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“Really?”
“Really. Your mom said you could have an ice cream today, if you were very well-behaved. Are you very well-behaved?”
Jamie nodded and wiped the tears from his eyes. “Yeah!”
“Okay, then. Can you go find Ben?”
Amelia settled Jade into her stroller, rounded up Molly and Maisy from the top of the slide, and rejoined Ben and Jamie by the edge of the park.
“Everybody ready?”
They nodded, so Amelia took Jamie’s hand and led them towards the ice cream shop a few blocks away.
“What flavors are you all going to get?” she asked when she noticed that Molly was starting to drag her feet.
“Strawberry!”
“Vanilla!”
“Chocolate!”
“Pistachio!”
The kids chattered excitedly about ice cream all the way to the shop. When they arrived, Amelia helped the kids make their orders, then paid and handed them their ice cream. Molly, Maisy, and Ben were ice cream pros, but Jamie looked at the scoop atop his cone with a kind of fearful reverence.
“Ice cream!”
Maybe Amelia should have gotten it for him in a cup, she mused, as Jamie zoomed around the shop with the ice cream precariously balanced in one hand.
“Slow down!” she reminded him. “Watch where you’re going.”
As they were leaving the shop, Amelia fell back to help Maisy wipe a drip of ice cream off one of her shoes. When she looked up, she came face-to-face with a tall, handsome man in a suit. At the same moment, Jamie started to wail.
Amelia looked around and saw in an instant what had happened. Jamie’s strawberry ice cream was smeared in a bright pink line across the businessman’s suit jacket and pants. The rest of the ice cream was in a heap on the sidewalk, with only an empty cone left in Jamie’s hand.
Oh, no.
In an instant, Amelia swept Jamie into her arms.
“I’m sorry that happened, honey.” She resisted the urge to add that this was exactly why it was important not to run with ice cream. She and Jamie could have a talk about it later, when he was calmer. “I’ll buy you another ice cream, okay? And we’ll eat it together so it doesn’t spill.”
Meltdown averted, Jamie slumped against Amelia’s shoulder and looked mournfully down at the scoop of ice cream on the sidewalk, which was already starting to melt. Amelia turned to the businessman.
“I am so sorry about this.” She dug in the diaper bag for a paper and a pen. “Let me give you my contact information. I’ll handle the dry-cleaning bill.”
“That doesn’t exactly help me now,” the man said dryly. “I’m on my way to an important meeting, and now I’m pink.” He gestured at the smear of ice cream, and Amelia blushed.
“I really am sorry.”
There was a pause. As Amelia waited to see what the man would say, she took a better look at him. He was heartbreakingly handsome, the kind of guy who’d play an international spy or a brave soldier in a movie. His dark brown hair was neatly cut, and his blue eyes, though cold, were the color of the ocean. Perhaps, if Jamie hadn’t smeared ice cream all over the man, she’d be thinking of flirting with him now.
The moment stretched as Amelia shifted Jamie higher on her hip and looked up at the businessman.
CHAPTER 2
LIAM
Liam tried to control his frustration. It wasn’t this woman’s fault that everything had gone wrong today. His morning run had been underwhelming, he’d arrived at work to find that an important new product was being delayed, and one of his paper suppliers was raising the prices beyond what was logical to pay. Now, during his very late lunch break, when he had just enough time to buy a sandwich and run back to work, he was covered in strawberry ice cream.
