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“Right,” Michael sighed. “That’s fair. I mean, he has the nanny, right?”
I gripped the leather arm of my chair. Michael didn’t have kids—he wouldn’t fully understand how that wasn’t a helpful sentence. “Yes, but ideally, he needs another parent.”
“Oh. Well, you’ve been dating recently, right? Is that why?”
I shook my head. “No, that's more for…fun,” I explained. I told Michael most things, but I didn’t need to explain exactly what I got up to on those dates, and he definitely didn’t need to know about my alias. “But I’m considering doing it more seriously. David’s daughter, Ava, is setting up some kind of matchmaking service, and David’s convinced that she can find someone to solve my problems for me. But the idea of letting another person into my life, whether they’re there only for my son or something slightly more, feels like an invasion that I’m uncomfortable with.”
Michael nodded along to my words, steepling his fingers in his lap. “Shall I order in a chaise lounge for your office and finally get my psych degree?”
I glared at him.
“Kidding, kidding,” he laughed. “I get it. I do. After Jan, that can’t be fucking easy. But really, a matchmaking service? Aren’t the cool kids using Hinge nowadays?”
I shrugged. “I spoke with Ava’s assistant about it, and she said that their goal is to cater to people like me. Confidentiality, expert vetting, and finding me someone who is okay with what I want would be at the top of their priorities list.”
He interlocked his fingers and slid his joined hands between the puffed leather and the back of his head. “And what is it that you want?”
“A marriage of convenience,” I shrugged. “I’m not diving in head-first again. I don’t want to love whoever she is. I want to like her and be comfortable with her helping raise my son. That’s it. I’ll hire her, find someone, and my problem will be solved.”
“Right. And this has nothing to do with you chasing after Ava at the charity ball?”
My gaze snapped to his.
He shrugged. “You spent…what was it? Sixty grand, on a dance with her. Did you think I wasn’t paying attention to that?”
What the fuck?“Honestly, Michael, I had no idea you were eventherethat night.”
“Only for about thirty minutes to solve a supply issue,” he chuckled. “I came in right as David announced that you’d snatched it up. Saw you two dancing a few minutes later. Watched, uh,thatwhole thing. Do you realize that you’re an incredibly intense person? Anyway—you booked it after her, and I stored it in my noggin, and now here you are mentioning her again. I had to ask.”
Shit. You need to think of an excuse.“The other people bidding on her were slimy, and she looked uncomfortable. I know her fairly well, so I bid on the dance, knowing she’d be comfortable with me.”
He snorted. “She lookedverycomfortable with you. Until she went running off.”
I let my head fall back against my seat. I didn’t feel comfortable lying to him while looking him dead in the eye, and I needed time to think, time to steer the conversation away from her. But every time I tried to think of anythingbutAva, she barged her way into my head like some kind of barbarian, taking over the space that wasn’t meant for her.
“Look, you don’t have to explain yourself to me. I was just saying?—”
“You saw nothing.”
He went silent for a moment, and it hung in the air like the smell of rot. “Okay.”
“Have you spoken to anyone about that?”
“No.”
“Good,” I sighed, tipping my head forward to look at him again. “Keep it that way.”
“I can do that,” he said, nodding.
“If David found out?—”
“I get it.”
“Do you?” I challenged. I leaned forward on the desk, taking up all the space I could without getting up. The images of her on my fucking bed were still in my mind, and I really didn’t need to hammer this point home by standing and making the swelling bulge in my trousers noticeable. “As much as I love him, David is not the sanest person around. He could do medamageif he wanted to.”
“I don’t think he’d have that much of an issue with you having a slightly charged dance with his daughter, but yes, I understand.”
I held his gaze. There wasn’t a single part of me that was sure that he grasped the extent of what this was, and I couldn’t decide if that was a positive or a negative.
