The Daddy Project: A Single Dad Romance

He resented the accusatory tone. Where did she think they were? “They’re in the playhouse. Gemmy and I are keeping an eye on them.”

“That’s good. You know if you’re busy, you can drop them off here anytime. Fred and I are always happy to see them.”

There were lots of things he’d like to say, but only one of them was polite. “Thank you. I appreciate that.”

“Did that person from the real estate company show up?”

Now they were getting to the real reason for her call. At least she’d called and not shown up unannounced as she often did. He never should have told her he was going to sell the house, especially since her constant interference was one of his reasons for wanting to move. He didn’t like the idea of being too far from the university, but his next house would be a lot farther than fourteen blocks from Alice and Fred’s.

“She’s taking a look at the house right now.”

“And you’re out in the greenhouse?”

“I wanted to keep Gemmy and the girls out of her way, so I brought them outside. Besides, she’s just deciding what needs to be done.” He didn’t have to be around for that.

“You should have asked us to help instead of spending good money to have someone else do this.”

Nate closed his eyes and, for several seconds, indulged in the idea of applying for a faculty position at another university. One on the other side of the country. Or maybe in a different country.

“There’s a house for sale down the street from us,” Alice said. “It would be perfect for you and the girls, and they’re having an open house on the weekend. You should come by and have a look.”

“That sounds…interesting.” Nate picked up a garden trowel and imagined stabbing himself in the head with it. Alice had lost her only child, he reminded himself, but that didn’t make it easy for him to rationalize her interference. After Heather died, Alice had transferred all of her attention to her granddaughters. Understandable, and he appreciated everything she did for them. Mostly. But she had always made it clear that she considered him to be partly responsible for Heather’s death. He’d managed to heap a fair amount of blame on himself and he didn’t need her adding to it. She was Molly and Martha’s grandmother and he had to be civil, but no way was he buying a house within walking distance of the world’s most meddlesome mother-in-law. He set the trowel on his workbench.

“While I have you on the phone,” Alice continued. “Remember that children’s beauty pageant we discussed?”

His insides coiled into a knot. There had been no discussion. Only her saying he should enter the girls, and him saying no. “Yes, I remember.”

“You might not like the idea, but you should look at their website before you make up your mind. It will be so good for them.”

Good for them? They were four years old.

“Especially Martha,” she said. “These sorts of things build confidence and that will help her to stop sucking her thumb.”

“I’ve been busy, Alice.”

“The application deadline is only a couple of weeks away.”

He contemplated the trowel again. “Right. I’ll take a look.” Or not. There was no way his daughters would be paraded around like a pair of miniature beauty queens, not to mention having to compete with one another. No way in hell.

“Speaking of the girls,” he said, not wanting to leave her with another opening. “I need to check on them. Thanks for calling, Alice. I’ll talk to you later.”

He set his phone on the table and stared at it, picturing it impaled by the garden trowel. Instead he measured the next plant and updated the spreadsheet while he shoved the conversation with Alice to the back of his mind. He had more important, and appealing, things to think about. Like the woman currently inside his home.

He could kick himself for forgetting she was coming here this afternoon. A colleague at the university had recommended Ready Set Sold, so he had called them from his office and scrawled the appointment on a notepad, which by now was buried on his desk beneath everything else he’d been working on—the syllabus for the summer school course he was teaching next month, a draft of a research paper he was coauthoring with a colleague and the latest edition of the American Journal of Botany. He really needed to be better organized, but he could scarcely remember a time when his life wasn’t out of control.

In the months after his wife died, he had welcomed the help and support he’d received. Even relied on it. Over time, his family had backed off, but not Heather’s. They meant well, at least that’s what he wanted to believe, but their good intentions frequently overstepped the boundaries. Without coming right out and saying it, Alice often implied that he should be doing a better job of raising her granddaughters, of keeping the house tidier, of being two parents instead of just one.

She insisted Molly and Martha were old enough to look after their own things, and part of him acknowledged that might be true, but he couldn’t bring himself to make them do it. They had already lost their mother, so it didn’t seem right that they be stuck with an overbearing father who made them earn their keep. Alice was also of the opinion that Martha was too old to be sucking her thumb, and she was now pressuring him to put an end to that by entering her in a beauty pageant of all things.

