Single Mom's Protector - Complete Series

by Nella Tyler

  “Speak of the devil,” I said, as the notification showed a text message pending.

  “She texted you? That’s a good sign! Maybe you didn’t completely fuck this up after all.” I rolled my eyes and unlocked my screen, tapping the messages icon to open up the text.

  I had expected—seeing that it was Mack messaging me—that the message would be something like, “Hope you had a good Christmas” or asking me how Landon had liked the kite she’d bought him—maybe, at best, an idea for a date. Instead, as I read the message she had sent, I stared at my phone in confusion. Another woman? What?

  “What did she say?” I glanced at my sister, completely stunned by the message that Mack had sent me. “That doesn’t look like a ‘hey baby, drop by my place’ message.”

  “It definitely isn’t one of those,” I said. I read it out loud to Jessica and for a moment her expression looked the same way I’m sure that mine did: complete confusion.

  Then it all clicked in my head. Mackenzie had been wandering around the area—we weren’t far from her apartment—and had seen me in the café. And then she had seen Jessica. “Oh god, I’m an idiot—of course,” I said out loud, shaking my head.

  “What? Are you seeing someone else I don’t know about?”

  “No—no, she saw you. Just now.” I laughed, shaking my head again. “God. She thinks I’m cheating on her with my own sister.”

  “Oh god!” Jessica laughed with me. “Oh man—Pat—you have to tell her she’s wrong. I haven’t seen you this worked up about someone since Joanne. You can’t let her think you’re seeing some side-girl and that’s why things got weird.”

  “Yeah, definitely,” I said. I looked over the text message again, amazed that Mack could think that I was seeing someone else, that I wouldn’t have told her, or just broken things off with her. Part of me felt insulted that she thought I would cheat, but another part was relieved that she cared enough to be upset in the first place. I re-read the text message and caught the part where she mentioned that she had wanted to invite me to her parents’ party for New Year’s Eve. I smiled to myself, hoping that I could salvage the situation well enough to get another chance to make things right with Mack.

  PART 4

  Chapter One - Mackenzie

  After I sent the text message to Patrick confronting him about seeing another woman, I put my phone in my pocket and hurried down the street towards where my car waited. I wasn’t sure whether I felt more angry or hurt—and with each step, the two emotions flip-flopped inside of me. Why would he do this to me? Who does he think he is? Was I reading him wrong the whole time? How many other women is he seeing? I can’t believe that I actually thought he might be looking for someone serious! I shook my head, feeling the sting in my eyes that told me that if I didn’t get to my car soon I was going to just start crying.

  I started when my phone vibrated in my pocket and thought about ignoring it. It could be Mom or Dad. Or someone from the clinic, needing emergency coverage. I took the phone out of my pocket, hoping for something to distract me from my angry-sad thoughts about Patrick and what a fool I’d been to think about him at all; but of course it was him. Patrick’s name flashed on the screen as it vibrated again, and I almost threw my phone down onto the sidewalk.

  “Screw you, asshole,” I muttered at the phone, my finger hovering over the “decline call” icon. If he wanted to explain himself, he could leave me a voicemail and maybe—maybe—I would listen to it later. I caught someone looking at me funny as they walked past and took a deep breath as my phone buzzed a third time. I could just let it roll over into voicemail, like a calm person. Or I could answer it and see what Patrick had to say for himself. It was another woman, but was it a significant other woman? I didn’t know whether I could trust Patrick to tell me the truth, but as my phone buzzed for the last time curiosity won out over my anger and sadness and I tapped “accept”.

  “Mack? I was worried you were going to let me go to voicemail,” Patrick said, as soon as the call connected.

  “I was pretty much going to do just that,” I told him, continuing to walk towards my car. “I decided I wanted to hear what you had to say.”

  “I appreciate it,” Patrick said. I could hear the noise going on in the café around him on the other end of the line. “I wish you could have come to Christmas at my family’s place; you would have met my sister.”

