Flirting with the Single Dad (The Single Dads of Seattle Book 9)

by Whitley Cox

  Did you get your dog back? How was day two?

  It was her misdial.

  Sniffling, she texted him back.

  No. But I texted the home-wrecker, and she wasn’t ignorant to my existence. She also said Carlyle isn’t ready to talk to me but that my dog is fine. I asked her for a photo of him.

  Was this what her life had come to? Texting with a total stranger while buzzed on wine because she had nobody left in her life who loved her? Nobody lucid, anyway, because as much as her mother was still alive, she had no idea who Tessa was anymore. So that was pretty much the same as having nobody. She used to at least have her father until he died in a helicopter crash two years ago.

  Her poor mother had absolutely no idea he was gone, no idea that the man who loved her implicitly, even through her deep, dark depression and her worsening Alzheimer’s, who looked at her every day like she was the light at the end of the tunnel, had died.

  He texted again. I’m really sorry. That sucks. Have you filed a claim? Spoken with a lawyer?

  She didn’t know the first thing about finding a decent lawyer. The only thing she did know was that some were as crooked as the Norwegian coastline and willing to screw over even their own clients for the bottom dollar. Could she ask him for a recommendation? If he knew a lawyer who had integrity but also didn’t break the bank.

  I haven’t yet. I was waiting to see if Blaire (the home-wrecker) was going to be reasonable. Or if Carlyle was going to finally get in touch. But I think I have to go the lawyer route. Or hire a PI to find out where he’s living and then go and take my dog back myself. Small claims court will take too long.

  She drew a blanket over her cold feet and legs. Even though it was a warm May evening and she was in flannel pajama bottoms, she couldn’t chase away the chill that seemed to have buried itself deep in her bones. The chill that came when someone was as alone as she was.

  Do you have any lawyer recommendations? Or a PI you trust? I can’t live without Forest. Carlyle, yes. But not my dog.

  She felt better texting with this misdial stranger. That didn’t stop the half dozen tears from dropping down her cheeks and chin into her wineglass as she stared at her phone, waiting for his reply.

  I could recommend a few of both, yes.

  She swallowed the harsh, jagged lump in her throat.

  Thank you. Do you think I should go with a PI or lawyer?

  His texts were coming in quicker.

  I think you should obtain legal counsel first and then go on the advice of that council how to proceed next.

  Her breath shuddered, and she used the edge of the blanket to wipe up her damp chin and cheeks.

  Thank you.

  I will text you the names and numbers of a few good lawyers tomorrow when I get to work.

  Thank you.

  Now what could she say? What did you say to a total stranger? She’d dabbled in chat rooms and messenger-type things when she was younger, but she’d never been big on holding long conversations with total strangers. Particularly when those strangers usually only had one thing in mind.

  But she wanted to keep talking to this guy. Even though she didn’t know his name, his age or what he looked like, speaking with him and knowing he was on her side, she felt less alone.

  And then it hit her.

  What if he was married? Was this considered flirting? Or cheating in some way? Oh God. Was she the other woman? Was she no better than Blaire?

  Of course, you’re better than Blaire. You’re having a conversation with the man, not sleeping with him or sending him nude photos of yourself.

  Either way, she needed to find out if he was married. She wouldn’t have been too happy if she’d found out Carlyle had been texting some strange woman who had misdialed him, even if it was totally innocent.

  Or maybe he and his wife were both sitting there together texting her because they had an open, honest marriage where they didn’t keep any secrets from each other.

  What a novel concept.

  If it wasn’t for the deep, unrelenting love she saw between her parents, she may have lost hope in a relationship like that. One where the couple was honest and true to each other. But her parent’s marriage had been like that, and she hoped to God those relationships weren’t going the way of the Dodo, that they still existed, still happened, were still possible—even for her.

  Biting down hard on her lip, she asked the question she needed to ask before she spoke another word to him.

