by Leslie North
“You can bring your daughter,” Blake offered. “Seems like she might enjoy that sort of thing too, right?”
Michelle chuckled. “She’d enjoy it, but not for the reasons that you expect.”
“Oh?”
“Mollie really wants to be a singer,” Michelle explained. “So I’m fairly certain the baseball diamond will become her personal performance area.”
“Even better,” Blake said. “I’ll make sure she gets the microphone at least once during the evening.”
Michelle gasped. “You’d really do that?”
The surprise in her voice warmed him for some reason. “Sure, why not? Gotta support the arts.”
“Well, you are certainly full of surprises,” Michelle said, and he couldn’t miss the note of appreciation in her voice. His fingers curled, and half of him wanted to implore her to step outside of the building so he could catch a glimpse of her willowy frame or that light brown hair he wanted to tug out of her perpetual ponytail. Just to see how far down it cascaded over her shoulders.
Instead, he said, “It’s tomorrow evening. How about I pick you up at five at your house?”
“Sounds like a plan to me,” she said, her smile evident through the phone.
Blake was grinning by the time they hung up, and he kept watch out the window for a few more moments, still hopeful he might be able to catch a glimpse of her.
But it wasn’t meant to be. And that was for the best. Because this little infatuation that was blooming needed to be nipped in the bud. Blake was not meant for relationships. He was pretty sure no one in his family was, as evidenced by his parents’ multiple divorces. They were always happiest when they were single, and it had been an easy decision on his part to follow their lead. Why drag out a relationship that was only going to end in making him miserable?
It made much more sense to enjoy a more transient type of romance—a few dates, a lot of fun, and then a mutual parting with no hard feelings. So any soft feelings or admiration for Michelle needed to stay casual. The setup of the bet meant they’d be going on more dates than he was used to, but that didn’t mean his approach had to change from the norm.
Five dates weren’t a relationship, and it sure as hell wasn’t love. It would be fun, and then it would be over. That was how his life worked. It was how he operated.
And that’s how it would stay.
The next evening, Blake was driving his SUV to Michelle’s house, sans driver. She’d requested it specifically. He wasn’t sure why, but he was happy to oblige. He liked driving, even if it was generally more efficient to have someone else at the wheel.
His GPS occasionally blurted directions as he trekked across the city to Michelle’s house. He pulled up to a long row of townhouses on a hill. Hers was an eggshell white house with arched windows and a brick-lined walkway. It was quaint and oddly charming, even if it was much smaller than what he was used to.
But as he walked to the door, he realized that already the personality of this home was spilling out onto the sidewalk. Someone—presumably Michelle’s daughter, Mollie—had written a sign in kindergartner’s scrawl that said “I love my home.” The sidewalk leading up to the front door was adorned with pink chalk stars. Tiny fairy figurines dotted the dormant landscaping, a fact he noticed as he knocked on the front door.
The door swung open a moment later, a flushed and breathless Michelle greeting him.
“You’re just in time to watch me scour the house for my shoes!” she said, stepping aside as she gestured for him to come in. His gaze went to her feet—bare, impossibly cute, with pink polish on each toe. “Somebody was playing dress-up the other day and misplaced them,” Michelle went on, sending a stern look to the dark-haired girl who wandered into the hallway a moment later.
Big blue eyes, just like her mother’s, stared up at him, followed by a big grin.
“Tell Mr. Harrison hello,” Michelle urged quietly.
“Hello, Mr. Harrison, I’m Mollie. Did you know I petted a lizard today?”
Blake arched a brow. “Wow. I did not know that. Was it your lizard or…”
“It was the lizard who lives at my school!” Mollie gushed, her s’s lisping slightly.
He smiled warmly at her. Thirty seconds in her presence, and she’d already won Blake over. He loved kids, appreciated their energy and enthusiasm. Sometimes, he even envied them for their innocence. Everything was new and fresh to them, which was just the way Blake liked it. “I didn’t know you had a lizard who lived at your school. We never had a lizard at my school.”
