The Daddy Project. Lee Mckenzie

shook his head. “I’ll look after it. It was my fault anyway. I keep the door closed, so I put the water there because it was out of the way.”

      As he ran the mop over the floor, he kept a surreptitious eye on Kristi. She wasn’t paying any attention to him. Instead something on the fridge door had caught her attention. The latest strip of pictures of him and the girls from the photo booth at the mall.

      “Cute photographs,” she said.

      “Thanks. We started taking them when their—” When their mother was dying. Daily visits to the hospital had become too much of a strain for her and too stressful for the girls, so he’d started taking the photographs to her instead. He couldn’t tell that to a stranger. “We started taking them a couple of years ago. It’s sort of become a tradition.”

      “I think it’s lovely,” she said.

      He worked the mop across the floor, keeping what seemed like a safe distance from her. Safe, that is, until his gaze sought out the shapely curve of her calves, the slender ankles....

      The mop handle connected with something.

      He whipped around in time to see her enormous cupcake bag slide off the counter, but he was too slow to catch it. Like a slice of buttered toast, it flipped and hit the floor upside down, and then there was no need to wonder what was in the bag because its contents were strewn across the damp kitchen floor. “Dammit.”

      Kristi set her camera on the counter, laughed and knelt at the same time he did, the tip of her blond ponytail brushing the side of his face as she tossed it over her shoulder. She smelled like springtime and lilacs.

      She started cramming her possessions back into the bag.

      He gathered as many things as he could and handed them to her. A notebook, several pens, an empty Tic Tac box, a hairbrush, two tampons and…oh, geez…a condom? The warmth of a flush crept up his neck, but he was sure his red face was no match for hers. She held the bag open and he dropped everything inside, avoiding eye contact.

      “Thanks.” She stuffed a bunch of receipts and a wallet into the bag. “I think we got everything.”

      He stood up, and she stood up, wobbling a little on account of her heels. He grasped her arm to steady her, reminded of how she’d nearly tripped on Martha’s boot. She smiled up at him, and when he looked into the depths of her green eyes he felt like a cliff diver plunging headfirst into an unfamiliar sea.

      “So…” she said, then stopped as though she wasn’t sure what else to say. A lot of her sentences started that way.

      “I should get back outside. The girls are out there, and I still have work to do.”

      “Me, too.” She flung the overstuffed bag over her shoulder. “Inside, not outside. It won’t take me long to finish up, then I was thinking I could just let myself out. Would it be okay if I come back tomorrow? In the morning, maybe, say around nine, if you’re not too busy. That’ll give me a chance to look through the photos I’ve taken, talk to my partners.” She stopped, drew a long breath.

      She was embarrassed, probably in a hurry to get out of here, and it was his fault. If he’d been paying attention to what he was doing instead of admiring her legs, he wouldn’t have knocked her bag off the counter. And then, if he’d been paying attention, he would have left the little plastic packet for her to pick up and pretended not to see it.

      Now the stupid condom had become the elephant in the room—

      The bad analogy practically had him groaning out loud.

      “Tomorrow morning’s good,” he said. “Nine o’clock. I was planning to work at home anyway.”

      “Great. I’ll put together a proposal tonight and we can discuss it then.”

      She reached for her camera, and as she got close he backed away, sensing it was a bad idea to get too close to a woman who smelled like a cross between an English country garden and a Hollywood starlet’s boudoir. Not that he knew anything about the latter, but he was a man after all, and he did have an imagination. She must have been thinking the same thing…about getting too close…because she hastily backed away, too.

      “Thanks. And, um, I’m sorry about the water, and for taking you away from your work. I’m usually not this clumsy.”

      He didn’t believe her. In spite of her polished appearance she seemed to have a knack for running into things, tripping over them. Oddly, it made her even more captivating. He had no business being captivated, though. She might not have a husband, but the condom in her bag meant she was involved with someone. And if she wasn’t…well, he didn’t want to know what it meant.

      “Is there anything else I can tell you about the house?” he asked, not knowing what else to say.

      “I don’t think so. I’ll just take a quick look at the bedrooms and let myself out. I assume they’re down the hallway off the foyer.”

      He nodded.

      She whirled around and once again his nose filled with her heavenly scent.

      She crossed the family room like it was a runway, the flippy hem of her skirt flirting with her knees and the heels of her shoes making a crisp, sharp sound against the hardwood. Just before she left the room, she smiled at him over her shoulder, as if to say she knew perfectly well why he was still standing there.

      “See you in the morning.” And then she was gone.

      You’re wasting your time, he told himself. She’s not your type.

      Did he even have a type? He’d thought it was Heather. She had been every bit as attractive as this woman was, just in a more down-to-earth, practical way. No swirly skirts and purple cupcake bags for her. Heather had been studiously working toward a doctorate in psychology when they’d started dating. They hadn’t talked about marriage, but it was the obvious thing to do after they’d found out they were expecting.

      The pregnancy had taken a heavy toll on Heather’s health, but then the girls arrived and they seemed like such a gift, such a natural extension of their lives that neither of them had given much thought to any scenario other than Heather getting better. She hadn’t.

      He’d been left with a lot of questions. Would she have married him under any other circumstances? Would he have married her? Those were questions with no answers, only regrets. Would she still be alive if not for the pregnancy? Of course she would. It took two people to make a baby and the rational scientific part of his brain knew that. The part that housed his conscience was another matter. It ate at him with a relentless appetite.

      As for the beautiful woman who had just disappeared down the hallway, the one who might be walking into his bedroom at that precise moment, he had questions. Truth was he shouldn’t have any, but that wouldn’t prevent him from looking forward to seeing her tomorrow morning and maybe getting the answers to some of them.

      Chapter Three

      The next morning Kristi yawned and poured herself a cup of tea, then settled in at the kitchen table with her laptop. She had stayed up far too late last night, going over the photographs of Nate McTavish’s house and drafting a design plan. She was not a morning person at the best of times, and agreeing to meet him at nine o’clock had been a bad idea. Now she had just over an hour to review her proposal, check her email and make the twenty-minute drive to the university district.

      Hercules nosed her ankle. He sat on his haunches and cocked his head when she smiled down at him.

      “Hey, Herc. Do you want to sit with me?”

      He danced on his hind legs, tail wagging, and she swept him onto her lap. From beneath shaggy brows, his black-button eyes sparkled up at her.

      “Sit and be good or I’ll put you down.”

      He settled in, and Kristi opened her email.

      She wrapped one hand