  “Okay,” I said, frowning as I tried to understand why that was relevant to what I’d said to him.

  “But since you saw me out—and since you texted me—you can meet her now.” I stopped in my tracks, startled.

  “Meet her now?” I edged away from the flow of traffic, trying to understand.

  “The woman you saw me with is my sister,” Patrick told me. “She’s technically another woman, but she’s not one I’d ever cheat on you with, if I ever wanted to cheat in the first place.” I frowned and bit my bottom lip, trying to decide whether or not to believe Patrick. It was a convenient excuse; but just because it was convenient didn’t mean that it was a lie.

  “I don’t know,” I said, worrying my bottom lip for another moment.

  “Here,” Patrick said, “let me introduce you. Mackenzie, this is my sister Jessica.”

  I started to protest—to tell Patrick that I didn’t want to talk to anyone else. I heard the background noise get louder for a moment as he handed the phone off.

  “Hey! I’m really sorry if you thought that Pat was cheating on you. I’m Jess.”

  I opened my mouth and realized that I didn’t know the first thing to say, and then closed it again.

  “Hi, Jessica,” I said finally, leaning against the outside wall of one of the shops; I wasn’t sure which one it was. “I’m Mackenzie.” I licked my dry, cold lips and tried to decide whether or not I should trust that this truly was Patrick’s sister—or if she was just going along with him to help him out.

  “Patrick and I were actually just talking about you,” Jessica told me. “My dope of a brother was telling me about how smart and beautiful and talented you are, and how he was afraid he’d screwed everything up with you and didn’t know how to fix it.” I took the phone away from my ear and stared at it in shock. I could believe that a guy would ask the girl he was with to humor him and pretend to be his sister; I couldn’t believe that any woman would play along quite that much.

  “Really?”

  I hugged myself; standing still in the cold was definitely a bad idea, but I couldn’t walk, talk, and listen at the same time. “You were really talking about me and he really said those things?”

  “Really and truly,” Jessica said. “I told him to stop being such an idiot and actually talk to you about things if he had worries.” After a moment I heard her laugh. “He’s red as a beet right now, you should see it.”

  “Okay, okay,” I said, laughing in spite of myself. “I believe you are really and truly his sister.” I remembered that Patrick had mentioned having a sister named Jessica—and he’d mentioned it more than once. He wasn’t the only one who had managed to twist things around and screw them up.

  “I would love to meet you sometime soon,” Jessica said cheerfully. “Whether or not my brother manages to make everything up to you. I’ll get your contact details from him; maybe we can grab a coffee sometime.”

  “That would be great,” I said, shaking from a mixture of cold and relief. I shook my head, smiling in embarrassment at my outburst. I heard the background noise go louder again and then it quieted.

  “So you see? I am absolutely not cheating on you,” Patrick told me.

  “I will admit that I might have jumped to conclusions,” I said wryly. “But you seemed really familiar with her in the two seconds I saw you together.”

  “And I’ve been dropping the ball,” Patrick admitted. “Jess is right about that, and you had every right to assume the worst after the way I’ve been making everything weird and awkward.” I smiled again and started walking slowly, making my way towards my car. I
had to keep moving or I’d become a Popsicle.

  “I appreciate that,” I said. “Thank you for taking the time to set me straight.”

  “More than happy to do it,” Patrick told me. “Now—you mentioned that your family is throwing a New Year’s Eve party? I’d understand if you wanted to punish me for upsetting you—but I’d love to go with you. Can I have my invitation back?”

  I laughed. “It wouldn’t be fair of me to keep it now that I know you’re just being a good brother,” I pointed out. “I’d love to have you as my date to my parents’ New Year’s Eve party, if you don’t have other plans.”

  “None whatsoever; without you my New Year would be depressing—I’d just sit on the couch watching the ball drop while Landon sleeps and drink champagne out of a bottle.”

