“Are you a nurse?”
“Me? A nurse?” She took her hand from his face and straightened. “Why would you ask such a silly question?’
He wiped the moisture from under his eye with a fingertip and put his glasses back on. “You seem to know what you’re talking about.”
“I volunteered at a hospital for a summer when I was in high school,” she confessed, “but it was so not me.”
“I don’t know about that. You have a nice bedside manner.” He didn’t quite meet her eyes.
The guy was so shy he’d probably hide under his desk if she informed him she was better in bed than beside it. Okay. That was too forward. But she was making inroads here.
“Does that mean you’ll go to lunch with me?” she asked.
He stared down at his desk, not a good sign. Before he could refuse, she continued, “No, of course you can’t go. What was I thinking? You need to have that eye looked at.”
He nodded, obviously relieved.
“How about dinner?” she asked.
“Dinner’s not a good idea,” he said quickly.
“Why not?” she asked before a terrible possibility occurred to her. “Oh, no. Grady was wrong, wasn’t he? You are married.”
His brows knitted, and she braced herself to hear that he was off limits. Despite the free-and-easy act she sometimes put on to get Grady’s goat, she wouldn’t date a married man.
“Are you related to Grady Palmer of Palmer Construction?” He phrased it as a question but it sounded like an accusation.
"He’s my brother,” she said, “and you didn’t answer my question.”
His reluctance either meant he didn’t want her to know he was available or he was already taken. She suspected it was the former.
“For the record,” she continued, “I asked if you were married.”
“I’m not married,” he finally said.
“Engaged?”
“No.”
"Gay?"
"No!"
“Seeing somebody exclusively?”
“Well, no.”
“Then what's the problem? Don’t you find me attractive?”
If he denied it, she'd know he was lying. He didn’t even try.“That’s not it.”
Lorelei threw up her hands. “What then?"
His shoulders rose, then fell. “You’re twenty-one years old, and—”
“We’ve already been over how my age is so not a big deal,” Lorelei interrupted.
“You didn’t let me finish."
She swept her hand through the air with a flourish. “By all means, finish.”
“And I have responsibilities that leave me no time for a woman like you.”
“You can’t possibly know what kind of woman I am,” she said indignantly. “You don’t know anything about me.”
“I know you like to have fun.”
“And I know you have too little of it,” she shot back.
He ran a hand over his forehead. “You don’t understand.”
“Have dinner with me and explain."
She held her breath, sure he'd refuse. After a moment, she sensed that he arrived at a decision.
“You said I could pick the place, right?”
She nodded eagerly. “Right.”
“Mario’s Pizzeria. Six o’clock.”
She started to object to both the location and the early hour then thought better of it. She’d envisioned a romantic dinner at a French restaurant, but she could compromise.
“Deal,” she said. “I have one caveat.”
“What?” He looked suspicious.
“You have to get that eye checked out first.” She’d spent the last ten minutes silently empathizing with him for the pain she knew it caused. “Promise?”
“Promise,” he said on a sigh.
She smiled at him, glad her impromptu visit to his office had paid off in more ways than one.
“Good.” She walked away before calling over her shoulder. “Because when I come into that pizza parlor tonight, I want you to see you’re about to become one lucky man.”
***
MARIO’S PIZZERIA WAS unremittingly red.
Red booths, red carpet, red doors.
Plastic red-and-white tableclothes covered the tables, and the young employees behind the crimson counter spread red tomato sauce on pizzas they fed into an industrial-sized oven.
Five minutes after the waitress had seated Wade Morrison at a booth for four, his eyes still had trouble adjusting to the sea of red, especially his right one.
The pain had significantly lessened, thanks to the antibiotic drops the ophthalmologist had prescribed.
Lorelei had been right. He had a scratched cornea.
She’d been wrong, too. No doubt she’d be wearing some crazy, skin-baring outfit when she entered the pizza parlor. But she was the one who would get an eye full.
