Valentine's with the Single Dad (The Single Dads of Seattle Book 7)

by Whitley Cox

  “You want some of mine?” she asked, scooping some of her rice, chicken and cashews onto her bamboo fork.

  He bobbed his head. “Please.”

  Now it was her turn to feed him. She cupped her hand beneath the fork as she brought it to his mouth, and just as she got close to his mouth, she opened her mouth.

  “I’m a big boy, you know,” he said with a chuckle, “I don’t need you to show me what to do. I know I need to open my mouth.”

  She paused with the full fork in front of him. Her eyebrows lifted. “What did I do?”

  “You opened your mouth like a parent or guardian might when trying to feed a child. It’s instinct, I know, but it was really cute. You’re really cute.”

  Ah, there we go. Even redder cheeks.

  God, he could fucking grab her by the back of the neck and crush his mouth to hers right now. He wanted to, wanted her so badly.

  But they weren’t there yet. He was playing the long game with Lowenna and needed to keep it cool. This was still a business transaction as far as she was concerned, and he didn’t want to scare her off with his true feelings.

  So instead, he simply opened his mouth like a good boy and made an “ahhh” sound until she put the fork in his mouth, giggling.

  “You have a great laugh,” he said, pushing the delicious cashew chicken and rice into the side of his cheek to speak. “I know I’ve said that before, but you really do.”

  He resisted the urge to brush the back of his hand against her now absolutely crimson cheeks. How red could he get them? They were probably as hot as the sun.

  “This is really good too,” he said, chewing and swallowing. “You want to switch for a bit?”

  She nodded and passed him her container. “Sure. My mouth will be on fire, but it makes me feel alive. I love a good burn on my tongue.” She dove into his drunken noodles with a big smile on her face.

  “Not so much fun coming out the other end though,” he said before he could stop himself.

  Her eyes went wide, her jaw slack, and she pivoted her head to look at him.

  “Shit, sorry. That came out of my mouth before I could stop it. I realize our relationship has not yet gotten to the toilet humor level. My apologies.”

  Though she didn’t look too offended or put out. And she certainly wasn’t regarding him with the look one might give a person they were itching to get away from.

  Her lips lifted into a lopsided smile, her gray eyes sparkling. “You’re right about that,” she finally said. “But what’s life without a bit of risk? We all need to walk on the wild side once in a while, and when the risk is just so damn good, I think I’ll take my comeuppance tomorrow.”

  He snorted, relieved that she appreciated his poop joke. “Is that what you call it?”

  “Well, no. I call it the ring of fire, but I was trying to be polite.”

  Mason tossed his head back and laughed. “First thing you need to know about me, sweetheart, you don’t need to be polite. Or politically correct. I much prefer honesty and candor. Always have, always will. If you want to sling toilet jokes at me all day long, I will be one happy man. Like a pig in shit, really. In fact, I think it’ll just make you sexier.”

  She sank her top teeth into her bottom lip. “Good to know.” She slid her gaze away from him and down to her food, but as Mason sat there, continuing to watch her, her eyes once again slid to his. “The same goes for me. Honesty always, please. And I’m A-OK with the potty humor. Life is too short to not laugh about shit. Literally and figuratively.”

  They both started to laugh when a knock at Mason’s driver’s side window had them nearly jumping out of their skin.

  “You two coming in?” Adam asked, rain dripping from his nose. “You’re fifteen minutes late already. Everything okay?”

  They’d managed to fog up the windows pretty good, and suddenly that image from Titanic with Rose and Jack in the car and the handprint on the window flashed into Mason’s mind. He quickly pushed it away and rolled down his window. “Sorry, man. Lost track of time. Good company and good food will do that. We were just having dinner. We’ll be right in.”

  Adam lifted one eyebrow, his gaze drifting over Mason’s shoulder to Lowenna for a moment. The woman simply shrugged and smiled before she began to shovel Thai food into her face like it was her first meal in a week.

