Her Problem

As a busy single mom to her teenage daughter, Kristi Callahan doesn’t have time for a man. But it sure would be nice if her mother believed that, too. She keeps setting Kristi up on disastrous blind dates, determined to find her “the one.”

His Problem

After Nate McTavish’s wife died, he was faced with raising his twin little girls alone. Making it up as he goes along and sometimes questioning his daddy skills, he also has to fend off women his well-meaning family keep throwing at him.

Their Solution

When Nate hires Kristi to stage his house before selling it, they instantly realize they’ve found the perfect answer to their problem: be fake dates for each other! It’s a great plan—until they start to wonder if the real thing might not be even better....

“A blind date?”

Kristi laughed. “Yesterday my mother called about my aunt’s Fourth of July barbecue. She was going to invite this guy who used to live across the street when I was in high school.”

“How did you handle it?”

“I told her I’d just met someone, and your name kind of slipped out.”

Nate’s eyes narowed. “What is it with families?”

“They mean well,” she said. “At least mine does. My mom was a single parent, too, and it was hard for her.”

“My family wants to find a new mother for Molly and Martha.” His voice was thick with resentment. “They seem to think I’m in over my head.”

“Oh, I’m sure they don’t. Your girls are great. They’re happy. Anyone can see they’re well cared for.”

“So, how about it? You come to my sister’s birthday party, I’ll go to your family barbecue, and we’ll call it even.”

Say no. “Sure,” she said instead.

He offered his hand to seal the deal. “It’s a date.”

She shook it. “A fake date.”

“Make that two fake dates.” He smiled and her insides turned to jelly.

Dear Reader,

I’m not sure why, but people are often surprised to learn that after I completed a bachelor of science degree (with honors, I’m proud to say) I went on to do graduate work in earth sciences. Yes, that makes me a bit of a nerd, so you probably won’t be surprised to learn that my absolute favorite show on television right now is The Big Bang Theory.

I’ve always wanted to turn a science geek into a sexy hero, and I hope you’ll agree that Nate McTavish is that hero. He’s one of those supersmart guys who knows lots of obscure facts about all sorts of things, and it’s really just the mundane details of day-to-day life—like keeping house and raising four-year-old twins on his own—that gets him a little flummoxed from time to time.

Enter Kristi Callahan, the interior decorator he’s hired to stage his house before it goes on the real-estate market. She might not have a PhD, but she knows a thing or two about being a single parent, and Nate could sure use a good teacher.

The Daddy Project is Kristi’s story and the second of three books set in the beautiful city of Seattle, centered on three women who run a real-estate business called Ready Set Sold. Readers have already met Samantha the carpenter in The Christmas Secret, and Claire’s story will be up next. I do hope you enjoy all three! I love to hear from readers, and I hope you’ll visit my website at www.leemckenzie.com.

Happy reading!

Lee McKenzie

The Daddy Project

Lee McKenzie

www.millsandboon.co.uk

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

From the time she was ten years old and read Anne of Green Gables and Little Women, Lee McKenzie knew she wanted to be a writer, just like Anne and Jo. In the intervening years, she has written everything from advertising copy to an honors thesis in paleontology, but becoming a four-time Golden Heart finalist and a Harlequin author are among her proudest accomplishments. Lee and her artist/teacher husband live on an island along Canada’s west coast, and she loves to spend time with two of her best friends—her grown-up children.

For Mom and Dad, with love.

Acknowledgment

Thank you Geoff W. for an excellent idea.

Contents

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Chapter Ten

Chapter Eleven

Chapter Twelve

Chapter Thirteen

Chapter Fourteen

Chapter Fifteen

Excerpt

Chapter One

Kristi Callahan rang the doorbell of her dream home. A sprawling 1960s rancher with two fireplaces, a breezeway separating the house from the two-car garage, and enough West Coast flair to appeal to potential buyers searching for their own dream home in one of Seattle’s family-friendliest neighborhoods. And it was just her luck to be on the wrong side of the door.

This house was well beyond the reach of a single mom raising a teenage daughter on a single mom’s income, but that didn’t stop her imagination from playing with the idea of actually living in a house like this someday. And since she’d been hired to get this one staged for the real estate market, she would at least get to put her personal stamp on the place before returning to reality. Her modest two-bedroom town house was no dream home, but it was hers. Or it would be hers in twenty-three and a half years.

The other reality was that by the time she and her team at Ready Set Sold were finished here, this client would get top dollar, even in today’s less-than-stellar market, putting this house even further out of her reach.

Speaking of clients, she had an appointment and she was only five minutes late. Okay, eight, but surely Mr. and Mrs. McTavish hadn’t given up on her and gone out. There was a big silver-colored SUV and two pink plastic tricycles parked in the driveway but that didn’t necessarily mean anyone was home.

She dug her phone out of the side pocket of her bag. No messages, no missed calls. Taking care not to get tripped up by a tattered teddy bear missing half its stuffing and three small yellow rubber boots strewn across the wide front step, she rang the bell again, and waited. A moment later her patience was rewarded with footsteps, lots of them. Two identical faces with earnest blue eyes and blond Cindy Brady pigtails appeared in the glass sidelight next to the door. One had her thumb in her mouth; the other’s pigtails were oddly askew. No doubt these were the tricycle riders. And then they were dwarfed by a huge dog whose head appeared above theirs, a panting, drooling Saint Bernard.

“Is your mommy home?” Kristi asked, loud enough so they could hear.

Their pigtails shook from side to side.

The dog pressed its moist nose against the glass.

Hmm. The children stared at her but made no attempt to summon a grown-up. Surely they hadn’t been left here on their own with only a dog to look out for them. A dog that let loose a strand of drool that now slithered down one of the blond pigtails.

Gross. Kristi quickly looked away and reached for the doorbell yet again, pulling her hand back when another set of footsteps, heavier ones, approached from the other side of the door.

The man who opened it was wearing faded blue jeans, a gray T-shirt with what appeared to be a complicated chemical equation in green lettering stretching across his chest, and the annoyed expression of someone who wasn’t expecting anyone.

“Can I help you?” he asked.

Darn. Did she have the wrong day? No. She had checked her calendar and this appointment had definitely been scheduled for Wednesday. And it was Wednesday, wasn’t it?

The man at the door gave her a wary look and held up his hands, both clad in dirt-caked gardening gloves. “If you’re selling something, I’m not interested.”

“No.” She shook her head emphatically, trying to ignore his mucky gloves and struggling not to be distracted by the intensity of his eyes. Cool blue eyes that a girl could practically swim in. “I’m not selling anything.”

“Who’s she, Daddy?” the girl with the crooked pigtails asked before Kristi could continue.

“My name’s Kristi.” She smiled down at the adorable little girls, then extended her hand to their father. “Kristi Callahan. I have a two o’clock appointment to meet with the owners. The McTavishes?” Maybe she had the wrong address. “I’m the interior decorator with Ready Set Sold. You hired my company to stage your home and set up the real estate listing.”

His expression went from accusatory to apologetic and he slapped a hand to his forehead—apparently forgetting about the gloves as he remembered the appointment—and applied a grimy streak to his brow.

She stared at it, contemplated the protocol with strangers who had spinach in their teeth, toilet paper stuck to a shoe, dirt on their faces, and decided there wasn’t one.

He must have realized what she was looking at because he gave his forehead a hasty swipe with his forearm. The streak blurred to a smudge.

Kristi fought off a smile and lowered her gaze to the two little girls, who now flanked the man, each with an arm wound around a kneecap. The one was still sucking her thumb.

“Right. I’m Nate McTavish.” He held out his hand, jerked it back and pulled off the glove. His handshake was confident, firm but not too firm. His skin was warm and, given the state of his gardening gloves, surprisingly dirt-free. “Your company was recommended by a colleague of mine. I plan to sell but the house needs some work and I wouldn’t know where to start.”

