Irresistible Daddies Series Box Set

by Katy Kaylee

“You’re playing like shit,” David said as I missed another serve.

  I grimaced. “Yeah, y’know how it is.”

  “No, I don’t know how it is,” David responded, fetching the ball and serving it to me again. “You don’t ever play like shit. You’ve been kicking my ass at this for how many years now?”

  David was the opposite of me in every way, including physically. He had dark hair, dark eyes, and skin the color of oak, with a much more serious disposition than I had. I was relaxed and smiling, while David was focused and quiet. He worked as a surgeon at a nearby hospital, which was a lot more fast-paced than what I did. We’d gone to medical school together after college and had been supporting and propping each other up ever since.

  He was like me in one way, though: he’d had his heart broken same as mine had been. Only while I had spent my time dating woman after woman, David had just gotten quieter and more withdrawn, putting on a remote demeanor, keeping women at arm’s length.

  “C’mon.” David set his racquet down. “Tell me what’s up, I know it’s something.”

  I sighed. “I’m that obvious, huh?”

  “You’re playing that shit, that’s what.”

  I grabbed my water bottle and passed David his. “Do you remember how I said that a girl broke my heart in high school?”

  “Yeah, I remember.” I had never given David details, but I’d also never asked him for details about his own heartbreak. It just wasn’t something either of us had been willing to talk about. We’d had a silent understanding of one another’s pain and that had been good enough for both of us.

  “Well, she came back into my life again. She’s a patient at my clinic.”

  David’s eyebrows rose. “Oh, did she now?”

  I nodded. “She’s recently divorced. She won’t give me the details but it wasn’t good, from what I can tell. She’s sworn off relationships and she’s focusing on rebuilding her life, having a kid instead of waiting around for the perfect guy after putting up with a crap one. And she’s… she’s changed, since high school. The good stuff that was there before, it’s all still there. But the obsession with how she presents herself, the letting people walk all over her when it comes to status, the snobbish parts of her, that’s all gone, or at least as far as I can tell it’s all gone y’know?”

  “So she’s even more perfect than before and you’re tempted as hell,” David concluded.

  “Basically. I’m fucking screwed, man, I don’t know how I can keep myself objective about this. She’s gorgeous, absolutely. And her personality… we were making each other crack up last week.”

  “You’re playing a dangerous game, Ted,” David said. “And you know it, I know you’re not stupid. You know what you’re doing.”

  I did know. I nodded.

  “You could lose everything you worked so damn hard for. You and I, we came from nothing. We had the odds stacked against us from the start. And we made it. We’re successful, we’re home free, and I know that you don’t want to give all of that up. So be careful.”

  “Yeah, I know.”

  “Refer her to another doctor.”

  “But then I wouldn’t see her again. I think that’s the problem - I know it would be the right thing to refer her to someone else, but then I wouldn’t be able to see her.”

  “Says who?” David took a long drink from his water bottle and then laughed. “Nobody’s saying that you can’t keep seeing her personally once you stop seeing her professionally. Stop treating her and then ask her out on a proper date.”

  “No, no way.”

  “Why not?” David folded his arms at me and raised an eyebrow. “What’s stopping you? The worst she can say is no and it’s not like you can be with her if she’s still your patient. At least this way you have a chance to be with her, and it won’t ruin your damn career if people find out about it.”

  “We were together over a decade ago, I should be letting this go, not diving deeper into the rabbit hole.”

  “Ted, seriously? The entire time we were in college you were moaning and moping about the one girl who got away. You were practically mooning over her and she wasn’t even there!”

  I could feel my face and neck heating up with embarrassment and held up a hand. “Whoa, whoa, no, I was not mooning over anyone.”

  “Mmm, you sure about that?” David raised an eyebrow. “You barely paid attention to the very eligible and extremely attractive women we met there. We’d go to parties and they’d be flinging themselves at you and you just didn’t notice. You didn’t even start going on dates until senior year, man.”

