Distracting Dad

Nate could ask the same about women, but he had the good sense to keep that sentiment to himself. Besides, he couldn’t help but be impressed by Allie MacLord. She didn’t back down when challenged. “You, uh, have any unmarried female relatives in the forty to fifty age range?” he asked, remembering his plan to find a wife for his dad. “Mothers? Aunts?” Any female biologically related to this termagant would have no problems keeping Nate’s dad under control. Same gene pool, after all. Same domineering attitude, he figured.

“Unmarried female relatives?” Allie asked. “What are you talking about?”

“Nothing,” he mumbled, and was mortified to feel a blush creeping up his neck. When was the last time he’d blushed? Good grief. What was that all about?

If Nate didn’t know himself better, he might suspect this woman was causing him to think about marriage—for himself!

Dear Reader,

The summer after my thirteenth birthday, I read my older sister’s dog-eared copy of Wolf and the Dove by Kathleen E. Woodiwiss and I was hooked. Thousands of romance novels later—I won’t say how many years—I’ll gladly confess that I’m a romance freak! That’s why I am so delighted to become the associate senior editor for the Silhouette Romance line. My goal, as the new manager of Silhouette’s longest-running line, is to bring you brand-new, heartwarming love stories every month. As you read each one, I hope you’ll share the magic and experience love as it was meant to be.

For instance, if you love reading about rugged cowboys and the feisty heroines who melt their hearts, be sure not to miss Judy Christenberry’s Beauty & the Beastly Rancher (#1678), the latest title in her FROM THE CIRCLE K series. And share a laugh with the always-entertaining Terry Essig in Distracting Dad (#1679).

In the next THE TEXAS BROTHERHOOD title by Patricia Thayer, Jared’s Texas Homecoming (#1680), a drifter’s life changes for good when he offers to marry his nephew’s mother. And a secretary’s dream comes true when her boss, who has amnesia, thinks they’re married, in Judith McWilliams’s Did You Say…Wife? (#1681).

Don’t miss the savvy nanny who moves in on a single dad, in Married in a Month (#1682) by Linda Goodnight, or the doctor who learns his ex’s little secret, in Dad Today, Groom Tomorrow (#1683) by Holly Jacobs.

Enjoy!

Mavis C. Allen

Associate Senior Editor, Silhouette Romance

Distracting Dad

Terry Essig

www.millsandboon.co.uk

For everyone at Silhouette—

thanks for noticing that manuscript

with the crayon drawings on the back all those years ago

and rescuing it from the slush pile,

as well as all the help and guidance since then.

Here comes lucky number thirteen.

Books by Terry Essig

Silhouette Romance

House Calls #552

The Wedding March #662

Fearless Father #725

Housemates #1015

Hardheaded Woman #1044

Daddy on Board #1114

Mad for the Dad #1198

What the Nursery Needs… #1272

The Baby Magnet #1435

A Gleam in His Eye #1472

Before You Get to Baby… #1583

Distracting Dad #1679

Silhouette Special Edition

Father of the Brood #796

TERRY ESSIG

says that writing is her escape valve from a life that leaves little time for recreation or hobbies. With a husband and six young children, Terry works on her stories a little at a time, between seeing to her children’s piano, sax and trombone lessons, their gymnastics, ice skating and swim team practices, and her own activities of leading a Brownie troop, participating in a car pool and attending organic chemistry classes. Her ideas, she says, come from her imagination and her life—neither one of which is lacking!

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter One

“An older woman. That’s what I’m thinking. Widowed, divorced, I’m not in a position to be picky. Or it could be somebody younger with a mother. Everybody has a mother. One of them must be widowed or divorced, you would think.”

Nathaniel Edward Parker paused in his speech, leaning back in his chair behind the large wooden desk in his office. Across from him was his longtime best friend and business partner, Jared Hunter. They were supposed to be having a business meeting. Jared looked up from the papers in front of him wearing a very puzzled look on his face. “What? Nate, could you please stay focused here? We need to convince Harry Zigler to sign this contract so we can pay our rent next month.”

“Sorry. I’m a little distracted.”

