes unpunished.”

  “Maybe you can break the cycle by not being mad at me for trying to keep Harm-the-dentist’s practice going?” she said hopefully.

  “Are you kidding? After all that I’m pulling for it to work even more just so you can have a win,” he claimed with humor, squeezing her neck. “But truthfully, Lindie, you told me you were trying not to swoop in to fix everyone’s problems and rescue them.”

  “And you were right about the Murphy girls. They were all here today and we packed up enough dinner for them to take home to their aunt’s whole family. They’re doing okay there.”