Reality of Love Boxed Set: Books 1-3

by Marika Ray

  She’d opened the door wearing the weirdest outfit and then practically passed out over a tiny nick on her finger. Then in thanks she hurled scissors at my feet, like they’d offended her with their size thirteen lace-up oxfords. To top it all off, her skirt kept sliding down and all she did was inch backward, her eyes locked to my face, like she was trying to hypnotize me into not noticing she was dropping her skirt.

  Of course that attempt went out the window when her skirt hit the floor and I got a flash sighting of her pale legs and pink cotton underwear. I looked away of course—I wasn’t an asshole—but the image was still locked in my brain, waiting for this exact moment to be taken out and examined in detail.

  Physically, Lily-Marie was the epitome of everything feminine that turned me on. The long, blond hair. The pretty dresses. The curves I wanted to trace with my hands. The throaty voice that made me wonder what she sounded like first thing in the morning before her head even left the pillow.

  So there I was, attracted to her and wanting to be her hero, bandaging her finger like I was performing open-heart surgery. And then she threw scissors at me and I didn’t know if I’d been bewitched by Freddy Krueger.

  If that wasn’t whiplash enough, then she flashed me her panties and I found out her perfect curves extended to her thighs. She preferred comfortable underwear, like I would expect a stereotypical mom to choose, but they were also in a pretty pink. Like she had a flair for femininity that just couldn’t be denied.

  Did I really know Lily-Marie? Why was she acting so weird yesterday? And should I let my son ride to school with her?

  I rolled out of bed and pulled on a pair of gray sweatpants. As I shaved in my bathroom, I came to the conclusion that I could be attracted to her all I wanted, but I needed to reassess things this morning before I let Stein get in her car. We’d agreed to start carpooling today, but I had to protect the most precious thing in the world to me: my son. If she was acting weird again this morning, I’d come up with an excuse to take him myself.

  Pink panties or not, I had a responsibility.

  “Come on, Dad, we’re gonna be late!” Stein raced through the house with his backpack bouncing around behind him as he ran.

  “All right, all right,” I mumbled as I followed behind, smoothing down my hair and reminding myself to ignore how beautiful Lily-Marie might look this morning and be objective.

  By the time I shut the front door behind me, Stein was over by the neighbor’s SUV talking about something exciting with Clark. Their arms were flying all over as they got into it, whatever it was. Or maybe they both just had to pee. Milly was jumping up and down, trying to get either boy’s attention to no avail.

  A slamming door had my head turning to see Lily-Marie exiting her front door with a travel mug on top of a book, a purse on one shoulder, and a full tote bag hooked on the other arm. She was trying to lock the front door, but was about as successful as Milly when she tried to play with the older boys.

  I walked over and took the book and mug out of her hand. She glanced over and blew some hair out of her face, a quick smile her morning greeting.

  “Thanks. Don’t know why I’m always rushing on Monday.” She flipped the lock and threw her keys in her purse. Turning fully toward me, she took a deep breath. “I’m sorry about yesterday. I’ll try to explain later, but right now I have to get these kids to school.”

  Something about her facing her embarrassment and addressing her odd behavior yesterday put me instantly at ease. Ignoring it like the behavior was normal would have been a bad sign. So I went with my gut.

  I backed away and nodded. “Totally understand. See you here at drop-off?”

  “You bet. Have a killer Monday.” She flashed that broad grin and rushed past me, urging the kids to get in and buckle up.

  I stood straddling our property line and waved them off. I stayed until the car turned the corner and could no longer be seen.

  “I wonder...” I muttered out loud, rubbing my chin and finding a spot I missed while shaving. A more important thought than my questionable grooming habits occurred to me as I stood there: was Lily-Marie acting weird because money was so tight she couldn’t afford to buy clothes? Making them was her only option? She was always wearing these beautiful sundresses. Maybe she made them all. She was a single mother, after all.

  Maybe I needed to reassure her that there was nothing shameful about being frugal or making your own clothes. In fact, I admired her ingenuity. Instead of backing out of her front door yesterday, afraid for my safety, I should have been setting her mind at ease.

