Date with a Single Dad. Ally Blake

what a girl needed in order to feel safe had been increased tenfold in one short conversation with the most unlikely source—Meg Kelly.

      She’d been so confident that Ruby needed her space. And just as sure that it was okay for him to impulsively not want to give it to her. And even more than okay that Ruby knew it. His instincts were spot on. Maybe he did have it within him to do this right after all.

      He wrapped his hand around the door handle.

      Good hands, Meg had called them, and with enough vehemence he’d let himself believe it too.

      He went in. Even in the darkness there was no mistaking the big white bed jutting out into the centre of the largest bedroom in the house. He might have gone overboard with the rocking horse, the padded window seat, the library stacked with Saddle Club books, the tea-party table, the twenty different dolls, but he’d taken note of every lick of advice from Felicia and her other teachers who’d known her the past couple of years and let his International Resort Decorator go crazy, no expenses spared.

      He took a few steps into the plush-carpeted room until moonlight spilling through the faraway window gave him enough light to see that beneath the pink-and-white lacy bedcovers lay a skinny, young girl.

      A handful of days had passed since she’d been home for the weekend, but he was sure she’d grown. Her dark hair splayed across her pillow with such perfection it was as though someone had brushed out every strand. Her face was smooth and unlined. Her breathing even and unworried. Her throat not bothering her a bit.

      Before he knew it was coming he smiled wide. Cheeky kid. She even had her nanny fooled. But Meg, considering her more recent experience being a daughter, had seen through the subterfuge in a second.

      He took another step closer until he was near enough he allowed himself the small gesture of wiping a long, straight lock of hair from across her eyes.

      Ruby stirred. Mumbled a bit. He froze. But she soon resettled—taking up the whole bed, one arm flung over her head. Exactly the way he’d always slept.

      His heart slammed against his ribs. This creature was his daughter. His responsibility. His only family. If anyone did anything, said anything, printed anything that made the authorities even think about denying her to him …

      Before his throat clogged so tight he couldn’t breathe he spun on his heel and walked from the room.

      ‘Daddy?’ a soft voice called when he was a metre away from being home free.

      He turned; Ruby was sitting up, a shadow in the darkness, as he must have been to her. He found his voice for her. ‘Yes, honey?’

      ‘Nothing. Just checking.’

      Checking to see he was real.

      Checking to see he was still around.

      Checking to see he hadn’t disappeared right when she was getting used to him being there. God, how he knew that feeling. That loathsome, sinking, hollowness when someone you trusted to love you left without looking back.

      ‘I’m here,’ he said, his voice gruff. ‘I’m not going anywhere. You can go back to sleep.’

      By the slow, even breaths coming from her bed, he knew she already was.

      He closed her door and paced into the kitchen where he leant his hands on the island bench in the middle of the huge room.

      Felicia had left out his newspapers. Beside them sat a permission slip from Ruby’s school for an upcoming field trip, and a spaghetti jar overfilled with a mishmash of local wildflowers. He imagined Ruby picking them for Felicia as an act of contrition, and Felicia falling for the sore-throat stunt all the harder. Smart kid.

      He played with the rubbery, cream petal of a waxflower. Working in solitary, coming home late to a dark house, eating leftovers, keeping his weekends completely free to spend them at Ruby’s beck and call within the confines of a handful of safe places; this was the inflexible life he’d chosen. This was how things were going to be for the next dozen-odd years. No more hands-on business, no more travel, no more adult company?

      Meg Kelly’s lovely face swam all too easily back into his mind.

      For the first time since he’d set foot in the door—but certainly not the first time that day—he remembered the kiss. God, the delights he’d found within that mouth. It had drawn him in like a siren song he could no longer resist. But her warm skin, and her goddess curves and her instant response had made it impossible for him to tear himself away.

      He pushed away from the island and moved to the oven to grab his dinner. Oven mitts the last thing on his mind, the ceramic quiche tray burnt his fingers. He let go and it smashed to the floor. Egg and zucchini and cheese flew everywhere, splattering the wooden cupboards and embedding themselves in every bit of slate-tile grout it could find.

      He swore at the great mess profusely but sotto voce, always remembering Ruby was asleep down the hall. He flipped on the tap and shoved his stinging fingers beneath the cold-water stream.

      What the hell was he thinking? Kissing Meg. Confiding in her. Her pretty words might have sounded believable at the time, but Meg Kelly could yet bring down his carefully balanced house of cards with one word whispered in the wrong direction. Her best friend was a journalist, for Pete’s sake! Dammit. That mouth of hers could prove to be his downfall in more ways than one.

      He turned off the tap, wiped his hands down his trousers when he couldn’t find a handy tea towel, and set to cleaning up the mess.

      After cheese on toast for dinner he signed Ruby’s permission slip with a flourish so fierce he tore the paper.

      He’d let himself be wrapped around a female finger for the last time. The next time Ruby tried to pull a stunt like skipping school, he would talk with her. He would grow some backbone and set some boundaries.

      Apparently boundaries were something young girls needed. Or so some would have him believe.

      CHAPTER SEVEN

      IN LIEU of the dawn jog, the next morning Meg slid notes beneath the girls’ doors saying she was taking the hike through the national forest instead and to meet her at the rendezvous point at seven.

      After finally falling asleep some time after two she needed the extra hour to recuperate. But that wasn’t why hiking was suddenly her new favourite pastime.

      She was avoiding Zach.

      After the dreams she’d had, G-rated dreams of white picket fences and yellow Labrador puppies with herself in an apron washing dishes while looking out a kitchen window at a yard full of kids, she needed to put as much of the fifty acres of resort land between her and Zach Jones as she could.

      She stood at the back of the thankfully large hiking group, decked out in what seemed the most appropriate hiking attire she had, twisting her crazy morning hair into two thick plaits, determined not to let the humidity beat her, ready to put aside the past couple of days and start her holiday anew.

      ‘Good morning,’ a deep voice rumbled beside her.

      She snapped her eyes shut, not needing to look up to know who the voice belonged to. That tone alone could make her skin hum no matter what it said.

      ‘So where are the other two musketeers this fine morning?’ he asked.

      Thankful for the excuse not to look him in the eye, she glanced over her shoulder to find the path behind her empty. She said, ‘Still snug in their warm beds, I expect. Who knew I’d turn out to be the energetic one?’

      Who knew? They knew. And that was why they weren’t coming. Oh, no …

      In an effort to be honest with her best friends while still keeping from them everything she was unable—or not yet ready—to share, she’d been brief when mentioning her run-ins with Zach. Obviously too brief. Her insouciance hadn’t fooled them for a single second. They knew something was up, and being her best friends they’d optimistically assumed