“No kidding. Look, buddy, I need you to pay attention. This is important.”

“And this isn’t? I’ve got a serious problem here, Jared.”

Jared looked disgruntled. “Yeah? Well, you’ve got another one right here. This contract…”

Nate ruthlessly interrupted Jared. “I cannot pay attention to the contract. God knows I’ve tried, but it’s impossible. Maybe if we clear up this other issue I’ll be able to concentrate.”

Jared blew out a sigh. “What other issue? We have to make up a list of people we know who have mothers before you can focus? What is that all about?”

“Available mothers. Big difference.” Nate drummed his desktop with his fingers. “For my dad. Ever since Mom died, he’s been making me crazy.”

Jared snorted. “So what else is new? Your mom’s been dead for two years. You should be used to it by now.”

Nate raked a hand through his blond hair. “No. Lately it’s been getting worse. I can’t concentrate because I keep expecting him to come bursting in here with some other bizarre way we can improve the business.”

“Giving away Fourth of July fireworks with the company logo on the package wasn’t that bizarre.”

“Please. Nobody who saw them blow would realize that blue and green are the company colors and the first person who loses a hand would sue our butts off. You can bet dear old Dad wouldn’t offer to pay the lawyer’s bill, either. He can’t. He doesn’t have that kind of money.”

Jared rattled the papers on the table. “About this contract,” he began determinedly.

Nate flattened his palm over the rustling papers. “Not until I have my list.”

Throwing up his hands, Jared relented. “All right, all right. I’m almost afraid to ask. What do you plan to do with this list of people with mothers. Available mothers,” Jared immediately corrected before Nate could. “Marry the old guy off?”

“Well, yeah.”

“You’re not serious, are you?” Jared pointed an accusing finger at his buddy. “You are serious.” He threw himself back in his chair. “Aw, man, I don’t believe this. What are we, a dating service now? We’ve got a business here, Nate. We don’t have time to run a lonely hearts club, too.”

“Well, we can’t take care of business with my father breathing down our necks, now can we? The man is lost without Mom, lost. The way I see it, the only solution we’ve got is to find him some other interest in life besides me, his only son.” Nate sat up, his irritation with his partner’s obtuseness obvious.

“A wife, for example?” Jared asked.

“Exactly. Look. It’s obvious.” Nate picked up a marker and leaned to the side, writing on a large sheet of paper clipped to a tripod. “Look, we’ll flowchart it. Try and follow along.” He wrote the word father in large block type at the top of the paper and pointed to it. “My father.”

Jared rolled his eyes and nodded. “Your father.”

“Has been sticking his nose in where it doesn’t belong, making us crazy on a daily basis since my mom passed away.” Nate drew a dash down from the word father and wrote Nate and Jared.

“I still don’t think the fireworks were that bad an idea.”

“Shut up. Dad needs something to distract him from us, right?”

Jared nodded. “Okay. Distractions can be good. That would probably work.”

“He needs a woman in his life. He never bugged me like this when Mom was around. She kept him occupied.”

“I don’t mean to speak disrespectfully of the dead, but your mom was nuts,” Jared pointed out, stating what he thought to be the obvious. “Keeping her out of trouble was a full-time occupation for your father.”

Nate shrugged. It was the truth. “Mom distracted him, see?”

“Uh-huh. So we make this list of available women and this helps us…how? Exactly how do we get them together?” Jared waggled a finger admonishingly. “And no force allowed. Shotgun weddings went out a long time ago.”

Nate waggled the marker right back at his partner. “We’ll worry about that part when we get that far. Think about it. This makes perfect sense. Somebody we know is bound to have an unattached female relative of the right age somewhere in their family tree. We just have to find her. Once we accomplish that, we sic her on Pop. Women are supposed to be naturally nurturing, right? She’ll be all over him, cooking him wholesome dinners and stuff like that. He won’t be able to resist. She distracts him, see? Then he leaves us alone. Easy.”

Openly snickering at his buddy’s logic, Jared asked, “Naturally nurturing, huh? I don’t know about that. I’ve been out with one or two that would probably eat their own young.” But he gave it some thought. “You, um, really think this will work?”

