Sophie! Get your butt down here or we’ll be late.”
Matt tried to keep the impatience out of his voice, but he wasn’t succeeding. It amazed him how long it could take a six-year-old to choose an outfit to wear to day care. He glanced at the clock in the hallway. If he played it right, he’d have time to get to the stadium for a full workout before batting practice.
“I can’t find my green shirt. I can’t go if I don’t find it—it’s mermaid day.”
Mermaid day. Whoever thought up theme days definitely was not a single parent.
“If you get down here in three minutes, I’ll stop at Lulu’s and you can get an ice cream.” He didn’t approve of bribes, but most times they worked. The clatter on the stairs told him it’d worked today.
He buckled Sophie into the back seat. Graduating to the booster seat had been a major milestone in Sophie’s life. At least once a week she had Matt measure her height. At three feet ten inches, she was the tallest in her class, but still not tall enough to forgo the booster.
“How come you didn’t talk to that lady who showed us the butterfly plants yesterday? She’s nice. I liked her. She’s pretty, don’t you think, Dad?” She put her feet against the back of the seat and turned them in the sunlight. “And did you see her shoes? I’d like shoes like that, with little stripes. I like stripes. But I’d want pink and green.” Sophie slanted him a look. “She has really shiny hair. Like Lauradore.”
Lauradore was the cat he’d been talked into two months ago. One of the many concessions Sophie had finagled from him since her mom had died.
“Lauradore’s hair is shorter,” he said, tousling Sophie’s hair.
When they reached the ice cream parlor, Matt helped Sophie out of the car.
“One scoop, Punkin.” He held up a finger. “One.”
“I know what one looks like, Dad.” She shot him one of those assessing looks that children can send boring straight through a parent. “Why don’t you ever talk to anybody? Well, hardly ever. And you never talk to ladies. I think we need a lady in our life.”
When Matt didn't respond she put her hands to her hips.
“I want to go in on my own.”
He fished a ten-dollar bill from his wallet, relieved to change the subject. “Get me a chocolate, with chocolate sprinkles.”
As she dashed off into the ice cream parlor, Matt silently thanked the heavens for the unfailing diversion of sugar. He didn’t allow it often, mostly as a treat, but it worked just as well as a tactical tool. He needed all the tools he could muster. Since Liza died, he’d had to lean heavily on all of them.
He watched Sophie order their ice creams. She was right—Alana had beautiful hair—but she was more than pretty. Pretty didn’t capture her refined, elegant beauty. When she’d first flashed her sapphire-blue eyes at him, heat had seared straight to his groin.
He might not want the complication of a woman in their lives, but he sure was overdue to have a woman in his bed. Yet between baseball and tending to Sophie, there wasn’t much time left for all that.
And much of that was his fault. He hadn’t fared well finding someone to help care for Sophie; maybe he’d overreacted when he’d fired the nanny last week. But coming home to find her snuggled with her boyfriend on the couch had been the last straw.
He jingled a few loose coins in his pocket, wondering if he was the one out of touch. Since the move to San Francisco, they’d been through three nannies in as many months. Was he too demanding?
He teetered on the edge of having what it took to be a single dad. No, not a single father—just being a dad. His mother had suggested sending Sophie to boarding school. Insisted was more like it. But that wasn’t going to happen. He’d just have to suck it up and find a way to deal. Call the agency and find another nanny. Maybe the woman who ran the day care center would know of somebody decent and reliable.
He watched as Sophie balanced the ice cream cones and headed for the car. Some days he felt guilty for not giving up the game and becoming a full-time parent. But without his hot bat and good arm at shortstop, he’d be padding about in slippers like his dad, checking stock prices and sipping coffee while making reservations for golf games with the elite of Bucks County. He’d had a dose of that life during the one season when he’d been on the disabled list, and it’d been scary. His dad’s idea of the idyllic life was Matt’s idea of hell.
It was beyond time for him to think seriously about what he’d do when he stopped playing. Guys who left the game without a backup plan didn’t fare well. Sure, money made the day-to-day run smoother, but a man needed more than that. He needed more than that. He envied Alana and her job working at the ranch. She seemed enthralled with it, even if she wasn’t very skilled on a ladder. He remembered the feel of her in his arms and grinned.
Maybe when he left the game he’d buy a house in the country, use his carpentry skills, build a greenhouse and put in a garden. Sophie could dig all she wanted. Maybe they could plant a butterfly garden if Sophie was still over the moon about them.
He liked gardens. The year he’d married Liza he’d put one in, nothing special, but it had thrived. Liza had wanted nothing to do with digging in the dirt, wasn’t interested in the odd-shaped vegetables that he picked with his hands. She preferred the perfectly shaped produce from the local market. The garden had been just one more thing they hadn’t shared. How long would it have been before Sophie was their only connection?
They’d stayed together for Sophie’s sake, but a kid wasn’t enough of a bridge to hold two people together. Especially two people who didn’t fit. He still felt guilty for not missing her as much as Sophie did.
“Dad?”
Sophie’s distraught voice brought him back from his thoughts.
“Your ice cream is dripping.”
She wrinkled her nose at him as he brushed at the brown streak that had dripped onto his pants.
“Don’t you like it? The lady put extra sprinkles on it for you.” She shot him a look between licks on her cone. “You were thinking again. I saw.”
Matt took a last bite and tossed the cone into the receptacle next to his car.
“Thinking is part of my job, remember?” He patted Sophie’s hair. “Gotta get you to day care, or I’ll be late for batting practice.”