“I see.” She noted that he said “I” rather than “we,” and the little girls had already indicated their mother wasn’t here. The hand that might give a clue to his marital status was still inside a gardening glove. Not that it’s any of your business, she reminded herself, and tried to ease her hand out of his.

He quickly let go.

She dug a business card out of her bag and handed it to him, wishing her partner Claire had come instead. She always knew how to handle awkward situations.

“If this is a bad time—”

“No, not at all. I’ve been working in my greenhouse this afternoon and I lost track of the time.”

In a way it was good that he hadn’t been expecting her. She didn’t have to apologize for being late.

“As I said, I’m the company’s interior decorator. I help our clients get organized prior to listing their homes, assist with any decluttering or downsizing that might be needed. We’ll work together to create a design plan to suit your home and your budget. Samantha Elliott, one of my partners, is a carpenter and she’ll take care of any repairs or remodeling that has to be done. My other partner, Claire DeAngelo, is a real estate agent,” she added, striving to sound polished and professional. “She handles the appraisal, the listing, arranges the open house, that sort of thing.”

“This sounds like exactly what I need. I don’t have much time for these kinds of things.”

Kristi’s initial uncertainty faded, but she forced herself to take a breath and slow the flow of information. “We take care of everything. I’m here today to take a look around and get an idea of what needs to be done and we’ll take it from there. Um…will your wife be joining us?”

His earlier wariness was back, and if anything it was intensified. “No. She’s…” He glanced down at his children and gently eased the thumb out of his daughter’s mouth. “My wife passed away two years ago.”

“Oh, I’m sorry. If there’s anything I can—” Stop. You don’t offer to help a complete stranger. “I’m so sorry.”

“Thank you.” Except he didn’t sound grateful. He sounded as though he wished people would stop asking where his wife was, and stop offering clichéd condolences when they found out.

The little girl with the crooked pigtails tugged on his hand. “What’s she doing here, Daddy?”

The other child had already recaptured her thumb.

“She’s going to help us sell the house.”

“Why?”

“Because we’re going to move into a new one.”

“Why?”

Kristi was reminded of her own daughter at this age, when the answer to every question generated another, especially when the answer was because. Creating a distraction had been the only way to make the questions stop.

“What are your names?” she asked.

“I’m Molly. She’s Martha. We’re sisters.”

“Nice to meet you, Molly and Martha. How old are you?”

“Four.” Molly appeared to be the pair’s designated spokesperson.

Martha held up the four fingers of her free hand, apparently happy to let her sister do the talking.

They were adorable. They were also a poignant reminder of how much she loved children, how she’d never really got past the disappointment of not having more of her own. The panting dog nudged her elbow with its moist nose, making her laugh. She rubbed the top of its head in response.

“You should come in.” Nate reached for the dog’s collar and backed away from the door, taking the girls and the dog with him. “Sorry, I shouldn’t have kept you standing out there.”

“Thank you.” She’d begun to wonder when that would occur to him. She stepped into the foyer and tripped over the fourth yellow rubber boot.

Stupid high-heeled shoes. She’d put them on, thinking they made her look more professional, and instead they turned her into a klutz.

Nate grabbed her elbow and held on till she’d regained her footing. She looked up and connected with his intense blue-eyed gaze, and for a second or two, or ten, she couldn’t draw a breath. He was gorgeous.

When the clock started ticking again, he abruptly let her go, as though he’d read her thoughts, maybe even had similar ones of his own, and then with one foot he slid the boot out of her path. The dog snapped it up by the heel and gave it a shake, sending a spatter of drool across the floor.

Kristi shuddered.

“Girls, remember what we talked about? You need to put your things in the closet.”

“That’s Martha’s,” Molly said. “Mine are outside.”

Martha tugged the boot out of the dog’s mouth, tossed it onto the pile of things in the bottom of the closet and tried unsuccessfully to close the bifold door. She was remarkably adept at doing things with one hand.

“Sorry about the mess,” Nate said. “If I had remembered you were coming, I would have tidied up.”

Kristi couldn’t tell if the closet door wouldn’t close because the pile of clothing and footwear was in the way or if a hinge was broken, or both. She made a mental note to have Sam take a look at it, and added storage baskets to the list already forming in her head. She lived with a teenage girl and a dog so she knew a thing or two about clutter. At least the slate tile floor was clean, which, given the amount of traffic generated by two small children and one large dog, was a good sign. This man must be a decent housekeeper, or maybe he had a cleaning service. Either option scored him some points. The children looked well cared for, too, and in the grand scheme of things they were most important.

All this made Nate McTavish pretty much the opposite of the deadbeat dads in her life. That, along with his offhand charm and those heart-stopping eyes, should elevate her opinion of him. Instead the combination set off a loud clamor of mental alarm bells.

Get over yourself. Quiver-inducing blue eyes aside, she was here to do a job, not strike up an unwelcome relationship with a client.

“Not a problem. That’s why I’m here.” And if the rest of the house was anything like the foyer, she had her work cut out for her.

“Where would you like to start?” he asked.

“Is this the living room?” she asked, pointing to a pair of mullioned glass doors. With the frosted glass, they looked more like Japanese rice paper than traditional French doors.

He hesitated, then reluctantly pushed them open. “It is. We almost never use it so I keep the doors closed.”

Kristi surveyed the interior. The curtains were closed and the room was dark and cool. The vaulted cedar-plank ceiling was draped with yellow-and-mauve crepe paper and clusters of matching balloons. Several balloons appeared to have come loose and were now on the floor, looking a little deflated.

“We had the girls’ birthday party here last week and I didn’t get around to taking down the decorations. I’ll be sure to do that tonight.”

Martha clung to her father’s hand but Molly scampered into the room and attempted a balloon toss. The massive dog lumbered in behind her. The yellow blob of a balloon slithered to the floor so the child stomped on it instead. When it didn’t pop, she lost interest and rejoined her father and sister. The dog nudged it with its nose, picked it up and gave it a chomp. Still no pop, so the Saint dropped the slobbery mass in the middle of the sisal area rug.

The room was furnished with comfortable-looking furniture and there was an abundance of books and newspapers, a few kids’ toys and dog toys, and sofa cushions that needed straightening.

Kristi took her camera out of her bag and looped the strap around her neck. “If it’s okay with you, I’d like to photograph each room. When I get back to my place…my office—” He didn’t need to know she did most of her work out of the back of her minivan and at one end of her kitchen table. “The photographs help me create a design plan and draw up a budget.”

“Fine with me. Are you okay to look around on your own? I still have some work to do outside.” He pulled his gardening gloves back on.

“You go ahead,” she said. “I’ll look through the house and we can talk when I’m done.”

“And I will tidy up in here tonight,” he assured her again.

The week-old remnants of the party seemed to embarrass him. Kristi didn’t see them as a problem, quite the opposite. At least there had been a party, and that was definitely to his credit. She couldn’t remember the last time Jenna’s dad had even called to wish their daughter a happy birthday. Gifts? Not even a consideration.

“Molly. Martha. Let’s go. You can play outside while I work.”

“Daddy, why is she taking pictures?”

“She needs to know what the house looks like.”

He took Molly’s hand and coaxed her out of the room along with her sister, who needed no urging at all. The dog seemed content to amble along after them.

“Why?”

“Because.”

“Because why?”

“Because she just does.”

To say Nate McTavish was overwhelmed by single-parenthood would be the understatement of the century, but what he lacked in technique, he made up for with patience. In spades.

As he walked away, she smiled at the green lettering on the back of his T-shirt. Go Green With Photosynthesis. At least now the equation on the front made sense, and confirmed her guess that he probably was a gardener. Her gaze dropped a little lower. There was a lot to be said for a flattering pair of jeans, but these particular jeans were simply magic. She quickly looked away. You have a job to do, and that is not it.