  You’re sure your wife doesn’t mind you texting some crazy woman who misdialed and dumped her relationship baggage on you?

  Her lips rolled inward as she waited.

  He texted back right away.

  No wife.

  She swallowed and texted back.

  Divorced?

  No.

  How old are you?

  39. You?

  35. Children?

  Yes.

  But no wife?

  No.

  Did that mean … ?

  Yes, it probably did mean that he was a widower.

  How tragic.

  How long have you …

  She wasn’t sure if this question was appropriate, but she knew she needed to know the answer.

  1 year, 5 months, 3 weeks, 4 days, 6 hours and 37 minutes.

  Oh God. Fresh, hot tears stung the back of her eyes. Now this was a man who had been madly in love with his woman. This was not the type of man who would steal her dog and abandon her, even if she developed some horrible brain-rotting disease. This was a man who had loved his wife with the same intensity Tessa’s father had loved her mother. Fully, unabashedly and until his final breath.

  Unless he’s a serial killer and killed his wife and he knows the exact moment he killed her.

  She needed to tell her imagination to shut the hell up. All those Netflix documentaries were beginning to make her suspicious of everyone. Though to be fair, given the way the world was going, she often wondered if the real question wasn’t are you paranoid? But in fact, are you paranoid enough?

  I’m sorry, she texted back, determined to not assume this guy was a cold-blooded wife killer. Then she cringed at her message. She knew firsthand how telling someone grieving that “I’m sorry” just wasn’t enough. So many people had said that to her when her father died that eventually the words became hollow and meaningless.

  But what else could you say?

  She texted him again. How many children do you have? How old?

  How many children had been left motherless? How many children was he forced to become mother and father to in most likely the blink of an eye? Even though her mother had been alive, there were a lot of days, sometimes weeks where her father had been forced to step up and be both parents. When her mother had retreated into her bedroom, into the dark, unwilling to come out—not even to eat. She knew the toll that had taken on her dad, and she could only imagine it was compounded significantly for a widower.

  Her phone buzzed with his reply.

  What’s your favorite flavor of ice cream?

  Well, that question came out of nowhere.

  Did it, though?

  No. It didn’t. She was a therapist and knew redirection and deflection when it clobbered her upside the head. He was done talking about his life, about his wife.

  She was just grateful he wasn’t done talking to her.

  Smiling, she texted back Pistachio.

  God, how long had it been since she’d had ice cream? Years? Yeah, probably. She’d gone clean and dairy-free after reading up on Alzheimer’s prevention, and although it was hard, the alternative scared her straight.

  She would really like a bowl of pistachio ice cream right about now, though. Wasn’t that what you were supposed to do during a breakup? Eat ice cream and dish with your girlfriends?

  Only she didn’t really have very many girlfriends. A lot of her high school friends had moved away, the same with her college friends. And the ones that were still in town had demanding lives with work,
husbands and children. They had no time to come over to Tessa’s place and listen to her lament about her pathetic love life. A few of them (only her three besties) had actually snubbed her because she didn’t have kids. They said she just didn’t understand the demands and challenges of their lives, and that sure, she worked with kids, but when she went home the kids didn’t follow her.

  Those words had stung her worse than when she stepped on that wasps’ nest on her ninth birthday. Never once did she ever judge or criticize her friends and their busy child-filled lives. All she’d ever been was understanding, envious and willing to bend over backward to make a drink night or coffee meet up work. Whether her friend Jill packed her four-year-old twins along while they had coffee in a park and watched the boys play, Tessa didn’t care. She just wanted the friendships, no matter how they came packaged. But her friends didn’t feel the same way, told her as much, and then stopped calling. She hadn’t heard from Jill, Kailey or Addison in over three years, but she was either an idiot, a stalker or a glutton for punishment, because she refused to unfriend them on social media. So every now and then something about one—or all three of them together with their husbands and kids—would pop up on her feed and the scab would just rip open all over again.

