Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (109 page)

Zeke, on the other hand, could make even
the relatively boring subject of brokering agreements and contracts for
charities seem like a fascinating subject. It was obvious to me that both men
threw themselves completely into their work of choice, but that Zeke was
somehow better at getting the people he spoke with to understand his enthusiasm
and feel it.
Probably because part of his
work is essentially sales-driven in mindset,
I thought to myself idly. I
wondered if Asher would have more polish to his manners and presentation if his
father had—somehow—forced him to work for part of his life, to be a salesperson
or to at least get involved with a company. Everything for Asher seemed
cerebral and remote.

“What do you think of that?” Asher’s
question cut through my abstracted thoughts and I forced myself to try and
think of what he’d been talking about when I’d gone on my mental tangent.

“It sounds very interesting,” I said to
cover my inattentiveness. “What else do you have going on in your life these
days? It seems like you’re loading yourself down with a lot of work. Have you
taken the time to try some of the activities I’ve suggested?” I’d hoped that by
getting him into activities where he’d have to interact with other people on
the basis of something other than games or writing, he might get a more varied
conversational style.

“I tried,” he said with a sigh, pushing
around a bite of fruit tart on his plate. “But I just couldn’t make myself go
to any of them. It seemed too boring or too tiring or too…just not me, you
know?” I suppressed my urge to sigh at yet another excuse from the man.

“Well, certainly I didn’t expect you to
try all of them in one week, Asher!” I smiled as broadly as I could. “But
trying one or two of them—even if they’re boring or too tiring or
whatever—could give you a new perspective. Hell, maybe you’ll be rewarded with
another idea for a story.” I kept my smile plastered on my face in spite of the
fact that what I really wanted to do was give him a good shake and tell him
that if he kept rejecting advice from me, we were both going to be stuck
practice-dating each other forever.

I went over the same list of items to do
with Asher as I had at our four previous meetings and left the restaurant
feeling disappointed in both my client and myself. How was it possible that I
could have one client who got the gist of what I was trying to explain to him
almost before I finished explaining it, and another who showed every sign of at
least comprehending the words out of my mouth but not the meaning or the use of
my advice?

Unbidden, the memory of kissing Zeke
floated up into my mind, and I pushed it ruthlessly aside. I was not going to
dwell on how much more charming Zeke Baxter was than any other client I had,
and I certainly wasn’t going to ever let him get past my defenses again.
We are going to nip that “practice the goodnight
kiss” thing right in the bud. No more of it.
It was obvious that it had
only made things worse, at least when it came to me managing my other
clientele. I couldn’t let Zeke jeopardize my professional life.

Chapter
Ten

Zeke

“You wanted to see me, Mr. Baxter?” I
looked up from my computer screen to see Trevor coming through the door to my
office. I frowned until I remembered that I had texted him, asking him to come
by as soon as he was done at the drycleaner’s.

“Have a seat, Trev,” I said, sitting back
from my desk slightly. “I want to make some plans.”

“What kind?” Trevor took out his notepad
and sat down across from me, slipping his phone out of his pocket to consult it
in case there were conflicts in schedule.

“I want to get the ball rolling on the
next few dates I’m supposed to be taking Natalie on.”

“I can definitely put together some
preliminary plans,” he said, opening up my calendar on his phone. “What did you
have in mind?”

“One of the things Natalie wants to see is
me paying attention to the things my dates like,” I explained. “So I want to
try and schedule some future dates for the kinds of places she would like to
go.”

“Well, what ideas do you have?” He glanced
up from his notepad and phone.

“She likes movies and music—see if any of
her favorite bands are on tour or have concerts in the area in the near future.
I think I already gave you the list on that, right?”

“I think so,” he agreed.

“Especially Hot Hot Heat or Franz
Ferdinand, or Yeah Yeah Yeahs,” I told him. “I remember her also saying she
likes Radiohead, Muse, and OK Go.” Trevor wrote the list down.

“Other than concerts—movies maybe?”

I frowned. “We’ve already been on a movie
date. If I took her to see a film again, I’d want it to be more special. Check
and see if there are any good comedies that are scheduled for a premiere—any
event-type movies.”

“I can absolutely do that,” he told me,
nodding his head. “Should I look for movies in general, too?”

I shook my head. “Comedies and romances,”
I told him. “Create a sub-list, too—horror movies. But nothing too gory.”

“Okay,” Trevor said, nodding again. “What
else?”

I took a deep breath and considered. “Look
at art openings: galleries, exhibits, things like that. Also check out events going
on in the parks—festivals or meets.” I remembered that Natalie had mentioned
taking Brady to the park often and how much she loved the events they had
there.

