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The Dad Next Door
Virginia Myers
JUST PLAIN KATE…Sometimes, secretly, Kate wished she were pretty. Pretty enough to attract the attention of handsome Ian McAllister, the dashing single dad next door. But Kate tried to be content, raising her children solo and filling in as part-time mom to Ian's lonely little boy.So it was a bolt from the blue–a dream come true–when Ian proposed, promising Kate anything if she'd be his wife. Her heart soared down the aisle–only to plummet with afterthoughts. Did Ian really want her? Or merely a family for his son? Was she headed for heartbreak…or heaven in Ian's embrace?
Table of Contents
Cover Page (#udec69d7d-691a-5044-80c7-5ac7f192b525)
Excerpt (#u50e0b7ee-0413-5b91-b202-520cf1660aa6)
About the Author (#u309c28ce-3fde-56c6-badc-23931bfb1492)
Title Page (#u8fd89611-933c-52f1-86c0-c136b667b3d9)
Epigraph (#u19f26833-d566-54ab-af1e-b7bf7cb7cefb)
Dedication (#u53c0ff3e-9e64-522a-9a5e-279d1236661d)
Chapter One (#u27c1ece3-bd80-537e-a602-9e793876e331)
Chapter Two (#u1d22f855-7b4a-54c9-9902-a5fae7a9d213)
Chapter Three (#uddb56461-a04e-5fde-9a06-b9183b5dece7)
Chapter Four (#ue878e2c3-3398-5add-a654-2594001a5763)
Chapter Five (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Six (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Seven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eight (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Nine (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Ten (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Eleven (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Twelve (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Thirteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter Fourteen (#litres_trial_promo)
Dear Reader (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Years ago she’d settled down to single motherhood, sure she’d never be attracted to another man.
Until now.
For the first time Kate admitted to herself that she could love again. And—oh, dear God, help me—this was the man. She wanted to touch Ian, heal all his hurts.
He looked up at her, his beautiful hazel eyes troubled. “You’re a good friend, Kate.”
A good friend. She made herself say it. “Well, friends help friends, Ian. And you know how fond I am of young Raymond.”
“You’ve been a godsend to my boy. I could never repay you for what you do for him.”
“I understand,” Kate said gravely. But, her heart whispered, I don’t want you to pay me. I want you to love me. Love me to distraction. The way I love you…
VIRGINIA MYERS
Virginia Myers has been writing since childhood. As an adult she has published ten novels, contemporary and historical, for the general market. She has now written three novels for the inspirational market.
Active in the writing community, Virginia developed a course in popular novel writing, which she has taught in several Washington colleges. She has lectured, taught writing workshops and served for two years on the board of trustees of the Pacific Northwest Writers Conference.
She lives in Longview, Washington, where she is active in her community and a faithful worker in her church.
The Dad Next Door
Virginia Myers
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
Blessed are the peacemakers: for they shall be
called the children of God.
—Matthew 5:9
In memory of my aunt, Lillian Harrison Hardesty,
a woman of peace
Chapter One (#ulink_628fe621-f63c-5ffd-bee6-fe15c25fbaa3)
Kate Graham glanced out the window at the weather. Seattle was having a fierce February for the second year in a row. She draped a scarf over her light brown hair, which was pulled back in a ponytail secured by a rubber band. As she tied the scarf beneath her chin, she wished—again—that she was pretty. She could be a lot better looking if she worked at it, the way she had when Claude was alive. But now…
Half a dozen of her sister Jill’s well-meant comments on the subject flew through her mind. Of course, Jill was beautiful. She snatched up her umbrella, picked up the windbreaker jacket she had found in Raymond’s closet and rushed out the door to meet the middle-school bus. She had wasted too much time looking out the window at Ian’s house next door, and planning what she would have for dinner. Ian always came over for dinner when he got home from a business trip.
It was ridiculous. Her daydreaming about Ian McAllister. She was a respectable widow with two children of her own. Maybe she should talk about it to Pastor Ledbetter. He had so much good sense and was always so willing to help. He had been a tower of strength for her when Claude had died. She had needed all the help she could get then. Dad, Mom and her younger sister, Jill. Then Jill’s husband, Greg Rhys, a CPA, had sorted out all the insurance so that she had the steady small income that paid her little family’s bills, if she was very careful.
She wondered again if she had taken on Ian McAllister’s son, Raymond, to bolster the family budget or because she was sorry for the lonely child of a broken marriage. Or was part of the reason that it kept her in regular contact with Ian? She had certainly never regretted the arrangement. Raymond was such a changeling of a child, bright, sensitive, responsive, with Ian’s blond good looks and hazel eyes, and so in need of love. He was twelve, but a very young twelve. She had always felt a wave of protectiveness toward him, from the first time he’d appeared in her kitchen.
