Brenda Harlen - Building The Perfect Daddy

With an exaggerated sigh, Kylie turned toward the living room.

“You’re going to have your hands full with that one,” Ryder said to Lauryn.

“They’re full enough already,” she admitted, setting a mug of coffee and the sugar in front of him.

“How old is she?”

“Three and a half.”

“And the little guy?” he asked, glancing at the playpen where the baby had managed to pull himself to his feet and was gnawing on the frame.

Lauryn’s gaze followed his as she sat down across from him with her own mug. “Seven months and—as you can see—teething.”

He frowned. “Didn’t you say your husband left nine months ago?”

“I did,” she confirmed.

“It must have been hard on you—having the baby without him,” he noted.

She shrugged. “My sister Tristyn was there.”

“The one who forged your signature on the application?”

“I thought we were going to pretend I didn’t tell you that.”

“We were,” he acknowledged. “But then I thought that we might be able to use your sisters in the introductory segment—put them in front of the cameras and let them explain why they wanted this renovation for you.”

“They’d probably love that,” she said. “But Tristyn’s job requires her to travel a lot, so it would depend on when you planned to film the segment.”

“Monday,” he told her.

“Monday—as in five days from now?”

“Is that a problem?”

“No,” she admitted. “I mean—I’m still not entirely comfortable with this, but I guess Monday is as good a day as any to begin.”

“Do you think your sisters can be here?” he asked.

She shrugged again. “It shouldn’t be a problem. Besides, they owe me—even if they don’t know it yet.”

“Hopefully, by the time we’re done, you’ll be thanking rather than blaming them,” he told her.

“Hopefully,” she agreed, then sighed when she saw Kylie slip back into the room and open a cupboard beside the fridge. “No more cookies.”

“But I’m hungwy.”

Lauryn stood up and moved to the stove, twisting a knob to turn it on. “Dinner won’t be too long,” she promised.

She took a yogurt tube out of the fridge and snipped off the top.

“Is Mister Wyder gonna have dinner wif us?” Kylie asked, taking the tube from her.

“Oh. Um.” She felt her cheeks flush as she delicately tried to wiggle out of the awkward position her daughter had put her in. “I’m sure Ryder already has plans for dinner.”

Kylie turned to him. “Do you?”

“Actually, I don’t have plans,” he told her.

“You have dinner wif us?” she asked again.

His gaze shifted from the little girl to her mother. “What are you cooking?”

“Meat loaf,” she told him, taking the already prepared pan from the refrigerator and sliding it into the oven. “With a side of mac and cheese and salad.”

She hadn’t planned on adding macaroni and cheese to the meal, but she wasn’t sure that the meat loaf and salad would stretch far enough to feed all of them if he decided to stay.

“Sounds good,” he decided.

She eyed him skeptically. “Really?”

He smiled, and she felt an unexpected warmth spread through her veins. “Well, it sounds a lot better than the pizza I probably would have ordered at home.”

“I like pizza,” Kylie told him.

“So do I,” he admitted. “But it gets kind of monotonous when you eat it four or five times a week.”

“What’s mon-tin-us?”

“Monotonous,” he said again, enunciating clearly. “And it means boring.”

Lauryn took a pot out of the cupboard and filled it with water, then set it on the stove to boil.

Although she would have been able to get two meals out of the meat loaf if she was only feeding herself and the kids, she was glad he was staying. She’d had a really crappy day and while she certainly wouldn’t have sought out any company, she was grateful for the distraction. Because as long as Ryder was there, she didn’t have to think about how spectacularly she’d screwed up her life or try to figure out how she was supposed to put all of the broken pieces back together again. As an added bonus, he was great with her kids—and, she admitted to herself, really nice to look at.

“Can I help with anything?” Ryder offered.

She shook her head. “The salad is in the fridge, the meat loaf is in the oven, and the mac and cheese will only take ten minutes after the water boils. But if you’ll excuse me for a minute, I’m just going to run upstairs to change into something more forgiving of sticky fingers.”

Ryder nodded.

She was gone less than three minutes, exchanging her dry-clean-only business attire for a comfortable pair of faded jeans and a peasant-style blouse. When she returned to the kitchen, he was refilling his mug of coffee from the pot.

She picked up her own abandoned cup and sat down across from him.

Ryder ran his fingers over the surface of the table. He had really great hands—a workman’s hands—strong and capable. “I noticed you’ve got a lot of quality furniture inside this house with the leaky roof, falling-down porch and ugly kitchen.”

“I took advantage of the employee discount at Garrett Furniture,” she told him.

He lifted a brow. “Not the family discount?”

“I didn’t think it would take you too long to figure it out after Kylie mentioned Justin and Avery’s wedding.”

“Did you want it to remain a secret?” he asked.

She sipped her coffee. “No. But I don’t want the Garrett name used on the show.”

“Why not?”

Because she was embarrassed enough about her financial situation, and the last thing she wanted was to cause embarrassment to her family. She knew it wasn’t easy for her parents to overlook all of the work that needed to be done in her home. More than once, her father had offered to call a handyman friend to fix the leaky plumbing in the kitchen, to replace some questionable boards in the front porch, to secure the wobbly ceiling fan in the master bedroom. Every time, Lauryn had refused because her husband had promised to take care of the problems.

It was harder to turn away her cousins when they showed up at the door, as Andrew and Nathan had done a few times. It was thanks to them that she had a secure handrail leading to the laundry room in the basement and shelves in the nursery. And the new locks on the doors were courtesy of Daniel, who had installed them within hours of learning that Rob had walked out on his family. Not that she intended to admit any of that to the man seated across the table from her now.

“Can’t you just respect my wishes on this?” she finally said.

He considered for a minute, then nodded. “Okay.”

“Well, that was easy,” she said both grateful and a little dubious.

“Did you expect me to be difficult?”

“You weren’t nearly as agreeable when I asked you to get off my property this morning,” she reminded him.

“I know you’re not thrilled about being part of the show, but everything will go much more smoothly if you accept that we’re on the same team,” he told her.

“Are we?”

“Why do you doubt it?”

She shrugged. “A lot of so-called reality TV shows are all about the conflict and drama.”

“Maybe you should watch a few episodes of Ryder to the Rescue before you sign the contract,” he advised.

“Maybe I will,” she agreed.

“In the meantime—” he nodded toward the stove “—your water is boiling.”

She hurried to open the window above the sink, to let the steamy air escape, because the range fan didn’t work. Then she opened the box of macaroni and dumped the noodles into the pot.

Ryder found plates and cutlery and set the table. She started to tell him that she would do it, because she was accustomed to doing everything on her own, then she decided that it was nice—at least this once—to have some help. Besides, while she finished the preparations for dinner, she was able to watch him move around her kitchen—and she really liked watching him move.