Single Mom's Protector - Complete Series

by Nella Tyler

  We made small talk for a few moments while the people on the bar made our drinks, and called them out. “Brigitte,” I said, as we both stepped up to claim our drinks. “I was wondering: would you like to grab dinner sometime?” She looked startled, but not unhappy, and I felt my heart beating even faster in my chest with the hope that this would be the magic number that would get me a date of my own—not a practice date, not a pity date, not a professional date, but an actual, real date.

  “Sure,” she said after a moment. She smiled up at me. “Let’s get out of the flow of traffic, and I can give you my phone number.” I grabbed my latte and gestured for her to step out in front of me, where the traffic was a bit thinner for the busy morning rush. We stopped at one of the few empty tables, and I took out my phone. Brigitte recited her phone number twice, and I showed her the contact page on my screen to make sure it was accurate. “Now send me a text and I’ll have your number, too,” she suggested.

  In a matter of moments, I’d made a tentative date with her to have dinner in a few days’ time. I told Brigitte that I’d text her with more details once I had a reservation for something after seven in the evening, and we parted ways. I wanted to throw up my arms in victory. I wanted to tell the guy I walked past, leaving the café, that I’d actually managed to get a date. But that was ridiculous—I knew better than to do anything like that.

  I walked the last few blocks to the office, still buzzing with the feeling of having actually gotten a date for myself. Maybe having sex with Natalie took away whatever needy vibe you were giving off before, I thought, riding the elevator up to the floor my office was on. The thought reminded me of Natalie, and of the fact that she’d had to cancel a practice date with me. Katie had been clear that I would still be doing my practice dates with my coach while I was seeing other women that I found for myself—and to be honest, I didn’t want to stop seeing Natalie, even if I had gotten a date of my own. I would need her input. If it weren’t for her, I might not have thought of that move—buying Brigitte’s usual order for her as an opening, I reminded myself. I was sure that Natalie would have plenty of advice for the finer points of going on dates, too, and I’d want her feedback once the date with Brigitte happened.

  Then, too, I just wanted to see Natalie again. I got into my office and dug my phone out of my pocket again. She should—I hoped—be up already, but I didn’t want to assume, so I sent her a text message. If she wasn’t awake, she could give me a call when she was. We need to reschedule our practice date, I wrote. I hesitated before sending it, though—we were supposed to be professional, but we’d already crossed that particular line, and I didn’t want Natalie to think I was being too brusque. How’s Brady? I hope he’s feeling better.

  I set my phone aside and tried to focus on my work: there were reports to read, proposals to check on. But in the back of my mind, I kept waiting to hear my phone buzz, to tell me that Natalie had texted me back. My skin tingled and crawled with anticipation.

  Finally, when I was just starting to relax into my work, I heard my phone vibrating on the desk. I reached out and snatched it up without even really looking at the screen when I unlocked it. The message notification opened; it was a reply from Natalie. Brady is feeling much better! Did you want to call and reschedule? I glanced at my computer monitor—my work could wait.

  I called Natalie, sitting back in my chair and waiting while the phone rang once, and then twice. “Hey, Zeke,” she said as soon as the line connected. It was on the tip of my tongue to tell her that I’d actually managed to get a date on my own, but something made me stop short of actually saying it.

  “So, what does your schedule look like for next week?” Normally, Natalie was supposed to run her own schedule around her clients—she’d told me so, when we were just getting to know each other—but since it was a re-schedule, I didn’t want to plan anything and then find out that she already had a session booked for that time.

  “I have Wednesday and Thursday free,” she said. “What did you have in mind for our date? Or is it going to be a surprise?” I thought her voice sounded a little weird, a little subdued, maybe. But that might have just been the early morning hour—I could easily believe that she normally had more relaxation time, even with a rambunctious child.

  “We’re going to be going to laser tag,” I told her. “I figured it would be fun. What do you think?”

  “That sounds great,” she replied. Once more I almost told her about the café, about Brigitte, and about the fact that I had another date to plan—a real date, at that. But I pushed the thought out of my head.

