Amy Frazier - The Trick To Getting A Mom

Sean sat beside his daughter and put his arm around her shoulder, fragile as a bird’s wing. “Kit’s not part of the family, hon.”

“Why’d you follow her?”

“I…thought Kit’s feelings might be hurt. I wanted to apologize.”

“Aunt Mariah wasn’t real friendly to her.”

“No, she wasn’t.” He chucked Alex under the chin. “Hey, sport, if you want to see your new cousin, we’d better get a move on.”

Alex stayed put. It was no secret she’d inherited his stubborn streak. “I like Kit.”

“I know you do.” He rubbed the back of his neck, massaged the tense muscles. “And she likes you. There’s nothing wrong with that.”

What was wrong was his inappropriate attraction to a woman who rocked his sense of responsibility. When she’d jumped on her motorcycle, his first thought had been to climb on with her.

“I just wanna be her friend,” Alex whispered. “I don’t understand what’s going on.”

“Kit only came back because her mother messed up and she has to help her out. She’s not happy about it and she can’t wait to leave. Alex, honey, it’s hard to make friends with a person who has no intention of sticking around.”

Dear Reader,

When I was in my early twenties and just starting out in the world, I used to play a mind game to help me cope with people who drove me nuts. I would imagine the difficult person and me in a very personal situation far removed from any situation we’d face in reality. My scenario might place me at a table for two with the guy who sold newspapers on the street corner and who could never manage to be civil. I would submerge myself in the fantasy, thinking what could I find out about this person that would make him more human? Perhaps the tough guy rescued stray dogs or ran the volunteer book cart on the hospital pediatrics ward. The fantasy never repaired these individuals’ real-time annoying habits; the exercise just reminded me that things—especially other people’s lives—are never as they seem. It made me more accepting.

Acceptance is such a simple word, but it appears to be a difficult concept to implement. In The Trick to Getting a Mom, Kit Darling has never been accepted in her hometown. She is an outcast and a rebel, surviving only by forging a who-cares exterior and an itinerant lifestyle. Sean McCabe seems to accept his role as a single parent, but beneath the surface simmers a wanderlust that bows before family responsibility. One rootless, the other rooted, the two resist an unacceptable attraction. It takes an eight-year-old, Sean’s daughter, Alex, to teach the adults true acceptance.

Amy Frazier

www.millsandboon.co.uk

PROLOGUE

CHAPTER ONE

CHAPTER TWO

CHAPTER THREE

CHAPTER FOUR

CHAPTER FIVE

CHAPTER SIX

CHAPTER SEVEN

CHAPTER EIGHT

CHAPTER NINE

CHAPTER TEN

CHAPTER ELEVEN

CHAPTER TWELVE

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

CHAPTER FIFTEEN

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

EPILOGUE

WHAT KIND OF FATHER WAS HE if he couldn’t keep one little girl out of trouble?

His gut in a knot, Sean McCabe pushed through the double doors of Pritchard’s Neck Elementary School. Alex, his eight-year-old daughter, had been suspended from school. For fighting.

At the end of the long echoing corridor that smelled of floor wax and chalk dust, Alex sat outside the principal’s office, alone, perched on an enormous bench that made her seem very, very small. Small and adrift on a sea of polished tile.

She looked up, and, even from a distance, Sean could see the shiner, reddish-purple and puffed and already closing one eye.

Instinctively, he rushed to her. “What happened?”

“I finished my work before everybody else,” she replied, her head cocked at a defiant angle. “So I raised my hand to go to the bathroom.”

“And?” Sean prodded, suspicious. Alex had a way of complicating simple tasks.

“And I thought about how Seafaring Cecil—” Seafaring Cecil was Alex and Sean’s favorite travel writer “—says you can adventure anywhere just by drawing a map.”

“So…?” Sean didn’t trust this train of thought. Alex had inherited his wandering soul, and, more and more in her “explorations,” she pushed the limits of what he considered safe for her.

“So I started a map on one of the paper towels from the bathroom with a pencil I found wedged behind a radiator, and I ended up in the fifth-grade-wing.”

This wasn’t the first time Alex had strayed. Or the first shaggy-dog explanation she’d given Sean. It was, however, the first time his daughter faced suspension from school for her adventuring.

He leveled a stern look at her. “Ms. Simmons told me you were fighting.”

With a stubborn one-eyed squint that showed no sign of tears, Alex met and matched his steady gaze. “I hit a fifth grader.” She sounded neither proud nor remorseful. To her it was only unvarnished truth.

He gently grasped her tiny face with his big weathered hand, turned her head to examine the darkening eye. Tried to steady the racing of his heart. “Why, baby? Why?”

“She said I smelled like bait.”

Sean’s gaze dropped to the miniature boots Alex seldom removed—the ones he’d had custom-made to match his own. “Our boots do smell like bait, sweet pea. So what was the real reason you hit her?”

Alex’s self-assurance wavered. Her chin wobbled and her shoulders sagged. “She…said…you must be a crummy dad if I had to go out lobstering to take care of you.” Tears glistened in her eyes. “You’re not a crummy dad. You’re the best.”

“Oh, honey.” He pulled her into his arms.

She was fierce, his daughter, fierce and proud and loyal far beyond her age and size. A chip off the old McCabe block.

“Ahem.” Candace Simmons, the school principal, appeared in the doorway to her office.

Sean stood. “Candace—” He caught himself. “Ms. Simmons.”

“Mr. McCabe.” She looked as if she didn’t relish either the necessary formality or the task at hand. “I’m afraid we have a zero-tolerance policy toward fighting. As I told you on the phone, Alexandra is suspended from school. For two weeks.”

“You said she’d be suspended for one.” He recognized the need for punishment, but two weeks was harsh.

“That was before Alexandra produced this from her boot.” Candace held out a letter opener Sean recognized as a freebie for taking out a loan at the Ocean National Bank. It had a faux scrimshaw whale for a handle. “We also have a zero-tolerance policy toward weapons.”

“Alex?” A headache forming behind his eyebrows, Sean looked at his daughter for an explanation.

“It’s not a weapon, Dad. I carry it in case of snake bite.”

“You know perfectly well there are no poisonous snakes at Pritchard’s Neck Elementary.” Sighing deeply, Candace turned to Sean. “It’s this inability to distinguish reality from fantasy that gets your daughter in trouble.”

“Clearly, she didn’t intend to hurt anyone with the letter opener or she would have used it during the fight.” He believed children should accept responsibility for their actions, but he also knew Alex. “She might fight, but she doesn’t fight dirty.”

“Sean.” Candace spoke softly, but looked him right in the eye. “The rules are there for the safety of the children. Even if I wanted to, I can’t make exceptions where safety is concerned. So…one week for fighting. One week for possession of a potential weapon. Two weeks suspension.”

“But there are only two weeks left of school.”