Daddy Lessons

Unconcerned, Megan pushed herself to a sitting position, then with a negligent wave of her hand she said, “Oh, I’ve just been trying a few things on.”

A few things? It looked to him as if there were enough things on the floor alone to stock a whole boutique. “And none of them could find their way back into the closet. Is that it?” he asked.

Megan giggled at her father’s grim expression. “Oh, Daddy, you’re so funny. It’s just clothes. They’re not hurting anything. I’ll pick them up before I go to bed,” she promised.

Deciding it might be best to relent for now and wait to see if she kept her promise, Joe nodded toward the book she’d been so engrossed in when he’d come into the room. “Is that one of the books you got at the library today?”

She gave him a sweet smile. “Thanks, Daddy, for letting me go. The library was great! I found all sorts of stuff I want to read.”

He tilted his head in an attempt to read the title printed on the spine of the book. “You didn’t, uh—get anything with…”

“Sex, murder or corruption?” she finished for him, then, giggling, she shook her head. “No. I can get plenty of that stuff on TV.”

Joe could hardly argue that point and he realized how different things were now than when he’d been Megan’s age. Savanna Starr thought he didn’t remember being a child, but he did.

Unlike Megan, his parents had lived together. But they’d never gotten along. Joe knew his father was a big reason for that. Joseph McCann had been a tough man, who’d liked his liquor and the expensive gamble of wildcatting. Joe could still hear his parents’ shouting matches and how alone and miserable they’d made him feel.

There’d been times he’d looked at Megan and felt guilty because he hadn’t been able to hold his marriage to her mother together. But now when those thoughts assaulted him, he deliberately remembered back to his own childhood, and he knew that giving Deirdre the divorce she’d wanted had been the right thing to do.

“Have you eaten yet?” he asked his daughter.

With a cheerful smile she jumped up from the bed and looped her arm through his. “Yes. But I’ll come fix your plate for you. Ophelia showed me how to heat everything up in case you were late.”

Out in the kitchen Megan made a big production of heating the casserole and preparing him a glass of iced tea. When everything was ready she carried it over to him on a plastic tray, then plopped down on a chair next to him.

Joe took a bite of the food, then glanced at his daughter. Her chin was in her hand and she was studying him as if she couldn’t quite decide whether he was her hero or the devil himself.

“Well, how are things going?”

“I mostly miss all my friends. It’s boring around here without anyone to talk to or do things with.”

“You’ll make plenty of friends once you start school this fall,” Joe said matter-of-factly.

Megan’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I doubt it. I don’t want to go to some dumb ole private school. I’ll have to wear some childish uniform and look like all the other nerdy girls there!”

Joe cast her a stern look of warning. “I don’t want to hear you call anyone nerdy. You don’t know what the girls at school will be like. You’ve never been there before.”

She lifted her chin defiantly and glared at him with eyes as blue as his own. “And I won’t go, either.”

Joe shoveled another bite of food to his mouth before he lost his appetite. “You’ll go if I say so.”

Megan jumped up from the chair and jammed her fists on either side of her waist. “Daddy, I want to be a cheerleader and go to football games! I want to go to proms and dances. You can’t do that without boys around!”

Joe put his fork down beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. He’d almost forgotten how quiet the house used to be before Megan arrived. Still, he loved her utterly, and more than anything he wanted the very best for her.

“You’re far too young to be thinking about boys. Besides, school is about getting an education, not playing sports and dancing.”

Megan rolled her eyes. “You’re always so serious, Daddy. Don’t you know a person has to have some fun once in a while?”

“Fun is knowing you’ve succeeded at achieving your goals.”

Groaning with disbelief, Megan flounced over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can of soda. “Fun is going to the beach or the movies. But I guess you don’t do those things,” she said sullenly.

He picked up his fork and stabbed it at the pile of noodles on his plate. Hell, if he let Megan’s temperament spoil his appetite every time he sat down to supper, he’d soon turn into a skeleton.

Megan came back to the table and sank into the same seat she’d just vacated moments earlier. Swiping her hair out of her eyes, she said in a perkier voice. “Your new secretary sounds very nice. When am I going to get to meet her?”

He glanced at his daughter with surprise. “Why would you want to meet my new secretary?”

The teenager let out another loud groan. “Because everyone around here is a stranger to me. And she sounded like someone I’d like to know.”

“How could you tell? You only talked to her on the phone for a few short minutes,” Joe observed.

“Well, I could just tell. Is she pretty?”

He choked on the tea he’d been about to swallow. “Pretty? Why in the world would you want to know that?”

“Because if she was pretty, you might not come home in such a cranky mood,” Megan reasoned. “Is she married?”

Knowing his daughter probably wouldn’t hush until he answered, he said, “No. Ms. Starr isn’t married. And yes, she’s very beautiful. But I doubt you’ll have a chance to meet her before Edie comes back to work.”

Megan eyed her father over the rim of her soda can. “What if I go to the office for a while?”

“Maybe later. I’ve got too much going on right now.”

A grimace twisted her young face. “Then let’s invite Ms. Starr to supper. Yeah! That would be fun. Will you ask her, Daddy? Will you?”

“No. She’s a secretary. Bosses don’t do that sort of thing with their secretaries. It isn’t—proper.”

“Daddy, it’s not like you’re going to have an affair with her!”

Dear Lord, did all thirteen-year-olds talk like his? Joe wondered. “And what do you know about affairs? That word shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary, yet.”

Tilting her head to one side, Megan said, “Back home, my friend Amy’s father had an affair. After that, her parents got a divorce. Is that what happened to you and Mom? Did you have an affair with some woman you liked better than her?”

Joe frowned at his daughter’s speculation. “No, neither one of us did anything of the sort. Your mother and I were simply too young to be married. Both of us wanted totally different life-styles and because we did, we argued all the time. So we decided it would be better if we didn’t live together anymore. We’ve told you this before. Don’t you remember?”

Megan nodded, while absently winding a strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah, I remember. But I thought you might not be telling me the truth.”

Joe reached out and gently touched his daughter’s face. She was so young and innocent and full of life. He didn’t want her ever to be hurt by anything. Especially from mistakes he’d made in the past or any he might make in the future.

“Megan, I’ll never lie to you. Not about anything. Okay?”

She nodded, then gave him an impish grin. “So why haven’t you gotten married again? I think you should.”

A second mother figure might be just what she needs.

Joe inwardly shook his head as Savanna’s voice came back to him. He’d thought the woman had been totally on the wrong track, that Megan would resent the very idea of a stepmother. Obviously he’d been wrong about Savanna and his daughter.