  “So Thursday is good for that?” I scribbled a quick note to put Trevor on the job for scheduling it, making it happen for me. “You’ll be able to get a babysitter? I think that Brady might still be a bit young for laser tag.”

  “I agree,” she said, and I thought I heard her smiling, finally. “I can definitely make it Thursday at about seven.” She didn’t sound as excited as I’d hoped she would, but then again, I reminded myself, she had probably not been awake for very long, and she was probably preoccupied with Brady’s morning routine.

  “Okay, I will see you then.” I stayed on the phone just long enough to exchange the usual pleasantries before telling Natalie that I had to get back to work. In the back of my mind, I couldn’t help but wonder if maybe I hadn’t been quite as good in bed as I’d originally thought. Maybe the reason she was less than excited about our practice date was that I’d made her feel uncomfortable.

  You’re definitely going to have to talk about it, I thought, turning my attention back onto the work in front of me. I knew that I probably shouldn’t have pushed that boundary, but in the moment, it had seemed so completely right—and Natalie had gone right along with me, at least as far as I could tell. She had been amazing. I thought about that moment between us over and over again ever since it had happened. I took a deep breath and made myself think about Brigitte instead. That was a much more productive way to be distracted. I’d tell Natalie about my date with Brigitte after it had happened, and I would make things count with the woman who was actually interested in me—not the one who was professionally attached to me. I pushed the thought of Natalie out of my mind, and got to work with the resolution to make things go the way that they should without fighting them.

  Chapter Twenty Three

  Natalie

  I could feel my heart beating faster as I pulled into a parking spot at the laser tag place that Zeke and I had agreed to meet at. “Zeke, we need to have a very serious conversation,” I said, glancing in the mirror. I had been rehearsing in my head what I was going to say and how I was going to address the situation. “I won’t say that the—the sex wasn’t good, because it was, but that’s actually an even stronger reason for why we can’t ever do that again.” I took a deep breath. My hands were shaking on the wheel.

  I had gone through all the possibilities that I could think of in my mind; that Zeke would attempt to blackmail me into continuing to have sex with him, or that he would try and make a play on my emotions, or that he would be irritable and aggressive in his defensiveness. It had been so long since I’d had to really give any guy that kind of talking to that it was difficult for me to even imagine how it would play out, but I knew that I had to draw a line in the sand, and I had to enforce a boundary. Much though I liked Zeke—and much though the sex had been amazing, even better than it had ever been with Alex—I couldn’t let it continue. My job was more important than any fling.

  I took another deep breath as I shut off the engine and checked my makeup in the mirror. I had been careful not to look too casual or too sexy—at least, as best as I could—but I still wanted to look professional and put-together. I touched up my lip color and grabbed my purse, trying to convince my pulse to slow down a little bit. Why was I so nervous? It wasn’t just because experience had taught me that men, in general, would react poorly to being “rejected.” It was because it was Zeke in particular that I was enforcing a boundary w
ith. There was some part of me that almost didn’t want to have the conversation at all; some part of me that wanted to leave whatever it was we had to say unsaid, and just hope for the best.

  But that wasn’t possible. I pushed my shoulders back and walked towards the entrance where I’d agreed to meet Zeke for our date. After a moment, he appeared, and I was almost certain that my heart was going to pound its way right out of my ribcage. “Hey, Zeke,” I said, forcing myself to smile as casually as possible.

  “Good to see you again, Natalie,” he said, moving closer. He leaned in to kiss me on the cheek and I felt my body go stiff with the sudden fear that he was going to go for my lips instead—and that I wouldn’t have the moral courage to prevent him from doing it. “Something wrong?” He straightened, looking down at me with concern on his face.

  “I just…think…we need to discuss what happened between us,” I said, taking another deep breath as surreptitiously as possible.

  “Oh—oh, yeah, we definitely do,” he agreed, nodding. He looked around and spotted a bench. “Do you want to sit down and talk about that before we head in?” He seemed so reasonable, so pleasant; I have to admit that it threw me for a moment.

