by Nella Tyler
Finally, the elevator came to a stop at the ground floor and I said goodbye to Tom, wishing him luck with his wife; she’d had their second kid three months before, and they were both feeling the strain of it. I hurried out to my car, shifting the strap of my laptop bag off of my shoulder and grabbing my keys. I should—I hoped—have just enough time to change out of my suit and into something more appropriate for the date Trevor had planned for me and Natalie to go on. I dropped my keys on the garage floor and cussed, bending over to pick them up.
As if on cue, images of my night with Natalie flitted through my brain. I groaned as I stood up, feeling the heat jolt through my body straight to my groin at the memory of how she had felt wrapped around me, how tight and hot she’d been, the sound of her moans in my ears. It was the best sex that I’d had in my entire life. I’d thought about it at least four times a day every day since I’d left her apartment in the morning after our tryst. I’ll probably never get that again, but Christ, it was good. I clenched my teeth, finally managing to get my car door unlocked and open. I couldn’t quite fight the thought—terrible as it was—that there couldn’t possibly be a woman that Katie could match me with who would be as good in bed as Natalie had been. Stop thinking that way. It’s not just about sex. If it was, you could just hire a professional. I pushed the thought of sex with Natalie out of my mind and climbed into the driver’s seat, throwing my laptop bag into the passenger side floorboard and shoving the key into the ignition.
Just then, my phone buzzed in my pocket. I fumbled for it and after nearly dropping it as clumsily as I had my keys, I saw that it was Natalie. I tapped accept and brought it to my ear. “Hey, I was just leaving work. You ready for the practice date of your career?”
“Oh God, Zeke, I’m so sorry, but I have to cancel on you again,” Natalie said, sounding like she was almost on the verge of tears.
“What’s wrong?” I closed the car door and stopped in the midst of pulling my seatbelt on. “Are you okay?”
“I’m fine,” she told me quickly. “Brady’s just sick again.” She cleared her throat and I frowned to myself, worried about the adorable little boy and his obviously distraught mother. “You know kids that young are just—basically walking petri dishes,” she said, almost laughing in a sad way.
“Is he all right?” My heart beat faster in my chest as I pictured a deeply sick little boy in my mind; Brady looked so much like his mother that it was hard for me not to feel for him, above and beyond the normal level of worry that any sick toddler would make me feel.
“I think he’ll be okay,” Natalie said. “He’s running a fever and coughing like an old man with COPD, but I think it’s just a cold.”
“Well don’t hesitate to take him to the doctor if he gets worse,” I told her. “If you’re worried about a hospital bill…”
“No—no, I really don’t think it’ll come to that, but if it does I have insurance,” she said. “Thank you, though. I really…I really appreciate it. I just won’t be able to go out knowing that he’s so sick, you know?”
“I totally understand,” I said. I did—but I was also disappointed; even if it was no one’s fault, I couldn’t help but feel bummed that the date that I’d had Trevor put so much work into was falling through at the last minute. “You take care of Brady and we’ll reschedule. No sweat.”
“Thank you again, for being so understanding,” Natalie said. Her voice sounded like she was at her breaking point, and I wondered if Brady was worse than she was letting on.
“If you need anything, you have my number,” I told her.
“Thanks. God—I sound like a broken record. I should go check up on him.”
“I’ll check in a few days from now to reschedule. Go take care of your boy.” I ended the call and dropped the phone onto the passenger seat of the car with a sigh. There was no need to hurry home anymore. There was nothing waiting for me for the night except for maybe a beer and—if I was lucky—a decent TV show. I decided that I’d go to the gym instead and put Natalie out of my mind unless she needed help.
VOLUME III
Chapter Twenty-One
Natalie
“Mama! Bear!” I looked over at the TV; Brady was playing with the car that Zeke had gotten for him during our last official date, while watching something I’d put on from the kids’ nature channel. I smiled, but I could only be glad that Brady hadn’t spoken up while I’d been on the phone with Zeke, only a moment before. If he had, and Zeke had heard, I might have had a hard time explaining the chipper, cheerful sound of my son’s voice when he was supposed to be sick as a dog.