  “Hey, I needed time to adjust and I was focusing on my studies, I had to do well to get into a good medical school.”

  David gestured at himself. “So did I, and I managed to score quite a few ladies myself at parties, squeezed them into my oh so busy schedule - come to think of it I think my schedule was even busier than yours, actually and yet…”

  “You think you’re real funny, don’t you?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” David replied. “But I also think that I’m right. You never got over that girl.”

  “I dated senior year, and all through med school!”

  “Dating people isn’t the same as being in a relationship. You would hook up with people at parties and you would go out on dates but you never actually spent more than a couple of weeks with the same person. You’d go on, what, three dates?”

  “It was more than that, c’mon, give me some credit here!” I felt like David was going to start pulling out the literal receipts of all the dates I’d ever gone on while in school.

  “The point is that you were never with anyone long enough to even think about starting a serious relationship with them. And you always thought up some kind of bullshit excuse to break up with them. Her hair was the wrong shade, her laugh was too annoying, she had different taste in movies, she didn’t appreciate Mexican food enough… it was always something. And these were beautiful, intelligent, funny, talented women! Women that men would give their left arm to be dating! And you went through them like a kid with his Halloween candy!”

  “Okay, okay, I get it, I’m a perfectionist, I’m too picky, whatever.”

  “You’re not listening.” David set down his water and leaned back against the wall. “Look, those women would’ve been great for you, or for any man, if you’d been able to find room in your heart for them. And don’t give me that look, this isn’t me being all sappy on you. It’s the simple truth. You never got over this other woman - her name started with an R…”

  “It’s Veronica, actually, but I always called her Roni.”

  “Roni, that’s it, that’s what you called her when you told me about her. Look, I don’t know the details of what went down, okay? But I do know that you’ve been carrying a torch for this girl for over a decade, whether you want to admit it or not. And you’ve tried to move on. I’ve seen it. But you’ve still got feelings for her and now she’s back in your life and I’m thinking maybe you were never supposed to get over her. Maybe this is the second chance that you’ve been waiting for without even realizing it.”

  “You make it sound like I’ve been in stasis this whole time.”

  “You haven’t been, hell no, you’ve grown and you’ve accomplished a lot. I’m not saying that. But when you try different things and keep drifting back to the same thing, I think that there’s a reason for it. You owe it to yourself to see where this could go. You said that the reasons that you two broke up in the first place seem to be gone, right? That she seems to be a different person? Then go for it!”

  “I’m… I’m not sure that’s the right thing to do. The break up was ugly. For me, at least. She didn’t seem to care. She didn’t seem to even give a rat’s ass. How could someone who had said that - she said that she loved me, right? And then she turned around and did that. Who just does that? How could I - and sure, she doesn’t seem to care about status and appearance as much but y’know it’s one thing to do that in
little ways, but when the chips are down… what if she’s only doing this because I’m a hotshot doctor now? What if she only says yes to me when I ask her because I’m now at an ‘acceptable’ status level?”

  “Well first of all, you’re a hotshot doctor now. You’re making money hand over fist. So there’s your status problem right there.”

  I flipped him off.

  David winked at me before sobering up and growing serious. “That’s a legitimate fear, I’m not going to deny that. But you don’t know until you try, that’s the thing. I think it’s unfair of anyone to judge someone else by how that person was ten years ago. We all change and grow. Now, some of us do have things that stay the same. Some of us change for the better, and some of us change for the worst. But you can’t read her mind, so the only way to learn is by dating her again.”

  “And put my heart on the line again, possibly get hurt again.”

  “Well, if you don’t do anything, you’re definitely going to be hurt, and you’ll keep pining away like a sad little puppy until the day you die.”

  “Charming prediction, Nostradamus.”