  Adam’s eyes fell back to Mason, his grin was amused and knowing. “Okay. See you in a minute.” Then, with a laugh, he ran back toward the door to the dance studio, his blue shirt now dark blue from the heavy falling rain.

  “Whoops,” Lowenna said, taking a sip of her juice box until it made that slurping sound at the bottom. She began to pack up. “Thank you so much for dinner. That hit the spot.”

  Mason took an enormous bite of his rice and chicken, nodding with a full mouth. “We should do this every dance lesson night if I don’t have Willow.”

  He scooped up the last bite of rice, then tossed the box into the paper bag she held out for him. Her gorgeous smile and bright eyes made his heart do a cartwheel.

  “It’s a date,” she said, as they both grabbed their coats and prepared to open their doors and run out into the rain.

  He grinned back at her before they opened their doors. “It’s a date.”

  Then they opened their doors, slammed them, met at the front of his SUV and, grabbed each other’s hands as they ran toward the dance studio, the sound of the rain, wind and Seattle traffic no match for their laughter.

  7

  It was late Saturday afternoon, and Lowenna was at the shop, busy working on the latest additions and changes to her sister’s chocolate sculpture. She was set to leave for Violet’s baby shower in roughly an hour but needed any free time she had to test whether Doneen’s absurd request would even work.

  Xi and David were busy in the back, organizing the cooler and finishing up the lemon ganache bonbons while Lowenna growled and grumbled at the chocolate heart arc that kept falling.

  Swearing under her breath for the umpteenth time, she blew the stubborn tendril of hair off her forehead and tried again with the centerpiece. The only reason she was doing all of this shit in the first place was because her mother had guilted her into it.

  Yes, guilted. As she’d told Mason, Adeline Chambers was an expert guilt tripper.

  Cursing under her breath again, she reached for the razor blade on the table and trimmed off a jagged edge of chocolate, her mind wandering back to that conversation with her mother she wished she’d let go to voicemail.

  “You know your sister,” Lowenna’s mother said with a fatigued sigh. “She wants her wedding to be spectacular. And since we paid for your wedding, we have to pay for hers.”

  Lowenna rolled her eyes, grateful that she was on the phone with her mother and she could do any facial expression she wanted without feeling like a bitch.

  “Yeah, but it’s a little weird don’t you think that the two weddings you’re paying for have the same groom?”

  “That’s irrelevant.”

  “Is it, Mom?”

  “Lowenna, please.”

  “What can I do for you, Mom?” As much as Lowenna loved her parents, their pacifist nature irked her from time to time, particularly when it came to her sister. Since the girls were children, they just let Doneen railroad them until she got her way. And that train just kept on chugging along, taking out Lowenna and anyone else in its path until Queen Doneen got what she wanted. But she was tired of talking about Queen Doneen, she was busy at work and had no time for small talk.

  Her mother’s sigh told her that Lowenna was not going to like what she was about to hear. “I was wondering if you’d be willing to help us with the guest favors. Your sister’s preferences for the wedding are becoming rather pricey, and any bit of financial help would be greatly appreciated. Your father is worried he may have to postpone retirement because of this wedding.”

  Lowenna took a deep breath. She wasn’t even sure she was going to go to the wedding—not that sh
e’d received a save-the-date yet—but the last thing she wanted to do was supply her sister and ex-husband’s nuptials with any of her chocolates.

  “Mom, I’m not sure that’s such a good idea—”

  “Please, honey? It would mean a lot to me and your father. And I’m sure it would mean a great deal to your sister, too.”

  Yeah, right. The only thing that meant a great deal to Doneen, was Doneen.

  “It could also be a way for the two of you to mend fences. I know your relationship has always been strained, maybe this could be a new leaf. Extend an olive branch by doing this for your sister.”

  I’d rather hit her in the face with an olive branch.

  “She’s marrying my ex-husband, Mom.” Lowenna closed her eyes and shook her head. Her parents had no idea that Doneen and Brody had started sleeping together while Brody and Lowenna were still married. They thought that when they announced their relationship was when it started—HA! Not quite.

