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Self-righteously he picked up his supplies and, with one final baleful glare at the filling machines, turned away. “I’ll tell you what, anybody takes anything out of those machines before I get back and that woman gets to say I told you so, they’re dead meat. Dead meat,” he repeated, almost wishing someone would try. He was in the mood to take somebody on, no doubt about that.
Nate bounded back up the stairs. He dropped his hamper off at his place, grabbed the mop and bucket and headed down to 2H. No point in putting off the agony.
The door to Allie’s condo wasn’t closed tightly and Nate nudged it open with his foot as his hands were full.
“Yes, well it’s like I was saying, my son seems to be having trouble finding himself a good woman, Allie. Course, he’s looking in all the wrong places. Singles bars.” Ted made a disgusted sound. “What do you get when you pick up somebody at a bar? An alcoholic, that’s what. A good woman doesn’t hang out in a bar, for God’s sake.”
Nate had obviously caught the end of a conversation. Sad, sorrowful and deep, that was definitely his dad and, unless Nate missed his guess, dear old dad was on another one of his rolls, with Nate once again the topic of choice.
“And a man needs a good woman. A wife can make or break a man,” Ted continued to expound. “God knows I’ve tried explaining that simple concept over and over, but Nate just doesn’t seem to get it. I don’t suppose, since you don’t have anyone special…no? Well, maybe you have a friend?”
Nate dropped the bucket on his foot.
He couldn’t believe it. His father was sneaking around behind his back trying to marry him off! If that wasn’t the most underhanded, conniving, manipulative thing the old man had tried yet, Nate didn’t know what was.
And besides, he’d thought of it first.
Chapter Two
With the sound of the clattering bucket, two heads poked into the room. “Wha—oh, uh, Nate, you get your laundry started already?”
Nate righted the bucket, then stood up and looked at his father. “Yeah, Dad, I did. Can I talk to you for a moment?” Nate gestured to the open condo door. “Out in the hallway maybe?”
Ted cleared his throat. “Well now, nothing I’d rather do than have a heart-to-heart with my one and only son, don’t you know. But little Allie here was showing me her bedroom. I gotta tell you, son, it’s a mess. Yes, indeed.” Ted pointed behind him. “I’m afraid our little talk will have to take a back seat. Here, have a look at this.”
Nate shook his head in disparagement. No way was his father getting away with this. “Dad—”
“No, really, come have a look.”
Nate heaved a great sigh and pushed away from the mop and bucket. He could hold his own with the CFO of any major corporation, but with his own father, he was clueless as how to proceed. “Fine, Dad. Let’s see. Show me the mess.”
Allie’s condo appeared to be laid out exactly the same as his own, only reversed. But the décor screamed female in the house. They ought to get one of those decorator magazine editors in here, Nate decided as he reluctantly wound his way through the small foyer, to the efficiency kitchen, and on into the living-dining area and then the bedroom.
Nate took a last look around. Yeah, some editor could do a great series on how the same layout could look totally different with just a few changes in paint and furniture. Nate liked to think of his own place as, well, masculine. Little wonder, as it just so happened his condo was full of what Nate considered manly stuff. Guy choices. Tan carpet, brown leather sofa pit, modern pictures loaded with these really cool geometric shapes in tan, brown and black that didn’t try to be anything other than what they were: cool shapes. There wasn’t a candle in the place, no overburdened silk flower arrangements and definitely no little artsy-fartsy ceramic bowls brimming with stinky potpourri sitting around catching dust, making you sneeze. And pink? What was that? Certainly not a color in Nate’s vocabulary.
Allie’s place couldn’t be more girly girl. Pink might not be the only word in her vocabulary but it was darn close. And knickknacks? Good grief, the woman could open a store. She could stock it for a year out of her living room alone. Nate sniffed in dismissal, turned around and looked up at the bedroom ceiling.
Oh, God. He needed to check his insurance policy. The problem was, he knew he’d taken a high deductible to lower the rates. He hoped to heaven this type of thing was covered, because he suspected he’d exceeded even his exorbitant deductible.
“Holy cow.”
“Yes,” his father agreed. “It’s a mess all right.” He slapped Nate on the back. “Well, we’ve got our work cut out for us, son.”
Nate, his father and Allie watched as a drop of water fell from the stained ceiling and hit the bed with a sodden plop.
