The Bride Came C.O.D. (Bachelor Fathers) Read online

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  The Bride Came C.O.D.

  Bachelor Fathers - Book 2

  Barbara Bretton

  Free Spirit Press

  Copyright © 1994, 2017 by Barbara Bretton

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Created with Vellum

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Epilogue

  About the Author

  Also by Barbara Bretton

  Prologue

  Nowhere, Alaska

  "Tell me I didn't hear that," said the male voice on the other end of the telephone. "Tell me I'm wrong."

  "She's here," Kiel Brown repeated for the third time, "and she's staying here."

  "She can't stay," said the frazzled PAX coordinator. "She's not part of the plan."

  "She's part of my plan," said Kiel through gritted teeth.

  "I thought she was staying with your cousin in Chicago."

  "My aunt in Boston. She's not staying there any longer."

  "Ship her back."

  "Can't do," said Kiel. "My aunt broke her leg."

  "So?" said the PAX coordinator. The man was a Ph.D. in foreign affairs, a Rhodes scholar, and an unqualified moron.

  "You don't know much about four-year-old girls, do you?" Kiel shot back. "My aunt would commit hari kiri." As it was, his aunt Edith had sounded relieved to send Kelsey back home.

  "I'm too old for this," she had told Kiel from her hospital bed. "Little girls were less...active in my day."

  "There must be someone else," the coordinator said in a maddeningly logical tone of voice.

  "There isn't."

  "Cousins...brothers...sisters...help me, with this, Brown."

  Kiel finally exploded. "You're a spy organization, damn it. You know everything about me. There's no one else to take care of Kelsey."

  "Ship her down here to Connecticut and we'll find someone to watch out for her until you've completed your assignment."

  "The hell I will. This is my daughter you're talking about, not a package for Fed Ex. She's here and she's staying here and if you have trouble with that, we can call the whole thing off right now."

  He slammed the phone down so hard that the plastic cradle snapped in two, sending shards skittering across the polished wood floor of the kitchen. It felt good, but not half as good as heaving the damn thing out the window would feel.

  PAX needed him more than he needed them. He was the top man in his field. No one else was even close. They knew that when they plucked him out of his Boston Brain Trust and spirited him into the world of spies and counter-espionage and terrorist plots. None of which he gave a good damn about. PAX needed a way to neutralize the thousands of nuclear warheads for sale in eastern Europe before they fell into the hands of splinter groups looking to grab a piece of the world pie.

  And they needed it fast. Leading players on the world stage had long since rejected Armageddon but every minor dictator and major nut job on the planet knew where to go to find the tools of destruction.

  If PAX wanted Kiel to provide the solution, they'd have to take the entire package, Kelsey included.

  Grimly he counted down the minutes until they called back. Four. Three. Two.

  "I hope you guys aren't always this predictable," he said by way of greeting, "or democracy is in big trouble."

  "Can the sarcasm," said a familiar voice. Ryder O'Neal, current head of the entire operation, was known for his hard-headed pragmatism and his surprisingly soft heart. He had taken over for Alistair Chambers when Chambers retired to a farm in Scotland with his beautiful actress wife Holland. "Joanna and I have two kids of our own. I know what you're up against."

  "I'm not sending my daughter away."

  "Nobody's going to ask you to. We're here to make it easy for you to do your job."

  "If you meant that, you wouldn't have sent me off to the back of beyond."

  "You know as well as I do that security is our primary objective." O'Neal paused. "Your security as well as the security of the project. The best thing for everyone concerned is to have you in relative seclusion."

  Nowhere, Alaska had qualified on most counts, at least until Kelsey arrived. In a few short weeks his daughter had attracted more attention than the arrival of a UFO complete with alien crew. People who had viewed his arrival on the scene with little more than polite curiosity now flocked to him with covered dish casseroles and phone numbers of single women who would love to change their status.

  Mrs. Loomis at the general store tsk-tsked each time he came in for supplies. "A man like you doin' the chores and carin' for a little one. Woman's work, that's what it is." She batted her faded blue eyes at him as if volunteering for the job.

  Old Mr. Packer at the filling station dispensed gas and bad advice each time he topped the tank of Kiel's Jeep Cherokee. "You need a wife up here, boy. You ain't been here for one of our winters. Need someone to keep you warm at night."

  Even Imelda Mulroney, who'd moved back into town not long after Kiel's arrival, said Kiel couldn't go on the way he was going much longer. "Winter's comin'," Imelda said in the ominous tones everyone used when talking about the changing of the seasons. "My hubby and me got a cabin out in the bush just like yours and I'm here to tell you it ain't easy out there, especially with a little one."

  Imelda had a point. They all did, even if Kiel didn't want to admit it. Kelsey was all energy and curiosity, a quicksilver blend of everything that had been wonderful between him and her mother, if only for a little while.

