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“He changed her,” Cosette said. “We’re wondering if perhaps Daisy might have fallen for—”
“I can’t,” John said. He leaned back in the booth, and when Jane put the “tipple” in front of him in a sweetly painted tea cup to disguise its contents from the other patrons, John knocked it back without hesitation.
“Easy there, sailor,” Dennis said. “It’ll be closing time soon. I’ll take you to my place and we’ll cauterize your brain for a bit. Or maybe Phillipe’s place for some yoga. I’m really getting into that yoga crap Phillipe’s got going on, Cosette. Do you do it?”
“I do, and I’m getting so flexible! Who would have ever thought my husband would become a yogi of sorts?” Cosette looked pleased, and John noticed that she didn’t refer to Phillipe as her ex-husband. Maybe matters were looking up for them. He sure hoped so.
“I’ll pass on the yoga.” After their divorce, Phillipe had moved into a small house, and outfitted it with hanging beads and floor cushions for the yoga practice he’d started. It looked like a regular hangout for hippies, which had caught them all off guard because Phillipe and Cosette were anything but the hippie type.
Cosette picked up the delicate floral teapot and poured some more amber liquid into his cup. “You look like you could use another smidge of whiskey.”
“And all this time I thought you sat in this booth and drank tea.” John shook his head.
“We do!” Jane glanced at her friends. “But on occasion, like right now, something with a little oomph is required. Now, if you’re feeling fortified, let’s get back to the topic at hand, which is Daisy.”
He froze up again. “I can’t be the fall guy. I can’t even think about it.” He swallowed hard. “Anyway, isn’t it her business who the father of her child might be?”
“Maybe,” Dennis said, “unless the father lives in Montana or something.”
Crap. He could see where they were going with this. Daisy Donovan might just have allowed herself, in a moment of heartbreak and confusion, to be seduced. The cold chills he’d suffered a moment ago came back with a vengeance, despite the whiskey he’d quaffed out of the eggshell-thin teacup.
She might not ever return to Bridesmaids Creek.
“I suppose you’re absolutely certain, one hundred percent sure that the baby couldn’t possibly be yours...not that we’re trying to pry?” Jane asked gently.
He read between those lines. “Oh, you’re dying to pry, but I know you mean well.” He took a long, deep breath. “I suppose the way things work in BC, I can’t entirely count out the remote, infinitesimal poss—”
“I knew it!” Cosette clapped her hands.
Jane beamed. She made another pour out of the teapot for the entire table, making sure John’s went clean to the rim of his cup. “This calls for a celebration!”
“Now wait,” John said. “I was going to say that Daisy’s baby being mine would be something on the order of a miraculous—”
They all looked at him, their faces gleaming as his words drifted away. Each of them looked so pleased he couldn’t bear to let them down.
“You have to understand, you’d be better off looking for another bachelor,” John said. “I’m not your man.”
“He may be right,” Jane said thoughtfully. “I don’t know that I’m feeling it.”
Dennis wore the same suddenly thoughtful look. “And then there’s the matter of Sam. I still can’t figure out how he got into this.”
John didn’t want to hear about Handsome Sam. “Trust me, my buddy was just trying to help me get to the altar. It was all an elaborate sham to coax me there.”
“Most men don’t offer to marry a woman who’s having a child that isn’t theirs.” Cosette grew pensive now, too. “I mean, you’re not.”
His throat got a bit tight. “I haven’t really thought about—”
“The thing about Sam,” Dennis said, “is that he really is an ultimate bachelor with a golden heart. Someone should hook him.”
John shook his head. “You’ll never catch Sam.”
“But he was taking her to Vegas,” Jane said. “That gives me pause about this bachelor song he sings.”
A little doubt crept into John. “Sam’s just up to his usual tricks. We all suffer from it. And love him for it, too,” he said truthfully.
“Well,” Cosette said brightly, “I suppose it doesn’t matter whether you’re in love with Daisy. She’s not here, and who knows when she’ll come home after the shock she’s suffered.”