Since her ex, Derek the Deadbeat, had left twelve years ago, she had been on a number of casual dates, mostly with men her family and friends had set her up with, but she had guarded against anything that would distract her from becoming a self-sufficient single mom and career woman.

Everything about this man was distracting. The hair that could use a trim but suited him anyway, his being oblivious to the streak of dirt on his forehead, and oh…those eyes. She never felt awkward with new clients, but if she’d had to go through every room in the house with him, knowing those eyes watched every move she made, she would not have been able to focus. Especially after the moment they’d had when she tripped over the little yellow boot. And it hadn’t just been her moment. He’d felt it, too. She was sure of it.

With him out of the room if not entirely out of her mind, she pulled open the heavy drapes and imagined the clutter away. The rich wood of the floors and beamed ceiling created a warm contrast to the polished river rock of the open-hearth fireplace. She would start staging in this room, she decided. The fireplace was the focal point of the room, and it would create the perfect jumping-off point for the casual West Coast decor she would carry throughout the house. She didn’t even need to see the other rooms to know she could make it work.

She raised her camera, snapped a photo of the fireplace and then systematically documented the rest of the room.

Her BlackBerry buzzed before she had a chance to move on. It was her mother. She could either take the call now or wade through a half dozen messages later on. Kristi adored her mom, but in the history of motherhood, Gwen Callahan’s persistence in checking up on her daughter was unmatched.

“Hi, Mom. What’s up?”

“Hello, dear. I hope I’m not interrupting anything.”

“Actually, I’m in the middle of a job.”

“Oh. Well then, this’ll just take a minute.”

I suppose there’s a first time for everything. “What would you like?”

“I was just talking to my old friend, Cathie Halverson. You remember her, don’t you? They lived across the street when you were in high school, then they moved to Spokane.”

“Ye-e-e-e-s.” Kristi already knew where this was going.

“Her son Bernard has just moved back to Seattle. I’m sure you remember him.”

All too well. Bernie Halverson had asked her to a school dance when she was fifteen. She went because it was the first time anyone had ever asked her out and she hadn’t had the sense to say no. The date had been a disaster. They’d had nothing to talk about, and his idea of slow-dancing was synonymous with groping. He had reeked of cheap cologne, and the next day she’d had to wash her favorite sweater three times to get the smell out of it. But the worst part had definitely been the kiss.

“Sure,” she said. “I sort of remember him.”

“He doesn’t know that many people in Seattle,” Gwen said. “So I was thinking we could invite him to Aunt Wanda and Uncle Ted’s Fourth of July barbecue. Doesn’t that sound like a good idea?”

To Bernie Halverson, it might. For a split second she considered telling her mother he’d been the first boy to stick his tongue in her mouth, she hadn’t liked it one bit and if he was still single after all these years it’s because he was still a letch.

She couldn’t tell her mother that. Gwen Callahan did not like to discuss “intimacies,” as she so delicately referred to them. But then straight out of the blue, Kristi had a better idea.

“I don’t think so, Mom. I’ve actually just met someone.” It wasn’t a lie, really. She had just met someone. Nate McTavish. So it was only the teeniest of lies. Just a fib, really. “It’s nothing serious or anything but I don’t think we should give Bernie…Bernard…the wrong idea.”

It took her mother five full seconds to respond. “You’re seeing someone? When did this happen? Why haven’t you said anything? Has Jenna met him? Are the two of you—”

“Mom, stop. It’s recent, very recent, and like I said, it hasn’t turned into anything serious. And no, Jenna hasn’t met him so I’d appreciate it if you didn’t say anything to her.”

“What’s his name? What does he do?”

“Oh. Nate. His name’s Nate and he’s a… He works in landscaping.” And in a blink the fib turned into a terrible lie that she would, without question, live to regret.

“Well, this is certainly a surprise. Where did you meet him?”

“Through work.” That part was true. “And I’m at work right now, Mom, so I really can’t talk.”

“I’ll call you tonight so we can make plans. You’ll have to invite him to Wanda’s barbecue so we can all meet him. So Jenna can meet him. Or you can give me his number and I’ll invite him.”

And there came the part where she would live to regret this…right on schedule. “No! No. Thanks, Mom. I’ll talk to him about it. I’m not sure if he’s free, though. I think maybe he mentioned something about having plans with his family.” Stop. Talking. The hole she was digging would soon be so deep, she’d never climb out of it. “I have to go, Mom. I’m working with a new client this afternoon. I’ll talk to you later.”

“I’ll call you tonight,” Gwen said again.

Kristi couldn’t tell if there was a subtle threat in her mother’s parting words, or if the guilt she was feeling had skewed her perception. Most likely a little of both.

Over the years her mother and Aunt Wanda had tried to set her up with more eligible men than she could count. She’d managed to avoid going out with most of them, but occasionally they’d caught her off guard, like the times they had invited someone like Bernie Halverson to a family event. Not one of those men had come close to looking like Nate McTavish. Not that looks were everything, but there hadn’t been any chemistry with any of them, either. Shaking hands with Nate had left her insides bubbling like a beaker over a Bunsen burner.

Even his T-shirt has chemistry written all over it.

She rolled her eyes at that thought. She had no business getting all dreamy-eyed schoolgirl over her new client. She had a job to do.

From somewhere in the house, a phone rang. She counted six rings before it stopped, unanswered.

She quickly scrolled through her photographs of the living room. Satisfied she had everything she needed for now, she crossed the room, opened a second set of frosted glass doors and walked into the dining room. Another unused space, judging by the cool temperature and drifts of gift wrap and empty toy packaging littering the floor. There were more yellow-and-mauve streamers and dejected-looking balloons, but everything else about the dining room was neat as a pin. It was spacious, with plenty of room to maneuver around a table that would comfortably seat ten. The furniture was a little too flea-market-finds-meet-grandma’s-attic to really suit the house, but some of it was solid and in good condition. She always liked to keep her budget as low as possible, so she would make it work.

From the moment she’d driven up, she’d loved this house, but now she felt a little sad for it, having its beautiful rooms closed up and uninhabited. This house deserved to be lived in by someone who would love it at least as much as she did.

At the back of the dining room was a third pair of opaque glass doors, closed like the others. She pulled them open, stepped into a spacious and very messy kitchen, tripped over the dog’s water bowl and sent a small tidal wave gushing across the tile floor.

“Oh, for heaven’s sake. Who puts a bowl of water in front of a closed door?” Apparently a frazzled single dad did. She had no idea where to look for a mop and she couldn’t leave this huge puddle on the kitchen floor. So much for working through the house on her own. Now she had to find that distractingly sexy and very single dad and ask him for help.

Chapter Two

Nate herded the girls and the dog through the family room.

“Why can’t we stay with the lady?” Molly asked.

“Because I have work to do.”

“We can stay with her.”

“She has work to do, too,” he said, sliding the patio door open.

“Taking pictures?”

“Yes.” And he was happy to leave her on her own. It was one thing to stand with her in the living room, or almost any other room, while she made notes and took photographs. But eventually they would get to his bedroom, and the idea of going in there with her had brought on a mild state of panic.

“She has a pretty purse,” Molly said.

“Does she?” He shut the patio door behind them. He had only noticed her bag was huge. And stuffed full.

“It has cupcakes on it.”

“Does it?”

Martha pulled her thumb out of her mouth. “I yike cupcakes.”

“I know you like cupcakes. Why don’t you two go in the playhouse and have a look at the new dress-up clothes Aunt Britt dropped off this morning.” He’d asked Britt to bring them out here because the girls’ bedroom already looked like Toys “R” Us had tangled with a tornado. “Maybe she brought you some purses.”

