by Nella Tyler
“Why do you think that is?” I snagged a chip and dipped it into the guacamole.
“Things just never seemed to work out with my college dates,” he said with another shrug. “I’d go on a date with a girl, think it was going well, and then never hear from her again. Or it just wouldn’t click somehow.” He took another bite of his taco. “So after a while, I decided to just throw myself into my work, and deal with finding someone ‘later.’” I smiled, I hoped sympathetically.
“Always more time ‘later,’ isn’t there?” I started in on my own taco, chewing thoroughly as I thought about Zeke. It was hard to believe that a guy like him—smart, talented, successful, and objectively hot—would find it hard to get a date with anyone, but if he’d had trouble with making anything stick, relationship-wise, I could see how he’d eventually stop even trying.
“Always,” he said, grinning. “Until, of course, you wake up and realize that you’re thirty and most of the women you could comfortably date are already settled down.”
“Not most of them,” I countered. “Or at least, they’re not settled down anymore.” I thought about my own situation; I’d gotten married right out of college, had a kid within a few years, and then my marriage had ended almost as quickly as it had started. “Lots more women like me out there, who had one try at settling down and didn’t quite end up staying with it.”
“There’s nothing wrong with that, though,” Zeke pointed out. “You gave it a try—I haven’t even managed that yet.” He wiped his fingers on a napkin and sat back in his seat slightly. “I’m just hoping that I haven’t left it too late.”
“You’re thirty, not three hundred,” I told him, shaking my head. “You’ve got plenty of time. Most people in our generation are getting settled down later—career first, get themselves settled.” I ate another chip with guacamole and considered. “You’re more the rule than the exception these days.” Zeke chuckled and picked up his second taco.
“Thanks for the pep talk, coach,” he said, grinning. I rolled my eyes.
“It’s not a pep talk,” I told him. “It’s the truth.” He smiled even wider.
“Okay, okay,” he said finally. “I will keep it in mind. Where should we go to next?” I looked down at the food we’d picked out and realized that between the two of us, we’d managed to eat it all. I took another sip of my drink and sat back, looking around at the rest of the crowd in the food court.
“I think we’re just about done—you’ve spent way too much money on me already,” I told him. The idea of the necklace he’d bought me weighed on my mind more than I wanted to admit. He hadn’t been wrong—the gemstones in the necklace definitely matched my eye color—but just because it looked nice on me didn’t mean that he should buy it for me. I didn’t think I would ever wear it; it was too expensive, and I felt way too strange about owning it.
We wandered around the mall a little bit, looking for the entrance we’d met at, and I had to insist again that I didn’t want to go into any of the other shops—Zeke had to have spent easily over two hundred dollars on me already, and the last thing I wanted was for him to find an excuse to spend more. We kept talking all along: about the dating process, about the matchmaking process he was in, about our lives. By the time we reached the entrance and got ready to part ways, I actually had begun to feel at ease again. I could even think of the necklace without feeling like I was being bought.
“You know, I remember you said that we probably shouldn’t practice my goodnight kissing skills again at all,” Zeke said, giving me a mischievous look, “but Brady isn’t here, and I thought—I hoped—that maybe we could try it one last time, just for the sake of it.” For just an instant, I thought that Zeke believed, somehow, that since he’d bought me so many things at the mall, he was entitled to more from me than our practice dates called for.
“Do you remember what we talked about before, about your transactional approach to dating?” I raised an eyebrow. I could feel myself starting to get irritated.
“Oh—of course,” he said, inclining his head towards me. “I’m not asking because I think I should be able to kiss you after buying things for you—you can keep the things I bought no matter what. I bought them because I wanted to buy them.” He smiled. “I asked because the first time I kissed you was really nice, and I wanted to try it again for old time’s sake.” I held his gaze for a moment. In spite of my irritable feelings about Zeke’s high-handed use of our practice date as an excuse to buy things for me, I had to admit that I hadn’t forgotten our kiss, either.
“As long as you’re not doing this because…you think…” I pressed my lips together.
“No, I don’t think you’re some kind of prostitute,” he told me, shaking his head. “You’re an awesome, smart, charming woman who happens to be coaching me to get ready for real dating.” I took a deep breath and exhaled slowly.
“Okay, let’s do it then,” I said, feeling awkward. Zeke put paid to my twinge of weirdness in an instant; he leaned in towards me, his hands going to my waist and shoulder to hold me in place, and he brushed his lips against mine. I’d kissed him before, so I had thought I would be prepared for a second kiss—even one that was a little more awkward than the first. But as he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips more firmly against mine, tightening his hands on my body—but without moving them anywhere inappropriate—I felt myself starting to respond, forgetting for the moment just how inappropriate what we were doing technically was. I reached up and draped my arms around his shoulders, pushing my body up against his without thinking. I could feel myself warming up from head to toe, something tightening inside of me that I hadn’t felt in months, in years: since things had started to go south with Alex, in fact.
