Surprise Daddies (#1-4 Box Set)

by London James

  “Sorry, B,” he says. “He seemed like an okay guy. What was wrong?”

  “I cannot believe you’re asking me about this,” I laugh bitterly.

  “It’s a date post-mortem. We do them for businesses, so why not for dating?” he points out. He gives me one of those not-quite-smiles that make me feel like my insides have turned to oatmeal. “I can give you the male perspective.”

  “I just wasn’t feeling anything toward him,” I admit after a long pause. “Isn’t that why most dates go awry?”

  “The guy threw in the towel the moment I stepped inside. Isn’t that worrying?”

  “Psh, have you seen yourself?” I mumble.

  “What was that?”

  “What?” My neck gets hot instantaneously. Thank god I wore my hair down. “Nothing.”

  “Pretty sure that was something,” he smiles, with a lightheartedness in his voice that makes me feel slightly less terrible.

  “He probably saw you and assumed a bunch of stuff,” I say, trying to divert attention from the obvious fact that Drew’s jealousy made him leave. “He already realized our date was doomed, so he saw an out.”

  Ash pauses, slowly dragging a fry across the top of the ketchup, hardly getting enough to taste. He falls deep into thought quickly, the way he frequently does, which gives too much space for me to think.

  “I feel like a shitty person. I should have tried harder,” I say, filling the quiet. My head dips in shame.

  “Tried harder to like someone? It’s not like you had to marry the guy,” Ash comments. “It was a first date, wasn’t it?”

  I hesitate. We’re quickly treading into dangerous territory, and I’m not sure if I want to keep going there. I glance at Ash, who is listening intently. Someone besides Zara wanting to listen to my love life troubles is new, and I appreciate it. Besides, we’ve settled what we are—just friends—and it’ll be helpful to have a guy’s perspective anyway. He’s never going to be my boyfriend, so it won’t be weird to discuss these things with him.

  “Of course not… but I don’t know. I claim to want a relationship, but I find it hard to make that connection. And on top of that, I keep getting burned,” I explain, swallowing a fry. “It must be my fault.”

  “Christ, Briony, it’s not your fault at all.” He says the words with such intensity that it startles me. “Why would you say that?”

  “Because I… I don’t know. Maybe I expect too much or something. Maybe I’m too much of a romantic.” Now that I’ve admitted something, the rest starts to tumble out. Maybe it’s the wine, too. God. Me, Ash, and alcohol do not mix.

  “In what sense?”

  “I don’t know. Like expecting texts back within a certain time frame or wanting to go on dates that go beyond just Netflix and sex. Maybe getting flowers every once in a while,” I go on. “I haven’t had an actual boyfriend since I was twenty-three. That’s eight freaking years. But surely things in the dating world haven’t changed that much.”

  I feel so pathetic that I want to slide from my stool and through the floorboards.

  “I’m not trying to be anyone’s boyfriend, but even I answer people’s texts within a reasonable amount of time. It just sounds like you’re finding stealth douches.”

  “Stealth douches?” I giggle.

  “Oh yeah. Guys who put up a front about being ‘good’ are usually the ones you have to watch out for. They’ll go out with you and do the whole song and dance just to keep their reputation intact when in reality, they just want to fuck you and move on with their lives. And it seems like that’s the kind of guy you might be going for.” One side of his mouth lifts. “As a certified Non-Boyfriend Type, I know these things.”

  “Where’d you get that certification? Non-Boyfriends.com?” I ask.

  “Nah.” He sips his beer. “I got it on Amazon like a normal person. Free two-day shipping.”

  That makes me laugh genuinely for the first time that evening.

  “But in all seriousness, don’t lose your optimism. It’s special,” he continues, lowering his voice. “In the Navy, I learned that having just one positive person in a scenario could change the whole feel of an operation for the better. You can be that person.”

  Now I want to melt onto the floor for a whole other reason. He’s being genuine again, and it’s blasting through every single barrier I put up to not fall under his spell. I want to bury my face in his broad chest and soak him in, but I hold myself back.

  “Thanks, Ash.”