  “Yes, but—”

  “Mom, they’re getting married on Val-en-tine’s Day. Not only is it my birthday, but it also happens to be like the absolute busiest day of the year for the chocolate industry.”

  “Lowenna, honey, please.”

  She could practically see her mother building up the tears, preparing for them to dribble down her cheeks like raindrops on a window.

  “Your father and I would love it so much if our girls could become close. She’s all you’ll have in this world when your dad and I finally go. Don’t you want to have a relationship with your big sister? I fear I’d remain in purgatory for eternity if I died and my daughters hadn’t reconciled.

  Oh, for crying out loud.

  “If it’s the money you’re worried about, we could pay you … a small sum. The family discount maybe?”

  Jeez, her mom was really laying it on thick this time. Had she rehearsed this? Was Lowenna’s aunt standing in the background holding up cue cards? Her mother certainly seemed to have an answer for everything.

  “Just think about, okay, honey? It would mean a lot to your dad and I if you were able to help us out. And who knows? Maybe by the end of it all, you and your sister will be like best friends. I hear she still hasn’t picked a maid of honor.”

  Lowenna fought the urge to laugh. Yeah, right, like she’d ever be her sister’s maid of honor. More like made of humiliation.

  Growling and throwing a big middle finger up toward the sky—because her sister wasn’t around to aim it at—she pinched the bridge of her nose and muttered the one word she would regret until the end of time. “Fine.”

  She refused to admit to anybody, even herself, that after everything Doneen had done to her, she still held on to the tiniest shred of hope that their relationship could improve. She was, after all, her sister. And Lowenna had idolized Doneen growing up. They didn’t have to be best friends, but her mother’s words held truth to them. When their parents died, Doneen was all she would have left.

  “Oh, honey, thank you so much,” her mother cheered into the phone. “Your father is going to be so happy. Your sister, too. I can’t wait to tell them.”

  And then, like a snowball that just keeps growing after it’d been kicked down a steep, snowy mountainside, that one gesture of goodwill toward her parents, and in the hopes of reconciliation with her sister, was taken by Doneen and expanded and exploited until Lowenna was ready to explode.

  She went from doing the guest favors as a favor to her mother and father, to help their bank balance not dip into the red, to doing a goddamn centerpiece for Doneen’s dessert table, and now the chocolate covered strawberries.

  It was shortly after she agreed to do the guest favors that a save-the-date turned up in her mailbox, complete with an option for a plus one.

  That’s when Lowenna decided that if she was going to go to the stupid wedding and provide them with a bunch of free chocolate, she was also going to show up with the twenty-first century’s version of Fabio on her arms. Minus the hair though, she didn’t really want a man with longer, more magnificent hair than her.

  Cue the Craigslist ad, and what soon became an endless stream of dick pics and Nigerian princes offering to be her date in exchange for a five-thousand-dollar cash advance on a multi-million-dollar investment deal. She’d just about given up hope until Mason offered up his services. Now, she had a man a trillion times sexier than Brody as her date to the wedding, and he was a doting single father to boot.

  Score!

  She couldn’t wait to see the look on Doneen and Brody’s faces when she and Mason stepped out on to the dance floor and showed those no-rhythm losers just how much better her life was now that she was cancer and Brody free.

  The door dinged, bringing her back to the present, but she ignored it for a moment, her fingers pressing down gently on the arc while the other hand grabbed the can of freeze spray and hit the melted chocolate with it so the chocolate arc would bind instantly to it. She bit down hard on her tongue, hoping to God it stayed in place this time.

  “You’re awfully rude not acknowledging a customer that comes in,” came a familiar, irritating and snotty voice behind her, making Lowenna jump and release the chocolate, causing it to topple over and smash onto the floor.

  Growling, she bit down even harder on her tongue until she tasted blood, then turned to face her sister.

  As always, Doneen was dressed for a day at the office—even though it was her day off—with black trousers, a silk cream blouse with pearl buttons, impeccable makeup and long, dark brown hair perfectly coiffed like a Stepford wife. Something she shoved in Lowenna’s face any chance she got—that Doneen’s hair was long and luxurious, and Lowenna was just now pulling off her short, chin-length bob.

