One Daddy Too Many Read online

  Nope. He had to do the right thing. The noble thing. He’d help her settle her custody issues, throw her restaurant some business while making his dad happy, then get the heck out of her life. And Vegas. Who in their right mind thought living on the desert twenty-four/seven was a good idea? He missed the Bay area more than he ever thought possible. What I wouldn’t give for a little fog…

  He started, realizing the two women were waiting for him to reply to some question. “Huh?”

  His mother gave him a look that said she knew what he was thinking. He couldn’t read Kate’s face as easily. “Jo asked if there was a wedding planner involved.”

  Rob didn’t have a clue. But he’d find out.

  He pulled out a checkbook from the inside pocket of his suit coat and quickly scribbled an amount and his signature. “At the moment, all I’m concerned about is making sure we have a place. Will this work as a deposit?” He handed her the check.

  Her gasp told him she was surprised. And pleased.

  “Dad gave me carte blanche,” he told her. “He wants the best. I know I can trust you to deliver that.”

  Kate managed to keep her emotions together until Rob left. She stared at the zeroes neatly scribed on the amount line of the check until tears clouded her eyes.

  “Honey girl, don’t cry. I’ve been telling you all along, good things happen to good people. Sometimes, it just takes a while to prime the pump,” Jo told her, giving Kate’s shoulders a robust squeeze.

  Jo was the one person, aside from Kate’s sisters and her daughter, who could hug her and get away with it.

  “This is too much,” Kate said. “Your son must think I’m a charity case.”

  “My son is infatuated. He just won’t admit it.”

  The check Kate had been drooling over slipped from her suddenly numb fingers and fluttered to the tile floor, which was covered in white dust and foot tracks. “He…you…no…don’t kid about something like that, Jo,” she said when her power of speech returned. “Rob’s a great guy. The best. But no way in the world would he be interested in someone like me.”

  Jo, who’d grabbed a broom from the utility closet, leaned on it and said, “Someone like you? You mean someone who puts family first, who works twenty hours a day and still manages to be a great mom and fabulous boss? And would look like a model, if she ever wore anything but jeans and a chef’s uniform?”

  Kate laughed out loud. “Very funny. I’m skinny, burnt-out and emotionally bankrupt. But even if I were a gorgeous young supermodel, Rob and I wouldn’t stand a chance.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I’m a mother, and I get the distinct impression he doesn’t like children.”

  “Oh, pooh,” Jo said. “He used to love kids. In high school, he spent every summer working at our community pool. He just comes off a little stiff because he’s been around law books and stuffed suits too much. Maya could whip him into shape quick enough.”

  Kate doubted that. Maya, who was the most intuitive four-year-old Kate had ever known, wasn’t smitten with Rob, either. “He’s icky. And his shoes squeak,” her daughter had declared after meeting Rob at Romantique one evening when he dropped by to pick up his mother.

  Kate didn’t think either point was true, but she hadn’t pressed the issue, other than to reprimand her daughter for her use of the word icky.

  “Well, this is a moot point,” Kate said. “He’s your son. And a client. And my soon-to-be ex-lawyer. That’s all.”

  Jo resumed sweeping. “Yeah, sure. Only you two are going to be working very closely over the next two weeks. Some might regard that as fate lending a matchmaking hand.” She used her broom to tap out the beat to “Here Comes the Bride.”

  Kate laughed, even as a shiver ran down her spine. “Stop. I did the bride thing once. And believe me, once was enough. I learned my lesson. From now on, I only say, ‘I don’t.’”

  Chapter Three

  “What will you do, Katherine?”

  “Murder sounds appealing. If only my future brother-in-law really had been a hit man,” Kate said with a sigh. She kept her voice down so as not to alert Maya to her return. Her daughter was in the living room watching a DVD.

  It was only three o’clock in the afternoon, but Kate was exhausted. She’d put in six long, grueling hours cleaning Romantique. Even with a professional crew and Jo’s help, the job had been more difficult than she’d expected. Physically and emotionally draining.