His sister, a self-proclaimed clotheshorse, frequently cleared out her closet to make room for new things and bestowed the items she no longer wanted on her nieces. The girls loved it, but their bedroom, the family room and now the playhouse overflowed with toys and Britt’s cast-offs.

“Come on, Martha. Let’s see what she brung us.” Molly snagged the dog by the collar and tugged. “You, too, Gemmy.”

At the entrance to the playhouse, she let go of the Saint’s collar and skipped inside. Martha straggled in behind her, and Gemmy sprawled across the doorway, head resting on her paws.

After they were settled, Nate turned his attention to the rows of potted asters in his makeshift greenhouse and tried not to think about the beautiful woman with the ginormous cupcake purse who was discovering that he was not the world’s greatest housekeeper. How had he not remembered to put a reminder about this meeting in his calendar? If he had, he would have spent last evening tidying up instead of going over the final draft of his current research paper.

He measured the height of a plant and recorded the data in the spreadsheet on his laptop.

Kristi Callahan was stunning in a wholesome girl-next-door sort of way, with a lively swing to her blond ponytail and an engaging flash in her gray-green eyes. More green than gray. She smelled good, too.

His cell phone rang. After three rings, he tracked it to the end of the workbench, where it was hiding beneath a spare pair of gloves. His in-laws’ phone number was displayed on the screen. What now?

“Hello, Alice. How are you?”

“Nate, I was getting worried. I called the house but no one answered.”

Nate sighed. He and the kids could have been out for the afternoon or even just at the supermarket, and he refused to check in with her every time they left the house.

“Sorry, Alice. I didn’t hear it ringing. I’m out in the greenhouse.”

“Where are the girls?”

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.

“You were wearing garden gloves when you answered the door and your T-shirt—” She glanced at his chest and away again. “So…”

He liked that she was still blushing.

“It’s the equation for photosynthesis,” he said. “I got this at a conference I attended last year.”

“I thought so. I mean, that’s what it says on the back. So, about the mop…” She hiked her thumb toward the house. “I need to clean up the water I spilled and finish looking through the other rooms.”

He also liked that she was outwardly more flustered than he felt on the inside. “I’ll clean it up. It’s my fault for leaving Gemmy’s bowl in front of the door.”

He set the calipers beside the next plant he needed to measure, saved the spreadsheet and closed his laptop. “Molly? Martha? I’m going inside for a couple of minutes.”

“We’re playing school,” Molly yelled back. “An’ I’m the teacher.”

“Good for you. I’ll be right back. Gemmy, stay,” he said, giving the dog the palm-out signal for “stay.” She rolled onto her side with her back firmly pressed against the playhouse door and her eyelids slowly slid shut. She wasn’t going anywhere and neither were the girls.

“I take it Gemmy is a girl,” Kristi said as they circled the pool together and walked toward the house.

“She is. It’s short for Hegemone.”

“That’s an unusual name. I’ve never heard it before.”

“Hegemone is the Greek goddess of plants. The botany connection seemed like a good idea when I got her. Then the girls came along and they couldn’t pronounce it so they shortened it to Gemmy. She also responds to Gem. And Milk-Bone treats.”

“My dog’s name is Hercules. That’s a Greek god, too. I think.”

“Roman, actually. Borrowed from the Greek Heracles, son of Zeus. He was half mortal and half god.”

“Oh. We thought he was the god of strength or something.”

She wasn’t wearing a wedding ring so he’d assumed she was single. The “we” implied otherwise.

“He was, among other things,” Nate said. He resisted the urge to elaborate. She probably already thought he was a complete nerd. No point sounding like a walking encyclopedia and removing any doubt. “What kind of dog is Hercules?”

“A Yorkshire terrier.”

He laughed. “Good name. Does he live up to it?”

He slid the patio door open for her and waited for her to go inside.

“Only in that he has me and my daughter completely wrapped around one of his tiny little paws.”

“But not your husband?”

She met his gaze head-on. “I don’t have a husband.”

“I see.” He had wanted it to sound like an innocent question. It was anything but, and they both knew it. For a few seconds they stared awkwardly at one another, then she looked away.

“So…I’ll just grab the mop.”

He left her waiting in the family room and sidestepped the massive puddle on the kitchen floor. He looked in several places before he located the mop in the mudroom and the bucket in the garage.

In the kitchen, Kristi stood at the end of the peninsula that separated the kitchen from the eating area. She had set her enormous cupcake bag on the counter next to her and was looking at the monitor of the camera in her hands. The bag was a light purple color and printed with wildly colorful cupcakes, which the girls had gushed over. It was also large and completely stuffed. He’d heard all the jokes about the contents of a woman’s handbag, but this was over-the-top. How much stuff did one woman need to carry around with her?

“You have a great house,” she said, without looking up from the camera.

“Thanks.” You have great legs, he thought as he quickly looked down and up again, past the purple skirt and short, matching jacket with the big black buttons, relieved she wasn’t watching him.

He set the bucket on the floor, and Kristi reached for the mop.

He shook his head. “I’ll look after it. It was my fault anyway. I keep the door closed, so I put the water there because it was out of the way.”

As he ran the mop over the floor, he kept a surreptitious eye on Kristi. She wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead something on the fridge door had caught her attention. The latest strip of pictures of him and the girls from the photo booth at the mall.

“Cute photographs,” she said.

“Thanks. We started taking them when their—” When their mother was dying. Daily visits to the hospital had become too much of a strain for her and too stressful for the girls, so he’d started taking the photographs to her instead. He couldn’t tell that to a stranger. “We started taking them a couple of years ago. It’s sort of become a tradition.”

“I think it’s lovely,” she said.

He worked the mop across the floor, keeping what seemed like a safe distance from her. Safe, that is, until his gaze sought out the shapely curve of her calves, the slender ankles....

The mop handle connected with something.

He whipped around in time to see her enormous cupcake bag slide off the counter, but he was too slow to catch it. Like a slice of buttered toast, it flipped and hit the floor upside down, and then there was no need to wonder what was in the bag because its contents were strewn across the damp kitchen floor. “Dammit.”

Kristi set her camera on the counter, laughed and knelt at the same time he did, the tip of her blond ponytail brushing the side of his face as she tossed it over her shoulder. She smelled like springtime and lilacs.

She started cramming her possessions back into the bag.

He gathered as many things as he could and handed them to her. A notebook, several pens, an empty Tic Tac box, a hairbrush, two tampons and…oh, geez…a condom? The warmth of a flush crept up his neck, but he was sure his red face was no match for hers. She held the bag open and he dropped everything inside, avoiding eye contact.

“Thanks.” She stuffed a bunch of receipts and a wallet into the bag. “I think we got everything.”

He stood up, and she stood up, wobbling a little on account of her heels. He grasped her arm to steady her, reminded of how she’d nearly tripped on Martha’s boot. She smiled up at him, and when he looked into the depths of her green eyes he felt like a cliff diver plunging headfirst into an unfamiliar sea.

“So…” she said, then stopped as though she wasn’t sure what else to say. A lot of her sentences started that way.

“I should get back outside. The girls are out there, and I still have work to do.”

“Me, too.” She flung the overstuffed bag over her shoulder. “Inside, not outside. It won’t take me long to finish up, then I was thinking I could just let myself out. Would it be okay if I come back tomorrow? In the morning, maybe, say around nine, if you’re not too busy. That’ll give me a chance to look through the photos I’ve taken, talk to my partners.” She stopped, drew a long breath.

She was embarrassed, probably in a hurry to get out of here, and it was his fault. If he’d been paying attention to what he was doing instead of admiring her legs, he wouldn’t have knocked her bag off the counter. And then, if he’d been paying attention, he would have left the little plastic packet for her to pick up and pretended not to see it.

Now the stupid condom had become the elephant in the room—

The bad analogy practically had him groaning out loud.

