Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (113 page)

“I think we’re just about done—you’ve
spent way too much money on me already,” I told him. The idea of the necklace
he’d bought me weighed on my mind more than I wanted to admit. He hadn’t been
wrong—the gemstones in the necklace definitely matched my eye color—but just
because it looked nice on me didn’t mean that he should buy it for me. I didn’t
think I would ever wear it; it was too expensive, and I felt way too strange
about owning it.

We wandered around the mall a little bit,
looking for the entrance we’d met at, and I had to insist again that I didn’t
want to go into any of the other shops—Zeke had to have spent easily over two
hundred dollars on me already, and the last thing I wanted was for him to find
an excuse to spend more. We kept talking all along: about the dating process,
about the matchmaking process he was in, about our lives. By the time we
reached the entrance and got ready to part ways, I actually had begun to feel
at ease again. I could even think of the necklace without feeling like I was
being bought.

“You know, I remember you said that we
probably shouldn’t practice my goodnight kissing skills again at all,” Zeke
said, giving me a mischievous look, “but Brady isn’t here, and I thought—I
hoped—that maybe we could try it one last time, just for the sake of it.” For
just an instant, I thought that Zeke believed, somehow, that since he’d bought
me so many things at the mall, he was entitled to more from me than our
practice dates called for.

“Do you remember what we talked about
before, about your transactional approach to dating?” I raised an eyebrow. I
could feel myself starting to get irritated.

“Oh—of course,” he said, inclining his
head towards me. “I’m not asking because I think I should be able to kiss you
after buying things for you—you can keep the things I bought no matter what. I
bought them because I wanted to buy them.” He smiled. “I asked because the
first time I kissed you was really nice, and I wanted to try it again for old
time’s sake.” I held his gaze for a moment. In spite of my irritable feelings
about Zeke’s high-handed use of our practice date as an excuse to buy things
for me, I had to admit that I hadn’t forgotten our kiss, either.

“As long as you’re not doing this
because…you think…” I pressed my lips together.

“No, I don’t think you’re some kind of
prostitute,” he told me, shaking his head. “You’re an awesome, smart, charming woman
who happens to be coaching me to get ready for real dating.” I took a deep
breath and exhaled slowly.

“Okay, let’s do it then,” I said, feeling
awkward. Zeke put paid to my twinge of weirdness in an instant; he leaned in
towards me, his hands going to my waist and shoulder to hold me in place, and
he brushed his lips against mine. I’d kissed him before, so I had thought I
would be prepared for a second kiss—even one that was a little more awkward
than the first. But as he deepened the kiss, pressing his lips more firmly
against mine, tightening his hands on my body—but without moving them anywhere
inappropriate—I felt myself starting to respond, forgetting for the moment just
how inappropriate what we were doing technically was. I reached up and draped
my arms around his shoulders, pushing my body up against his without thinking.
I could feel myself warming up from head to toe, something tightening inside of
me that I hadn’t felt in months, in years: since things had started to go south
with Alex, in fact.

The realization that I was actually
getting into the kiss jolted me out of the moment and I pulled back, letting my
arms fall to my sides. I gathered up the bags that had fallen out of my hands
as the blood flooded into my face and took a step back, swallowing down the
taste of Zeke’s lips on mine, the taste of his tongue and the feeling of his
body. “I really need to go,” I said, pretending to check the time on my phone.
“I didn’t think the date would run over—and my sitter has to get home.” I barely
glanced in Zeke’s direction as I started towards the door to the mall. “Let me
know when you’ve got a next practice date ready,” I told him quickly. I hurried
away from the mall, feeling as if I had possibly made the biggest mistake of my
life as I turned the corner and found the parking garage where I’d parked.

Chapter
Sixteen

Zeke

It
was a mistake to kiss her again,
I thought to myself as I
looked around my office. I hadn’t been able to get Natalie out of my mind ever
since our last date. It was worse than it had been before—and before I’d kissed
her, it had been difficult as hell to get her out of my mind.

I guessed that I had hoped that kissing
her again would somehow take the magic out of it. I had thought somehow in the
back of my mind that if she gave me permission to kiss her again and I did so,
it would just feel normal, and boring. The reality was that it had been even
more exciting than the first time I’d kissed her. I shook my head, trying to
clear it of the memories that rose up in spite of how much I tried to push them
down. It was too easy to remember the way that she pressed her body against
mine, too easy to remember the feeling of her lips against mine, the taste of
her. I wanted more; I could tell that she did, too—at least, in that moment.
I’d been able to feel it in the way her body tensed against me and taste it on
her lips. In that moment—no matter what else had happened between us that
night—she had wanted more than just a kiss.

The problem was that Natalie was
everything I wanted in a woman: smart, talented, put-together, funny,
independent. She was gorgeous, too, and so charming even when she was
correcting me or giving me criticism that it was impossible not to listen to
her after a certain point, even if I’d acted like a jerk the first couple of
dates we went on together. I couldn’t imagine anyone that the matchmaking
service could set me up with would be any better than Natalie herself—but that
wasn’t the point. I wasn’t supposed to be getting feelings for my dating coach.
I was supposed to be learning from her before moving on to date someone else.

When
is Pete going to get here anyway?
I glanced at the time;
there was another fifteen minutes or so to go before Pete—Peter Angelosi, a
long-time partner with the company I worked for—came in for the meeting I’d
set. We were supposed to be discussing charity events for the companies he
represented, and I’d looked over the information that he’d sent me the week
before, but I didn’t have any of it in my brain anymore—everything in my head
was Natalie. That was a definite problem.

