Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (127 page)

After about fifteen minutes of driving, I
finally caught sight of where Zeke was taking us: he pulled into the turn lane
as we approached a sign that read
Paint
Balloon Course!
And underneath that, I saw the words
Messy fun for everyone!
“Paint balloons?” I looked at Zeke and he
chuckled.

“Well, Brady’s a bit young for actual
paintballs, isn’t he?”

“Considering the bruises those leave
behind, I have to agree,” I said.

“This should be a lot of fun,” Zeke said
as he turned in at the entrance. I noticed—to my concern—that the parking lot
had only about three or four cars in it. “We’ll have a chance to run around,
pelt each other with paint, and have a good time.”

“Are they a new business?” I gestured to
the almost-empty parking lot and Zeke’s smile deepened.

“Nope,” he said, picking a spot near the
entrance. “I just paid for them to give us sole access to the place. Didn’t
want to risk Brady getting trampled by someone else.” My eyes widened. Zeke had
rented out the whole course for the three of us? The rest of the few cars in
the lot must—I decided—be for the employees. Alarm bells rang in my head at the
fact that Zeke had gone to such trouble, and had planned such an expensive
date.

“Brady, we’re going to get all messy and
covered in paint—how does that sound?” I knew I shouldn’t be asking my son what
he thought of a date I was doubtful about, especially one that he was sure to
love. But he was already in the car. He already knew we were going somewhere.

“Yay!” I smiled at Zeke, considering the
situation. I should—I knew—ask him to take us to the plan B date he was sure to
have lined up, but I didn’t want to upset my son or throw a wrench into things.

We got out of the vehicle and went into
the building that led out to the course. “You three are going to have a great
time,” one of the employees told us. “It’ll be great—no worries about anyone
else, the full course at your disposal.” They gave us jumpsuits—pure white—and
buckets of little paint-filled balloons. Brady looked adorable in his tiny
white jumpsuit. I thought again about asking Zeke to take us somewhere else,
but it would just be mean to the people who’d come in to work the course for
the three of us.

We went out into the course, and Zeke and
I gave Brady a head start. “It’s like hide and seek, buddy,” I explained to my
son. “Go find your hiding spot, and we’ll come look for you.” Brady’s idea of a
good hiding spot was not exactly strategic, so Zeke and I had to take turns
pretending not to notice him until he ran out from behind whichever haystack or
pile of debris he had chosen. Zeke and I alternated being “it”—chasing each
other and my son, throwing balloons of paint, darting behind whatever
obstructions we could to keep from getting hit ourselves. I had to admit, as we
all splattered each other with paint and ran until we were breathless, that it
was an amazing date, but it was an amazing date that felt too real—too much
like a date that Zeke should be taking an actual girlfriend on.

I kept that thought out of my mind and
threw my paint balloons, indiscriminately splashing my son and my client, and
getting splattered myself. Brady—who always loved any excuse to get
messy—laughed and shouted and screamed with joy, running himself into
exhaustion between Zeke and me. I couldn’t quite make myself believe that what
I’d agreed to was exactly okay, but I couldn’t make myself end the date or tell
Zeke to take us somewhere else, either. I gave myself up to the fun of the date
and tried not to think too hard about how much fun I was having. I would just
have to deal with it later. I would just have to do put aside my professional
issues and let my son—and myself—enjoy what time I had left with Zeke. He would
be out of my life again soon enough, and I’d rather have memories than nothing.

Chapter
Thirty Four

Zeke

I walked up to the entrance of Beurre, the
restaurant I’d agreed to meet my date at, feeling nervous. In spite of all the
coaching from Natalie, and in spite of the fact that I’d gone on a couple of
dates with Brigitte from the coffee shop, this was a completely different kind
of thing.

Katie had called me a few days before to
set up the date. She had found me a match—the first of a handful of options I
would have to choose from and who had me in their lists—and she wanted to know
how it went and what I thought of the woman. I hadn’t told Natalie when the
call had come, and I didn’t really want to think about why, but I promised
myself that if the date with Chelsea was half as successful as the first one
with Brigitte had been, I would tell her—without going overboard with singing
the woman’s praises. I had learned my lesson about that.

