I rolled out of bed and promised myself that it wasn’t going to happen again. Sure, it had been a fun way to blow off some steam—and he was the hottest guy I’d ever hooked up with, no doubt—but back in the real, adult world, I had a hell of a lot of boxes that needed taking care of. This apartment wasn’t going to unpack itself. I got to my feet, planted my hands on my hips, and surveyed the room. Okay, where should I get started?
Chapter 2
Logan
I headed upstairs for the quickest shower I could, hoping that I would be able to scrub the remnants of what I’d just done off my body before I went to pick up my daughter.
As the cool water ran over my body, I couldn’t help chuckling to myself. Maybe it was just the burst of endorphins from what had just happened, but I was in a hell of a good mood. I really hadn’t been thinking about fucking her when I’d offered to help her out—it was just what my grandmother would have slapped my wrist for not doing—but that was a nice little bonus. Maybe I should go out of my way to help my neighbors more often, see if it brought me more.
I got out of the shower, dried myself as fast as I could, and dressed hurriedly, making it down to the car just in time. I glanced at my watch again and hoped that the traffic was going to be alright on the way down there. If it held, I would get to the school with a couple of minutes to spare.
Maybe I should have hung around a little longer before I hit the bricks. I felt a little bad, looking back—I could tell from the look on Nina’s face that she had been upset at me leaving so quickly, but I couldn’t stick around without missing pickup for Erin at school, and I could hardly just tell her that right after we’d fucked for the first time, could I? It would have ruined the mood either way, and I’d rather ruin the mood with a little mystery than ruin it by telling her that I was a single father.
I sighed as those words played through my mind again. It had been nine years since Erin had come along, and I still had trouble accepting that I really was the only parent in her life, that I was the sole person responsible for the raising of a whole entire child of my own. Who the fuck let that happen?
Well, I knew the answer to that question—Samantha Barnes, her mother, and general bane of my life. I tried not to give her too much brain space, but it was tough when I still had to deal with her regularly. If she’d just gone on ahead and slid right on of my daughter’s life, that would have been one thing. But now, her being her, she had to go back and forth and up and down and never, ever make her mind up about Erin and me
But she had been out of town for a while and keeping to herself, and I would happily take that as a win for the time being. The less I saw of her, the better—hell, that had pretty much been true when we were dating as well. No wonder things hadn’t worked out with us.
I let my mind wander back to those heady days, long before Erin came along when I had been able to do anything and everything and anyone I wanted. It had started just as I finished high school when I moved from a small town in the middle of nowhere to the big city. After what happened with my family, I decided that I was allowed to blow off as much steam as I wanted, and I started sleeping around with everyone I could get my hands on. I earned myself a reputation in the process; if there was a girl looking to get laid after a bad break-up or have someone take her virginity, I was always the one her friends pointed her in the direction of, and I was more than happy to oblige.
I went to cooking school and found that the lifestyle there suited me even better: heavy drinking, heavy partying, heavy sleeping-with-everything-that-moved. I had an awesome time, dating around and hooking up and enjoying myself after the shitshow that had torn my family apart a few years before. And then I meet Samantha.
She seemed like a good idea at the time. That’s what I have to keep reminding myself when things with her get even shittier than normal. When we met, she seemed like the perfect woman for me—as hard a drinker, a partier, and everything else as I was. We got together and stuck together in what felt like a matter of hours. And it was fun for a while because these things usually are. And then she came to me and told me she was pregnant, and that she was keeping it.
I had just finished school and was preparing to go into my first job at a prestigious restaurant in the city, but as soon as I heard the news, I dropped it and looked for something part-time instead because I knew, in my heart of hearts, that I was going to have to be the one to step up and take care of this kid, because Samantha couldn’t do it. She was unstable, out of control—I practically had to pry the bottle out of her hand a few times when she was pregnant with Erin, but I managed to keep her roughly on the straight and narrow, thank goodness. She was already checked out before Erin came along, the novelty of all the attention everyone was paying her for being pregnant wearing thin swiftly, and when she gave birth, she fled the hospital as soon as she could and left me with Erin. I had to step up and be the father I’d never imagined I would be, at just twenty-one years old.
Looking back, I was surprised I didn’t fall apart. I was so young, and it was more stress than I had ever handled in my life before—I thought school was tough, but this was crazy. With my parents gone and my party friends having no idea what it actually meant to raise a daughter, I had to rely on my sister to guide me through the worst of it. How many times did I call her up late in the evening, begging her to come over and watch Erin for just a couple of hours while I picked up another shift to make sure that I could pay rent that month? More times than I could count, but she was there for me, a devoted aunt from the very start. And thank God because there was no way I would have been able to do it without her.
Eventually, I came out the other side of the night feedings and the kindergarten drop-offs and the parent-teacher meetings, and I found myself settled in. It had been hard work, no doubt, but I wouldn’t have changed a thing about it; I loved Erin fiercely, more than I loved anything or anyone else in my life, and I was glad I had dedicated my life to raising her into the sweet young woman she was growing up to be.
