Celebration's Family. Nancy Robards Thompson

Amanda had gotten his height and bigger frame. The girl wasn’t overweight by any means; she was just stockier and larger-boned than her sister.

      They were starting to really look like the fraternal twins they were.

      After Calee stepped back, Amanda hugged him.

      He loved the way that each of his daughters was her own person, especially since they were twins. Vastly different, yet fiercely protective of each other.

      Both girls wore their pajamas and had wet hair from their showers. They smelled of the fruity shampoo and bath products they’d conned him into buying them when they’d dragged him to the mall a couple weekends ago. He breathed in deeply, savoring the scent of his little girls, just about the only fragrance in the world that soothed his weary soul. Mingling with Rosie’s cooking, it was the smell of home.

      The girls had been at school until two-thirty, and then, after Amanda’s club meeting, they’d gone to the dance studio and were in classes until Rosalinda had picked them up at seven-fifteen. Despite the long day, they seemed to have more energy than he did after a good night’s rest. A case in point that youth was wasted on the young. Well, maybe not wasted, but there was definitely an unfair distribution.

      “Oh-em-gee,” Calee said. Lately, she’d taken to speaking in what Liam called “alphabet soup”—acronyms rather than words. It seemed to be the trend among today’s youth. “Are you going to be in that bachelor auction? Everyone’s talking about it.”

      “What?” Ugh. Had she seen the website on the tablet before he’d exited the page?

      “What auction?” he asked, borrowing a sly play from her book, one that he liked to call the “don’t offer any more than is absolutely necessary” tactic.

      Calee reached out and, with a couple confident taps, she pulled up the page he’d tried to hide as she and her sister had burst into the room.

      “Duh. This auction. You were just looking at it. Oh-em-gee. Why are you pretending you weren’t?”

      She put her hands on her slim hips and affected a disapproving look. That was the thing about teenage girls: nothing got by them. That’s why he was so careful not to do anything that might embarrass them or undermine the strict house rules under which he was raising them. Honesty was at the top of the list, and since he led by example, this was the perfect time to be truthful, a good teaching moment.

      “I was looking at the website because I went to a meeting today, and they were talking about it. Some of my colleagues are going to be in it to help raise money for the pediatric surgical wing.”

      Did partial truth count? His colleagues were going to help. He’d just omitted the part about him declining to take part, too.

      “I left to do rounds before the meeting was over. So I was checking the webpage to see what it was all about.”

      Amanda moved closer to stand beside her sister. She watched as Calee held up her hands. “Wait. Wait. Wait. You said your colleagues are doing it? Why aren’t you?”

      Liam was about to reassure her that he wasn’t doing it because he didn’t want to embarrass her and Amanda, but he was relieved when she didn’t wait for him to answer.

      “Oh-em-gee. You totally have to do it. You. Have. To. Do. It. Tonight at dance class Lacy Vogler was bragging about how her dad got invited to do it because she said he’s the hottest dad in Celebration.”

      Lacy Vogler? She had to be Quinn’s daughter.

      “But I told her that he wasn’t the hottest dad, that you were. Because you’re his boss, right? Right?”

      She was talking a mile a minute, and Liam was doing his best to follow what she was saying. Did this mean she wanted him to do the auction? He had a sinking feeling she might.

      “Well, no. I’m not exactly his boss. He works at the hospital just like I do. I’m in charge of pediatrics, and he’s in charge of orthopedics—”

      “But you’ve been there longer, right? Right? Lacy Vogler just moved here, and we’ve always been here, and she’s coming in and trying to take over. Please tell me you’re going to do the auction, because if you don’t, she will think she won and that her dad is better than you and—”

      This time Liam held up his hands. “Whoa, Calee, take a breath.”

      He gave his head a quick shake, trying to stop it from spinning thanks to her breathless tirade. Also because he didn’t like this trend of one-upmanship he was witnessing in her. And this wasn’t the first time, either.

      “Calee, in this family, we don’t worry about keeping up with the Joneses. So it doesn’t matter what Lacy says. The auction isn’t to decide who has the hottest dad.” He cringed before the sentence was completely out of his mouth. “Or however you put it.”

      Hottest dad? Since when did teenage girls even think about dads in those terms?

      The way his daughter was reacting was exactly why he didn’t want to participate in the auction in the first place. Well, okay, not exactly the reason. Sort of the flip side of the coin. Life and happiness weren’t about looks, or who got the most bids or raised the most money.

      “This auction is about helping. It’s about doing something for the greater good of the community.”

      “Right, but Lacy’s last name is Vogler? Not Jones?” Calee said. She’d also developed a habit of putting verbal question marks at the end of statements when she was trying to make a point.

      When Liam squinted at her, she explained, “Haha, Dad. You said we’re not interested in keeping up with the Joneses. It’s Lacy Vogler, not Lacy Jones.”

      She spat the girl’s name, as if the mere mention of it left a bad aftertaste, and that bothered him, too. Maybe even more than the thought of putting himself up for auction.

      “I know what her name is,” Liam said. “You know what that expression means. Stop being a smarty-pants.”

      “So, then, that means you’ll do it?” Calee said.

      Had she not heard a single word he’d said? He glanced at Amanda, who was still conspicuously quiet. Probably because she couldn’t get a word in edgewise when her sister was on a roll. Or possibly because she understood the implications of what her sister was trying to do.

      Liam shrugged. “I don’t know if I’ll be in the auction. I will definitely contribute money, because the funding is what’s important. The community and the hospital gravely need a pediatric surgical wing. It’s a great cause, and I do want to help, but I’ll have to think about whether or not I want to be in the auction.

      “You see, the way it works is the women bid on the men. That money goes to the hospital. But then the guys have to take out the women who placed the winning bids on a fancy date and spend a lot of money. I think I’d rather give that money to the hospital. Instead of spending it on a date. Don’t you think that’s better?”

      He paused to let the reality of that sink in. He wondered if Calee had been so caught up in outdoing Quinn Vogler’s daughter that she hadn’t even realized that being in the auction meant that a woman who was not her mother would expect to go out on a date with him.

      He paused, waiting for the implications to sink in.

      But Calee and Amanda were standing there staring at him, not giving him the horrified reaction he’d expected.

      “Because you do realize that, by being in the auction, I would have to go out on a date?”

      “It’s not like you’d be cheating on mom or anything.” The voice came from behind Calee. Liam’s gaze shifted to Amanda. She may have been the quieter of the two, but sometimes she seemed ages wiser. In fact, Joy used to call Amanda her “old soul.”

      “Well, no, I suppose not,” Liam answered, feeling as if the last of his reasons for not participating in the auction were flying