Must Love Single Dads – a short story

“I want to be a Ninja Turtle.”

“I want a butterfly.”

“Can you make me a princess?”

“Umm… Spiderman.”

Jamie Murphy had used up her entire repertoire over the past two hours. And almost all of her supply of face paints. 

The line of children waiting to take a turn in her wood and canvas director’s chair had dwindled and she shook her right hand to relieve the low-grade soreness that came from such a long period of concentration.

Only half an hour more.

She’d spent hours changing children into superheroes and ladybugs and wishing there was something in her face paint box that could re-make her into someone that Billy would want.

Too bad she didn’t believe in magical makeovers anymore.

The sun was setting now. The crowd thinned. The elementary school’s harvest-themed outdoor family night had drawn record numbers. Hopefully, the folks in her small town would come through and the fundraising they’d done tonight would be enough to replace what the school library had lost in an electrical fire.

Ten minutes.

She said goodbye to the kitty cat she’d just painted and the tiny girl slipped out of Jamie’s chair to run and show her mother the transformation.

“I only have time for one more—” She looked up as a middle-schooler plopped into her chair. “Ari.”

“Hi.” The girl ducked her head shyly. 

She was the last person in Jamie’s line.

“Am I too old for facepaint?” Ari settled in the chair, her legs dangling because the footrest of the chair was too high.

Jamie vividly remembered the awkwardness of being eleven years old. She’d been just like Ari. Legs and arms long and gangly. Shorts that would fit one day and then she’d wake up and find them far too short the next. Training bras…

She smiled gently at Ari. “You’re never too old for facepaint. Hasn’t your dad ever told you that?”

Ari looked to the side, long lashes hiding her eyes. A faint blush appeared on her cheeks. “My dad is so…”

“I know you were gonna say awesome. Or maybe rad.”

The deep voice from nearby startled both ladies.

Jamie’s pulse thundered. She felt like a middle schooler all over again but tried not to let it show on her face as she glanced quickly over her shoulder.

“I don’t think kids say rad anymore,” she murmured.

She couldn’t help but be aware of him as he moved in close, standing almost at her elbow.

“I was gonna say embarrassing,” Ari mumbled.

Billy grumbled and Jamie stifled a grin.

“Can you paint a Wonder Woman crown on my forehead?” the girl asked.

“Sure. You’d better put your hair up.” Jamie passed the girl one of the elastic bands she’d stashed on her wrist and then settled in with her brush.

Since she couldn’t seem to ignore the man standing at her side, she asked, “I thought you were supposed to be working this weekend.”

“You stalking me?” he asked.

“Of course not. Just your social media pages.”

She didn’t know all of his comings and goings. But she taught Ari’s Bible class on Sunday mornings and the girl had mentioned her father’s upcoming rodeo. 

“Dad got hurt,” Ari said softly.

Jamie was used to wriggling little kids and pulled back her brush at the girls’ words. She gave a mock glare. “Don’t move while I’m painting.”

“Don’t want to mess up the artwork,” Billy mumbled, his voice so low that Ari probably didn’t catch it.

Jamie gave him a sideways glare. “I’d appreciate it if you’d keep your comments about my work to yourself.”

He’d said plenty to her a few weeks ago. The blistering words still echoed. ”You hide behind all that makeup. No one can know who you really are.”

She made the last flourish to complete Ari’s forehead art and glanced his way again to judge his reaction. Facepaint was a lot different than makeup. Considering he wore a full mask of it during his bullfighting, he couldn’t criticize what she’d done for Ari. Could he?

But when her eyes settled on him, she saw the gray pallor beneath his tan, the tiny beads of sweat at his temples, the way his jaw was clenched.

“You don’t look so good, cowboy.”

Ari pushed up out of her seat. “Sit down, Daddy.”

Daddy. Jamie saw the flash of emotion in his eyes, quickly blanked, and knew how infrequently Ari must call him that.

The girl was really worried about Billy.

Jamie shifted out of the way. “Take my chair. It’s taller.”

The lanky cowboy would make the kiddie seat look like a toy chair if he sat in it.

“I’m fine.” He braced his feet and the tilt of his chin practically dared the two ladies to make him sit down.

Stubborn man. Fine.

She began the process of closing up all the individual pots of face paint and tucking them into the case where they belonged.

