Page 1 of The Live-In Temptation (Steele Brothers of Starlight Cove #2)

CHAPTER ONE

XANDER

In my professional opinion, fighting a house fire was a hell of a lot easier than getting a four-year-old ready and out the door on time.

I liked to think I was a smart guy who not only faced challenges head on but conquered them. I’d been doing that my entire life. And yet, when faced with the challenge of my daughter’s hair every single morning, I failed. Spectacularly.

“Ow, Daddy! That hurts,” Emma said, her voice thin and watery, which meant she was on the verge of tears.

Something I was, unfortunately, all too familiar with, thanks to my previously mentioned failing.

“Sorry, peanut,” I murmured, my brow furrowed as I stared at the absolute clusterfuck that was her hair. “I don’t understand how you can go to bed with smooth hair and wake up with this .”

It was just yet another unexplained mystery in my new life. The life I’d been blindsided by eleven weeks ago when a social worker had contacted me and told me I had a daughter.

That had knocked me on my ass. The bigger blow? I’d missed the first four years of her life. Which meant the first memory my daughter would always have of me was that I wasn’t there.

As the grown-up version of a kid who had too many of those memories to count, I felt sick thinking Emma would have the same of me.

But I was here now. I was trying. That had to account for something.

Kids had never been part of my plan. After the childhood I’d had with the father I’d been saddled with, I figured it was best for everybody if I stayed out of the gene pool.

Fate, apparently, had had other ideas.

Emma’s mom had been a single weekend of fun—something I rarely allowed myself. But I’d just been promoted to captain and wanted to celebrate. It hadn’t been love by any stretch of the imagination. It had been sex. Pure and simple.

I’d thought Corinne was beautiful and kind and self-deprecatingly funny. But never in the weekend we’d spent together had I thought, yeah, she’d definitely keep my kid from me for four years .

It was a question I desperately wanted an answer to—what was it about me that made her not want to tell me she was having our child?

That made her think it would be better to raise Emma alone rather than bothering to give me the most basic courtesy of a goddamn text telling me I was going to be a dad.

Unfortunately, now that Corinne was gone, that question was one that would forever remain a mystery.

The reality was, it didn’t matter why I hadn’t been there. Only that I hadn’t been. And the guilt I felt over abandoning my little girl—unknowingly or not—would sit heavy on my chest for the rest of my life.

I looked down at the catastrophe that was my daughter’s hair and sighed.

This was going to have to be good enough.

I grabbed the purple hair tie with unicorns on it—her current favorite—in hopes it could save this disaster.

Though after this many days and weeks of the same mess, I knew that was futile.

Stepping back, I looked down at her. My beautiful little angel with her big green eyes that matched mine and her round cheeks and her cute little rosebud lips. And then topping it all off was a devil’s disaster of a hairstyle.

Her ponytail was crooked, her hair nowhere near as smooth as it had been last night after her bath. But she still needed breakfast, and I wasn’t even dressed yet, which meant we were out of time. As usual.

“All right, peanut.” I lifted her off the vanity and carried her as I jogged downstairs. “What do you want for breakfast?”

She shrugged while clutching Pinkie, her tattered but still sparkly unicorn, to her chest. I blew out a frustrated sigh because I had a feeling this was going to go like yesterday had. And the day before that. And the week before that. And the month before that.

“Cereal?” I asked. When I got no reaction, I listed off the other items I’d stocked the house with. “Toast, oatmeal, banana, pancakes, yogurt?”

She just shrugged again, as if it didn’t matter. As if I could give her anything at all and she’d eat it. Except I’d already been tricked by that. Several times.

She didn’t like anything I’d offered her for breakfast.

Lunches? No problem. Dinner? I had it down. Okay, I didn’t exactly have it down, but we managed. Cooking boxed pasta and heating up a jar of spaghetti sauce still counted. But breakfast was kicking my ass.

Still, I tried. Every morning, I tried.

I set her down in her chair and pulled out the various breakfast items I’d listed, setting them in front of her like a smorgasbord. When she just sat, shoulders slumped, her tiny little fingers picking at the frayed seams of Pinkie, my heart broke a little.

Every morning when I offered her a variety of food, she looked at me like I’d told her I kicked puppies in my spare time. And I didn’t know what the hell to do about it.

Hanging my head, I blew out a weary sigh, accepted defeat, and strode to the pantry.