  I ran inside my house and grabbed my laminated sheet off the kitchen counter. The list of fifty ways specifically said to take the woman clothes shopping. Well, it said to do it for a date, but I didn’t see how we could do that with three kids between us. We’d just have to take them with us.

  Mind made up, I finished getting ready and climbed in my car to head to the college. My mind was spinning, but one thing was for sure: I had to set things right by being a gentleman.

  I heard car doors slamming, which brought me out of my curriculum building for the new biochem level-three class I wanted to offer in the fall. Shutting my laptop, I hopped up and ran outside, stiff from sitting all day, both at school and in my home office.

  Stein came walking across the lawn. “Hey, Dad.” He threw me a toothy grin, but kept walking to our house, probably to eat his habitual after-school snack. Seeing that he was home safe and acting normal, my gaze left him to settle on Lily-Marie gathering her things from the back of the car. I scanned her from head to toe, not to be a Neanderthal thinking a pretty woman was there for my viewing enjoyment—though I did enjoy it—but to see if I could discern if my homemade clothes theory was accurate.

  Both of her kids had already jumped out of the car too, running inside leaving just the two of us. She was wearing one of the dresses I’d come to expect from her: soft, feminine, gorgeous. She had shapely calves that led down to tiny feet in a cork wedge heel, making her taller than she really was. I didn’t know why the combination worked, but it set my heart rate into a gallop.

  “The eagles are in the nest,” Lily-Marie said with her head still in the back of her car.

  I frowned. “There are eagles around here?”

  Her head pulled out of the car and she smiled at me. “No, silly. It’s a phrase. You know? Like the kids are back home?”

  Oh. “I got it now. An idiom.” I shoved my hands in my pockets and rocked back on my heels. I needed to hurry up and ask her to go shopping before I ruined yet another conversation with my awkwardness.

  “Ohh...we got ourselves an English professor now?” Lily-Marie gave me a saucy grin and a wink, both of which hit my solar plexus the same as a physical blow.

  “I-I’m sorry. I was deep into a biochem book when you got home and my brain sometimes takes a few minutes to catch up to normal conversation.” I felt a moment of relief from having explained myself, then realized I’d phrased my offhand comment as if we lived together, sharing a mutual “home.” I sucked in a deep breath and hoped she didn’t take it that way. “Here, let me help you.”

  Lily-Marie handed off her large tote bag, which seemed to be as heavy as the bag of science textbooks I was always bringing home. “Thanks. I have a bunch of paperwork to go through tonight. Our department is trying to go paperless, but getting to that point takes a lot of scanning and shredding, you know?”

  I nodded, understanding completely, as that was something most colleges were doing as well. Following her up the driveway, I decided to just throw it out there. Couldn’t be any more awkward than anything else I’d ever said in front of her. “So. I was wondering if you and the kids wanted to go shopping with Stein and me soon. He needs some new clothes and we always end up arguing over what to buy. I figure if we make it something fun with you guys it won’t be such a chore. What do you say?”

  She opened the front door for me and let me walk inside before dropping her purse and keys on the entry t
able. “Sure. Probably the weekend would be best.” She pulled off her jacket and hung it on a hook. “I bet Clark and Milly could use a few things too.”

  I nodded, inordinately pleased she’d said yes. The bar stool chair looked like the best place to unload a ridiculous amount of paperwork. My back was still turned when I casually added, “Maybe we can find you some things too.”

  Immediate silence behind me told me she’d either left the room or I hadn’t been very sly with my comment. In my extensive experience, the answer to most troubling questions was usually “user error.” I’d always had a hard time connecting with people in a real way. My words tripped over themselves on the way out of my mouth to land in a clumsy heap in front of my intended recipient. I’d come to expect it, but I’d never had a visceral loathing of my inability to converse naturally like I did in that moment.

  I spun around to see Lily-Marie staring at me, eyes guarded, head cocked to the side. “That’s a strange comment,” she said slowly.

