Mountain Man's Lucky Charm: A Single Dad Romance (Mountain Men of Liberty) Read online

  Oh, car seats can sound so complicated and scary, I know! I’ll link to two that I recommend, both of which can be bought at Wal-Mart in Sunville. Or you can order them on Amazon if you have time for that. But yes, the two-year-old will need a toddler seat, and we suggest rear facing as well. I’m sure this is a lot to take in, but I promise you, you can do it. We’re here to help.

  This was exactly why I had started the group, and I saw that a few other people commented as well. Seeing the community come together to help someone put a smile on my face.

  He replied, asking if he could send me a private message. I told him he could, and within a few minutes, a notification popped up. I went into my Message Request folder and accepted it.

  Thank you so much for all your help, the message read. He was still typing so I waited for him to finish. I’m freaking out here. I’m on my own and have no idea what I’m doing. I didn’t want to post that publicly, but you seemed so friendly, I thought you might understand.

  I typed my response quickly, sympathetic to his venture.

  Oh God, I definitely understand! I wanted to adopt when I found my boys, but my ex left about six months after we adopted them. I’ve been mostly on my own until Rachel moved in with me. I couldn’t have done this without her.

  His next message made me laugh.

  So it’s normal to be scared out of my ever-loving mind?

  I told him, Of course it is. But you don’t have to be totally alone. You have the group. And you can message me with any questions or if you just need to talk.

  Thank you, Alex, he responded. It really means a lot. I’ll try not to bother you too much.

  Nah, don’t worry about bothering me. Please ask for help, don’t feel like you have to do this alone or that you must know everything right from the start.

  Chapter 3

  Liam

  The little girl stared at me with the largest blue eyes I’d ever seen. With a mop of red hair on her head and the McDowell nose, there was no doubt in my mind that she was my brother’s daughter. Abigail didn’t say anything the entire time Ms. Peters walked me through the process to take over temporary custody. She just stared at me. It was more than a bit unnerving.

  Emma fussed a bit in the carrier she was strapped into. She didn’t have much hair yet, but there was a patch of red fuzz growing on top of her head. They say red hair is a recessive gene, but not in the McDowell family. It seemed to pass down generation after generation at unnatural rates.

  “Do I need to feed her or anything?” I asked as Emma let out a wail.

  “She was just fed before you arrived. I think it’s just the stress of everything,” Ms. Peters assured me. “They’ve been through a lot the last few days.”

  Abigail shifted in her seat, and I noticed the torn knee of her pants. While torn blue jeans were all the rage in adults, and maybe even toddlers, something told me that hole wasn’t intentional. Her shirt also seemed to be a size or two too small and she kept pulling at it as if it wasn’t comfortable at all.

  When she turned her head toward her baby sister, I noticed that her hair wasn’t supposed to be short - but rather, it was knotted in the back. My heart broke.

  “Why are her clothes too small? And why didn’t anyone brush her hair after they were taken into your custody?”

  Ms. Peters turned toward Abigail, her dark eyes even darker due to the circles underneath them. There was pain on her face, but also exhaustion. “These are the clothes they came in, and her hair was like that when we picked her up. I tried to get the knots out myself, but she doesn’t like me touching her. She’d just scream, and I had to place her in a temporary group home until you arrived, so I didn’t get a chance to do much more.”

  I shook my head. Unbelievable that whoever took the girls in left them in the same dirty, too-small clothes and didn’t even try to brush Abigail’s hair. I wasn’t great with kids, and even I would have done something.

  I didn’t blame Ms. Peters because the girls weren’t in her care, and they were likely two kids out of a hundred she was dealing with. Social workers were often overworked and underpaid and that many went into this field to try and do some good, but there was only so much they could do with the limited resources they had available to them.

  “Do you need any help getting them out to the car?” Ms. Peters asked me, pulling me back to the present time.

  “Uh, yeah, actually,” I said with a smile. “Can you make sure I’ve hooked the car seats up correctly? I have no idea what I’m doing.”

