A Sweetheart for the Single Dad. Victoria Pade

Sam’s family lives here and it’s more important for the four-year-old to be with his family than for the thirty-four-year-old!”

      Sawyer had been trying not to raise his voice as he spoke to his ex-girlfriend on the phone on Tuesday but he’d lost the battle.

      “Maybe you should talk to Harmon,” Candy Ferguson responded as if she were only partially involved.

      “Maybe you should talk to Harmon! I know you don’t want to move out of state. You’ve never wanted to move out of state. You gave up a college scholarship and used loans to pay your tuition rather than go away just for four years. Now this guy snaps his fingers and says he wants to move, so you’re willing to do it? No way! Try standing up for yourself!”

      “Vermont is nice...” was the wishy-washy answer to that.

      They had been going round and round this issue for the past half hour and, so far, Sawyer hadn’t gotten anywhere. He was fed up and pulled out what he hoped was his ace in the hole. “I’ve already talked to Sean.” Sean was his younger brother and his attorney. “If I have to go to court, I will. If you don’t have the guts to tell Harmon that you don’t want to move, then feel free to make me the bad guy and use that as your out. But one way or another, I won’t sit idly by and have you and Harmon take my son across the country to live.”

      He hung up without saying goodbye. Frustrated, angry, worried. And cursing himself for the choices he’d made in the women in his life.

      “You’re falling for it, too, Harmon,” he muttered as if his ex’s husband could hear. “I’m betting that she’s letting you think she’s okay with moving when she really isn’t. Then she’ll get there and be unhappy and blame you. But you’re not taking my kid along for that ride!”

      Sawyer was sitting behind the desk in his office. His door was closed for privacy so—knowing no one who worked for him could see—he dropped his head forward and reached back to try to rub the tension out of his neck.

      It was bad enough to have his son living with another man half the time, to have Sam following some other guy’s rules—because, of course, Candy wasn’t going to be the boss. But at least Sawyer still had plenty of his own time with his son. Sawyer could be at T-ball games and school conferences and programs. Sawyer could pick Sam up from school. Sawyer could get to him in the blink of an eye if Sam was sick or hurt. He could be there for him.

      If Sam was in Vermont, Sawyer would be relegated to phone and video calls, and he’d only actually be with his son a few times a year. And there was no way he wouldn’t fight to keep that from happening.

      The trouble was that he wasn’t altogether sure it was a battle he would win.

      Being part of Sam’s life had been an uphill battle for a while now. Things had gone smoothly enough at the beginning. Candy hadn’t known she was pregnant when their relationship had ended, but had told him as soon as she’d found out. She’d declined his suggestion of marriage but had agreed to let him have an active role as Sam’s father. Or, at least, she’d conceded to it. He could never be too sure with her—or with any of the women who had passed through his adult life—whether agreement meant they were genuinely on board or just that they were going along against their will and not letting it show.

      Either way, Candy had consented to letting him share custody, and even to naming Sam after Sawyer’s father. Then she’d also accepted Sawyer’s request for equal time with Sam, along with the ample child support he’d offered her.

      It was only when Harmon had come on the scene two years ago that problems had started.

      Sawyer’s visitation with Sam had mysteriously gotten harder to schedule. Sawyer had stopped being included in decisions about Sam and was no longer informed about whatever was going on in Sam’s life. He hadn’t even been invited to Sam’s last birthday party, and now Sawyer had to rely on the four-year-old to tell him most things, which, more often than not, resulted in only hearing about it after the fact.

      But even though the problems started with Harmon, Sawyer couldn’t be sure the other man was actually to blame.

      He’d learned the hard way that just because Candy seemed okay with something, it didn’t mean she was. That under the surface things could be simmering that he was completely unaware of, things that would flare up when he least expected it.

      Did Candy really want to move to Vermont or was she not telling Harmon she didn’t?

      Was Harmon calling the shots with Sam, with Sawyer’s visitation and participation in his son’s life, or was Candy merely using him as an excuse to make Sam’s upbringing go the way she wanted it?

      Was it possible that Candy hadn’t been so okay with sharing custody of Sam these past four years and moving to Vermont was her passive-aggressive way of cutting Sawyer out of his life?

      Sawyer didn’t know.

      And he sure as hell couldn’t say he was any good at deciphering what was really going on with her.

      At the start, when Candy was being so agreeable to everything about Sam, Sawyer had taken into consideration that she was the primary caregiver, so he’d agreed to Candy being Sam’s custodial parent.

      Now, as the custodial parent, if she petitioned the court for relocation, a judge would most likely grant the relocation petition.

      Besides Candy being the custodial parent, Sawyer’s brother had said that the court would consider the fact that Sawyer often had to travel for work while Candy was a stay-at-home mom whose livelihood depended on her husband’s income—an income that could be improved if Harmon took over his father’s practice in Vermont instead of maintaining his own failing practice in Wheatley.

      And off Sam would go to Vermont.

      So Sawyer didn’t want to go to court. But he might not have a choice. Because even though he thought it was possible that Candy honestly didn’t want to move, he also didn’t hold out much hope that she would openly admit it to her husband.

      When it came to the women in his life, he’d definitely had a pattern. On the surface they’d all been agreeable, considerate, seemingly selfless women he’d thought were perfect partners. The kind of perfect partner his mom had been for his dad for the past four decades.

      But instead of finding happily-ever-after the way his parents had, Sawyer had ended up accused and found guilty of relationship crimes he hadn’t even known he was committing. As a result, his marriage and what he’d thought was a relationship headed for marriage with Candy had been dead in the water before he’d even realized anything was wrong.

      And now his relationship with Sam could be on the line, unless he could rely on a woman speaking up—a woman he already knew was unlikely to do that.

      He tapped his fingers on his desktop agitatedly.

      He loved that kid more than he loved breathing. He couldn’t lose him to Harmon and Vermont.

      “Dammit!” he said under his breath, clenching his hands into two fists to stop the tapping.

      A knock on his office door caused him to sit straighter and call a “Come in” as if nothing was bothering him.

      His executive assistant poked her graying head through the door. “The day is done. I just wanted to tell you that the fliers for the Wheatley park project are on my desk waiting for you, and to say good-night.”

      “Thanks, Marybeth. Have a nice night.”

      “You, too,” the sixty-one-year-old answered before retreating and closing the door.

      Sawyer checked the time and discovered it was nearly five-thirty. He needed to head for Wheatley.

      He pushed his chair back and stood, shrugging out of his tan suit coat, taking off his tie, then unfastening the top button of his ecru shirt and rolling his long sleeves to his elbows.

      Casual got