Ted scratched his head. “Probably take a while for the water that was already trapped between your floor and her ceiling to work its way through now that we’ve stopped the leak. I hope it doesn’t drip too much longer, though. The carpet’s pretty well saturated already. Know anybody with a wet vac?”
Allie volunteered to ring neighbors’ doorbells while Nate and Ted wrestled the mattress off the bed.
As they struggled to guide their sodden burden through the bedroom doorway, Nate mused that it wasn’t so much the mattress he minded replacing, it was the bed linens themselves. This room too was done in early Easter egg. Come on, pink and yellow and wimpy purple—no, lavender—that was what you called washed-out purple, lavender. Nate decided then and there to just give her the money. She’d have to replace the stuff herself. No way was he going to go into a store and buy pale purple anything. From the looks of things, this Allie woman didn’t have many guys staying over, that was for sure. No guy would sleep in a bed done up like a flower bower. And it smelled…girly in here. Wet, but still girly. Nate sniffed deeply and told himself he didn’t like it.
Ted looked back up to the ceiling as he helped Nate shove the box spring out of the room, and Nate’s eyes followed.
They watched another drop work its way loose from its moorings and do a free fall. Nate winced.
“Hey, look what I’ve got,” Allie called as she appeared in the doorway pushing what appeared to be a giant, lethal-looking vacuum cleaner. “A wet vac. Cool, huh? Mrs. Naderly had one. She said the basement in the house she used to live in before she scaled down to an apartment used to get water. She also has some floor fans to help dry things further after we suck up as much as we can out of the carpet.”
Nate gave her a halfhearted smile. “Great. That’s just really…great.”
Ted slung companionable arms around his son and Allie as though they were the best of buddies. “Tell you what. Let’s handle the carpet as best we can and then while we’re waiting for things to dry up some, why don’t we head to the hardware store? We can pick up what we need to repair the ceiling. If the seams in the drywall start to pop as it dries, we’ll be ready. Get little Allie here taken care of in no time.”
“I really think it might be better if we called in a professional, Ted,” Allie said.
“Dad, since when do you know how to repair plaster?”
“No need to bother some busy construction company when we can take care of this ourselves,” Ted insisted. “They’d never come for something so little, anyway. And how hard can it be?” He gestured toward the ceiling. “It’s not even real plaster, just that drywall stuff. Hell, we’ll go buy a can of that gunk you use, the kind that’s all premixed, and slap some up there. Have the whole thing back to normal in nothing flat. You’ll see.”
“Oh, God. Where have I heard those words before?” Nate asked the heavens.
His father turned on him. “I still say this has nothing to do with anything I did last night. It’s strictly coincidental that your water pipes decided to introduce you to your neighbor the day after I worked on the garbage disposal.”
“Yeah, right. Whatever.”
“It’s true,” Ted insisted.
Nate put his hand up in a “hold it” gesture. “Look, the how is no longer important. The situation exists. Let’s call a plasterer, let him deal with this and I’ll take you both out to dinner. What do you say?”
All Ted had to say was a chiding “Nate—”
Nate turned away from his father while he ground his teeth together. Then he spun back around to face him once more. “Dad, you really need to go back to work. Early retirement was a mistake. You need a life outside of—” Nate gestured up “—making me crazy doing this kind of thing.”
Ted shook a finger at him. “No. No, you’re wrong. All those years I concentrated on my career and for what? I missed my son’s childhood, my wife became a virtual stranger. She pulled all kinds of antics just to be noticed, is my guess. Then when I realized what had happened, arranged things so we could get to know each other again, it was too late. Your mom passed away.” Ted punctuated his words with vehement arm and hand gesticulations. “Well, I’ve learned my lesson and I’m telling you, this is what’s important. My son and the things that affect his happiness. You’re all I’ve got left. You may be a man now, Nate, but I’m still your father. And you know what they say.”
Nate gritted his teeth. “No, Dad, what do they say?”
“Better late than never, that’s what. I may not have always been there for you when you were a kid, but I’ve turned over a new leaf, learned my lesson. You can count on me. I’ll be here for you from now on. That’s a promise you can take to the bank.”
That’s just what Nate was afraid of.
“Now here’s what we’re going to do. We’ll go to the hardware store and then the Sleep Factory. After that, you’ll take Allie and me out to dinner, okay?”