As I continued on down the list, I was
actually surprised at the amount I knew about Natalie. I’d put her tips and
advice to work on our dates together—all two of them that we’d had since the
first—but I hadn’t realized that I had actually filed away the bits and pieces
of information she’d given me until just then. I knew that she liked going to
poetry readings, even though I’d never really considered it a great use of my
time. But I told Trevor to check those out, as well. I also added water parks,
mini-golf courses, arcades, and other things that I would never have thought of
unless Natalie had mentioned them to me as possibilities. I could remember with
complete clarity the advice that had come along with that list of places where
I could take women on dates:
“The basic
idea is that you want to have a list of places you can take someone to spontaneously.
People in general love spontaneous, fun things. Be lighthearted. Don’t be so
businesslike. You can get to know someone just as much on a bumper car as you
can in a restaurant.”

By the time Trevor left to look for leads
and begin to tentatively schedule the future dates, I thought that I
might—might—just be letting Natalie’s advice affect me too much. I knew that
her job was to get me ready for dating women that the matchmaker would set me
up with, as well as anyone else I might meet and want to ask out, but I’d
bought her flowers. I’d kissed her. I was looking for dates that she,
specifically, would enjoy.

Face
it,
I thought wryly, trying to get back to a report that I had to finish by the end
of the day,
she’s in your head now. Every
decision you make about dating is going to be informed by her.
I shook my
head, thinking of how that had come about. I had to admit that even above and
beyond her expertise, she had a lot of knowledge in her mind. There was
something about the way that she reacted, the way that she took a deep breath
and made herself pause before saying something, and how she coached me, that
told me that no matter how much education she’d gotten, a lot of her ability
was pure talent.

She’s
a mother. She’s got that mother’s instinct.
I smiled to
myself, thinking of the picture of her son that she’d sent me when she’d had to
cancel our original second date. The three-year-old looked both completely like
his mother and nothing like her at the same time and I wondered how it was that
Natalie had become a single mom. I’d wanted to ask, but of course, I knew
better. It was rude to ask a woman who was doing her best by her child how it
was that she came to be parenting alone. If she wanted me to know about it, she
would tell me. Until then, I would have to be content with knowing only that
she was single and that she had a son.

The night that I’d kissed her, I’d gone
home to my apartment alone. I had told myself that what I’d done was stupid and
that I should put it out of my mind as quickly as possible. I’d acted on
impulse. The fact that it had ended up with be being able to kiss her didn’t
mean anything. She was my coach, not my girlfriend. She would never be my
girlfriend.

But no matter how many times I tried to
put it out of my mind completely, it rose to the top. Something about kissing
Natalie had felt so good, so completely right. I’d gone to sleep the night of
that date with the memory of it still bouncing around in my head and had the
most intense sex dream that I’d had in years—maybe in my entire life. I had
dreamed of waking up with Natalie in the bed next to me, already naked, curled
up under the covers. In my dream, I woke her up with another kiss, and in a
matter of moments, we were going at it, touching each other everywhere, teasing
each other. I was hard as a rock and struggling to hold myself back. I kissed
Natalie everywhere in my dream and went down on her for what seemed like
forever, devouring her over and over again until I couldn’t stand it anymore.

I woke up from that dream still hard, my
cock aching and throbbing in my pajama pants. I took a long, hot shower and got
myself off, trying to think of anything at all except for Natalie.

But it seemed like no matter what I did or
how often I told myself that I couldn’t entertain an interest in her, that I
had to direct my attention elsewhere, my thoughts kept circling around to that
one kiss. I’d had sex with women; I had had sex plenty of times, even when I
wasn’t dating anyone—one-night stands, most of them—but something as simple as
a kiss had completely stuck in my brain. There had been a part of me that had
wanted to take it farther; I had been right on the point of suggesting that she
could let me walk her to her car, that we could kiss more there. I had been
right on the point of suggesting that we could go home together.

I definitely wanted to. Natalie was
gorgeous and
 
easy to be myself around,
pulling me out of my shell and teaching me in a way that I didn’t think anyone
else I had ever met or dated could have taught me. God, she had to be
absolutely, stunningly hot underneath those carefully professional clothes she
wore. It was only too easy for me to picture what she had to look like naked.
The clothes that she’d worn were tailored to her body—I had been with enough
women to have an idea of what that silhouette would look like. But I knew that
no matter how many times I pictured it, it wouldn’t ever happen.

I imagined the possibility of suggesting
to Natalie that we could have practice sex as well as a practice kiss, but that
sounded too much like I was trying to turn her into some kind of prostitute. I
was already paying her—technically—for going on dates with me, through the
company. I was paying for her to teach me how to be a better date, how to make
things work with a woman I actually wanted to eventually marry. It was supposed
to be strictly professional and I had already screwed that up a little bit by
kissing her. I thought that if I suggested we have sex, Natalie
would—rightfully—fire me as a client, maybe even report me to her boss, and I
would end up not only missing out on what she could teach me, but also missing
out on the possibility of using the service to find a woman I could love.