“My school is the best school,” she went on. “We have lizards and gerbils and coloring and—”
“Mollie, honey, why don’t you finish getting your bag ready while I look for my shoes?” Michelle steered her daughter down the hall, inviting Blake to follow. “If I don’t keep us on track, we’ll spend the next forty-five minutes talking about all the new thing she’s learned about gerbil droppings.”
Blake snickered. “Can I help with anything?”
“Magically make my shoes appear out of thin air?”
He snapped his fingers, making a display of looking around. “Okay, they should be around that corner over there.”
The little smirk she sent him caused shivers to run up his spine. There was something so sexy about her. He couldn’t put his finger on it. But how she was dressed today certainly didn’t help matters. Finally, she was out of the standard issue polo-and-chinos uniform, instead opting for distressed skinny jeans and a flowy, wrap around black sweater that hung off one shoulder and practically begged him to slip it off and explore what lay beneath.
“I’m going to check my closet one last time,” she said with an apologetic look. “I’ll be right back.”
Blake watched her scurry back down the hallway, her footsteps thumping slightly up the staircase. Mollie reappeared a moment later, holding a transparent pink backpack that he could see was stuffed with ponies and dolls.
“Is that your bag?” he asked.
She nodded exaggeratedly. “I’m all ready.”
“Good. Glad you brought the ponies,” he said, pointing to her backpack, “because I left all mine at home.”
She giggled. “You have ponies like mine too?”
He nodded very seriously. “Yes. Several, actually. But not with me.”
Just then, a muted shout rang through the house: Michelle, shouting victory. “Ah-ha! I found them!” A moment later, her footsteps thundered down the floor. She raised her fists in victory as she entered the kitchen, black flats on her feet. “We may leave now.”
“Great. Okay, Mollie, you got all your ponies ready?”
Mollie nodded enthusiastically while Michelle watched her daughter with an amazed expression. Mollie ran to the door, and Michelle turned to him to say, “Was she talking to you while I was upstairs?”
“Yeah. We were talking about her ponies.”
“Wow. That’s great. She’s really talkative when she likes someone, but sometimes she’s wary of new people. When that happens, she can be pretty shy.”
“Yet she’s planning a performance?”
“Isn’t that just how performers work? Shy off the stage, but once they have a crowd…” Michelle laughed as they headed out the front door, where Mollie already waited on the front porch. Once Michelle locked up, they headed for his SUV. But as soon as Blake approached, he knew something was wrong. The car looked…lopsided, somehow. He rushed toward the car, immediately spotting the issue.
The front driver’s side tire had deflated. Big time.
“What the…” Blake knelt in front of the flat tire, scoping out the situation. Michelle came to his side, bending to see.
“That’s not good,” she murmured.
“What happened?” Mollie asked.
“Blake’s tire needs to be changed,” Michelle said in a soft voice to her daughter.
“Let’s pump it back up!” Mollie exclaimed. “Hey, Mr. Blake, d’you want me to go get my bike tire pump
thingy? Mommy showed me how to pump up my tires last summer and I’m real good at it, I—”
“Honey, that’s a very kind offer, but your bike pump won’t work for this,” Michelle said. To Blake, she said, “Did you bring a spare?”
Disappointment crashed through him. There was nothing he loved more than arriving in style to big events. “No. This model doesn’t take spares, and the design doesn’t allow for a well large enough to carry the actual size of the tire it takes.” He swore under his breath as he spotted the culprit: a nail jutting out of the rubber. “I must have caught a nail on the road somewhere.”
“Dang it,” Michelle said, just as a waft of her perfume reached him. He sat back on his heels, looking up at her. Her soft face showed concern, and mixed with the spicy vanilla perfume she wore, it was impossible to move away.
“I can call for a tow,” Blake said, finally yanking his gaze off her face. It was too easy to get lost there. “And have my driver bring out another car, but we’ll be late.”
