Late Nights & Love Lines (Single Dad Hotline #2)

3. Fucking pervert

3

FUCKING PERVERT

SEBASTIAN

I walk the trails without searching for a destination. That woman is a complication I shouldn’t want or need, but I can’t rid my mind of the full-body shiver I experienced when we made eye contact.

For one brief moment in time, I was the old me, the one who believed in true love and happily ever afters. For fuck’s sake, when I was Miles’s age, my life goal was to fall in love, have a family, the white picket fence—everything my father never gave me.

One glance at a stranger today had that sensation of pureness and love flowing through my veins.

I blame my ex, Mya, for fucking everything up.

Is it all her fault though?

If I could stab my own conscience, I would. Of course it’s her fault. She fucked my best friend and VP, not me. I’ve always been faithful.

My phone vibrates in my hand, and I almost drop it.

Alexei: You doing okay?

Before answering, I scroll through my messages. It’s something I’ve been doing obsessively since Mya left. Not for me, but with an overwhelming sense of sadness I have for my children. How can she go no-contact with our kids? At least the boys have stopped asking for her every night. That was like getting kicked in the nuts over and over again.

Seren made her position perfectly clear when she blocked her mother, but the boys aren’t carrying that same rage, at least not yet, and their innocent questions electrocute my heart when I’m least expecting it.

Me: Fine. You on your way?

I’d told him he didn’t need to come, but he wanted to meet with Elijah in person.

Alexei: Yes. Meeting’s set for 10 tomorrow.

Alexei: How’s Seren?

This. This is why I keep the womanizing prick around. He always has my back, and he loves my kids with a fierceness most children will never experience. He once said it’s because he never intends to have his own children and showering mine with all his love ensures it doesn’t fester in his body and make him soft.

He’s an idiot.

Me: I’m giving her space to explore the camp.

Alexei: In the woods? Is that safe?

Me: You know that I’ve successfully parented for twelve whole years now, right?

Me: She knows not to leave the camp boundaries.

Me: I promise we’ll be fine.

Alexei: …

A note of music flutters on the wind, tickling a memory I can’t catch. Pocketing my phone, I walk farther down the trail and hear another note, followed by another that siphons the breath from my lungs.

Did Seren find the piano? Fuck, please let that be her playing.

I pick up my pace, and a large building comes into view around the next corner. The front door is propped open, but I walk around to the windows on the side so I don’t disturb her. Even if she only ever plays for herself, I want her to play—I need her to play again.

It’s been months since she’s touched the piano at home. Before the divorce, there wasn’t a day since she started taking lessons that she hadn’t played…something.

The piano stops and salty emotions clog my throat when I hear Seren sing. But as I peer through the window, my body tenses and my mind whirls with questions. She’s singing in front of that woman—no, she’s singing to her.

Seren won’t even hum in front of me, but she’s opened her soul to this stranger.

Blood wooshes in my ears when she finishes, and I miss what the woman said.

“So, you’re Rowan?” Seren’s words kick me in the chest, and suddenly I’m freefalling without a net to catch me.

Rowan. Peach. Fuck.

Spinning away from the window, I press my back into the wall of the cabin. Visions of a broken Rowan have haunted my dreams for years. It’s always made me feel like a fucking pervert, even if there was nothing sexual about those dreams. What grown-ass man dreams about a childhood friend from a moment in time twenty-five years ago?

“ Don’t run.” I hold out my hands so I don’t scare the girl sitting beside the dock. I think she scares easily, like my neighbor’s puppy. “How old are you?”

Her little chin tilts to the sky. “Eight,” she says, folding her arms in front of her belly. She’s wearing a James and the Giant Peach T-shirt but looks like that Jane of the Jungle cartoon I watched with her wild blond hair that’s falling out of its braid.

“I’m ten,” I tell her proudly, and suddenly I’m pretty sure I’m the giant and it’s my job to protect her. “This is my grandparents’ camp. Is it your first time here?”

She nods, then gasps, and my chest gets itchy.

“What’s wrong?” I ask, moving closer to her.

When she lifts her face to mine, my itchy chest crawls into my throat.

“Nothing.” She smiles. She has a really nice smile. “A ladybug landed on me. That’s good luck.”

She’s staring at her shoulder where the red and black bug crawls, but I just want to make her smile again.

The camp bell rings loudly. It’s time for the next activity, but now her smile stretches all the way to her eyes, and I don't move.

“An angel just got its wings,” she says, standing. “When you hear a bell, that’s how you know. Sometimes there’s a lot of angels.” Her hands protect the ladybug on her shoulder as she walks away from me.

“Hey,” I call after her. “What’s your name?”

She doesn’t hear me because she’s talking to the ladybug, but she waves at me distractedly.

“Bye, Peach,” I call after her.