But sometimes I missed the life I’d had before her. Of course, I did—it would have been weird if I hadn’t. When I held her in my arms and rocked her back and forth and tried to soothe her back to sleep when she was teething and screeching, it was hard not to let my mind wander to doing shots in a scuzzy bar downtown with the people who’d been my friends. To be going home with whoever I wanted and waking up wherever I wound up at the end of the night.
And that was what the whole thing with Nina had been about, more than anything. I saw a chance to go back to the last time in my life when I felt carefree, and I took it. And man, had it been fun.
I drummed my fingers on the steering wheel as I waited for a light to change and wondered if I should have told her about Erin. She was living in the building now, after all, so we were going to run into each other one way or another—and she would find out that I had a daughter then. Maybe it wouldn’t be a problem for her? My hopeful thoughts strayed into dangerous territory, and try as I might to pin them down, they got away from me.
She was cute and funny, and she had a smile that made my heart feel like it was lighting up in my chest. It had been a hell of a long time since I had hooked up with anyone new; what with Erin around, it was hard to find the time or the space, and besides, not many single women my age were looking for a guy who came already equipped with a daughter of his own. And the ones that were usually came with their own families, which was fine but not what I was looking for—in between work and Erin, I hardly had time for one other person, let alone a whole brood of them. But Nina seemed like she was single and child-free—and, to my great irritation, that probably meant she wouldn’t want anything to do with me.
I pulled away from the light and made the last bit of the drive down to the school. I would see her around, I guessed, if she wasn’t already too mad at me for leaving as soon as we’d hooked up. Maybe she thought I was some kind of player, working my way through the whole building as fast as I could manage it. The tho
ught made me chuckle. It couldn’t be further from the truth.
A few minutes later, I arrived outside Erin’s school and climbed out of the car to join the other parents waiting to pick up their kids. Normally, I would have chatted with them, but today I was feeling introspective. I had given up so much for Erin, and what just happened with my new neighbor had thrown that into sharp relief. A whole world, a bachelordom sacrificed to raise her and make sure that I was the best father I could be. It was hard not to wonder, sometimes, if I had made the right choice. Or at least, what my life would have been like if I’d chosen a different route.
“You alright, Logan?” asked Daniel, one of the other dads who I usually chatted to about cars and cooking. He was a nice guy if a little dull.
“Yeah, I’m good,” I replied, waving my hand, dismissing those thoughts from my head.
“You just look a little absorbed, that’s all.” He shook his head and leaned on the school gates. I grinned.
“And you thought that was notable enough to comment on? That I looked as though I was actually thinking?”
“Hey, hey.” He laughed, holding his hands up. “Just making conversation over here.”
The school bell rang, and moments later the kids began to pour out onto the concrete of the playground. As I always did, I found myself scanning for Erin, waiting for that little punch of happiness that came whenever I laid eyes on her. And sure enough, as soon as I saw her emerging, I couldn’t keep the smile off my face. This might not have been the life I envisioned for myself ten years ago, but now that I was here, I couldn’t imagine anything different.
“Hey, baby.” I gave her a hug as she reached me, and she wrapped her small arms around my waist. Jesus, she was getting so big—I could still remember when she could barely reach up to my knees. Soon she would be as tall as me.
“Hey, Daddy,” she greeted me, and she slipped her hand into mine as we headed over to the car.
“How was your day?” I asked, and Erin started chatting away about everything she’d been doing for the last six hours; I let my brain switch off and focused in on my daughter.
Chapter 3
Nina
“Hey!” Ant exclaimed as she burst through the door, her traditional high-energy style crashing head-first into my little cocoon of feeling sorry for myself and bursting it at once.
“Hey,” I greeted her, as she planted her hands on her hips and surveyed the apartment; I hadn’t had a chance to unpack all the boxes, and Ant had offered to come around and help me. She was a good friend that way—the best. She always knew when I needed her, and even when I thought I didn’t. She was one of the biggest reasons I had been able to get away from Fred in the end, going with me on apartment tours and helping me find a place that was in my price range but wasn’t a total dump.
“How’s the single life treating you?” she asked.
I bit my lip and thought back to the day before—I would keep that little incident to myself, for the time being, just to be on the safe side. Ant would never judge me for hooking up with someone so soon after meeting them, but if she found out the guy up and ditched me without another word, his chances of not being eaten alive as soon as she found out who he was were not good.
“Not bad.” I shrugged. “Just focusing on getting everything set up here.”
“Come on then, let’s get started,” she told me cheerfully, and she went to pull open a box full of books, plunging her hands in and coming out with a huge armful.
“Thanks so much for doing this,” I told her, the dozenth time I’d offered my appreciation for what she was doing for me.
She waved her hand. “Not at all,” she told me. “Thank you for finally getting rid of that waste of space boyfriend so I don’t have to pretend I find him interesting anymore.”
