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

by Whitley Cox

  His Adam’s apple jogged in his neck as he swallowed the wine. “You’re right,” he said, putting the glass down on the counter. “It was delicious.”

  Lowenna raked her teeth over her lip again.

  Now she not only wanted him to catch her, she wanted to slow down, stumble and let him fall clear on top of her. Pinning her to the ground and scraping his teeth over her neck.

  Consuming her. Devouring her.

  “Dinner’s just about ready,” he said, pulling the aluminum foil off the beautifully roasted chicken. “You hungry?”

  She nodded and rubbed Willow’s back. “Starved.”

  11

  Fuck, she looked good with his baby.

  Natural.

  Motherly.

  And Willow just adored her.

  Even though Willow couldn’t talk yet, both she and Lowenna had protested when he went to put his daughter to bed. Willow wanted to spend more time with Lowenna and Lowenna with her.

  And who was Mason to argue with the gorgeous women in his life?

  So now, there Lowenna sat on his bed, holding his baby and making her giggle, while Mason modeled his two tuxedos for them.

  He owned two because, well, why not?

  Back when he had piles of money and a job that required him to wear suits all day long, he found a kickass tailor named Simon down in Pike Place, and the man made Mason look good.

  He’d bought his tux for his sister’s wedding, and he’d needed one with tails for a fancy black tie fundraiser many moons ago. He’d had Simon nix the tails afterward though. They just weren’t him.

  He did up the final button on his vest, then stepped out of his walk-in closet, the tux jacket in his hand. “So, what do you think?”

  Lowenna’s pupils dilated and her nostrils flared as her eyes raked him from head to toe. A sexy pink bloomed on her cheeks at the same time her jaw went slack and her lips parted.

  He grinned, reaching over to grab the wineglass they shared and taking a long sip. “I’m going to take your silence as a yes.”

  As if she belonged there, Lowenna nodded and reclined back onto his bed, turning on her side and propping her head on her hand. Willow was wriggling and kicking on her back, all smiles. “You can take my silence as a hell yes.”

  She looked good on his bed.

  She looked good on his bed with his baby.

  Like she belonged there.

  With them.

  “So you like this tux then?” he asked, unbuttoning the vest and sliding out of it, taking care to drape it over a chair in the corner of the bedroom.

  She picked up one of Willow’s bare feet and kissed the bottom of it. “I do. And I think you should wear a silver tie if you have one. My dress is silver.”

  “To go with your eyes?”

  She lifted those gorgeous gray eyes to his face. “You know what color my eyes are?”

  Loosening the sleeves and collar of his crisp white dress shirt, he slipped onto the bed so that Willow was now between them. He mimicked how Lowenna was positioned, his head in his hand, elbow propping him up. “It’s hard not to miss those eyes,” he said quietly, tickling Willow’s belly and making her smile.

  “I doubt my ex-husband can remember what color my eyes are. So yeah, they can be hard to miss.”

  “Your ex-husband was a fool.”

  “Correction, he is a fool.” She pouted. “He’s not dead.”

  He snickered. “Right.”

  She covered her mouth to hide her yawn, at the same time flopping onto her back and throwing her arms above her head.

  Now, he was having visions of her in his bed without any clothes on, Willow in her own room, and Mason sliding between Lowenna’s thighs, showing her just how alive they could both feel. Just how much he wanted her.

  But now it wasn’t just Willow that lay between them. It was the secret he’d been struggling all night to find a way to tell her.

  That he, of all people, was her mysterious benefactor. Her fairy godfather, as she put it.

  If he told her, would that change things between them? Would she look at him differently? And if so, would that tighten their bond or loosen it completely?

  He knew that the last thing she wanted was to be looked at with pity-eyes. To be considered a charity case or somebody’s good deed.

  She yawned again. “I don’t know how you do it. Raise a baby and run a bar. I’m exhausted after a day of work and just a few hours with this little bunny.” She glanced over at Willow. “But she’s a very sweet, exhausting little bunny. Makes it easier to forgive her for my heavy eyelids.”

