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Wait for Me
Ares
Picking a woman up for a date and taking her back home, in your vehicle, with a plan to go up with her, and a vow to not have sex? This was a novel experience.
I’d given her a lot to chew on over dinner, but she took everything in stride. Especially when I told her I had a daughter.
Her blue eyes widened comically. “You have a child?”
“Yes.”
“Why didn’t you tell me about her when I told you about Brayleigh?” She thought for a moment. “I even asked you if you had someone special in your life.” Her eyes positively bugged out of her head. “Are you married?”
My eyebrows hit my hairline. “Hope! No!” I grasped the back of my neck with my palm. “You make me crazy. There is no woman.”
She cocked her head to the side. “What about her mother?”
I gazed at her steadily, wanting to gauge her reaction. “She’s out of the picture.”
Hope’s face fell. “My God, I’m so sorry. Did she die?”
I released a pent-up sigh and smiled. “That would be the only reason you could think of for leaving your kid?”
“Well.” She sat back. “Not the only one, perhaps, but definitely the first one.”
I shook my head. “She didn’t die. She simply decided motherhood was not for her. As for us, at best, it was a casual arrangement.”
“You weren’t in love with her?”
“No.”
“Have you ever been in love?”
I shook my head. “Not the way you’re asking.” I waited a beat. “Have you?”
She shook her head sadly. “No. But I really wanted to be.”
“Hence your night with Lucky.”
She twisted her pretty mouth to the side. “Hence my night with Lucky. Does it, uh, bother you?”
“I don’t think so.” I shrugged. “So long as it’s over. I guess I’ll know better when I meet him and see how he is with you.”
Her chest expanded as she sucked in a breath and then she spewed. “We grew up together. Friends forever. I hung out with the boys much more than girls. I didn’t understand the games they played and didn’t care to learn.” She shrugged. “Then I grew boobs. and they began to see me differently. The ones who stuck around were eventually dragged off by their girlfriends.” Her gaze skittered nervously over my face. “Anyway, I started wondering if maybe we had chemistry. If maybe ‘the one’ I’d been praying for had been there all along. The next morning, we felt incestuous and promised never to speak of it again.” She laughed and pulled her shoulders up to her ears. “And then came Brayleigh.”
“And how was he about that surprise?”
“He has never wavered in his friendship with me and that was no exception. Not much changed. We just had a new little friend in our trio.” She dipped her head in acknowledgement. “We have Minty now, too. And hopefully, if I meet someone who can handle Lucky in my life, maybe, we’ll have more people in our little family.”
My heart thudded in my chest. The idea of bringing Hope into my inner circle scared me. The addition of the child was terrifying. But, to know she had a ready-made family and was hoping to bring someone, that someone presently auditioning being me, was enough to send me running for the hills.
What if I couldn’t be what she needed? Give her what she wanted?
I needed to tread lightly with this woman. She was not one to casually sleep with and walk away. First, we worked together. Second, and most importantly, she deserved the one who would lay the world at her feet.
“You’re good at that.”
“What?”