  “Of course, Mr. McDowell, happy to help.” The tired woman helped me with Emma. I took Abigail’s hand, which she let me hold hesitantly. She continued to stare up at me as she nibbled on the fingers on her other hand.

  We walked out to my truck, which thankfully had a backseat. Ms. Peters checked the car seats, making some adjustments and explaining how to hook the girls in properly. I’d read about it online but seeing it in action made it a whole lot clearer.

  “I appreciate you taking the time to learn about car seat safety,” Ms. Peters said, smiling tiredly.

  “I want them to be safe, I just don’t have any idea what I’m doing. I’m in way over my head here.” I chuckled, because there wasn’t much else I could do but laugh at this point. Somehow, I was going to be responsible for the two little lives in the backseat. Me. A man who had never thought about having kids, who had no idea what being a father or guardian even looked like because I never had a decent role model in my life.

  But here we were.

  “It’s only temporary, Mr. McDowell,” she reminded me. “As soon as we can find them a permanent home or long-term foster family, we’ll place them where they belong.”

  “You don’t think my brother will get out anytime soon, huh?”

  Ms. Peters frowned. “I would be surprised if either of their parents are out of prison before Abigail’s eighteenth birthday, to be honest.”

  I looked away. I hated to think about how my brother’s life should have been different. He wasn’t always a bad kid. He just lacked any sense of direction and never had any rules. I’m not sure how I turned out halfway decent while he failed at life in every way possible.

  “Alright, I think everything is taken care of. The girls are in safely. You have my number if you have any questions or concerns.”

  I stared at the girls in the backseat of my truck. Emma was pulling at the straps of her car seat, letting out an annoyed whine. Abigail was still staring at me as if she wasn’t sure what to make of me. I looked enough like my brother that it probably confused her a little.

  “Thank you, Ms. Peters,” I said.

  “No, thank you, Mr. McDowell. It’s always much easier when family can step up to help, even if it’s only temporarily.”

  She squeezed my arm before she walked away, and it was in that moment that it hit me.

  I was now fully responsible for these girls.

  And I had no fucking idea what I was doing.

  “Shhh, Emma, we’re almost home, I promise,” I said in a sing-songy voice. I was hoping if my tone was lighthearted and fun, it might calm the screaming child down.

  But her screaming just got louder.

  I don’t know how parents do this, I thought. My nerves were already fried, and I’d been taking care of them for less than an hour.

  My head was hurting, and even though Abigail didn’t convey any of her thoughts - could two-year-olds talk? I had no clue. So far, she hadn’t said a single word. For some reason, I had assumed at two, they could form fully coherent sentences and carry on conversations. Proof I knew absolutely nothing about children.

  I pulled into my driveway and turned off the engine. Soon, we’d be inside. But then what? What if Emma kept screaming and crying? What if I couldn’t figure out what she wanted or needed? It wasn’t like either child could talk to me and tell me what was wrong. I just had to figure it out.

  I thought about Alex, the single dad I’d talked to online the night before. I could alway
s message him. Maybe he’d have some idea as to what I needed to do, because clearly, I wasn’t born with the dad gene.

  “Alright, alright, we’re home,” I said, hopping from the truck and rushing to the backseat to grab Emma.

  There were two of them. Emma couldn’t exactly walk inside, so I’d have to carry her. It would be hard to get her sister out of her seat and onto her feet if I had a baby in my arms. It would require some complex planning.

  I ran to the other side of the truck instead as Emma continued wailing and screaming about something. She was so unhappy. As I reached Abigail, I noticed the poor girl had her hands over her ears.

  “The noise is getting to you too, huh?” I asked. I half expected an answer, but she just stared at me. “That’s right, you don’t talk. Never mind.”

  I fumbled with the car seat straps, feeling like an idiot for having no clue how to unbuckle a child from the damn contraption. I was in construction. I built houses for a living. And a stinking car seat was getting the best of me?

  I unsnapped her at last and lifted her out, placing her on the ground. “Here, take my hand. We have to get your sister.”