  He watched closely as Lowenna’s chest rose and fell with each breath, her breasts round and full, and her nipples tight and pointing straight up to the ceiling.

  He wanted to suck one of them into his mouth until she bowed her back and slammed her eyes shut, moaning his name and digging her nails into his ass as he pumped furiously into her.

  “You okay?”

  Fuck, his eyes had been glued to her chest, and his mind had soared directly into X-rated movie territory. Her words had him blinking and shifting his focus to the now snoozing baby between them.

  “Yeah, uh, just … ”

  Her lips twisted. “Staring at my boobs?”

  Shit.

  She chuckled softly. “I think your baby’s out. Oh, to be able to fall asleep so quick and easily.”

  Phew. Saved by the baby.

  Though Lowenna also didn’t seem to mind that he’d been staring at her chest. Did that mean she was interested in him as well? So far the signals she’d been throwing him were confusing as fuck. One minute she was flirting, the next minute she was all “this is a business transaction.” And he certainly couldn’t get a read on her now.

  “I’m going to go take Willow to her own bed,” he said, sitting up and scooping his snuggly little baby into his arms. “Then I’ll come back here and stare at your boobs some more.” Even though he was all grins, inside he was worried she wouldn’t take it for the joke it was.

  Well, it was kind of a joke.

  She yawned again and shut her eyes. “Sounds good. They are pretty great boobs. I’m glad they didn’t disappear when I lost all that weight during my chemo.” Her mouth settled into a slight, curved smile, and she wriggled her bottom on his bed to get more comfortable.

  His cock twitched as he walked around the bed to the door, his eyes on the incredible woman peacefully resting right where he normally slept. “Be right back,” he whispered, Willow cradled against his chest.

  “Mhmm.”

  His body warmed as he took one final glance at Lowenna before he left his bedroom and wandered down the hallway toward Willow’s room. “Do you like our new friend?” he whispered to his now snoring infant. “Daddy likes her.”

  Daddy REALLY likes her.

  He laid his daughter down onto her back, rested his hand gently on her chest and closed his eyes, counting her breaths.

  He stood like that for a full minute. Sixty seconds. Counting each rise and fall of her tiny chest. He opened his eyes, taking in the vision that was his infant daughter. His flesh and blood. His reason for getting up each and every day. His joy. His heart. His life. His everything.

  With one last glance at Willow sleeping soundly in her crib, he headed back toward his bedroom and the sleeping beauty on his bed.

  He turned the corner, and there she was.

  “Lo?” He approached her.

  No response.

  “Lowenna?” he said, his voice just a fraction louder.

  Her killer tits rose and fell in slow, even breaths, practically heaving out of her light gray V-neck sweater. Her cleavage was rocking tonight too. As was her ass in those tight black pants she’d shown up wearing. They played up those hips and curves until he was forced to grab an apron and tie it around his waist to hide the boner that had sprung up in his jeans when he opened the door and took her coat. Fuck, he was popping chubbies around this woman like he was a goddamn fifteen-year-old and
not a thirty-eight-year-old man who knew how to control his erections.

  Yet, when it came to Lowenna, he had a hard time controlling anything.

  And now there she was, lying on his bed.

  A true sleeping beauty.

  With a great rack. And it was even better when she lay down and they spilled out of her top toward her chin.

  Should he kiss her? Could he?

  Would that wreck everything?

  Don’t deviate from the plan. You still have two weeks until the wedding to woo her. Once the wedding is over, you’ll tell her how you feel and then go from there. Don’t fuck up this wedding and her plan by deviating from your own plan because you can’t keep your inner fifteen-year-old in check.

  Right.

  But since meeting Lowenna, hell, since seeing Lowenna across the bar all those weeks ago, he’d become smitten with her. Enamored with her beauty and the mystery that surrounded her like a halo. He’d gone and kissed Emmett at midnight on New Year’s Eve even though he had a gaggle of gorgeous women around him because he hadn’t been able to get Lowenna out of his head. She was all he’d been thinking about at that party, and when the countdown began, he knew there was nobody else he wanted to kiss.