I bypassed the protein bars—those had been a hard fucking pass from her—oatmeal, and half a dozen other more nutritious options I’d picked up in the vain hope of her finally eating something.

Then I plucked the chocolate chip granola bar out of the box and brought it over to her.

She still wasn’t excited about it, but it was the one thing I’d managed to find that she would eat at least half of.

“How about I make you a deal?” I squatted down to her level, holding up the granola bar between us like a peace offering.

She glanced at me with a spark of interest in her gaze. It wasn’t much, but after the forlorn, my-daddy-kicks-puppies-in-his-spare-time sad eyes, I’d take it.

“If you eat the whole thing, we can have pizza for dinner and watch Frozen again. Sound good?”

She perked up. “Can Pinkie have a piece too?”

“Of course. You know Pinkie gets grumpy when she’s not fed.”

“Okay.” Emma took a tentative bite of the granola bar—which was really just a candy bar, let’s be honest—chewing as if it were as flavorful as sawdust.

But still, she ate.

When I was satisfied she’d continue when I was out of sight, I stood to my full height and headed for the stairs. “I’m going to change while you eat, peanut. We have to hurry to get to Mimi’s because we’re late.” Muttering under my breath, I added, “Again.”

I fucking hated being late. I had always been a punctual guy.

But since Emma had come into my life, I hadn’t been on time once.

Not even once. It didn’t matter how much I prepared for our departure, something always popped up.

Spilled juice that required an outfit change, a last-minute potty emergency, the morning she’d insisted on counting every step from her bedroom to the front door—twice.

This morning, it had been missing shoes that held us up. Except it wasn’t a single pair that had vanished. No, it was one of each.

Fortunately, the remaining shoes I could find were opposites, so she had one for each foot. Unfortunately, one of those was a winter boot and the other was a sneaker.

I glanced at my watch and muttered a curse as I bundled her in her winter coat, hat, and mittens. Then I scooped Emma into my arms, grabbed my keys off the counter, and dashed out the front door.

Late January in Maine meant it was still mostly dark outside, just a hint of the sun beginning to peek over the horizon. The neighborhood was still quiet, thankfully, not even?—

“Well, good morning, neighbor!” Mabel—my mom’s book club buddy, Starlight Cove’s sex toy dealer, and my too-nosy-for-her-own-damn-good neighbor—called from across the street.

She wore her husband’s winter boots and a housecoat, her gray hair done up in rollers.

“You’re looking a little worn down there, Chief. ”

“Thanks,” I muttered.

I’d felt lucky when this house had come on the market at just the right time, but that had been before I’d realized who would be living across the street. I swore that woman set an alarm every morning just so she could witness my failures.

“And Emma, you’re looking very adventurous today. Love the style choices!” Mabel’s words rang with sincerity, but I couldn’t help but feel them as a reminder of just how far out of my depth I was.

Adventurous wasn’t exactly what I would call it. More like disastrous. Catastrophic. A complete fucking mess.

And it wasn’t even seven a.m.

I wasn’t an arrogant guy. I was confident in my abilities, yes, but I wasn’t ever cocky about it.

Or I hadn’t thought so.

But when I’d transferred from the Chicago Fire Department to Starlight Cove’s, I had to admit I thought it was going to be an easy change.

Statistically speaking, Starlight Cove had a minuscule number of calls compared to what I was used to on any given shift in Chicago. True, I hadn’t been the fire chief while tackling those calls, but I thought I’d been prepared for that shift, considering the much smaller activity level here.

But now, after weeks in my new position back in my hometown, I could admit I was a complete fucking idiot.

This morning alone, I’d had to break up a heated discussion about which shift got to decorate the station’s float for the St. Paddy’s Day parade, discovered someone had “borrowed” one of the trucks to hang a Welcome to Retirement sign for Buster Thompson’s party, and spent forty-five minutes trying to figure out why the hell there was a goat tied to our flagpole.

I wasn’t used to dealing with all this… shit .

A knock sounded, and I glanced up from the paperwork spread across my desk to find Ford McKenzie leaning against the doorjamb.

He was several years younger than me, having graduated with my youngest brother, Lincoln, so we hadn’t been close.

But I couldn’t lie and say it hadn’t been nice to see a friendly face my first day on the job.

“Ford, what can I do for you?” I asked.