The realization that I was actually getting into the kiss jolted me out of the moment and I pulled back, letting my arms fall to my sides. I gathered up the bags that had fallen out of my hands as the blood flooded into my face and took a step back, swallowing down the taste of Zeke’s lips on mine, the taste of his tongue and the feeling of his body. “I really need to go,” I said, pretending to check the time on my phone. “I didn’t think the date would run over—and my sitter has to get home.” I barely glanced in Zeke’s direction as I started towards the door to the mall. “Let me know when you’ve got a next practice date ready,” I told him quickly. I hurried away from the mall, feeling as if I had possibly made the biggest mistake of my life as I turned the corner and found the parking garage where I’d parked.
Chapter Sixteen
Zeke
It was a mistake to kiss her again, I thought to myself as I looked around my office. I hadn’t been able to get Natalie out of my mind ever since our last date. It was worse than it had been before—and before I’d kissed her, it had been difficult as hell to get her out of my mind.
I guessed that I had hoped that kissing her again would somehow take the magic out of it. I had thought somehow in the back of my mind that if she gave me permission to kiss her again and I did so, it would just feel normal, and boring. The reality was that it had been even more exciting than the first time I’d kissed her. I shook my head, trying to clear it of the memories that rose up in spite of how much I tried to push them down. It was too easy to remember the way that she pressed her body against mine, too easy to remember the feeling of her lips against mine, the taste of her. I wanted more; I could tell that she did, too—at least, in that moment. I’d been able to feel it in the way her body tensed against me and taste it on her lips. In that moment—no matter what else had happened between us that night—she had wanted more than just a kiss.
The problem was that Natalie was everything I wanted in a woman: smart, talented, put-together, funny, independent. She was gorgeous, too, and so charming even when she was correcting me or giving me criticism that it was impossible not to listen to her after a certain point, even if I’d acted like a jerk the first couple of dates we went on together. I couldn’t imagine anyone that the matchmaking service could set
me up with would be any better than Natalie herself—but that wasn’t the point. I wasn’t supposed to be getting feelings for my dating coach. I was supposed to be learning from her before moving on to date someone else.
When is Pete going to get here anyway? I glanced at the time; there was another fifteen minutes or so to go before Pete—Peter Angelosi, a long-time partner with the company I worked for—came in for the meeting I’d set. We were supposed to be discussing charity events for the companies he represented, and I’d looked over the information that he’d sent me the week before, but I didn’t have any of it in my brain anymore—everything in my head was Natalie. That was a definite problem.
I pulled up the email he’d sent me with the reports about the different companies and the assets they were willing to invest in their pet charities and skimmed it; Pete and I would go over the details over the meeting anyway, and I just wanted to have enough fresh in my mind to not have to check the email every few minutes to remind myself. I skimmed it again just to make sure that I could at least remember which companies it was and which charities they wanted to work with, while I waited for Pete to arrive.
My phone buzzed on my desk and I picked it up, barely glancing at it as I tapped answer before bringing it to my ear. “Baxter speaking,” I said quickly.
“Mr. Baxter, good afternoon.” For a second the voice on the other end of the line confused me—feminine and upbeat as it was. I’d been vaguely expecting Pete, Trevor, or someone to be calling me about business matters; instead, it was Katie from the agency—Natalie’s boss.
“How’s it going, Katie?” I sat back in my chair and glanced at the time again; I had another ten minutes before Pete should arrive and I didn’t think the conversation with the matchmaking representative would take even that long. Unless Natalie filed a complaint about you for buying her expensive gifts and then getting her to kiss you, I thought, feeling more than a little guilty. I had thought the date would be a good idea, and I was still confident that Natalie had enjoyed herself in spite of herself, but she’d left flustered.
“Very well, thanks. How about yourself?” I answered that I was doing fine, waiting for an associate to arrive for a meeting. “I will keep the call short then; I don’t want to take up too much of your time, but I thought you’d want the news as soon as possible.”
“News? That sounds promising,” I said. I heard Katie laugh on the other end of the line.
“As I’m sure you’re aware, while you’ve been working with Natalie Leathers, your dating coach, she’s been reporting back to me about your progress.” My heart skipped in my chest and my mind turned once more to the notion that Natalie might have tattled on me.
“I hope I’ve been getting good reports,” I said carefully. “I’ve been listening to her advice as best as I can.”
“You’ve been getting very good reports,” she reassured me. “In fact, based on the most recent meeting I had with Natalie, I think you’re just about ready to start having homework dates.”
“Homework dates?” I shook my head, rolling my eyes at the idea. “What does that mean?”
“I’d like you to start asking women out that you meet just anywhere—at the bar, or wherever you hang out,” she explained. “We’re still working towards getting you matched with some compatible women in our directory, but Natalie and I agreed that it’s time you start taking the training wheels off and working on your skills with some people who aren’t coaches.”
“That’s great news,” I said, grinning to myself. “Glad to hear I’ve made good progress.”
“According to what Natalie’s told me, you’ve made excellent progress,” she said. “So whenever you want—as soon or as late as you feel like it—go ahead and start asking some local women out for casual dates and we’ll circle back to how you’re doing.”
