Dirty: The Complete Series (Secret Baby Romance Love Story) (149 page)

“You are a cheap date, Mackie,” Amie said,
shaking her head in pretend disapproval. “It’s not like he’s broke! Have you
even been paying attention to his clothes? His kid’s clothes? He’s sending that
boy to one of the most expensive private schools in Chicago, and rolling in
here in designer suits.”

“I’m not going to try and make him spend a
ton of money on me,” I said sharply, scowling at Amie. “I just want to have a
good time with a nice guy, that’s it.”

“Tell me this: have you and he gone to bed
together?” I blushed even harder.

“A few times,” I said, looking away. “Not
that it’s any of your business.”

“It is so my business! If I don’t ask, who
else are you going to talk to about him? I’ve never seen you really share
anything with anyone else in this office, and god knows you don’t have that
many friends out of this place.”

“I have friends!” I glared at Amie, a
little hurt at her comment. “And I have siblings. I could talk to them.”

“Yeah, if you wanted them to start
planning your wedding after your first date you could,” Amie said with a grin.
“What’s he like in bed?” I looked around, trying to make sure that none of the
young patients—or their parents—were listening in.

“He’s great,” I said quietly. “Of course,
it’s been ages since I’ve been with anyone else, but…” I grinned, blushing
bright red. “He’s amazing in bed. I swear.”

“It’s probably been a while for him, too,”
Amie pointed out. “So it’s good that he’s able to take care of business.” She
smirked at me. “Does he go down on you?”

“Amie!” I looked around again, shocked at
how direct her questioning had become. I swallowed against the dry feeling of
impulsive fear in my throat. “Yes, he does sometimes. He’s good with his hands,
too.”

“Then I’m satisfied that this is an
excellent life choice,” Amie said, giving me a quick nod. “Even if it isn’t
serious and doesn’t go beyond seeing him every few days and having good sex,
I’m glad to hear you’re getting out there. I was starting to worry about you.”
She pulled herself up carefully, groaning in pain until I started to get up to
help her. “No—it’s okay. I just put off the pain pill until I could get back
home. I need to fill out paperwork, and I do not fancy trying to take the train
home high as a kite.” Amie patted my hand with her uninjured one and gave me
another grin. “One of these days if things do get a little more serious between
you and him, you should bring him on a double date with me and Travis.” I
rolled my eyes.

“That’s down the line,” I said. “I don’t
even know if things are going to last beyond the month.” I thought of the fact
that Patrick had canceled our date for that night; I didn’t say anything about
it to Amie—especially since she was on her way to the manager’s office to fill
out paperwork—but I couldn’t help but think that Patrick might have been able
to get out of the business dinner if he’d really wanted to. It just seemed too
convenient that he found out about the obligation a few hours before our date.
You’re being stupid,
I told myself.
You had to cancel a date with him before;
it’s only fair that you give him the benefit of the doubt on one cancelation.
Don’t get all paranoid before the relationship even gets serious.
I watched
Amie leave and went back to trying to decide how to spend my evening off, now
that I wasn’t going to be spending it with Patrick.

Chapter Two – Patrick

When Mackenzie bought my story about
having a business dinner to go to at the last minute I’d hoped that I’d feel
fine about it; after all, I hadn’t lied to her for any bad reason. The fact of
the matter was that I’d simply had too much to do, and I hadn’t been able to
justify spending the night out. Then too, I’d started to think that maybe she
wasn’t as into me as I’d originally thought. I’d played her comments about not
being sure she was marriage material anymore through my head until I’d psyched
myself out—something I wasn’t proud about, but I couldn’t do anything about it
after it was done. I figured that I’d get over it fast enough, or make up my
mind one way or the other.

But instead of making up my mind, or
feeling better about it after a day or two, I only felt worse. Mack had
believed my stupid lie; somehow the fact that she hadn’t even questioned it
made me feel like an even bigger tool. I was abusing her trust and we weren’t
even in a serious relationship together. I felt like an asshole, and when it
came time for Landon’s next appointment with Mack, I couldn’t bring myself to
go in with him. “Hey, bud,” I said when I pulled into the parking spot at the
Kid Care building. “Can you just tell Mack that I had to hang out and get some
work done in my car? I need to make a few phone calls.”