“You’re welcome.” I giggled, and I went to grab some books from the box she had opened. “I can’t believe how little I miss him. I thought this would be harder, but …”
“But shedding the heaviest dead weight you’ve ever carried has been a good thing?” She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Color me shocked. Fred was an asshole, always was. I’m just glad you’re done with him.”
“Wish I hadn’t had to walk in on him cheating on me, though,” I muttered as I began to load the books into the shelf above the couch. She rolled her eyes and shook her head.
“Hey, if you want me to go down there and beat the crap out of him, then I’m still game for that,” she reminded me. “Offer still stands.”
“I know,” I said with a grin. “And trust me, I might just take you up on it one day. But right now, I just want to forget about him. Pretend that whole thing never happened.”
“I’m on board with that.” She nodded as she carefully arranged the books in order of size. I was just tossing them up there, but Ant was actually trying to make them look nice; she might have played at being this big, swaggering bad-girl, but she was really detail-orientated and sweet when she wanted to be. And she often seemed to want to be around me.
We met eight years before, in my last year of high school, when Ant moved across the country after the death of her parents to live with some relatives in the city. When I first met her, she had still been Anthonette, a name she hated with a burning passion but her family had tried to stick her with for life. She used the city as a chance to reinvent herself, to turn herself into something entirely fresh and new, and the Ant that I knew now was a result of that reinvention: street-smart, cool, and fiercely loyal. She was the kind of girl I wanted in my corner if I ever had to throw down into a fight, bold and sharp and not afraid to throw a few proverbial punches for her friends when they needed it.
“You know, you’re not living too far from my brother,” she remarked as we continued unloading the books. I cocked my eyebrow.
“Oh, the mysterious brother?” I teased her. “Am I ever going to get to meet him?”
“Well, you probably will now that you’re living in his building.” She shrugged.
“Great. This is his building? And is he still an asshole?” I went on, grinning. She knew I was just playing—she had spent most of high school and our early years in the city together telling me what a jerk her brother was to any woman who had the bad luck to wander into his flight path, sleeping with anything that moved and then swiftly moving on the next day. He went to college outside the city, and she had made a concentrated effort to keep the two of us apart during that time. I wasn’t sure what she thought was going to happen; I didn’t particularly care about hooking up with her brother, but she seemed convinced that he was just that irresistible that I wouldn’t be able to restrain myself. Which I had to admit, had made me even more curious to explore these apparently endless sexy charms of a man I was banned from meeting. But one way or another, we had never crossed paths, and Ant seemed happy to keep it that way.
“He’s not as bad as he was, you know that.” She shook her head.
“And so why haven’t you ever introduced him to me?” I waggled my eyebrows at her suggestively. “It’d make your visits a lot more efficient if I was just dating him.”
“Not a chance,” she shot back cheerfully. “He’s got the kid, remember? Erin?”
“Ah, yes, the mysterious Erin.” I bowed my head reverently. “I’m not sure she exists, either. All this is just a long con to make sure that I never go near your brother.”
“Yeah, well, if it meant that I didn’t have to cover babysitting duties every five minutes, I wouldn’t mind,” she replied, but there was a smile on her face as she spoke. I knew she adored her niece; I had never met her, but Ant was always showing me pictures of the two of them together, her little kid face all squished up against hers. She was the only child Ant seemed to be able to stomach, but she loved her more than she would ever have admitted to, which was incredibly cute to me.
“Well, trust me, as long as he’s got a kid, I won’t be going anywhere near him,” I assured her as I ripped open another box, this one full of clothes, and st
arted through to my bedroom to lay them out. “You know I’m not about that life.”
“Yeah, it’s a pretty good Nina-repellent,” she agreed.
And she was right; I couldn’t think of anything worse than having kids at this age. It wasn’t that I never wanted them, just that the thought of being pummeled with that much responsibility when I could hardly keep my own life together scared the bejeesus out of me. And dating a guy with a kid? Coming into some pre-established routine and having to be the one who rocked that boat, who messed things all up? Yeah, no, there was no way I was going to skip straight into a relationship like that. The thought of it made me shudder.
“Doesn’t having a kid cramp his style?” I wondered aloud. “I mean, from everything you told me, he was a total player in college. Did he just stop when she came along?”
“Pretty much.” Ant nodded as she joined me in the bedroom; I had made up the bed the night before, one of the only things I had the energy to do after the apartment was all unpacked, and the whole time I had been lying there, I had been able to smell that guy in the mattress, the remnants of his aftershave lingering in my senses. And I may have used them as a decent trial-run for my vibrator. Perhaps.
“That’s crazy,” I shook my head. “He was out every night, and then he just dropped it all to look after his daughter?”
“And walked away from a good job in the process,” she reminded me. “He had a sure thing at Canticos, that Spanish place across town. But he turned it down so he could be a good father to her.”
“Damn.” I shook my head again like I was trying to dislodge some thoughts that had got stuck up in there. “I can’t imagine changing everything like that.”
“Well, people do it,” Ant replied with a shrug. “It’s amazing what you can get used to when you need to.”
One Night Stand Page 2