  Abigail stared at my hand as her sister continued singing the song of her people in the backseat. My nearest neighbor was over a mile away, and surely, they were wondering what I was doing to that poor child.

  I took Abigail’s tiny hand, and she gripped my finger, and we walked over to the other side of the truck. I fumbled with the straps for a minute, said, “Screw it,” and removed the whole damned car seat from the truck. For some reason, I assumed just getting Emma inside would silence her screams. I learned just how wrong I was as soon as we entered the house.

  She was still crying as I placed the car seat on the floor.

  “One second,” I told the crying baby, again, as if she understood. “I have to take care of your sister.”

  I’d dropped Abigail’s hand when we entered the house, and she stood in the doorway as if lost. I walked over, picked her up, and carried her to the couch.

  “Can you wait here just one second, while I try to figure out what’s wrong with your sister?”

  No response. Of course not. But I was still going to talk to them because I figured that’s what you’re supposed to do. How would they learn to talk if you didn’t talk to them?

  I fought with the straps on the car seat while keeping an eye on Abigail sitting on the couch. She covered her ears again. I was able to get the straps off Emma and slipped her out of the seat, her little hands grabbing at my beard and yanking with all her might.

  “Jesus, you’re stronger than you look,” I said as I unclenched her fingers from my beard. Now that she was free from the seat, her crying had lessened to a whimper.

  “You don’t like being strapped in, do you? Can’t say I blame you much.”

  Now that she was her free, I wasn’t sure what to do with her. Could she crawl? I figured it wasn’t a good idea to put her on a couch by herself. She could easily fall off, so I sat her down on the floor beside my coffee table. The night before, the table was covered with beer cans and junk, but I’d cleaned it off thankfully, because the first thing Emma did was reach for the coffee table and pull herself up.

  My heart raced as I reached for her, putting my hands around her to make sure she didn’t fall over. She stared across the table at her sister, and a smile spread across her face for the first time since I saw her. Abigail was no longer covering her ears and scooted to the edge of the couch. She was smiling too, and she waved at Emma.

  Emma waved back.

  And I sat there, amazed, because I had no idea that nine-month-olds could pull themselves up, much less stand and wave. Every second I was with these girls was a learning experience for me.

  But I still didn’t know what to do next. I reached for my phone carefully and pulled up Alex’s message.

  Hey there, I typed, but before I could finish, Emma reached for the remote control on the table, the one thing I had left there, and began banging it against the glass coffee table.

  “No, no,” I said, reaching for it. “The glass will breaky if you do that.”

  Breaky? What the hell? Where was this baby talk coming from? I took the remote control from the girl and feared it might cause another tantrum, but she just started slamming her hands into the table instead.

  I had to redirect her. I knew that much.

  I slowly scooted toward the bags of stuff I’d picked up earlier that day and dug through it until I found a stuffed bear. Something soft. If she banged it against the table, at least it wasn’t likely to break anything. I yanked off the tags and handed it to Emma, who gripped it in her tiny little hands. Just as I’d guessed, she started slamming it into the coffee table.

  That was safer. Might distract her long enough to send my message.

  I went back to typing.

  So, I have the girls, and man, let me tell you, I have no idea what I’m doing. The oldest has knots in her hair, and I really don’t think I’ll be able to brush them out without hurting her. Any tips?

  I had just hit send when a tiny voice said, “I hungry.”

  I looked at Abigail, who was now standing on the other side of the table, looking right me. “You can talk? So you’ve just been holding out on me this entire time or what?”

  She didn’t respond. She must have forgotten she was giving me the silent treatment for a second, but she went right back to it now.

  My phone buzzed, but I didn’t check the message. I picked up Emma and took Abigail’s hand in mine and walked toward the kitchen.

  Food. I’d picked up some formula for the baby, based on the links Alex had sent me, but what did you feed a two-year-old? I assumed normal human food, within reason, of course. Nothing that could choke her. Nothing alcoholic, which ruled out most of what was in my fridge. I opened the refrigerator and stared inside, kicking myself for not making a grocery store run too.

