A Deliberate Father

ISBN: 0373717512

Author: Kelly, Kate

Condition: New

Excerpt. Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved. Jordan Tanner pulled up across the street from the faded purple monstrosity and uttered a dozen different curses, each one ending with Great-aunt Beulah. Not that he wasn't grateful to have inherited the house-mausoleum, whatever-but he harbored no illusions. As the last Tanner standing, this legacy had come to him through default.Rain beat against the windshield of his Lexus as the wind tore down the deserted street. The oak he'd parked under groaned from the assault. He should move his car away from the trees. But Dunstan Lane was entirely lined with the old giants, and he knew a stall tactic when he saw one.Jordan climbed out, unfurled his umbrella and studied his new home through the pelting rain. Not home. Residence. Home was his I-can't-believe-I-finally-made-it condo forty minutes down the highway. All he had to do was ride out the next few months in the butt-ugly Victorian until the place sold. Then he would return to his real life.A movement on the roof three stories up caught his attention. Curious, he crossed the street and peered upward. A small woman, maybe a girl, scampered over a dormer, stopped near the edge above him and raised her arms to the sky. You didn't have to be Einstein to know that was a curse ripping out of her mouth.He tossed the umbrella aside and broke into a full out run. How long would it take him to get to the top floor? And then? Then he'd figure it out. Talk her down. Break into the third-floor apartment if he had to and find a way onto the roof. No one was going to kill themselves today. Not on his property.He pounded up the fire escape, stopping only to sight the woman. She was squatting now, even closer to the edge, and swinging something in her hand. He pulled his head down and pushed on, his breath searing his lungs. Waste of energy to shout. Probably some crack crazed teenager. Probably one of his tenants. He hit the landing outside the top-floor apartment. Nailed to the side of the house was a ladder that went the rest of the way up. Thank God.He grabbed the bottom rung as he spared a quick check on the crazy lady. Yup, still there, but she had turned away from the edge, her attention focused on the shingles."I wouldn't do that if I were you, mister." A thin voice wafted out from a window that opened onto the fire escape.Jordan shot a look behind him but the curtains obscured whoever had spoken. Another nutcase, no doubt."There's a woman on the roof," he hollered over his shoulder as he hoisted himself up the first rung. "I think she's going to jump."A small boy poked his head out the open window. "She's fixing the roof. You better wait until she comes down." The anemic-looking child pushed his heavy framed glasses farther up his nose and looked him over. "You got a cold beer?""Excuse me?""She thinks cold beer is yummy. If you give her one, she might not yell at you."Jordan stepped back onto the landing and leaned over the railing until he caught sight of the woman. Now that he was taking time to notice, yeah, that was a hammer in her hand. The soft thump of hammer meeting nail reached him as he watched her duckwalk away from the edge.He hunched his shoulders against the relentless rain. "Does she always work on the roof during a storm?""Not always." The kid looked like he was having a midlife crisis at the age of, well, whatever age he was. Somewhere between eight and twelve. His thick black glasses swallowed his face, giving him a pinched look, as if he spent a lot of time scraping the bottom of the peanut butter jar. He started to shut the window."Hang on a sec. What's your name?""Jacob." He banged the lower edge of the window with his fist. It slid down another two inches."Jacob, I'd like to ask you a few questions." Like how rotten the old house was, and exactly who lived in it. Beulah's solicitor hadn't mentioned children. And where was the caretaker? Could it possibly be the tiny woman repairing the roof?"I'm not sup