Brenda Harlen - Building The Perfect Daddy

After making the pasta sauce, she called Kylie for dinner, then dished up her food while the little girl was washing up. She cut up some meat for Zachary and added a spoonful of macaroni, then slid his plate into the freezer while she settled him into his high chair and buckled the belt around his middle. Kylie had already climbed into her booster seat and was shoveling spoonfuls of macaroni and cheese into her mouth.

“Ketchup, please.”

Lauryn grabbed the bottle of ketchup from the fridge, shook it up and squirted a dollop onto her daughter’s plate—close to but not touching the meat—then set the bottle on the table.

“Umm umm,” Zachary was making his hungry noises and reaching toward his sister’s plate.

“Yours is just cooling off,” Lauryn promised, offering a sippy cup of milk to tide him over.

He immediately put the spout in his mouth, took a drink, then tossed the cup aside. “Umm umm,” he demanded.

Holding back a sigh, she bent to retrieve it, but Ryder had already scooped it off the floor and set it on the table. It was then she noticed that his fork was still beside his plate, his food untouched.

“Please don’t wait for me,” Lauryn told him. “Your dinner will get cold if you do.”

“No colder than yours,” he pointed out.

She opened the door of the freezer to check on Zachary’s meal. “I’m used to it. Sometimes the kids are finished before I get a chance to start.”

Satisfied with the temperature of the baby’s food, she set the plate in front of him. Zachary, like his sister, did not stand on ceremony but immediately shoved a hand into the macaroni.

Lauryn uncurled his fingers and wrapped them around the handle of the spoon she’d given to him. He held on to the utensil, then used the other hand to pick up a piece of meat. Shaking her head, she sat down at her plate and wiped her fingers on a napkin.

Only when she was seated did Ryder pick up his own fork. Not even her husband had ever waited for her to sit down before digging into his own meal, but she pushed that memory aside.

She’d taken the first bite of her dinner when the sky suddenly grew dark and she heard the rumble of thunder in the distance. But it was distant—far, far away, she assured herself, stabbing her fork into a piece of meat just as the skies opened up and rain poured down.

She pushed the meat around until Ryder reached across the table and put his hand over hers. She jolted at the unexpected contact, her fork slipping from her fingers and clattering against the edge of her plate, but he didn’t pull his hand away.

“The tarps will hold,” he told her.

She nodded, grateful for his reassurance and a little unnerved that this man, whom she’d met only hours earlier, had so easily followed the direction of her thoughts. Even more unnerving was the way her skin had warmed and her pulse had leaped in response to his touch.

She slowly drew her hand away. “Did you want more meat loaf?”

“I wouldn’t mind another slice.”

She pushed away from the table and reached for his plate.

“I can get it,” he told her.

“More milk, please,” Kylie said, lifting up her empty cup.

“I can get that, too,” Ryder said, when she started to rise again.

Settling back in her seat, Lauryn forced herself to take another bite of her dinner. She blamed the rain for her loss of appetite, because she was worried about potential new leaks.

But she was more worried about the sudden and unexpected tingles she’d felt all the way to her toes when Ryder touched her.

Chapter Four

Meat loaf and macaroni and cheese seemed to Ryder like a traditional family meal, but he couldn’t be certain. He’d grown up in a family that was anything but traditional, with two parents who spent more time at their respective jobs than at home and happily abdicated responsibility for the upbringing of their children to the nanny.

He and Avery had been lucky there, because Hennie had been wonderful. Right up until Ryder was twelve and Avery fifteen, when George and Cristina—long divorced but still making such decisions together—had concluded that their children didn’t need a caregiver anymore.

Spending time with Lauryn and her children was almost like entering a whole new world—and not one in which he felt entirely comfortable. He was accustomed to eating alone, and usually in front of the television. Except when his sister took pity on him and invited him over for a meal. He appreciated those invitations for a lot of reasons, not the least of which was that Avery was a fabulous cook. He also suspected that those invitations would be fewer and further between now that his sister had a husband and a baby.

By the time Zachary had finished all of his meat and noodles, his face and fingers were covered with cheese sauce. He even had bits of ground beef and macaroni in his hair.

“I think someone needs a bath,” Lauryn said, when she took his empty plate away.

“Zach!” Kylie declared.

“Well, Zachary’s going to get his first,” her mother agreed.

“Why don’t Kylie and I tidy up the kitchen while you clean up the little guy?” Ryder suggested.

“You don’t have to do that,” she protested.

“I don’t mind,” he told her, because it seemed only fair that he should do something to show his appreciation for the delicious meal. On the other hand, he couldn’t deny there was a part of him that was itching to make his escape from this unfamiliar yet somehow temptingly cozy situation.

The whole dinner scene had been a little too domestic for him—and a lot outside his comfort zone. Being around the sexy single mom and her adorable kids was creating some unfamiliar and unwelcome feelings.

Attraction was a simple emotion, and he had no trouble recognizing and acknowledging his attraction to Lauryn. It was the other stuff that was getting all tangled up inside of him. Because aside from the fact that she turned him on, there were a lot of reasons that he simply liked her. She was smart and warm and kind, and it was readily obvious that she doted on her kids.

And that was the crux of the problem right there—she had children. Children were a complication and Ryder didn’t want complications in his life. At least he never had before.

But since his sister had gotten married and had had her baby and he’d seen how those new bonds had enriched her life, he’d begun to wonder if there wasn’t something to be said for familial connections.

He’d always admired Avery’s intelligence and drive and ambition. But since she’d fallen in love with Justin Garrett, he saw something in her that he hadn’t before: joy. It was almost as if there had been a piece missing from her life, but she’d never known it until she met him.

Ryder wasn’t looking for anyone to complete him. He was perfectly content with his life. Yet, spending time with Lauryn and Kylie and Zachary tonight, he found himself wondering if maybe he wasn’t ready for something more.

Uncomfortable with those feelings, he pushed them aside to be considered at a later date—or preferably not at all.

“I think you should stop arguing with me,” he said to Lauryn now, “and get Zachary in the bath before he falls asleep in his high chair.”

She shifted her attention to the baby, whose chin was against his chest, his eyelids visibly drooping. “That’s a good plan,” she agreed, unhooking the tray and then lifting him out of his seat.

As soon as she picked him up, Zachary rubbed his face against her shoulder, leaving a smear of cheese sauce on her shirt. Lauryn either didn’t notice or didn’t care, and for some reason he found that incredibly appealing.

Most of the women he’d dated over the past few years had been preoccupied with their clothes and hair and makeup, and he found it tiresome to date a woman who rushed off to reapply her lipstick after a meal or was constantly fluffing her hair or adjusting her hemlines. Of course, he’d never dated someone with kids, and he suspected it was natural for a woman’s priorities to change when she became a mother—his own being an obvious exception.