Dating a Single Dad by Kris Fletcher - Comeback Cove 01 - Dating a Single Dad

insistent.
    Kiss him.
    The thought shivered through her, magnified tenfold when she saw that he was searching her face, his gaze lingering on her eyes, her cheeks, her lips.
    She tipped her face up. Then, quick as a light being turned off, sanity returned.
    She jerked back, cheeks burning, and raced for the cold and the night and the safety of outside. “Good night,” she said quickly. “I hope Millie has an easy night.”
    She slipped into the dark, picking her way down the path between their cabins. When she reached her door she looked back. He was in his doorway. Watching to see that she made it home safely? She smiled despite her confusion, waved and let herself in.
    He was just being a nice guy. She was reading too much in to this.
    She almost believed herself.
    Until she turned off the light and peeked out the window, where he still stood silhouetted against his door. As if he were trying to figure out what had happened.
    As if he were as reluctant to see her go as she had been to leave.
    * * *
    H ANK BLEW OFF the festival committee meeting the next morning so Millie could sleep. He called Brynn to let her know of his plan and asked her to tell everyone what had happened. It wasn’t until he hung up that he realized he’d made a critical error in talking to her first instead of his mother. Ma was bound to read something into this.
    That moment in the doorway the night before, with Brynn so close and tempting... Thank God she had backed away before he did anything. It was going to be hard enough to convince his mother that the only reason he had asked Brynn to deliver his news was because she had been part of the whole episode. It didn’t mean anything. As for that fleeting moment... Hey. He’d been exhausted, she had helped without making him feel incompetent, they had been almost touching and, yeah, she was pretty and he hadn’t seen any action in longer than he cared to admit. But no lines had been crossed. No relationships had shifted, other than her taking on child-care duties. There was nothing to make his mother suspicious.
    Thank God.
    All thoughts of Brynn and his mother were knocked out of his head when Millie crept out of her room with her bandaged hand pressed to her chest and tear tracks on her cheek.
    “Daddy, when will my hand stop hurting?”
    He dosed her with medicine, made her favorite mini-chocolate-chip pancakes and let her eat cuddled up to him in front of the TV. Maybe SpongeBob could cackle away the pain. But when the episode ended, the tears started rolling again.
    “I don’t like this,” she wailed into his chest. “I don’t wanna be hurt!”
    He rubbed her back. She needed to cry it out, his mother would say. Once she got rid of the leftover fear, she would be better.
    Ma never had a good answer for how he was supposed to deal with the parental guilt that lingered after the child moved on.
    The sobs were interrupted by a sudden gasp as Millie jerked upright, her face filled with almost as much horror as it had been when she realized what “getting stitches” really entailed.
    “My lab coat! I left it at the hospital!”
    “No, you didn’t, babe. We brought it home.”
    “I need it.”
    Crap. He should have washed it as soon as he noticed it in the bucket this morning. “Sorry, Mills. It’s dirty.”
    “I don’t care. I need it.”
    “I know, but it’s wet. Brynn soaked it last night. To get the blood out.”
    Fresh tears filled her eyes. “But I need it!”
    He was about to suggest they grab one of his shirts to use as a substitute when he figured out what she was really saying.
    “Do you want to Skype with Mom?”
    Thumb in mouth, she nodded. He kicked himself for not thinking of it earlier.
    “Okay. You go to the bathroom while I get things set up.”
    She nodded again and scampered off his lap. He grabbed the laptop and called Heather on his cell.
    “Hank?” Her voice registered the mix of surprise and worry that always accompanied unexpected contact. “Is