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At least, he felt at ease until he met her gaze across the table and all the blood in his body surged to his penis.
For a second there he froze. Did she know? What was she thinking?
No, she couldn’t possibly know. His pelvis was under the table, out of her view. And far hungrier than his stomach. Lasagna wasn’t what he wanted.
“I wanted to talk to you about the daycare in L.A.” Mallory stabbed the lettuce delicately, chewed, then took a sip of tea.
The daycare. It was what he’d been trying to talk to her about.
It was the purpose of the meeting, he reminded himself. Not taking her to bed.
Restaurants didn’t have his bed just down the hall.
Was that why they met in them?
“You know, in your new complex,” she said, fork suspended as she frowned at him.
He nodded and wiped his mouth with his napkin. “That’s the purpose of this meeting,” he said, attacking his lasagna with a vengeance. “I have several ideas that I think might give you a lot of added security for your future, you know, with a child, and yet wouldn’t run you ragged, trying to keep up with it all.”
Barely giving himself time to chew and swallow, he suggested that they use The Bouncing Ball name, set it up with the same room configurations and colors, use all of the same philosophies and paperwork, apply one accounting system that would be run online to keep both facilities connected in real time, but hire a manager to run the L.A. branch.
“You could install cameras, like the ones people put in their homes to be able to see what’s going on inside when they aren’t home,” he continued while she silently ate her salad and then finished her piece of lasagna—all four bites of it.
“That way you can monitor what’s going on in every room, all day if you want to, to make certain that the children are being treated with the loving discipline that has earned you so much respect.”
She wasn’t really nodding, but he could tell by the expression on her face that she was interested.
“And to make certain that the philosophy stays solid, you could offer the management position to Julia, maybe. You said since John died she’s been fading. Maybe a change would be good for her.”
Julia, Mallory’s second-in-command, had lost her husband to a motorcycle crash the year before. They were in their forties and had never been able to conceive children. Rather than adopting, Julia had chosen to work in the childcare field. She’d applied to work with Mallory before The Bouncing Ball had even opened.
“She’s actually just started seeing someone,” Mallory told him. “A single dad with two kids, a boy and a girl, both under ten.”
“Someone from The Bouncing Ball?”
“No. She met him through a friend of a friend. He’s an engineer.”
He should have known that. Why hadn’t he known that? It wasn’t like he and Mal didn’t talk regularly.
With a shrug, he took another bite of food. And then said, “So maybe Donna or someone else would be up for the move,” he said, making a mental run-through of her remaining eight employees and what he knew about their qualifications and living situations.
Mallory reached her fork over toward his lasagna and they both stopped moving, staring at each other.
Eating off each other’s plates had been common once upon a time. Mostly him finishing up whatever she’d left. But not once in the last few years had either of them crossed that boundary.
“I’m sorry,” she said, putting her empty fork down beside her plate.
“No,” he pushed his plate toward her. “Please. I’m not going to finish.”
She looked at him for a few seconds. He held her gaze. He kept telling himself he should look away, that staring into her eyes was only stirring his penis even further, but he couldn’t turn away. Eventually she picked up her fork and helped herself to a bite from his plate. Watching her put it into her mouth, he dropped his napkin in his lap.
It was a good thing he was moving to L.A.
A damned good thing.
Chapter Ten
She had to tell Braden that she wasn’t going to open a second daycare. All that week and into the next, Mallory told herself that she’d make the call tomorrow. Each day, it would happen tomorrow.
