Single Daddy To Go: A Holiday Single Dad Romance

by Adams, S. C.

  Single Daddy To Go

  A Holiday Single Dad Romance

  S.C. Adams

  Copyright © 2019 by S.C. Adams

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

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  For my Readers

  Also by S.C. Adams

  The To Go Series

  Daddy to Go

  Husband To Go

  3 Daddies To Go

  Babydaddy To Go

  Single Daddy To Go

  * * *

  Size Matters

  Size King

  * * *

  Irresistible Daddies

  Mister Daddy

  About This Book

  The growly, gorgeous single dad wants more children, and the curvy girl would be the perfect mommy to his kids.

  Rob Lockhart’s daughter is in my pre-school class. When he comes in to pick her up, the breath exits my lungs.

  After all, the alpha male is tall, gorgeous, and so eligible with intense blue eyes, chiseled features, and a physique that would make an Olympic swimmer jealous.

  But one day when he picks up his daughter, his jacket flies opon and I see … ohmygod.

  There’s an enormous tool in his pocket that’s reserved for good times.

  I gasp, growing hot.

  Is that for me?

  Evidently so, because this single dad wants more kids. In fact, he wants a dozen to form a hockey team.

  A dozen?

  The thought makes me catch my breath. I’d be more than delighted to give this possessive, demanding billionaire dozens of children.

  But are my curves right for Rob Lockhart?

  Or will he be a single daddy forever?

  Come and say hello to the most eligible bachelor on the block! This OTT alpha male drives our heroine crazy, but she’s a feisty one who gives as good as she gets. The stork gives our couple a gift just in time for Christmas, and they’re ecstatic to meet the new bundle of joy. No cheating, no cliffhangers, and always an HEA for my readers.

  Contents

  1. Ally

  2. Rob

  3. Rob

  4. Rob

  5. Ally

  6. Ally

  7. Ally

  8. Rob

  9. Ally

  10. Rob

  11. Rob

  12. Ally

  13. Ally

  14. Rob

  15. Ally

  Epilogue

  Sneak Peek: Babydaddy To Go

  Sneak Peek: 3 Daddies To Go

  About the Author

  1

  Ally

  I have an awesome job, and today is another beautiful day. I work with children, which is all I’ve wanted to do since I was a child myself because I’ve always loved taking care of kids. Right now, I work with two and three-year-olds at Ladybug Tots in NYC, which is a cheery yellow building smack dab in the middle of the city.

  The main room of the day care center is a happy place decorated with cartoon ladybugs and charts about letters and numbers. Here and there, kids’ art pieces are tacked up on the brightly painted walls. A set of cubbies take up one side, filled with the children’s belongings and marked with their names.

  Right now, the tots are engaged in free play, amusing themselves with blocks and dolls and playing all sorts of different games with each other. I’m keeping a watchful eye, making sure no one hurts anyone else or gets into trouble, but this part of the day gives me and my co-worker a rare moment to catch up.

  We both crouch on tiny, bright-colored plastic stools. Emma and I have worked together here for about a year. She’s a blonde with a perky bob and round cheeks. When she smiles, two dimples form above the corners of her smile, and wrinkles show up beside the corners of her big hazel eyes. Right now, she’s giggling like one of the kids, her dimples in full effect.

  “OMG, Ally,” she whispers. “My date last night was soooo good. My boyfriend Justin came over and we were supposed to watch Planet Earth on Netflix, but he was so handsy! I just didn’t know what to do.”

  It’s not exactly my area of expertise, but I smile and nod. The expression I’m going for is knowing conspirator, but I’m not sure if it comes through or not.

  “Is that so?” I ask her.

  She giggles even harder.

  “Justin has these really big hands. I’d tell him to stop, but I didn’t really want him to stop, and I guess he could tell. I’d push him off and he’d pause for a while and then go back to it, you know? Eventually I couldn’t resist anymore. He wanted me so bad. Who was I to say no? I guess you could say we were the subject of our own nature documentary. Mmmm Justin, he’s an animal but I love it!”

  She flashes me what is definitely a conspiratorial smirk. I laugh in response, perhaps a little weakly. He’s an animal but I love it isn’t something I’ve ever felt about anyone.

  “So,” Emma goes on, her fit of giggles subsiding. “Tell me about your last date.”

  I suck my teeth. It’s not a good story.

  Emma gives me a poke in the ribs.

  “Come on, dish it, girl!”

  I can feel my face turning red. I really don’t want to talk about this, but here I am anyway.

  “The guy stood me up,” I finally admit with a sigh.

  Emma’s pretty mouth drops open.

  “What? Really? What an asshole!”

  The expression I’m going for is nonchalance. I shrug.

  “Yeah. Whatever. It’s O.K. These things happen.”

  I’m only pretending because it wasn’t O.K. at all. I can feel a pit opening in my stomach as I remember the evening.

