I’m looking forward to it.
So am I, she texts. Thanks for giving me another chance. I appreciate it. And we’ll be cool with each other if things don’t work out, right? No work drama on either side?
No way. I don’t do drama, I assure her. You can ask my friends. I’m so low drama I didn’t even yell at my ex when I found her in bed with two other guys. I just grabbed the stuff from my drawer, left my key to her room on her kitchenette counter, and left.
Wow. That’s impressive. I definitely couldn’t say the same. If I’d found my guy in a situation like that, there would have been yelling and cursing and probably a few plates thrown at the wall. His favorite ones that I knew he couldn’t replace.
Valid, I say. I confess I wish I’d taken the Art Deco statue I bought her for her birthday a few months before. It was expensive and would look really good on my coffee table. And cheaters don’t deserve to own nice artwork.
Agreed. Liars, either. There should be a law. Off to hit the hay. Sleep well and see you tomorrow!
Ignoring the prickle of unease tiptoeing up my spine, I reply, You too.
I finish my pre-bed routine and slip between the sheets, telling myself that Harlow’s right—withholding is different than lying—but I’m not entirely convinced.
The only thing I know for sure is that I can’t wait to have Natalie all to myself for a night. Whether we’re sipping champagne at a gala or hanging out in my basement, I know we’re going to have a blast.
Chapter Eleven
Natalie
Friday Night
After all the canoodling Cam and I managed to sneak in yesterday, I shouldn’t be nervous about tonight.
Sure, it’s our first “technical” date, but we’ve been bantering and flirting before and after work like it’s our second job. And we got ice cream yesterday and he walked me home and the conversation flowed so freely it felt like I was talking to a friend I’d known for years, not a guy I met not quite a week ago.
Still, by the time I change into my gown and high heels and dash out of my bedroom to find Crissy covered in ketchup and making a royal mess at the table, while Nanny Hannah looks on in mild horror, my pulse is slam dancing in my throat.
“Oh good gracious, girlfriend,” I say to my daughter as I grab my giant bag from the hook by the door and begin transitioning my “must have” items into my tiny, fancy purse. “What are you doing to those nuggets?”
“I’m a T. rex,” she says, tearing off another chunk of nugget and smearing the extra ketchup across her cheeks with one pudgy fist. “I devour my enemies!”
I nod, my brow furrowing. “I don’t think T. rexes had enemies. It was a more straightforward, predator and prey relationship. The T. rex needed to eat and the other dinos were small and tasty. It wasn’t personal.”
Crissy narrows her eyes and adds in a dramatic whisper, “This time…it’s personal.”
Nanny Hannah and I both laugh before Hannah says, “As long as you keep your vengeance confined to the kitchen table, Miss T. rex, we’re good. No getting out of that chair until I’ve cleaned the ketchup of your victims off your face, okay?”
“Okay,” Crissy says, with a big smile. Her dimples pop in the same places as mine, but other than that, my daughter doesn’t look much like me at all. She has her father’s dark red, curly hair and hazel eyes with golden flecks in the center.
She looks so much like Phillip, in fact, that one of my friends in San Francisco once asked me if it was hard for me, to see the man who made my life a living hell reflected so clearly in my daughter’s face every day. But Crissy is nothing like Phillip. She’s sweet and funny and mischievous and creative. I feel nothing but love when I look at my daughter, and with every day that passes without Phillip upending our lives with his threats and rage, it gets easier to note the resemblance between them without visions of my ex’s furious eyes blazing into mine as he promised to punish me for some imagined sin or another.
And now I’ve met a truly kind man. One who’s also gorgeous and talented and so sexy I’ve been having fantasies about kissing him again all week. And tonight, it’s finally going to happen. If he doesn’t make the first move, I will. It’s been far too long since a kiss made me feel the way Cam’s did, and even longer since I’ve felt so excited about a date.
“Be good for Hannah,” I tell Crissy, crossing to kiss the top of her head, the only patch of real estate sure to not get ketchup on my clothes. “And I’ll see you in the morning after you eat a big mess of Hannah’s special pancakes.”