“What Halloween party?”
She sighed. “The one at the community center down the block from your house? You have to have seen the ads for it. It’s an annual thing and it draws a pretty awesome crowd. There are bound to be lots of single men for you to meet.”
I swiped my tongue across my lips, drawing a blank, but if she said it was happening, it was happening. She’d been living in our neighborhood a lot longer than I had.
“Pass,” I said, capping my pen and leaning back in my chair. “I’m swearing off dating for a while.”
“Maisie.” She grimaced like I’d just announced I was giving up on oxygen for a few months. “Don’t. You can’t just give up.”
“It probably won’t be forever, but right now, it’s just not working for me,” I said honestly. “I’m tired of all the fluff. The forced small talk. Pretending I care about someone’s fantasy football team.”
“You’re insane,” she said. “All that stuff is exciting. Every time could be the last time you have to find out something new about someone for the very first time. It’s crazy not to love the sense of possibility that comes with the small talk.”
Maybe I was insane. Maybe it was crazy not to feel all heart-eyed because of the possibility. I used to believe in love. I believed in it with everything I had until life threw me the biggest curveball of all. A curveball with a never-ending supply of energy, dark hair, green eyes, and a knack for turning my house into a Lego-built warzone.
For the last seven years, I’d poured every ounce of myself into that curveball and it was exhausting to have to start thinking about things like dating again just because he was getting older and a little more independent.
For a few more minutes, Debbie kept trying to talk me into keeping an open mind, but then the elementary school was dismissed and I made my way across campus to collect Brody. My beloved curveball came barreling toward me with his backpack bouncing against his spine and a much too grown-up smirk on his lips.
“Hey, Mom,” he said casually, barely looking at me as he made a beeline for our car. Somewhere deep inside, I felt a pang of longing for the toddler days, when I’d gotten more hugs and kisses than I could count and I hadn’t just been a flatMombut an excitedly squealedMommy!
“It’s golf today, right?” I asked, shaking off the nostalgia as he climbed into the car and I dropped in behind the steering wheel. “Are you really still enjoying that?”
“Yep.” He grinned, already digging a snack out of his bag. “I’m going to crush it. Coach Daniel said I’ve got a natural talent for the game.”
I smiled, but inside, my stomach dropped.Of course, he’s got a natural talent for the game.
Brody had anatural talentfor every sport known to man, and I was a single mom math geek who’d only learned how to catch a ball when I’d been teaching him. Sure, in my youngeryears, I’d been good at diving, but that was the only sport that had ever made sense to me.
As it was, the back seat was a mess of Brody’s hockey gear and, as of a few weeks ago, a set of golf clubs had been added to the mix. The kid cycled through hobbies faster than I could keep up. Hockey was still his main obsession, but apparently, golf was theinthing now.
The only consolation was that the driving range was only a few minutes away from the school. Once I dropped him off with his coach, I found a nice picnic table in the shade and pulled up my favorite weekly news outlet on my phone.
It was mostly local development updates and business news, but I loved it. It made me feel like I had my finger on the pulse of the stuff that mattered in our community—development, the preservation of green spaces, and small businesses in the area I could support.
Watching Brody from the corner of my eye, I scanned through the articles, absently flipping through the publication until something in the classifieds section drew my attention.
Local Businessman Seeking Wife. I snorted and rolled my eyes. What kind of lunatic would put an ad like that in the paper? I intended to move on, but for some reason, I kept reading.
The man claimed to be in his late twenties and well off. Apparently, he wanted to “skip the flings and situationships and get down to business.”
It was vague. Weird. Oddly smart.
I knew better than to romanticize things, but the truth was that I kept reading because I related to this guy. I was also tired of the endless song and dance of dating, of wondering whether someone would stick around or if they were just passing through. Since I had Brody to think about, even just the possibility of introducing him to someone who would hurt him when they left made me feel sick to my stomach.
This, however, seemed straightforward to me. Practical. Definitely the easiest way I’d come across so far to find Brody the dad he so desperately needed—and to make sure I didn’t die alone one day, surrounded by regret and cats.
Acting on instinct and before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked into my emails and typed out a quick message, sending it to the address listed on the ad. I was either going to get kidnapped and murdered, or married.
What could possibly go wrong?
CHAPTER 3
CALLUM
Istared at the empty chair across from me, wondering if it might spontaneously make a human woman appear out of sheer willpower if I stared hard enough, but it didn’t work. The chair remained very much empty and my patience was rapidly dwindling.
All around me, crystal glasses clinked and the low, smooth tones of a piano drifted through the air from somewhere in a darkened corner. It was romantic, the perfect setting for a first date with one’s future wife, but a complete waste of a table for one.