“Her name is Rowan,” Pappy says, scaring me so much I almost fall into the lake.

“Peach,” I repeat, and he chuckles. “I’m going to marry that girl someday.”

But she’s not that little girl anymore. She’s fucking hot and seems to have an instant connection with my daughter who is quickly slipping through my fingers.

Jesus Christ.

She’s my nanny.

I’m going to kill my grandfather.

There’s a snap at the front of the building, followed by a screen door screeching open, then slamming shut. I catch a glimpse of Seren’s raven hair as she rounds the corner. I should go after her. I should check in. I should do something other than peer through the open window again.

Rowan stands perfectly still, her fingers resting on the closed fallboard, but she stares straight ahead as if caught in a memory. Leaning on the window frame, I wait, hoping she’ll play again. When she doesn’t, I announce myself.

“You still play beautifully.”

She flinches, removes her hands, and slowly turns my way. When we make eye contact, she’s wearing a receptionist’s smile—it’s not real.

“I don’t, actually. I haven’t played in years.”

Suddenly I’m haunted by the memory of the last time I saw her.

She’d been having a panic attack on stage, so I joined her. I sat on the bench next to her and told her I’d flip her music for her. I had no idea she played everything from memory. As soon as she started her performance, I was transfixed, as was every other person at camp.

Until her narcissistic stepsister began to screech over Rowan’s performance. Halfway through her song, Rowan was dragged offstage by a man I later found out was her stepfather—a man so consumed by appearances he worried Rowan’s pain and her stepsister’s outbursts would reflect poorly on him.

The stepsister’s face as Rowan was carried off the stage like a ragdoll is something I’ll never forget—it was pure evil, and I’d never felt so hopeless.

Rowan didn’t return to camp after that.

But I know Pappy kept in touch with her. Over the years, he’s given me bits and pieces of her life. Tiny ties that kept up my interest in her, but he never pushed. He’s been a silent pillar for so many of his campers over the years, but Rowan has always been different.

He has an intuition about people that’s uncanny. It’s why I never understood how he ever allowed my mother to get tangled up with my father. Surely Pappy knew he was bad news from the beginning. When I’ve asked him about it though, he only shrugs and says you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make them drink.

I would have made Seren take the freaking drink.

“Are you okay?” Rowan asks. Shit. I’ve been staring at her open-mouthed and unblinking this entire time.

“What do you mean you don’t play anymore?” Music is a part of her.

“The piano I had at home was destroyed.” She shrugs. “I started playing again in college but then, well, I grew up.”

There’s so much to unpack in that statement, unease spreads through my veins—music is in her soul. I knew that the second I found her hiding at the pavilion with a keyboard when she was eleven.

Random memories, snippets in time flood my mind faster than an avalanche. All the innocent moments I’d been drawn to her over a handful of summers—a need to ease the pain that surrounded her—it hits me again now.

“What about now?” I ask in an attempt to tame my wild thoughts and keep us on track.

“Some things in life are best left as a memory.” It’s a nonanswer, and when she raises a brow at me, it’s clear that’s all she’ll give me. “Are you going to keep standing at the window, or would you like to come in so we can have a proper conversation? Apparently, I’m your interim nanny.”

My shoulders shake with silent laughter. She’s blunt—she always was. It’s refreshing to see that some things never change. “What are the chances that Pappy is behind this?”

Rowan frowns. “It’s an almost certainty.”

Shaking my head, I gnaw on my bottom lip. “It does feel like a scheme he’d dream up.”

Her face softens. “So you don’t believe in coincidences either?”

“No,” I say, more harshly than I intended. “Believing in fairy tales is what landed me in this position in the first place.”

“Okay.” She glides toward the door without another word.

Is that it? She’s just walking away?—

I’m scratching the side of my head when Rowan walks around the building and plops down in the dirt, exactly as she did when we were kids, resting her back against the building. The instant she peers up at me with those big brown eyes that always tugged at my heart, I know I’m in a lot of fucking trouble.

“It’s good to see you, Peach.”

We spent an hour going over logistics, but it passed in a flash. Her scent is still imprinted in my mind, and now I want fucking roses everywhere I go. What would it take to line the paths with rosebushes?

God, I’m an idiot.

The trail we’re following opens up to the ocean, and she stops so suddenly I nearly crash into her.

“You okay?” I ask, surreptitiously scanning the sand in front of her for something ready to strike. I’m not even sure what I’m looking for if I’m being honest. A crab?

“Yeah.” We stand side by side, close enough to feel her shoulders unfurl like a yoga mat as she exhales deeply. “The beach is my happy place. I’m never as calm as I am here. I wish I were able to visit it more often.”

I’m still studying her face when a chorus of “Daddy!” wakes me from the surreal bubble I’m in.