I had thought—I had hoped—that I could put aside the fact that I’d slept with Zeke and just go on my practice date with him as scheduled. But the closer I got to the time to get ready to go, the more and more I’d felt the cold panic building up inside of me. I felt too guilty; I felt too weird. I couldn’t make myself do it.
For a moment, I wasn’t sure which was worse: the guilt I felt about sleeping with Zeke or the guilt I felt about lying to him about our practice date. From the hints he’d dropped in the days between when he’d spent the night with me and a few hours before I’d canceled, he’d worked hard on figuring out a good date idea for us. I had heard the disappointment in his voice when I’d told him I’d have to cancel. It almost would have been better if he’d gotten pissed off at me over it. I took a deep breath and sighed.
“How you doing in there, little man?” I came out of the kitchen and threw myself down onto the couch, watching the TV for a few seconds to figure out what it was that Brady was watching. He looked up from his car and beamed at me. My little boy held up the car Zeke had given him and toddled over to where I sat, waving it a little bit.
“Mr. Zeke’s car,” he told me importantly. “Mr. Zeke is nice.”
“He’s very nice,” I agreed, feeling that guilty lurch in my stomach once again. He was too nice; that was kind of the problem. Brady looked up at me, his face screwed up in the effort to concentrate enough to figure out how to say what was on his mind.
“You go see Mr. Zeke? Tonight?” I had mentioned that I was going to be seeing him—I was surprised that Brady even remembered that.
“Not tonight, sweetie,” I said, keeping my smile firmly in place. I didn’t want Brady to even think that there was anything amiss.
“You like him,” he pointed out. “He likes you.” I laughed.
“How do you know that, bug?” I reached out and pulled him onto the couch with me.
“You smile with him,” Brady told me matter-of-factly. “Not the others.”
“You haven’t seen me with any of the others, though,” I pointed out.
“When you talk,” he said, correcting me. “You smile when you talk.”
“How do you know he likes me, though?” He giggled.
“He looks at you,” Bherady told me. “Like daddies and mommies.” I raised an eyebrow at that.
“Let’s look at what’s happening on the TV,” I told Brady. “Looks like there are some funny gorillas coming up—you don’t want to miss that!” I was relieved when he turned his attention back onto the TV. He played with his car meditatively as he watched the gorillas interacting on the screen, and I relaxed a little bit.
I got up and finished making dinner for the two of us: chicken and rice with green beans, something that would be easy for Brady to eat, that he wouldn’t argue over. I’d started him on vegetables when I’d first weaned him, so apart from asparagus and spinach, he was mostly willing to eat veggies, but there were certain ones that he turned his nose up at from time to time even if he’d liked them before.
I called Brady to the kitchen table and he brought the damn car that Zeke had bought him with him once more; I didn’t want to argue the point, but I couldn’t help but feel awkward at the reminder of a guy that I really didn’t want to think about in that moment.
By the time I had fed Brady dinner, given him a bath, and gotten him into bed, I was exhausted. I sat on the c
ouch in the living room and tried to watch TV—quietly—but all I could think about was Zeke. It wasn’t just the guilt that I felt at having lied to him that bothered me; it was the fact that I had let him come to my house, that I had let things go so far with him. It had been a mistake from the beginning to the end.
But in spite of the fact that I knew it was a mistake, I couldn’t help reliving the unofficial date. Brady had had no idea that Zeke had come over; Zeke had managed to leave before Brady woke up in the morning, which we’d agreed on as soon as we finished having sex. We both knew that the situation between us wasn’t a permanent thing—he would go on to dates with matches that the agency set up for him, and I could go on to coaching other clients, possibly eventually finding a man to date myself, not just someone to coach.
