“I’ve decided to start with their rooms first,” Kennon explained, since the girls at least were eager to give their input.
“Come with us, Daddy,” Meghan begged. “We want you there.”
“Yes, please, Daddy,” Madelyn chimed in. And then came the crowning touch. Guilt. “We never do anything with you.”
He raised his eyes to Kennon’s face. This seemed a bit too organized to him.
“This your idea?” he asked.
It was a rhetorical question. Why else would his daughters suddenly begin pleading for him to go with them to a furniture store, of all places? They’d never behaved like this before.
“What?” Kennon asked innocently. “That the girls want to spend some time with their father?” She mentally crossed her fingers behind her back. “No, they came up with that all by themselves.”
“Most kids ask for trips to amusement parks, not furniture stores,” he pointed out.
“What can I say? Your girls are exceptionally mature for their ages.” And then she dropped the teasing tone. “Besides, I suspect that it’s a matter of taking what they can get.” When he looked at her, a question entering his dark eyes, she elaborated. “Amusement parks are all-day commitments. A furniture store is an hour and a half, tops. Maybe they’re trying to break you in slowly.”
Simon was surprised when she moved in closer to him.
Kennon glanced over to the girls and said, “Excuse us for a minute, girls.” Taking hold of Simon’s arm, she guided him over to one side of the room. She knew she was crossing a line and that he probably wouldn’t appreciate her doing so, but he had to be made to understand before it was too late.
“I think it’s pretty clear that your daughters want you in their lives, Doctor. I’d say that makes you pretty lucky and I’d suggest that you take them up on it.” She saw a flicker of annoyance entering his eyes. This would be where most people would back off. But most people didn’t have her ability to empathize with children. She plowed on. “It won’t be long before they’ll just be streaks across a room as they dash out the door to go off with their friends. After that’ll come boys and college, and all this will be just a memory. A memory you won’t have,” she emphasized, “if you don’t do anything with them now.”
He was a private man and he didn’t like anyone meddling in his life. But he supposed the woman did have a point, and she knew it, too.
“You’re going to keep talking until I give in, aren’t you?”
Her mouth curved just enough to tell him that he was right. “Just thinking of you—and them,” Kennon added deliberately.
Right, he thought sarcastically. And while she was thinking, she wasn’t above manipulating the situation and the players to get what she wanted. Him at the furniture store. Still, he was forced to admit that he hadn’t been as available to the girls as he should have been. But that was, for the most part, because he didn’t know what to say.
“Tomorrow’s Saturday,” Kennon was telling him. “You do have the time to spare.”
How did she know that? He frowned. “Now you’re psychic?”
“No,” she said simply. “Just resourceful.”
Edna had been the one to tell her that Simon had become part of the Newport Beach Cardiovascular Group, which was housed in a very modern-looking two-story building located two blocks away from Blair Memorial Hospital. It took nothing for her to call the office and ask if Dr. Sheffield was going to be on call this Saturday. The woman scheduling appointments at the front desk had informed her that Dr. Champion was on call the entire weekend. It was all Kennon needed to know.
“Resourceful,” Simon repeated, scrutinizing the dynamo before him. “I’d ask you what that meant, but I have a feeling I’m better off not knowing.”
Simon sighed inwardly. Though he wouldn’t admit it out loud, the woman had made a valid point. And there was the fact that he had made a silent vow to Nancy at her funeral to become more actively involved in their daughters’ lives. So far, he’d only managed to live up to his word in the most marginal sense. He supposed that spending a few hours with them on Saturday, even if it was in the pursuit of furnishing their bedrooms, would be a decent start.
He capitulated.
“What time?” he asked Kennon.
She had anticipated at least another round of going back and forth, if not more, before she wore him down. This was almost too easy. Maybe he was a reasonable man after all.
“Then you’ll come?” she asked, relieved that she could stop playing at being his conscience.
Damn, but the woman had one hell of a radiant smile, he thought. It was one of those rare smiles that seemed to instantly pull you in and made you feel that all was right with the world.
He caught himself looking at her left hand, wondering why there wasn’t a wedding band, or at least an engagement ring, on her finger. For the first time since she had steamrolled into his life, he found himself wondering about her backstory.
As if to deny the very thought, Simon replied in a voice devoid of all emotion, “That would be the natural supposition for my asking you about the time.”
Kennon was tempted to tell him that he needed to loosen up a little, for the girls’ sake as well as his own, but for now this was enough progress for one day. One step at a time, that was all she could logically hope for. Every journey began with a single step and ended with another one many, many steps later.
Dr. Sexy Mouth had just taken his first, Kennon thought with satisfaction. Now the trick was to keep him going until he reached the destination where he needed to be.
“Girls,” she called out, turning around to face them again. “Your dad’s going to be coming with us tomorrow.”
He wasn’t prepared for the enthusiastic squeals and cheers, nor did he expect to have two overjoyed little girls rush up and, for all intents and purposes, effectively “surround” him.
No, he wasn’t prepared for it, but he had to admit he rather liked it. Liked, too, the wide, satisfied smile he saw on his decorator’s face. A man could easily get lost in that face.
The next moment, he turned away from Kennon and focused only on Madelyn and Meghan. It was a lot less unsettling that way.
Chapter Eight
How one trip multiplied into two and a single, one-time-only exclusive Saturday outing mysteriously led to another—and another—in the two Saturdays that followed was something that Simon felt he needed to examine at length when he had the time. All he knew was that it’d happened so effortlessly, so naturally, that, at the time, he wasn’t even aware of it. Wasn’t aware of saying yes to Kennon until after the fact.
Thinking back to how all this shopping came about was a little like searching for the seam in a skirt that appears to be seamless. You knew it wasn’t possible, there had to be a seam somewhere, but at first—and second—glance, it certainly looked to be without a beginning or an end.
In other words, it seemed to be continuous.
He also knew he had to put a stop to it before it became a Saturday-morning ritual to wander through furniture stores and import shops with his daughters on either side of him and the ever-effervescent interior decorator leading the way.
Simon decided to make his stand on the fourth Saturday morning. Like clockwork, Madelyn and Meghan came into his room, rushing now instead of approaching hesitantly as they had that first Saturday when he had supposedly agreed to go to just one store and only to purchase bedroom