Nate reached for the coffeepot that sat on a warmer on one side of the table. “Damn straight.”

Jared held out his coffee cup. “Okay, if you say so. Now, who goes on the list? And don’t say my mother. I don’t want her tangled in your nutty schemes. Then she’d start driving me crazy.”

Nate took a cautious sip of hot coffee. “No, your mother’s out. I’ll admit I thought about her, but I don’t think she’d put up with my father’s antics. Doesn’t she have any unmarried sisters or anything?”

“No.”

“Not even one?”

“No. God broke the mold after creating my mother.” Jared folded his hands together and raised his eyes piously. “Thank you, God.”

Nate slumped in his chair. “Okay, all right. Who do we know who does?”

The two men sat, marking the highly polished conference tabletop with fingerprints as they drummed their fingers and thought.

Tentatively Jared offered out loud, “Anne Reid brought in brownies the other day. She must have a mother.”

Nate snorted. “They were awful. Her mother probably taught her everything she doesn’t know about baking and Dad’s an old-fashioned kind of guy. He’d never go for a woman who couldn’t bake.”

“All right, I tried. This is your problem, you think of somebody.”

“Our problem,” Nate corrected. “Remember the contract? I can’t concentrate until we take care of this.” Nate gave Jared a mean little smile. “And just so you know, Dad’s signed up for a computer class over at the high school’s adult education program. He’s decided to help us with our books.”

Jared unstacked his feet and sat up straight, suddenly far more serious. “Fine. Mitzi Malone.”

“She was hatched, not born. Try again.”

The phone rang. Both men looked at it, then at each other. “You get it. If it’s my father, I’m not here.”

“You get it. It’s probably my mother.”

“Could be Sue Ann calling to tell you she can’t live without you. What if it’s a client?”

“They’ll leave a message.”

The machine did, in fact, pick up. Nate and Jared’s argument was broken into by a vivacious female voice. “Mr. Parker, this is Allison MacLord. I live in the condo just below yours? Please call me as soon as you get this message. There’s something leaking from your place down into mine. You’ve got a broken pipe or something. My bed’s soaked. I think you may have ruined my ceiling. Oh, ick, the carpet’s all squishy. You have insurance, right? My number’s 27…”

Nate snatched up the phone, and yelled into it, “What are you talking about Miss…whatever you said your name was? What’s leaking?”

Allison Marie MacLord held the phone away from her ear and blinked at it. One minute she’d been talking to a machine and the next a very vital, very vibrant, very forceful male voice. “Well, um, I don’t exactly know, Mr. Parker. I mean I just got home. My ceiling’s dripping, some paint’s already peeled and fallen, my mattress may never dry out and water’s welling up every time I take a step on the bedroom carpet. My feet are getting wet right through my shoes, which really makes me mad because I paid ten dollars for that water protecting spray they’re always trying to sell you at the shoe stores.”

Nate swore.

On her end, Allie grimaced. She hated confrontation. When the answering machine had picked up, she’d been almost relieved, except for the fact that leaving a message wasn’t going to stop the steady flow of…whatever anytime soon. “Mr. Parker? You are 3H, aren’t you? That’s what the mailbox says. Your next-door neighbor thought this was where you worked.”

Nate put his hand over the phone’s receiver. “Dad insisted my garbage disposal wasn’t working right the other night. God only knows what he did while he was crawling around under my sink.” He lifted his hand and spoke into the phone. “3H, yeah, that’s me. Damn it.”

“Um…” Allie sighed. This wasn’t going at all well. “Ah, I don’t suppose anyone around here has a spare key to your place?”

Nate dropped his head into his hand. “No. No spare keys.”

“You really should leave one with a neighbor, you know. What if you lock yourself out sometime? Then what would you do?”

“Miss M—”

“Allie. You should probably call me Allie. You did just destroy my bed, after all. You know, if you’d left a spare with a neighbor I could go in there for you and try to figure out what the problem is. Maybe call a plumber.”

Nate sighed. “What color is it?”

“What?”

“The…whatever that is dripping.”

