One last shot—and if it doesn’t work out, I’m London-bound, baby.
CHAPTER 4
MAISIE
Brody was mid-flight between the couch cushions when I came downstairs, my red cocktail dress swishing against my legs. He landed on the last pillow with a victorious whoop, arms flung out like he’d just nailed a gold-medal routine at the Couch Olympics.
“Whoa,” he said, green eyes widening when he spotted me. “You look like a movie star.”
“Thanks, buddy.” I smiled despite the nerves swirling through me, smoothing the fabric over my hips and wondering if I should’ve pulled my hair up after all. “You’re still not supposed to be jumping on the furniture, though.”
He flashed me an unrepentant grin and launched right into balancing on the backrest like a tightrope walker. I didn’t call him out on it. Picking my battles with him had become something of an art form, and tonight, I was saving my energy for a different kind of challenge.
This wasn’t, by any means, a date. It was more like a meeting. With a businessman who claimed to want to skip the flowery crap and all the other nonsense people wrapped around romantic relationships. What he wanted was to talk and go straight to the point, and honestly, so did I.
I’d learned a long time ago thatdatingin San Francisco wasn’t really much of a romantic endeavor anyway. Mostly, it meant getting dressed up to go sit and listen to men who were busier than me, richer than me, and just as laser-focused on their careers.
Which was fine but only until the topic of kids came up.
To be fair, it usually didn’t. None of the men I’d gone out with recently could picture any kind of life that might require them to leave the office before midnight. As a result, parenthood wasn’t high up on their lists of priorities.
That was the part that worried me most about this meeting, the reason for the nerves that had been swirling through me ever since I’d received that email.
Brody.
I wasn’t ashamed of being a mom. Far from it, in fact, but men in my dating bracket just didn’t see fatherhood as a desirable add-on. If this man and I saw eye to eye, however, there could be an agreement, a set of signed papers, and maybe a new chapter for both of us, but only if he was willing to accept the fact that I came with a child.
There could be no deal otherwise, which meant I would have to be upfront about it.New territory for me, for sure.
Jace, the babysitter, leaned against the kitchen counter, his long legs crossed at the ankles and his hair sticking out from under a backward baseball cap. A teenager who played hockey at the same rink Brody did, he was babysitting as a way to save up for new skates.
I snagged my purse from the counter and looked at him. “You’ll be fine here, right?”
“Yeah, of course,” he said like this was the easiest thing in the world. “Don’t worry about the couches. He was only testing the textile strength of the cushions because he plans to build some kind of fort for defensive purposes. We’re all good.”
Defensive purposes.That tracked.
Jace had not been my first choice of babysitter, but he was the only one so far who’d managed to last more than three hours with Brody. The two of them really seemed to understand each other. They had fun together, even, all without burning the place down.
My original babysitter had shown up with arms full of crafting supplies and first-grade-level books to read. I would’ve loved her as a kid, but she’d left in tears after only a couple hours because Brody had spent the entire timecausing chaos.Her words, not mine.
He wasn’t a bad kid. He was just fullboy. Rough and tumble. He survived on scraped knees and boundless energy, the kind of child who could turn a cardboard box into a construction project and eat half the contents of the pantry in the process.
It was no wonder he and Jace got along so well. I checked my lipstick in the mirror-finish of the fridge before turning back to him. “There are three large pizzas on the way. I’ll be back by ten at the latest.”
He grinned. “Got it. Good luck with your meeting.”
“Thanks.” I hesitated. “Don’t let him climb on the roof and just, uh, try to keep him alive. Everything else is fair game.”
“I play defense, Ms. Morgan,” he said with an easy shrug. “Trust me, we’re good. Brody won’t slip past me.”
I hung around for another beat, but that “assurance” would have to do. Sending up a silent prayer that neither of them would break a bone tonight, I went to say goodbye to Brody and headed out, climbing into my sporty little SUV, the one and only massive purchase I’d ever spoiled myself with and it had only been because of the safety rating.
The purr of the engine did little to settle the knot of nerves in my stomach as I navigated the traffic downtown. To my surprise, as my GPS directed me to the address the mystery man had sent,the neighborhoods around me shifted from suburban, to shiny storefronts and high-rises, to graffiti-tagged brick buildings and cracked sidewalks.
Oh, God. Kidnap and murder are becoming way more of a possibility than marriage. By the time the disembodied voice of the GPS told me that I’d reached my destination, I was very close to making a U-turn and hightailing it straight back home.
The place he’d chosen wasn’t a sleek hotel lounge or a candlelit restaurant. It seemed like a hole-in-the-wall dive bar, with a flickering neon sign outside and the kind of parking lot beside it that was perfectly suited to doubling as the set of a crime drama.