  Her mother’s kitchen smelled of ginger snap cookies and lentil soup. Warm and welcoming. But Kate was consumed by a restless energy. Something was going to happen. Good or bad, she couldn’t say.

  “There must be other options, dear,” her mother said, her tone sardonic. “You don’t even know where Ian will be staying, do you? A halfway house. Or a hospital. There’s no reason to think he’ll be anywhere nearby.”

  Kate stepped closer to her mother and lowered her voice. “Anywhere in Clark County is too close for my comfort. He’s not only a liar and a thief, but he’s sick. Maybe contagious. What if he gives this disease to Maya?”

  Yetta dropped the spoon she was using to stir her stew. “Is that what you think will happen?”

  Kate rolled her shoulders trying to work out a few knots. “I don’t know. For the first time in my life, I wish I could see into the future. My gut says run, but do you know how much all this stuff around my neck weighs?”

  Yetta wiped her hands on a towel and put her arms around Kate. “Yes, dear, I think I do.”

  Kate tried to keep herself rigid, but her mother’s scent—comforting and familiar—filled her nostrils and made her relax—just a tiny bit.

  “Why is this happening now, Mom? Nobody made Ian steal that money. What he did was his choice, but Maya and I had to pay for it. I sold our house, cars, boat and all the toys Ian couldn’t live without. I emptied my trust fund to repay people. We moved in with you. I’m thirty-two years old and living with my mother,” she said shaking her head.

  “Not because you needed me, but because I was lonely and miserable until you and Maya brought me back to life,” Yetta said firmly.

  The words were nice to hear—and deep down Kate knew her mother meant what she said, but nothing could erase the sense of failure Kate felt. She’d finally started rebuilding her life. She’d had a flourishing business and money saved for the deposit on a new place of their own—until this E. coli fiasco. And now, her ex suddenly decides he wants to be a daddy.

  Kate stepped back and resumed pacing. “I just don’t get it. Ian signed the divorce papers without a word. Ever since, I’ve had to make all the decisions about our daughter’s welfare, and he never once asked to see her. Not once. Now, he wants to share custody. Why? Does he think he can do better?”

  Yetta returned to the stove and picked up the spoon she’d used to stir the soup. “Katherine, no one in their right mind would question your parenting skills. Your daughter is an absolute delight—wise, generous and kind. But Ian is her father. Not a good one, I agree, but he exists. And there will come a time when she’ll resent the fact that you kept her from seeing him. She might even run away to be with him. That could be disastrous.”

  Kate closed her eyes. Suddenly, she had a clear image of a young teen with flowing brown curls on the side of the road. Hitchhiking. Alone. Vulnerable.

  “I didn’t say I’d never let her meet Ian,” she said, shaking her head. “Maybe after he gets well…is this something you can recover from? Liz would know. I’m going to call her.”

  “She isn’t home. She had some kind of hearing with those two poor women from Charles’s hotel. They’re asking to be allowed to stay in the United States, and Elizabeth is trying to help.”

  Kate had been too distracted by her own troubles to pay much attention to her sister’s latest humanitarian effort. “Well, the lawyer Rob set me up with said he’ll schedule an appointment with a family mediator once Ian gets released. I only hope it’s later rather than sooner. With this wedding coming up in a hu
rry, I’m going to be swamped.”

  She filled her mother in on the job Rob had tossed her way then asked, “Do you need my help? I’ve been so busy worrying about Ian I just stood here and let you do all the cooking.”

  “Heavens no. The soup just needs to simmer a bit longer.”

  Simmer—pretty much all Kate had been doing lately. And she was sick of it. She walked to the doorway that connected to the living room. “Hey, poops, let’s go fly the kite you got for your birthday from Auntie Liz. It’s still light outside and we both need the exercise.”

  Twenty minutes later, at Lorenzi Park, Maya called out in a high-pitched squeal, “Run, Mommy, run fast.”

  Ironic, Kate thought as she gamely fought to keep the kite aloft. Her daughter was urging her to do exactly what her sixth sense said to do. Run. But which way? And for how long? Would distance alone be sufficient to avoid this upcoming confrontation with her own failure?