  Pistachio is a good pick.

  She smiled at his response and asked him his preference. What’s yours?

  Citrus cooler. They don’t make it anymore, but as a kid I couldn’t get enough of the stuff in the summer from the ice cream man who set up his cart along the river in Portland.

  Oh, so he was from Portland.

  But he must live in Seattle now if he mentioned the Rage Room.

  Interesting.

  I’ve never heard of that flavor, but it sounds delicious. How long have you lived in Seattle if you’re originally from Portland?

  Even though she wanted more wine, she was out of wine, and it was only Monday after all. She did have work in the morning, and as much as she would love to drown her sorrows in vino until she was numb, buzzed, and giggling instead of crying, she had to remind herself that she wasn’t twenty-one anymore and she would be paying for it in the morning.

  So, like a responsible adult, she brewed herself a cup of apple cinnamon herbal tea as she and this mystery person on the other side of her phone slowly got to know each other.

  Despite the fact that she was sad, alone and without her best friend in the entire world, by the time Tessa pulled the covers over herself, flicked off the light and said good night to the misdial lawyer originally from Portland, she didn’t feel like the entire world was against her.

  Because at least she had one friend … sort of.

  5

  On Friday, Tessa rode her bike to work. And not like a Schwinn or a mountain bike with gears. She rode her 2017 Ducati Pengale. The only thing in the world she loved nearly as much as she loved her mother, father and dog was her Ducati.

  Her father had been a big bike nut for as long as she could remember. When her mother would retreat into her bedroom for days on end, Tessa and her dad would head out to the garage and tinker on bikes. He liked Harleys, but she had a need for speed and was always drawn to the crotch rockets. For her seventeenth birthday, he bought her a beat-up old Yamaha, and the two of them fixed it up together until it was shiny and new-ish, well, new to her, anyway. She turned quite a few heads the first day she rode that beauty to high school. Too bad they didn’t have GoPros back in the day.

  For longer than she could even remember, as she and her dad worked in the garage, they would argue over the superiority of one make over the other. She liked Harleys, but nothing beat the beauty and speed of a Ducati. They’d always end their evening together with a Dr. Pepper and a bag of salt and vinegar chips shared between them to call it a draw.

  She missed those nights and weekends more than anything. So when she was on her bike with the wind hitting her helmet and the power beneath her, she felt just a little closer to her father.

  She couldn’t very well wear her flowy skirts when she rode her bike—as much as she loved them—so she was in a pair of dark wash jeans and a sleeveless black and white checked cotton blouse. Though she always wore her leather jacket when she rode—a gift from her father for the last birthday he was alive to help her celebrate. When she wore it, she liked to think he was hugging her, keeping her safe as she zigged and zagged her way through traffic.

  Her small tattoo peeked out from beneath the cuff of her jacket as she pulled her bike into her usual spot out in front of her office building and lifted her helmet off her head, releasing her hair loosely behind her.

  When her dad gave her the leather jacket, he’d included a small, hand-scrawled card with it.

  I love you, kiddo.

  ~Dad

  After he died, she had that little note, in his writing, tattooed on her wrist as just another way to always keep him with her, always keep him close.

  She wasn’t sure if it was a weird sound in the traffic behind her or a gasp, but either way, she turned her head to see what made that sound.

  It was Aria’s dad, Mr. Stark, holding Aria by the hand and the baby in the carrier.

  She squinted at them, then lifted her hand to block out the morning sun. She’d received an email Thursday afternoon from Mr. Stark asking if she had any openings on Friday, that Aria had been acting out again at home, had hit the baby with a toy, and that he thought maybe two sessions a week to start would be better. Normally, she was fully booked weeks in advance, but she miraculously had a nine o’clock opening the very next day. Hence why the little firecracker with the exhausted-looking father and the rosy-cheeked baby were headed toward her.

  Aria released her father’s hand and ran up. “Hi, Tessa!”