“What’d you do anyway, spring your ankle vaulting over the arena fence?” she asked offhand.

“A bull stepped on him,” Ari offered, the smart-aleck tone in her voice letting the adults know just what she thought about Billy’s refusal to sit down.

And Jamie gave up on pretense, abandoning the paints to give the cowboy a once-over. 

Broad shoulders still intact. Lean hips and mile-long legs looked better than all right. And the constant disapproving frown he reserved only for her was safely in place.

She didn’t care about that right now.

“Are you really okay? You got checked out, right?”

She knew the rodeo was required to have medical personnel on hand, but often the stubborn cowboys refused treatment.

Billy’s frown grew darker. A muscle ticked in his cheek. “I did.”

“He’s got a busted rib and his entire side is black and blue,” Ari offered again. This time, she was distracted as she used her phone to tell a selfie.

“I’m fine.”

How fine could he be if he’d skipped the rodeo this weekend? Bullfighting was his career. To miss out on a job was to miss out on a paycheck. She knew a few crazy cowboys who would ride with a broken rib.

Not that she thought it was particularly intelligent of them.

Which meant he felt worse than he was letting on.

Ari turned away, tapping away on her phone.

“Is there anything I can do?” she asked.

And the moment caught between them, an echo of a question asked a long time ago.

Something in his eyes flared. Recognition, maybe. 

Reciprocation?

And then, just as quickly as it had come, it was gone.

He turned away, toward Ari. “Let’s go, kiddo.”

And she was left alone to finish cleaning up.

 *

It was four days before Halloween, well after midnight when Jamie’s cell phone rang.

Billy.

“Ariana is missing,” he said, bypassing any greeting.

She could hear the distress in the catch of his voice.

And she took pity on him. “She’s here.”

She heard the rattle of his breath.

Even though he couldn’t see her, she had to turn away from his emotion. He would have hated for her to witness it.

And then his voice speared her with accusation. “She’s there.”

His reaction was a defense mechanism.

“I was getting ready to call you,” she said. “She’s fine. She knows she’s in trouble.”

He muttered something she couldn’t make out. She heard a car engine turn over.

“And do you?” he asked.

“Do I what?” A finger of anticipation shivered down her spine, the same as always when she knew she was going to see Billy.

“Do you know you’re in trouble?”

*

It took him twenty minutes to pull into her drive. And then he sat in his truck, parked in her driveway.

She watched him and the clock from her spot at the sink in front of the kitchen window. One minute. Five. Seven.

Was he that angry? She’d had her phone in her hand when it rang with his call. She’d known when Ari showed up on her doorstep that he’d be worried. Of course, she’d intended to call him. But maybe he wouldn’t give her the benefit of the doubt.

He got out of his truck.

As he approached, she could almost see the shadow of the high school boy he’d been back then. The boy she’d harbored a secret crush on. The boy she’d shared one magical night with…

And then his steps carried him into the circle of illumination thrown by her porch light and she saw the man he’d become. 

She didn’t give him a chance to knock. But when he moved to brush past her, she touched his forearm.

He froze.

“She’s upstairs,” Jamie said. “She asked me to—”

“Talk me down?” His eyes glittered as he looked down at her. Trouble. “What exactly did she tell you?”

“That you’d had an argument and sent her to her room. That she snuck out and rode her bike over to the neighbors and hopped into the back of his pickup truck and rode into town.”

She shook her head. Breath rattled in her chest. “She was lucky nothing happened to her.”

From the thunderous look on Billy’s face, it was clear nothing had happened to Ari yet.

And Jamie felt for the girl. “She was pretty upset when she got here.” Ari’s face had been tear-streaked, her skin mottled pink. 

That muscle was jumping in Billy’s cheek again. “Why don’t you tell me what to do, since you’re an expert on my daughter now.”

The words landed like a blow. He’d meant them to, she could see it in the daggers in his eyes.

She let go of his arm, took a step back. Hid her shaking hands by clasping the countertop and then resting on them.

“This isn’t about me.” Darn. Even her voice was shaking. She tried a steadying breath. “It’s about Ari.”

Another breath.

“She told me that some girls from school were taunting her.”

