Dr. Dad Read online

  “I don’t want you falling in love with her, Daddy,” Lindsey explained

  “Why not?” he asked.

  “She’s not right for you,” Lindsey said. “She’s a star. You don’t understand about stars, Daddy. They’re different.”

  “You’re the only star I care about,” he murmured. “Susannah isn’t a star anymore. And I’m not in love with her. Okay?”

  She was reassured. “Okay.”

  “Do you want me to miss Daddy School tonight? I’ll stay home if you need me to,” he said, loosening his hold on her.

  “No, that’s all right. I’ve got homework to do, anyway.” She didn’t want to do her homework, but she figured saying it would cheer him up.

  It did. He stepped back and gave her a real, full-fledged smile. “Okay, Hot Stuff. You do your homework and I’ll go to class. And don’t worry about Susannah.”

  “I’m not worried about her. She’s cool. She’s terrific. She’s just…” More than you can handle, Lindsey wanted to say. “She’s different.”

  “Yeah,” he agreed, “she’s different.”

  Except Lindsey knew for sure he didn’t mean it the way she did.

  Dear Reader,

  Two years ago, I wrote a trilogy of books about the “Daddy School,” a program that taught men how to be better fathers. The three “Daddy School” books were so popular I was asked to write another “Daddy School” book.

  The result is Dr. Dad, a story about a widowed doctor and his lovely but exasperating ten-year-old daughter. Toby Cole has always been close to his daughter, but now Lindsey is changing, both physically and emotionally. These changes intensify when the woman who moves into the house next door is Lindsey’s idol, a TV star who isn’t at all what Lindsey had always dreamed she would be.

  We all know that romantic love can be the best medicine for healing the human soul. A father’s love for his daughter can be equally powerful. This is a lesson I learned from my own father, who would probably make an excellent Daddy School teacher himself!

  I hope you enjoy Dr. Dad. And please visit my web site: www.superauthors.com.

  Happy reading!

  Judith Arnold

  DR. DAD

  Judith Arnold

  This book is dedicated to the wonderful pediatricians

  who have kept my sons healthy and happy.

  CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER ONE

  THE MOVING TRUCK had been sitting in the Robinsons’ driveway when Lindsey got home from school, and it was still there three hours later. It took up the entire length of the driveway, with the cab hanging out into the street. Brawny men in brown uniform shirts and blue jeans walked back and forth, lugging cartons and sofas and weird-shaped objects wrapped in quilted gray cloth across the lawn to the front door or straight into the garage.

  Lindsey sat on the cushioned window seat in the study, spying on the movers. She was hoping for a clue, something to tell her about the family moving into the Robinson house.

  Some baby items—a stroller or a tricycle or one of those pudgy plastic basketball hoops designed for toddlers—would indicate that the new neighbors had little kids, which meant maybe they would hire her to baby-sit for them. She was going to turn eleven in July, and eleven was old enough. According to her friends, baby-sitting meant getting paid three bucks an hour to watch TV and eat potato chips while the kids slept. Lindsey could definitely handle that.

  But she would sacrifice baby-sitting jobs for the chance to have someone her age moving in next door. A girl, so she and Lindsey could be friends. Cathy Robinson used to be her very best friend—and she still was, even though her family moved to Atlanta in December and she and Lindsey had to use e-mail to stay in touch with each other. But Lindsey would sure like it if another girl moved in next door, someone she could hang out with and go to the mall with and stuff. Or a boy, as long as he was cute and a year older than her, because boys her own age were such jerks. If he was a year older, he’d be going into seventh grade while she went into sixth, but they’d both be taking the same bus to the middle school. So maybe they could be friends.

  Especially if he was cute.

  For as long as Lindsey had been watching, though, nothing the movers hauled out of the truck offered a single hint about the new neighbors. A car was parked by the curb in front of the house, one of those updated Volkswagen beetles the color of pea soup, with a California license plate attached to the bumper. Lindsey couldn’t understand why people thought those new beetles were so cool. She thought the car in front of the Robinson house looked disgusting.