  She’d loved Ian, but he’d lied to her, along with everyone else. I was a gullible fool once, but I’m through letting him control my life—even in absentia.

  Her goals were clear-cut and simple: rebuild her restaurant’s reputation, care for her daughter and, when she could afford it, move into a place of her own. She knew she couldn’t rely on anyone else to make these things happen. Not her family, not Ian and certainly not Rob.

  The fine string pulled taut beneath her fingers as breeze and kite connected. “Okay, Miss M, let go of the tail.”

  The exotic blue-and-gold parrot-shaped kite shot skyward, nearly ripping the plastic spool from Kate’s left hand.

  “Ooh, pretty,” Maya said, clapping and jumping up as if to touch the dancing yellow ribbons. “You’re good, Mommy.”

  The praise was sweet, but it turned out to be premature. A minute later, the wind died. The kite drifted back to the ground faster than Kate could rewind the string. She ended up surrounded by an unraveled mess.

  The image fit her life perfectly, she decided. She and Ian had been flying high—briefly, dazzlingly. But then everything crashed. And she couldn’t get over her anger. Even now, she wanted to punish Ian for ruining their perfect life. But her mother was right. Someday, Maya would hold Kate accountable for the decisions she made today.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy. We can try again.”

  Kate sat down and pulled her daughter into her lap. “Maya, love, we need to talk. Remember how I told you your father didn’t live with us because he did something wrong and had to go away?”

  “Uh-huh.”

  “Well, now he’s coming back.”

  “When?”

  “I don’t know exactly. Soon, I think.”

  “Will he move into Grandma’s house with us?”

  “No.”

  “Will he live in an apartment? Like Jo?”

  Kate had taken Maya to visit Jo, who lived in a gated senior complex for active adults. The place had three pools, tennis courts and two gyms. And nearly everyone they met had a dog. Maya had been enthralled.

  “I don’t know. But since he’s younger than Jo, I’d guess not. You have to be a certain age to live in that kind of place.”

  “Oh. How come Daddy isn’t coming to live with us? Like Gemilla’s daddy?”

  Gemilla, Kate’s cousin’s daughter, was Maya’s best friend.

  She focused on rewinding the loose string, her hands trembling. Not from the chill in the air, she knew. This was a talk she’d put off for too long. “Gregor and Mary Ann are married, honey. You know that. Mommy and Daddy are divorced. Divorced people live apart but they still share their children. Sometimes the dad spends a lot of time with his kids and sometimes not so much.”

  “When can I see him?”

  Every cell in her body cried, “Never,” but Kate forced herself to smile and answer, “I don’t know. We’ll work out a schedule once he gets…settled.” She’d almost said well, but she didn’t want to worry Maya until she had all the facts.

  Maya nodded and jumped to her feet. “Okay. My turn,” she said, grabbing the spool of string.

  Kate was just about to reprimand her for being rude when her cell phone rang. She didn’t recognize the number but since it was local, she took the call, as she stood up.

  “Hi, Kate, it’s Rob. I know it’s bold of me to ask, but I need a favor.”

  Rob. She’d spent way too much time thinking about him this afternoon as she was cleaning the grill. Fantasizing about the impossible. A different her. A different him. A different time in their lives.

  She shook her head to chase away the silly dreams. “What kind of favor?”

  “The shopping kind. Mom and I are at Rosemary’s having dinner and I realized I need a gift for my dad. She told me you decorated Romantique almost single-handedly. You know where to shop in Vegas. And you have excellent taste. Is there any way you could spare a couple of hours some day this week? I know you’re going to have your hands full with this party, but, believe me, I’m shopping challenged.”

  Interior design was Kate’s private passion. While married to Ian, she’d had seemingly unlimited funds to indulge her hobby. But, aside from outfitting Romantique, she hadn’t even stepped foot in a store except to buy things for Maya.

  The wind gusted hard. Maya ran gamely trying to keep the kite aloft, but the parrot flapped just once or twice before making a spectacular spiral straight to earth.

