The Instant Family Man. Shirley Jump

you and I haven’t seen you in almost five years.”

      “You know me. I’m not perfect, but I’m a decent man at my core, Peyton.” His gaze locked on hers, and Peyton’s heart stuttered again. “Trust me.”

      That was the hardest part. Trusting anyone with Maddy. Susannah had always been busy and scattered, flitting in and out of Maddy’s life like a butterfly. Peyton was the one who had enrolled her in preschool, cut the crust off her sandwiches, enforced a bedtime, set all the doctor and dentist appointments. To let someone else control even five minutes of Maddy’s life took a Herculean amount of trust.

      Charlie crossed over to Peyton, nosing at her hand until she lifted it to scratch his ears. It almost seemed as if the dog remembered her, remembered that day they had found him. More than five years ago, she had been walking home from her part-time job with Luke—Susannah had ditched her promise to drive Peyton home and headed off with her girlfriends. Luke had offered to walk Peyton home. Along the way, they’d found this mutt, shivering and shaking and curled into a ball under a tree. No collar, no tags, nothing but skin and bones and big eyes. Luke had scooped the dog into his arms and carried him a mile back to his house and straight into the kitchen, ignoring his mother’s protests.

      Luke had fed the dog the steaks defrosting on the counter, then given him a bath in the second-floor tub. We should call him Charlie, because he had an angel looking out for him, Luke had said. Then he’d looked in Peyton’s eyes, in that way he had of making her feel as if nothing else existed in the world but this man, this moment.

      An angel? she had asked.

       If you hadn’t seen him, Charlie might not have lasted another day. He’s lucky to have you in his life.

      In that schoolgirl-crush way, she’d thought he was talking about more than just the dog. She’d been head over heels for Luke, her heart breaking a little every time she saw him with her sister. But the Luke she remembered, the same one who had let down her sister when she’d gotten pregnant, had no more permanence than wet tape. She didn’t think that side of Luke had changed one bit—

      But then there was the dog.

      A dog required commitment. A home. A dependable adult.

      Maybe Luke could handle Maddy. It was only two weeks, after all. A blip in time.

      A test...

      Was she really basing her decisions for Maddy on a dog, for Pete’s sake?

      But what choice did she have? Maddy needed time, love and connection, and there was no better person to do that than the man who shared her DNA. Peyton had done her best, but even she had to admit her best might not be enough. Maybe spending time with Luke, with the man who had once loved her mother, would allow Maddy to heal.

      And at the end of the two weeks, if Luke still wanted to be part of Maddy’s life, Peyton could make arrangements. Call up a lawyer, draw up a plan.

      “I’ll do it,” Luke said, “but on one condition.”

      Her gaze narrowed. “What?”

      “I’m not going to be Uncle Luke or Friend Luke or anything else. I’m Dad. So you better figure out a way to tell my kid she has a father, and also that I’m not going anywhere two weeks from now. Or ever.”

Chapter Two

      Two hours later, Luke sat in a lounge chair in the shade of the lanai roof at the back of his rental house, nursing a beer that should have taken the edge off his hangover, but instead churned in his stomach. Across from him there were splashes and laughter and bawdy jokes, but he stayed where he was, feeling older than dirt.

      A kid. He had a kid.

      He let the thought settle over him, but it didn’t become any more real or concrete. He’d seen the photo of Madelyne, seen his eyes in her wide blue ones, but still couldn’t compute him + Susannah = Kid.

      Being a parent meant being responsible. Growing up. Stepping off the hamster wheel of parties and hangovers. Considering he had a party going on right in front of him while he was still battling the hangover from yesterday, Luke Barlow clearly wasn’t stepping off that hamster wheel anytime soon.

      Except a part of him had been growing weary of the life he’d been leading, had been for some time. The problem was whether he was ready to change. Or if he was even capable of change.

      Change like agreeing to spend time with a four-year-old? It didn’t sound hard—what did a four-year-old do anyway?—but it sounded like something better suited for a relative or a good friend or someone other than Luke. Someone with experience. Someone who knew what to do when a kid cried or fell down.

      Except he was Maddy’s father. A father should know what to do. A father should have no problem spending time with his daughter.

      A father who hadn’t known he was a father until Peyton showed up on his doorstep. From the minute she started speaking, the world had dropped away. Part of it was the bomb she’d exploded in his life, part of it was Peyton herself.

      Hell, he hadn’t even recognized her at first. Gone was the geeky girl who had tagged along with him and Susannah. The girl who more often than not carried a book in her backpack and buried her nose in the pages every spare second. That girl had turned into a beautiful woman, the kind who stopped traffic, made a man forget every coherent thought in his head.

      And lingered in his mind long after she had pulled out of his driveway.

      Peyton had always had this way about her, an air his mother had called it, that wrapped people in a spell. Okay, maybe not people. Maybe just him. Because today he’d agreed to the one thing a man like him should never do—

      To be a responsible role model and parent. Ha. Luke had his position in the family—sandwiched between his military hero younger brother and his overachieving CEO elder brother—serving as the family screwup. Yeah, he’d been good at sports, but he’d never been good enough to become a star player, the way Jack had been a leader in the military or the big-bucks moneymaker Mac was. Maybe it was because Luke hadn’t found his niche, his place in the world. Or maybe it was because he was no good at doing responsible or role model or anything even close.

      He’d tried, once. Tried to be the kind of guy someone else could rely on.

      And he’d screwed it up. Royally. No one talked about the fallout from that day, the accident that had left Jeremiah in a wheelchair. Nowadays, Jeremiah rarely left his house, rarely returned Luke’s texts, rarely did anything other than play video games in the dark and wait for his life to unwind.

       Damn.

      Luke twirled the beer in his hands, but didn’t drink. The weight on his shoulders hung too heavy for him to do anything other than sit there and wonder if Peyton had made a huge mistake in bringing a kid into his life.

      Not a kid. His own child. His daughter.

      Ben Carver plopped down into the seat beside Luke, clutching a nearly empty beer, his hair wet from the pool. Ben grinned, and the gesture lightened the heavy air around Luke. Friends for almost all their lives, Luke and Ben had been named Most Likely to Cut Class in high school, gone on more adventures in twenty-six years than most people went on in eighty and served as each other’s wingman almost every night of the week. They were bachelors—and damned good at it, if you asked anyone in Stone Gap. If there were ever two men in this town least likely to grow up, it would have been Luke and Ben.

      Except now Luke had a child, and that changed things. A lot.

      “You going to sit there all day or join the party?” Ben said. “There are some hot girls waiting for you to join them in the pool. Actually, they’re waiting for me, but they said you could tag along. Pity dates.”

      “Yeah.” Luke tipped his beer in the direction of Tiffany and Marcia and...Beth? Barbara? He couldn’t