  Even though he didn’t know her yet, hadn’t officially met her, she was the only one he wanted to ring in the new year with.

  Emmett had been in the middle of relationship drama with Mason’s florist, so to ward off the hopeful lips of one of his stiletto-clad fans, Mason had grabbed Emmett and planted a big kiss on his lips when the clock struck midnight.

  It’d certainly done the trick with the women. They’d all moaned and grumbled, saying that the best ones were always gay.

  And then Mason had gone home and played his own New Year’s Eve fantasy in his head in the shower. One where he finally walked up to Lowenna at the bar, pulled her to her feet and kissed her like she’d never been kissed before, and all to the sound of the ball dropping in Times Square and people cheering for the new year. Followed, of course, by white-hot sex in his office at the bar. Of course.

  Maybe next year?

  For now, he had a new fantasy to fuel his nights. Her, sleeping on his bed peacefully.

  What he did to her in his mind was all his and would definitely be played out this evening as he took himself in his fist to relieve the tension. But for now, he was going to remain the gentleman his mother had raised and let Lowenna be, as much as it pained him. As much as his cock standing at full attention in his dress pants protested, he was going to leave her be.

  He sat down on the edge of the bed next to her waist and took her hand. It was soft, and the fingernails were trimmed neatly. A bit of black was under her left pinky nail. Probably chocolate. It seemed she always had chocolate somewhere on her when they met. Either her neck, chest, wrist, the side of her face. She brought her work home with her.

  Gently, he turned her hand face up and began to trace the lines of her palm with his index finger. His mother had gone to a palm reader once, then she came home and insisted she was now an expert and wanted to read Mason’s palm. She was relieved he had a long life line but got all pouty when his heart line was broken beneath his pinky finger

  “What does that mean?” he’d asked, not really believing in all that voodoo hocus pocus crap but also hoping that a broken heart line didn’t mean he was going to die young of a heart attack or something.

  His mother pursed her lips. “It means what I’ve been telling you all along, that you put too much stress on money and the material things in life. That true love will be a struggle, if not impossible, because you’re too busy. Too consumed with money.”

  Mason had rolled his eyes at his mother and then tugged his hand away. But that didn’t mean that over the next few weeks he didn’t catch himself staring at his hand, at that broken heart line.

  He’d gone to a palm reader while in China, hoping that his mother had been wrong and that he wasn’t a lost cause. That he could find love. Could palms change over time? Could the lines grow?

  He traced his finger over Lowenna’s heart line. It was perfect. Curved beautifully, intact, landing beneath her index finger and extending all the way to the edge of her hand.

  “That tickles,” she murmured, her voice groggy as she began to stir. Thick, dark lashes blinked open a few times before revealing sleepy gray orbs he wanted to wake up to every morning.

  “Want me to stop?” he asked, tracing his finger over her life line. It was short.

  Hmm. He pursed his lips together.

  He still didn’t completely agree or believe all that voodoo stuff about palms, but the woman in China he’d gone to see had been awfully convincing, and she seemed to know her shit.

  “What did you make that face for?” she asked, cocking one brow at him playfully, an expression that made her look downright irresistible.

  “This is your life line, and it’s short.” He traced his finger over it again, happy to be holding her hand, touching her. He’d rather be hammering her body into his mattress as their naked bodies, slick with sweat, slid against each other over and over again. But at least this was something.

  “What does that mean?” she asked, panic filling her eyes. “Does that mean I have a short life?”

  He shook his head. “No. It doesn’t. It means you are prone to illness.”

  “Which I am. Cancer girl, remember. I was also a preemie baby and had to stay in the hospital for three months after I was born. Had a big hole in my heart they had to fix, then I contracted some infection. I nearly died.”

  Jesus Christ, this woman had really been through the wringer. She needed to catch a break. She needed her win.

