Summer with the Single Dad

Welcome to San Camanez, a humble, peaceful little island in the Puget Sound and home to the McEvoy brothers. Four sexy single fathers—and one childless snack with a beard—who run a brewpub on the beach, raise their kids together, and hope to find love and happiness in the chaos that is life. This is Bennett’s story ...Single Dad and CFO, Bennett McEvoy, is determined to give his daughters a fun summer despite the money woes plaguing his family business. He needs the brewpub and cabins he owns with his brothers to be the more prosperous than ever. Because right now, things are tight. His focus is on profit and sustainability. He doesn’t have time for the mysterious beauty in cabin five. But when her cabin floods, he insists she move into his house, because he absolutely does not want to see her go.Dr. Justine Brazeau, a renowned cardiothoracic surgeon, made a mistake and killed a patient. Clearly, she’s not cut out to practice medicine. But now, she has no direction or purpose. She’s lost. She’s sad. And she’s lonely. Well, not anymore since she’s living with Bennett, and he’s making it very difficult for her to figure out her future—that doesn’t involve him without a shirt (or pants).Can Bennett make the money his family business needs this summer, and heal Justine’s guilty heart? Or is she too consumed with her own pain to see that together they are stronger, better, and a lot less broken?

Bennett McEvoy plunked his elbows on the worn wooden desk of his
office and hung his head, catching his scalp in his fingers and tugging harder
than he probably should. Baldness didn’t run in his family, thankfully, but he
probably shouldn’t be testing the strength of his follicles, anyway.

The business was hemorrhaging money, and it was up to him to stop
it.

But his brothers figured because the restaurant was always full,
the brewery continuously sold out of stock, and their cabin reservation book
had a mile-long waitlist, that everything was peachy keen.

Well, it fucking wasn’t, jellybean. It fucking wasn’t.

They took a massive hit during COVID. They stopped giving
themselves a wage, but paid all their bills and staff from the beer sales. So
even though, “technically” the business was slowly creeping back into the
black, Bennett and his brothers themselves were struggling.

They poured every penny they had into buying the property and
setting up the businesses, and although it was all successful, the price of
everything needed to run a restaurant, brewery, and rental cabins just
continued to go up. Fuck, even between now and a year ago, laundry detergent
had gone up over fifty percent. And between the kitchen, dining room and
cabins, they did a fuck-ton of laundry.

And all that shit added up.

Not to mention the electricity bill which pillaged their bank
account like it was some mid-evil sheriff collecting taxes from the poor
villagers.

It didn’t help that Clint just bought brewery equipment whenever
he needed to, not bothering to discuss it with Bennett ahead of time. He just
ordered what he needed—like a new unitank jacket conical fermenter—whatever the
fuck that was?—which cost over a thousand dollars, and handed Bennett the bill,
expecting Bennett to pull the money out of somewhere. His ass, maybe? Wyatt
was the same way in the kitchen. He just bought a brand-new fucking commercial
deep fryer for twenty-five hundred bucks, because the other one broke. And
yeah, they needed it, but he didn’t even talk to Bennett about it first. He
just told Bennett to deal with it.

A knock on his office door pulled him from his spiraling funk.
“Come in,” he murmurs.

“Daddy?” It was Aya, his seven-year-old daughter. Her
nine-year-old sister Emerson, or Emme, as they called her, was right behind
her. They both had smoothie cups with reusable silicone straws.

“Hey sweethearts,” he says, throwing on a smile and pushing his
rolling chair away from his desk so Aya could perch on his knee. “What kind of
smoothie did Uncle Dom make you guys this time?”

She offered him the straw. “Pineapple, spinach, mango. It’s really
good.”

He took a long pull off the straw, regretting it instantly when
the brain-freeze tried to render his children orphans for twenty-seconds.

“Brain-freeze?” Emme asks with a giggle.

He blinked open his eyes as the pain receded. “Yeah.” Kissing
Aya’s temple, he inhaled her fruit punch shampoo. “It’s a good smoothie,
though.”

“We’re boooooored,” Aya says. “What can we do?”

“Where are all your cousins? Go find them to play with.”

Both girls made faces and rolled their matching brown eyes. Eyes
they inherited from their late mother, who was half Colombian. “The boys are
playing video games and we don’t want to play video games,” Emme says. “And
Talia is in Seattle with Brooke and Uncle Clint. She skipped school and went
over with them this morning.”

“Oh, that’s right,” Bennett says, nodding. “Brooke had to chat
with the police about—”

“All that crazy stuff that went down with her stalker-killer,”
Emme replies, plunking a hand on her hip and shaking her head. At that moment,
she reminded him so much of her mother. Both girls looked a lot like Carla, but
Emme was her doppelgänger. Aya inherited Bennett’s mother’s blonde hair, but
Emme had Carla’s dark brown curls, darker skin-tone and long eyelashes.

