Six Hot Single Dads. Lynne Marshall
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There was no getting around it. He absolutely had to stay away from Ashley. He simply wasn’t his normal, sensible self around her.
“Let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Last night was huge for us. And hey, at least you kissed someone.” She giggled, her eyebrows bouncing.
“Please, Joanna. I beg you. I’m a grown man. Can we stop talking like a bunch of teenagers?” He brushed away a piece of lint on his pants. “Last night was a one-time thing and that’s it. End of discussion.”
Joanna twisted her lips. “Uh, yeah. About that...”
“What?”
“Dad really wants you to take out Ashley again.”
“He said that?” Marcus bolted forward in his seat. “He explicitly said that?”
She nodded. “And I have to agree with him. You should at least take her out for a nice meal to thank her for last night. It’s great for business and don’t forget that it was your idea to expand into the US.” Joanna tapped away on her laptop. “I think the fact that you met Ashley and had the chance to take her out is wonderful. You can’t argue it’s not the best thing that’s happened to us since we came to New York.” She patted the stack of new orders and wholesale inquiries sitting on her desk. “If you play your cards right, it could be the best thing that’s happened in your personal life.”
“What is that supposed to mean?”
Joanna closed her laptop and folded her arms across it. “She’s lovely, Marcus. And granted, I haven’t met her or anything, but she seems like quite a nice woman.”
“I know where you’re going with this, and you can stop right now. You know my situation, Jo. Better than anyone.”
She rose from her seat and rounded to the front of her desk. “What is your situation, Marcus? Working impossible hours to measure up to some imagined standard you set for yourself, then going home and reading a book to Lila? Spending the weekends taking her to the park, but not interacting with another soul in this enormous city? There are thousands of single women in Manhattan, Marcus. Tens of thousands. One of them could make a wonderful wife and mother, but you’ll never find her if you don’t look.”
He crossed his arms in front of him. “I’ve looked. I’ve dated three women in the six months since we’ve been here. That seems like a respectable number to me.”
“Including Ashley. And none of them went beyond the first date.”
“None of them was right. There’s no point in wasting my time with a woman when I know she isn’t right.” It made perfect sense to him, but he and Joanna had argued about this before. “And you know that dating is a complicated situation for me. I refuse to introduce any of them to Lila until I’m serious. And let’s be honest—most women do not want a baby right off the bat.”
His heart ached as the words came out of his mouth. Dear, sweet Lila was the most precious thing in the world to him. He still couldn’t fathom how Elle had walked out on her, except that he’d witnessed it—the desperate look in Elle’s eyes that told him she was equally horrified by her own distaste of motherhood. She didn’t want to be a mom, never had, and Marcus had talked her into it. With their other problems, the fights, he’d thought for sure parenthood would save them, would save her. Quite the opposite had happened. It had been the final, wretched straw. She couldn’t stay. She couldn’t do it anymore. She couldn’t pretend. Freedom was all she longed for, away from England, her father and the expectations that had been foisted on her from a young age. Away from all of them. Away.
“Surely you’re interested in Ashley. That kiss is awfully convincing.”
How did Joanna talk him into these circles? “She’s very pretty. I won’t deny that. But she’s wrong for me, just like Elle was, and I can’t make the same mistake twice. I need solid. Reliable. Sensible. Ashley is none of those things.”
“Please promise me you will never, ever set up a profile on an online dating site saying you’re looking for a solid, reliable woman. You’ll end up with an incredibly loyal lumberjack.” She took the seat next to his, reaching over and touching his arm with the tips of her fingers. “Marcus. I want you to be happy. God knows you deserve it. Please just ask Ashley out to dinner. Thank her for the nice thing she did for our business. It’s not a big deal.”
Everything in Joanna’s voice said how much she pitied him, and he hated that. Part of him wanted to ask Ashley out, try again, at least apologize for last night. The rest of him was certain he didn’t have time to spend on a date with a woman he’d never end up with. And that was assuming a lot. Ashley had every right to want his head on a platter. “She’ll probably say no.”
“You won’t know until you ask.”
His mind flew back to last night—the look on Ashley’s face when he’d left her alone in her apartment. “No, I’m certain the answer will be no.”
Ashley stepped off the elevator and came to a stop. Normally she’d head straight for her apartment on the right-hand side of the vestibule. Marcus’s door was directly opposite. The two were separated by a thirty-foot expanse of the finest marble floor, a fussy old chandelier and a sea of differing opinions.
I promised Grace. If she was going to ask him to dinner, she should probably do it in person. Calling or texting from across the hall seemed juvenile. She was a grown woman, for God’s sake. A grown woman did what she needed to do, no regrets, no second thoughts about rejection. Still, she was drawn to the idea of going home. It would take a lot to prop up her busted confidence after last night.
She inched closer to his door, casually leaning in, craning her neck to see if she could hear what might be going on in there. It was dead quiet, of course. Marcus loved his calm and quiet. She raised her hand to knock but stopped herself. It was after seven. Maybe this was a bad time. Maybe it was Lila’s bedtime. Or her bath time. Or story time. Not that Ashley would know anything about Lila or her routine—Marcus had kept the most precious thing in his life, the reason he couldn’t or wouldn’t take Ashley seriously, as far away from her as possible.
Ashley did an abrupt about-face. Her purse went flying, as did her metal travel coffee mug, which clattered and clanged across the marble floor. She shushed the damn thing as it noisily collided with the wall. She scrambled to collect her things, then rushed to her door. She was shoving her key into the lock when she heard Marcus’s door behind her.
“Ashley?” he asked.
She froze. Her shoulders rose to her ears. Why did that have to be his effect on her? Why did his voice make her behave like a smitten idiot?
“I heard a noise.”
“Marcus. Funny running into you.” She turned, and his presence hit her like a tidal wave. She was still so hurt from last night, and seeing him felt as though she’d scraped a fresh wound. The problem was that her inclination was to fold herself into those arms of his, not run away and hide, even when he’d had the gall to suggest last night that feelings like that for him were foolish.
“Is it? Funny, I mean? We do live across the hall from each other.”
She shook her head, trying to wrench her thoughts away from the kissing variety. How she wanted to kiss him again. Just one more time. Just so she knew it hadn’t really been that amazing. It was her womanly due diligence. One ordinary kiss and she’d know it was okay to walk away from Marcus Chambers. “It’s been a long day, Marcus.”
He shoved his hands into his pants pockets. With his shirtsleeves rolled up to his elbows, the move only served to torment her with his muscled forearms. “Oh. Sure. I’m sorry. I wasn’t sure I extended a proper thank-you for last night. That’s all.” He closed his eyes for an instant. Was it actually painful for him to grant her a single gracious thought?
Thank