  It’s embarrassing because this was actually an old-fashioned set up. My mom set me up with my date, which means that people actually know us. So how could he no-show? It’s humiliating.

  After all, if you’re dating on-line, at least a no-show is anonymous. I understand some of the sites will ding your user profile if you’re reported for a lot of no-shows, but still. I was stood up in real life.

  It’s my mom’s fault. She’s always trying to set me up with what she thinks are “good guys.” I usually tell her no, but Clarence actually sounded kind of awesome. He was the son of one of her friends from Bridge Club. My mom told me he was a medical student who wanted to focus on building artificial limbs for children disabled by land mines. The pictures she showed me revealed a handsome man with wavy brown hair and a winning smile. He looked a little short, but sweet anyways.

  “He seems too good to be true,” I told my mom as she excitedly relayed how Clarence wanted to take me out on a date. My mom isn’t the most practical woman. She buys tickets to the lottery and is always dreaming about me getting married to some doctor or lawyer. I tell her that things are different now, and guys don’t really want that sort of old fashioned romance, but she always tells me she knows better.

  “Why not, darling? You’re a beautiful woman with a heart of gold. Any man with half a brain can tell you’re a catch!” Bernice tapped her red lacquered nails on her wine glass.

  Of course she thinks I’m a catch. She’s my mother, after all. She’s almost constitutionally obligated to have such an opinion. Still, it made me smile.

  “I love you,” I told her. “Tell you what? If Clarence is really serious, I’ll go on a date with him.”

  “Splendid!” Bernice said, as the waiter
brought her another glass of Chardonnay. “Althea and I will set it up. Clarence is a little shy and focused on work, but Althea wants him to get out more, and she agrees that you would be perfect for him.”

  I rolled my eyes.

  “Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. It’s just a first date first, right?” I quipped.

  But all kidding aside, I was really excited to meet the guy. I spent three days day-dreaming about our time together. When the weekend rolled around, I spent an hour taming my mane of brown curls and another hour deciding what to wear for my special night, trying on every outfit I owned until finally settling on a blue dress that showed off my curves without being overtly sexy. Fortunately, I own a pair of matching heels that were high, but not too high.

  I looked like a million bucks, but it was all for nothing because Mr. Big Shot never showed up. I didn’t get so much as a text. He flat out no showed.

  It was devastating. I waited at the neighborhood bistro for over two hours, my heart getting smaller with every minute. The waitress kept coming by to check on me, as all the cheer drained out of my spirit. By the time I finally left, I was so embarrassed and felt utterly worthless and stupid for having believed that it would work out.

  I called my mom, and Bernice called her friend in a huff. The son gave some weak excuse about work, but it didn’t matter. I definitely wasn’t going to try again because I was way too hurt by the whole experience. I would never do that to someone. I’d literally have to be in the hospital in a coma before I’d stand someone up without even texting something, and I wasn’t about to try another date with someone who had so little consideration for my feelings.

  “These things happen,” Emma consoles me, back in the present. Over her voice I can hear the squeals of excited children as they dart around the room. “No, Ally. They don’t just happen. That guy was a jerk.”

  He was, but I don’t want to dwell on it. If I let myself go down that road, I might cry, and I don’t want to break down in front of Emma or the kids. It wouldn’t be professional. I shrug again, doing my best to cover the wound in my heart with an extra dose of perkiness.

  “Yeah, sure, and I’m not going to let it get to me. He was just some guy I never even met. I don’t want to give him space in my mind.”

  She nods, her energy rising.

  “I don’t know how you stay so nice, Ally. If a guy did that to me, I’d want to find out where he lived and... I don’t know... egg his house? Key his car?”

  “Hire the mob to break his kneecaps?” I tease half-heartedly, glad the subject has moved into the realm of the theoretical. I’m still hurt about what happened, although I’m trying not to feel it. Clarence got my hopes up and he let me down. I’d rather just not have a date at all than have something like that happen again.

  “Yeah!” Emma says encouragingly. “That’s the spirit!”

  I laugh. She laughs too. The conversation moves on to other things. But as we chat, I keep silently flashing back to that night, to the way I felt sitting there in that restaurant as the clock ticked away the minutes – sad, embarrassed, and alone. I really wish she hadn’t brought it up. It’s not her fault, of course, because my co-worker didn’t know. Still, it’s a subject I didn’t want to have to re-visit.

  I don’t know what’s wrong with me that makes me so unlovable. My mom may think I’m a catch, but guys don’t seem to agree. I hear “I love you” all the time from sweet kids and my friends, but I’ve never had a man say it and mean it.

  Maybe it’s my size. I’ve always been a bigger girl, with giant boobs up front and a whole lot of junk in the trunk. I’ve tried dieting and I do get a reasonable amount of exercise with walking and biking, but no matter what I do, my body stays curvy and soft. I’ve given up on trying to change this aspect of myself. Trust me, it never works.

