Date with a Single Dad. Ally Blake
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from the inside out and he rowed.
She merely sat there and waited.
It paid off.
He took a deep breath, narrowed his eyes, then with all the enthusiasm of a man with a knife pressed to his ribs to make him talk, he said, ‘She rang Felicia this morning, claiming a sore throat. Felicia called a cab to bring her home. When I heard my first thought was that it was a ruse. Then I wasn’t sure. Do you think …?’
He shook his head and pressed the oars deeper into the water.
It more than paid off. Had Zach Jones just asked her for advice? She was shocked it had come so easily. But boy, was she ready to—
Who the heck was Felicia? Another woman in Zach’s life? Meg wrapped her fingers around the bench to stop from tipping right off. ‘Felicia is …?’
‘The nanny.’
She all but laughed with relief. When Zach’s eyes narrowed, she babbled, ‘I had a nanny once. I told her I was adopted. She told a friend, who spilled the news to the press. Wow, I’d completely forgotten about that. Mum was so upset. And my father …’ She shook her head to clear that image before the rest of the memory filtered through. ‘Let’s just say no more nannies came through the place.’
Zach’s eyes widened a fraction. He really had no clue that young girls were as much about sugar and spice as they were about snakes and snails and puppy dogs’ tails. It only made her more determined to make him see.
‘Don’t get me wrong. Other kids adored theirs,’ she continued on. ‘Tabitha still sends hers cards on Mother’s Day. Does Ruby get on with Felicia?’
He waited a beat then nodded. ‘She taught at Ruby’s school for over twenty years. She’s seen it all. I poached her earlier this year when Ruby came to live with me.’
‘Well, that’s great, then,’ she said, her finger fiddling with her bottom lip as she frantically thought through what tack to take next. ‘A girl needs firm boundaries as much as she needs her space.’
And then it hit her. Ruby hadn’t always lived with him.
Where had she been? With her mother? Had they divorced? Had they never married? Had they been in love but couldn’t live together? Was he still in love with her now? Was that where his innate darkness sprang from? There was no denying her heart hurt just thinking about it. It hurt for Zach. For Ruby. It was much easier letting it hurt for them than in any way for herself.
Now Meg needed to know the whole story so badly she could taste it. She held her breath.
‘That’s enough,’ Zach said, and Meg’s finger stilled. ‘I have no idea how we started talking about this in the first place.’
Enough? They’d barely begun! She didn’t have half the information she wanted—no, required—in order to help.
‘You brought it up,’ Meg shot back.
‘I—What?’ His oars paused mid-air.
‘If you’d been sensible enough to ignore the fact that I happened upon your backyard, then we might never have had to have this conversation.’
‘Why do I get the feeling you’re used to getting your own way?’ he growled.
‘Ha! I have no idea because it certainly ain’t true. I have three bossy older brothers and a father who thinks everything I do is a complete waste of time.’
Meg’s eyes slammed shut and she bit her lip, but it was far too late. She’d said what she’d said. Somehow he’d done it again—given her all the rope she needed to hang herself.
She opened one eye to find him sitting ever so still, the oars resting lazily in their slips, dripping lake water over the bottom of the old wooden boat.
He was quiet for so long Meg could hear the sound of wings beating in the forest, the soft lapping of water against the side of the boat, and her own slow, deep breaths. Then he put the oars back where they were meant to be and pushed off.
He said, ‘Ruby attends a local weekly boarding school.’
Meg could have kissed him. Right then and there. She had no clue why he’d let her off the hook when she’d been pressing herself into his personal life with barely concealed vigour. All she knew was that if he looked her in the eye rather than at some point over her shoulder she would probably have gone right ahead and kissed him.
‘Where Felicia used to teach,’ she encouraged, her voice soft, her words clearly thought out before she uttered a single word.
The muscle beneath his left eye twitched. Then as he pulled the oars through the water he said, ‘It’s barely a ten-minute drive from here. The same one she was attending before her mother passed away a few months ago.’
And there it was.
Meg’s hands clasped one another so tight her fingers hurt. Ruby’s mum had been gone only a few months. Oh, that poor little creature. No wonder he wanted to keep Ruby wrapped up in cotton wool. The fact she was able to go back to school at all was amazing. As for Zach …
She opened her mouth to ask how he was doing, when he cleared his throat and pushed the oars deeper into the water, sending them spearing back towards shore.
He said, ‘This isn’t the first time since she moved in with me that she’s had a sore throat, a finger that twitches so hard she can’t write, a foot so itchy she can’t walk. So far all she’s needed is a day at home and she’s been right for another few weeks. So all in all I think we’re doing okay.’
Doing okay? He cared. He considered. It was important to him to be a good father. In her humble opinion Zach was doing everything in his considerable power to do right by his little girl. And just like that all sorts of bone-deep, neglected, wishful, hopeful feelings beat to life inside her.
‘Zach, I had no idea,’ she said as she tried to collect herself. ‘Truly. I’m so sorry about your wife—’
He cut her off unceremoniously. ‘Ruby’s mother and I knew one another for a short time several years ago when I was visiting with a view to building this place. I didn’t even know Ruby existed until after Isabel died.’
‘So you weren’t—’
So you’re not still in love with her, was what she was trying not to ask.
‘We weren’t,’ he said, insistent enough Meg had the feeling he’d heard all too clearly nonetheless. ‘I was in Turkey when my lawyer contacted me with the news. After much legal wrangling I met a social worker here, at the house. And I met Ruby. She had one small suitcase and carried a teddy bear wearing a purple fairy dress under one skinny arm. I never expected her to be so small—’
Zach came to an abrupt halt, frowned deeply and glared down into his lap.
The backs of Meg’s eyes burned. It took her a few moments to recognise it was the sharp sting of oncoming tears.
She never cried. Ever. Never sweated, never blushed, never cried. The moments she’d let herself succumb to her emotions were the times she’d been most deeply hurt—by careless whispers of envious types, by stories of horrendous depravity at the Valley Women’s Shelter, even by herself. But this guy tugged shamelessly at hidden parts of her that didn’t know the rules.
She blinked until the sensation went away.
‘We’re both trying to get used to our new living situation. To each other,’ he went on, his voice raw, his eyes staring at some point on the bottom of the boat as it drifted steadily on. ‘The last thing we need at this point is for her existence to come to the attention of the press. You obviously do know what they can be like. She needs to find her feet without constantly looking over her shoulder. She’ll trip. She’ll fall. She’ll be hurt even more.’
He lifted his dark eyes to hers. There was a newfound lightness within them that