  “Don’t worry about it.” His fitness tracker blinks and vibrates. “Shit, I need to go, actually. See you around?”

  “Yeah, of course.” And before I can stop myself, I add, “Do you want to hang and work on some flower arrangements with me? The ones for the engagement party? I swear it’ll be more exciting than it sounds.”

  “Seems like an appropriately friend-zone activity,” he says with a gorgeous smile. “Sure, why not? Text me when you need me, and I’ll try to stop by.”

  My stomach twists at him saying ‘friend-zone.’ It’s what we have to do, even if my heart is trying to steer my brain to leap into his arms. And besides, Friend Ash is a pretty good listener underneath the snark. I want to get to know that Ash more.

  Chapter Eight

  Ash

  I shouldn’t have gone back to my father’s house so soon after our shit-show of a visit last time, but here I am, rolling up to the hospital where he’s just been discharged. He’s sitting in a wheelchair outside, looking cranky as always, with a nurse standing guard. She’s wearing scrubs with pink hearts on them, a contrast to her clearly annoyed expression.

  “Finally,” Dad says the minute I get out of the car I rented. “I’ve been waiting.”

  “You’re all set?” I look him over.

  He has on a gray t-shirt with ‘Navy’ emblazoned across the chest and gray sweatpants. He looks small, like he’s swimming in the clothes. His thick white hair is lank and a little greasy, which never would have happened if he weren’t sick. He was notoriously vain back in the day, never stepping out of the house without his hair styled — it was his pride and joy, since he still had a full head of it— or a neatly pressed outfit.

  His nurse, Nora, has had a few days off, and his interim nurses clearly aren’t as diligent as she is. At least they got him to the hospital when he passed out. They called me in the middle of the night two days ago, when I was in Atlanta on business, and I drove in the minute I got back. I need to get a car to keep in the city. I only have some at my houses in Miami and L.A.

  I push down the surge of pity I feel for him. He won’t want it.

  He was vague about what had happened to him on the phone. He just said that he had passed out in his chair all of a sudden, and that his nurses decided to take him to the hospital. His doctors said that it was a severe hypoglycemic episode, even though his blood sugar is usually fine. He’s always kept in shape, and he doesn’t have diabetes.

  “Make sure to watch his blood sugar for the next few days. Feel free to call us if anything else changes, okay?” the nurse says, plastering on a fake smile.

  “I just want to get out of here. Goddamn hospitals. Goddamn nurses.” He stands slowly and shuffles over to my car. I dart around to get the door for him, but he yanks it open and plops down before I can do it. The nurse books it back inside now that he’s in my custody. I sigh and get behind the wheel again, peeling off toward his house.

  I have the radio playing gently, and he turns it off without saying a word. The silence is absolutely miserable, but anything we could talk about would be worse. He doesn’t like music—any of it. It just doesn’t appeal to him at all, which is by far one of the weirdest things about him. Maybe that’s why I like it so much, since it was an easy act of rebellion to blast it from my room as a teenager. Metal was particularly annoying to him.

  “Let’s go to Bagel Factory,” he says, adjusting in his seat, pointing to the old bagel shop’s sign off the side of the highway. It’s the one place th
at we both agree on liking, and admittedly, I’m pretty hungry.

  “The nurse literally just said for you to watch your blood sugars, though,” I say, drumming my fingers on the steering wheel. He pauses, and I can feel him glaring at me. “Bagels have too many carbs.”

  “Get off at this exit,” he says, ignoring me. “They have eggs, don’t they? You must be hungry.”

  As if on cue, my stomach growls, and I do as he says. I flash back to high school, when we’d go to Bagel Factory after my wrestling meets. Dad was always trying to get me to gain weight to go up to the next class, where there was less competition. He would order a dozen bagels and cream cheese and watch me eat until he was satisfied that I was trying enough.

  Not that he had to encourage me much—I was a sixteen-year-old boy, for fuck’s sake. I was going to eat a shitload no matter what. But the very memory is a bit of a shock to the system. I bet normal people don’t have those memories with their dads.