“Okay Dad,” Landon said, shrugging it off;
he had no idea of what an asshole I was being to a woman who was at least a
little bit interested in me, either. He went into the building while I watched
and I sat in the car, knowing I was being a coward and worse, stewing in the
disgusting juices of my own bad behavior.

I spent the two sessions after that the
very same way, feeling more and more like a cowardly asshole. I had convinced
myself that Mack wasn’t all that into me, but why should that matter? I could
still face her as my son’s physical therapist, couldn’t I? Or was I afraid that
she would look uninterested in me, that I’d see it plain as day on her face
whenever I went in with Landon? I hated the fact that I couldn’t bring myself
to just get through the interactions; I couldn’t even bring myself to send a
text message or call her to try and do what I could to keep the relationship
going. It was getting closer and closer to Christmas by the day—and closer to
the deadline that Landon had set in his bet with me of finding someone to be
his new mom.

Every time I sat in the car, waiting for
Landon to finish up his sessions, I thought about the dates I’d been on with
Mack. At the time, I’d thought that they had gone so well—each time we’d gone
out together I’d felt more and more like I was getting to know her better, and
that we were getting closer; right up until the most recent date we’d been on.
I thought about our first date, and how Mack had seemed a little on edge, a
little nervous. It had been so cute to see her blush, and I could picture it so
easily in my mind.

And then at the second date, when we’d
ended up in bed together; as much as I tried to fight the impulse to compare
Mack with Joanne in any way, shape, or form, I thought that the sex with her
might actually be better. I hated to think it—I hated to think of Joanne as
being better than Mack because it didn’t seem fair to Mackenzie to think that,
and I hated to think of Mack being better than Joanne, because it seemed to be
cheating the memory of a woman I loved.

Landon brought back the reports that
Mackenzie wrote out over the course of the few sessions I couldn’t bring myself
to attend, and the sight of her handwriting alone was enough to make my stomach
clench. Whether I wasn’t sure of her feelings or not, I was sure that my
feelings were way too strong for her. Every little scribble of her notes about
Landon’s progress and the next steps that I needed to take with my son was like
a silent accusation that I wasn’t holding up my end—even with the little
comments at the end that she hoped she would have an opportunity to talk to me
again soon, or that Landon was cuter than ever.

I told myself over and over again that I
needed to just bite the bullet and reschedule the date. If Mack really wasn’t
interested in me, I should hear it from her lips, and not just assume it. If
she
was
into me, then I needed to do
the right thing—for both of us—and talk to her about what an insecure jerk I
had been. But I couldn’t make myself do it, no matter how much of a coward I
felt like for avoiding her. I was an idiot, I knew it—but I couldn’t make
myself do the right thing and just confront the issue. I was too much out of
practice when it came to relationships, too scared. I didn’t want to have to
deal with my own feeling of disappointment, much less tell Landon that things
just weren’t going to work with Mack. I thought—somehow—that if I just kept
avoiding Mackenzie until the physical therapy sessions ended, it would just
dissolve. I thought on the other hand that I would eventually work up the
nerve, and everything would be all right again—but that moment didn’t seem to
be coming.

There were only a few days left until
Christmas, and when Landon came back from his session, climbing clumsily into
the back seat of the car and asking me for help in getting the seat belt to
work with his booster seat, he handed me a little piece of paper—the latest
report on his progress.
Landon is doing
very well, making very steady gains in his recovery…I’d like to discuss his
progress in more detail with you one-on-one, when you’re not so busy…I believe
it may be almost time to move Landon down to three-per-week sessions, instead
of five-per-week.
The report was just as neutral as it had always been, and
it still stung to read it.

“Dad, are you mad at Mack for something?”

 
I
finished fastening Landon’s seatbelt and gave it a tug to make sure it would
stay where it was. “No, bud. Why do you think that?”