Heather would have known exactly how to handle her mother and their daughters. Why didn’t he? He was a bright guy with a PhD and a career as a scientist. When it came to family, he felt hopelessly in over his head, and he was also smart enough to know that reflected his own upbringing. His mother had kept house and raised him and his sister. His father had been the family’s sole breadwinner and his fallback approach to child rearing had always been “go ask your mother.” Over the years Nate had learned a lot of things from his dad, but parenting skills weren’t among them.

These days Nate rarely thought about the weeks and months after Heather died, leaving him with a pair of toddlers and a fledgling career as a professor of botany at the University of Washington. When he did reflect on those dark days, they were blurred by grief, and even a little guilt. His two-year-old daughters had needed his undivided attention, 24/7, and that had kept him going. The university had even granted him a semester’s leave. Many people, including his family and Heather’s, thought he should have taken more time off but he had wanted to get his life back to normal.

Now, two years later, he was probably as adept at juggling his family and his professional life as he would ever be, and it felt as though the ship had sailed on establishing boundaries for his in-laws. Selling the house and moving to another neighborhood might not be the best solution, but right now it felt like his only one. And it was better to do it now. The girls wouldn’t stay little forever. They’d be starting school next year, and this would get easier. It had to.

He knew the future would bring different demands, not fewer, but a smaller house would be more manageable, and a fresh start might make it easier to lay down some new ground rules. But first he had to sell this house, and he was definitely smart enough to know he needed professional help with that. Heather had planned to decorate right after they bought the place, but she was already pregnant, and then she got sick. The girls were born six weeks early, and then she got even sicker. Curtains and cushions had never been on his list of priorities, and they had dropped off Heather’s. Once he’d made the decision to sell the house, Ready Set Sold seemed like the perfect solution. Alice might think “home staging” was a waste of money and phony as hell, but Kristi Callahan seemed like the real deal. Even her blond hair looked natural. Nice curves, great legs—

“Nate?”

He dropped his calipers.

“I’m sorry,” Kristi said. “I didn’t mean to startle you.”

“Oh. No, you didn’t.” Like hell she didn’t. His imagination had been on the verge of conducting a closer examination of those legs. He hoped his red face didn’t give that away. “I’m just clumsy,” he lied.

Her laugh sounded completely genuine. “Clumsy is my middle name. I’m afraid I spilled your dog’s water bowl. It was in front of the door between the dining room and the kitchen, and I can’t find anything to clean it up.”

He bent down to pick up the calipers, came face-to-knee with the hem of her skirt and jolted himself back to the upright position. “Don’t worry about it. I’ll come in and mop it up.”

“So, this is your greenhouse,” she said, looking around. “It’s not what I expected.”

“It’s technically not a greenhouse. It was built as a pergola and the previous owners converted it into a pool house by adding the change room at the back. We don’t use the swimming pool.” He gestured at the bright blue cover. “So I closed this in with heavy-gauge plastic and use it as a greenhouse instead.”

“I see.”

He could tell she didn’t, but at least she hadn’t called it an eyesore like his mother-in-law had.

“You have a lot of plants,” she said. “Is this what you do for a living?”

He surveyed the rows of asters. “I teach botany at Washington U. I’m collecting data for a senior undergraduate course I’ll be teaching this fall.”

“So, you’re a university professor.” She was still looking at the plants as though she wasn’t quite sure what to make of them.

“Yes, and I also do research.” Oh, geez. As if she would care.

“What are you researching?” she asked, probably because she felt she had to say something.

“The poor reproductive barriers in species of angiosperms.”

“Really?” She looked puzzled. “I didn’t think plants had sperm.”

Nate laughed. “I said angiosperms. That’s the botanical term for flowering plants. You’re right that plants don’t have sperm. At least not in the strictest sense of the word.”

Her cheeks flared pink. Her comment had been innocent enough and he wished he had let it go.

“I thought you might be a gardener,” she said.

Now it was his turn to be puzzled.