Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (103 page)

The hostess stopped at one of the tables
and I took a second to look over the woman sitting at it. She stood, smiling
slightly. Dressed in a blazer, a nice blouse, and a pair of jeans, she looked
completely casual and completely professional at the same time. Her red-brown
hair was pulled back off of her face, tied back in some kind of bun. Even with
the blazer on, I could tell she had a good figure: full breasts straining at
the front of her blouse even though she’d chosen something that wouldn’t show
cleavage, and the cut of her clothes made her slimmer waist and nice hips
visible. “Natalie, I assume?” I said, holding out my hand for hers. She shook
my hand and the smile deepened slightly.

“Nice to meet you, Zeke,” she told me.
“Please, have a seat.” The hostess left us as I sat down across the table from
my new dating coach.

“I have to admit,” I said, picking up the
menu but not actually looking at it, “I did not have high hopes when it came to
going on a date with someone who was supposed to coach me.” Natalie chuckled.

“Why not?” she shrugged, gesturing all
around her. “I’m very good at what I do, and a lot of what we’re going to be
doing is mostly just…sort of fine tuning the instincts you already have.”

“But if I have dating instincts already,
how is it that I need your help to go on dates?” I raised an eyebrow at her.

“Everyone’s got instincts,” she told me.
“But if you don’t use a particular kind of instinct for a while, your sense of
it sort of deadens over time. You become a little bit numb to it, and learning
how to put it to use doesn’t come automatically.”

“I’ve always been a very instinctive
person,” I said. “And a quick learner. I doubt I’ll need more than a few
sessions to get back onto my feet.”

“I’m sure both of those things are true,”
Natalie countered. “But at the same time, I’ve been doing this for two years;
I’ve worked with dozens of clients in that time. Generally, it does take some
time before the people I coach are comfortable enough in the process to
actually make proper inroads on dating someone.”

“I’ll have to hope to prove you wrong,” I
told her with a grin, “and earn the dating coach equivalent of a silver star
then.”

“I know you won’t believe me,” she said,
her eyes gleaming, “but I actually hope you do. I love to see my clients
succeed beyond my hopes.” She cleared her throat and glanced down at the menu.
“Would you rather wait until we’ve ordered to discuss all the business details,
or should we jump right in?”

“Let’s order first, so we don’t keep the
waiter hanging,” I suggested.
She is
actually really cute. Thank God. On the other hand, she might be a bit
distracting. Oh well; I’ll learn fast with someone like this to keep me on my
toes, at least.
I looked over the menu and picked something almost at
random; I didn’t really care what I ate that much. Natalie ordered one of the
specials—the steak-frites—when the waitress came to the table and told us about
them, along with a glass of wine to go with my beer.

“So, let’s discuss the dates to come,”
Natalie said.

“I’d love to,” I told her.

“First, we have to talk about the ground
rules,” she explained. I wanted to pay attention, but the first few rules were
so basic and made so much sense that I could feel myself beginning to tune out
in favor of simply admiring what she looked like, the sound of her voice. “As
long as we have that level of mutual respect, I think we’ll be fine,” Natalie
said, wrapping up, and I nodded.

“Of course,” I agreed. “I absolutely
respect your experience and expertise.” I started in on my meal—some kind of
chicken dish with roasted potatoes and greens.

“Now that we have the preliminaries out of
the way,” Natalie said, “is there anything you want to know about me?”

“What got you into this line of work?”
That was something I couldn’t help but be curious about.

“I sort of got into it for the same reason
you’re getting coaching right now. I wanted to meet new people.”

“You don’t date clients though, do you?”
She gave me a look, one eyebrow raised as she ate a French fry.

“Rule number two: no romance between coach
and client,” she told me a little tartly. “We’re going on dates together as
practice for you, to get you back into the swing of things—not for either of us
to fall in love with each other.”

“Oh, right, sorry,” I said, picking up my
glass and taking a sip of my beer. “I remember that now.” I leaned in closer to
her slightly. “But haven’t you ever been tempted, since you’ve been doing this
for so long?”

She laughed. “Most of the guys that I
coach are…” she took a quick, deep breath. “Rougher around the edges than you.
Very, very few of them are tempting from my standpoint.” She cut a bite-sized
piece of her steak, dipped it into her aioli, and popped it into her mouth,
chewing and swallowing before she continued. “And doing this job has given me
the great benefit of knowing exactly what I want in a boyfriend—assuming I ever
find it.”

“What’s that?” I said, smiling to myself.
She wants someone rich, good looking, and
hung—that’s why she’s meeting so many guys like you through this date coaching
thing.

“I want a guy who respects me,” she said.
“Who cares about me. Who wants to share his actual life with me.”

“What about money?”

Natalie shrugged. “Money is nice, but it’s
not the end-all-be-all. I’ve been with guys who have money—not rich, but
comfortable.” She made a face, wrinkling her nose. She shook her head.
She’s too cute for all this,
I thought.
Someone should snatch her up, give her a big
house to take care of.
“Respect, mutual love, those things are more
important to me.”

“Are you sure about that?” I grinned.
“Money makes the world go ‘round.” Natalie gave me another look, and I felt a
jolt like electricity run through my body.

“If money took care of everything, then
you wouldn’t be here, learning how to date properly.”

“Oh! Good point,” I said, waving my fork a
bit. “Although you have to admit: money bought the service of you teaching me
how to date properly.”

“Okay, I’ll give you that,” she said. “So,
tell me: what are some of the things that you’re interested in?”

“Interested in?” I shrugged. “I haven’t
really had much of an opportunity for a personal life.” I wracked my brain to
try and come up with something, I had to admit that I had become boring over
the years. “I like the usual stuff: movies, music, hiking, all that kind of
stuff.”