She stopped halfway up the block, in front of the second-from-the-end brick house, as Raymond had instructed. He was afraid of some of the bigger boys at school, who often harassed him when they got off the bus at their corner, but he was, after all, twelve and it was unthinkable that he should be met at the bus.
“I’m in middle school!” he had said, his voice rising in panic. “Nobody’s mom meets the middle-school bus!” Her heart had ached. He had started calling her Mom the way her own children did. He was such a waif, with no real mother and his father away on business half the time. He was trying so hard to grow up and also trying to hold on to the childhood he had never really had during his parents’ turbulent marriage.
They had settled on her standing half a block down, so if the bigger boys started hassling him, she could start walking toward the corner. At the sight of an adult, even a short one, approaching, the tough kids would skulk off and leave him alone.
She stopped at the designated place. The bus was late today. She needn’t have hurried. The rain was light and intermittent, but the wind swept it this way and that up under the umbrella. Kate shivered. Raymond had worn only a sweater this morning, so he would probably be cold.
The great yellow lumbering vehicle appeared down at the far end of the street. Hurry. This was a hot-chocolate day for sure. Her own two children, Tommy, eight, and Joy, six, were already home and were alone in the house. She had left firm instructions not to turn on the burner under the pan of milk until she and Raymond got there. They were pretty good kids, and she was reasonably sure they would wait.
The bus stopped at the corner, its air brakes letting out a whooshing sound. The kids, in their hideous collections of many-layered clothing, began to get off the bus. Something was different today—they didn’t loiter at the stop. Some of the bigger boys got off and fairly ran from the area. She waited for Raymond to get off, straining to see. The driver was an older woman who took a real interest in her charges. Kate watched now as the driver got out of her seat and went toward the back of the bus. The bus was still about half-full of kids, who seemed unusually subdued.
Something was wrong.
Kate took a chance of embarrassing Raymond and hurried the half block to the bus. Surely Raymond hadn’t missed it. No. As she came up to the open bus door, she saw the driver coming back up the aisle, her arm around Raymond’s shoulders.
“See. They all went. And here’s your mom. It’s okay,” the driver was saying.
Kate’s heart was suddenly pounding. “Raymond! What happened!” She could hardly recognize him. His face was swollen and bruised, badly scraped on one side. Blood was smeared over his sweater and T-shirt. He was limping.
“Oh…Raymond.” She held out suddenly shaking hands as he got off the bus. He shrugged away from the driver’s protecting arm, looking sick and miserable.
“I’m so sorry, ma’am,” the driver said. “I told him he should see the school nurse, but he said he didn’t know where she was, and he couldn’t miss the bus. I wanted to go find her myself, but I’m not allowed to leave the bus when there are kids on it.”
“But what happened?” Kate gasped.
“Nuthin’. It’s okay. I wanna go home,” Raymond said.
“It’s those tough kids, ma’am,” the driver said. “They can be so mean. It’s because he’s skinny and he won’t fight back. If he’d just fight back a little, I tell him. It’s awful to tell peaceable kids to fight back, but how else can they cope?” Her kindly eyes filmed over with tears.
“I wanna go home,” Raymond muttered, twisting the strap of his backpack with a thin hand.
“Thank you,” Kate managed to say to the bus driver. “Come on,” she added to Raymond. “We’ll go and see to that swelling.” Both his eyes were almost shut.
“Here,” Kate said. “Put this on.” She draped the windbreaker around his shoulders. What will Ian say? A wave of belated fury rushed through her. “Who did this to you?” The bus roared away and a shudder went through the boy. He looked after the bus with sheer hatred showing through his slitted eyes.
“I’m not going back!” he said through his teeth.
“Who did this to you? Tell me what happened!”
“Okay, but at home. Let’s go home.” He was watching the bus disappear out of sight around the corner.
“All right.” She put her arm around him, trying to shelter him with the umbrella from the dashing rain, but he pulled away and started a half run back toward the house. He was limping. She hurried to follow him and they reached the door together, which Tommy held open. The wind and rain blew Tommy’s light brown hair. He was her own small image, whereas Joy had inherited Claude’s dark hair and bright blue eyes.
“What took you so long?” Tommy demanded. “We waited and waited…” He fell silent when he saw Raymond’s face.
“Keep quiet!” Raymond commanded. “Do you want the whole neighborhood to hear?” He darted into the house and Kate followed, pausing only to partly close her umbrella and shake out excess water onto the porch. Inside, she dropped it into the umbrella stand.