As I got ready to leave the office for the
night, I tried to make myself imagine the kind of woman I would want to marry.
She would have a lot of the same traits that Natalie had shown, but she would
be a completely different person altogether. The woman I would eventually find
for myself wouldn’t have any kids already; we would build our family together.
She would be smart and funny, professional and insightful, and she would
challenge me the way that Natalie did, but it would be more playful—less
businesslike. We’d go on dates, but they’d be equally split between the things
I liked to do and the things that she liked to do, instead of me investing time
in figuring them all out.

No matter how hard I tried to picture my
ideal woman in my head, though, the image of kissing Natalie swirled right back
up to the surface of my brain. It was as if she had some kind of drug on her
lips that would make me only think of her, although the fact that she hadn’t
wanted to kiss me at all at first—in addition to her general
professionalism—made that theory impossible. How was it that I could meet
countless women every day that made no impact on me at all, but the one woman
that I knew I couldn’t have stuck around in my head like a bad pop song,
repeating over and over again? I decided right then and there that I would get
out of the coaching sessions as quickly as possible and put my energy towards
something I knew would pay off eventually. There was no sense in dwelling on
Natalie when she would probably forget me weeks after our sessions ended.

VOLUME II

Chapter
Eleven

Natalie

Katie typed something on her computer
quickly, nodding to herself as I waited. “Okay,” she said after a moment.
“Let’s get this meeting underway.” I smiled. Every week, I met with my boss to
discuss my progress with clients. Usually we used it as an excuse to grab a
coffee, and this week was no different; Katie had gotten me my usual from
Starbucks, and I took a sip of my mocha before setting it down and pulling my
tablet onto my lap.

“It’s been a week of breakthroughs,” I
said tartly, unlocking the screen and pulling up the first report. “Tanner
Hodges has finally come to the conclusion that maybe—just maybe—he should
actually listen to the things his date says, especially what she says she wants
to order.”

“You
have
been working hard,” Katie told me with a grin. I laughed.

“It only took me, what, five dates with
him to get him to accept the idea that women are human beings?” I shook my
head. Some of the clients I was responsible for coaching were quicker than
others and some were much, much slower.

“I appreciate your patience with him,”
Katie said, giving me a sympathetic smile. “What do you think in terms of
timeframe?” I considered that question.

“It’s going to take him a while to be
date-ready,” I said, taking another sip of my mocha and looking over my notes.
“He’s finally got that basic truth of women being human beings drilled through
his thick skull, but I feel like it’s going to need lots of reinforcement
before he can actually pull off a date without offending someone.” I thought
about the question a little more. “Give it another five dates and re-evaluate
from there.” She typed a note into her client form on her computer and nodded.

“Next one,” she prompted me. We went
through the list of clients I was working with. Katie asked about specific
issues with some—issues I had made note of either in their preliminary meetings
or in subsequent practice dates—and for others, she just asked for my
impressions. I almost never had fewer than eight clients at a time. When we’d
been short of personnel, I had managed as many as twelve or thirteen coaching
clients.

I sighed as I came to Asher’s name. “I
feel like maybe it’s almost time to cut Asher loose.” I pressed my lips
together in distaste, shaking my head slowly. I hated to admit defeat or give
up on any of my clients, but sometimes it was just obvious—a client wasn’t
going to actually do the work that they required to get the result they wanted.
There was no point in wasting time with them.

“I know you’ve been working hard with him,
but based on your reports, I’m…reluctantly going to side with you,” she said.
If I hated giving up on a client, Katie—whose bonuses depended on getting
clientele to the point of being ready to date their pre-screened matches—hated
it even more. Usually if one coach couldn’t handle a particular man or woman,
she’d rather just switch them out, as opposed to cutting anyone loose. She
shifted in her seat, shaking her head.

“It sucks, but I think it’s likely he’s
just not ready,” I told her, shrugging. “No matter how many times I go over it
with him—or what I suggest—I get the same thing. It’s always like talking to a
brick wall, and I’m not convinced that anyone else would be able to get through
to him, either.” Katie nodded slowly.

“I think I’ll have a meeting with him and
tell him that he’s going to be on a break for a couple of months—farm him out
to a couple of the bigger seminars, see if he can’t absorb at least a little
bit of information,” she said, typing something into the notes on Asher’s file.
“There is no reason for him to be this hopeless—it’s not like he’s got any
learning disabilities or anything like that.”

“My personal diagnosis is ego,” I said.
“He’s so used to being labeled smart and clever and important that he doesn’t
know how to take advice from anyone else period—especially someone who he views
as potentially ‘lower’ than him.” I bit my bottom lip. “Put him in the speed
dating seminar and give him some practice talking to people until he learns how
to ask questions instead of answering ones that were never voiced.”

