One in a Million

“Maybe it’s karma,” Sam said. “You were wild and stupid and now he’s following in your footsteps.”

Sam was only kidding but the way Tanner saw it, Troy’s bad ’tude was all on him. He could remember all too well the inner fury of being a kid who’d been dumped by his dad. And no, Tanner hadn’t dumped Troy, but the kid didn’t see it that way.

Tanner had been a teenager himself when he’d found out he was going to be a father. As a seventeen-year-old with no means to support himself, much less the girl he’d slept with on the beach after a party one night, he’d done the best he could. This had involved marrying Elisa to give her and their baby his name, throwing away a lucrative football scholarship to ship off to the navy, and growing up pretty damn fast.

Elisa had dumped him shortly after Troy’s birth and moved with the baby to Florida to live with her grandparents, but Tanner had still done what he could, making sure that he’d provided for the both of them along with his mom.

When he and the guys had first come back to Lucky Harbor from the Gulf of Mexico, he’d asked Elisa for custody, or at least partial. She’d refused, and for the past two years Tanner had done the best he could from three thousand miles away, visiting Troy as often as possible, calling, emailing…

And then two weeks ago Elisa had changed her tune, showing up in town with Troy in tow, as well as Boyfriend Dan. Suddenly she’d been all about sharing custody of their son.

No idiot, Tanner had jumped right on that, but there’d been problems he hadn’t foreseen. Such as Troy’s bad attitude, resentment, and basic hatred of all authority figures—of whom Tanner was apparently the king.

“If the kid’s anything like you,” Cole said, “and we all know he’s exactly like you, then keeping him busy is the key. He just lost a job. Why don’t we give him one?”

“I like it,” Sam said. “The boat needs a massive detailing, the dock needs a good bleaching, and the equipment needs its seasonal going-over—every single inch of every single piece of equipment with a fine-tooth comb.”

“And you trust a pissed-off-at-the-world fifteen-year-old to do all that?” Tanner asked in disbelief.

“It’s better than us doing it,” Sam said pragmatically. “He’s already grounded from anything except school, right? He probably thinks his life is over. You’d be doing him a favor, and you need that. You need him to owe you.”

“It’s a great idea,” Cole said.

Actually, Tanner couldn’t think of a worse idea. But his so-called friends just grinned at him. “Shit,” he said, and they out and out laughed at him. He pointed at Sam. “You’re next, you know. You’re getting married in a month. This kid thing is coming for you, and I can’t wait. I’m going to laugh my ass off.”

“That’s just mean, man,” Sam said.

“You’ll get the hang of daddy duty,” Cole told Tanner, clapping a hand on his shoulder. “Sooner or later.”

God, he hoped so, but sooner would be better than later. The problem was, Tanner had undeniable survival skills, an arguable amount of life skills, and absolutely no known dad skills.

Chapter 4

Callie was woken before the crack of dawn by a call from a panicked bride who’d decided she wanted to elope instead of face her elaborate wedding in two days.

“I don’t know what I was thinking,” Lacey wailed. “All this crazy fuss. I just want to cancel.”

Callie had a lot of experience with these sorts of calls. But up until yesterday Lacey had been over-the-moon ecstatic about everything, down to the color of the nail polish she planned on using on her Yorkshire terrier. “What happened?” Callie asked, stumbling to her kitchen for coffee before remembering she no longer had a coffeemaker.

“It started last night,” Lacey said. “Joe said all I ever talk about is the wedding and he’s sick of it. Can you believe it? All this work I’ve done and he’s over it before it even happens!”

Callie opened her freezer and stared at the ice cream. No, she told herself firmly. You are not having ice cream for breakfast. “Sometimes grooms feel a little left out, that’s all,” she said. “You could involve him in some of the decisions that have to be made. Maybe he could help arrange the flowers at the reception site or—”

“He can’t be trusted with the flowers!” Lacey cried. “He thought we could do without flowers, said he didn’t see the big deal. And then he tried to tell me that the seating arrangements are all wrong, that his Uncle Bob can’t sit next to his Aunt Judy because they’ll kill each other. But now’s a fine time to tell me that! Do you know how difficult it is to work with tables that only seat six?”

Yes, Callie knew exactly. With a sigh, she shut the freezer. “I’ll rework the seating arrangement for you.”

“Great. But can you give my fiancé a personality transplant?” Lacey asked. “No? Then I want to elope! You’re my virtual wedding planner, can you help me elope or not?”

Callie drew a deep breath. “Yes. But I want you to do me one favor. Remember how Joe proposed? It was just as you’d asked him to do, in front of all your family and friends on the beach at sunset. He even got you the exact ring you wanted, the one with the bigger diamond that he couldn’t really afford.”

Lacey sighed dreamily. “Yes. He did do that for me.”