“Oh.” Allie’s gaze drifted up. “It is, uh, kind of a very light brown.” It could be water simply picking up color as it passed through the beams over her head, but it could be something else totally. Yuck. “Ah, it seems to be picking up speed. I don’t know how much more my bed and carpet can absorb. If we don’t hurry here, it’s going to go down to the ceiling in 1H below me. If it hasn’t already—”

Nate swore again. “I’m on my way.” He threw down the phone and stood. “I’ve got to go. My father is singlehandedly destroying my entire building and something tells me he doesn’t carry workman’s insurance.”

Jared had the low class to laugh. “Better hurry, man.” He quickly grew serious. God only knows what havoc the old guy could wreak on their books. “Meanwhile, I’ll keep thinking.”

“Thanks, man.” Nate glowered as he raced out the door.

Slamming the car door as he jumped into his car did nothing but make the hand he caught in it hurt, and the speeding ticket he collected on the way cost him valuable time. By the time he reached his building, Nate was fuming. Still he pulled cautiously into a parking slot lest he somehow overshoot the space and smack right into the side of the building. If bad luck came in threes, he’d met his quota for the day. But there was no point in pushing his karma or whatever. One thing for sure, Nate was not meeting with any clients or signing any contracts today. Climbing out of the car, he closed the door without slamming it and hurried into the building. Not willing to wait for the elevator, he took the stairs two at a time. He juggled his keys in his palm as he made his way down the hall, then took a fortifying breath before opening the door to 3H. Cautiously Nate peaked in.

“Hell,” he said to no one in particular, and followed it up with something more pungent.

The living room carpet he stepped onto was dry. But he could see that water came to within a few inches of its border. Gingerly he made his way across the island of the living room to stare at the flooded kitchen. In the center of the room the water appeared to be over an inch deep. That was obviously the low spot created when the building settled. With a distasteful expression on his face, Nate toed off his good shoes. He leaned down to pull off his dark socks and roll up his pant legs. He waded in.

“Like I don’t have enough problems,” he muttered as he slogged his way over to the sink. “Economy’s nuts, dot coms dropping like no tomorrow.” He pulled open the cabinet door below the sink and squatted down to peer at a spaghetti bowl of pipes he would have preferred never getting to know on such an intimate basis.

“Not only do I have to put up with Dad’s business advice and dire warnings on the economy but now he’s got to turn into Handyman Negri’s evil counterpart. Unhandy-man Ted runs amok. Again. Damn it, Dad, what did you do under here last night? I swear to God it’s the last time I invite you to dinner because I feel bad about you eating alone. I eat alone practically every night and I survive.” Tentatively Nate reached out and touched an alien-looking length of white PVC pipe.

The phone rang.

Nate jumped and cracked his head on the underside of the counter.

“Ouch! Damn it!”

He backed out from under the sink, grabbed one of the kitchen towels his last girlfriend had bought him—see? women worried about stuff like that—swiped it over his hands and nabbed the telephone. “What,” he growled. “Make it good. This is not turning out to be one of my better days.”

“Um, Mr. Parker?”

Nate sighed. It was that Allison person. The one whose apartment his father had ruined. Nate struggled for a bit of sympathy, but honestly, it was tough to find when he was standing in the swamp that used to be his kitchen. “Yes?” It was all he could manage with any degree of civility.

“This is Allie MacLord. 2H?”

Nate rubbed tiredly at his forehead, took the portable phone with him as he ducked back down to peer under the sink again. “Ms. MacLord, I just—”

“Allie.”

Nate rubbed his forehead harder and dutifully repeated, “Allie. Look, I just walked in the door. I haven’t really had time to—”

“Oh, my timing is perfect then. I’ll be right up to help. My place won’t dry out until you quit dripping into it, you know.”

“I know—” He stepped, realizing he was talking to a dead phone. The woman had hung up on him. He, Mr. Masters in Business Administration, hadn’t managed to finish one sentence during their entire conversation. Now she was on her way up to finish off his ego by watching what a nonstarter he was with plumbing issues. “Real men know how, where and when to use a pipe wrench,” he told himself as he poked the end button on the phone and reached above his head to set the receiver on the counter.

