Dr. Dad Read Online Free PDF Page B

realized. Now that he knew she thought spaghetti was great, he intended to relax and enjoy himself.
    She gazed around the kitchen, and he wondered whether he should apologize for its clutter. Besides the detritus scattered across the table, the refrigerator was decorated with shopping lists and school calendars. A broom was propped in a corner, left out from when Lindsey had spilled a box of Cheerios yesterday. The pleated shades at the windows had been raised to different heights that morning, and he’d never bothered to adjust them.
    But no, he wasn’t going to apologize for the disheveled state of the room. He wasted too much energy worrying about whether he ought to apologize to Lindsey for transgressions real or imagined. He wasn’t going to worry about his neighbor, too. One difficult relationship with a female was all he could handle.
    â€œUm…” Sue peered through the doorway into thedining room, then glanced behind her toward the hall. “Will I be meeting your wife?” she asked delicately.
    The question jolted him, although he realized it was a perfectly natural one. She’d met him; she’d met his daughter—why shouldn’t there be a wife in the picture?
    He set down the spoon he’d been using to stir the sauce. “My wife died five years ago,” he said with a wry smile. “So no, I don’t think you’ll be meeting her.”
    â€œOh!” Sue looked chagrined. “I’m so sorry—”
    â€œThat’s all right.” There was a great deal he hated about Jane’s death, but one of the worst things—which had never occurred to him until he’d experienced it—was the constant need to break the news to others. For years after Jane had died, he would run into old acquaintances who hadn’t heard, and they’d ask how she was, and he would have to tell them and revisit his grief. And when he met new people, like Sue Dawson, he would have to go through it all over again.
    The pain wasn’t acute anymore; after five years he’d gotten used to the idea that Jane was no longer with him. But whenever he told new people, they would become upset and he’d feel an obligation to comfort and reassure them. Instead of receiving their sympathy, he’d be knocking himself out trying to make them feel better.
    â€œAm I going to meet your husband?” he asked, in part to direct the conversation away from himself and his loss and in part because he assumed a beautiful supposed celebrity like her had to be married or attached, or at the very least in a hot relationship with the Hollywood heartthrob of the moment.
    â€œNo husband,” Sue said laconically, her voice dipping into the subzero range.
    Okay. No more questions in that direction.
    He found a salad serving utensil in a drawer and placed it in the salad bowl. As he shut the drawer his gaze drifted back to her, standing near the windows, the evening light sloping through the panes and glazing her hair with an amber shimmer. She was single; so was he. Interesting.
    But impossible. She was his neighbor, and becoming involved with a neighbor would be a serious mistake. Besides, Lindsey deserved the bulk of his attention right now. He couldn’t fritter away his time or emotions on anyone else.
    She reentered the kitchen and he thrust the salad bowl into her hands. “Would you take this to the table, please?”
    She eyed Sue. “He treats me like a slave,” she muttered, then headed back to the dining room with the salad.
    Sue grinned. “How old is she?”
    â€œAlmost eleven—physically. Mentally, she’s anywhere from three to forty, depending on her mood.” The sauce had begun to bubble. He eased a strand of spaghetti out of the water with a fork and tested it for doneness. “I’ve got a bottle of wine for dinner, if that’s all right with you.”
    â€œGreat.”
    Lindsey reappeared in the doorway. She