“Do I still go on my practice dates with Natalie?”
“Oh—yes, that is still happening,” Katie explained. “You do still have skills to work on, and of course, she can steer you in the right direction and give you feedback on your homework dates with other women.”
“Sounds good,” I told her. I actually had to struggle—a bit—to keep the excitement out of my voice, to keep sounding calm and collected. “I’ll definitely follow up on that this afternoon. Thanks for the good news, Katie!”
“Always happy to get someone moving along towards their happily ever after,” she told me. “Unless you’ve got any more questions on the subject, I think we’re done. I don’t want to make you late for your meeting.”
“I think I’m covered,” I said. “Thanks again.” I ended the call and set my phone down in one of the drawers of my desk; I didn’t want to have it distracting me during the meeting with Pete. The fact that I could—finally—start dating people again, people who were actually interested in me, people who I might even have some kind of future with, was thrilling. I thought about Natalie: how sweet, and kind, and funny, and beautiful she was. I had known from the beginning that there was nothing between us and there couldn’t be. We had a professional relationship; no matter the fact that I had convinced her to kiss me twice, I knew that she would never let it get any farther than that and probably regretted letting it even get that far. It would be better by far to find someone who I had a shot at actually being with in a personal, romantic relationship, instead of letting thoughts of Natalie consume me.
I decided that I’d take advantage of my clearance to date as soon as possible—that afternoon, in fact. I’d find a woman who I thought might be interested in me, at least a little, and ask her out. That would put Natalie out of my mind in every sense except the professional. I’d be able to focus again, which had been a problem for me ever since we’d started going on the practice outings and especially since the first time we’d kissed. As soon as I came to that conclusion, there was a knock at my office door and Trevor’s head popped into the room. “Mr. Baxter, Pete Angelosi is here to see you.”
“Send him on in,” I told my assistant, sitting up in my chair and pulling up the email that Pete had sent me the week before just to keep it handy. I wanted to get the meeting over with as quickly as possible so that I could get out and find someone to ask on a date.
Chapter Seventeen
Natalie
When Katie told me that she was going to give Zeke the clearance to start asking women out on his own, I’d figured that he was going to at least make the attempt to pull back on our sessions and that I’d have to remind him that we were still supposed to be having our practice dates; I had actually kind of hoped that that would be the case, since I was still shaken up from how good kissing him had felt at the end of our most recent date.
Instead, he’d called me a few nights before we were scheduled to meet again and told me that he thought—given his age and the things we’d discussed at the mall—that it would be good to have another practice date with Brady accompanying us, if I was okay with that idea. “I need to get used to being around kids,” Zeke had told me. “A lot of the women I’m going to be dating are—I assume—going to have kids, or want kids, and I want to be as prepared as possible for dealing with dating moms.”
So instead of him planning a date for us, I suggested that I would put everything together and tell him where to meet with us. Mini-golf had been fun for Brady, but if I was going to be bringing him with me, I wanted to be on something like neutral territory—somewhere I knew my son was comfortable and where I knew he’d have the least reason to act out. A picnic at the park was the obvious choice.
The night before the date, I sent Zeke a text message to let him know when and where to meet us. It was a weekend, so I was fairly certain that he’d have at least mostly an open schedule. We’re going to be going to the park. It’s Brady’s favorite place other than the zoo, so I figured that’d be a good place to interact with him. Meet us there at one? I half-expected Zeke to come up with an excuse or to try and offer an alternative to make the date more exciting, but I would be firm if he t
ried to wriggle out of it, I told myself.
Instead, he seemed to be completely on board. One is great for me! Should I bring anything? I looked around my kitchen, where I’d already started to assemble the components that I was going to make into a picnic lunch.
I’ve got it all covered, for once, I texted back to him. Just come in comfortable clothes and be ready to chase down a three-year-old with me if you have to.
The morning of the date, I was surprised at how nervous I felt. I left Brady to play with his toys in his pajamas while I put the finishing touches on everything I wanted to take with us. I’d fried up some chicken the night before, since I knew from experience that leftover fried chicken made for an excellent picnic meal. I also set up some cold brew coffee in the fridge, which I strained into a thermos to drink throughout the afternoon. To keep Brady occupied, I had plenty of different treats—cheese cubes, mini cupcakes, grapes that would serve both for his own snacking needs and his desire to feed the ducks, and some graham crackers with peanut butter. For Zeke and myself I tucked a small bottle of wine into the basket, along with a vegetable salad I’d made the night before.
Finally, when it was time to head over to the park, I rounded up my son and got him dressed in jeans, a tee shirt, and a hat to keep the sun off of his face, and dressed myself in a comfortable pair of soft fabric pants and a blouse and some sandals. “I’ve got a big surprise for you when we get to the park,” I told Brady as we loaded up the car together. I strapped him into his car seat carefully and grinned to myself, anticipating not just my son’s surprise, but also Zeke’s surprise, when he found out one of the orders of the day that I had in mind.