“Tomorrow morning’s good,” he said. “Nine o’clock. I was planning to work at home anyway.”

“Great. I’ll put together a proposal tonight and we can discuss it then.”

She reached for her camera, and as she got close he backed away, sensing it was a bad idea to get too close to a woman who smelled like a cross between an English country garden and a Hollywood starlet’s boudoir. Not that he knew anything about the latter, but he was a man after all, and he did have an imagination. She must have been thinking the same thing…about getting too close…because she hastily backed away, too.

“Thanks. And, um, I’m sorry about the water, and for taking you away from your work. I’m usually not this clumsy.”

He didn’t believe her. In spite of her polished appearance she seemed to have a knack for running into things, tripping over them. Oddly, it made her even more captivating. He had no business being captivated, though. She might not have a husband, but the condom in her bag meant she was involved with someone. And if she wasn’t…well, he didn’t want to know what it meant.

“Is there anything else I can tell you about the house?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.

“I don’t think so. I’ll just take a quick look at the bedrooms and let myself out. I assume they’re down the hallway off the foyer.”

He nodded.

She whirled around and once again his nose filled with her heavenly scent.

She crossed the family room like it was a runway, the flippy hem of her skirt flirting with her knees and the heels of her shoes making a crisp, sharp sound against the hardwood. Just before she left the room, she smiled at him over her shoulder, as if to say she knew perfectly well why he was still standing there.

“See you in the morning.” And then she was gone.

You’re wasting your time, he told himself. She’s not your type.

Did he even have a type? He’d thought it was Heather. She had been every bit as attractive as this woman was, just in a more down-to-earth, practical way. No swirly skirts and purple cupcake bags for her. Heather had been studiously working toward a doctorate in psychology when they’d started dating. They hadn’t talked about marriage, but it was the obvious thing to do after they’d found out they were expecting.

The pregnancy had taken a heavy toll on Heather’s health, but then the girls arrived and they seemed like such a gift, such a natural extension of their lives that neither of them had given much thought to any scenario other than Heather getting better. She hadn’t.

He’d been left with a lot of questions. Would she have married him under any other circumstances? Would he have married her? Those were questions with no answers, only regrets. Would she still be alive if not for the pregnancy? Of course she would. It took two people to make a baby and the rational scientific part of his brain knew that. The part that housed his conscience was another matter. It ate at him with a relentless appetite.

As for the beautiful woman who had just disappeared down the hallway, the one who might be walking into his bedroom at that precise moment, he had questions. Truth was he shouldn’t have any, but that wouldn’t prevent him from looking forward to seeing her tomorrow morning and maybe getting the answers to some of them.

Chapter Three

The next morning Kristi yawned and poured herself a cup of tea, then settled in at the kitchen table with her laptop. She had stayed up far too late last night, going over the photographs of Nate McTavish’s house and drafting a design plan. She was not a morning person at the best of times, and agreeing to meet him at nine o’clock had been a bad idea. Now she had just over an hour to review her proposal, check her email and make the twenty-minute drive to the university district.

Hercules nosed her ankle. He sat on his haunches and cocked his head when she smiled down at him.

“Hey, Herc. Do you want to sit with me?”

He danced on his hind legs, tail wagging, and she swept him onto her lap. From beneath shaggy brows, his black-button eyes sparkled up at her.

“Sit and be good or I’ll put you down.”

He settled in, and Kristi opened her email.

She wrapped one hand around her teacup and breathed in the heady jasmine-scented steam rising from it. After a quick scan of her in-box, she clicked on a message from her business partner Claire DeAngelo.

Thanks for sharing your photographs and design plan for the McTavish house. Love your ideas! Knowing you, the place will be organized in no time. Let’s see what Sam says about the renos you’ve suggested. The “greenhouse” definitely has to go, but the professor looks like a keeper. C.

PS: remember our 10:30 conference call.

The message ended with the emoticon for a wink.

Very funny, Kristi thought. She had wanted Sam to see the pergola–pool house structure that Nate had converted into a greenhouse, but she shouldn’t have sent a picture with him in it.

She opened a folder on her desktop and clicked to open the photograph.

Turning the structure back into a pool house wouldn’t take much work, so there was really no justifying the amount of time she’d spent studying the photo last night. Claire was right. He looked ridiculously good. If anyone had asked her to imagine what a botany professor looked like, her imagination would have conjured up the exact opposite of this tall, fit-without-being-totally-ripped man with gorgeous eyes and a killer smile.

She quickly clicked to close the image and opened Sam’s email next.

I agree with Claire. Great house. Great ideas. Definitely looking forward to meeting your Professor Hottie. S.

Sam’s email ended with two winks.

Oh, for heaven’s sake. Their comments were all in good fun, but Kristi rolled her eyes as she read them. She had given some sketchy background information on their new client when she’d sent the photographs and the proposal to her partners late last night. Sketchy details were all she knew. He was a single dad and a widower who found that one big house and two small girls were more than he could juggle with his demanding career.

Claire, recently separated and almost certainly headed for divorce court, had declared she was off the market. Besides, Nate wasn’t her type. Her ex was an investment broker with a taste for money and a penchant for keeping up appearances. Kristi had never liked him, had always thought Claire could do better, but her friend was totally type A when it came to organizing her life. Nate’s disorganization would drive her crazy.

Sam and the love of her life, recently married at a quiet ceremony with a small gathering of family and close friends, wouldn’t give another man a second glance, no matter how hot he happened to be. Kristi had been thrilled to share maid of honor duties with Claire, and they couldn’t be happier that their business partner was happily settled with her husband AJ and their young son, Will.

Claire’s and Sam’s teasing was strictly for Kristi’s benefit. That they had picked up on her immediate attraction to this man was a testament to how well they knew one another. They also knew she was determined to maintain control of her life, at least until her daughter was grown-up and off to college, and that meant not having a man in it.

Her deadbeat dad had abandoned her and her mother after he’d lost his job, remortgaged their home and gambled everything away. And then she’d made the same mistake her mother had. Let herself be swept off her feet by a guy who was all talk and no substance. Got pregnant right out of high school. Married the guy because of course that was the right thing to do, and learned too late that he couldn’t hold down a job, didn’t know how to be a husband much less a dad and had no interest in learning.

Now her mission in life was to set an example for her daughter and break the cycle so Jenna didn’t make the same mistake. Setting a good example meant not getting involved with a man, any man, but especially not another deadbeat, until Jenna was past the age of being impressionable.

Anyone could see that Nate McTavish was smart, decent, easy on the eyes and about as far from deadbeat as any man could be, but he was still a man. He had a lot going on in his life, including grieving the loss of his wife. Kristi would be the first to admit she had enough baggage of her own. To heck with taking on anyone else’s.

Once more she scrolled through all the photographs she’d taken, from the living room and dining room with their festive party streamers to the cluttered kitchen where a board game on the table was still surrounded by lunch dishes that hadn’t been cleared away.

One photo captured the refrigerator and a cluttered counter. Like hundreds of other homes, the front of the fridge was plastered with notes, calendars, kids’ artwork. It was the photo booth strip that leaped out at her, though. She enlarged the photograph and leaned closer to the screen for a better look. Four images of Nate and his girls, snapped in rapid succession, laughing and grinning and making silly faces at the camera. Her chest went tight, the way it had when she’d first seen the pictures yesterday. There had been more strips on a tackboard in the girls’ bedroom, one on Nate’s dresser in the master bedroom and several on the desk in his home office. None of them, at least none that she’d seen, had included the wife and mother this family had lost, but together they created a poignant record of Nate’s daughters as they grew up. Altogether she’d noticed eight or ten of the strips scattered throughout the house, and she felt sure she would encounter more as she drilled down through the layers of clutter.

