The Reluctant Daddy Read online

  Who knew he’d be assigned to a case where a verdict of arson could spell trouble for half the population of Tyler?

  Who knew the daughter of his prime suspect, the mother of two toddlers, would be the woman of his dreams? Who knew her kids would have such a hold on him?

  Who knew she’d be withholding evidence?

  “We shouldn’t have done this.”

  He gazed deeply into her eyes and touched her cheek with the back of his fingers.

  “What?” she asked breathlessly, gazing up at him boldly. “We haven’t done anything.”

  “You really think we haven’t done anything tonight?” He shook his head slowly and ran his fingers through her hair. “You should be scared.”

  “Lee…” She pressed her palms against his chest. “It doesn’t scare me.” Her eyes were shining with conviction. She’d never felt so alive, so full of fire.

  “You should be, and here’s the proof.” He pulled her to him and pressed a searing kiss to her lips.

  When he released her, she gasped. “I’m not convinced. You’re the one who’s scared.”

  “Glenna,” he warned, “if I kiss you again, it’s going to be like a freight train moving down a track. There won’t be any stopping it.”

  She melted against him. “I told you, I’m not scared. I’ll risk it.”

  The Reluctant Daddy

  Helen Conrad

  Around the quilting circle…

  “Reverends marrying arsonists.” Annabelle Scanlon peered through the stylishly wide frames of her glasses. “I never heard of such goings-on.”

  “And right before Christmas, too,” Tessie Finklebaum declared, pursing her lips as she began looking through her sewing bag for her quilting needles.

  “Well, I for one stand behind Sarah Fleming.” Martha Bauer gazed at her friends with exasperation. “If she loves the man and believes in him, why shouldn’t she marry him?”

  “A minister of the church ought to be more careful whom she chooses,” Tessie stated primly.

  “Fiddlesticks,” Martha muttered, rocking the quilting needle in and out on the flawless seam.

  “Martha is a fan of young love,” Bea Ferguson said with a hint of amusement.

  “I guess that’s why she’s willing to see her granddaughter shamelessly cavorting with the man who’s going to destroy our town,” Tessie declared.

  The others gasped, looking from Tessie to Martha, but Martha didn’t rise to the bait. She’d seen the fire investigator Tessie was talking about and she silently approved of Glenna’s attraction. There had been enough heartache in her granddaughter’s young life. If the man gave her the love she deserved, that was all Martha cared about.

  But the thought of his hard, handsome face made her pause. If only she could be sure this one wouldn’t go off and leave Glenna and the children behind like the previous one had.

  WELCOME TO A

  HOMETOWN REUNION

  Twelve books set in Tyler.

  Twelve unique stories. Together they form a

  colorful patchwork of triumphs and trials—

  the fabric of America’s favorite hometown.

  Unexpected Son Marisa Carroll

  The Reluctant Daddy Helen Conrad

  Love and War Peg Sutherland

  Hero in Disguise Vicki Lewis Thompson

  Those Baby Blues Helen Conrad

  Daddy Next Door Ginger Chambers

  A Touch of Texas Kristine Rolofson

  Fancy’s Baby Pamela Bauer

  Undercover Mom Muriel Jensen

  Puppy Love Ginger Chambers

  Hot Pursuit Muriel Jensen

  Mission: Children Marisa Carroll

  Contents

  PROLOGUE

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  PROLOGUE

  THE BLAST ROCKED the town of Tyler, splitting the midnight silence with a shattering boom. An orange fireball lit up the purple sky for a moment, then died down to do its destructive work. Flames raged through the building, eating away at walls, turning machinery white-hot, and sending it crashing from one floor to the next. Sirens wailed in the town, first from the top of city hall, then from the fire trucks hurrying to the scene. But the fire went on, a relentless, molten inferno.

  The flames devoured everything in their path. Ingalls Farm and Machinery, a firm that had stood for more than a hundred years and employed half the town, was gone in minutes. The desk where Jean Francis worked disappeared in an instant. Her computer, now a melted mass of plastic, slid to the floor. The drill press Pat Schweinhagen operated fell to its side like a wounded soldier. The newly renovated lunchroom, where Todd Werner had asked Mary Jane Fickes to marry him only last week, was gone, the tables and chairs now grotesquely twisted metal remnants.

  Johnny Kelsey, plant foreman, had recently helped negotiate a new contract that would provide jobs for another hundred workers. The file cabinet holding that contract began to crumble, and the paper inside crinkled and burst into flames in the heat. The pictures on Johnny’s desk—of his smiling wife, Anna; his children, Patrick, the high-school basketball coach, and Laura and Glenna and Kathleen—began to curl at the edges, the beloved faces turning black and then scattering in the strong draft from the fire.

  In the office of the owner, Judson Ingalls, windows burst from the pressure, showering his perfectly preserved antique desk with a glittering snow that caught the light of the fire licking the room. Another moment and the desk was gone as well.

  The building lay in ruins. Men shouted, ran around the perimeter, trained hoses on the rubble, but it was too late. The foundation of a small-town empire was gone in the time it took to tell about it.

