Daddy in Disguise (Crescent Cove 7)

Maybe a blow to the head would knock some sense into me regarding Macy. Nothing else had.

Macy turned toward me and blew out a breath that ruffled the loose strand of hair that had escaped her braid. “I’m sorry, Lucky, but Calendar Boy here and his legion of admirers have me all messed up. I’ve had to hire more staff, and we damn well know I won’t have a use for them once he puts his cannon back in its holster.”

“Oh, yeah, and what’s going to do that? Since all he’s done is sulk and fuck shit up all week.” Lucky shrugged when I cut him a look. “Just saying. I don’t see how us hiding in here as if they aren’t all attached to the windows outside is going to help the situation. Gideon has to make a decisive move to put an end to this.” He slipped a hand into the pocket of his overalls. “I do have about fifty of my business cards on me, if that’ll help…”

Because I knew he spoke the truth—even Lucky had to get it right now and then—I strode to the door that faced the street and undid the locks. Behind me, I heard muttering and a few gasps and a couple of chuckles.

I flung open the door, and the walkway was not full of women, thank God. Instead, a woman in a trim navy pinstriped suit held a microphone in my face with a triumphant grin. “John Gideon, the DILF of the hour. What do you have to say for yourself?”

“Fuck off.”

She blinked, glanced at her cameraman over her shoulder, and not so discreetly made a hand gesture by her hip. As if she’d summoned a murder of crows in a Hitchcock movie, a herd of women stormed toward the building, coming out from behind cars, trees, and even seeming to appear from the grates in the ground. That couldn’t have been true, but a man’s mind tended to play tricks on him when he was about to be swarmed.

“Call them off,” I said in an undertone, not bothering to disguise my urgency. They were probably all very nice women, but people in groups made me edgy. “If you do, I’ll give you your scoop.”

“What scoop is that? Are you going to reveal on live local TV that you in fact placed your own Facebook ad, requesting, and I quote, ‘a woman to be your wife who is better at cooking and cleaning than you are’?”

I squeezed my eyes shut as the sun beat down relentlessly on my scalp. I’d deliberately not read the “ad” Dani had placed, even though I knew I had to deal with it. I had to read it and process that my own offspring believed I was so hard up and desperate that she needed to do a mass post requesting female companionship for me—and had insulted my cooking and cleaning while she was at it. Yet she had gleefully consumed my apple pancakes even as she’d posted the blasted thing.

And I needed to ground her. For using the internet as a dating resource. For lying that I even wanted a date, never mind a wife. For covering up what she was up to with her phone.

Damn Jessica and her decision to give Dani her old phone in the first place. And damn her for calling me “sloppy” in Dani’s earshot. I’d never been sloppy while we were married, and I sure wasn’t now.

What I was, though, was pissed.

“I did not place an ad. Neither did my daughter. She simply wanted to find me a date. It wasn’t advisable, but we were all children once, weren’t we?” When the newscaster didn’t reply, I shrugged. “Okay, maybe not you, but I was a kid and I did stupid things. Not this kind of stupid, but her heart was in the right place. She cares about me and wants me to be happy and not alone for the rest of my life because her mother cheated and we got divorced.” It was only when the newswoman’s eyes widened that I realized I had seriously gone too far.

Since I never said too much—and many times, rarely spoke at all—that only proved how rattled I was by all of this. I needed to end it. Now.

The newscaster motioned for the circling women to stay back and for her cameraman to come in closer. “Lonely, lost, needing companionship, you appealed to your young child to help you find a woman. Is that what I just heard? If it is, don’t be ashamed. Many of us have been where you are. We understand.” She batted her dark lashes a few times too many at me, to the point that I wondered if the glue she’d used to stick them on had clumped.

I truly did not understand the feminine mystique.

“I didn’t appeal to anyone. I didn’t need to. You know why? Because I already have a woman.”

To be fair, I was as shocked to hear the words come out of my mouth as the newscaster appeared to be. An actual gasp went through the crowd. Or that might just have been Lucky, who’d pushed me all the way through the doorway so he could grip the ja

mb and lean forward to survey the situation.

“Oh, you do, huh?” The newscaster studied me with her now suspicious brown eyes. “Just who is that partner, and how come your sweet daughter failed to realize you had one? Or are you having,” she dropped her voice, “a secret romance?”

Another glance behind me just brought me face to face with a smirking Lucky. I grabbed a fistful of his shirt and hauled him out of the way, tossing him to the side like an offering to the assembled ladies in our midst. It was only sheer surprise that allowed me to move him so easily, since he was built like a freight train and stubborn to boot.

Once he was out of the way, Macy stepped forward. And I swear to God, I wasn’t a fanciful man, but it was as if the heavens opened up and a chorus began to sing. I reached for her, pulling her against me, my only thought to get through the next minute with her by my side.

Then my gaze dropped to her brick-red lips, painted and scowling. She rarely wore makeup when I was around, and to be honest, she didn’t need the warpaint. But at that moment, I’d never seen a more gorgeous sight. Especially when paired with her sizzling blue eyes, so wild and fiery that I couldn’t have looked anywhere else if I tried.

Definitely couldn’t have remembered another woman, despite being surrounded by them. All of whom were watching us avidly, I could just tell.

And I did not give one flying fuck.

“Right?” I asked softly, cupping her surprisingly silky cheek in my palm.

With Macy, you almost expected her skin to be lined with thorns. Instead, it might as well have been the finest satin. Her eyes flashed and I went for broke, because I really had no choice. She could make my lie into a kind of truth or prove it to be the story that it was, and I was entirely at her mercy.

“Right what?” She wasn’t swooning in my arms, but she also wasn’t pulling away. Her gaze raked over mine, and if I wasn’t mistaken, she even turned her face into my hand just the slightest bit.

Enough for me to say the words suddenly burning their way from my chest into my throat.