“Wait a minute.” John’s brain whirred like a pinwheel. Which fallacy should he start with—that he was in love with Daisy, or that she might never return? This was BC: she had to return. “I’m not in love with Daisy.”
The second the words left his mouth, causing glints of mirth and knowing to shine in his friends’ eyes, John knew—just as they knew—that he was head over heels, gone-and-not-coming-back, certifiably in love with Daisy Donovan.
“Oh, crap,” he said, and they high-fived each other, and then him, for good measure.
This was a problem. He was now squarely in BC’s sights, and the worst part was, he had no clue where Daisy was, and if that was his child she was carrying.
Holy smoke.
Chapter Five (#ulink_8b249aeb-bbf2-5a34-bd91-fe6034bb704e)
“And that’s that,” John told Daisy’s gang. “You lot are going to help me make this right. And if that’s not high irony, I don’t know what is.”
Daisy’s gang of five, seated in their new man cave, shook their lunkheads. “We can’t help you,” Dig said.
“No aid to the enemy,” Red said.
“She’s our girl,” Clint said, “even if she didn’t choose one of us.”
“We don’t see what a great girl like her would see in a squid like you,” Carson said.
“And we haven’t given up hope,” Gabriel said. “We’re not helping any Handsome Sams, Squints or Frogs. Where do you guys get these names, anyway?”
So he was sitting square in enemy camp, with conspirators unwilling to be his wingmen in his hunt to find Daisy. “Listen, Daisy’s having a baby, and she’s going to need our help.”
“Our help,” Red said. “Not necessarily your help.”
“Unless you’re the father,” Carson said, “and we don’t see that being the case.”
John shrugged. “Of course I’m the father. Who else do you think it would be?” Here he was fibbing just a bit because he didn’t know for sure, but in the night, he’d ruminated over what his friends had said to him at The Wedding Diner and realized it really didn’t matter who the father of Daisy’s baby was. He was in love with her, and he’d be a good father, a dad to her child.
As far as John was concerned, that made it case closed for his suit.
They glared at him, not believing him.
“Daisy would have told us,” Clint said. “We’ve got our money on it being that fellow up in Montana. The airy-fairy one who lives in the wild and communes with nature and all that crapola.”
John laughed. “Branch would get a real charge out of hearing himself described that way.”
“So?” Carson demanded. “How do you know Daisy’s not with him?”
“Because she’s not. And we need to find her, fellows.”
“Again,” Dig said, “we need to find her. There’s no you and us in this situation. We’ve known her since she was three years old, and we don’t need any outside help rescuing her from what was clearly an unfortunate decision on her part.”
“That’s too bad.” John leaned back in one of the leather chairs, glanced around the man cave. “It’d be good for your new business to showcase your first success as date makers.”
“You’re not one of our clients,” Red said.
“Because you don’t have any yet,” John said, pointing out the obvious. “If you’re going to be the premier dating service and cigar bar,” he said, glancing with doubt toward the leather-wrapped cigar bar and wooden walls that shouted man cave, in complete opposition to the idea of being a dating service, “you need a high-profile client to highlight what you can do. And that’s me.”
They gawked at him. John could hear the wheels turning.
“He’s right,” Clint said reluctantly.
“Never say that an out-of-towner is right,” Carson said, his words hushed.
“Nevertheless, he has a point,” Dig said, his voice stunned.
“At least it’s not Handsome Sam,” Gabriel said. “I think I can stand anything but giving our girl up to a man with a handle like that!”
* * *
THE SIX MEN got out of the two trucks, warily eyeing the Donovan compound.
“Well,” Dig said to John as they stared at the massive two-story gray edifice, “here’s the yellow brick road. And while you might want us to play your Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Toto and—”
“I’m not playing Dorothy,” Red said, “no cracks about my hair or anything.”
They gazed at his long red mop for a second. John didn’t think there was a man on earth he’d rather deem Dorothy less than Red. The man had arm muscles that looked like a bear’s.
“Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Toto and a flying monkey,” Dig said, his tone impatient with his friend.