I didn’t know almost anything about the
woman I was meeting, other than her name. Katie had set it up so that my date
would be waiting at my table for me. She had texted to confirm that Chelsea had
arrived about ten minutes before I parked my car.

I approached the hostess stand, smiling at
the woman there: she was a tall, willowy brunette, maybe twenty-two on the
outside, dressed in all black. “I’m meeting someone,” I told her. “My date has
arrived, but the reservation was under my name: Zeke Baxter.”

“Ah—yes,” the hostess said, mirroring my
smile. “I’ll take you right to the table.” She grabbed a menu and gestured for
me to follow her. “First date?” I nodded.

“It’s a blind date,” I told her. The
hostess’ green eyes showed her intrigue.

“I hope you have a great evening, then,”
the woman said. I followed her through the dining room, looking around. It was
a typical fine dining restaurant, with the standard white tablecloths, crystal,
and place settings. The floors were wood rather than carpet, but otherwise, it
was like any other high-end restaurant I’d been in—and almost against my will I
remembered my first meeting with Natalie.
Don’t
think about her. You’re on a date with an entirely different woman right now.

The hostess stopped at a table and I took
a moment to smile at my date. Chelsea stood, and I saw that she was maybe two
or three inches shorter than me—tall—with medium-brown hair streaked with
reddish highlights and blue eyes. She wore a simple black dress and a set of
pearls, and her fingernails were painted a soft pinkish color. I thought she
was probably about twenty-five or twenty-six, around Natalie’s age, but other
than that, there wasn’t much that seemed similar between the two women from a
physical standpoint. “Pleased to meet you,” I said, reaching out for Chelsea’s
hand. We shook, and I sat down across the table from her.

“You are…better-looking than I imagined,”
Chelsea said, smiling slightly. She had dimples, which was at least slightly
endearing, but the smile didn’t quite reach to her bright eyes.

“You imagined me?”

She chuckled, letting her hands rest on
the tabletop. “Well of course,” she said with a shrug. “You didn’t imagine me?”

“I didn’t have anything to go on,” I
pointed out.

“I managed to get Katie to give me a
little description of you,” she admitted. “Then, too, you’re the third guy I’ve
met through the service.” I resisted the urge to raise an eyebrow at that;
Katie had told me she had four or five women total for me to meet—I couldn’t
turn my nose up at the fact that the women would have more than one potential
partner to meet, as well.

“I’m glad that I exceed expectations
then,” I said, smiling. “Should we get down to the business of getting to know
each other—or do you want to order first?” Chelsea bit her bottom lip and
reached for her glass of water, taking a quick sip.

“Let’s go ahead and order, that way we
don’t have as many interruptions,” she said finally.

When the waiter came, I ordered the petite
steak with roasted vegetables and duchess potatoes, and Chelsea ordered a
grilled chicken paillard with a garden salad. I had no right to find that
faintly boring, but I did. “So, tell me about what you’d normally be doing
tonight,” I suggested as soon as we were alone once more.

“Most likely I’d be at home, reading,” she
said. “Or listening to a podcast. Maybe both.” I nodded to that. “You?”

“Watching TV, or if I wanted to be out of
the house, maybe visiting a gallery, or checking out an event downtown. Do you
like going out?” Chelsea half-shrugged.

“Not really. I mean, obviously it’s not
like this is some kind of torture or anything—but apart from doing things like
hiking, or surfing, stuff like that, I don’t really like to go out.”

“Those are out,” I countered, keeping the
smile on my face.

“Right, but I mean, I don’t like things
like big events or those kinds of social things,” she explained. I kept myself
from frowning. I was willing to make a few compromises, but I liked having a
social life, and I liked going out to places—not just to be outdoors, but also
to meet with people.

“How about TV? Any shows you like?”