I pulled up the email he’d sent me with
the reports about the different companies and the assets they were willing to
invest in their pet charities and skimmed it; Pete and I would go over the
details over the meeting anyway, and I just wanted to have enough fresh in my
mind to not have to check the email every few minutes to remind myself. I
skimmed it again just to make sure that I could at least remember which
companies it was and which charities they wanted to work with, while I waited
for Pete to arrive.

My phone buzzed on my desk and I picked it
up, barely glancing at it as I tapped answer before bringing it to my ear.
“Baxter speaking,” I said quickly.

“Mr. Baxter, good afternoon.” For a second
the voice on the other end of the line confused me—feminine and upbeat as it
was. I’d been vaguely expecting Pete, Trevor, or someone to be calling me about
business matters; instead, it was Katie from the agency—Natalie’s boss.

“How’s it going, Katie?” I sat back in my
chair and glanced at the time again; I had another ten minutes before Pete
should arrive and I didn’t think the conversation with the matchmaking
representative would take even that long.
Unless
Natalie filed a complaint about you for buying her expensive gifts and then
getting her to kiss you,
I thought, feeling more than a little guilty. I
had thought the date would be a good idea, and I was still confident that
Natalie had enjoyed herself in spite of herself, but she’d left flustered.

“Very well, thanks. How about yourself?” I
answered that I was doing fine, waiting for an associate to arrive for a
meeting. “I will keep the call short then; I don’t want to take up too much of
your time, but I thought you’d want the news as soon as possible.”

“News? That sounds promising,” I said. I
heard Katie laugh on the other end of the line.

“As I’m sure you’re aware, while you’ve
been working with Natalie Leathers, your dating coach, she’s been reporting
back to me about your progress.” My heart skipped in my chest and my mind
turned once more to the notion that Natalie might have tattled on me.

“I hope I’ve been getting good reports,” I
said carefully. “I’ve been listening to her advice as best as I can.”

“You’ve been getting very good reports,”
she reassured me. “In fact, based on the most recent meeting I had with
Natalie, I think you’re just about ready to start having homework dates.”

“Homework dates?” I shook my head, rolling
my eyes at the idea. “What does that mean?”

“I’d like you to start asking women out
that you meet just anywhere—at the bar, or wherever you hang out,” she
explained. “We’re still working towards getting you matched with some
compatible women in our directory, but Natalie and I agreed that it’s time you
start taking the training wheels off and working on your skills with some
people who aren’t coaches.”

“That’s great news,” I said, grinning to
myself. “Glad to hear I’ve made good progress.”

“According to what Natalie’s told me,
you’ve made excellent progress,” she said. “So whenever you want—as soon or as
late as you feel like it—go ahead and start asking some local women out for
casual dates and we’ll circle back to how you’re doing.”

“Do I still go on my practice dates with
Natalie?”

“Oh—yes, that is still happening,” Katie
explained. “You do still have skills to work on, and of course, she can steer
you in the right direction and give you feedback on your homework dates with
other women.”

“Sounds good,” I told her. I actually had
to struggle—a bit—to keep the excitement out of my voice, to keep sounding calm
and collected. “I’ll definitely follow up on that this afternoon. Thanks for
the good news, Katie!”

“Always happy to get someone moving along
towards their happily ever after,” she told me. “Unless you’ve got any more questions
on the subject, I think we’re done. I don’t want to make you late for your
meeting.”

“I think I’m covered,” I said. “Thanks
again.” I ended the call and set my phone down in one of the drawers of my
desk; I didn’t want to have it distracting me during the meeting with Pete. The
fact that I could—finally—start dating people again, people who were actually
interested in me, people who I might even have some kind of future with, was
thrilling. I thought about Natalie: how sweet, and kind, and funny, and
beautiful she was. I had known from the beginning that there was nothing
between us and there couldn’t be. We had a professional relationship; no matter
the fact that I had convinced her to kiss me twice, I knew that she would never
let it get any farther than that and probably regretted letting it even get
that far. It would be better by far to find someone who I had a shot at
actually being with in a personal, romantic relationship, instead of letting
thoughts of Natalie consume me.

I decided that I’d take advantage of my
clearance to date as soon as possible—that afternoon, in fact. I’d find a woman
who I thought might be interested in me, at least a little, and ask her out.
That would put Natalie out of my mind in every sense except the professional.
I’d be able to focus again, which had been a problem for me ever since we’d
started going on the practice outings and especially since the first time we’d
kissed. As soon as I came to that conclusion, there was a knock at my office
door and Trevor’s head popped into the room. “Mr. Baxter, Pete Angelosi is here
to see you.”

“Send him on in,” I told my assistant,
sitting up in my chair and pulling up the email that Pete had sent me the week
before just to keep it handy. I wanted to get the meeting over with as quickly
as possible so that I could get out and find someone to ask on a date.

Chapter
Seventeen

Natalie

When Katie told me that she was going to
give Zeke the clearance to start asking women out on his own, I’d figured that
he was going to at least make the attempt to pull back on our sessions and that
I’d have to remind him that we were still supposed to be having our practice
dates; I had actually kind of hoped that that would be the case, since I was
still shaken up from how good kissing him had felt at the end of our most
recent date.

Instead, he’d called me a few nights
before we were scheduled to meet again and told me that he thought—given his
age and the things we’d discussed at the mall—that it would be good to have
another practice date with Brady accompanying us, if I was okay with that idea.
“I need to get used to being around kids,” Zeke had told me. “A lot of the
women I’m going to be dating are—I assume—going to have kids, or want kids, and
I want to be as prepared as possible for dealing with dating moms.”

So instead of him planning a date for us,
I suggested that I would put everything together and tell him where to meet
with us. Mini-golf had been fun for Brady, but if I was going to be bringing
him with me, I wanted to be on something like neutral territory—somewhere I
knew my son was comfortable and where I knew he’d have the least reason to act
out. A picnic at the park was the obvious choice.