The Daddy Dance Read Online Free PDF

just like the worst villains of Jenny’s favorite animated movies. But the child eventually got to bed wearing her pajamas, with her teeth brushed, her hair braided and her prayers said.
    Exhausted, and unwilling to admit just how much her foot was aching, Kat collapsed onto the sagging living-room couch. Six more days. She could take six more days of anything. They couldn’t all be this difficult. She glanced at her watch and was shocked to see it was only eight-thirty.
    That left her plenty of time to call Haley. Plenty of time to catch up on the exploits of Adam and Selene, to remember why Kat was so much better off without that miserable excuse for a man in her life.
    Kat summoned her willpower and stumped over to her purse, where she’d left it on the kitchen table. She rooted for her cell phone. Nothing. She scrambled around, digging past her wallet. Still nothing. She dumped the contents out on the kitchen table, where it immediately became clear that she had no cell phone.
    And then she remembered spilling everything in the cab of Rye’s truck in her rush of surprise to see him standing beside her. She had been shocked by the elemental response to his body near hers. She’d acted like a silly schoolgirl, like a brainless child, jumping the way she had, dropping her purse.
    But even as she berated herself, she remembered Rye’s easy smile. He’d been truly gallant, rescuing her at the train station. It had been mean of her to pretend not to remember him. Uncomfortably, she thought of the confused flash in his eyes, the tiny flicker of hurt that was almost immediately smothered beneath the blanket of his good nature.
    And then, her belly did that funny thing again, that flutter that was part nervous anticipation, part unreasoning dread. The closest thing she could compare it to was the thrill of opening night, the excitement of standing in the wings while a new audience hummed in the theater’s red-velvet seats.
    But she wasn’t in the theater. She was in Eden Falls.
    And whether she wanted to or not, Kat was going to have to track down Rye Harmon the following day. Track him down, and retrieve her phone, and hope she had a better signal at Rachel’s house than she’d had at the station.
    All things considered, though, she couldn’t get too upset about the lack of signal that she’d encountered. If she’d been able to call Susan or Amanda, then Rye would never have given her a ride. And those few minutes of talking with Rye Harmon had been the high point of her very long, very stressful, very exhausting first afternoon and evening in Eden Falls.
    By noon the next day, Kat had decided that retrieving her cell phone was the least of her concerns.
    Susan had swung by that morning, just after Kat had hustled a reluctant Jenny onto her school bus. Looking around the straightened house, Susan said, “It looks like you and Jenny were busy last night.”
    “The place was a pigsty.”
    “I’m sorry, dear. I just wasn’t able to get over here before you arrived, to clean things up.”
    Kat immediately felt terrible for her judgmental tone. “I wasn’t criticizing you , Mama. I just can’t believe Rachel lives like that.”
    Susan shook her head. Kat knew from long experience that her mother would never say anything directly critical about her other daughter. But sometimes Susan’s silences echoed with a thousand shades of meaning.
    Pushing aside a lifetime of criticism about her sister, Kat said, “Thank you so much for bringing by that casserole. Jenny and I will really enjoy it tonight.”
    Susan apologized again. “I can’t believe I didn’t think of giving you anything last night. The church ladies have been so helpful—they’ve kept our freezer stocked for months.”
    “I’m glad you’ve had that type of support,” Kat said. And she was. She still couldn’t imagine any of her friends in New York cooking for a colleague in need. Certainly no one would organize food week after week. “How was