  She dug her finger inside her sneaker to scratch an itch below her ankle bone. She wasn’t supposed to be wearing shoes when she had her feet propped up on the window seat, but she didn’t care. Dad was going to be pissed at her today, whether or not she put her feet up with her shoes on.

  She wished her feet didn’t sweat so much. In another month it would be warm enough to go barefoot, but not yet. It didn’t make sense that her feet should be too hot in shoes and too cold in sandals. Sometimes it seemed like nothing about her body was working right.

  One of the moving men came out the front door, with a woman following him. The new neighbor, Lindsey thought, sitting straighter. She squinted, trying to size her up, to see if she looked friendly and, more important, if she looked old enough to have a kid Lindsey’s age or young enough to have toddlers in need of a baby-sitter. Her long blond hair was pulled back in a sloppy braid, and she wore a big sweatshirt and tight jeans. She had really slim legs. In the late-afternoon shadows, it was hard to see her—until she turned and the sun hit her in the face.

  “Oh, my God!” Lindsey shrieked. Her heart shimmied inside her chest, beating so hard it felt like it was going to break out of her rib cage. She surged to her knees and shielded her eyes to get a clearer look at the woman.

  It was her! It had to be. Even though her hair was just a little lighter, and she looked a little thinner, and her coloring was just a little paler without makeup, but…“Oh, my God,” Lindsey whispered. The words came out sounding like an actual prayer.

  It made no sense that someone as famous as she was would actually be moving to this boring little corner of Arlington, Connecticut. Nothing exciting ever happened around here, especially not to Lindsey. Never in her wildest dreams would she have imagined meeting someone so extraordinary, let alone having someone so extraordinary move into the house next door.

  It must be fate. A giant swoosh of destiny. Lindsey’s life was going to change forever because of this. It was going to become important and meaningful, maybe even spectacular. Everything would get better.

  “Daddy? Daddy!” She leaped off the window seat and tore out of the study, down the hall to the kitchen.

  “Oh, my God, Daddy, guess what?”

  Her father was standing beside the kitchen table, his tie loose and his blazer draped over his arm. She didn’t know why he even bothered to have a blazer with him, since he always took it off as soon as he got to work, and then maybe he put it on to drive home but he stripped it right off again the minute he entered the house. Lindsey was glad she wasn’t a guy, because she thought blazers were really stupid, especially with those little notches in the collars that looked like a penguin had taken a bite out of the fabric on each side.

  Ties were stupid, too. Her father’s tie was loose
ned, his shirt collar unbuttoned and his shirt comfortably wrinkled. He hated ironing.

  He was holding a piece of paper, studying it, and when Lindsey realized what it was, she almost forgot about the new next-door neighbor. He was going to be so pissed when he finished reading it. She was going to be in major trouble, and no swoosh of destiny was going to rescue her from it. If she’d gotten into a fight or talked back to the principal or something, her father would be angry for a while and then get over it. But grades were a whole other thing. He took grades very seriously.

  She wondered if she could get him so excited about the new neighbor he’d forget all about her midterm report. “Daddy, you’ll never guess who’s moving into the Robinson house! Come on, guess!”

  He lowered the paper and peered at her. He was furious. She could have been standing two towns away, and she’d still have felt the waves of anger rolling off him. He waved the paper at her. “This is not good, Lindsey.”

  She already knew that. She’d read the report. And being the honest daughter she was, she’d bravely left it on the table for him to see first thing when he got home, even though she knew that was like suicide. If she hadn’t been honest and brave, she would have hidden it until later, when he was half-asleep in his easy chair, and then said, “Oh, by the way, Dr. Dad, you have to sign this for tomorrow,” and he might have been so sleepy he’d have signed it without looking too hard at it.

  Fat chance. He would never sign anything without reading it thoroughly.