He went still, but she didn’t kid herself that the anger he’d showed seconds ago was gone. It was simply banked, still present. “Who?”

“She wouldn’t name names.”

“Why didn’t she bring it up when she was shouting at me earlier?”

She shrugged.

He glared at her until she blurted, “Maybe she didn’t think you’d understand.”

His eyes narrowed. “But you can?”

She flinched away from the awful tone in his voice.

He ran one hand through his hair, then winced when the action must’ve pained his ribs.

“She won’t talk to me, but she’s sharing secrets with you? She spends hours watching those videos of yours. She yaps on and on about you all the time.”

“I’m not the enemy here.” Her chin came up, but she fought to keep her shoulders down as defensiveness rose. Weeks ago, he’d called her videos stupid, had accused her of wasting her time.

Her makeup tutorials weren’t stupid. She worked hard to create the content and they were resonating with young women across the globe.

But not with the man radiating frustration in her kitchen.

They’d butted heads before. How could she make him understand?

“Eleven is a hard age,” Jamie said softly. “Things are changing for Ari. Her body, her emotions, her relationships. I’m just trying to help her. Listen to her, give her a safe place to come to if she needs a grown-up friend.”

“She doesn’t need—I don’t want her to—“

He cut himself off with a hand pressed to the bridge of his nose.

But she could finish his sentence easily enough. “You don’t want her to be friends with me.”

The hurt was like a punch to the solar plexus and she turned away to hide the hot tears that rushed to her eyes.

It was like that awful night in senior year all over again. She’d been waiting tables at the local diner when he’d shown up with a date—Maria, the popular, blonde cross country star.

Jamie—who’d been convinced that the night before, when they’d stayed up past one a.m. talking, had been the best night of her life, had been eviscerated. And she’d had to smile at the both of them while they ate their hamburgers and milkshakes.

She’d cried herself to sleep for a week afterward.

“Look, I’m sorry—“ His voice sounded half-strangled. “I—it’s like all of a sudden she only cares about clothes and getting her ponytail exactly right. She’s been begging for make-up and I’m sorry, but I think she’s way too young.”

She swiped at her cheeks with her wrist and formed her lips into what she hoped was a smile. “You don’t have to explain anything. She’s your daughter.” She started for the hallway, only throwing him a glance. “I’ll run upstairs and get her.”

“Jamie—“

She wasn’t fast enough. He grasped her elbow and tugged her to a stop.

“Hang on a second. Will you—“

She tried to dislodge his hand before more tears escaped, but his hold was too firm.

He cursed in a low voice. Because of her tears, or because she’d tweaked his injury by trying to pull away?

Humiliation burned her cheeks as she lifted her opposite hand to catch the tears on her cheeks.

He beat her to it, cupping her cheek in his hand.

Her breath caught. He was too close. He didn’t want her, and she didn’t want him to see the emotion she couldn’t hide.

She closed her eyes.

And it was as if he could read her mind. “Don’t hide from me.”

She inhaled, trying to regulate her voice. “What I do in my videos isn’t about teaching girls to put armor on, or to hide. It’s about giving them confidence to be who they really are. Not everyone walks around like an arrogant cowboy, sure of his identity.” Like Billy.

“I’m not sure of anything right now,” he muttered.

He was so close that his words were a breath against her lips.

And then he was closing the distance.

“Dad—“

Ari’s voice broke the moment. 

*

Billy had never told her the facepaint started to itch after a half hour.

After dark on Halloween, Jamie sat on the top step of her porch with a giant plastic bowl of candy next to her.

She’d gone all out, costumed from the curly rainbow-colored wig she wore down to her red boots. She’d found an extra-large pair of overalls at the resale store and painted huge, colorful flowers all over them.

She’d painted her clown face sad because she was sad.

She hadn’t been able to shake the doldrums since Billy and Ari had left in the middle of the night.

Nothing had been resolved. Billy had been this close to kissing her. At least she thought so. Had she imagined it?

He hadn’t made any attempt to speak to her since. Not even a text.

Ari had been silent, too.

And Jamie’s heart was a little bit broken.

Which was why she’d painted herself a sad face.

But she couldn’t help smiling at the little Pokemon and Batgirl who skipped up the sidewalk to her. “Hi, Miss Jamie!”