Nate clenched and unclenched his hands several times in frustration. His father really seemed to believe that making him crazy was in reality a way of a father reaching out to his son. How could you argue with a guy for trying to bond with his son? You couldn’t. You’d only lose and look like a heartless jerk in the process. Might as well save some time and cave right then and there. “Okay, Dad, you win,” he said, but he didn’t like it. “Let’s go to the hardware store.”
His father slapped him heartily on the back as Nate gave a last, disgusted look up at Allie’s ceiling. “That’s the spirit, son, that’s the spirit.”
Nate was pretty sure that Allie had called the situation earlier. They should just skip over the screwing-everythingup-royally part and go right to calling in a professional. Save a lot of time, effort and money. He’d seen his dad in action before. It wasn’t a pretty sight. But now, in an attempt to humor his dad, they were going to take a project that would take somebody else a day or two, complicate it, lengthen it and multiply the cost, all by a factor of at least two. Nate sighed to himself. Well, maybe it would work out. If he and his dad hung with Allie for a while, they might meet some of her friends or relatives. An unmarried older female relative with Allie’s spunk might work out real well here.
Nate commandeered the wet vac and extracted a good couple of gallons of water from the carpet while Ted and Allie bagged up her wet sheets, blanket and spread to take to a Laundromat, which had oversize machines that could handle the load, the next day. When Nate felt they’d accomplished as much as possible, he called a time-out. “All right, people, that’s it for a while. It’s getting late and I’m hungry. Let’s head on out of here.” Ted beat them all to the door. Nate assumed he was hungry, too.
Allie grabbed her purse as she passed through the kitchen area. She wasn’t that hungry, but she didn’t want to look at the mess her beautiful condo had become any longer, either. “Your father is such a sweetheart,” she said as she locked up.
Nate rolled his eyes. Sweet. Yeah, right. The old sweetheart had just about demolished Allie’s apartment. What was that all about? A major cavity caused by all that sweetness? “Listen, Allie,” Nate said. “I know this is going to be a big inconvenience for you, but I’ll make it up to you.” Somehow. “Dad means well and he really wants to try to fix things up for you. If you’ll just let him putz around in there for a while before we call in somebody else, someone who actually knows what they’re doing, I swear I’ll make it up to you. I don’t know how, but I will.”
Allie looked at him askance. “You’re being kind of mean-spirited, don’t you think? It’s not like he did it on purpose. It was a mistake. What are you, Mr. Perfect? I mean, maybe you don’t get along with your father, but you still shouldn’t downgrade him like that.”
Nate recoiled. She was attacking him? All he was trying to do was correct an error his father had made. Not Nate’s error, Ted’s. He felt justifiably put-upon. “Of course, it was a mistake. Nobody would do this kind of thing on purpose, and no I’m not perfect. I’m just saying I’ve dealt with my father all my life. You haven’t. I know what to expect here.” Chaos. Bedlam. Further disaster.
“He certainly sounds as if he knows what he’s doing.”
“Yeah, he does, doesn’t he?” And he’d seen his mother weep real tears over some of the repair jobs Ted had done for her. And they hadn’t been tears of gratitude. Nate held up his hands in surrender. “Okay, fine. Not another word. We’re going to get the taping compound right now,” Nate informed her. “And then I guess we’ll see.”
“Yes, I guess we will.” And Allie’s expression stated more clearly than words who she thought would be getting their eyes opened.
“Come on, children, you’re dawdling.”
“Right behind you, Dad.” Nate lowered his voice once more. “Just don’t say I didn’t tell you so.” Nate held up one hand. “Maybe I’ll be proved wrong.” When pigs flew. “I hope I am. Honest, I do. But just in case, here’s how we’ll play it. We’ll let him play around a little bit, you’ll tell him what a great job he did—I hope you’re a good liar—we’ll wait a couple days for him to lose interest and stop checking on it to make sure his repair is holding, which it might, although it’ll look like garbage. Once he’s satisfied, that’s when I’ll call in somebody who actually knows what they’re doing. You know, a professional.” Nate held up one hand, palm out. His index and middle fingers were up, his thumb touching his bent fourth and fifth digits in an old scouting gesture of sincerity. His other hand lay on his chest over his heart. He had all bases covered. “I swear. Trust me.”
