The Parent Trap(79)

Now things had changed. Georgette still traveled a great deal, but she did have a permanent residence. Her income was substantially higher than Jon’s and she had a wealthy new husband. And then there was the not-so-insignificant matter of Kate recently being a runaway. Judges always based decisions on the best interests of the child, and under ordinary circumstances they most often ruled in favor of the mother. In this case, it was almost certain. The only positive thing he’d heard was that the judge would want to meet privately with Kate to find out how she felt about the current and proposed situations.

Kate wanted to stay in Serenity Bay. More likely because of her friends than her father, but he’d take it. Her grades had improved, and she was genuinely sorry that her impulsive decision to take off had precipitated Georgette’s change of heart. Now the most he could hope for was that the court would see he was a responsible father who was making a good home for his daughter. And he hoped Kate would show the judge that she was a kid who made a mistake and was now trying to make up for it.

His lawyer said the hearing would be scheduled in a couple weeks, so they had time to prepare. And then he’d asked something entirely unexpected. If there a woman in Jon’s life, and therefore potentially in Kate’s, that might tip the balance in his favor.

He’d had to be honest and say no. Sarah was technically in his life but she wasn’t in his life, not in the sense the lawyer was talking about. Still, she had offered to help.

If there’s anything I can do, I want you to call. Okay? I’m serious about that. Anything.

She hadn’t really meant anything. That’s just what people said when they felt bad for someone and didn’t know what else to say. And he couldn’t ask her to get involved in this.

No, that wasn’t quite correct. He’d like more than anything to have this amazing woman in his life, but this was not the sort of thing a man asked a woman to do as a favor.

Not even when he was desperate. Really, really desperate.



BY DINNERTIME ON TUESDAY, it was obvious to Sarah that something was afoot. For the past several days Casey had been moping around the house, very uncharacteristically, bemoaning the fact that her best friend was leaving in a few weeks and she would never see her again, and it seemed no amount of reassuring was going to change her mind.

“Kate says if her dad had a new wife or maybe even a girlfriend, you know, so they looked more like a normal family, then the judge would let her stay,” she’d said over breakfast that morning.

The same thing had crossed her mind but with the hearing just a few short weeks away, there was no way that would happen. The possibility of him losing his daughter made her heart ache, but so did the idea of him having another woman in his life.

“I’m sure the judge will take everything into consideration before making a decision,” she’d said, but Casey remained unconvinced and inconsolable.

Kate, understandably, had been even more distraught when she came to the store after school. This was her life, she’d insisted. And while attending a posh European boarding school wasn’t exactly the end of the world, she saw it as the end of hers.

“I told my dad he should try online dating,” she’d said after not so subtly bringing up the topic of her father’s lack of female companionship.

Sarah had caught herself before she laughed out loud. Aside from that being one of the most preposterous things she’d ever heard, that sort of activity could spell disaster if Georgette’s lawyer or the judge caught wind of it.

She had distracted the girl by offering her the part-time job she had discussed with Jonathan. Just a few hours a week, she’d warned, and contingent on her maintaining good grades. An ecstatic Kate had accepted, then tempered it by saying she would love to work at the store until her mother hauled her off to boarding school.

Now, as Sarah cleared away the dinner dishes and tidied up the kitchen, pondering the girls’ fixation on finding a woman for Kate’s father, Casey came in and dumped an armload of schoolbooks on the counter.

“Is it okay if I go over to Kate’s to do homework? We have a big science report due tomorrow and it’s worth ten percent of our final grade.”

“What about Petey? He hasn’t been walked yet.”

“Right. I forgot.” Then she cast a questioning glance at Sarah. “Unless, would you mind taking him out tonight? Just this once? This is a really big report.”

She had a feeling “just this once” could become a semi-frequent occurrence. Which wasn’t a bad thing, as it forced her to get out of the house and get a little exercise.

“All right, I’ll take him, but only because it stopped raining.”