  All right, so he was angry and she was in trouble. Big deal. The most incredible thing was happening practically right outside their door! Did they really have to discuss her midterm report right now?

  Apparently, they did. Her father lifted the paper and stared it as if it were a love letter he wanted to memorize. Or a hate letter, given how grim his face was. “‘Math,”’ he read. “‘Lindsey is a gifted student, but she isn’t putting forth the necessary effort. Science. Lindsey is missing two homework assignments.”’

  “I can make those up,” she mumbled.

  Ignoring her, he continued reading. “‘English. Lindsey seems distracted and uninterested—”’

  “Well, the story we’ve been reading is boring. It’s about Hitler and this stupid stuffed rabbit—”

  “‘History,”’ her father read. “‘Homework has been sloppy. Spanish. Muy bien.”’

  “See?” she said hopefully. “I’m doing real good in Spanish.”

  “Really well,” he corrected her, then lowered the midterm report to the table. “What’s going on, Lindsey?”

  “Okay, so it isn’t as good as usual.” Her feet felt fidgety, and she nudged the floor with her toe to keep herself from running away, back to the study to spy on the new neighbor, or maybe straight out the door to see her in person.

  “As good as usual?” He jabbed the report with his finger. “This stinks, Hot Stuff. It isn’t like you at all.”

  Maybe it was like her. Maybe she wasn’t Hot Stuff. Maybe she wasn’t Little Miss Straight-A, like she used to be. Maybe other things mattered more to her than being perfect all the time.

  For instance, the new next-door neighbor—she mattered more. “Look,” she said, racing through this discussion so she could steer her father to the more important issue. “I can make up the missing homework. If Ms. Hathaway wants me to redo the history homework, I’ll redo it neat.”

  “Neatly,” her father said.

  She tried not to roll her eyes. This wasn’t a good time to let her father know she thought he was being a major pain. “Neatly,” she echoed. “This is just the midterm report. It doesn’t actually count.”

  “No, but it tells me something’s not right. Your schoolwork is deteriorating. The midterm report exists to warn us when there’s a problem—and there’s clearly a problem here, Lindsey.”

  “I’ll fix it.” Please, Daddy, don’t turn this into a big thing. Please. “It’s not a problem, I promise. I can talk to Ms. Hathaway and fix everything.”

  “I think that perhaps I should talk to Ms. Hathaway.”

  “You don’t have to do that. It’s not like I’m failing or anything. I’ll do the missing homework, and that’ll be that.”

  He gave her the Look: a deep, stern, narrow-eyed frown that announced: You have disappointed me. She hated the Look. She had no defense against it.

  Except today, maybe she did. She had the new neighbor, which was so much more significant than anything going on in her useless, idiotic fifth-grade class. “Susannah Dawson is moving into the Robinson house,” she said.

  Her father scowled. “Who?”

  Sheesh! He thought history homework was more important than having a celebrity as your next-door neighbor. “Susannah Dawson! From Mercy Hospital!”

  “Mercy Hospital?” He was still frowning.

  “Where’s that? I’ve never heard of it.”

  “It’s a TV show, Daddy. Mercy Hospital. Susannah Dawson plays Lee Davis on it. Dr. Lee Davis,” she added, because she thought that might impress her father.

  “She’s not a doctor. She just plays one on TV,” he muttered, then smiled wryly.

  Lindsey wanted to shake him hard. He could be so dense. Didn’t he realize what a big thing it was to have someone as famous as Susannah Dawson moving into their neighborhood? More than their neighborhood—right next door!

  Obviously, he didn’t think it was a big thing at all. He was her father. Totally clueless.

  “So, she’s a TV star?” he asked. He looked like he was pretending to be interested.

  “Yes, she’s a TV star. If you ever paid any attention to anything—” Lindsey cut herself off. She couldn’t mouth off to her father. He was already steaming mad because she’d blown her midterm report. She couldn’t risk making him even madder.

