Welcome to Temptation by Jennifer Crusie

want my mom to be Rachel."
    "Rachel?" Phin's temper flared. "Who—"
    "Grandma Liz says Rachel is just like a mom when she baby-sits me," Dillie said. "And Rachel's mom keeps saying maybe someday she'll be my grandma and won't that be nice. But I don't think Rachel's practical enough to be my mom. And I really don't want her mom to be my grandma because her mom is mean to Grandma Junie all the time." She fell into her maternal grandmother's southern Ohio drawl as she added, "She's just naasty ."
    "Rachel's not going to be your mom," Phin said. "You can stop worrying."
    "Well, I don't know." Dillie sighed and straightened. "That's what Grandma Liz wants, and if we stay here, that's what'll happen because we always end up with what she wants."
    "Trust me, Dill," Phin said. "There's not a chance in hell that Rachel will be your mom." He heard his mother call, "Dillie?" and he raised his voice and called back, "We're out front." Liz came around the house from her garden, her gloved fist clenching blue-violet roses, her pale hair refusing to move in the summer breeze. The Tuckers did not let nature push them around. "Why are you sitting out here?"
    "Because it's nice," Phin said. "What did you want to talk to me about?" Liz stopped at the foot of the steps. "I want you to spend more time with Stephen Garvey instead of turning your back on him and rushing off like that. You'll never build a consensus giving him the cold shoulder."
    "I don't want to build a consensus, I want to run a bookstore," Phin said. Dillie poked him and he added,
    "And eat hot dogs with my kid. Dillie and I are going to have a sleepover at the store tomorrow night."
    "What?" Liz frowned at them both, two ridiculous children. "She can't. Her piano lesson is at six and then there's dinner, and she has to be in bed at eight-thirty. There's no point in her sleeping there."
    "Friday, then," Phin said.
    "Ballet," Liz said. "I don't understand this at all."
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    "What night don't you have a lesson?" Phin said to Dillie.
    "Mondays," Dillie said glumly.
    "That's the only night?" Phin turned back to Liz. "When did that happen?"
    "You stay at the bookstore past six most nights," Liz pointed out. "She's not missing quality time with you. And we want her to be well-rounded."
    Phin looked down at his angular little girl. "She's rounded enough. We're staying at the bookstore on Monday."
    "That's the first day of school so it would be impractical—"
    Dillie looked at him anxiously and he broke in. "We like impractical. Dillie and I live on the edge." Dillie beamed at him, joy radiating from every cell in her body, and he thought, I have to spend more time with this kid. She's the best.
    Behind Dillie, Liz opened her mouth again and Phin met her eyes. "Monday we stay there."
    "Very well," Liz said, clearly thinking it wasn't. "Just for this Monday, though. We have to be practical about school nights. Come on, Dillie, let's go get changed for dinner." Dillie took one yearning look back at him, which would have wrenched his heart if he hadn't known what an actress she was. "All right," she said plaintively, and took her grandmother's hand, dragging her feet as she went up the stone steps.
    "For heaven's sake, Dillie," Liz said, and Phin laughed.
    Dillie jerked her head up and grinned at him, pure kid again, and then she went inside with her grandmother to go without dessert because it was a weeknight.
    Diane would have given her dessert for breakfast, he thought, and then stopped, surprised that he'd thought of Diane at all. They'd been together for so short a time, he wasn't sure he could remember what she'd looked like. Round, he remembered, because that was what had gotten him into trouble in the first place. That, and she'd been so warm. Warmth had been in short supply at the Tuckers', especially when he'd come home to help his mother cope with his father's second heart attack and his father cope with his own mortality.
    Then one night he'd gone to the Tavern to get