  * * *

  A GENTLE NIGHT BREEZE sang through the pines around the vacation condo in Scottsdale, Arizona. Judson Ingalls woke and frowned, listening for something he thought he’d heard.

  “Must have been dreaming,” he muttered. Turning over, he went back to sleep.

  The phone rang just as he was coming out of the shower the next morning. Tisha Olsen, his companion, answered it, and he went on drying himself with the thick towel. He’d barely pulled on his slacks when Tisha was knocking on the door of the bathroom.

  “Judson? You’d better come hear about this.”

  Something in her voice sent a shot of adrenaline to his bloodstream. “Has something happened?” he asked, throwing open the door and striding quickly toward the telephone resting on the kitchen counter. “Alyssa?” he asked sharply, thinking first of his only child.

  Tisha shook her head, her face pale and strained. “No. No one’s hurt. But...” She held out the receiver to him. “Here. Edward will tell you.”

  Dread choked Judson but he held it back. He’d lived a long life and he’d handled every crisis fate had thrown at him so far. Whatever this was, he would handle it, too.

  “Edward?” he said to his son-in-law, the phone to his ear. “What’s happened?”

  Edward Wocheck took a deep breath. “First, Alyssa is f
ine, and second, no one has been badly hurt or killed.”

  “Just tell me what’s happened,” Judson barked.

  “The F and M. It’s burned to the ground.”

  Judson stood very still, then swayed, feeling as though his knees were giving way. Tisha rushed forward and took his arm, but he shrugged her away. Still, he sank into a chair before he returned to the phone, clearing his throat before he could speak again.

  “Is it—is it all gone?” he asked, his voice breaking on the last word.

  “I’m afraid it is.”

  Judson closed his eyes, steadying himself. “How?” he asked, his voice husky with emotion. “Who?”

  “We don’t know that yet. There was an explosion. It happened at about two o’clock this morning. The night watchman thinks he saw someone running away, but some say he’s enjoying the limelight a little too much for anyone to take his word as gospel.” He hesitated. “But just the fact that he says so means there will have to be an investigation.”

  “Of course,” Judson said, nodding. The racing of his heart had slowed a bit and he took a deep breath. “They always investigate fires of this magnitude. The insurance company isn’t in the habit of handing over money without checking things out.” His voice grew stronger as he fixed his mind on business details. “We’ll be okay. We’ve got a good solid policy. They’ll come through.”

  Edward hesitated, then said carefully, “As long as the fire was an accident.”

  “Of course.” Judson shook his head slowly. “Of course it was an accident. There is no other explanation. We’ll be okay.”

  He barely listened as Edward went over more of the particulars of the disaster. His mind was reaching back, back to his father. To his bewhiskered grandfather, who had worn a three-piece suit with a thick gold watch chain to the plant every day of his life. To his great-grandfather, Gunther Ingalls, who had founded the business a century and a half ago. Gone. All gone.

  Judson’s head fell to his chest and he handed the receiver to Tisha. Edward was still talking, but he knew she would deal with it. Ponderously, he rose and went into the bedroom, closing the door behind him. For just a while, he had to be alone—alone, to talk to his past.

  CHAPTER ONE

  BING CROSBY SINGING about a white Christmas from the loudspeakers at Gates Department Store, sky the color of gunmetal and the crisp hint of an oncoming snowstorm in the air, bright lights blinking and people hurrying by with packages—Lee Nielsen shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans and looked up and down the street of Tyler, Wisconsin, reminding himself that this was supposed to be the happiest season of the year.

  “And also,” he muttered as he crossed the street, heading toward Marge’s Diner, “a prime time for suicides.”

  That made him smile wryly. No matter how bleak things got, suicide just wasn’t his style. He was more the type to go out with a bang than a whimper.

  After a ride out to the site of the fire and an early-morning tour of the area, he was hungry as a bear. Marge’s Diner looked inviting, and even from halfway down the block he could see that it was full of townspeople having breakfast. Maybe he’d be able to slip in unnoticed and have a decent meal.

  He stopped and let a couple of early shoppers pass in front of him. The two middle-aged women glanced at him, taking in his long, lean form and chiseled face. One of them did a double take, then grabbed her companion’s arm and whispered in her ear, her gaze still on Lee. He nodded and went on. It seemed his hope of remaining anonymous had already been shattered.

  But what did he expect in a community this size? Everyone knew everyone else’s business ten minutes before they knew it themselves. He’d run into this sort of thing before, where people figured a stranger in town had to be the investigator called in to handle whatever crisis had occurred. He should have known folks in Tyler would catch on right away.

  He looked across the street. There was the little, redbrick fire station, his destination after a cup of coffee or two. A couple of firefighters were polishing a bright red engine, and one poked the other with an elbow, then they both looked his way. Nearby at Carl’s Garage a man was pointing him out to someone in a car.

  Lee slowed his steps and squared his shoulders, automatically swaggering slightly. At times like this he got that old itchy feeling in the palms of his hands. He suppressed a grin. Here it was again, that sense of being a hired gunfighter walking down the center of the street in an unfamiliar Western town. All eyes were on him, the men watching with uneasy suspense, the women pulling their skirts out of his way.