  When I was in high school, other girls used to make fun of me and call me fat, but I just smiled through it, doing my best to be a good person even though it made me want to cry sometimes. Besides, being fat is a whole lot better than being a cruel person. So what if I’m curvy? I have a good heart and I’m kind to people.

  These days, no one insults me openly or anything like that, but the dates certainly aren’t lining themselves up. I guess it’s O.K. Or at least I tell myself it’s okay and try to be grateful for what I have. I enjoy my job and being around all the little kids. I have a good relationship with my family and plenty of friends. Everything except my love life is amazing, so I really shouldn’t complain, but sometimes I feel empty on the inside. It would be so nice to have someone to share my life with and a special someone to wake up with in the morning.

  A buzz on the front door breaks me out of the moment. I glance up at a clock on the wall and notice that it’s five o’clock. I work until 7 PM, when the last of the parents arrive, but the first one start coming to pick up their kids around five.

  “Coming!” Emma announces, in the sing song voice she uses with children and their parents as she heads for the door. She opens it to reveal the twiggy frame of Mrs. Cavannah, who has twins in day care, a boy and a girl with matching blonde hair and green eyes.

  “Piper! Aaron!” I call out to them. They run over to me on their little feet, clad in Transformers and Frozen-themed shoes. Piper throws her arms around me as I help her put on her Sponge Bob Square Pants backpack, slipping the straps over her little arms.

  “How were my little angels today?” Mrs. Cavannah asks me, as I return her children to her.

  “Very good, weren’t you?” I say, tousling Aaron’s hair.

  “I’m always good,” he says confidently.

  “I made you a painting!” his sister announces, holding out a piece of purple construction paper with a red heart made of gold glitter and the word “Mom” in unevenly sized letters.

  “That’s beautiful,” Mrs. Cavannah says, taking the paper with a wide smile. My heart feels warm, overjoyed to see the love between parent and child. I just love kids so much, and the twins are an especially good pair of little souls.

  As they head off, the kids chattering excitedly to their mother, I go back to the play area and start helping the other children to get ready to go home, making sure everyone gets the right backpack.

  Suddenly, a shadow looms over me. I feel it as much as I see it, the air blowing both hot and cold at the same time over me.

  “Hello,” growls a very deep voice behind me. “I’m here to pick up Katie Lockhart.”

  Whoever this is, he ought to narrate romance novels, I think to myself. But when I look up, it’s clear that the voice in question belongs to literally the hottest man I have ever seen in person.

  He towers over me. Some tall men look awkward and stooped when they’re that tall, but this guy is built like a marble statue. He’s imposing, with a broad chest beneath a well-tailored sport coat.

  He’s probably in his forties, but incredibly handsome with a full head of black hair cut in a loose style and the most amazing pair of eyes. They’re blue like the ocean on a wish-you-were-here postcard of some exotic beach, and they seem to be staring right through me, cutting into my soul like a diamond-sharp blade.

  My jaw drops. It’s everything I can do not to let out a sound to go with the expression. It’s like I’ve just ridden over a bump in the road in a car, like some organ inside of my abdomen has leaped up and made its presence known. I feel a spreading warmth in my pussy, suddenly very aware of his presence in my secret spot.

  Wow. This is a new one. I’ve been turned on by hot male celebrities or by stunning male models, but this is an altogether new experience. I feel steamy all over, my skin tingling. I’m worried that I might be blushing and hope to god that my face isn’t beet red. This is deeply inappropriate.

  Quickly, my eyes go to the ground, avoiding the man’s gaze. I don’t want him to notice how turned on I am. I don’t want him to laugh at me, some silly fat girl getting all hot and bothered in her workplace over a parent here to pick up his kid. But this guy is so attractive t
hat he’s probably used to it. He probably gets this kind of reaction all the time. I take a deep breath and try to calm myself down.

  This is my job. I’m here to take care of kids, and not act like some silly schoolgirl. Whoever this gorgeous hunk of man is, I’ve never seen him before, and I’m not about to let a child go home with the wrong person. I look back up, meeting the man’s penetrating eyes again.

  “Yes, Katie Lockhart attends daycare here at Ladybug Tots. May I ask who you might be?”

  The handsome man grins once as his blue eyes flash.

  “Her dad,” he rumbles deep in his chest. “Who else? Now I’d like to see my daughter please.”

  2

  Rob

  The pretty girl gazes up at me with the most beautiful big brown eyes I’ve ever seen. I feel a little taken aback, but I suppose it’s to be expected. After all, I don’t get to Ladybug Tots much. My daughter is three years old, but this is the first time I’ve ever picked her up from day care.

  After all, I run a multi-national conglomerate with investments in multiple sectors of multiple world economies and my high-powered lifestyle doesn’t leave a lot of room for errand running. I haven’t even done my own shopping in decades, much less cooking and cleaning.