Katie snorted. “I’ll schedule him for the
active listening workshop, too, while I’m at it,” she told me. “Along with ‘How
to Connect’ and ‘First Date Topics.’” I giggled. I knew I probably should
struggle to feel some empathy for Asher, but I couldn’t make myself feel too
terribly bad for the wealthy, self-important man, not after weeks of going to
restaurants with him only to be a captive audience for his long recitals.

“Head’s up, he’s starting to consider a
mail-order option,” I said.

Katie groaned. “I’ll talk to him about
that,” she said, rolling her eyes. The few clients we had who started to talk
about green card wives or mail order brides typically were—in the agency’s
experience—going down an irredeemable path. We had a few informers at the
larger mail order bride agencies in the country who would let us know if any of
our “red flag” names came up in applications; it was mutually beneficial
because the mail order agencies lost money on those clients when a “perfect
match” didn’t meet the pedestal-raised criteria that the clientele looked for.
Katie did try to reason with those few men and women who went down the path of
what they thought would be instant gratification, but it was the first step
towards them no longer being our clientele, and we both knew it.

“That brings us to the newest addition to
my roster,” I said, taking a deep breath and a sip of my mocha to remove the
bad taste of Asher from my mouth. “Zeke Baxter.”

“He seemed pretty promising in his
interviews,” Katie said, sitting back in her chair. “I’ve got your initial
reports, of course. What are your current thoughts?” I considered that question
carefully. I’d been thinking a lot about Zeke ever since our most recent date
when he’d kissed me. That had been a major mistake—and one that I definitely
wasn’t going to divulge to Katie, no matter how good of a working relationship
I had with her.

“I think he’s a lot less hopeless than
Asher,” I said tartly.

“That’s not a very promising start,” Katie
joked. I grinned.

“In seriousness, I think he mostly just
needs some rough edges smoothed out. He’s not…” I shrugged. “He’s not a bad
guy, just a little out of touch. Too much the businessman.”

“I did get a bit of a brisk vibe from
him,” she admitted. “But he does seem to have a certain native charm.”

“He does,” I agreed, thinking about the
way that Zeke had been at our first meeting. “He’s a quick learner.” I told her
about the first official date, when Zeke had bought and given me roses—and how
he’d reacted to my feedback by bringing me flowers I actually liked the next
time we had a date in person.

“What kinds of dates is he arranging?”

I shrugged again. “So far, the basic
things. Dinner, a movie, that kind of deal. I do suspect that he has more
ambitious ideas that he’s having his PA put together, but we’ll see how he
carries those off.”

“What is your opinion of him more
generally?” Katie added a couple of notes on Zeke’s file on her computer and
turned her attention back onto me more fully. I felt weirdly self-conscious for
the first time, and I wondered if she had somehow detected something amiss in
my reports about the businessman—if she thought I was hiding something.
Don’t be ridiculous. She’s always more
intensive in the beginning stages of a coaching project. She just wants to have
a good picture to start with so she can monitor his progress better.
I took
a quick, deep breath.

“I think his biggest problem is that he’s
over-confident,” I told her, remembering the interactions I’d had with Zeke.
“He came into it thinking that he’d have a couple of practice dates, charm me
to bits, and then he’d be onto the ‘real’ stuff.” I shook my head, unable to
keep myself from chuckling. It was an attitude I’d seen more than once from
clients; in that sense, Zeke wasn’t in any way unique. “I think it’s going to
take some work for him to get over this sort of—transactional feeling in his
mind, to get him to actually engage with his dating partners as real people
instead of as business associates.”

“But otherwise he seems promising? How’s
that charm of his working on you?”

I snorted. “I have known plenty of
charming men in my time,” I told Katie blandly. “I’m not worried about him
overwhelming me with that superficial bull.” I looked at one of my early notes
about Zeke. “I think that he’s a pretty promising client, overall. I think he
learns quickly; and if I can bust him out of that routine,
shake-hands-and-make-the-deal mindset, I can prepare him for someone really
special.” Katie’s eyes widened with mild surprise.

“That’s a pretty strong accolade,” she
told me. I dismissed the idea that I was in any way praising Zeke unusually.

“He’s smart. He’s quick on the uptake, and
he’s willing to learn from feedback—from a professional perspective, it’s easy
to see how he got to where he is,” I explained. I swallowed against the
convulsive tight feeling in my throat as I thought about just how much Zeke had
already learned from feedback, and just how far he had come—and how easily he
had gotten where he wanted with me, at least in terms of the “goodnight kiss
practice” idea he’d had.

“Good to hear,” Katie said, turning back
to her computer to type in a few more things. “I guess they can’t all be lumps
of coal, right?” I laughed.

“Some of them have to be diamonds in the
rough, after all,” I agreed. She finished off her notes and turned back to me.