  “Okay,” I agreed, walking with him towards the empty bench. I swallowed against the tight, dry feeling in my throat and tried to compose my thoughts. I’d planned for every contingency except Zeke being completely upfront and polite about the situation between us. That had been my mistake. “I can’t invite you over anymore, and we can’t…” I glanced up, trying to gauge his reaction. “We can’t kiss, or have sex, or do anything like that again.” Zeke held my gaze for a moment before nodding.

  “I’m moving forward in the program, and I’m going to be starting to actually date,” he said, nodding again. “We need to keep things between us professional.”

  “Exactly,” I said, for a minute more than a little flustered. Was it… Surely it isn’t that he thinks I’m bad in bed or something? I should have been happy that he was being so cooperative, but the fact that he didn’t even put up a fight about no longer kissing or having sex gave me a moment of self-doubt that I couldn’t quite move past. “The most important aspect of this for me is that I really do need to keep my job,” I said, smiling again nervously. “And if Katie finds out about what we’ve done…”

  Zeke grinned. “I assume she’d probably throw both of us out of the agency for it. You for breaking professional rules, and me for…” he stopped short. “Violating a boundary with one of her coaches. Not a good sign, I’d think.”

  “Well,” I said, feeling my cheeks burning. “I don’t know for sure that she’d throw you out just like that, but she would definitely fire me.” I laughed, kind of forcing it, but I didn’t know what else to do.

  “I wouldn’t want to see you fired over something that I can just as easily not do,” he said, smiling at me slightly. “So, now that we have that out of the way: laser tag?” I laughed a little more genuinely and nodded, standing up from the bench.

  I still felt nervous somehow, with my skin tingling and my heart beating faster in my chest, but as Zeke led the way to the ticket counter, I could at least find it in me to be pleased at the fact that he hadn’t lived up to my worst nightmares about what our conversation could go like. He was being professional and polite—which I really should have expected of him, considering that my first criticisms were that he was too businesslike in his interactions.

  We picked up our passes and went into the building, finding the outfitting station. For the first several rounds, we put ourselves on the same team together, and darted around in the black light darkness, shooting at the members of the other team, crouching under and behind the different obstacles, laughing and shouting with everyone else. I started to relax more and more as we went in together again and again, and then as we waited our turn for another room in the laser tag complex, or grabbed a quick bite to eat and a beer for our break. The place didn’t really have much in the way of food—chicken strips, some burgers, hotdogs and fries—but we scarfed down our meals and took the opportunity to wander around the smaller arcade part of the building for a few minutes while we let it all settle in our stomachs.

  “What do you say we go on separate teams when we go back in?” I raised an eyebrow at Zeke in challenge, grinning up at him. Things couldn’t be the way that they had been before we’d ever kissed or had sex, but I thought they could almost—maybe—be better, with our deeper understanding of where each of us was coming from.

  “Oh—I see how it is. You think you can take me?” I nodded.

  “I absolutely do,” I told him. “I think I can take you out in five minutes flat.”

  Zeke laughed. “I’ll see if I can pay someone to close down one of the smaller rooms for us later on, and we’ll go one-on-one.”

  “Why don’t we just stick to being on different teams for now?” I strapped on the equipment again and grabbed the gun I’d put aside when we’d decided to eat, and grinned up at Zeke. “Then if you’re feeling ambitious, we can discuss getting a private room to ourselves.”

  “Deal,” he said, looking at me with challenge in his eyes. We went into the laser tag section together and found a group that one of the employees was splitting up into teams. Zeke took one side, and I went to the other, grinning to myself.

  “I’ve got the big blond,” I told the woman, who told me she and her friends were at the place for their bachelorette party. “I need to prove a point.”

  We went four rounds with different teams, picking different sides each time. The first time, I got the drop on Zeke and tagged him out within three minutes of the round. The second time we went in, he managed to sneak up on me, letting his teammates pick out their friends on my side, while he devoted himself to dodging my team’s fire and getting to me while I was besieged. The third time we managed—somehow—to shoot each other at exactly the same instant, and we were both out of the game at the same time. “Okay, this one is the tie-breaker,” Zeke said, while we waited in line again. “If you win it, then we can grab another beer and relax and call the date done.”