Organizing a client’s personal mementos fell well outside the kind of work she usually did, but the mother in her wanted to do something special with those photographs. She wished she had started a tradition like that when Jenna was little. Suggesting it now would yield one of her daughter’s signature eye rolls and a “Mo-om, that’s so lame.”

Speaking of Jenna…

Kristi glanced at the clock. Darn. In a futile attempt to keep herself on track, she kept it set five minutes fast. Even deducting those precious minutes, they were running late and it was almost time for her daughter to leave for school.

She scooted Hercules off her lap and drained her teacup as she shut down her laptop and stuffed it into her bag along with the rest of her things. On her way through the kitchen she deposited her cup in the sink and hauled her bag to the bench by the front door. Now to find her keys.

“Jenna?” she called up the stairs as she scanned the surface of the small console table inside the front door. “Are you ready?”

“Almost. Do you know where my iPod is?” Jenna shouted back.

Kristi put her search for her missing keys on pause. Exactly where you left it, she thought. Ditto for my keys.

“Haven’t seen it, sweetie.” And she didn’t have time to look. Her daughter could survive for one day without Justin and Selena. She, on the other hand, couldn’t get her day started until she found her keys.

She should have taken less time going through photos, less time checking email and a lot less time fussing with her hair and makeup. Then she had put on her blue sneakers, realized they were scuffed and grimy from clearing out a previous client’s garage and changed to the pink ones. But her blue T-shirt didn’t go, so she changed to a white one, decided against it and dashed downstairs to retrieve a pink shirt from the dryer. Then she’d let herself get distracted and had folded the rest of the laundry and put it away.

How she managed to stay on task in a client’s home while being so disorganized in her own was a constant source of frustration for her…and an endless source of amusement for Sam and Claire. And now, because of it, she was going to be late.

Back in the kitchen she picked up a dish towel to see if her keys were hiding beneath it. They weren’t. This was rapidly turning into one of those mornings when nothing went the way she wanted it to. She quickly folded the towel, hung it on the handle of the oven door, moved on to the dining room table. No keys on the half she used as her office. The other end was Jenna’s homework space, and the two halves met in the middle in a muddle of personal items, assorted junk mail and a pair of hurricane candle lanterns, placed there to create a little ambience after their last cleaning session.

No sense looking there. Had she put the keys in her bag? Claire, the poster girl for organized efficiency, had suggested attaching a lanyard to the strap of her handbag and clipping her keys to that when she wasn’t using them. An excellent suggestion and it had worked like a charm, until she’d switched purses and didn’t transfer the orange lanyard because it didn’t match the purple bag. Note to self. Buy a lanyard to match every bag.

She retrieved her bag from the front hall and set it on the kitchen counter. Wallet, makeup bag, lint roller, dog leash, but no keys. She shoved those items aside and dumped the rest onto the counter. The loose contents included a handful of spare change, two Milk-Bone treats, the tube of lipstick she’d hunted for earlier that morning…and one condom.

She picked it up and stared at it, recalling in excruciating detail Nate McTavish’s embarrassment when he’d realized what he had in his hand. She had been every bit as mortified. Did he think she was one of those women who was always ready for a little action? Ugh. Nothing could be further from the truth. She avoided as many blind dates as possible, and the only action she saw when she did date was never more than an awkward good-night kiss. No condom needed.

Yesterday she had been even more embarrassed when Nate told her about his research. Something about poor reproductive barriers in flowering plants. She still didn’t completely understand what he’d been talking about, even though she’d tried to look it up on the internet last night. He might as well have been talking Greek.

“For sure he was talking geek,” she said, smiling at her own cleverness.

Fourteen years ago she had learned the hard way that at least one brand of condom had provided a very poor barrier to reproduction. Thank goodness she hadn’t revealed that yesterday. Bad enough she’d blurted out some nonsense about sperm. What had she been thinking? His laugh had been a few registers lower than his speaking voice, deep and sexy with a flash of perfect white teeth. He might be a geek, but he was a darned sexy one.

Jenna thundered down the stairs. “Mom? Are you sure you haven’t seen it?”

Kristi shoved the small plastic packet into her bag and hastily put everything else back on top of it. “Have I seen what?”

“My iPod.”

Right. “No, I haven’t.”

“Well, crap.”

“Excuse me?”

“‘Crap’ isn’t swearing, Mom.” Jenna dropped her backpack by the front door and glanced around the living room.

Kristi didn’t have time to argue. “Do you remember what you were doing the last time you used it?”

“No. If I did…” Jenna was halfway across the room when she stopped. “Sleeping! I fell asleep listening to Katy Perry.” She whirled around and dashed for the stairs. “I’ll bet it’s still in my bed. Thanks, Mom!”

“You’re welcome.” Now if only the same strategy would work for her. She had come home from work yesterday afternoon, brought in a handful of mail, picked up the paper…aha, that was it. She must’ve left her keys on the coffee table where she’d deposited everything else.

Sure enough, there they were, under the newspaper. Jenna had flipped it open to check the movie listings, not wanting to wait until Kristi had finished uploading photographs to her laptop so she could check them online. Being a typical teenager, she had used the inconvenience as an opportunity to bemoan the fact that she was stuck with her mother’s retired cell phone instead of the iPhone she so desperately needed.

A car horn sounded in front of the town house and Jenna raced back down the stairs. “That’s my car pool. Gotta go.”

“I’ll be home early,” Kristi said, as much a warning to her daughter that she shouldn’t bring boys home after school. One boy in particular. That strategy would work until next week when school let out for the summer. Then she wasn’t sure how she would do her job and chaperone a teenager who was too old for a babysitter but too young to be left on her own all day.

“See ya later, Mom!”

“We’re having pasta for dinner. If you could make a—” Her request that Jenna make a salad to go with it was cut off by the slam of the front door. She could leave her a note, but Jenna would say she didn’t see it. Better to send her a text message. Teenagers never let a text go unread, and her daughter was no exception.

Kristi opened the door to their backyard patio and shooed Hercules outside. “Go on. Do your business, then I have to get out of here.”

While he was outside, she checked her bag to be sure she had everything she needed for the day, then glanced at her watch. She hadn’t packed a lunch, but if she left now she would only be a few minutes late. Ten minutes, max. She’d have to take a break at lunchtime and run out to grab a bite to eat, and that would waste more time. She opened the fridge and scooped up a couple of bottles of water, an apple and the makings of a cheese sandwich. Now she could work through lunch to make up for not being on time. She took out a plastic container filled with the cupcakes she had baked on the weekend. She hated to see them go to waste, and Nate and his daughters might like them.

“Come on, Herc.” She picked him up when he scampered inside, gave him a scratch behind the ears and set him in his bed. “Keep an eye on Jenna when she gets home. I have to dash.”

Worrying about being late was likely a waste of time, though. Nate McTavish didn’t seem like the kind of guy who paid any attention to the clock. He probably wouldn’t even notice that she was running a little behind.

* * *

NATE POURED HIMSELF a second cup of coffee and settled at the breakfast bar with his laptop. Behind him, Gemmy was sprawled on the family room floor, and Molly and Martha lay between her front legs and her back legs, using her ample girth as a pillow while they watched a daddy-approved program on television.

While he kept an eye on the clock, anticipating the ring of the doorbell, he opened the file containing the first draft of a research paper he was coauthoring with a colleague.

Kristi had said she would be here at nine, and it was now two minutes past. Actually, she said around nine, and it’s not like it matters. He would be here all day.

The doorbell startled him, even though he’d been expecting it. “I’ll be right back,” he said to the girls.

He hotfooted it to the front door and opened it to find his mother-in-law standing there.

“Alice. This is a…surprise.” And yet another affirmation of why he needed to move.

As always her dark clothing reminded him of a military uniform, and the pinched lines around her mouth made him think she needed to smile once in a while.

