Irresistible (Cloverleigh Farms #1)(3)

“Okay, let’s go!” I shouted from the front door.

“But my hair’s not done,” Millie cried, hurrying down the stairs in her black leotard and pink tights, her blond hair still a tangled mess.

“And Winnie never got dressed,” said Felicity from the couch in the living room, where she was playing on her iPad.

I looked at Winifred, who was lying on the floor in her Hufflepuff pajamas watching cartoons. “There’s no time now. Winnie, put your boots and coat on over your pj’s. Felicity, get ready to go and make sure you and Win both have hats and gloves. It’s freezing.” Then I looked at Millie. “Go get the bun stuff. I’ll get snow everywhere and I don’t want to take all my crap off.”

Felicity pointed at me as she slid off the couch. “That’s another fifty cents, Daddy.”

“Crap isn’t a swear word,” I argued.

“Can I say it at school?”

“No.”

“Then it’s a swear.”

I sighed heavily as Millie came down the stairs with a hairbrush, ponytail holder, and a dish of hairpins. Five minutes later, I’d managed to wrangle her thick honey-colored hair into something resembling a ballerina’s bun. I frowned at it. “Not my best work today, Mills. Just gonna admit it.”

“My bun is always the worst one there, Daddy. The other girls laugh at it.”

Something tugged at my chest. “Sorry. I do the best I can.”

“We’re ready,” said Felicity. “But my boots are so tight, I can barely get them on. And Winnie can only find one mitten.”

I closed my eyes for one moment and took a breath. “We’ll get you some new boots this week, and there are a million mittens in that bin. Go get me one, please.”

“It won’t match.”

“It doesn’t matter. Hurry, or your sister will be late.”

“I’m late every week, what’s the difference?” Millie muttered, slinging her bag over her shoulder. She was about to move past me out the door when I caught her by the elbow.

“Hey. I’m sorry. I’ll try harder to get you there on time from now on, okay?”

She nodded. “Okay.”

I let her go, hurried Felicity out the door in her too-small boots, and stuck a random mitten on Winnie’s hand before picking her up and carrying her out into the snow, pulling the door shut behind us.

I’d had way more disastrous mornings in the last nine months, but I’d had more successful ones too—although not many. I really was doing the best I could, but goddammit, Millie deserved a better bun and Felicity deserved boots that fit, and Winifred deserved a dad that had remembered to dress her and get the syrup out of her hair before taking her out of the house.

And they all deserved a mother who hadn’t deserted them—she’d only seen them twice in the last nine months.

As for me, I’d take a morning to myself. One morning without being entirely responsible for anyone else. One morning to feel like a man and not just Daddy. One morning to curse without putting money in a jar, to remember there was life beyond laundry, lunches, and little girls. Was that horrible of me?

Probably.

But still.

One morning. That’s all I wanted.





Frannie





The bride had toilet paper stuck to her shoe.

I was at the reception desk of the Cloverleigh Farms Inn, which the wedding couple had rented out for the entire weekend, when I saw her exit the lobby bathroom, trailing six or seven embarrassing white squares behind her. Quickly, I scooted out from behind the desk and hurried toward her before she could re-enter the inn’s restaurant, where the reception was taking place.

“Excuse me, Mrs. Radley?”

The bride, a forty-something woman with deep chestnut hair and a slender figure, turned to me and smiled at the use of her married name. “I guess that’s me, isn’t it? That will take some getting used to.”

I returned her smile. “Congratulations. Um, I just wanted to let you know you’ve got some toilet paper stuck to the bottom of your shoe.”

She looked down at her feet, clearly visible beneath the knee-length hem of her ivory bias-cut dress. “Oh, my goodness. Thank you so much—that would have been very embarrassing.”

“No problem.”

She reached down to grab it, and right as she did, one of the dress’s tiny satin spaghetti straps popped. Gasping, she tugged it up and held it in place. “Oh my God, I’m a mess!” she whispered. “And we’re about to do our first dance. Help!”

“Don’t worry,” I said, taking her by the arm. “Come with me. We’ll fix it.”

Pushing open the door behind the reception desk, I led her down a hallway lined with the inn’s administrative offices. First, I tried my mother’s, but the door was locked. Next I tried my sister April’s—she was the inn’s event planner and always prepared in case of an emergency. Right now she was in the restaurant overseeing the dessert service, but her office door was open.

However, a quick search of April’s desk didn’t turn up anything I could mend a dress with, not even a safety pin. “Shoot,” I said, glancing up at the fretful bride. “You didn’t happen to pack a sewing kit in your purse, did you?”