"Pure delight. . .Karen Templeton has mixed appealing characters and true-to-life situations with laugh-out-loud humor and heart-tugging emotion to create a real charmer of a book. Wonderful!" -- bestselling author Marilyn Pappano

                                                           Excerpt

Arguing the whole way as they clanged up the outside metal stairs leading to the
second floor apartment, Ashli and Jake tripped over each other in their zeal to see who'd get to the door first. Guy followed at a careful distance, a bag of groceries on one hip, a smelly, shrieking two-year-old on the other, deciding that ignoring them was the safest policy at the moment.

"Get out of my way, turtlebrain." Ashli followed this directive by shoving
her four-year-old brother aside with her bony hip. "I got here first."

"I did!" rasped the little boy, shoving back, amazingly throwing his twice-
as-tall sister off balance. Which made her madder than a wet cat. 

"Dad-dy! Tell him to get out of my way!"

"Tell her to get out of my way!"

"Excuse me, but you both can just get out of my way," Guy said wearily,
reaching the top of the stairs. He unlocked the door and they all tumbled over each other into the apartment. Guy winced at the musty, rancid smell that still permeated the place, even after days of airing and a case of Lysol. A large
electrified-furred dog of dubious parentage slinked over to them, his tail wagging his body, his sheepish expression screaming, "Guilty dog here!"

Guy didn't want to know.

"Ashli, take Einstein out before he piddles all over the place." Guy let the
baby loose, heaved the groceries up onto the counter that served to divide the
"living room" from the "kitchen", then grabbed the dog's collar and leash off a
hook next to the door and snapped it around the beast's neck. 

"C'n I go, too?" squeaked Jake.

"Please." Guy steered them all out the door, which he left open so he could
keep an ear out. A breath and a half later, they all clamored back up. Damn. 

"Did he go?"

The two older kids raced to the TV and plopped down onto olive green
shag carpeting that predated hula-hoops, immediately sucked into a rerun of The Simpsons Guy was sure they'd seen at least a half-dozen times.

"Gallons," Ashli called over her shoulder. 

He looked at the dog, who seemed to be happy enough, then glanced
around the apartment. A real prize, this. 

What would Elizabeth's Louden's reaction be to the place, with her
designer suit and silk blouse and expensively soaped skin? She'd probably hoist that pert little nose in the air and declare, "See? Men haven't evolved."

At the moment, he'd probably agree with her.

Wasn't as if he'd planned it this way, he thought as he grabbed the
chattering baby and trudged to the tiny bedroom all three kids shared. He quickly changed the little boy, barely able to think about dinner, let alone about finding a house where they could all sit in one room without inhaling dog hair. 

Actually, he had seen one property he really liked, just a few blocks away. 
But he doubted he could swing the down payment, not at the price the owner was
asking. Not to mention the mortgage -- he tossed the baby into the air and kissed his tummy -- which was a shame, because Ashli had immediately fallen in love with the old Queen Anne. 

So it was either lower his sights, or risk slow death from asphyxiation and
overexposure to Avocado and Harvest Gold. Or pray his house in St. Charles sold quickly, which, considering current market conditions, seemed unlikely. This apartment had been an act of desperation, the only thing immediately available that would allow three kids and Godzilla-mutt here. Knowing it was temporary helped a little, but it didn't make the situation any more pleasant. 

A brief but vociferous argument flared in the other room. Commercial
break, he figured, waiting out the fracas until the theme song from Home
Improvement started and peace was restored. 

Guy set a much sweeter-smelling toddler on the floor and returned to the
kitchen, which is where he discovered the source of the dog's guilty slink. Making little whuffing noises and determined to kiss and make up, Einstein plastered himself against Guy's shoulder as he cleaned up the spilled garbage.

"Get out of my face, you miserable beast." Guy half-heartedly shoved the
dog away so he wouldn't track in the orange juice concentrate before he could wipe it up, then looked up to see a snakelike tongue repeatedly licking the air three inches in front of Guy's face. Maybe after a nap, he'd laugh. Right now, he didn't have the oomph. 

"C'n we go to the park after dinner?" piped a gravelly soft voice right
behind him as he stood up, making him jump. How did they sneak up like that?

He turned to face a pair of imploring brown eyes. "I don't know, squirt. 
I'm really pooped."

"Please, Daddy?"

Jake only whined when he was tired and irritable. But so was Guy, who
shot back, "I said, we'll see," before he caught himself.

After all, he was the grownup. The grownup. He let out an enormous sigh,
then squatted down eye-level with the child. "I just walked in, same as you. Giveme a minute to unscramble my brain, okay?"

God, he was beginning to sound like his mother. However, he handed the
little boy a bag of pretzels and sent him back to the electronic baby-sitter,
knowing the crumbs would be lost forever in the hideous carpet. Man. Here he'd thought he was pretty understanding and sensitive and all that stuff, helping out
with the kids and cleaning a bathroom now and then, making the bed every
morning and pancakes every Saturday. You know -- the new improved liberated
male? Hah! As contrite as Einstein, Guy had given his mother a very nice present that first Mother's Day after he'd become a single father.