  “Do you like cheese?’ I asked Abigail.

  She nodded her head.

  “Alright, a cheese sandwich coming right up.”

  “Cash up,” Abigail replied.

  “Cash up?” I asked, confused. “Oh, you’re asking for ketchup?”

  Abigail nodded again, taking her fist from her mouth and pointing to the red bottle in the fridge.

  “A cheese and ketchup sandwich? I mean, why not, I’ve eaten worse,” I mumbled to myself. I grabbed the ketchup and the sliced Kraft singles and closed the refrigerator with my foot. Emma grabbed the electric bill hanging from the freezer door as I walked by. “Sneaky, grabby little hands. I have to remember not to walk you too close to anything, you little thief.”

  Even though Emma didn’t seem to know what I was saying, she giggled.

  If anything, these kids would do wonders for my self-esteem if they thought I was hilarious every time I made even the dumbest joke.

  I put the electric bill back under the magnet on the fridge and tried to make a sandwich one handed, which was harder than it looked when one hand held a kid who wanted to grab everything within a foot of her face. But I put together a sandwich and handed it to Abigail, who bit into it, squirting ketchup all over her shirt and the kitchen floor.

  She giggled, smearing the ketchup on her shirt with her finger.

  Good thing that shirt is going in the trash anyway, I thought. Let her make a mess if it made her happy.

  I sat down at the table with Emma and felt bad that she wasn’t eating anything. They had fed her before I picked her up, but if Abigail was hungry, maybe Emma was too. So I got back up and looked into the fridge for a snack, since it was likely too early for another bottle. I settled on a slice of cheese, which I handed to Emma. I watched her closely as she held the cheese up to her mouth, biting off a corner and chewing it, and then it hit me - can babies have cheese? Can Abigail even have cheese? I couldn’t recall a time in my life when I didn’t eat cheese, but suddenly I began doubting all my life choices. I took the cheese from Emma, which caused her to fus
s, but I needed to Google this before I did something terribly wrong.

  Abigail had already eaten half her sandwich and the other half was now resting on the table. God, hopefully I didn’t just poison her or something.

  I’d have to ask Alex. I pulled my phone back out of my pocket. He had answered my previous question.

  I know you’re overwhelmed, but trust me, you can do this. As far as the two-year-old’s hair, if it’s really that bad, I would suggest a haircut.

  Before I even acknowledged his last message, I typed, Can a nine-month-old have cheese? How about a two-year-old?

  I felt like an absolute idiot. Shouldn’t I know these things? Apparently, some people - like Alex - had all the answers already, but I was unsure of what to even feed these poor kids.

  Alex quickly got back to me, thankfully, because my heart was racing. Who knew something as simple as cheese could be this scary?

  Cheese should be fine. Usually we’d say to avoid dairy until nine months or a year, but a little bit probably won’t hurt if there are no previous allergies. Abigail should be just fine, unless they told you of a milk allergy.

  Relief washed over me. I might not give the cheese back to Emma, who was clearly not happy with my decision, but they’d be fine.

  No mention of any allergies, thankfully. What can I feed the nine-month-old? Besides formula, of course.

  Alex sent me over a link with a list of appropriate foods.

  Non-citrus fruits. Hmm, I think I had some bananas.

  I asked Alex if that was fine, and he told me just to mush it up or cut it into small enough pieces that she couldn’t choke. So, I mushed it up into a gooey mess, and fed it to Emma with a spoon. She seemed more focused on grabbing the spoon from my hand than actually eating the banana, so I was convinced she wasn’t that hungry.

  I glanced around and realized Abigail was no longer in the kitchen with me.

  Dammit. Two kids. How was I ever going to keep my eyes on both of them at the same time? I rushed into the living room and called out her name. I couldn’t breathe for a second, afraid that I’d already failed and lost one of the girls. Like that would be a world record for fuckups right there. But I found her on the couch, curled up and asleep, and my pulse steadied.