  I get two egg-and-veggie scrambles and black coffee, even though I want a bagel myself. He begrudgingly takes it and digs in right away.

  “Your appetite’s better,” I note. He just grunts and keeps eating his eggs.

  When we get home, I help him back into his big leather chair. He groans and covers himself with a blanket.

  “How are you feeling?” I ask, sitting down with him. Nora won’t be back for another half hour or so.

  “Like shit.”

  I hold in a sigh. “Did they give you any paperwork about your diagnosis? Any discharge paperwork? I only know what you’ve told me.”

  He shakes his head. I raise an eyebrow. Usually I’m not around when he has medical treatments, so I always get information through his lens. I want to see what the doctor says directly, but since Dad hasn’t granted me the right to access his medical records or given his doctors consent to talk to me about his condition, I can’t see them.

  “What?” he snaps.

  “Why would they send you away with no information?” I ask. “Where’s your bag?”

  “Sit down, Ashton,” Dad hisses. “You don’t think I can take care of myself?”

  “Christ, Dad, I was just trying to help—”

  “Trying to help by putting me up to some bullshit medical tests or giving me a damn egg scramble when I could be eating a bagel.” He grabs the TV remote and turns it on.

  I glare at him, wondering if I should just get up and leave. But there’s a real risk of him passing out again, and if he made it through, he would never let me hear the end of it.

  God, why is my fear of being berated greater than the fear of him dying? I’m a piece of shit. Maybe Dad’s guilt-tripping is warranted.

  I hate this, passionately. I want to say I hate him, but I can’t, for reasons I don’t understand. A lot of people openly hate their parents who don’t say things that are as fucked up as what Dad has said to me over the years. So many of my friends who know him beg me to tell him to fuck off, but I can’t bring myself to do it.

  I grit my teeth, trying to get myself into a more positive mental space so I won’t have a damn meltdown. I glance at my watch. Once Nora gets here, I can head back to Brooklyn, to Briony’s place. I’ve never been so excited to do something boring like arranging flowers before. Briony makes a lot of boring things more exciting.

  I bite the inside of my cheek. Trying to be just friends with her is harder than I thought it would be, though I do enjoy her company. It’s something beyond just physical attraction, though that’s definitely a big part of it. Something about her that I can’t place draws me to her and makes me feel like myself in a whole new way. She’s opened a little door in the back of my mind that I’ve never even noticed. We just click somehow.

  Do I have a crush on her?

  Jesus, I’m a grown man—I don’t have crushes. But I am feeling something I haven’t felt in a long, long time, and I’m not sure what to do with it. I stuff it in the back of my mind. It’s not like I can act on it. That would be like strolling into enemy territory without a plan and expecting it to go well. I can either have Briony as a friend for a long time, or have her as a girlfriend, inevitably feel claustrophobic and tied down, and break up with her. The first option is much less of a headache.

  “Nice news,” Dad says, breaking my train of thought.

  “What?” I look up at him.

  He nods his head toward the TV, which is covering my company. The segment ends and moves on to something about Google before I can learn what it was about. I never get used to seeing myself on TV, even if it’s just a photo.

  “About the company’s valuation going up,” he says. “Nice.”

  “Thanks.” I’m already a little proud of myself for that, but hearing Dad say it makes me feel even better. Pulling praise from him is like pulling teeth.

  I drum my fingers on the arm of my chair, feeling guilty yet again. What he thinks about what I do shouldn’t matter to me, but old habits die hard. It’s like the twelve-year-old Ash popped up out of nowhere, excited that Dad told me I did a good job at anything for once. Those moments were so rare as a kid and are even more so now as an adult.

  “Now’s the time to—”

  “Take it public. Yeah, I know, Dad. We’ve talked about this,” I say, shutting down and turning up the TV.

  Even though I’ve cut off the conversation, the juxtaposition of him being pleased with me and the idea of giving up control of my company for a shit-ton of money connects some synapses in my brain that need to stay unlinked. I can’t be that guy, the one who gives something up because he feels pressured to. But god, is the idea tempting.