Allie glared at him. “You are being such a jerk.”
“I just don’t want you panicking, that’s all.” And she would. Nate grimaced, thinking of some of his father’s home repairs he’d witnessed. Would she ever. “So when the time comes, remember. I promise I’ll take care of it.”
Allie rolled her eyes. “Fine. I’ll remember.”
“What are you doing over there, reciting a boys’ group pledge? Come on, the poor girl’s probably starving to death. Look at her. A good stiff wind would blow her away. Why, she probably eats barely enough to keep body and soul together. I’m thinking we may have to take her under our wings, Nate. See to it she takes care of herself. Seems to me her family’s falling down on the job.”
“Oh brother.” Allie sighed softly. If he only knew. Allie was more than willing to let Ted do any repairs he wanted to attempt so long as they could keep her interfering family out of things. She’d be eighty and her father and brothers would dotter over on canes to smooth life’s little wrinkles for her. She loved them all dearly, but sometimes she felt so…smothered.
Nate opened the car door for Allie, waited for her to climb in, then chuckled as he circled the vehicle. This was great. He’d forewarned her, so Allie couldn’t say she hadn’t known what to expect. Talk about taking lemons and making lemonade. He’d just bought himself a whole bunch of relative peace and quiet while his father was occupied at Allie’s. Hot damn.
Oh sure, he knew what Ted was up to—and it wasn’t only a repair job. Nate was wise to him now, thanks to overhearing his conversation with Allie earlier. But Nate wasn’t worried about falling prey to any matchmaking. He was immune. But think about this. His father would be occupied for several days playing handyman and safely out of his hair. Unfortunately, it was going to cost Nate, at a time when his money should be plowed back into his new business, but the price would be well worth it. Heck, now that he thought about it, he was going to talk to Jared about deducting the repairs as a business expense. An extremely worthwhile business expense.
He drove to the hardware store, well aware of the disparaging glances Allie shot him from where she sat in the passenger seat. Well, good. He didn’t want her to like him. He wasn’t ready for anything permanent and this would keep things simple. He was grateful, yes, he was. If only she had a single mother, a maiden aunt he could recruit to keep Pop busy once the apartment repairs were taken care of, life would be perfect. He was on to his dad, but, heh-heh, he didn’t think his dad was on to him.
Subtlety was lost on a man, Nate told himself as he drove, because men were usually so up-front about everything. But with a woman, a man had to be circumspect, come in the back door, otherwise women tended to get on their high horses and basically go ballistic. Well, no problem. Nate could lead a conversation, bring it around to where he wanted it to go without the other party even being aware. All he had to do was ask a few leading questions, get her talking. He’d find out everything there was to know about Allie and any unmarried female relatives without her being any the wiser.
“So, Allie,” Nate started jovially, “tell us a little about yourself.”
Lord, he wasn’t interested in her, was he? Allie wondered. He was a good-looking guy and everything—really good-looking, to be honest, with his body by Apollo, wavy blond hair and Lake Michigan blue eyes. But she’d gotten vibes from Mr. Parker senior that Nate was having problems getting himself a woman who’d put up with him. And after conversing even briefly with the six-foot-plus Mr. Parker junior, Allie could understand why. Heck, the guy couldn’t be loyal to his own father, talking him down the way he had. Her father made her crazy, too, but she didn’t diss him. Not out loud. Not to a total stranger. She crossed her arms defensively over her chest. She wasn’t interested. Absolutely not. And he didn’t need to know anything about her. “Why do you want to know?”
Nate shrugged. “No reason. Just making conversation, that’s all. You, um, come from a big family?”
“Not really.”
Man, this was like pulling teeth. “Define not really.”
“Brothers, okay? I’ve got three older brothers. They’re great, but they all think I’m still ten. The three of them plus my father would be down here in nothing flat if they catch so much as a whiff of this. They’ll have the repairs done—but to their specifications, not mine—and the entire place remodeled in a day and a half. They don’t understand that I want to do things my way. Your dad at least asked my opinion on color and stuff. He’s great,” she finished, turning to smile at Ted in the back seat.
Nate shrugged. “Ceilings are white and carpet is supposed to be beige. For resale. A Realtor friend of mine told me that.”
See? Just like her brothers. Allie rested her case.