“Daddy, watch this.”
The tiny blond girl across from him rose to her full height of three feet one inches and jumped up and down on the booth’s cushioned seat.
“Stop that, Mary Kate,” he said sternly.
The giggles of a second equally blond girl drowned him out. “Ashley wants to be kangaroo, too,” she said gleefully, scrambling to her feet and joining her sister up, then down.
Both of the girls had messy, lopsided pony tails. Mary Kate’s listed to the right while Ashley’s veered left. Other than that and their T-shirts of different colors, they could have been carbon copies.
“Girls,” Wade said sternly. “Stop that right now.”
“’s fun,” Mary Kate said.
“Kangaroo roo,” Ashley cried.
“Roo roo,” Mary Kate added.
The place was nearly full, mostly with families. Even the diners with young children turned disapproving looks toward Wade.
“Girls,” he repeated. Their giggles didn’t ease.
Aware of the murmurs getting increasingly louder, he quickly came around the booth. He caught and lifted a giggling Mary Kate, scooted into the booth with her on his lap and managed to gather Ashley to him on her way down from one of the jumps. He held the twins close while they giggled helplessly.
He didn’t smile. He needed to make them understand they couldn’t act like marsupials in restaurants.
“Listen to me, girls,” he said.
After a few more laughing gulps, they did, each one gazing up at him with big green eyes.
Wade wished their mother hadn’t named them after the Olsen twins who starred in all those silly look-alike movies. He had to admit, though, that the girls resembled the actresses when they’d been children. Up to a point. He thought his Mary Kate and Ashley much cuter.
“No more jumping in restaurants,” he said.
Ashley screwed up her tiny forehead. “Why not, Daddy?”
“Restaurants are places for eating, not jumping.”
Mary Kate reached out a pudgy hand and tapped him on the mouth. “Daddy, smile.”
“I’ll smile if you promise not to jump anymore.”
“Promise,” Mary Kate said happily.
“Promise,” Ashley said.
After that, he did smile. Although the little girls were a constant trial, they were also his biggest joy. Because he never regretted having them, he’d even be able to withstand Lorelei Palmer’s look of horror when she came into the restaurant.
He didn’t have any illusions. The beautiful, vivacious young woman would be horrified at the thought of dating a man with three-year-old twins.
Just as he was horrified at getting involved with a woman whose main objective was to have fun. He couldn't blame Lorelei for her joie d’ vivre. Chronologically she was a woman, but emotionally she seemed little more than a vibrant, spirited child.
Wade didn't know why she’d latched onto him but they were clearly at different stages of their lives.
He had responsibilities, as he’d started to explain when she stopped by his office. Because she was an uncommonly determined you
ng woman, he’d decided it would be best to show her exactly how daunting those responsibilities were.
“Want pizza, Daddy,” Mary Kate said.
“We’ll have pizza in a little while, honey. We have to wait for Lorelei.”
“Is she a mommy?”
Wade tried hard not to sigh. If they were lucky, the twins saw their mother twice a month. Obviously that wasn’t enough.
“No. Lorelei is not a mommy.”
Lorelei was a fantasy. A fantasy that wouldn’t last the night after she saw the twins. A fantasy he never should have had in the first place.
“She’s. . . a friend.”
“Like Kristen?” Ashley asked.
Kristen was the latest in a long line of teenagers who babysat for the twins when Wade had an after-hours event he couldn’t get out of, like the mayor’s party. The twins spent their days at a church-run preschool and day-care center near their home. The overwhelming majority of their nights, they spent with Wade.
“Yes. Like Kristen," Wade said, hoping they hadn't gotten attached to her. Like the other babysitters before her, she'd told him she wouldn't babysit again.
“Need to pee, Daddy,” Ashley said, standing up in the booth and squeezing her short legs together.
The moment Wade had feared most was here. Taking one little girl into the men’s room was bad enough but he had to do double duty. Mary Kate was too young to be left alone.