“We can work with that,” she told me.
“When do you want to set our next date for?”

“I set this up through my personal
assistant,” I said, shrugging. “He can confirm all the details with you.”

“I would rather make sure that we’re in
agreement on the date before we part ways,” Natalie said firmly. “It’s a good
habit for you, even if you do have a personal assistant. The women you’ll
eventually date will expect for
you
to make dates with them, not your PA. So best to get in the habit now, don’t
you think?” She raised an eyebrow and tilted her head to the side slightly, and
I smiled.

“Okay, fine,” I said. “Next week? Do I
have to pick a day now, or can I wait until I have my schedule to look at to
confirm?” Natalie rolled her eyes, though her lips were still curved up in a little
smile.

“Next week is fine,” she said. “I’ll get
in touch to confirm the specific day, and we’ll go from there.” She gave me a
longer look and pressed her lips together. “I really hope that you’re taking
this seriously, Zeke. I would hate for you to be wasting your money and my
time.”

“I am taking this all very seriously,” I
told her. “We should order something for dessert, don’t you think?” I spent the
rest of the evening trying to figure out what kind of woman Natalie was, and by
the time we parted ways at the door to the café, I thought that it was a good
thing indeed that I’d have a couple of months to get to know her.
Good practice, anyway, at getting to know a
woman who isn’t one of your employees,
I thought to myself. As I walked
back to the office to grab my car and head home, I couldn’t quite get Natalie
out of my mind. Maybe it was because it had been so long since I’d dated
anyone, or maybe she was unusually pretty and unusually confident in herself,
but she struck me more than almost anyone I’d met in years.
This could be interesting, at least,
I
thought as I put the night behind me and focused on getting home.

Chapter
Three

Natalie

A few days after my first meeting with
Zeke, I was at home, getting Brady ready for bed. It was one of the rare
occasions when I’d had a full day off. While I only worked thirty hours a week,
those hours were scattered between dates with coaching clients and meetings to
discuss my clients, so it wasn’t often that I had a day completely and totally
to myself. Brady and I had gone to his favorite park to feed the ducks, the zoo
to look at the animals, and had ended at the library, where I’d helped him pick
out his bedtime books for the rest of the week. He couldn’t quite read yet,
obviously; he was only three. But I’d started reading him bedtime stories as
soon as he started talking, and it had become part of the routine—something
that I could have one of his babysitters or his grandparents do that was
soothing for him even when I wasn’t there.

“All right, my little man,” I told my son
as we finished clearing off the table. “It’s six o’clock, which means we need
to start getting ready for bed.”

“I like when you’re here,” Brady told me,
looking up at me through his eyelashes. He hugged my leg tightly, nuzzling
against the spot just under my knee.

“I like it when I’m here, too,” I told
him, smiling as I got down to his level to give him a hug. I lifted Brady off
of the ground and started to carry him through the apartment towards the
bathroom.

“But you like working,” he pointed out.

“I do,” I agreed. “Not as much as I like
you.”

“Why do you work, then?” I set him down on
the bathroom floor and started to run the water for his bath while I thought
about that question. He was too young for me to explain it to him completely,
obviously.

“Well, Mommy has to have money to live,” I
told him, testing the water with the inside of my wrist. “And I like my
work…even if I don’t like being away from my cute little boy.”

“You meet friends?” I nodded.

“I meet a lot of friends,” I said. “Lots
of friends.” I thought about possibly putting Brady into daycare when he turned
four; it would be good for him, to get him around more kids and into a more
structured environment. He already had a good vocabulary for his age; I thought
it was probably because of all of the reading—at least, I hoped so—and the fact
that I always spoke to him like a normal person. “Why don’t you tell me about
some of your friends?” I began stripping off Brady’s clothes while I let the
bathtub fill, adding a capful of his favorite bubbles to the water; they helped
him sleep, or so the label said.

“Sarah’s nice,” Brady told me; Sarah was
one of his babysitters. “She plays cars.”

I nodded along as my son listed off all of
his “friends”—from the other kids he played with at the park to his
babysitters, asking questions here and there to keep him going. Even though I
worked, I wanted him to always feel like his mom was involved, interested in
his life; I knew he was too young to have a thought that complicated, but I
wanted to put it in his head before he ever could. After a while, his attention
wandered onto other topics that he always seemed fascinated by: why some dogs
were big and others small, why he wasn’t allowed to touch frogs, why the monkey
bars at the playground were so high. I let him play in the warm water and
relaxed, taking in the sight of my son. He looked more like his father than
like me, but I had never really cared. Even if Alex wasn’t part of my life and
never would be again, Brady was more than a reminder of a relationship that
hadn’t worked out.

“Saw Jenny’s papa,” Brady said randomly,
looking up from his alphabet floating toys.

“Did you? What’s he like?” I wondered what
brought the thought on, what had jogged loose the idea of someone’s father.

“Nice,” Brady told me. “He likes swings.”

“Who doesn’t like swings?” I grinned at my
little boy. “It’s almost time to get out now, and we’ve got to wash your hair
before we do.”

“Mama,” Brady said, pressing his lips
together and looking at me almost sideways.

“What, baby?”

“Are you lonely?” I stared at my little
boy in shock at the question.

“Who put that idea in your little head?” I
tried to smile, but I knew it was only a halfway effort.

“Jenny’s papa,” Brady told me. “Said
you’re lonely.”

“Well I’m not,” I told him firmly, but
with as much positivity as I could manage. “I’ve got you!”

“You need a papa,” he said. I laughed.

“I have a papa,” I pointed out. “Grandpa
is my papa.”

“No,” Brady said, shaking his head. “Like
Jenny’s papa.” He frowned, almost pursing his lips, and I could see him trying
to put the thoughts into the words he wanted. “Like Jenny’s mom has.”