  “I tell it like it is, man.” David tossed me the ball and walked back over to his spot on the court. “Look, if nothing else, dating her will get her out of your system once and for all. You’ll find out if she’s really changed or not, and you can lay it all to rest. She might be the best thing that ever happened to you, who knows? Not me, and not you, not until you try.”

  “I’m going to give you this same lecture someday, I hope you know that.”

  “First you have to find me a woman who’s sweeter than my Ma’s sweet tea, and that isn’t ever going to happen, my man.”

  “Yeah, it will, just you wait.” David had been raised by his single mother after his father had died of a rare heart condition, which was why he’d wanted to become a doctor. I’d met David’s mother a few times. Mrs. Franklin, or Ma Franklin as she’d always insisted I call her, was a lovely woman, and her sweet tea was indeed sweet enough to give you cavities.

  “There’s a whole other problem that you seem to be ignoring,” I told him, twirling my racquet in my hand. “Roni - Veronica isn’t into a relationship right now. She might not ever be. She just got out of a divorce and she’s planning on having a kid.”

  “And you’re going to let that stop you?” David replied with a grin. “That doesn’t sound like the Ted Winters that I know. You didn’t let anything stop you, no matter what, not once you set your mind to something. You owe it to yourself to see where this’ll go and I bet you that you can convince her to change her mind about not getting involved with someone.

  “You’re a charming man, just be that. Give her a flash of those dimples of yours and do that stupid thing where you make your eyes twinkle and her panties’ll melt right off. Worked like a charm at every single bar we went to, you had the woman spreading her legs right in front of the other patrons.”

  “Very funny,” I said, hefting up the ball for a serve.

  I might have aimed the ball to whizz right past his head, but David couldn’t prove it. He yelped, and then went to grab it, yelling, “not cool, man, not cool!”

  Despite my dismissal of David’s teasing, I couldn’t help but consider his words. He had been there for me all these years and so he knew me better than just about anyone.

  And he was right. I hated to admit it, but… the guy was absolutely right about all of it.

  I had mooned after Veronica in college, despite also being furious with her for how she’d broken up with me. Every single time a girl had tried to flirt with me I’d just seen how she wasn’t my Roni. And it hadn’t been fair to any woman that I tried to date that I spent the whole time measuring her up to some other woman - or that I would find myself hoping she’d just be Veronica’s clone.

  Eventually I had just given up on dating altogether. I had decided that if I was supposed to be with someone, that someone would just waltz into my life and it would fall into place. I felt fulfilled by my work and the rest of my life, so really, what did I need a romantic partner for?

  But when I’d told the universe to have someone waltz into my life, I hadn’t meant my ex, and I hadn’t meant for her to literally waltz into my damn office.

  Yet here I was.

  And maybe… maybe David was right.

  Maybe I needed to put this whole thing with Veronica to rest once and for all.

  12

  Veronica

  I sighed as I entered the luxury ballroom at the ground floor of the Belmond Hotel. It was considered the place to host your event, with the walls covered in gorgeously hand-painted Art Nouveau style scenes of animals out in nature, a high ceiling with massive glittering crystal chandeliers, and enough room for both dancing and dining. People had weddings here all the time, and being a member of the Charleston upper crust, I was almost as familiar with this ballroom as I was with the back of my own hand.

  And I was not pleased to be here.

  My whole life had been a series of balls like this, hosted in venues just like this. Maybe to some it was fun, and if this was the life that someone had chosen for themselves, then I said good for them. But it had never been my choice to be in this. This had been what my parents had insisted I do with my life, how they made me live my life, and then Chad had done the same.

  God forbid we ever just took a weekend off and go to a little cabin in the woods or something. No, there was always another society event that we had to go to, some place where our faces had to be seen. As a teenager I had been desperate to please my parents and I had believed in a lot of the things they had preached. It was why I had gone along with their insistence that I break up with Ted.