Michelle shook her head. “No. I mean, sure, let’s do all that, but after the event, so we can still get there on time. We can take my car for now. Then when we get back, you can tow it and take care of everything.”
Blake hesitated, unsure how to respond. He’d seen her battered sedan in the driveway. That was not exactly how he’d planned on arriving to the event.
“I don’t know, you shouldn’t be driving to something I invited you to,” he said, trying to figure out another option. Even calling an Uber would be better—but he doubted Michelle would agree to that when her car was already there, and free of charge. He wouldn’t be able to refuse her offer without flat-out admitting that he didn’t want to be seen in a run-down, outdated car.
“It’s no bother at all,” she insisted. “I would have been driving myself there anyway.”
Blake slowly stood, his gaze on her car. It was the simplest solution for getting them there on time.
“Yeah. Let’s take your car.”
“Mr. Blake is coming in our car!” Mollie cheered.
Michelle grinned up at him. “And this time, I’ll be driving.”
Blake was amused by how much enjoyment she seemed to take in that. Maybe it was linked to why she’d specifically asked for him to not bring his driver. It was clear that he and Michelle had very different lives, and came from very different worlds. This wasn’t odd, exactly—the majority of his dating experience was with women who had less money than him. But honestly, most people had less money than him.
Blake was used to showing the women he dated a taste of the finer things in life that were out of the average person’s reach. They enjoyed the luxuries and so did he, so it was a win-win. But Michelle didn’t seem to want the excess of creature comforts.
She wanted to pack her lunch and drive herself. Which practically made her an exotic animal.
One that he was more curious about than he wanted to admit.
4
Two hours later, Blake had basically recovered from the shock of arriving to a work event in a ten-year-old car and was riding high on the joys of watching his employees’ families meeting baseball players and throwing baseballs around.
Of all the excitement around him, there was one thing that kept catching his eye.
And that was Michelle’s smile.
Every time he looked over at her, she was beaming down at her daughter. Mollie was certainly stuck to her side, her shyness out in full force now, but she seemed to be enjoying the general ruckus of watching baseball players autograph baseballs, pose for pictures, and play catch with their families. He watched Michelle joke around a few times with the baseball players she worked with. She got along with them like they were old friends, not new work colleagues.
The woman was a beam of light. She was sexy and soft and subtly sarcastic. And really, he wasn’t minding these dates. Not one bit.
Which reminded him that it was time for his best friends to see how well he was doing with the bet. They thought he’d fall flat on his face if he had to go on more than one date, but Blake was here to prove to them that he would stop at nothing to get DJ Fiesta in his nightclub. He trotted over to Michelle and Mollie, his phone in hand.
“Hey, girls. Let’s get a selfie.”
Mollie jumped at the opportunity, and Michelle pulled her daughter into her side. Blake held out the phone so he could fit them all in the frame, and the three of them made silly faces for the picture.
“Can I see? Can I see?” Mollie hopped up and down at his side, so Blake showed her the picture he’d just taken. She clapped her hands together.
“Mommy, you look so pretty!” Mollie said. Blake grinned, catching Michelle’s eye as a blush stained her cheeks.
“Thanks, sweetie,” Michelle said, smoothing her hand over Mollie’s head. “But not as pretty as you.”
Blake thought it better to keep his mouth shut about how pretty he thought Michelle was, so instead, he said, “Mollie, I hear you like to perform. Can I see your show?”
Mollie’s eyes lit up. “I can sing real good!”
Blake knelt down to get on her level and listened as Mollie launched into a soft but sweet rendition of Mary Had A Little Lamb. When she was done, Blake applauded loudly.
“Do you want to sing over the microphone now?”
Mollie’s eyes went wide, somewhere between awestruck and terrified.
“It’s okay,” Blake conceded. “You don’t have to if you don’t want to. Maybe next time. After some more rehearsal.”
