Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (102 page)

“I still can’t dance,” she said with a
grimace.

“Remember what I told you about slow
dancing.”

“Yes, it’s like making love.”

“Then make love to me on the dance floor,
Summer.”

She grinned and led me out in front of the
stage. I took her into my arms and we began to dance. “Will you teach me?” she
asked.

I looked down at her pretty face. “Teach
you what, baby?”

“Will you teach me how to dance, the way
you taught me how to surf?”

I grinned at her. “It would be my
pleasure.”

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COACH
– THE COMPLETE SERIES

By
Nella Tyler

This
book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places and incidents are
products of the writer's imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not
to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual
events, locales or organizations is entirely coincidental.

Copyright
© 2016 Nella Tyler

VOLUME I

Chapter
One

Natalie

I tried not to fidget while I waited at
the table inside Greentree Café, looking around to spot my date as soon as he
arrived. It was almost like a blind date—but I knew we wouldn’t end up in some
kind of relationship, or ever end up sleeping together, even if it went well.
It was practice. My “date” was actually a client by the name of Zeke Baxter, a
30-year-old bachelor who had finally come to the decision to take time away
from wheeling and dealing to get back into the dating world; maybe he was
getting into the dating world for the first time.

I had a lot of sympathy for my clients; I
had actually taken my job as a dating coach with a company that coached clients
before setting them up on real dates because I wanted an excuse to meet people,
to go on dates. Based on the profile that my boss had given me, Zeke was an all
right guy: tall, with decent taste in fashion, groomed, and well-to-do. He
didn’t have that many interests listed on his chart, but I figured that we
could find something that would be fun to do on our dates together in the
future.

The first meeting with a new client always
made me a little nervous. It was like an actual date and a job interview all
rolled up into one. I glanced around the café once more, resisting the urge to
check the time for another minute or so. I’d arrived early to make sure I could
scope out the place—it was closer to Zeke’s office, somewhere I’d only been
once or twice before. It seemed like a decent place, and glancing at the menu,
I’d noticed that it was slightly higher-end than I would have picked for
myself, but then, I didn’t have to worry about the tab at the end of the night.
One of the conditions of my contract was that the client paid for all dates—but
then, of course, the client had final say in what the dates would be and where
they would be.

I heard my phone vibrate in my purse and
snatched it up, wondering if it was Zeke texting to tell me that he was late or
my boss contacting me to let me know that the client had backed out, gotten
cold feet, or decided to put practice dating on hold. Instead of either of those
options, the text had come from my babysitter, and I opened the message
eagerly.
Brady is doing great! Just
wanted to check in.
Attached to the message was a picture of my son playing
with his favorite stuffed animal lobster toy.
We’ll start getting ready for bed soon,
Alicia added. I smiled to
myself; though I missed my son when I had to be away to work, I didn’t have
much choice—and I knew that he was in good hands with Alicia.

I replied to the messages quickly, feeling
a stab of guilt at the fact that I had my phone out when I was supposed to be
waiting patiently for my coaching client to arrive.
Looks like you’re having a great time! I will definitely be home on
time this evening, so let my sweetie know that if he’s good and takes his bath,
I’ll bring a treat home for him as a bedtime snack.
I tapped send and then
locked the screen, putting the phone back into my purse. Unless something
happened to Brady, I didn’t think I’d hear from the sitter for the rest of the
evening, which was as it should be.

I told myself that it was just another
date with just another client. Zeke Baxter was like any one of a dozen clients
I’d worked with since I had taken the job on, and I would be just as capable of
steering him in the right direction as I had with every other client. I would
smooth off his rough edges, get his confidence up, and in next to no time—a few
months, tops—I would discharge him and he’d be out in the world, asking women
out, finding a girlfriend and maybe a wife. After about two years on the job, I
knew what to expect; I knew how to handle almost any client my boss could throw
at me.

It had started shortly after my son Brady
had turned one. When I’d had Brady, my life had been completely and totally
different to what it was now. I’d been married, thinking that I was starting a
life and a family with the man I loved. I had actually believed when I’d gotten
pregnant with my son that I was going to be with Alex for the rest of my life,
that we’d grow old together.

Brady hadn’t exactly been an accident, but
he had been sort of a surprise. Alex and I had talked about having kids, and I
had stopped taking birth control, but we’d thought that it would take a few
months for my cycle to clear out, for the hormones to get fully out of my
system. That was what the doctor had told me. So when I’d gotten pregnant less
than two months after stopping birth control, it had been kind of a shock—but
one I was ready to embrace. At first, Alex had been, too; he had told me again
and again how glad he was that we were getting it over with, getting started
right off the mark. He had told me that he wanted to have two more after the
first one, as long as I was ready for them. And of course, when we went to the
ultrasound appointment where they told us Brady’s sex, he’d spent the entire
week afterward beaming and bragging to all of his friends and coworkers that he
was having a boy.

And then Brady had arrived. I’d had what
they called an easy labor—and having heard all the horror stories myself, I had
to admit objectively that it could have been a lot worse—and after six hours of
waiting, and waiting, and holding back, and then pushing, Brady had come out of
me: perfect, tiny, with a fuzzy head stained with blood from my body and ten
tiny fingers and toes. He’d been just over seven pounds, and when he screamed
out his first breath, I was immediately in love. I almost couldn’t make myself
put him down, even though I knew I should. I nursed him, and loved him, and
cared about him more than I had cared about anything or anyone else in my life.

