The Sweetheart Rules Read Free

story.
    “Daddy! I want ice cream! Now!” Ellie stomped her feet and made her mad face. “I’s hungry and you
promised
!”
    Case in point.
    “We have to finish shopping first, El, then we can get—”
    “Now!” The word exploded in one over-the-top Mount Vesuvius demand. Thirty days, he told himself, thirty days, and then Jasmine would be back and he’d be free to return to Alaska.
    Yeah, that’s what he should be looking forward to. The problem was, he didn’t want his kids to go back to living with Jasmine. Mike might rank up there close to number one crappiest dad on the planet, but when he’d picked up the girls, he’d finally seen what he’d been blind to for so long. The dancer he’d married in Vegas was a distant, hands-off mother who had blown his monthly child support checks on parties and shoes, while his daughters went around in too-tight, too-short hand-me-downs and ate store-brand cereal three meals a day. That had pissed him off, and when he’d gone through the house to help the girls pack, it had taken every ounce of his strength to stop himself from exploding at Jasmine.
    Because truth be told, it was his damned fault they lived this way, and if he’d been the kind of man and father he should have been from day one, then none of this would have happened. Yet another chalk mark in the failure column.
    “Ice cream!” Ellie screamed. Several people turned around in the aisle, giving Mike the glare of disapproval.
    Diana backed up a half step. “I’ll let you go. Have a good vacation with your daughters.”
    He swore he heard a bit of sarcasm in the last few words. He told himself he should let her leave, but a part of Mike wondered about that dress. And wondered if she’d thought about him in the last six months. Plus, she seemed to have a way with Ellie, a calming presence, that he could sure as hell use right now. At least until he figured out what the heck he was doing. “Do you want to get some ice cream with us?”
    What was he doing? He had a schedule to keep, a plan for the day. Eighteen minutes until he planned on being done shopping, then thirteen minutes to get home, stow the groceries and then eat lunch at 1300. Lunch done and cleaned up by 1345, and chores until 1500.
    Chucking that schedule to the side made the muscles in his neck tighten like steel cables. Yet a part of him wanted to while away the rest of the day with Diana Tuttle in the quaint Rescue Bay ice-cream shop and find out if she was a chocolate or vanilla kind of girl.
    His money was on chocolate. Definitely chocolate.
    “Ice cream! Ice cream!” Ellie jumped up and down, the teddy bear flopping his head in agreement.
    “Just what she needs—
sugar
,” Jenny muttered.
    Diana began to back away. “Uh, it seems you have—”
    “Come on, it’s ice cream,” Mike said. “Everyone deserves ice cream at the end of the day.” He nodded toward the basket in her hands. “Unless you have somewhere you need to go.”
    Could he be more pathetic or obvious? Somewhere she needed to go?
    “Please?” Ellie said. “Please go with us? I like you and Teddy likes you and Daddy is grumpy.”
    Diana laughed, and seemed to consider for a moment. In the end, she was won over by Ellie’s pixie face. “Well, who can resist an invitation like that?”
    Ellie jumped up and down again, then ran back and forth in the aisle, nearly colliding with other shoppers, singing, “We’re getting ice cream, we’re getting ice cream.”
    “Ellie, quit,” Mike said.
    Ellie kept going. Jenny studied a hangnail.
    “Ice cream, ice cream, ice cream.” Ellie spun in a circle, almost crashing into an elderly woman in a wheelchair. “Teddy loves ice cream, Jenny loves ice cream, Ellie loves ice cream.”
    “Ellie, quit it!” Mike said again, louder this time.
    Ellie kept going, like a top on steroids. Her song rose in volume, her dancing feet sped up. She dashed to Mike, then over to Diana. “Ice cream, ice cream!”
    Diana bent down