“Okay, I can go with a flying monkey. They were kind of cool,” Red said, but they ignored him and went back to staring at the house where Daisy lived, and thus, her warlock of a father.
John shook his head. “I really don’t know if this is the right plan, fellows.”
“Well, you came to us for help, need I remind you?” Carson said. “And this is how we suggest you help yourself. You’re going to have to man up and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“What?” John said, and Daisy’s gang favored him with narrow gazes.
“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” Gabriel demanded.
“I was going to start small,” John said, “like maybe let Robert Donovan know that I’d like to find his daughter.”
They shook their heads.
“Here’s the problem,” Clint said. “We have it on good authority that Donovan doesn’t know his little angel is expecting his grandchild.”
“That can’t be possible. This is BC,” John said. “Everybody knows everything about everybody, and if they don’t, it’s because they’ve buried themselves deep under a rock.”
“And just who do you think would tell Mr. Donovan that his daughter is in the family way?” Dig asked, staring at him. “Don’t you think he’d have had a word or two with the man he thought had knocked up his daughter and left her high and dry?”
“You being that fellow and all,” Red said, “now that the truth has come out.”
“No truth has come out!” John said, but he was beginning to wonder himself. He’d asked Sam, but Sam had denied knowing who the father of Daisy’s baby was. Swore up and down that he didn’t care, either. If Daisy needed a husband, then Sam Barr was more than happy to be that husband.
Jealousy had practically eaten a hole in John’s cool, calm persona—and Sam knew it. Enjoyed it, even.
“But admit it, you’re beginning to think you’re going to be shopping for blue or pink in the very near future,” Clint said, and John’s breath hitched.
“It’s actually a pretty appealing idea,” he said, and they clapped him on the back in the nearest sign of camaraderie he’d experienced from them. “Hey! You’re trying to get me to go up there, spill the beans—which are Daisy’s beans to spill, by the way—and get my head pounded down my neck!”
They guffawed, just a bunch of knuckleheads having a great day, more than happy to add him to their group for the moment because it made them a whole half-dozen cars on the crazy train for a change.
“Aw, Donovan’s not going to pound your head,” Dig said. “Nobody’s afraid of Daddy Warbucks anymore. But you are going to get the speech about how you’re not worthy of his adorable daughter, and how he ought to bury you under Best Man’s Fork where no one can find your remains for knocking up his baby girl, and that if you think you’re going to get one penny of his dough you’re crazier than a bedbug.”
“Well, when you put it that way, how can I resist?” John asked, not that worried about Donovan, anyway. A security truck pulled up, with Donovan riding shotgun to see who was trespassing on his holy land, and the five dummkopfs scattered in their truck.
“What brings you to my humble abode, Squint?” Donovan demanded as the dust plume rose from John’s newfound friends’ hauling asses.
“It’s John now, Robert. And I’d like a moment of your time,” John said, and the man narrowed his eyes at him.
It wasn’t a stare most people would like to receive, but John had seen a lot worse. He shrugged. “If you have time, that is. Sir.”
Just like his military days, he knew when to apply the courtesy treatment. Robert perked up.
“I might spare you five minutes. Start talking.”
“Actually, what I’ve come to say is private.” John glanced at the armed guards and the driver, who was no doubt packing as well, with a shrug. “Regarding family business.”
Robert grumbled a bit. “I suppose you want to be invited in.”
John shrugged again.
“Those five wienies who just hit the road have never darkened the doors of my house. Why would I let you in?”
“I can talk out in the fresh air just as well as inside four walls, Robert. I’m just asking for you to hear me out in private.”
After a moment, Robert got out. His men drove away. “So, you’ve come to find out where my daughter is. She said you would.”
“I’m glad she knows me so well.”
“Harrumph!”
“Look, Robert, I happen to think an awful lot of your daughter, and—”
“Son, let me stop you.” Robert drew himself up to his full six feet four and glared. “I know where you come from, I know about your family. What do you imagine you can possibly offer my daughter?”
John ignored that, took a deep breath and then the plunge. “There’s a very good chance Daisy may be having my baby. I need to find her.”