Michelle laughed, squeezing her daughter’s shoulder. “You did a great job, honey.”
One of the baseball players called over to Michelle, waving her over. Michelle and Mollie wandered that way, and Blake dug out his phone to send a text to his friends, including his selfie with Mollie and Michelle.
“This marks our second date,” Blake typed. “Almost halfway to winning.”
Grayson was the first to respond. “Where are you?”
“Seagulls’ team and staff mixer,” Blake wrote back.
“I don’t know, buddy,” Grayson’s text said a moment later. “You’re going to have to try harder. Both of these dates have been work-related. They hardly count as dates. What do you think, Daniel?”
Daniel’s reply came a moment later. “Agree with Grayson. We’ll allow these two, but the next three must have nothing to do with the Seagulls.”
Blake rolled his eyes, tapping out a fast response. “Since when did you two become such date dictators?”
Grayson’s reply came fast. “Our bet. Our rules.”
Blake sighed, pocketing his phone. His gaze drifted to Michelle and Mollie on the field. One of the uniformed baseball players had knelt down to talk to Mollie at eye level, helping fit a glove onto her hand. Even from over here, he could hear her shrieking laughter. Michelle glanced back at him, joy written on her face.
He waved, and Michelle got Mollie’s attention so that she looked back and waved at Blake too.
They were perfect. Beautiful and sweet. Pure, even.
Guilt panged through him, making his smile fall slightly.
It wasn’t right to use Michelle and her daughter like this, just so he could win a bet. The only thing that kept him from feeling like a complete asshole was the fact that at least they were having fun. He wasn’t asking Michelle to do anything wild, and he was providing her daughter with new, fun experiences. That wasn’t so bad, after all. The bet was harmless. At the end, they’d all part ways as friends and be done with it.
And it wasn’t like he planned on seducing Michelle and then ditching her. No, there’d be no seducing at all.
Even though the longer he looked at the sexy curve of her ass while she bent over to talk to Mollie, the less he wanted to look away.
There’d be no seduction—only distant appreciation—throughout these dates. If he had his way, there wouldn’t even be kissing. Even though his neck went hot at the mere thought of what her perfect pink lips might feel like against
his.
No, there was zero chance he’d fall into bed with a single mom. Not just because she was a mother, but because he assumed that if she was looking for anything, it was someone who would be there for the long haul.
And if there was one thing he knew about himself, it was that he wasn’t the long-haul kind of guy.
That wasn’t him.
It could never be him.
A few days after the outing with the baseball players, Mollie wouldn’t stop asking about Mr. Blake.
Like mother, like daughter, she supposed. Because Michelle couldn’t stop thinking about Mr. Blake, either.
She and Mollie had spent their weekend together, per usual, going to parks, watching movies and cooking at home. And by the time she returned to work on Monday, she realized she’d been puzzling over one question for the entire weekend:
What does Blake want with me?
She didn’t know why he’d invited her to go with him to the baseball outing on Thursday. Both that and the workout equipment assessment were neutral, platonic activities, so it seemed out of the question that he was maybe hitting on her.
But still, she swore she caught the heat of desire in his eyes when he looked at her. Maybe this was his way of courting her. The idea made something dizzy and swirling run through her. Was she being courted? By a man like Blake?
She didn’t want to be. Obviously. Not because he wasn’t great—he was definitely great—but because she wasn’t looking for a relationship. And yet…what if he was?
She couldn’t think about it. Not when she had no proof, and there was no word from him.
Still, her monkey brain kept chewing on the idea. She entertained the notion that he was taking it slow, since she was technically his employee, even if she didn’t report to him. Or maybe taking it slow because of Mollie—that seemed logical. Or maybe there was no sexual interest at all, and this was just two happenstance events that occurred randomly? That didn’t seem quite right either.
She couldn’t stop herself from mulling over it in the back of her mind throughout the weekend. And things got even more complicated when Blake wrote again on Sunday morning.