Okay. . . food. Guy methodically opened cupboards, closed them again,
tried to push nagging self-pity out of his brain, then repeated the procedure with
the refrigerator, sidestepping the eighty-pound Brillo pad planted in the middle of
the worn linoleum floor. He grimaced. Guess it was spaghetti again.

He put on a big pot of water, then opened a jar of Ragu and dumped it out
into a saucepan. He hated spaghetti. If he never had to look at another plate of
pasta the rest of his life, he'd die a contented man. But it was the one thing he knew the kids would eat no matter what, unless they were sick, and it had the added advantage of hitting three of the four major food groups in one fell swoop.

He stood watching the steam rise from the simmering water as if watching
an oracle, a handful of dried pasta clutched in his hand. If nothing else, no one could accuse him of not being honest with himself. The past year and a half had been hell. 

Thank you, Dianne.

He dumped the spaghetti into the water, stirred it, turned to get the milk
out of the fridge, pouring it into the plastic Tupperware cups he and his brothers used to use. From the living room, another shrill dispute snagged his attention.

"Ashli--" he warned, and was rewarded with a pair of angry blue eyes.

"Jake started it, Daddy," she began. "He's such a dork-face--"

"Ashli Nicole! No more!"

With a scowl that could freeze the sun, she turned back to the TV,
skootching cross-legged away from her brother, and rammed her chin into the
palms of her hands.

He hated raising his voice at her, but her perpetual bad mood was
beginning to get to him. Had gotten to him, months ago. He knew she'd been
devastated when her mother had left, but why she felt the need to take out her
pain and frustration on her little brother was beyond him. Kids fought -- as the
youngest of five brothers, that he knew -- but she really seemed to dislike Jake at
times. And that, he couldn't tolerate. 

"Okay, guys. Dinnertime." He settled Micah into his high chair as the
other two wiggled into their chrome and vinyl chairs with much floor scraping
and giggling and one cup of milk, per usual, spilling. Guy silently cleaned up the mess, then sank into his chair, exhausted, and just watched his children eat.

He'd thought at first that staying in a familiar environment was the best
thing to do. After one shock, Ashli couldn't have stood relocation as well. Or so the experts said. But as time wore on, and the child's sullen mood didn't seem to improve, Guy decided to explore other options. Obviously, what he had been doing -- drifting aimlessly in the status quo -- wasn't working. Trouble was, he'd had no idea what to do.

Then, three weeks ago, his mother told him about an ad she'd noticed in
the Ann Arbor paper for an opening in a Realty office in Spruce Lake, just twenty
miles away. Wondering why he didn't immediately say thanks but that's okay,
Mom, he'd put the kids to bed, shoved a vintage Ella Fitzgerald cassette into the
player, then stood in the middle of his nearly empty living room. Just stood
there, thinking, in a house he'd been able to hang onto only by selling most of the stuff in it. Finally, after what might have been ten minutes or two hours, it
dawned on him that a lot more was missing than furniture. 

Chicago wasn't his home, and it never had been. He'd only settled there
because that's where Dianne's family lived. Since there'd been no Dianne for
some time, why was he still there? 

He'd called Maureen Louden the following morning, and she'd hired him
sight unseen. He'd been tempted to wonder what he'd gotten himself into, but
before he could chicken out he told her he'd be there a week from the following
Monday and would she mind lining up a few apartments that might take a dog
and three kids until he could find someplace permanent? And get him the name of a daycare center, too?

She'd apologized, at least five times, that this was the best she could do on
such short notice. At this price, she diplomatically refrained from adding.

Micah squealed, interrupting his thoughts. 

Guy sighed and wiped a splotch of spaghetti sauce off the baby's pink face,
looked at his own bowl, pushed it away. He'd make a sandwich later.

"You guys done?"

They both nodded, Jake noisily finishing off his milk. "Daddy?" he asked
through a milk mustache. "Can we? Can we go feed the ducks?" 

Guy caught Ashli's groan and held up one hand to squelch any comment
about stupid ducks, stupid ponds, or stupid younger brothers. She liked feeding the ducks as much as Jake did, and he was having none of her contrariness this evening. So he nodded, even though he was so tired he wasn't even sure he could
feel his feet anymore. "Sure," he said, and was rewarded with a grin that had a
remarkably salubrious effect on his nerve endings. "There're some old bread heels in the Roman Meal bag. Go get 'em."

Amid Jake's chatter and Micah's high-pitched mantra of "Baby go gucks? 
Baby go gucks?", he heard Ashli ask, trying to keep anything resembling
enthusiasm out of her soft voice, "Can we go by the house, too?"

He knew which house she meant. "Sure, baby," he said, planting a kiss on
top of her head. "Why not?"

As they all scrambled down the stairs, each kid trying to yell louder than
the others, Guy vaguely wondered if Elizabeth Louden also liked feeding ducks and strolling around lakes on warm summer evenings. 
 

Copyright 1999/2000 Karen Templeton-Berger.  All rights reserved.  Reprinted 
with permission of Harlequin Enterprises, S.A