Second-Chance Sweet Shop. Rochelle Alers

if she was carrying a communicable disease.

      That was the first time Dwight realized his daughter was regarded as an outsider in a school system where most of the kids had grown up together. Not only had Kiera acquired the sophistication of someone who’d grown up in a cosmopolitan city like New York City, but she’d also favored the ubiquitous black worn by many New Yorkers. She must have confided this to her grandmother when Dwight overheard his mother telling Kiera, “Don’t concern yourself about those jealous little snits, because they know you’re better born and better raised.”

      He had his mother to thank for telling Kiera what was so obvious, because it would not have come out like that if he’d had to say it. There were a few occasions when he’d waited to pick Kiera up from school and he’d noticed several boys staring at her. This had obviously annoyed some of the girls with them, and when he’d mentioned this to Kiera, she stated the girls did not have to worry about her coming on to their boyfriends because all of them were stupid. Dwight agreed that some teenage boys were stupid, but there would come a time when they became mature young men. However, his daughter was having none of his talk about boys and so he dropped the subject.

      “Maybe you should bring a pair of tennis shoes with you that you can change into before you start working.”

      Kiera nodded. “I’m definitely going to do that.”

      Dwight drove out of the parking lot and came to a complete stop at the railroad crossing as the gates came down. The sound of ringing bells and flashing red lights indicated an oncoming train. “How was school today?”

      Kiera shifted on her seat. “Daddy, remember you asked me that when you picked me up?”

      He smiled. “My bad. I forgot about that. Your old man must be getting senile.”

      “You’re not old and you’re a long way from being senile. Maybe you need to take up a hobby.”

      “I have a hobby.”

      “What’s that?”

      “You, baby girl, and fishing.” He’d become quite an adept at fly-fishing.

      Kiera laughed. “I can’t be your hobby.” She sobered. “Have you thought about getting a girlfriend? Mom’s married, so what’s stopping you from marrying again?”

      A frown found its way over Dwight’s features. “I don’t have time for a girlfriend. Maybe after you go off to college I’ll consider dating again.”

      “But that’s not for more than a year, and you’ll be too old to hit the clubs looking for a girlfriend.”

      His frown grew deeper. “What do you know about trolling clubs looking for dates?”

      “I heard Mom say that you look for women in clubs.”

      Dwight felt a surge of rage he found hard to control and counted slowly until he once again felt in control. Adrienne had a tongue that was lethal as cyanide and sharp as a samurai sword. He had dated a few women since his divorce, and fortunately, he hadn’t had to resort to going to clubs to pick them up.

      He chose his words carefully, because the last thing Dwight wanted was to belittle Kiera’s mother. It was enough that she didn’t get along with her stepfather. “Your mother is wrong.”

      “Then why would she say that, Daddy?”

      He forced a smile. “I don’t know.”

      Kiera met his eyes. “Don’t you want a girlfriend?”

      Kiera was asking him questions he’d asked himself over and over since his divorce, and he knew if he hadn’t a daughter he would’ve considered marrying again. There was one woman who lived in the state’s capital that he’d dated off and on for nearly a year. She’d accused him of talking incessantly about his daughter and decided to end their liaison because she wasn’t able to compete with her for his attention. One thing Dwight had promised himself was that he wasn’t going to hide the fact that he was a single father and his daughter came first in his life.

      “It’s not that I don’t want a girlfriend. It’s just that I haven’t met someone I want to spend time with.”

      “Does she have to be pretty?”

      Dwight shook his head. “No, Kiera, looks are nice, but they’re not everything. I’d like her to be well-rounded so we could have intelligent conversations. And it would help if we both like the same things.”

      “Are you saying she would have to be a dentist, too?”

      “Oh, no,” he drawled. “That definitely would be a deal breaker. I don’t want someone where we’d spend all of our time talking about deciduous, cementum and molars.” The last car on the train passed and the gates lifted, and Dwight drove over the tracks.

      “What made you fall in love with Mom and marry her?”

      Frowning through the windshield, he held the wheel in a death-like grip. “What’s with the twenty questions, Kiera? Have you been talking to your mother and she’s been interrogating you about me?”

      Kiera stared straight ahead. She was so still she could’ve been carved out of stone. “The last time I spoke to her she did ask me if you had a girlfriend.”

      A muscle twitched in Dwight’s jaw as he clenched his teeth. “The next time you talk to your mother and she asks about me, I want you to say, ‘No comment.’”

      “You know how Mom is. Grammie says she’s like a dog with a bone.”

      “Well, this big dog isn’t having it. I meant what I said about feeding her information about me.”

      He wanted to tell Kiera that if her mother was so interested in his love life, then she should’ve never divorced him. After all, she had moved on with a new husband in a new city and loved her work, and from what he could see, she was having the time of her life.

      “I know she’s going to get mad at me if I say that to her.”

      “Let me handle your mother, Kiera. We’re both adults and I can say things to her you can’t or shouldn’t. Your mother legally handed over custody of you to me, so that means I’m totally responsible for you until you’re twenty-one.”

      Kiera rested her left hand over his right on the steering wheel. “I’m glad I’m living with you. Thank you, Daddy.”

      He smiled. “You’re welcome, sweetie.”

      He would never forget the sound of his daughter’s sobbing when she called to tell him her mother had made plans to send her to a Connecticut boarding school because Kiera had talked back to her stepfather. The tables were reversed because Adrienne’s husband had issued his own ultimatum: him or his stepdaughter.