Kade kicks up sand as he sprints toward us. Miles runs beside him with his hands outstretched as though he’s ready to catch his little brother when he inevitably falls.

“Miles is protective,” Rowan observes.

“He’s a peacemaker, but yeah, he loves his little brother.”

She eyes me curiously but says nothing as my boys wrap their arms around my legs.

“We saw sharks, and dinosaurs, and snails, and kites. I swam in a big wave and I’m going to be a surfer when I grow up.” Kade’s excitement for life is infectious. “Right, Miles? Right?”

“Right, buddy,” Miles says with an indulgent quirk of his lips. He’s much too old for his eight years.

“Are you having fun?” I ask Miles.

His pasted-on smile, a permanent fixture lately, lifts at the corners. I wish I could get my happy little man back—the one who didn’t fake his emotions to make everyone around him comfortable. “Pappy promised me three scoops of ice cream if I kept Kade from diving into the waves without him.”

“That sounds about right. At least he knows that at seventy-plus years old, he’s in no position to dive into the waves to rescue a curious six-year-old.” I grin at my little boy.

“Pappy did good watching us,” Miles says, then dusts off his hands in the same no-nonsense way my grandfather does.

“Pappy’s a stubborn old mule who believes he’s still in his prime,” Rowan mutters, then drops to her knees in the sand while Miles and I gape at her.

“Rowan, this is Miles and Kade,” I say, pointing to the boys.

“Hello, Walker boys. My name’s Rowan, and I’ll be hanging out with you for a bit if that’s okay with you?”

Kade pinches his face as though he’s in deep thought. “Do you like bugs?”

“I eat them for breakfast,” she replies without a moment of hesitation.

A bark of laughter escapes me.

“No, you do not,” Kade says with his mouth gaping in between words. “What about snakes and mud?”

“Snakes and mud together or on their own?” Rowan tilts her head as she nudges the ball back to his court.

Kade’s feeding off the silliness, and he scratches the back of his neck as if this is the most important question of his life even as his feet dance in the sand.

When was the last time anyone simply accepted my youngest’s energy and vivid imagination? Even his own mother was exasperated by him most of the time.

“On their own,” he says with a serious nod of his head.

“Well.” Rowan sits back on her heels, pure sunshine radiating from her mischievous expression. “I prefer my snakes behind glass, but mud can make for excellent spa days.”

Miles inches closer to me. It would seem he’s as curious about my childhood friend as I am, but he’s still partially hidden by my side, so I wrap an arm around his shoulder. We breathe deeply and in sync, the salt air settling into my bones.

“You play in the mud?” Because Kade can’t do anything with subtlety, his skepticism shows in his comically raised brows and impossibly wide eyes.

“Sure thing, kid. I don’t mind getting dirty.” Rowan places her hands in the sand, then leans around my legs to address Miles. “What do you like to do?”

He shrugs. “Whatever Kade and Seren want to do.”

She sits back on her heels and dusts the sand off her hands before placing them on her thighs and rolling her shoulders forward as though she’s creating a bubble around herself. Is she pulling back for herself or for my boys? “What if they were busy? What’s the one thing you want to do this summer?” Rowan watches him closely but allows Miles to make the first move.

As his shoulders hover around his ears, parental guilt rolls over and lodges itself in my throat. What does he want to do, and why the fuck haven’t I asked him that myself?

“I heard you can find treasure on the beach sometimes,” he says shyly. His feet move an inch in her direction.

“Treasure hunting it is! I’m sure we can find some metal detectors, too.” Rowan’s voice is almost cheery, but she still keeps that bubble of space around herself.

Kade is a tiny wrecking ball who has no use for personal space, and I can’t wait to see how he’ll break down that wall she’s putting up.

Miles takes half a step forward and scans Rowan’s face. A silent conversation drags out between them, but no one moves.

Her body language relaxes, and her face is kind when she finally holds out her hand to my little man. He tentatively places his palm in hers. “It’s nice to meet you, Miles.” She lowers her face and whispers conspiratorially, “I keep my promises, and I never promise something I can’t follow through on.”

My fist clenches against my sternum when a shooting pain lances my chest just as Pappy shuffles toward us from the water’s edge.

“How do you feel about spending some time with me for a few weeks?” she asks him. In fact, everything she’s done so far seems to give him the power. What would she do if he said no?

“Sure,” Miles says pleasantly, but his tone isn’t sure at all.

“It’s about damn time, Row.” There’s a fondness in my grandfather’s tone that’s generally reserved for my kids, and it tells me everything I’ve always suspected about Rowan Ellis—he loves her as if she’s his own flesh and blood.

“Pappy,” she sighs. Her expression opens, and for one moment in time, she’s the frightened little girl she once was, but as quickly as it came, she shutters it behind a smile that will fool everyone.

Everyone but me.