  I tried valiantly to assemble the words in my head before they left my mouth, but as they say, “go big or go home.” Like rogue soldiers, the words jumped ship and rearranged, dumping a stinking pile of nonsense at her feet. “Well, you were making a skirt. And you’re a mom. So, I figured some shopping would be helpful.” I winced.

  I’m no expert when it comes to women, but her hand fisting on her hip and the arch of one eyebrow said things were about to get ugly.

  “I’m sorry, what?” She inhaled quickly and I guessed correctly again that was a rhetorical question. She unleashed and I took the hits. “Because I’m a mom I need help picking out clothes? You don’t like the way I dress? ’Cause I’m pretty sure I never asked your opinion on what I choose to wear on my own body. And just because I was making a skirt doesn’t mean I’m hard up for clothes. I was making a skirt to catch a man. The last thing I need is to go shopping with an egotistical male who will influence my young daughter with stupid ideas like needing a man to pick out your clothes because her own opinion isn’t valid.”

  She shook her head and seemed to be collecting more weapons in this verbal warfare I found myself in. I had to jump in before this went from bad to worse. I flung my hands out in the universal sign of peace.

  “No. Stop. Please. That’s not what I meant. I would never insinuate that you need my opinion. I happen to love everything you wear, if you someday ask for my opinion. You have to understand. I don’t say things right. I never have.” I ran a hand through my hair, upsetting my carefully pomaded hairstyle. I was begging for her to understand, not even pausing to wonder why her impression of me mattered so much. “I just wanted to help. You’re a single mom and if you couldn’t afford clothes, I didn’t want to stand by and do nothing. I just wanted to help. That’s all.”

  She took a deep breath and the fire left her eyes with her exhale. She dropped my gaze for a moment before swinging it back and granting me a single nod. “Apology accepted. I’m sorry I jumped to conclusions. But I’m not hurting for money nor do I need you to buy me clothes.”

  I took a step closer. “Understood. And you’re not the only conclusion jumper. Next time I’ll just ask before coming up with weird ideas.” My heart was pounding like I’d ridden twenty miles on my bike. I was awkward, but persistent. “Any chance you’re still on for shopping, though? I wasn’t kidding about Stein needing clothes. And it would be nice to spend some time together.” A bead of sweat dripped down the center of my lower back.

  A tilt to her lips and then a full smile took over her face, letting the sunshine come out again. “Yes, shopping sounds great. How about Friday night? The kids don’t go to their dad’s until Saturday morning.”

  Now that the ceasefire was called, I should have been ecstatic to escape without a scrape. But my chest felt heavy, like something was off. It wasn’t until I said my goodbyes and walked to her door to head back to my place that it came to me. I was making a skirt to catch a man.

  What the hell?

  I froze as her words reverberated through my brain. One hand on the doorknob and not one rational thought to be found pinging around in there. My brain scrambled like my words and my body followed suit, acting like that of a robot. Reaching up to my shirt cuff, I grabbed a button and pulled. A discreet cough and the button was off without a sound. I let it slip through my fingers and fall to the floor, pinging off the tile and over my shoe. It rolled until it hit the wall by the door, falling over and coming to a stop.

  Lily-Marie, having been behind me as we walked to her door, followed the path of the button and then stooped to pick it up. She flipped it over in her hand and then eyed my shirt. I was like a deer in headlights. The woman had more intelligence in her pinky finger than I had in my whole brain, science degrees or not. There was no way she was going to fall for the fact that my button had magically come off my shirt. I wasn’t that good of an actor.

  “Are you missing a button?” She trailed a finger down my torso, my muscles jumping and convulsing beneath her simple touch. I would have answered her if I still had breath in my body. She didn’t wait for a response, simply grabbing my hands and examining my cuffs, finally seeing the empty spot where threads dangled in the air. “Aha! Here. Damn mass-manufactured shirts these days. Always dropping buttons and seams coming unraveled.”

  She released my wrist and held the button out toward me. Time to go for broke. I rubbed the back of my neck. Anything to stop the tingling in my arm from where she held me. “Yeah, thanks. Um, any chance you could help me sew it back on? Seeing as how you’re good with a needle and thread.”