“I told you to go before we left home,” he said. “You did go, didn’t you?”
“Need to pee,” Ashley repeated.
Mary Kate busily colored on the paper placemat the waitress had provided. She reached across the table for a fat blue crayon, bumping his water glass in the process.
He grabbed for it but wasn’t fast enough. The glass tipped and water spilled over the table.
“Oops.” Mary Kate covered her mouth with both hands.
“Need to pee,” Ashley said.
“Wade?” asked another feminine voice.
Wade looked up, and there she was. Lorelei Palmer. Her sleeveless dress was short and tight, leaving little to the imagination. Her eyes, which were so pretty under the heavy mascara, were round and surprised.
“Hi, Lorelei,” he said while he ineffectually wiped at the spill with a napkin that was already soaked. “Meet Mary Kate and Ashley. My daughters.”
She stared transfixed at the twins, speechless for the first time since he’d met her.
Mary Kate patted her hands in the spilled water on the table, laughing as she splashed.
“Need to pee,” Ashley said.
Wade expected Lorelei to suddenly remember she had another engagement and flee. Instead she flagged down a passing waitress.
“We’ve had a spill,” she told her.
The waitress bustled off, presumably to get something with which to wipe up the water. Wade waited for Lorelei to sprint after her on her way out the door.
“Hi, Ash. Hi, M.K.,” she said. "I'm Lorelei."
Mary Kate splashed.
“Need to pee,” Ashley told her.
Lorelei’s face creased into a smile.
“Then, by all means, let’s go pee.” She reached for his daughter’s hand. The little girl gladly gave it to her, and they hurried off to the bathroom.
“I need to pee, too,” Mary Kate said, crawling over Wade's lap and running to catch up.
Wade stared after them. Lorelei Palmer was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought. Or maybe she was merely more polite than he’d given her credit for.
She hadn’t run scared at the sight of Ashley and Mary Kate, but she would. He knew her type.
He’d not only dated it, he’d married it.
CHAPT ER FOURTEEN
Lorelei Palmer surprised Wade by making it through dinner with her mega-watt smile intact.
“I never knew little kids could be so much fun,” she said.
Wade wiped a piece of mozzarella cheese from Ashley’s chin and tossed the soiled napkin onto the growing pile to his left.
The other side of the table didn’t have a discard pile. Mary Kate, seated next to Lorelei, wore so much tomato sauce she was nearly as red as the rest of the restaurant.
“I never babysat growing up," Lorelei continued. "Nobody ever asked me for some strange reason so I haven't been around kids much."
No big surprise there, Wade thought.
“Your two are absolute dolls. Maybe they’d like to go shopping with me sometime. It would be fun. We could try on some clothes, do lunch.”
“They’re a little young for that,” Wade said.
“Get out of here. All females love to shop. It’s a biological fact.” She bent her pretty face close to Mary Kate’s. “You like shopping, right, M.K.?”
“Like to chop.” Mary Kate brought her hand down on the edge of the table. She’d been chopping since Wade had watched an old Jackie Chan movie on television a few nights before.
“Chop, chop,” Ashley said, imitating her sister.
“See? I told you,” Lorelei said brightly. She really was beautiful, Wade thought. He didn't usually gravitate toward bottle blondes, but Lorelei would be stunning no matter what her hair color. She had a great face, with eyes that would have looked big even without eye liner and cheekbones so defined they didn’t need all that blush.
Her natural effervescence shone through the makeup. She winked, telling him she knew he was staring. “Where should we go now?”
Half afraid she’d suggest a department store, Wade quickly replied, “Home. It’s getting late.”
“Seven o’clock’s not late,” she said like a woman who’d never had kids. “Let's do something while the night’s still young.”
Wade needed to get the girls home and to bed. That wouldn’t solve his Lorelei problem. And that’s what she presented: A problem.
If she had been a different woman, he might have gotten past their nine-year age difference.