“Yeah,” he confirmed, shoving the wave of grief and nostalgia down
to the very bottom of his gut. He didn’t have time to deal with that right now.
“And Uncle Clint went over for support. He also took over some shipments of
beer. Talia tagged along because she just wanted to.”

The girls pouted. “I wish we could have skipped school and gone to
Seattle.” Aya took a sip of her smoothie. “We never get to do anything fun.”

He tickled her ribs. “Oh, is that so?”

She giggled and squirmed on his lap.

“I seem to remember just last night. I let you both stay up late.
We made microwave smores and watched two movies. That was pretty fun,
wasn’t it?”

“You know what we mean,” Emme says, all sass and pre-teen angst.

Inhaling deep through his nose, he scrambled to collect every
ounce of patience and compassion he could find. “I know,” he says, meeting
Emme’s gaze. “It isn’t the same, but it’s something. It’s all I can offer you
right now. This isn’t the first time we’ve had this discussion, either.”

“I know,” Emme says, hanging her head and breaking eye contact.

“Maybe once school is out, we can take a couple of days and go
camping or for a little road trip. It’s been a while since you’ve seen Abuela
and Grandpa Lang.”

His in-laws lived in northern California and didn’t see their
granddaughters much. Carla had been their only child and when she died, they
didn’t take it well. It didn’t help that Aya and Emme looked so much like
Carla. The girls were just a constant reminder of the daughter Luisa and Greg
lost.

Gravel crunched under tires outside.

A quick glance at the clock on the wall said it was nearly five
o’clock. His newest guest for the cabin said she would be on the four o’clock
sailing from Seattle, so she was right on time.

“Are you coming home for dinner, Daddy?” Aya asks. “Uncle Jagger
said he’d make us turkey tacos if you need to work late.

“I still have a bit more to do here, but I should be up at the
house by six. Tell Uncle Jagger to start the tacos and I’ll finish them when I
get home. He can stay and eat with us, though.”

Aya hopped off his lap just as there was a knock at the office
door. He never fully closed the door, and the kids knew that, so the knock was
just a pretend formality and the guest pushed open the door.

He nearly swallowed his fucking tongue. He knew it was a solitary
guest coming to stay for seven weeks at the cabin, but he hadn’t bothered to
Google their name. It’d been a last-minute rebook. They had a cancelation, and
this guest snuck in just minutes after he reposted the vacancy. A gift from the
universe because that loss of revenue would have hit them hard. He hadn’t even
had to discount it because it was last minute. This woman—who was fucking
gorgeous—paid full price.

“Hi!” Aya squeaked. “Who are you?”

“Aya,” Bennet scolds.

She glared back at him. “What? I just asked her who she was. How
did I do anything wrong?”

“You asked in a rude way,” Emme says.

“Sorry,” Aya replies, clearly deflated. Her cheeks went pink. “Hello.
Who are you … please?”

Emme snorted.

Bennett’s lip twitched.

“It’s all right,” the woman replies with a sweet smile directed at
Aya. “I’m Justine.”

“That’s a pretty name,” Emme says.

“Thank you.”

“Checking into Cabin Five?” Bennett asks, hating that his voice
cracked like a thirteen-year-old boy’s.

“Yes, please,” Justine says, meeting his gaze. Her pupils dilated,
and she swallowed.

Heat flared in Bennett’s chest, spreading instantly up his neck
and down into his groin. He cleared his throat and broke eye contact, glancing down
at the old-school reservation book on his desk. Yes, he had a digital schedule
as well, but during storm season the power often went out, so he liked to have
backup hard copies, too.

“I’m Emme and this is my sister Aya,” Emme says.

“I’m seven, she’s nine,” Aya adds. “You’re really pretty. I like
your hair.”

He lifted his gaze just enough to watch as a sexy flush bloomed in
Justine’s cheeks, but her smile grew causing her cheeks to apple. “Thank you. I
think you two have lovely hair as well.”

Bennett’s daughters beamed and preened themselves, toying with
their curls, which had grown a little frizzy over the day due to running like
wildlings at school and the never-ending humidity from the early June weather.

“Girls,” he started, directing his attention to his daughters for
a moment, “why don’t you head on up to the house and find Uncle Jagger. Let him
know the dinner plans. I’ll be up shortly.”

His daughters pouted, still clearly enamoured with the new guest,
but they nodded.

“We hope you enjoy your stay here,” Aya says. “Come find me if you
have any questions.”

Justine snickered. “I absolutely will. Thank you.”