  “Oh,” Maya said with a sigh of disgust, then she trudged over to the fallen bird and started winding up the string again.

  Kate wondered briefly if Rob had somehow sensed this hidden passion of hers, but did that matter? He’d brought her a huge party. She owed him a favor—and if his request involved something she enjoyed…“Okay.”

  ROB CLOSED HIS PHONE with a smile. She’d agreed to take him shopping. He wasn’t sure what had made him ask. Need—definitely. Serena once said that Rob had the worst taste of any person she’d ever met. She’d never allowed him to pick out a thing—clothing, items for the condo, the color of his car. She’d undermined his self-confidence—department-storewise—so completely, he actually suffered a slight panic attack when called upon to buy a gift for someone.

  He looked toward the bar where his mother was having a smoke with her brandy. His mother thought that was the funniest thing she’d ever heard. When he’d brought up the subject over dinner, Jo had suggested he ask for Kate’s help.

  “You’re not trying to fix us up, are you?” he’d asked.

  “Of course not. You’re not her type.”

  He agreed, but it still irked him to hear her say so. “What makes you so sure?”

  “She’s a single mom, and you’ve never exactly gone out of your way to cozy up to her kid.”

  Rob hadn’t bothered to deny the charge, but neither was he ready to explain—to his mother, at least—why he’d avoided having much contact with Maya. She was a beautiful little girl. The few times they’d met, a part of him had wanted to squat down and find out what was going on behind those big, intensely observant brown eyes, but he hadn’t let himself.

  As he sipped his coffee, he brought to mind a memory that still haunted him. It was the moment Rob fully understood the word affair. He had been nine or ten at the time. The latest woman his father had been seeing—a beautiful young coed who’d returned to college after her marriage failed—showed up one night at their door. She’d come to confront Adam, to convince him to leave his wife. She’d brought her six-year-old daughter with her. Rob would never forget the anguish and confusion on that child’s face. The little girl might not have understood everything that was going on, but she knew her mother was in pain, and she knew that another man was rejecting them. Again. Just as her father had.

  Rob had vowed never to date women with children. Relationships were tricky, ephemeral. He refused to risk contributing pain to some kid’s life. The longest he’d ever dated a girl—prior to his two-year relationship with Serena—had been eight months. With that kind of track record, someone like Kate, no matter how great s
he was, was off-limits.

  But that didn’t mean they couldn’t be friends. And business associates. Right?

  “Well, what’d she say?” a voice asked.

  Rob’s nose twitched at the familiar scent of cigarette smoke. He’d given up hassling his mother about her bad habit. Instead, he smiled and said, “Yes. She said she would help me find just the right gift for Dad and…” For a second, he couldn’t remember his future stepmother’s name.

  “Haley.”

  He snapped his fingers. “Right. You’re lucky. You don’t have to shop. The cake you’re making will be the perfect gift.”

  He stood up, checking his pocket for his keys and sunglasses. “Are you ready? I have some briefs to read. I swear the lawyers in this office are the laziest bunch of miscreants I’ve ever worked with. All they want to do is golf and take two-hour lunches.”

  His mother shouldered her purse strap. “Isn’t that why you went to law school—because Tiger Woods beat you out of a spot on the pro tour?”

  He laughed. They both knew he wasn’t anywhere close to Tiger’s standard. Golf was a hobby. An excuse for Rob and his father to spend time together without really talking. But the law—Rob loved being a lawyer. Well, he had until his ex-fiancée’s father sent him to Las Vegas as punishment for breaking his daughter’s heart.

  He ushered Jo toward the door, nodding goodbye to the hostess, a beautiful blonde who’d flirted with Rob when they first came in. In the past, he might have asked for her number, but tonight his mind was still on Kate’s laugh.

  “You know what you need, don’t you?” his mother asked, as he held the door for her.

  Thinking she was talking about the gift he was going to buy, he said, “No. What?”

  “A family.”

  Rob’s heart made a funny skip in his chest. “And which store sells those? Only the top-of-the-line, of course. No bargain basement families for me, you know.”