  “This will be a lot better than that,” I promised.

  “Of course it will,” Patrick said. “If you’re there, the whole house could go down in flames and it’d still be better.”

  I laughed again. “I hope that doesn’t happen, but I’m glad that you can come with me,” I told Patrick. I shivered as I approached my car, and I knew that no matter how good it felt to hear his voice and to know that he wasn’t cheating on me, that he was actually being as upfront as possible, I needed to get into my car and out of the cold. “I have to hang up now,” I said. “I am freezing out here and I need to get home with the things I just bought.”

  “Okay,” Patrick said. “Get inside before you freeze to death. Can I see you at the clinic tomorrow?” I thought about it; I did have a shift at the clinic, and I was pretty sure than Landon had an appointment.

  “Absolutely,” I said. I smiled to myself, thinking that just seeing Patrick in the office again would be great; it would be good to get back to the way things had been before things got weird. “I’ll be glad to see you.”

  “Me too.”

  I finished up the call and unlocked my car door, climbing in and making sure none of the things I’d bought would shift around too much when I drove home. I turned the car on and turned the heat up, for a moment just sitting there and letting the air get warm enough to thaw me out a little bit. I smiled to myself, more relieved than I would have thought even possible by the fact that I hadn’t actually caught Patrick with some other woman. Until I’d seen him in the café with his sister, I never would have thought that Patrick was cheating on me. I had thought that things had gone south, and that he’d lost interest—but nothing at all about the way that Patrick treated me suggested that he was with someone else.

  I felt a little bit embarrassed at the fact that I’d rushed to such a drastic conclusion, especially since I should have remembered that Patrick had siblings. If he had decided to be angry with me for making the assumption that he was cheating, I couldn’t have blamed him. I was glad though that Patrick had cleared the air between us; I wasn’t going to let him go so easily in the future.

  I pulled out of my parking spot and started for home, thinking about the fact that for the first time in years, I was going to have a date to my parents’ New Year’s Eve party. If anyone in my family or amongst the family friends thought that I had been making Patrick up, they would know the truth as soon as I came in with him. “Oh god—what am I going to wear?” I almost turned back to go shopping for my dress, but decided that since I had a few days before the party, I would wait and make a special trip for it. I was exhausted from all of the stresses of the day, and I wanted to devote all of my attention onto getting the right dress—something sexy, but not too sexy, glittery without being tacky, something that would make me look amazing next to Patrick.

  I sang along with the stereo all the way home, shaking my head every once in a while at the thought that I’d actually assumed that Patrick was cheating on me. I didn’t know for sure if things would work out between us in the long term, but at least talking to his sister told me that he hadn’t lost interest; if I could trust her report, Patrick was thinking about me a lot. I got back to my building and carried my bags up to my apartment, thinking about how good it would be to see Patrick again and to know that I had a date with him. I remembered my plans from when I’d gone to Lush and decided that instead of taking a bath to comfort myself about my possibly-single-again status, I’d take one to celebrate the fact that Patrick and I were moving forward.

  Chapter Two - Patrick

  The coffee date with my sister, the text message from Mackenzie, and the phone call after it lit a fire under my ass. I wanted to make everything right with her, undo the mistakes I had made. As soon as I got home from my date, I had started thinking about how I could make an even bigger impression on Mack, to make a gesture to convince her that not only was I not cheating on her, but I was serious about our relationship together.

  “Landon, we’re going to make a stop on our way to your session, so we need to get out of here a bit early,” I told my son, watching as he pulled on some warmer clothes for the drive. I got a coat on and took off my slippers to put on a decent pair of shoes.

  “Where are we stopping?” Landon looked up at me curiously, swinging his arms at his sides.

  “We’re going to stop and get something for Mack,” I told him. “Are you ready to hit the road?” Landon nodded, running to the door and grabbing his scarf and gloves. I chuckled, thinking of where we needed to go and how best to get to the shop and get what I needed before Landon and I needed to be at his appointment; even for the sake of the surprise I had in mind, I wasn’t about to be late to his session.