However, he’d figured out fairly quickly that she was a free-wheeling party girl. Despite the way she cooed at his daughters, she clearly hadn’t yet figured out what dating a man with three-year-old twins entailed.
“What do you suggest we do?” he asked.
She leaned forward slightly, and he had a clear view of the tops of her breasts peeking above the snug-fitting bodice of her dress. If the twins hadn't been along, he wondered if she’d suggest they go back to her place.
Her breasts were lovely, large enough to fill a man’s hand and. . . Splat! A wet spot on his glasses suddenly distorted his view of her cleavage.
Mary Kate took a striped plastic straw from her mouth. “Bill’s-eye!” she cried.
“Bull’s-eye,” he corrected, taking off his glasses and wiping them on the edge of his shirt. “We’ve gone over this before. My glasses are not a target.”
He reached across the table and took the straw from her resisting hand. He didn’t have to wonder how he’d missed her lining up the shot. He knew.
He put his glasses back on, and then Lorelei distracted him again. Appearing to be deep in thought, she absently licked a lower lip she’d slathered with pink gloss right there at the table after finishing her pizza.
Wade shouldn’t wonder what her lips would taste like, shouldn’t be willing to find out even if he had to endure the pink gloss to do it.
But he did wonder. God help him, he did.
“Why don’t we all go. . . bowling?” Lorelei seemed absurdly pleased by her very bad suggestion.
Intending to let her down gently, Wade said, “Mary Kate and Ashley don’t bowl.”
“Maybe not yet, but I bet they want to learn. What do you say, M.K. and Ash? What’ll it be? Go bowling or go home?”
“No go home,” Mary Kate said. Her blond hair shook as her head swiveled.
“No, no,” Ashley added.
“See,” Lorelei said smugly. “They want to go bowling.”
“Do you realize how old they are?”
“How old are you and M.K., hon?” she
asked Ashley. “Four? Five?”
Ashley giggled and held up three fingers.
“One, two, three,” Lorelei counted. To Wade, she said, “They’re three.”
She’d completely missed the point that three-year-olds didn’t belong in bowling alleys.
Wade thought about explaining to her the realities of life with small children. He doubted it would do any good. A more hardheaded woman he’d yet to meet.
What Lorelei needed was a demonstration.
That would make her stop thinking of the twins as pretty, miniature dolls. That would make her stop slanting him those flirtatious smiles of which nothing could ever come.
“So what do you say?” she asked Wade. “Are we on?”
Wade shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Let’s go bowling.”
***
M.K. AND ASH WERE MONSTERS, Lorelei thought.
No, scratch that. The twins weren't big enough to be monsters. Gnomes, maybe. Gnomes were tiny, except nowhere near as attractive as the diminutive blond girls.
What was itty bitty, cute and monstrous to boot? Gremlins?
Yes. M.K. and Ash were gremlins.
“No, Ashley,” Wade said with infinite patience as he plucked his daughter off the circular ball-return tray. “That’s dangerous.”
The little girl kicked her legs and waved her arms.
“Let go, Daddy,” Ash cried. “Let go.”
Lorelei sat at the scorekeeper’s table, waiting her turn at the lanes. M.K. was up. Except the little girl was no longer lining up her shot.
She was halfway down the lane, merrily chasing her hot-pink bowling ball. It bounced crazily off the fat blue bumpers in the gutters before slowing down to a near stop. She bent down to give it another shove.
“Oh, hell." Lorelei jumped to her feet and rushed toward the lane. “Wade, M.K.’s loose.”
“Darn,” he said, which Lorelei figured was a G-rated version of what he really wanted to say.
He cut off Lorelei at the head of the lane, shoving a still-squirming Ash at her before taking off in pursuit of his other daughter.
“Watch out,” Lorelei called over a bobbing blond head. “The lane’s oiled.”
The thundering sound of bowling balls in the adjacent lanes plus a booming voice over the loudspeaker drowned out her warning.
Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy) Page 9