Chelsea considered. “I like
Cosmos
and some of the other educational
shows,” she said. I pushed down my slight sense of disappointment.

The food came and we began to eat, asking
each other questions and figuring each other out. I managed to keep myself
civil, but it was obvious within fifteen minutes that it wasn’t going to go
anywhere. Chelsea was a decent person, but everything she found interesting
seemed boring to me, and everything that I liked was obviously not something
that she was interested in—although she was polite enough not to comment to
that effect. I knew that we’d manage to make it through dinner without causing
a scene on either of our parts, but there was nowhere for anything to go.
Some of her traits are exactly the opposite
of what I asked Katie for,
I thought as I talked about my work.
She’s smart and obviously independent, but
clearly she isn’t all that social. She doesn’t have much of a sense of humor,
either.

I tried to make excuses for Chelsea, I
tried to tell myself that it was more because she might have been nervous, or
because it was a first date—but Natalie had sparkled even during our first
meeting together.
Natalie also has had
more first dates, and first meetings, than probably anyone else you know,
I
pointed out to myself as we got to the dessert course, finally.
She’s used to just…being herself.
But I
couldn’t quite believe that. There was something about Natalie that was
genuine, and I thought that she had ended up becoming a dating coach because
she was good at meeting and interacting with people—as opposed to becoming good
at interacting with people because she had become a coach.

I told myself not to compare Chelsea and
Natalie, but I couldn’t help it. Natalie’s darker hair, her dark eyes, her
little half-smile, the dry wit and the sense of humor she possessed were so
different from what Chelsea had to offer. If I had never met Natalie, or never
kissed her, or had sex with her, then I might have been better inclined to
enjoy Chelsea, but as it was, at best Chelsea was a dim, altered mirror of what
Natalie had been from the first time I’d met her.

I paid for our meals and we stepped
outside; I didn’t exactly know how to end the date—not when it was going bad on
such a particular level, but not so badly that we were angry at each other.
“How do you think we’re doing?” I shook myself out of my reverie at the
question from Chelsea.

“Hm?” I sat down on a bench outside of the
restaurant, not quite willing to start walking towards my car. She sat down
next to me.

“The date? How do you feel about it?” I
tried to think of a good way—a polite way—to answer the question honestly.

“I think it’s a first date—a little
awkward,” I replied finally. “How about you?” Chelsea tilted her head from one
side to the other, deliberating.

“Yeah, it feels like a first date,” she
admitted. “A blind first date, at that.” She met my gaze and smiled slightly.
“But that doesn’t mean that we can’t move things along. Maybe things will heat
up if we’re a little more private?” I cringed internally.

“I want to take things slow with whoever
I’m dating from the agency,” I explained. “I’ve done one-night stands, and I
don’t want to approach this situation with that kind of idea in mind.”

“That’s an admirable thing,” she told me,
nodding. “But I mean…we could at least see what a goodnight kiss feels like,
right?” I thought about it; a goodnight kiss wouldn’t kill me, but it would
probably give the woman I was with the impression that things had gone better
than they had.
Why is she even fishing
for this? She should be just as bored, just as uninspired as I am.

“How do you feel about me?” Chelsea raised
an eyebrow at the question, silently asking me for clarification. “I mean—what
are your thoughts on the date, really. It doesn’t seem to me like we have a lot
in common, and I wonder if you feel the same way.”

“I don’t think that two people have to
have a ton in common to get along well together,” she said, half-shrugging. “I
am used to living a pretty independent life, so I would expect to do things on
my own, and sometimes with my boyfriend, but it’s not like I’d want you to come
hiking with me every weekend or something.”

“I think…” I took a deep breath. I didn’t
want her to think I was a jerk, but it was hard to say what needed to be said
in a way that would make that impossible. “I don’t think it’s going to work
between us,” I said finally. “I mean—don’t get me wrong—you’re gorgeous, and
obviously very smart and very driven.” I smiled, hoping that I was taking the
sting out of whatever she might feel for being rejected. “But I don’t think it
would work out between us.”