  Once you were famous, fifth-grade midterm reports no longer mattered. Lindsey would bet Susannah Dawson never gave hers a moment’s thought. And as soon as Lindsey walked out of Elm Street Elementary for the last time in June, she was never going to think about fifth grade again, either. She was going to start middle school next fall, and after that high school, and after that she was going to be a star, like Susannah Dawson. She’d appear on some wonderful TV series every week, and she’d be beautiful, and girls all over America would wish they were her. And she’d get to kiss men who looked like Lucien Roche, who had been having an affair with Dr. Davis until they started fighting on the show.

  Lindsey couldn’t wait to be old enough to have guys like Lucien Roche falling passionately in love with her. Once you had someone like Lucien Roche in your life, fifth grade was pretty meaningless.

  “So, what are we going to do about this?” her father asked, gesturing at the midterm report. Evidently, he didn’t think having Susannah Davis of Mercy Hospital moving onto their street was anywhere near as significant as Lindsey’s missing a couple of homework assignments. “I think I should make an appointment to meet with Ms. Hathaway so we can review your work together.”

  Lindsey shrugged. “Really, Dr. Dad, you don’t have to. Ms. Hathaway is a jerk.”

  “She’s your teacher. Whether or not you like her is irrelevant. You’ve got responsibilities as a student. You’ve to get the job done.”

  Lindsey shrugged again, this time letting out a long sigh. Her father was always saying things like that—You’ve got to get the job done—as if he were a coach addressing a football team. As if school were a job like his job as a pediatrician. As if the fate of the universe rested on whether or not Lindsey got her job done.

  He just didn’t get it. A famous, gorgeous actress was moving in next door, and he thought Lindsey’s schoolwork was the only thing worth caring about. He really was hopeless.

  TOBY HAD BLOWN IT. He knew he had even before Lindsey had slouched out of the kitchen with her shoulders hunched and her gaze on the floor. She’d bounced in so full of energy, bright-eyed and exuberant—and he’d come down on her like the Lord High Executioner wielding an ax. And now she was
gone, off to contemplate how very much she despised him.

  Would it have made a difference if he’d given her a hug first? She seemed so prickly these days he was hesitant about touching her. Maybe he should have said he loved her—but she tended to recoil from all shows of affection, verbal or physical.

  He didn’t know how to reach her.

  Obviously, Ms. Hathaway didn’t, either.

  Lindsey had always been a good student. Even Ms. Hathaway had admitted on the midterm report that she was gifted. But the report showed that she was slacking off in nearly every subject. It wasn’t like Lindsey to do that.

  He sank onto one of the kitchen chairs and reread the report, although he already knew its troubling contents. His day had entailed the usual ups and downs—treating sick children could be both rewarding and depressing. But nothing was as rewarding as raising his precious daughter. And lately, nothing was as depressing, either.

  For not the first time, he suffered the gnawing worry that he was losing Lindsey. She wasn’t the girl she used to be, and he was scared out of his wits.

  As a doctor, he understood the changes theoretically. He knew about hormonal upheavals, about the moodiness and restlessness that assailed children with the onset of puberty. Physically, she was already beginning to show the signs. Her body was developing a mature femininity that frightened the hell out of him. Even worse, her face was different. The last layer of baby fat had melted from her cheeks and chin, leaving behind a face of sculpted beauty—a face that resembled her mother’s in an unnerving way. Every time he looked at Lindsey these days, he saw Jane, and it made him realize how desperately he needed Jane right now, and how alone he was.

  Sighing, he shoved away from the table and crossed to the sink. He rolled up his sleeves, washed his hands and unwrapped the salmon steaks he planned to broil for dinner. The mechanics of preparing the evening meal couldn’t distract him from his worry about Lindsey. That she had budding breasts and a new roundness to her hips, that she looked like the reincarnation of her mother, that she’d recently discovered the sublime thrill of sarcasm—it was all unsettling, but there was nothing he could do about it. He had to focus on what he could do something about: getting her back on track in school.