  But now that I was older, everything had lost its shine. This society had been empty to me for a while, and nobody had stuck up for me when I’d divorced Chad - nobody besides Layla - no matter how many of their charities I had donated to, how many of their parties and teas I had gone to. None of it had mattered to them, in the end. It all felt like such a sham.

  But Layla had been there for me through all of it, and so she was the reason why I was here. This was a charity event to raise funds for extracurricular activities for at-risk children so that they would be at those activities instead of getting into trouble, and those activities would help them to put more things on their applications for college.

  Layla hated going to these things alone. God forbid her husband actually attend one of them. I felt awful for her, but Layla bore it all with a smile. We had swapped notes about our husbands, and hers was nearly as bad as Chad had been. At least her husband seemed to be more neglectful than outright manipulative and emotionally abusing, but how you could neglect a sweet and thoughtful girl like Layla, I had no idea.

  So of course I was going to come as her date to this thing. I had to support her, what friend wouldn’t?

  But that didn’t mean I was going to like entering this ballroom.

  Taking a deep breath, I smoothed my hands over my dress and stepped inside.

  Everyone was already chatting in groups, since I’d come late. Fashionably late, or so I’d say to anyone who asked, but really it was because I hadn’t wanted to come and so I’d been giving myself a pep talk in the car in the parking garage.

  Layla saw me at once. She looked like a vision in her soft pink dress, like a princess. Ugh, if only she would divorce her husband, then I could find her someone who really deserved her, someone who would treat her right.

  I waved back and walked over. Layla quickly detached herself from the group she was with and grabbed onto my arm. “Thank goodness you’re here,” she whispered.

  I hugged her. “Of course I came, I’ll always be here for you, honey. How’s it been going?”

  “Awful,” Layla admitted. “I keep waiting for the day when I’ll miraculously be comfortable talking with people or I’ll somehow know what to say and that day just never comes and I feel like a stuttering schoolgirl no matter what I do. Everyone must be lookin
g down at me, I know they pity Lewis…”

  “They do not pity him.” Lewis was Layla’s husband, a congressman. “They all think he’s lucky as all hell to have a beautiful and darling woman like you for his wife. He doesn’t deserve you.”

  “You’re really too kind.” Layla linked our arms. “Let’s go find the buffet table, I’m starving and you’re the only one who doesn’t give me judgmental looks if I stuff my face.”

  “Hey, a girl’s gotta eat, right?” I replied.

  Layla laughed. “I love that’s what you say.”

  “Starvation for our figure is out, eating whatever the hell you want and as much of it as you want is in.” I winked at her.

  We loaded ourselves up on the various delicious appetizers. Layla just about had a heart attack from joy when she saw the chocolate fondue fountain, and we attacked that with vigor. I was actually having fun at this thing. Sure, it was because I was ignoring just about everyone, and that included the whispers I could hear about me and my relationship with Chad, but I had long grown used to those. Society was split on who got the ‘blame’ for the divorce, and I was just lucky that my father-in-law, the state governor, liked me so much. He blamed Chad for the whole thing and for ‘letting her get away’ and after that was known, people had pretty much decided that Chad was a no-good and I deserved better.

  Didn’t stop any gossip about me but at least it was a bit more on the positive side. Silver linings and all that.

  Speaking of the devil, though…

  “Uh oh,” Layla whispered. “Spawn of Satan heading our way.”

  I turned - sure enough, Chad was headed straight for us. Oh, joy. And here I’d thought today might actually be decent.

  Chad was the kind of guy who looked like his name. Whenever I’d heard the name ‘Chad’, before I met my now-ex-husband, I had pictured a broad-shouldered, square-jawed football linebacker type with an oddly vacant look in his eyes who loved nothing better than a frat party.

  My former husband was worse. He was that preppy type who did one week of fencing at his fancy Cape Cod summer camp and then decided that he knew everything ever about the sport. He wore boring clothes and expensive sweaters that made him look like he was always about to step onto a yacht, and the look in his eyes read hedge fund.