“These are the pageant applications. I wasn’t sure if you would get around to looking at the website before the deadline.” She handed a large envelope to him. “I know how busy you are.” Her tone implied otherwise.

He didn’t want to get into it with her now, with the girls practically in the next room and Kristi due to arrive any minute. Now he really hoped she got held up somewhere and wouldn’t arrive until Alice was gone. “You didn’t have to go out of your way. I would have—”

“The girls’ photographs are in there with the application forms,” Alice said, cutting him off, saving him having to lie to her. “We had them taken the last time Molly and Martha spent the weekend. The applications have to include full-length poses and head shots. We know how busy you are, so we took care of it.”

Head shots? He resisted the urge to tear open the envelope.

“I can’t stay,” she said. “I’m on my way to have my hair done.”

Her dark silver coif was as smooth as a helmet, not a hair out of place.

He waved the envelope at her. “I’ll take a look at this.” No, you won’t, and you shouldn’t be letting her think you will. He needed to put an end to this insanely inappropriate plan to enter his daughters in a beauty pageant.

“Heather would have been okay with this.” And without waiting for him to reply, she strode down the sidewalk in her no-nonsense shoes, got into her gray sedan and drove away without a backward glance.

He didn’t give a damn what Alice said. Heather would not have been okay with this. What he didn’t understand was why this was suddenly so important to Heather’s mother.

“Who was that, Daddy?” Molly asked when he returned to the family room.

He slipped the envelope underneath his laptop, glad the girls hadn’t heard their grandmother at the door, and even more grateful she hadn’t asked to see them.

“Just a courier, sweetie. Dropping off some papers for me to look at.”

He sat on a stool and scrolled back to the top of the document and read the introduction for the third time. So much for his plan to get some work done before Kristi arrived.

Who was he kidding? Between Alice’s unexpected visit and Kristi’s impending arrival, he couldn’t concentrate anyway. Last night, after the girls were in bed, he’d spent an hour and a half taking down streamers, cleaning bathrooms and trying to catch up on laundry. Then he’d spent another hour looking at online real estate listings for smaller homes that were still close to the university and the girls’ day care, yet a safe distance from his in-laws. His findings weren’t impressive. For the first time since deciding to sell this place, he’d had some truly genuine misgivings, but Alice’s unexpected visit this morning strengthened his resolve.

The doorbell pealed…this time it had to be Kristi…and on his way to answer it, he reminded himself to play it cool.

“Good morning,” she said. In cropped black pants and a pink T-shirt and sneakers, she could be dressed for yoga class. She looked completely different from the woman who had breezed in here yesterday, taken up residence in pretty much every waking thought and occupied at least one of his dreams last night.

Wow. “Good morning.” He stood there, realized he was staring at her and hoped he hadn’t said “wow” out loud.

“I would have been here sooner, but I waited until my daughter left for school, and then I couldn’t find my keys....” She hitched the purple cupcake bag higher on her shoulder. “Sorry. I should have called.”

“That’s okay. I’m used to students who show up late for class.” Moron. How was that playing it cool? Had he forgotten how to have a normal conversation with a woman?

She seemed to find him amusing. “Well, I hope I don’t lose marks.”

She said it with just enough sass to put him in his place, but not so much that he minded.

“Come in,” he said, stepping aside for her. This home staging thing was a complete mystery to him but he was more than willing to learn. It would be like being a student again, and he had a pretty good idea he was going to like his teacher.

* * *

KRISTI WALKED WITH Nate through the house, noting that the living room doors were open, the streamers were gone and he had even attempted to tame the kitchen clutter. Molly and Martha were sprawled with the dog in the middle of the family room floor, watching a children’s show she didn’t recognize. Something new in the years since Jenna was little.

“Good morning, girls. What are you watching?”

Molly angled her head and looked up at her. “The Cat in the Hat.”

Martha tugged her thumb out of her mouth. “Knows a Lot About That.” Back went the thumb.

Kristi looked to Nate for an explanation.

“The Cat in the Hat Knows a Lot About That! It’s a kids’ science show.”

Of course it was. This family was all about science. Nate’s T-shirt this morning read Evolution of a Botanist and had a series of silhouettes, starting with a chimpanzee, progressing through various human forms, and arriving at a man with a plant pot under one arm. She wondered how many botany T-shirts were among the items of clothing she’d seen lying around his bedroom. She hadn’t dared look too closely, but her money was on lots.

The kitchen countertops were still home to more items than potential buyers needed to see, but he’d made a valiant attempt to clear them. She was impressed.

“Coffee?” he asked.

“No, thanks. I’ve already had tea.”

She pulled a file folder and her laptop out of her bag, and carefully set the bag on the floor out of the way. She was not risking a repeat of yesterday’s disaster.

She took the stool next to his at the breakfast bar and slid the folder toward him.

“This is my proposal,” she said. “I’ve tried to keep it simple and straightforward. Mostly painting and bringing in some fabrics to freshen things up. I would also like to give you some solutions to help you keep things organized.”

She watched him open the folder and scan the contents, hoping he wasn’t overly offended by her inference that his home was, well, disorganized.

“Outside, we’ll want to uncover the pool, have it cleaned and filled. It’s one of the main selling features of the house. And…ah…it would be a good idea to turn the pergola back into a pool house.”

Since he was currently using it for his work at the university, she hesitated to suggest that the plants had to go because she wasn’t sure how he would react. She still didn’t really understand exactly what it was that he did. Last night she had found his page on the university’s website, which included a description of his research interests and a list of papers he’d published recently. She’d hardly understood a word of it. Who knew plants were so complicated? Or that a man who could pass for a film star would find them so interesting?

“No problem,” he said, surprising her. “Can you give me a week?”

“Of course. There’s lots to do inside.”

He closed the folder. “This isn’t as bad as I expected. Where do we start?”

“I’ve listed the rooms in the order I’d like to work on them.” She had decided to tackle the rooms that were in the worst shape first. “My plan is to begin with your daughters’ bedroom and your office.”

“That’s fine with me. Is there anything I can do?”

“Yes. If there are items in your office that can be filed or put in storage, that will help at lot. Those are decisions I can’t make for you.”

“Makes sense.”

Relieved that he seemed willing to go along with her suggestions, she pressed on. “This morning I’ll get going on the girls’ bedroom. I’ll bring in some bins they can use to help sort their things.”

Nate seemed unsure. “I’m not sure how that’ll go over.”

Did he think four-year-olds couldn’t take ownership of their own messes? she wondered. Or that it was a parent’s job to do everything for them?

That could explain why he was so overwhelmed. Or maybe he was overwhelmed and didn’t even realize it.

“Let’s see how it goes,” she said. “I have a couple of tricks up my sleeve.”

“Daddy, can we watch something else now?” Molly called from the next room.

“Maybe later. Kristi would like you and Martha to show her your bedroom.”

She and Nate slid off their stools and joined the girls in the family room. The TV was already off and both girls were on their feet.

“Come on,” Molly said.

Martha took her hand and tugged.

Kristi grabbed her bag and let them lead her down the hallway with Nate following, somewhat reluctantly if she had to guess.

Once inside the room, each girl climbed onto her unmade bed, Kristi sat on an upholstered ottoman, and Nate hovered in the doorway.

“First I’d like to talk about your favorite things,” Kristi said.

“Barbie!” Molly said.

Martha shook her head. “Barney!”

Okay, no theme there. “What about colors? What’s your favorite?”

“Purple!” they said in unison.

Okay, she could work with that.

“I like purple, too.” She pulled a binder and her paint palette out of her bag and fanned the chips to show them. “Is there another color you both like?”

“Blue.”

“Red.”

Purple, red and blue. Not going to happen. She slid a sample of soft, pale apple green from the palette. “What about this? If we paint your walls pale green, we can use your favorite color as an accent for things like bedding and curtains.”