Nate didn’t even own a pipe wrench.

He comforted himself. “Like I was saying earlier, the apple doesn’t fall all that far from the tree. It’s pretty obvious to me that Dad’s not all that hot with a wrench, either. At least I’m man enough to admit I don’t know what I don’t know.” It wasn’t all that much comfort as water continued to gush.

The doorbell sang out Allie’s arrival. “God help me,” he muttered as he closed his eyes in silent resignation. Nate called out, “Come in. It’s not locked.”

Nate heard the door open, then close. Seconds later a feminine voice said, “Oh, my.”

Not exactly the response that had come first to his mind upon viewing the scene, but hey, everyone was different. “Yeah,” he said. “Goll darn. What a mess.” He looked back over his shoulder and about fell on his butt into the water.

Allison, oops Allie MacWhoever was a pixie. A sprite. Nate bet she was a foot shorter than his own six foot two and if she turned around, he believed he’d see fairy wings. She was slightly built and, he’d bet his last dot com, Irish. Or Scottish. One or the other. Her hair was deep red verging on auburn. It was cut short and framed her face in soft waves. Her eyes were a clear, brilliant emerald-green and, even from across the room, he could see the freckles marching across the bridge of her nose, not because the freckles were so large or dark; they weren’t, but because her skin was so milky pale anything would stand out in contrast.

She stood on tiptoe at the edge of the floodplain, her hands tucked into the front pockets of stone-colored shorts that rode below on her hipbone. Her pink tank top barely met the top of her shorts and when she moved, as in breathed, a tantalizing narrow band of belly peaked out. For a short person, she had amazingly long legs. They were slim yet shapely and ended in little elf feet sporting amazingly pink flip-flops with orange and pink silk floppy flowers growing from the vamp.

Damn, but she was cute. Not pretty. Cute.

But cute could be good.

All Nate’s manly protective instincts went on red alert and he scowled. Who had let this little baby doll loose on her own in the world? What kind of parents did she have that they’d let a maybe eighteen-year-old alone with nobody to watch out for her? Morons. This Allie had morons for parents.

Allie gave Nathaniel Parker an odd look as she kicked off her flip-flops and prepared to wade in. The guy looked like he was in a trance or something. What was he staring at? Self-consciously she rubbed along her upper lip, feeling for remnants of the pb and j she’d scarfed down while waiting for some sign of life up above her, but she didn’t feel anything.

“Are you okay?” she asked, moving closer.

“What?” Nate shook his head to clear his brain and put a hand down in the water to help with his balance. “Sorry. I just—spaced out there for a moment, I guess.”

Allie splashed her way over to squat next to Nate. “What have we got?”

“A problem. A real problem. See this pipe here?” Nate gestured to the culprit pipe that was spurting water down under the sink. “It’s broken. My father must have bumped it and loosened it last night when he was playing around with the garbage disposal. See how close it is to the disposal? Pressure must have built up during the day until it burst.”

“Yeah, looks like,” Allie agreed, looking at Nate expectantly.

“Yeah.” Nate nodded solemnly. “Looks like.”

“You going to fix it?”

“Um. Well. Where’s the water turnoff in your place?”

Allie reached past him and turned a knob. “Right here.” The flow slowed to a trickle.

Nate moved her hand aside and tightened the knob farther. The water shut off completely. “Great. Now let’s see. I guess I need a wrench or something.”

“Call a plumber,” Allie advised. “Where’s your mop?”

“No, look. See? If we just align these two ends again and give this thing a couple of twists—”

“What is it with men? You can’t ask for directions even if you have no idea where you are. You can’t admit when you’re in over your head with a home repair. What is wrong with calling in a professional? Look at this mess!” Allie made a wide sweep with her hand and Nate had to lean backward to avoid being hit.

“It would have taken a plumber one third the time and I’d have a bed to sleep in tonight if you and your father hadn’t decided to play handyman last night.”

Nate puffed up with indignation over that. He’d practically ordered his father to leave his plumbing alone last night. This was not his fault. The blame lay squarely with his dad. “Now just hang on a second—”