  “Yeah, well, that explains the short life line. But it also means that you are a person of integrity. You’re down to earth, kind but also a little timid.” He linked their fingers together. “You’re not timid, are you? You beat cancer. You kicked its ass. That doesn’t say timid to me. That says warrior.”

  He grinned when she rolled her eyes. “It nearly killed me, and it cost me my uterus, one ovary, my cervix and let’s not forget … my marriage. But sure, I kicked its ass.”

  Now it was his turn to roll his eyes. He pulled her up to sitting, much against her groans of protest.

  “But I was comfy,” she whined. “Your bed is really comfy.”

  Their fingers were still linked together. She hadn’t pulled away. He took that as a good sign. “It is really comfy,” was all he said. If she wanted more, she had to take the next step.

  Her eyes slid down to their intertwined hands. “Maybe I should go. Order an Uber and head home. I have to be at the shop for six o’clock tomorrow.”

  Damn it. So close.

  She didn’t release his hand.

  Her gaze drifted back up to his face. “Thank you so much for dinner tonight. It was wonderful. I really needed to get out of the house, get out of my head and spend some time with a friend.”

  A friend.

  Was he being thrown into the friend zone?

  Was there any coming out of it if he was?

  He’d never been in the friend zone before. Well, he had, but she came out of the closet like a month later, so it made sense. Otherwise, he’d always gotten the girl. He’d always been the boyfriend. He’d never really had girls that were his friends. He had girlfriends and fuck buddies but never any girls that were his platonic friends—besides his lesbian friends who were Willow’s aunts.

  And he certainly didn’t want to start having girls who were simply friends if Lowenna wanted to be the first one.

  No. This couldn’t happen.

  She sank her teeth into her bottom lip and averted her gaze over to the nightstand on the opposite side of the bed, where a nearly empty glass of wine sat. “I know it’s a lot to ask, and I will pay you extra … ”

  Fuck, he hated when she brought up the fact that she was paying him. Hated it.

  “But the night before the wedding … it’s the rehearsal dinner and … ”
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  “I work.”

  Christ, why had he just blurted that out? He was the boss. He could work or not work. There were always students willing to pick up a shift either on the bar or as a server. His staff was amazing.

  Because you’re frustrated. You’re being thrown into the friend zone, and she just reminded you that you’re her gigolo.

  She slipped her hand from his and glanced down between them. “Right. Okay. I just thought I’d ask.” She turned to go. “Thanks again for dinner, the fashion show and the palm reading.” Her laugh came out forced. She showed him her back and headed out the bedroom door and down the hall. “Here’s hoping all my illnesses are behind me. Maybe my life line will grow. They can still grow at thirty, right?”

  Without glancing behind her, she made her way to the front door, pulled out her phone and tapped it a dozen times. Finally, she lifted her gaze to his. “Uber is just around the block. Should be here in a minute.”

  With an ache in his gut and a rock in his throat, he grabbed her jacket from the coat closet. She allowed him to hold it out for her, and she slid her arms into the holes.

  “Thank you,” she whispered, turning to face him. “I had a nice time.” Then she leaned in, bringing her scent of chocolate and spice with her, and pecked him on the cheek.

  Pecked him on the fucking cheek. Like he was her geriatric great uncle or something.

  It was dry and quick, almost more of a hover with a kissy noise than anything else. At least when he’d kissed her on the cheek earlier, he’d lingered, made real contact and did it seductively. This kiss was none of those things.

  He swallowed down the razor blades in his throat and forced the corners of his mouth to lift up into a smile. “I had a nice time too.”

  Headlights flashed through the living room window, indicating the Uber had pulled up to the curb.

  “Well, I should get home. That catnap on your bed wasn’t enough. Though, if you hadn’t woken me up, I would have probably slept straight through the night.”

  He reached for her hand again, his other hand opening the door for her. “Next time I won’t wake you. Next time I’ll just crawl into bed next to you. Let you sleep and cook you breakfast in the morning.”