Nate thought about her family description. Was there a problem with producing females in her family? Maybe this wasn’t such a hot idea. Allie MacLord was cute in a Cathy Rigby with red hair gymnast kind of way. Nate assumed a female relative, provided she had some, would also be attractive. The problem, as he saw it, was cute really didn’t stand up well against four large overprotective males who might misinterpret his interest in Allie. He’d go to the wall for the woman he’d eventually marry, of course, take on an entire legion if necessary, but that was years down the road. Years.
Nate tapped his fingers on the steering wheel while he thought about that. A trio of overgrown siblings on one side of the scale, his father on the other. Hmm. He could still be persuaded to take them on if the stakes were right. Like if an elderly maiden aunt could be found among her family members for his father. In fact, this was actually a no-brainer. If push came to shove, he’d take on the brothers and do it with a smile on his face. Nate made the decision to continue the interrogation, see if there was anything worth pursuing.
“How about your parents?” Were they conveniently divorced? Mom need a shoulder to cry on? Hey, it just so happened his dad had broad shoulders, for an older guy. When you thought about it, an interfering family and Allie’s condo’s proximity meant her relatives would be around a lot for his father to bump into. This could be good. Eagerly he awaited her response.
“There’s just Dad,” she reluctantly confided. Her large, gruff, love-you-till-he-smothers-you dad.
“Oh, really? Where’s your mother?”
“She died. Breast cancer.”
Oh, man. Nate winced and braked hard for a changing light, then turned to stare at her. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s okay. It was a while ago. I was sixteen.”
Sixteen was a very vulnerable age. Damn.
Nate shot Allie a sideways look as he pulled into the parking lot for the hardware store, his gaze falling automatically to Allie’s face. She still looked vulnerable. Like she was in need of protection. He had a sudden urge to pull over and wrap his arms around her. What, was he crazy? He ought to know better than to fall prey to his father’s matchmaking.
“Nate, where are you planning on parking?” Ted wanted to know. “You’ve driven by three perfectly good spots. I know you’re protective about your car, but do we really have to park at the far end of the lot?”
“What? Oh, sorry, Dad, I got distracted.”
“I keep telling you, this isn’t going to be that bad. We’re both college graduates, aren’t we? We can figure this out. Watch out for the light pole, will you?”
“Oops, sorry.” He swerved, missed the pole in question and could feel a flush rising to stain his cheeks. Somehow that sudden spurt of feeling for Allie had gotten him positively flustered. Damn it, get a grip, Parker, he told him self. You’re acting like you’re fifteen instead of thirty. Like you’ve never seen breasts before.
Nate pulled into a spot and turned off the ignition. He leaned back in the seat for a moment to rein his thoughts in.
“Nate, you coming or what?”
“Yep. Right behind you two.” And he was, he realized, after he got out of the car and locked it. He was also getting a great view of Allie’s gently swaying derriere. She had a perky posterior Nate decided as he watched it swing through the turnstile in the front of the store. Decidedly perky.
“That all right with you, Nate?”
Nate’s eyes rose guiltily from Allie’s butt to the inquiring glance his father was sending back over his shoulder.
“Sure. What?”
Ted sighed. “Is it okay if, after we buy the guck and whatever tools we need to fix the ceiling, we go eat and then hit the mattress store? I’m starved and Allie just admitted she didn’t have time for anything but an apple at lunchtime.”
“No problem. We just have to be sure and replace Allie’s mattress and bedding before the stores close.”
Nate continued to watch Allie interact with his father as he trailed them around the store. She hadn’t hesitated in showing him her vinegary side and yet she was being unfailingly polite and kind to his father. Allie smiled, made small talk and teased Ted. It was almost as though she sensed his father was needy and lonely and was doing her best to be kind.
Nate scowled at their backs. It wasn’t like he hadn’t figured out that much. He was every bit as damned perceptive. Nate just didn’t know how to help his father, that was all. There was no need for him to feel like a worm, though, he told himself. Think about it. Besides, his father was practically glowing in Allie’s presence. If Nate played his cards right, this whole situation could work to his advantage. Pawning his dad off on Allie for a few days would buy him some time to find a few older women to throw in Ted’s path, either from Allie’s family or wherever. That would in turn make his dad happy while keeping him occupied so Nate could get a few things on his own accomplished.