The girls waved to Bennett and Justine, then disappeared with
their smoothies through the door.

Now, the only person he could look at was the beautiful
woman with almond-shaped brown eyes, freckles, and a slender neck. His
daughters weren’t wrong. She was very pretty. Gorgeous, in fact. He would guess
she had at least one parent of Asian ancestry. Her hair was black with subtle
highlights and hung in a sleek ponytail down her back.

“If you’ll follow me, I’ll get you all checked in to your cabin.
Do you need a hand unloading?” He stood up, averting his eyes from her face at
all costs. He’d never had such an intense, instant reaction to a woman like
this before. Not even Carla.

It was throwing him for a loop, and he didn’t like it one bit.

“Uh, that’d be great, thank you,” she says, following him out the
door, but not before he stopped to grab the cabin key from the row of keys. It
was the only one on the hook since the rest of the cabins were occupied.

However, him stopping so abruptly like that caused Justine to bump
into his back.

“Oh, I’m so sorry,” she apologizes, stepping back.

He glanced over his shoulder, flashing her a smile. “It’s okay. I
shouldn’t have stopped so suddenly. Just this way.”

Her sleek black BMW SUV was parked on the gravel in front of his
office—which was, in essence, just a little shack built onto the side near the
brewery. Nothing fancy, nothing special. But it served its purpose as a place
for him to conduct business with vendors, staff and guests.

She unlocked the SUV and popped the trunk.

“Oh, you can park in front of your cabin,” he says. “You don’t
have to unload from here.”

Another rush of color entered her cheeks. “Oh … okay.” This forced
her to wander behind the vehicle and manually close the hatch.

“It’s just down that lane there if you want to drive. I can meet
you there.” He pointed in the direction of her cabin and waited for her to
climb into her vehicle.

He welcomed the fresh air and absence of this enchanting woman.

What the fuck was wrong with him?

Why was he having such a carnal, visceral reaction to her?

He reached Cabin Five in less than a minute, the gentle rumble of
the BMW behind him. She parked in front of her cabin and turned off the engine.

He unlocked the door and opened it, then circled around to the
hatch, which she’d already popped. She met him at the back and they both
reached into the trunk at the same time.

Of course, they reached for totes adjacent to each other and the
back of his hand brushed the back of hers.

Like he’d just touched an electric cattle fence, a shock raced
through him.

She was the first to pull her hand away. “Sorry,” she murmurs,
adjusting her approach and grabbing the lidless tote in a different way so
their hands were nowhere near each other.

“My fault,” he mutters, deciding to grab a big plastic Coleman
cooler instead. He followed her into the cabin, breaking his promise to himself
to not check out her ass.

Dammit, she had a great ass.

A rocking ass. And it filled out those tight jeans like nobody’s
fucking business.

He swallowed and made his way into the kitchenette, plunking the
big cooler on the floor near the fridge.

“We have Wi-Fi,” he says, turning to face her. “Password is ON
THE FRIDGE.  But the O in on
is a zero, and the E is fridge is a three. Then there’s an exclamation
point at the end. You’ll see it in the guest binder on the coffee table.”

“One the fridge,” she breathes, a small grin curling her lips.
“That’s clever. So when someone asks, what’s the Wi-Fi password? You can answer
with: it’s on the fridge.”

They said that last bit in unison.

“My youngest brother came up with that gem.”

“I like it.”

He nodded, cleared his throat, and made his way into the kitchen.
“The stove is gas. Nothing fancy, no tricks to it. Just don’t leave it on.
Obviously. The shower, on the other hand, takes a solid minute to warm up. No
matter what we do, it runs cold for a full sixty seconds before it starts to
heat up. So don’t jump in then turn the water on because you’ll get a
shock.”

“Noted.”

“You’re next to a pub, so quiet time in the evenings follows the
pub hours. When it shuts down, that’s time for the parties here to quiet down,
too. We ask people to keep it quiet in the mornings until eight. So if you need
to pack up and leave before then to catch the ferry, please do it quietly.”

She nodded.

“Ummm … there’s no television. We’ve stocked you with towels, and
enough toilet paper and paper towel for about five days, after that it’s on
you. We do have coin-operated laundry in a little area off my office back
there. There’s a sign-up sheet that guests seem to find helpful since there are
only two sets of machines. You’re welcome to just use the washing machine then
hang your clothes on a line. I think there’s one strung on your patio out
front.” He craned his head around to indicate outside.

“Okay.”

“Oh! And I almost forgot.” He reached into the back of his jeans.
“All guests get these free drink vouchers to be used at the pub. So … here.” He
held out the stack of free drink tickets and, of course, just like before, when
she reached for them, their fingers touched.