  He knew why they watched him with apprehension. At this point, a word from him could make or break the local economy. That didn’t give him a feeling of power. No, the feeling was more like sadness, regret. He knew what it was like to have your hopes dashed, to lose everything. He didn’t wish it on anyone, not even strangers. But he had to do his job.

  Marge’s looked like a refuge. The huge front windows were steamed halfway up from the conversation and cooking going on inside. From here he could see that the booths were filled, but there was still room at the counter.

  Pancakes smothered in boysenberry syrup, he thought to himself. Sausages on the side. Black coffee and maybe some fresh-squeezed orange juice. And if he kept his head down and his voice low, maybe no one would notice him.

  Pulling open the door, he looked in as a sea of faces turned to stare at him, expressions suspended in anticipation.

  Ah, hell, he thought. It looked like he wasn’t going to get through breakfast in peace. That was just the way it was.

  * * *

  GLENNA KELSEY MCROBERTS looked like a teenager today, though she didn’t know it. She’d wrapped her silky black hair into two short braids, and because of the misty morning she was wearing jeans and a navy-blue sweater she’d had since high school. Her deep blue eyes were sparkling and her cheeks had a winter pink that made more than one male stop and turn and look again.

  She didn’t notice that, either. Right now she was stamping her sneaker-clad feet to get rid of the chill and looking up at the sky, wondering if it was really going to snow. She certainly hoped not.

  “Wait until Christmas Eve,” she suggested softly to whoever was in charge of these things. “I have too much to do to get bogged down in snow just now.”

  Reaching into her backpack, she pulled out another stack of flyers and looked speculatively down the street, wondering who her next victim would be. Aggie Lindahl, who worked in the drugstore, had just let her put one in their window, but Glenna knew better than to try Gates Department Store. Nora Gates was a great supporter of most town causes, but her window displays, with their carefully crafted holiday scenes, were works of art. Glenna was the first to admit that taping up multicolored notices in them would be a criminal offense.

  Forget the department store. But Carl would let her put some in the window at his garage, and Marge Phelps wouldn’t mind at all. She encouraged local groups to advertise their fund-raisers in the windows of her cozy little diner, liking the community atmosphere it helped create. “After all, honey,” she would say in her friendly, jovial voice, “that’s what being part of Tyler, Wisconsin is all about.”

  So Glenna headed in that direction. But in the meantime, how about putting some under the windshield wipers of cars? The street was lined with parked vehicles. Yes, that would be a more direct approach.

  She glanced at the flyer again, proud of the job she’d done on it. Christmas teddy bears cavorted across a snowy background in newsletter style. Bazaar Bargains Benefit Beautiful Babies, the headline read. “Come find your perfect Christmas gifts and decorations. All proceeds go to support TylerTots Community Day Care.”

  Two of those tots were her own. They were at the child-care center right now, playing and learning. Both of them loved going there, and enrolling them was working out well.

&
nbsp; At least, Glenna hoped all was going well. She had to guard against showing anxiety around her children, but she was definitely worried about them. She’d always believed children needed an intact family, with two strong and loving parents. That was what she’d grown up with, and what she knew worked. When she’d married and started having children right away, she’d never dreamed her husband, Alan, wouldn’t be around for the long haul.

  But that was her current reality. So she did the best she could for her little ones, and right now they were snug and warm in their playroom at TylerTots, while she was out here in the cold, drumming up business. She shivered and began putting flyers under windshield wipers.

  “Hey, Glenna!” Her brother, Patrick, slowed his car to grin at her, his blue eyes laughing. His short dark hair was slightly mussed and curling, as though he’d just left a rowdy game of touch football in someone’s yard. “I’ll take one of those.”

  “I don’t know,” she said, looking at him with mocking eyes and pretending to hold the flyers back. “Somehow I just can’t see you at a ladies’ bazaar, Pat.”

  “Are you kidding?” He thumped his chest with his fist. “I’m a Renaissance man. I can do bazaars. I can do square dancing.” He thumped again. “And when I’m done with those, I can go home and plow forty acres.” He gave his sister a teasing smile. “There ain’t nothing I can’t do,” he drawled. “Just ask Pam.”

  “Double negative,” Glenna chided, laughing at him and thinking how good marriage to Pam Casals had been for him. “Grammar is one thing you haven’t got the hang of.” She handed him a flyer just the same. “And I don’t believe all this Renaissance stuff for a second, even though I have heard Pam got you to try square dancing. But you can show the handout to her. She might be interested.”

  Chuckling, he waved and drove off, and Glenna turned back to her chore. There were only a few flyers left when she rounded the corner and noticed the sleek, unfamiliar sports car with its lights on. She stared at the car for a moment, realizing someone had been out in the misty morning and forgotten to switch them off. She’d done so herself often enough. The vehicle was an old foreign model, a rag top, the kind that wouldn’t have a warning for things like lights left on, and the kind you couldn’t really lock. Glenna hesitated, wondering what she should do. It would be a shame if the out-of-towner returned to find his battery dead on a cold day like this.