“I yike purple and green,” Martha said.

“Me, too.”

“I wonder what your dad thinks,” Kristi said, glancing at Nate, who was leaning against the door frame.

“Doesn’t green clash with purple?”

Kristi flipped the pages in her binder and showed him the color wheel. “They’re on opposite sides of the wheel, so they’re actually complementary colors.” She ran her finger in a line across the page. “Think of a plant that has purple flowers and green leaves.”

He leaned in for a closer look. “Okay, that makes sense.”

She congratulated herself on the plant analogy. “I suggest a very light shade for the walls, and then we can put together some accessories the girls will enjoy now and that they can take with them. Before we can start painting, we’ll need to move all your stuff into the guest room,” she said to the girls. “Would you like to help with that?”

Molly bounced on her bed. “Yup. We’re good helpers.”

Martha stuck her thumb in her mouth and shook her head.

“Why not?” Kristi asked.

“She likes sleeping here,” Molly said.

“Martha, is that true?”

The little girl nodded.

Kristi looked to Nate for help.

“I have an idea,” he said. “How about we turn this into a little holiday? I’ll set up the tent in the family room, and you can sleep in there till your room is ready. It’ll be like a camping trip.”

Martha’s eyes lit up and she gave her head a vigorous nod.

Molly jumped off the bed. “Sleeping bags! Can we have hot dogs? And marshmallows?”

“Sure we can.”

Martha leaned close to Kristi and pulled her thumb out of her mouth again. “You, too?” she asked.

Kristi didn’t know if she was being invited for hot dogs or the whole camping holiday.

“Thank you for asking me,” she said, avoiding looking at Nate. “But I have to go home and have dinner with my daughter.”

“She can come.”

“How old is she?” Molly sounded as though she was looking for a new playmate.

“She’s fourteen. A lot older than you and Martha. She likes hot dogs, though.” Camping not so much. “Are you ready to get started?”

Nate stepped into the room. “If we’re having hot dogs, we’ll have to make a trip to the market. Do you mind if we leave you on your own for a while?”

“I want to stay,” Molly said.

Martha’s head bobbed in agreement. “I don’t yike the market.”

“If you don’t like the market, I could sure use some help here.” Kristi wondered what Nate would think of that. “They’ll be fine with me if you’d like to go on your own.”

“Are you sure?”

“Of course.” She loved kids and these two were adorable. Besides, she had a hunch they would be more willing to cooperate with her cleanup plan if their dad wasn’t here.

“Girls, are you okay to stay with Kristi?”

“Yes!” they chorused.

The telephone rang, interrupting their conversation. “I’d better take that,” he said.

“While you’re still here, I’ll bring in the bins I use for sorting.”

Kristi followed Nate as far as the foyer. From there he went into the kitchen to get the phone and she let herself out the front door.

Several minutes later she returned with as many plastic bins as she could carry. She set them on the floor inside the front door and went in search of Nate. She hoped he would agree to pare down some of the toys, especially the stuffed animals, but she hadn’t wanted to ask in front of the girls.

The dog, still doing a bear-rug imitation, gave her a lazy blink. Nate stood by the patio doors in the family room, his back to her, phone to his ear.

“Mom, I’m sure your friend’s daughter is very nice,” she heard him say. “And I’d be happy to meet her some other time, but it’s Britt’s birthday so this should be about her.”

He paused to listen to his mother’s reply.

Kristi cringed. His mother was obviously trying to set him up with someone, and it was just as clear that he didn’t want to be set up. Poor guy. She could relate. Yesterday’s call from her mother still echoed in her head, and remembering the story she’d made up brought on a fresh wave of guilt. And she shouldn’t be listening to Nate try to wriggle out of a similar situation. This was way too personal.

“Here’s the thing,” he said. “I’m sort of seeing someone.”

Okay, you really need to get out of here, Kristi told herself. But curiosity kept her rooted in the doorway.

“Oh. Ah, her name is Kristi. She’s—” He turned around and stopped talking.

Their gazes locked and held.

He ran a hand through his hair. “Mom, I’ll call you back. I have to check on the kids.” He ended the call without waiting for a response.

The room was suddenly warm and much smaller.

“Oh, God. I am so sorry. I didn’t mean for you to hear that.” He spiked his hair again. “It’s just that my family has this thing about introducing me to women. I was trying to figure a way out of it this time, but I shouldn’t have mentioned you.”

“A blind date?” Kristi laughed. She couldn’t help herself. “Trust me, you do not have to apologize. My family does the same thing to me all the time.”

“Really? So…you’re not seeing anyone?”

“No, I’m not.” Although she was surprised he asked. “A fact that makes my mother a little crazy. Yesterday she called about my aunt’s Fourth of July barbecue. She was going to invite this guy who used to live across the street when I was in high school.”

“How did you handle it?”

Should she tell him? If she did, it might make him less uncomfortable. “I did the same thing you just did.”

His eyes narrowed.

“I told her I’d met someone, and your name kind of slipped out.”

There was no humor in his laugh. “So your family thinks you’re taking me to your aunt’s barbecue.”

“I guess so. I’ll have to come up with some excuse why you won’t be there but—”

“And my mother will expect you to be at the cocktail party she’s throwing for my sister’s birthday.”

She didn’t respond, but then he didn’t really seem to be talking to her anyway.

“This could work. You come to my sister’s birthday party. I go to your aunt’s barbecue.” He sounded calm and rational, as though he was laying out the steps in a lab experiment. “What do you think?”

She was pretty sure he didn’t want to know what she was thinking. “I don’t know. I used to lie to my mother about some of the guys I was dating, but I’ve never lied about someone I’m not dating.”

He shrugged. “So you’d rather spend an afternoon at a family picnic with the guy who lived across the street?”

God, no. “I’d rather go by myself.”

“That’s how I feel about my sister’s birthday party. But unless I come up with an alternate plan, I’m going to be paired with my mother’s bridge partner’s daughter.”

“So I heard.” And she would suffer the same fate if she didn’t make plans of her own.

“What is it with families?”

“They mean well,” she said. “At least mine does. My mom was a single parent, too, and it was hard for her. I think she always wished she’d find someone but never did, and now she’s shifted that focus onto me.”

“My family wants to find a new mother for Molly and Martha.” His voice was thick with resentment. “They seem to think I’m in over my head.”

“Oh, I’m sure they don’t. Your girls are great. They’re happy. Anyone can see they’re well cared for.”

“Thank you.” The tension around his eyes softened.

“You’re welcome.”

“So, how about it? You come to my sister’s birthday party, I’ll go to your family barbecue, and we’ll call it even.”

Say no. “Sure,” she said instead.

He offered his hand to seal the deal. “It’s a date.”

She shook it. “A fake date.”

“Make that two fake dates.” He smiled and her insides turned to Jell-O.

Chapter Four

Kristi tugged her hand out of Nate’s and hiked a thumb over one shoulder. “I’ll just go and start sorting.”

“Sure, good idea. And I’ll run out to the market but, ah, first I have to make a call.”

Kristi made her escape, collected her things from the foyer and headed down the hallway to the children’s bedroom.

He was going to call his mother. There’d be no turning back after that. What were they thinking? What was she thinking? Her mother and Aunt Wanda would be happy, but how was she going to explain this to Jenna? Only time would tell if this fake-date idea was brilliant or ill-conceived.

The giggling emanating from Molly and Martha’s room was like music to Kristi’s ears. Such sweet kids. Each girl was wearing dress-up clothes over their pajamas. Molly’s black spaghetti-strap cocktail dress bunched on the floor around her. Martha had a messenger bag slung crosswise over her shoulder and a floppy-brimmed hat all but covered her eyes. Scattered around them were toys and clothes and the largest collection of stuffed animals Kristi had ever seen.

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