  “Hi, Aria, how are you?”

  The little girl pouted. “I hit Cecily with a toy.”

  Tessa pressed her lips into a thin line and hummed as she crouched down to Aria’s level. “And do you think that was a good idea?”

  Aria shook her head. “No. I know it was wrong, but she … ” Her lip wobbled, and she glanced back at her father. “I was talking to Daddy about school, and Cecily wouldn’t stop crying.”

  “Hmm, yes, I can see how that would be very frustrating for you. I bet you were probably feeling a lot of different feelings, weren’t you?”

  Aria nodded. “I was mad. And sad. And … not happy.”

  Tessa reached for Aria’s hand. “Well, let’s head into my studio, and we can maybe talk about our feelings a bit more. I’ll tell you right now how I’m feeling. Do you want to know?”

  Aria’s hand was small and satin-soft in her palm. “How are you feeling?”

  “I’m feeling really happy that you’re here today. I’ve been looking forward to seeing you again. My day yesterday wasn’t very good, but now that you’re here I’m happy again.”

  When Aria smiled, she beamed. It was like the world instantly became ten times brighter.

  They headed off toward the front lobby door of the office building. She didn’t have to turn around to know Mr. Stark was following them.

  Up the elevator they rode to the fourth floor, the only sound in the small space being Aria showing Tessa how she could now “wink” even though she couldn’t. She kept asking, “Am I doing it? Am I doing it now?” and Cecily slurped away on her fist like it was a lollipop made of Pablum.

  Did babies still eat Pablum? She had no clue.

  They were nearly to the top floor when Mr. Stark’s deep voice made goosebumps prickle up along her arms—even beneath her leather jacket. “You ride a bike?” Even with the rough and quiet timber of his voice, she couldn’t mistake the surprise in his tone.

  She glanced over her shoulder at him. “I do.”

  He grunted. “Didn’t expect that given the patchouli and skirt on Monday.”

  What the heck?

  She rounded on him. Despite her fun and almost flirty conversation with her mystery texter last night, she’d had a terrible sleep and woke up in a funk.
She was in no mood to be dealing with a man who had obviously taken one look at her and thought hack. “What is that supposed to mean?” she asked, squinting at him.

  He took a visible breath, and she watched as every muscle in his tall, fit body went rock-solid. It was as if he’d just stepped into full body armor and was preparing to protect himself. But then something else flashed behind his eyes. He shrugged off the steel and blinked before he shook his head and broke their gaze. “Never mind.”

  What the actual hell?

  But she wasn’t ready to let that comment go. “No, tell me what you meant, Mr. Stark. Please? Did you think because I wore a comfortable, pretty, flowy skirt, a few bracelets and my hair down that I also like to dance naked in a field, praying to the sun gods while high on peyote?”

  It was obvious now he was fighting a grin at that response and trying desperately to keep his expression serious. He still hadn’t pivoted his gaze back to her though.

  “And that patchouli comment? There’s a meat smokehouse next door, and I like to open the window on nice days and not constantly smell jerky. I also happen to believe that essential oils do have the ability to alter our moods. When I smell something gross, I’m certainly in a less happy mood. Wouldn’t you agree?”

  Slowly, as if it pained him to do it, he swung his head back to face her, and his dark gray eyes zeroed in on her like laser beams, then drifted down to her chest. At first, she thought he was staring at her breasts, but then she realized it was the healing crystal that she wore that had drawn his attention.

  One of his dark blond brows rose just slightly at the same time the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.

  What. An. Asshole.

  She turned herself back around and, still holding Aria’s hand, she led the little girl down the hallway toward her studio. “We can take it from here, Mr. Stark. You go … do what you need to do. See you in an hour.” She hadn’t bothered to glance back at him, but she could certainly feel his eyes on her.

  Thankfully, Aria seemed none the wiser and was happily skipping beside her, talking about how she planned to finish her pasta art this session.