Why did I even let that happen? In the moment, it had seemed so obvious to me, but looking back on the not-date that I’d had with Zeke, sitting on the couch we’d been on when I’d decided to have sex with him, it was a little harder. He was gorgeous—that much was obvious, and I couldn’t deny it, even when we’d first started working together. He was charming, smart, and funny. But he was a client. He wasn’t for me.
I closed my eyes and thought about the actual incident itself. It was too easy by far to remember how it had felt to fall into bed with Zeke, how he’d felt inside me. If I’d gotten turned on just from kissing him—and I definitely had—then sex with him was enough to make me wish I was one of Katie’s clients, so that I could have the chance of feeling like that every day for the foreseeable future. He might have been a little rusty, but it was apparently like riding a bicycle. I shuddered, my hands beginning to wander over my body a little bit as I remembered his touch, the feeling and taste of his lips, the feeling of his cock. He was huge—at least by my standards—and he had looked even more glorious naked than he had in his stylish, expensive clothes. My heart beat faster in my chest at the memory of his muscled body, lean hips, the wheat-colored trail darting down from his navel towards his erection. Zeke had been absolutely mouthwatering.
And, he would be absolutely mouthwatering for some other woman, within a matter of months. I gave myself a shake and tried to pay at least a little attention to what was going on in front of me on the TV, but it was useless. Zeke was going to be matched with some other client, who would start a family with him at some point. He would forget all about me, more than likely, and he would go on to get married and have kids. I had to think about my own future. I couldn’t tell Katie about what happened, and until I managed to figure out how to re-enforce the boundaries that should exist between Zeke and me, I had to put off seeing him again. It was only too easy to think that he would probably push for more—at least a kiss, if not another night together.
You could always quit your job and date him yourself, you know. You’d be a great candidate—you know him already, and you know what his weaknesses and strengths are. For about a minute, that thought was so tantalizing and so bright and shining in my head that I seriously considered calling Zeke and inviting him over. But I’d have to explain about Brady if I did that. I wasn’t prepared to admit to lying to him. I sighed, scrubbing at my face, and decided that I was going to give myself a long, hot bath—but that brought Zeke to mind, as well, with the reminder of the things he’d bought for me at Lush. I couldn’t do anything in my own home without thinking of the guy.
If I dated him, though—if I quit my job to avoid the professional conflict and dated him—there was no guarantee that it would work out. Sure, I knew his weaknesses and strengths, and I knew all kinds of strategies for getting him to act the way that I needed him to and to communicate effectively with him to get him to tell me what he needed, but that wasn’t all there was to a good relationship. Sooner or later, the odds were good that we’d end up breaking up. And then, I would end up losing him as well as being without a job. There was no guarantee, either, that I’d be able to find another job quickly after leaving the agency, especially if I came clean to Katie about why I wanted to leave.
Glancing in the direction of Brady’s room, I knew that I would have to keep my job. It kept us afloat, and I couldn’t put Brady’s health and lifestyle at risk just because one of the clients I worked with was good in bed and reasonably charming. I had to be responsible. I decided to take a shower instead and get an early night. Maybe with some decent sleep, I would figure out a way to make things right between Zeke and me. I obviously couldn’t let things get to the point that they had a few nights before, ever again—I had to make sure that we kept things professional between us. I could lose my job if there was ever any whisper that I’d kissed—much less slept with—a client that I was coaching. I couldn’t risk that.
I cleaned up the apartment and went into my bedroom, making a beeline for the shower. I kept the door open in case Brady woke up and needed something, but my mind was a million miles away even while I scrubbed and shaved and shampooed and conditioned. I couldn’t get rid of the nagging sense of guilt I felt for what I’d done. I would have to come clean to someone eventually; I couldn’t tell Katie and I definitely couldn’t tell any of my coworkers.
