“The thing about Sam,” Dennis said, “is that he really is an ultimate bachelor with a golden heart. Someone should hook him.”
John shook his head. “You’ll never catch Sam.”
“But he was taking her to Vegas,” Jane said. “That gives me pause about this bachelor song he sings.”
A little doubt crept into John. “Sam’s just up to his usual tricks. We all suffer from it. And love him for it, too,” he said truthfully.
“Well,” Cosette said brightly, “I suppose it doesn’t matter whether you’re in love with Daisy. She’s not here, and who knows when she’ll come home after the shock she’s suffered.”
“Wait a minute.” John’s brain whirred like a pinwheel. Which fallacy should he start with—that he was in love with Daisy, or that she might never return? This was BC: she had to return. “I’m not in love with Daisy.”
The second the words left his mouth, causing glints of mirth and knowing to shine in his friends’ eyes, John knew—just as they knew—that he was head over heels, gone-and-not-coming-back, certifiably in love with Daisy Donovan.
“Oh, crap,” he said, and they high-fived each other, and then him, for good measure.
This was a problem. He was now squarely in BC’s sights, and the worst part was, he had no clue where Daisy was, and if that was his child she was carrying.
Holy smoke.
“And that’s that,” John told Daisy’s gang. “You lot are going to help me make this right. And if that’s not high irony, I don’t know what is.”
Daisy’s gang of five, seated in their new man cave, shook their lunkheads. “We can’t help you,” Dig said.
“No aid to the enemy,” Red said.
“She’s our girl,” Clint said, “even if she didn’t choose one of us.”
“We don’t see what a great girl like her would see in a squid like you,” Carson said.
“And we haven’t given up hope,” Gabriel said. “We’re not helping any Handsome Sams, Squints or Frogs. Where do you guys get these names, anyway?”
So he was sitting square in enemy camp, with conspirators unwilling to be his wingmen in his hunt to find Daisy. “Listen, Daisy’s having a baby, and she’s going to need our help.”
“Our help,” Red said. “Not necessarily your help.”
“Unless you’re the father,” Carson said, “and we don’t see that being the case.”
John shrugged. “Of course I’m the father. Who else do you think it would be?” Here he was fibbing just a bit because he didn’t know for sure, but in the night, he’d ruminated over what his friends had said to him at The Wedding Diner and realized it really didn’t matter who the father of Daisy’s baby was. He was in love with her, and he’d be a good father, a dad to her child.
As far as John was concerned, that made it case closed for his suit.
They glared at him, not believing him.
“Daisy would have told us,” Clint said. “We’ve got our money on it being that fellow up in Montana. The airy-fairy one who lives in the wild and communes with nature and all that crapola.”
John laughed. “Branch would get a real charge out of hearing himself described that way.”
“So?” Carson demanded. “How do you know Daisy’s not with him?”
“Because she’s not. And we need to find her, fellows.”
“Again,” Dig said, “we need to find her. There’s no you and us in this situation. We’ve known her since she was three years old, and we don’t need any outside help rescuing her from what was clearly an unfortunate decision on her part.”
“That’s too bad.” John leaned back in one of the leather chairs, glanced around the man cave. “It’d be good for your new business to showcase your first success as date makers.”
“You’re not one of our clients,” Red said.
“Because you don’t have any yet,” John said, pointing out the obvious. “If you’re going to be the premier dating service and cigar bar,” he said, glancing with doubt toward the leather-wrapped cigar bar and wooden walls that shouted man cave, in complete opposition to the idea of being a dating service, “you need a high-profile client to highlight what you can do. And that’s me.”
They gawked at him. John could hear the wheels turning.
“He’s right,” Clint said reluctantly.
“Never say that an out-of-towner is right,” Carson said, his words hushed.
“Nevertheless, he has a point,” Dig said, his voice stunned.
“At least it’s not Handsome Sam,” Gabriel said. “I think I can stand anything but giving our girl up to a man with a handle like that!”
* * *
THE SIX MEN got out of the two trucks, warily eyeing the Donovan compound.
“Well,” Dig said to John as they stared at the massive two-story gray edifice, “here’s the yellow brick road. And while you might want us to play your Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Toto and—”
“I’m not playing Dorothy,” Red said, “no cracks about my hair or anything.”
They gazed at his long red mop for a second. John didn’t think there was a man on earth he’d rather deem Dorothy less than Red. The man had arm muscles that looked like a bear’s.
“Cowardly Lion, Tin Man, Scarecrow, Toto and a flying monkey,” Dig said, his tone impatient with his friend.
“Okay, I can go with a flying monkey. They were kind of cool,” Red said, but they ignored him and went back to staring at the house where Daisy lived, and thus, her warlock of a father.
John shook his head. “I really don’t know if this is the right plan, fellows.”
“Well, you came to us for help, need I remind you?” Carson said. “And this is how we suggest you help yourself. You’re going to have to man up and ask for his daughter’s hand in marriage.”
“What?” John said, and Daisy’s gang favored him with narrow gazes.
“That’s what we’re here for, isn’t it?” Gabriel demanded.
“I was going to start small,” John said, “like maybe let Robert Donovan know that I’d like to find his daughter.”
They shook their heads.
“Here’s the problem,” Clint said. “We have it on good authority that Donovan doesn’t know his little angel is expecting his grandchild.”
“That can’t be possible. This is BC,” John said. “Everybody knows everything about everybody, and if they don’t, it’s because they’ve buried themselves deep under a rock.”
“And just who do you think would tell Mr. Donovan that his daughter is in the family way?” Dig asked, staring at him. “Don’t you think he’d have had a word or two with the man he thought had knocked up his daughter and left her high and dry?”
“You being that fellow and all,” Red said, “now that the truth has come out.”
“No truth has come out!” John said, but he was beginning to wonder himself. He’d asked Sam, but Sam had denied knowing who the