  “If you get me out?” I crossed my arms over the sensor covering my chest.

  “Then we get a private room and see who’s really the best, when there isn’t anyone else to interfere,” he told me matter-of-factly. I considered it; I was starting to get tired from the running around, but I thought I might have a couple more rounds in me.

  “Deal,” I said, extending my hand to shake. Zeke’s fingers closed around mine and I felt that hot jolt through my body—that feeling that I’d felt every time I’d come into contact with his body. I pushed it aside, reminding myself that we had both agreed to keep things strictly professional and platonic, and pumped his hand twice before letting go.

  We plunged into the darkness with our teams, and I immediately found the best hiding spot I could get to without being tagged out by one of the members of the other team. I tried to spot Zeke, but it was impossible in the darkness. I shot at anyone whose vest was red instead of the blue my team’s vests showed, not really caring who I was tagging out—except that I wanted to make sure to get Zeke.

  I had to dart out of my hiding spot at one point, and I heard Zeke’s voice off to the side of me, a few yards away. I shot in that direction and hoped for the best, knowing it would be next to impossible to find him again until the crowd thinned a little bit. All at once, my vest lit up—someone had hit me. “Shit!” I went off to the sidelines to wait for the round to be over, fuming to myself. I wasn’t sure who it had been—and as soon as I saw Zeke, walking towards the benches in the “time out” area at the same time as me, I smirked.

  “You didn’t get me out,” Zeke said to me tartly.

  “And you didn’t get me out, either,” I pointed out. He laughed.

  “Call it even, then?” I nodded. I was panting from running around so much, and my thighs were starting to ache from crouching, jumping, and tumbling around. We waited for the round to end and tu
rned in our gear to head over to the bar on the other end of the facility.

  We chatted for a little while longer before I realized I only had about fifteen minutes before Brady’s sitter would need to go home. As I gave Zeke a quick kiss on the cheek and hurried out of the laser tag arcade, I hoped against hope that it was a sign of good things to come: we’d go back at least mostly to the way things had been before and I could keep my job and my conscience intact.

  Chapter Twenty Four

  Zeke

  Two days after my date with Natalie to laser tag, I decided to go out to dinner by myself rather than staying in; I felt restless, anxious for my date to come and irritable from impatience. I went to one of my go-to restaurants, Mise en Place, a little bit before the dinner rush was set to start.

  “Good evening, Mr. Baxter,” the hostess said, smiling at me.

  “Have you got a table open? I’m alone this evening—I will take anything.”

  “You’re right on time; we have a two-top that’s available and unreserved,” the cute, young brunette told me. She grabbed a menu and led me through the dining room. Glancing around, I saw that I wasn’t the only one that had had the idea of coming in before the rush—there were a few married couples, who I assumed probably had kids they needed to go home to early, and a few elderly couples and groups at the tables. The hostess stopped at a two-seat table and pulled out one of the chairs for me and I sat down, continuing to look around me for a few more moments.

  My gaze landed on a table along the same wall where I’d been seated, and I stared in shock at the sight of Natalie, seated opposite a tall, middle-aged man in a suit. She had her hair pulled back into the trademark bun I usually saw it in, and she was wearing a blazer and blouse. Immediately, watching her, I felt jealous. Who was that man she was with? Balding…the suit doesn’t fit that well on him…he’s not nearly good enough for her. In the quiet of the dining room, I barely caught the sound of Natalie’s voice saying, “I’m glad you were able to meet with me so soon, Mr. Giles…” Oh. I could have slapped myself—of course, Natalie was meeting with a client. I took a deep breath, turning my attention once more onto the menu. I had come to the restaurant to eat. I had no claim on Natalie, and even if I had, she was on a professional date, a first meeting—or so I assumed—with a new client.