  Kelsey hadn't been back with him a week before he discovered that an I.Q. of 175 and a Ph.D. in nuclear physics were no help when it came to caring for a child in the middle of the wilderness. He struggled with Sesame Street by day and nuclear fusion by night and slept one hour out of every twenty-four.

  "You guys are tying my hands," Kiel said, with as much control as he could manage. "The nearest daycare center is one hundred and twenty miles away. If you'd let me hire a housekeeper to watch Kelsey, I could get back to work."

  O'Neal's response was both earthy and to the point. "We can't risk it. We have reason to believe there are operatives in your vicinity. I don't have to explain the ramifications if your research should fall into the wrong hands."

  "Everyone in this damn town keeps telling me I need a wife. If that would keep them from dropping by, I'd put an ad on one of those computer bulletin boards. 'Lonely Nuclear Scientist Needs Spouse. No Romance Necessary.'"

  "Maybe you should."

  "Right," said Kiel. "You won't let me hire a housekeeper but you'd let me marry a stranger."

  "As long as we provided the stranger."

  "Since when is PAX in the matchmaking business?"

&nbs
p; "Since about three minutes ago. We need you and we'll do whatever it takes to keep you happy."

  "Including find me a wife?"

  "Including finding you a wife."

  "You're a great bunch of guys," said Kiel, unable to mask the edge in his voice, "but I don't want a wife." He'd been married once and badly. He wasn't about to do it again.

  "Like you said, Kiel, we're not talking romance here. We're talking convenience."

  "A housekeeper is convenient."

  "A housekeeper won't keep the ladies of Nowhere from trying to find you a wife."

  "How do I keep you from finding me a wife?"

  Ryder laughed.

  Kiel didn't.

  "It'll work out," Ryder said an hour later after the details had been worked out.

  "Right," said Kiel as a black cloud of doom settled over him. "Isn't that what they said to Custer?"

  Chapter 1

  En route to Nowhere

  Marrying a man she didn't know wasn't the craziest thing Lexi Marsden had ever heard of.

  Jumping out of airplanes was crazy. Swimming with sharks was crazy. Running with bulls, eating goldfish, and walking through Central Park at midnight were all crazy.

  People did crazy things every day of the week and lived to tell the tale. Why should she be any different? She was just getting married, after all, not joining the Army. The Army tied you up for three years. If everything went according to her plan, this marriage would be over in six months.

  She stared out the window of the tiny seaplane as it skimmed across the endless miles of wilderness called Alaska. The only available male willing to contemplate marriage without romance and he had to live in a place called Nowhere. Wouldn't you just know it?

  When Joanna Stratton O'Neal called yesterday afternoon to broach the topic, Lexi had bombarded her friend with questions.

  "I never did understand exactly what you and Ryder do for a living," she had said. She'd always believed it to be some kind of government contract work. "You're environmentalists?"

  "Among other things."

  "Sounds more like you're matchmakers."

  Joanna had grinned. "When necessary."

  She'd listened as Joanna swore to her that despite its name, Nowhere was really a respectable small town in Alaska. "No Bloomingdale's," Joanna had said with a laugh, "but I can guarantee indoor plumbing, a microwave oven, and a satellite dish."

  "No Bloomingdale's," Lexi repeated, only half-kidding. "I don't know...."

  You have no choice, the irritating little voice inside her head had whined. If you want what belongs to you, you have to go through with it.

  Time was running out. In three weeks it would be too late. She would turn twenty-five and her inheritance would be locked in trust until her fortieth birthday.

  What choice did she have? She had to get married and she had to do it now, even if it meant leaving civilization, as she knew it, behind.

  "His name is Kiel Brown," Joanna had continued, "and he's in environmental research."

  Lexi groaned. "Does that mean I can't bring my sable?"

  "I'll pretend you didn't say that."

  "What is he like?"

  "Sky-high I.Q., bookish." Joanna had paused a moment. "And he's not looking for a wife in the...traditional sense." She went on to explain that Mr. Kiel Brown was getting tired of being bombarded with proposals, indecent and otherwise, from the ladies of Nowhere and an arranged marriage seemed like the best solution.

  Lexi had been ecstatic.

  No sex. No romance. It was enough to make a woman believe in destiny.

  "There is one drawback," Joanna had said carefully. "Kiel has a daughter."

  I can handle that, Lexi told herself over and over again. How hard can it be? The absent-minded professor could lock himself away in his laboratory and log migratory patterns of Alaskan birds while Lexi and his little girl amused themselves with hair ribbons and fairy tales.

  Six months were all she needed. Six months and one day to collect her inheritance. They'd get married, they'd have it annulled, she'd become an heiress. It couldn't be more perfect.

  She leaned forward and tapped the pilot on the shoulder. "I have a question."

  "Fire away," said the pilot, a brawny character named MacDougal. She'd been expecting a pilot named Jensen but apparently he'd broken his leg the night before. "If I don't know the answer, I'll find someone who does."