  Her gaze whipped up and behind the guardedness from earlier, I could see a hint of pleasure. The tiny lines around her eyes relaxed and smoothed over at the compliment. She finally nodded. “Sure, I can do that for you. Just—”

  All I heard was “sure” and I started unbuttoning my shirt right then and there.

  “What—what are you doing?” Her mouth dropped open.

  I continued unbuttoning and then took the shirt off, revealing the tight white undershirt below. How else was she going to sew it back on? I was pretty sure she couldn’t do it while I was still in the shirt. “Giving you my shirt so you can sew the button on.”

  Her eyes darted back and forth across my chest and if I wasn’t hallucinating, I could see a soft blush spreading across her cheeks.

  She accepted the balled- up shirt from my outstretched hand and chuckled. “Clothes keep coming off when we see each other...”

  9

  Lily-Marie

  “So I wore the skirt and not one man at work said anything to me. A lady from accounting complimented me in the break room, though.”

  “And how old was she?” Gabby asked me over the phone.

  I grimaced. “Close to retirement,” I mumbled.

  A bark of laughter had me pulling the phone from my ear. I got defensive. “Listen. So far, most of these fifty ways to find a husband have been total duds, but the Band-Aid thing totally worked. Just happened around the wrong man. I gotta keep going, Gabby. Besides, getting a new skirt out of the deal is better than being pickpocketed, so I’d have to rate my methods better than those stupid dating apps so far. Don’t you think?”

  Gabby had calmed down enough to listen. “I will give you that. But I still don’t hold out much hope of you finding success with this scheme of yours. I’m sorry. I love you and I want you to be happy, but following advice from the 1950s seems a little cray-cray.”

  I pulled the phone from my mouth and shouted up the stairs, “Clark! You better be reading right now.” When I heard a grunt in response, I went back to talking to Gabby. “I know it’s a little crazy, but I’m willing to do whatever I need to, to find Mr. Right. Can’t ding me for trying.”

  “Girl, you gotta let me write this stuff up in my column. Pretty please? I promise you it’ll be anonymous and complimentary toward you. I’ve already written up three articles and I just need to hit submit to send them to my editor to get the series going.”


  I rubbed my forehead. She’d been lobbying hard to use my dating dilemmas for her newspaper for a while now and I just couldn’t say no anymore. My defenses were low. “Fine. Submit it.” I raised my voice over her loud whooping. “But make sure you keep details out that could ever be traced back to me. Promise?”

  “I vow on my firstborn child—whenever that might be—to protect you. Thank you, Lil. This docu-series is going to go viral, I can feel it.”

  I rolled my eyes. Viral. “Yeah, whatever, just make sure you remember me in your acceptance speech of whatever awards they give to newspaper columnists.”

  “Uh, there are no awards.”

  “Well, shit. I guess I’ll take a rain check. I kinda like you owing me one.” It was my turn to giggle, but she was all business and didn’t even acknowledge the imbalance of favors owed.

  “Okay, so tell me about your latest interactions with Jameson.”

  I shook my head. “I’m not trying to marry Jameson, nor am I using my list where he’s concerned. Forget him. Let’s talk about my next moves.”

  “Nah-uh. Back up and tell me about Jameson and then tell me your next moves.”

  I sighed and rolled my eyes again, but went over all the awkwardness with Jameson, leaving out the muscles I’d felt and seen when I’d touched him and he took his shirt off the other day. That part was irrelevant and quite frankly, embarrassing. When I’d tried to watch Beauty and the Beast last night before bed, I’d actually been comparing Gaston’s physique to Jameson’s. When I realized what I was doing, I turned it off and proceeded to toss and turn for far too long. His buttonless shirt sat on my dining table, mocking me.

  “Hmm.”

  That was all Gabby said when I got done with my Jameson interactions. Which was strange. She usually had a litany of commentary, even when I didn’t want it. When the silence stretched out, I launched into the stuff that mattered: my next moves.