  I had called three florist shops as soon as I got up that morning to find which of them might have the flowers I was looking for. I had remembered something that Mack had told me on the first “real” date we’d been on, when I brought her a bouquet of flowers, and I thought—I hoped—that it would be a good enough gesture to surprise her with when I got to the appointment.

  I helped Landon get into the car and checked the time; I should have just enough time to get to the flower shop that had confirmed it had what I wanted and then to the Kid Care clinic. I navigated into the light—for Chicago—traffic, and smiled to myself. I remembered what Jessica had said to Mack on the phone, and then what we’d talked about after. Jess had been the one to give me the idea for how to try and make things right with Mack before our date on New Year’s Eve. “Obviously, going to the party with her is one thing,” she’d said, shrugging. “But before you let her show you off to her family you need to actually make up for letting things get weird because you were all in your own head about stuff.”

  “You’re taking her side over mine?” I’d asked her.

  “Well duh—I know you. You’re a great guy, but you totally did everything you could to try and make this end without it being your fault.”

  “It takes two people to destroy a relationship,” I’d said, feeling more than a little defensive.

  “That’s a lie,” Jess had told me. “It only takes one person to ruin it and the other to walk away.” She had wagged her finger at me. “What you need to do is make some kind of big, romantic gesture. Something she wouldn’t expect but would love.”

  “How am I going to do that?”

  Jessica had shrugged. “Surprise her at work or something. You know her better than I do. You should at least have some idea of what she would like by now.”

  At first I’d rejected the idea of surprising Mackenzie at work; I knew how committed she was to being professional while she was in the clinic. I didn’t want to embarrass her with my surprise. But I remembered that most of the rest of the staff knew that I had been on at least one or two dates with her; it wasn’t like it was a huge secret. I made my way across town, looking for the florist shop that I wanted. I spotted the sign with a block or so to go. “Do you want to come in with me buddy?” I looked at Landon in the back seat.

  “Where are we going?” Landon looked around curiously.

  “We’re going to stop and get Mack some flowers.”

  Landon let out an exited whoop. “You wan
t her to know you like her!” he beamed at me. “You like Mack a lot, don’t you?”

  “I do,” I said, nodding as I pulled off of the road and into the parking area next to the florist. “Do you like her?”

  “I like her,” Landon confirmed, nodding eagerly. “She’s really nice.” I turned to look at him in the back seat as I put the car in park and turned the engine off.

  “How does this sound…I want to take Mack to dinner with us tonight. We could wait for her shift to be over and then go to Ed Debevic’s, before I drop you off at Aunt Jess’.” I’d told Landon earlier in the day that I was going to let him spend the night at his aunt’s house; Jess had suggested it when I had tentatively decided to take Mack out to dinner if she was free after the session.

  “I get to go out with you and Mack?” Landon’s eyes got big in his face and he grinned. “Awesome!”

  “You’ve got to be on your best behavior at the session and at the restaurant,” I told him. “But as long as you’re a good guy, you can tag along. How does that sound?”

  “I’ll be good! I swear,” Landon told me. I grinned to myself. If that doesn’t show her I’m serious about this, then nothing will.

  “All right. First I need you to help me with some things.”

  “Okay!” I unlocked the car and got out, walking around to the back seat to help Landon out of the booster chair.

  We went into the florist’s shop and I spotted the woman I hoped I had talked to earlier in the day. “Hey,” I said, letting Landon close the door behind us. “I called earlier to ask if you had any peonies.” The woman’s eyes widened slightly in recognition and she grinned.

  “I remember,” she said, coming out from behind the counter. “It’s not the usual request for this time of year, but we do actually have some in. They’re not as beautiful as the ones we get at the beginning of summer, but they are still up to our standards.” She looked down at Landon. “Do you want to help me wrap them up?”