  And now that the company is worth more, we can get a ton of money by going public. We could do so much more with our training program and raise wages across the board. Unlike Dad, I don’t want to hoard it all. Another glass of lemonade from my lemon of a childhood—I never want to be a slave to money. Not that I dislike nice things or having a salary that’s much higher than 99.9 percent of America’s, but it isn’t the end goal of what I do. I have three homes, one in Brooklyn, one in Miami, and one in LA. They’re nice, but nothing too extreme. They’re just enough.

  Thankfully, Nora comes bustling in not long after that, putting away her things and starting to check over Dad’s medicine. Once she gives me the okay, I leave, speeding back to Brooklyn.

  I run back home to let Sarge out in the backyard before I go to Briony’s. Over text she mentioned that she wanted to meet him, but I doubt Sarge and Chunk would get along. Sarge sees anything smaller than himself as a very fun challenge—and by challenge, I mean snack.

  Her apartment is in an old brick building not too far from Prospect Park, tucked down the block from a nail salon and a drug store. I press the buzzer for her apartment and wait… and wait.

  Am I in the right place? The address is right. The vibe is right, too. The area is filled with thirty-something professionals and young families. Briony had called it the bargain-brand version of Park Slope over text, which I’d read mid-meeting. I’d snorted so loudly that my CFO asked if I needed a tissue.

  “Hello?” she finally says over the intercom, sounding out of breath.

  “It’s Ash.”

  “Oh, shit. Okay. Just a second. Hold on.” The door clicks open, and I walk up the three flights of stairs to her place. The stairwell has worn marble stairs and a railing that really needs to be replaced before someone dies breaking it.

  “You’re early!” Briony shouts from down the hall, poking her head out of the apartment.

  “Am I?” I look at my watch. “By five minutes.”

  “Five minutes I was hoping to have to pull myself together. Come in.” She holds the door open for me.

  The place is small, which I knew it would be, and basically every available surface is covered with flowers. It smells great, which momentarily distracts me from the fact that it’s insanely hot inside, even with the windows open. It’s been a long time since I lived in an apartment building without central air. I’m only
wearing shorts and a t-shirt but sweat is already pooling on my lower back. Damn, I’m getting too soft.

  I curse the late July heat but am suddenly very thankful to be sweating my ass off inside when I see Briony in the tiniest running shorts I’d seen in a while and a thin t-shirt. The shorts are cut in just the right way to show off her hips and thighs; the fabric pulled tight across her curves. I know her ass will look just as good if she turns. I like how sturdy she is, for lack of a better word. She’s womanly as hell with her little waist and broad hips but looks like she can withstand a hurricane with enough willpower.

  Her cheeks are flushed from the heat, not makeup, and her hair is up in a messy knot on the top of her head. Is she wearing a bra? From the way she’s moving, it seems like she isn’t. I don’t look hard enough to see if her nipples are hard. Goddamn, she’s tempting.

  Maybe this appropriately friend-zone’ activity is a bad idea.

  “Have a seat wherever you can find a spot,” Briony says, navigating the minefield of vases on the ground to her bedroom. “Give me a second.”

  I kick off my shoes and sit down on her couch, sinking deep into the cushions. I hear a chirp and look down to find Chunk butting his head against my leg. I give him a scratch behind the ears before he flops down on the other side of the coffee table, adequately greeted.

  I look around the apartment. It’s clearly a shared space, but it still has touches of Briony. The walls are pale pink, which is probably still her favorite color, and plants are in every nook and cranny. A speaker is sitting on the shelf next to a row of romance novels, and a few photography prints of some Long Island beaches are on the wall. It’s cozy without feeling too cramped.

  Maybe it’s because it’s filled with flowers, but it smells like her, too. Well, her perfume, rather. Maybe I can find out what brand it is if I get a chance to snoop in her bathroom. But that’s way too creepy, isn’t it?

  I like it, besides the lack of cool air. Maybe I can buy her the silent window unit that a buddy of mine’s company makes. Friends do things like that, don’t they? It isn’t like I’m buying her a dildo.