  "Do you have any children?"

  "Six," said MacDougal with a laugh. "Two in college, two in grad school, two out of the house."

  "I don't suppose you remember much of what they were like when they were little."

  "Long time ago," he said, twisting around in his seat to look at her. "How come?"

  "Just curious," she said. He continued to look at her and she motioned toward the instrument panel. "Shouldn't you keep your eyes on the road, so to speak?"

  "I've got three grandbabies," he offered, taking a cursory look out the window. "That help any?"

  "Only if one of them is a four year old little girl."

  "Bingo!" said MacDougal, turning back to the instrument panel. "My oldest turns four next week."

  "How marvelous!" Lexi's mood brightened. "Do you have a photo?"

  "Do cats have kittens? He reached into the front pocket of his flannel shirt and withdrew a thick packet of snapshots. "Annie, Sarah, and Lindsay. You could search the lower 48 for the rest of your life and not find cuter kids."

  Lexi, who was not a connoisseur of children cute or otherwise, quickly flipped through the stack of photos. Little girls in frilly pastel dresses. Little girls with hair ribbons and shiny patent shoes. Obviously the world hadn't changed that much in the twenty years since she was Kelsey's age. Little girls still loved carriages and baby dolls, all the things Lexi herself had adored as a child.

  A bookish intellectual who wanted a wife without emotional involvement and a little girl who was just like Lexi had been at her age, angelic and obedient.

  Life didn't get much better than that.

  "NO!"

  Kiel gritted his teeth and tightened his grip on the hairbrush. "C'mon, Kelse. Don't you want your hair to look nice?"

  Kelsey's dark eyes flashed a warning. "NO!"

  "So it's going to be one of those days." It figured she'd pick today of all days to throw a tantrum. He placed the hairbrush down atop the dresser. "How about you let me put your hair in a ponytail?"

  "I don't like ponytails." She reached for her Red Sox baseball cap and plopped it on her head. "I like this."

  She wasn't going to win any fashion awards but that was the least of his worries. Alexa Grace Marsden was due to arrive on their doorstep sometime today and Kiel had hoped Kelsey would at least let him brush her hair for the occasion.

  "Pancakes or French toast?" he asked as he scooped her up into his arms.

  Her little mouth curved in a grin that was so much like her mother's that his breath caught for an instant. "'Cakes."

  "Pan-cakes," he said. Helena's diction had been beautifully precise that he used to say he could listen to her recite the phonebook.

  "Paaann-caakes."

  "You're a wise guy, Kelse," he said as they started down the hallway toward the kitchen. "Do you know that?"

  "No," she said, hugging him around the neck. "I'm a wise girl."

  "I'm not going to argue that."

  Fatherhood continued to amaze him. He'd always liked kids the same way he liked puppies and kittens and other small things. Smile absently, pat them on the head, and then forget they existed.

  All that had changed the day he'd walked into Helena's office and heard the words, "We're going to have a baby."

  The reality of fatherhood had barreled over him like a runaway train, obliterating everything in its path. From the first moment when he heard Kelsey's heart beating inside her mother's womb, he'd known instinctively that he would risk his life to keep the two of them safe from harm.

  Too bad Helena hadn't felt the same way. When
she died in a boating accident off Martha's Vineyard, Kiel had been the second person notified. The man she'd left him for had been the first.

  He pushed away the memories and headed for the kitchen, which was located at the back of the cabin. It boasted three windows and a view of Denali in the distance that was second to none. His research lab, a sturdy concrete structure, was a ten second walk from the back door. It would be the perfect situation for a work-at-home father if the father was a writer or an artist, someone who only had to worry about peanut butter and jelly stains from inquisitive fingers.

  When the father-in-question worked with nuclear energy, it was another story.

  He sat Kelsey down at the table then disappeared into the pantry to grab some pancakes out of the freezer.

  "No more of these once Lexi gets here," he announced, popping the pancakes into the microwave. "We'll be eating meals the same day they're cooked." He punched a few buttons then sat down opposite his daughter. "What do you think about that?"

  "Cool," said Kelsey, drinking her orange juice from her favorite Beauty and the Beast glass.

  "Cool?" He started to laugh. "Since when do you say cool?"

  "I saw it on TV."

  Which was another reason why he had to stop using television as a babysitter.

  It occurred to him that maybe PAX was right about some things. Kelsey deserved more than temporary housekeepers to mother her. He didn't want a wife, not in the real sense, but he needed a partner. A woman who wasn't looking for hearts and flowers and all the things he no longer had to give. Someone who understood kids and knew when and how to keep her mouth shut when it came to his work.

  If the good folks at PAX could provide that, they were miracle workers.

  "You're landing here?" Lexi's voice rose an octave. "You can't land here! This isn't an airport."