Daddy Lessons. Stella Bagwell

with.”

      “You’ll make plenty of friends once you start school this fall,” Joe said matter-of-factly.

      Megan’s mouth turned down at the corners. “I doubt it. I don’t want to go to some dumb ole private school. I’ll have to wear some childish uniform and look like all the other nerdy girls there!”

      Joe cast her a stern look of warning. “I don’t want to hear you call anyone nerdy. You don’t know what the girls at school will be like. You’ve never been there before.”

      She lifted her chin defiantly and glared at him with eyes as blue as his own. “And I won’t go, either.”

      Joe shoveled another bite of food to his mouth before he lost his appetite. “You’ll go if I say so.”

      Megan jumped up from the chair and jammed her fists on either side of her waist. “Daddy, I want to be a cheerleader and go to football games! I want to go to proms and dances. You can’t do that without boys around!”

      Joe put his fork down beside his plate and leaned back in his chair. He’d almost forgotten how quiet the house used to be before Megan arrived. Still, he loved her utterly, and more than anything he wanted the very best for her.

      “You’re far too young to be thinking about boys. Besides, school is about getting an education, not playing sports and dancing.”

      Megan rolled her eyes. “You’re always so serious, Daddy. Don’t you know a person has to have some fun once in a while?”

      “Fun is knowing you’ve succeeded at achieving your goals.”

      Groaning with disbelief, Megan flounced over to the refrigerator and pulled out a can of soda. “Fun is going to the beach or the movies. But I guess you don’t do those things,” she said sullenly.

      He picked up his fork and stabbed it at the pile of noodles on his plate. Hell, if he let Megan’s temperament spoil his appetite every time he sat down to supper, he’d soon turn into a skeleton.

      Megan came back to the table and sank into the same seat she’d just vacated moments earlier. Swiping her hair out of her eyes, she said in a perkier voice. “Your new secretary sounds very nice. When am I going to get to meet her?”

      He glanced at his daughter with surprise. “Why would you want to meet my new secretary?”

      The teenager let out another loud groan. “Because everyone around here is a stranger to me. And she sounded like someone I’d like to know.”

      “How could you tell? You only talked to her on the phone for a few short minutes,” Joe observed.

      “Well, I could just tell. Is she pretty?”

      He choked on the tea he’d been about to swallow. “Pretty? Why in the world would you want to know that?”

      “Because if she was pretty, you might not come home in such a cranky mood,” Megan reasoned. “Is she married?”

      Knowing his daughter probably wouldn’t hush until he answered, he said, “No. Ms. Starr isn’t married. And yes, she’s very beautiful. But I doubt you’ll have a chance to meet her before Edie comes back to work.”

      Megan eyed her father over the rim of her soda can. “What if I go to the office for a while?”

      “Maybe later. I’ve got too much going on right now.”

      A grimace twisted her young face. “Then let’s invite Ms. Starr to supper. Yeah! That would be fun. Will you ask her, Daddy? Will you?”

      “No. She’s a secretary. Bosses don’t do that sort of thing with their secretaries. It isn’t—proper.”

      “Daddy, it’s not like you’re going to have an affair with her!”

      Dear Lord, did all thirteen-year-olds talk like his? Joe wondered. “And what do you know about affairs? That word shouldn’t even be in your vocabulary, yet.”

      Tilting her head to one side, Megan said, “Back home, my friend Amy’s father had an affair. After that, her parents got a divorce. Is that what happened to you and Mom? Did you have an affair with some woman you liked better than her?”

      Joe frowned at his daughter’s speculation. “No, neither one of us did anything of the sort. Your mother and I were simply too young to be married. Both of us wanted totally different life-styles and because we did, we argued all the time. So we decided it would be better if we didn’t live together anymore. We’ve told you this before. Don’t you remember?”

      Megan nodded, while absently winding a strand of hair around her finger. “Yeah, I remember. But I thought you might not be telling me the truth.”

      Joe reached out and gently touched his daughter’s face. She was so young and innocent and full of life. He didn’t want her ever to be hurt by anything. Especially from mistakes he’d made in the past or any he might make in the future.

      “Megan, I’ll never lie to you. Not about anything. Okay?”

      She nodded, then gave him an impish grin. “So why haven’t you gotten married again? I think you should.”

      A second mother figure might be just what she needs.

      Joe inwardly shook his head as Savanna’s voice came back to him. He’d thought the woman had been totally on the wrong track, that Megan would resent the very idea of a stepmother. Obviously he’d been wrong about Savanna and his daughter.

      “And why do you think that?”

      “You don’t seem too happy like this.”

      Savanna had implied the same thing when she’d compared him to that hound with a flea on its back. But just because two females made the same conjecture about him didn’t mean they were right, Joe told himself. He was happy, damn it. As happy as he could ever hope to be.

      “My job gives me a lot to worry about, Megan. Believe me, the last thing I need to make me happy is a wife.”

      Across town Savanna carried paper plates, sodas and iced glasses to a card table set up on a small patio outside her father’s apartment.

      A few feet away from her, in one corner of the tiny square of yard, Thurman Starr was turning steaks on a smoking barbecue grill. Beside him, standing a good foot shorter than his six-foot frame, her new stepmother, Gloria, swiped a hand across her damp brow.

      “I don’t know which is cooking the most out here, us or the steaks,” the older woman said.

      Savanna gave her father a teasing grin, then winked at Gloria.

      “I think Dad would haul that grill with him as far as the equator. When he’s barbecuing, he doesn’t know if the weather is ten degrees or a hundred.”

      Thurman laughed. “You two girls are getting soft on me. This is lovely weather. Couldn’t wish for better. Besides, I have to have my grill with me. Otherwise, every piece of meat Gloria gets her hands on turns into a piece of black shoe leather.”

      Gloria wrinkled her nose at her husband. “Well, we’ll see who cooks your breakfast in the morning,” she warned playfully.

      Savanna smiled to herself. It was was wonderful to see her father so happily married. At fifty, with dark brown hair and a slim, petite figure, Gloria was still youthful and pretty. But more importantly, she was a sweet, giving person. She adored Thurman and made it her job to make him feel wanted and loved.

      Sadly, that hadn’t been the case with Savanna’s mother, Joan. She’d been a discontented woman and no matter how hard Thurman had tried to please her, she’d never seemed to be truly satisfied. Joan had always wished for things, but she’d been unwilling to bend and work to get them.

      Savanna had grown up vowing not to make the same mistakes her mother had. Whatever she decided she wanted in life, she was going to go after it full force. If she had to deviate from her plan