“Well, before you were always going into
the sessions with me,” Landon said, frowning. “You never had to do work in your
car before.”

“Things are busier than usual this close
to Christmas,” I told my son, starting the car and taking the gearshift out of park.
“We’re going to have a lot of days off together, and I want to make sure that I
don’t leave anything hanging before I get my vacation.”

“Oh!” Landon considered that. A little
flash of doubt—and concern—flickered through my brain.

“Did Mack ask about it?” I pulled out of
the parking spot and turned around, wanting to get away from the clinic as
quickly as possible without looking like I was running away.

“No,” Landon said simply. “I just wanted
to know.” As I drove away from the clinic, I found myself thinking once more
about Mack. I had felt so good with her—so at ease, so comfortable. It had been
totally unlike the random set-up dates that I’d had with women in the early
years of Landon’s life after Joanne passed away. I had had hopes that I could bring
Mack into my life with Landon in a way that I hadn’t thought possible with any
other woman that I’d met. I smiled to myself, thinking that even Joanne would
have liked Mack.

It had been a different time in my life
when I’d met Landon’s mother; I’d been younger, more willing to give into the
hope and the optimism. I hadn’t even really thought about getting married, one
way or the other. Things had just seemed to fall into place with Joanne at
first. Everything was smooth sailing, and everything happened naturally. We
dated for a couple of years, and then eventually we ended up living together
almost on accident—we figured out that we had an equal amount of our things at
each other’s places and decided that it just made sense to have them all in one
place. When I’d proposed to her, I had done it because it seemed like the right
thing to do, because I was convinced that we would spend the rest of our lives
together. And for Joanne it was true; she had spent the rest of her life with
me.

With Mack I wasn’t nearly as certain of
myself. Landon had told me, a few days before—just in passing, out of the
blue—that he wished he had a younger brother or sister. It was the day before
school let out for the winter break, and he’d seen his friends’ siblings in the
classroom, seen their presentations about what gifts they were giving their
family members. I’d told Landon that I’d have to find him a new mom before I
could make any kind of guarantees about siblings, and Mack’s words about not
being sure that she was marriage material, about not being sure if she would
ever be in a position to have kids, had floated up in my brain.

As I made my way to the house, I thought
about the wager that Landon had made with me, and the Christmas shopping I had
already done. It seemed to me that with the way things stood, I was probably
going to have to set aside a good bit of money after the beginning of the year
to buy my son a second Christmas. I wasn’t sure which aspect of it bothered me
more: the fact that I’d been dumb enough to wager almost a week’s pay on being
able to find Landon a new mom, the fact that I was almost certainly going to
have to play with the budget more than usual in the first month of the year, or
the fact that my first real try at finding a woman to bring into my life with
my son was failing so miserably.
Let’s go
with all three,
I thought sourly. I pushed the thought aside as Landon
asked whether or not we would be able to go sledding that weekend, telling
myself that there were more important things in the world to worry
about—including the basic needs my son had. I should be grateful that the
accident that had caused his injury hadn’t been worse, and I should be grateful
that he’d given me the kick in the ass to put myself out there once more.
Anything more than that was just gravy. If I couldn’t be happy with Mackenzie,
then I would find another woman who was a better fit, and I could pay up to my
son—and give him more toys than any kid could possibly play with—with good
grace.

Chapter Three- Mackenzie

As I watched Landon hurry out through the
waiting room, darting as fast as his injured leg would allow into the cold
winter air on his way to Patrick’s car, I sat down at my desk and frowned. I
couldn’t quite shake the voice in the back of my mind that insisted that
Patrick was going out of his way to avoid me; I could understand being busy
heading into the week or so of the holidays—I was doing everything I could to
make sure all of my patients were caught up, their files updated and everything
the way that it should be—but it seemed more than a little strange that he
would stay out in his car, taking calls and doing work, for three sessions
straight. It seemed even stranger to not get any real response to the text
messages I sent to him. All I got from him was that he missed me—or that
something I’d said was funny. I had people in my life who I barely considered
friends who had given me warmer responses to messages.