“Settle down, you two. Raymond will tell us about it when he’s ready to. Go in the kitchen and wait. We’ll make the cocoa after I see to Raymond. Raymond, you come with me into the bathroom. I’ve got to look at that scrape.”
“I’m okay,” Raymond muttered, but followed her into the bathroom, as did the other two children, ignoring her command to wait in the kitchen.
“No, you’re not okay. Now, I’ve got to get you fixed up. I mean it.” The “I mean it” was the no-nonsense code phrase that usually got results.
Raymond submitted, somewhat sullenly, while the other children watched. The bathroom was crowded, but Kate managed to wash the caked blood from Raymond’s face and observe the extent of the damage. She did the best she could with water and disinfectant. In a few hours, when the bruising surfaced, he was going to be a sight. She wished that Ian wasn’t coming back to Seattle tonight. When she had done the best she could, they went into the kitchen.
“Raymond, I need to know what happened. Your dad is coming in tonight. What am I going to tell him?” She kept her voice steady with an effort because she wanted very badly to cry. He looked so pathetic, trying to pretend it didn’t matter. Since before Claude’s death, when her life had collapsed, and through her long journey with her grief to this present point of acceptance, if not content, she had become very good at not crying in front of the children.
Tommy and Joy were unusually silent as they stared at Raymond’s battered face. Raymond, twelve, and in middle school, was their hero. They were both deeply shocked.
“Okay,” Raymond said through swollen lips. “So I got beat up. It’s no big deal.”
Kate turned from the stove. “It is a big deal, Raymond. It should never have happened. Tell me how it did.”
“Well,” he said reluctantly, “there’s this bunch of big kids, see. They’re really big guys.” He paused, seeming tired, and pushed one grubby hand through his fair hair. “Well, what happened is they want to get in this gang. In that school, if you’re a guy and you’re not in a gang, you’re nobody. So there’s this test, this initiation.”
“Initiation? What kind of initiation?” Kate felt a sudden chill. These were children they were talking about. Kids, just about to enter their teens, like Raymond.
The boy sighed. “Is the milk hot yet? I’ll never get warm again.”
“Raymond, what initiation?”
“Well, it was three guys.” It seemed the boy was pushing the words out, one at a time. “These three guys can get in this gang if they can prove they’re tough. Really tough. If they can deliver. If they can follow orders. So they had to beat up somebody. Really bad. To prove it, you know.”
“Three of them had to beat you up to prove they were tough!” Kate sat down suddenly in a chair. She was physically sick. They could have killed him.
“Now, what’s going to happen is this,” Raymond added. “I’m not—repeat not—goin’ back to that school! Ever!”
Tommy broke the silence that followed. “Ray, when I get to middle school I’ll help you.”
“But Tommy, I’m not going back. Ever.”
Joy spoke softly. “Mommy, the milk is moving.” And Kate returned her gaze to the milk pan, watching the surface of the milk in its preboiling state. Raymond cannot go back to that school, she thought Nor did she want Tommy and Joy continuing in public school after the primary grades. Something was very wrong. She’d have to face it. This was not the way her children were going to grow up. They must not be cheated out of their childhood.
Kate lunged forward to pull the pan of suddenly-boiling milk from the burner, and poured the hot milk into the big metal pitcher over the sweetened chocolate.
“Well, you certainly don’t need to go back to school tomorrow anyway,” she said to Raymond. “We’ll talk to your dad about it tonight.” Kate poured chocolate into a mug and handed it to him. “Don’t drink that yet It’s too hot.” She poured two more mugfuls for her children.
“I wish he wasn’t coming back tonight. I’d like to heal up a little first,” Raymond muttered.
“Oh, Raymond, I’m so sorry.” She poured another mug for herself. She shouldn’t have. She was getting too rounded again and she had made a resolve not to eat between meals anymore. But she needed this.
“Your father’s going to be upset. He’ll think I’m not taking care of you.”
“Not your fault,” Raymond said quickly. “You can’t help what those goons at school do. Dad will just have to understand it. See, Dad’s always been first string. In everything. All his life he’s total success. So he freaks out when I can’t cope, which mostly I can’t. But he’s gotta face it. I’m an inferior kid. He can take it or leave it.”
“You’re not an inferior kid. You’re a great kid. I wouldn’t want you to be any different than you are. Your father wouldn’t, either!”
“Don’t sweat it, Mom. It’ll be okay.”
Kate wondered again how Ian’s former wife, Marsha, could have simply walked out on this boy. He was struggling so hard for some sort of family. Thank heavens Ian was paying Marsha so much alimony that he couldn’t afford to send Raymond to boarding school. That would have stifled the boy completely.
