Total pages in book: 98
Estimated words: 93425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 93425 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 467(@200wpm)___ 374(@250wpm)___ 311(@300wpm)
My eyes narrowed. “What the hell are you doing?”
“Copyedits my ass.” She started to riffle through the papers in her hands. I attempted to grab them, but she pulled back too quickly for me.
“Give me that!”
She dug a few pages down into the pile and then yanked out a page. “Aha! I knew you were doing something you didn’t want me to see.”
“You’re crazy.”
She started to read the paper aloud. “Bloom Matchmaking Services. Boutique services for elite singles.” Devin rolled her eyes. “Let me translate. ‘Boutique’ equals ‘expensive.’ ‘Elite singles’ equals ‘a bunch of stuffy assholes who think they’re too good for Match.com or the bar scene.’”
“It’s research for an article.”
“So why did you just lie to me and tell me you were working on copyedits?”
“Because of exactly what you’re doing at this very moment. You blow everything out of proportion.”
Devin was too busy scanning the sheet for clues to even hear my defense. She smirked when she looked up. “The description of your ideal mate sounds very familiar.”
“I’ve always liked tall with dark hair.”
She arched a brow. “With good bone structure, green eyes, and a wide stance?”
“Who doesn’t like that?”
“Uh-huh. So you weren’t describing Sebastian Maxwell on this form?”
“Absolutely not.”
She flipped over the page and looked at the questions I’d answered earlier this morning. “How many children does your ideal mate have? Zero to one? Since when are you in the market for a single dad? This is the first time I’ve heard about this.”
I grabbed the papers out of her hands. “Don’t you have a job to do? Or coffee to mainline into your vein or something?”
“You need to just ask him out and you know it.”
“Yes. That’s exactly what I need to do. Because the foundation of any good relationship starts off with a series of lies about . . . let’s see . . . my name, occupation, and relationship with his only child. It was obviously meant to be. We’ll probably be married by Christmas.”
Devin sighed. “Why don’t you just come clean, then? Tell him the truth.”
“And then what? Ask him out on a date?”
She shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“Because he’ll go ballistic on me if he finds out. He bought an unruly Great Dane that is driving him crazy because his daughter suddenly became convinced her dead mother was mad at her for something she’d done. That was all my fault, Devin. I made a child think Santa Claus had a direct line to a dead woman.”
“But you meant well.”
“I’m sure Sebastian Maxwell won’t see it that way.”
“Well, you’ll never know unless you tell him, will you?”
I sighed and shook my head. “I could really use that coffee.”
Devin nodded. “Fine. I’m going. But think about it, Sadie. There’re eight million people in this little city of ours and somehow you wound up meeting this guy. Maybe it started out wrong, but maybe there’s a reason you two met.”
After Devin left, I crumpled up the matchmaking application I’d been filling out. The truth of the matter was, I had no desire to go on any date. Devin was right. I had a real thing for Sebastian. And it wasn’t just that he was ridiculously handsome. He had a soft side that he reserved for his daughter. I was certain that his wife had been privy to that side of him, too. There was something just so beautiful about a man who saved the best parts of himself for the women in his life. I knew . . . because he reminded me of another man I adored. God, Freud would have a damn field day with me.
I decided to come clean. Shockingly, Devin had been right. Since the very first letter from Birdie, something had felt like kismet. Like I was supposed to meet her and her father for a reason. Of course, it helped that once I did, the man was insanely handsome. But a part of me truly felt like even if Sebastian Maxwell hadn’t turned out to be gorgeous, I’d still be drawn to him. My attraction went deeper than the surface. I was also well aware that I was bringing parts of my own history into my fascination with his little family—but isn’t that how life works? Our hearts are made up of all different broken pieces that belong to others, and when we find the right one, they show us how they can all fit together again.
Maybe I was reaching too far and being too philosophical, but the bottom line was . . . I’d run the dating gauntlet enough times to know that when someone comes along and makes you feel butterflies, you need to chase them. Because it doesn’t happen very often.
So I decided that after today’s training session, I was going to ask Sebastian to speak to him privately and then come clean. Chances are he’d freak out and never want to see me again. But at this point, I couldn’t keep up the lies anymore. It wasn’t fair to me, or to him and his daughter. And if there was a shot in hell that maybe something could happen between us, I couldn’t have that built on a foundation of lies.