She recognized the faces between the masks from Sunday school and gave out hugs along with the candy. She waved to the mom waiting on the sidewalk.

As the kids darted off, a tall, broad-shouldered man in a sharp suit approached from the opposite direction.

For a second, when he turned his dress boots up her sidewalk, she thought she was in trouble. Then she recognized him.

Billy.

Make that big trouble.

Her heart thrummed painfully against her breastbone. “I don’t want her to be your friend.” Her chest squeezed.

He stopped, his dress boots steps away from her perch. He looked her up and down, a smile ticking up one corner of his mouth.

“I’m looking for something sweet,” he said.

What? What did that mean?

“Aren’t you a little old to be trick-or-treating?”

Mother Nature was cruel, holding him with a golden halo from her porch light, bringing out the sharpness of his cheekbones.

She got caught in his stare and for a moment, everything else fell away. There were no kids giggling in the street, no goofy costume, no neighbors watching curiously from their porches. There was only Billy and the way he’d made her stomach swoop low ever since tenth grade.

“Hey, Jamie!” Ari called out from the street.

He glanced away, the moment broken.

“I have got to work on that kid’s timing,” he muttered.

“What?”

He shook his head.

“Jamie, guess what?” Ari called. “Dad bought me some lip gloss!”

She lost track of the giggling girl as his tractor-beam gaze reeled her in again.

Suddenly shaky and full of nerves, she stood up. The step put her maybe an inch taller than him. She kinda liked that he had to look up to her.

“Lip gloss? What’s the world coming to?” Was that her voice? Why had it emerged a shaky whisper?

He had an almost predatory look in his eyes as he took a step toward her. “I don’t know about the world, but I was told by someone very important to me that makeup is about helping her find confidence in herself.”

Heart pounding like a bass drum now, she fisted her hands. Don’t read too much into this. “I’m important to you?”

He kept advancing on her until his toes touched the bottom step, only a breath between them. He reached out and clasped both of her hands in his.

“You’re everything.”

Oh, swoon.

His expression was grave. “Some things got said the other night and… we need to clear the air.”

She swallowed hard. Nodded.

He laced their fingers together and for a moment, she got lost in the intimate touch. She closed her eyes. It was—this was all too much.

He gave a gentle squeeze, so she opened them again.

“I want you and Ariana to be friends. More than friends, if I have my way.”

“Like… stepmom and stepdaughter?” Giving voice to the deepest secret wish of her heart was difficult. The words emerged in a whisper.

“Just like that.”

Her heart was fluttering madly, but he anchored her with his touch.

She was having trouble concentrating, he was so near and so dear to her, and—

“But I’m not going to stop doing my video tutorials,” she blurted. She squinted up at him, almost afraid of his reaction to that. Did he still think her videos were worthless?

“I watched a few of your videos with Ari.”

He had?

“They’re not stupid. And I’m sorry if I hurt you when I said they were.” He exhaled a burst of air. “It’s been hard. Moving on from Ari’s mom. Maybe I freaked out a little because my feelings for you were getting big.”

Maybe he deserved a little grace. It wasn’t as if he was the only one who’d lost his temper.

“How big?”

“Scary big.” He stepped back, tugging her off the porch and into his arms. “There.” He leaned in to touch his forehead against hers.

“You’ll get paint on you,” she whispered.

“Won’t be the first time,” her rodeo cowboy said. “Besides, this is important.” 

His smile faded and her stomach bottomed out at the look in his eyes. “I love you, Jamie. I never thought it would happen twice in a lifetime for me, but it did. Will you take a chance on loving me back?”

“It’s too late,” she whispered. A tear tracked down her cheek and he froze with his hands on her waist. “I’ve taken the chance. I’ve been in love with you for years.”

His breath caught, and the tender reaction from her tough cowboy brought on more hot tears behind her eyes. She blinked them back. She didn’t want to miss one second of this moment.

“Jamie—“

“Hurry up and kiss her!” Ari called out from somewhere behind him. “Everybody’s watching!”

He smiled down at Jamie. And he did.

Loved this story? Here’s another single dad romance you might like: The Homesteader’s Sweetheart

Want even more single dad romance? Try any of these:

• Kissed by a Cowboy
• Heart of a Cowgirl
• The Nanny’s Christmas Wish
• Love Lessons