I don’t know if things had gone bad
between Alex and me before I even gave birth to Brady, but after I got home
from the hospital, things started to go downhill faster and faster. Alex
couldn’t understand why I was exhausted all the time; he came home and if I
didn’t have dinner done and Brady quiet, he left right away, headed into town
to meet up with his friends to grab a meal with them. He tried to paint it as
an attempt to take the burden off of me, but I couldn’t help but resent the
fact that he could come and go—and did—as he pleased, while I was more or less
trapped under house arrest. And of course, Alex wanted to go back to having sex
several times a week as soon as I had medical clearance to do so; but even
though I felt more in control of my body, more sexual than I had in the last
months before delivering Brady, I still needed warming up before I felt like
actually having sex.

Everything went from bad to worse as the
months went by, and it became obvious to me that Alex hadn’t actually been
fully ready to have a son. Alex wanted everything to be the way that it was
before Brady had been born, before I’d even gotten pregnant. He didn’t want to
get up at night to feed the baby, he didn’t want to take care of Brady for a
few hours so I could take a nap, enjoy a long bath, or maybe meet up with my
friends for lunch or a cup of coffee. He barely even noticed Brady at all, in
fact.

By my son’s first birthday, it had been
obvious to me that it just wasn’t going to work. I’d been ashamed at first
because I’d always thought that I’d have better taste, better discernment in
picking someone to make a family with, and because I knew my family would think
that it was at least partially my own fault. I wished that I could be what Alex
wanted me to be, and what Brady needed me to be, at the same time, but when
Alex barely even managed to show up for his own son’s birthday party, and
barely paid attention to the party at that, I had known that I couldn’t do it
anymore. I had to make a choice. And I chose Brady.

Alex didn’t cause much trouble in the
family courts. He didn’t want more than token visitation rights and he was
willing to pay child support. For my part, I’d told the lawyer that took my case
that I wanted the bare minimum from Alex. I didn’t want to feel like I was
taking advantage of him or that I was being given guilt money. I just wanted
enough to support Brady. But of course, I wanted to support my own self. So I’d
begun to look for a job.

One of my friends had suggested that since
I was newly single, and since I was pretty and experienced in the world, I
should sign up to be a dating coach. I’d thought she was out of her mind until
I looked at the job posting; it was flexible hours, which of course I would
need for taking care of my toddler son, and the pay was excellent. I’d studied
psychology in college, though I hadn’t gotten my counseling license because I’d
married Alex almost right after graduation and he’d had an excellent job that
paid well, with good benefits, but I still knew the ropes.

After a questionnaire, four interviews,
and a practice date with one of the other coaches and her client, I was
onboard. I found that I actually liked the work. It was definitely better than
working a call center or in retail, which at that point had been my only other
options short of going back to school. After two years, I hadn’t found anyone
that I personally wanted to date on my own—that was, my boss Katie had told me,
one of the biggest dangers of the job—but I had gotten comfortable in my own
skin and knew more than ever what I wanted in a man. As I settled in to wait
for Zeke to arrive, I went over my standard first meeting questions in my mind
and told myself that this would be the same as any assignment, maybe even a
little better. Guys who knew how to take care of themselves were a lot easier
to coach. I might even get a bonus if I could steer this businessman in the
right direction faster than the projected timeframe.

That
is, of course, if he takes it seriously. If he runs late, I’ll know he’s going
to be the type that I have to be firm with from the beginning and lighten up
later on.
I checked the time; he had all of ten minutes before
he was officially late to his first session with me, and I would absolutely
note that down on my report. If he was more than fifteen minutes late, I could
cancel our appointment with no fault, and I would get to go home to my little
man early and bring him the treat I’d promised.

Chapter
Two

Zeke

 
I felt
a little nervous when I got to Greentree Café, but I told myself that was
normal; I hadn’t been on a date with anyone at all in years, and even if this
was nothing more than a practice date, it gave me the same feeling I got when I
had to make a presentation to a prospective client cold.
Except you’d better keep in mind that you’re the client this time,
Zeke,
I told myself as I walked up and opened the door to the café. I’d
agreed to meet with Natalie here because it was within walking distance of my
office; even if I’d had to stay a little late to finish up a few things, I’d
figured it would be easy to dash out for the forty-five minutes that the date
would last and then get back into the office building after if I had to.
Fortunately, I’d managed to get all the work off of my plate before the end of
the day, so when six-thirty rolled around, I was ready to change out of my suit
and into a pair of jeans and a casual shirt. I had a name—Natalie Leathers—and
I figured that I would see what she looked like when I got to the table where
she was waiting for me.

The hostess at the stand in front of the
café was cute: blonde, skinny, wearing the black skirt and white blouse that
made up the café uniform. “Good evening,” I said, inclining my head towards
her. “I’m meeting someone here—her name is Natalie Leathers. Has she arrived?”

The hostess consulted her book for a
moment and nodded. “Ah, yes—I see right here,” the woman said, nodding again.
She looked up at me and smiled. “She’s been here a little while, actually. I
hope you’re not running late?”

“Just on time,” I said, smiling back at
her. “Five minutes early, in fact.”

“Good job,” she said. “If you’ll follow
me, I’ll take you right over to her.” I followed the blonde as she stepped out
from behind the hostess stand and started off across the dining room of the
café, wondering which of the women at the tables was my dating coach. The
matchmaking service had specifically kept me in the dark about what she would
look like, insisting that my coach’s attractiveness was immaterial to their
ability to get me ready for actual dating. I’d gone with it; after all, if my
dating coach was hideous, she’d at least be pleasant—or so I could hope. And,
it was probably for the best if I wasn’t attracted to her.