  Fuck Doneen.

  It’d taken forever for Lowenna’s hair to grow back, and even longer for it to look even remotely attractive. With the back of her wrist, she tucked that stubborn stray strand behind her ear, wishing she had the balls to put Nair hair removal lotion in her sister’s shampoo bottle. Give Doneen a taste of the bald life. See how she liked it.

  “Isn’t that why you have a bell on the door, to alert you of customers?” Doneen went on. “What if I’d actually wanted to buy something?” She clucked her tongue. “Really not very professional, Lowly.”

  Lowenna inhaled deep through her nose, held it in for a moment, then released it through her mouth. She hated Doneen’s nickname for her. Lowly.

  Like seriously, how horrible could you get? She might as well have just called her dirt or shit or flea. It would have had the same affect.

  Lowenna lifted her gaze to her sister’s light gray eyes. “What can I do for you, Doneen?”

  Doneen’s smile was anything but genuine as she wandered around the stainless-steel table Lowenna was working on.

  She was now in the employees-only section of the shop and had not been invited back.

  What gave her the right?

  The same “right” she thought she had when she slept with your husband. The Doneen Chambers sense of entitlement.

  “I came to see how things are going on the chocolate feature. I’ve spent the entire day going around to all the services I’ve hired for the wedding to check in face-to-face on their progress and make sure we’re all on the same page. Just came from the florist.” She rolled her eyes. “Rude woman, but she’s the best in the city by far. Apparently, white tulips are not in season.” She huffed. “Who cares? Make it happen. It’s fucking winter, and yet there are still flowers in her shop, yet not in the gardens. Why are tulips any different?”

  Lowenna shook her head and shrugged. “I know nothing of flowers, but hasn’t that place been in business for years? She probably knows what she’s talking about.”

  Doneen snorted. “Doubt it.” She clicked her black ankle boots around the table, her eyes squeezing into thin slits as she inspected the enormous chocolate piece Lowenna was working on. “What happened here?” she asked, pointing to the spot where Lowenna had been trying to adhere the th
in arc to the base of the structure. “I don’t like how messy that looks.”

  “You snuck up behind me, startled me, and I let go of the chocolate before it dried,” Lowenna said plainly. “I hadn’t held it long enough for the chocolate to adhere.”

  Her sister snorted. “So jumpy. Well, I don’t want to see that mess on my wedding day. Remember, we are being featured on the Washington Weddings blog, and I’ll probably mention who did my chocolates. I’m sure you’ll see a huge boost in sales after that. That blog and online magazine are really big.” She puffed up her chest and pushed her nose into the air. “I’m going to be famous.”

  Lowenna was forced to turn her head, then her whole body away from her sister so that Doneen didn’t catch the eye roll or sneer.

  “I mean, I’m already kind of famous. What with all my Instagram and Facebook followers. I’m still trying to build my brand as an influencer, but working a full-time job in PR for the city and planning a wedding—the wedding of the year—is so taxing.”

  Lowenna poked her finger down her throat, pretending to gag. Could her sister be any more pretentious?

  Did she want to know the answer to that?

  “Anyway, I just came by to check in. I’d like your speech by next week, please. So I have time to go over it, make corrections and all of that. Don’t want anything last minute or to get overlooked.”

  Lowenna turned back to face her sister, flashing an enormous fake smile. “Of course not. I’ve already started working on it. You will have it by its due date.”

  “Good. I’d also like to know what you plan to wear to the wedding. It is black tie and upscale. We’re expecting everyone in floor-length gowns.”

  Did Mason have a tuxedo?

  She nodded at her sister. “I’ll send you a photo of my dress in the coming weeks.”

  “The same with your dress for the rehearsal dinner.”

  Why?

  More importantly, should she ask Mason to go to that with her? Wouldn’t people wonder why he was at the wedding but not the dinner beforehand? She could offer him more money, ask for the extended full boyfriend experience. Would he go for it?