I got out of the shower, dried off, and threw on a nightgown before crawling into bed. Big mistake. The pillowcases, the sheets, still smelled a little bit like Zeke—even though I could have sworn I’d washed them. I groaned and flopped onto my back, trying to keep from breathing in the scent of Zeke’s sweat, soap, and cologne that lingered. I just have to get him out of my head. I have to think of him as nothing more than another client and forget everything we’ve done beyond that. I laughed at myself in the darkness. I had studied enough psychology to know how stupid the idea of forgetting something consciously was. What I need to do is find a guy I can actually date—someone who isn’t a client. I thought of the kind of guy it could be, but even then it was too easy to notice that the traits lined up almost perfectly with Zeke. I fell asleep unsatisfied, upset at myself, and still gnawing myself from the inside with guilt at what I’d done.
Chapter Twenty Two
Zeke
I stepped forward in the line at Breaking Day Café and looked around me. I had to admit that in spite of the fact that Natalie had canceled our practice date, I was feeling pretty good. Even if I couldn’t get her out of my head, I was moving forward. I was asking women out. I’d taken her advice to heart: dating was at least partially a numbers game, and if I asked enough women on dates, I would eventually find someone who was willing to take a chance on me. I grinned to myself, remembering the feeling, the sight, and the sounds of the best sex of my life—with Natalie. I took a slow, deep breath, trying to push down the rush of heat that flowed through me at the thought of it. At least you know that when it comes down to it, you can get a woman off, I thought.
I spotted one of the regulars a few spots in the line behind me, Brigitte was someone I’d talked to a couple of times while we both waited for drink orders, and I had always liked her—a little bit, at least as a person. She was obviously heading into work, dressed in a navy skirt suit with a pale pink blouse underneath. She’d pulled her blonde hair back into some kind of bun, which briefly reminded me of Natalie—but the hair color was totally different. I stepped forward in line again as the person two spots in front of me finished their order and came to a decision: I would ask Brigitte out. If she said no, it wasn’t like it would be the end of the world. If she said yes, I figured we could at least enjoy an hour or two at a restaurant over a meal.
When it was my turn at the register, I smiled at the harried-looking teenager running the till. “Two things,” I said to the girl. “First, take a deep breath. You look like you’re about to crumble.” The barista met my gaze and took a slow, deep breath, smiling slightly.
“Sorry,” the girl said, her cheeks lighting up with pink. “This is my first week here.”
“You’re doing just fine,” I told her. “Fortunately for you, my order is very, very simple.”
“I’m ready for it,” the girl said,
sounding more cheerful than she had for several minutes.
“I’d like a medium latte with an extra shot, light on the foam,” I told her. That was my order.
“Anything else?” I glanced over my shoulder at Brigitte.
“Yes, actually,” I told the barista, leaning in a little closer to her. “Do you see that gorgeous blonde woman about two or three people behind me in line?” the barista looked and then nodded. “I’d like to order for her: one large, extra hot latte, with two squirts of hazelnut syrup.” The barista nodded and tapped on her screen. She told me the total and I handed her a twenty. “Put the rest in the tip jar,” I said with a grin when the barista would have given me my change.
I stepped off to the side and waited, watching as the two people between myself and Brigitte took their turns. I could feel my heart beating faster in my chest as Brigitte stepped up to the register and began to order. The barista glanced at me for an instant and told the blonde something—presumably that I’d already ordered and paid for her. Brigitte turned around, looking at the line in confusion, and spotted me. The barista said something else and Brigitte walked away from the register, looking dazed but pleased.
“You bought me my usual?” Brigitte looked up at me, her bright eyes gleaming slightly.
“I thought it would be a nice thing to do… Are you going to tell me that you’re horrified at my presumption?” I thought—I hoped—that I’d taken Natalie’s lesson about gifts for women I wanted to date the right way.
“No,” Brigitte said, her lips twitching in a smile. I hadn’t really seen her up close in a long time. We mostly just saw each other in passing, usually with a few people between us leaving or coming into the café at the same time. “How have you been?”