Weekend Wife (Sassy in the City 1)

I’d take that. “I am. Completely. Ask Leah.”

“How did you two kids meet?” my father asked Leah. “Online?”

“No. I walked into a diner and there she was, wearing a uniform. This angel singing Ava Maria in a poodle skirt while people shoveled eggs and waffles into their mouths.” I’d always be fond of that poodle skirt.

“A poodle skirt? Good Lord, how can you stand a job that forces you to wear kitsch?”

“The tips are good,” Leah said. “Especially when I sing.”

“So she was your server?” Dad asked.

Note he had the language down now. I knew he’d been just being a smartass earlier.

“Yes. I sat at the bar.”

“He was very serious. I didn’t know what to make of him.” Leah leaned against me, in full-on girlfriend role.

“After eating there twice, I decided to ask her out. So that’s what happened.”

“What he actually said was ‘Why don’t you come to my place for dinner and stay forever?’”

My story was boring, I could admit that, but really? She had to make me sound like a complete tool? I looked down at her and shot her a look, but I was more amused than annoyed.

“Eddie. Jesus.” Dad sounded amused. “Going right for it. Like your old man.”

“He’s smooth like Skippy,” Leah said.

I didn’t mean to. Hell, I didn’t want to. But I burst out laughing because that was ridiculous. There was no telling what in the hell was going to come out of Leah’s mouth.

Simultaneously both of my parents shot each other a look, like they couldn’t believe I was laughing out loud. Which was fair enough. I did laugh. Just generally not in their company. Even then, I wasn’t a jovial guy. No one would claim that.

“And I really like peanut butter,” Leah said. “I couldn’t resist him.”

“So you’re living together?” Dad asked.

He looked pleased by that. Alarm bells started to go off inside me. What if Leah said we were living together? Then again, what difference did it make? They never came to my apartment. In fact, in the two years I’d been living there, they had never seen it.

It didn’t matter anyway. Leah was shaking her head.

“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. I need to know how serious he is about our relationship. I know his track record. But I liked his confidence and his general cheesiness.”

I looked at her. “That was a backhanded compliment.”

Leah smiled up at me sweetly and scratched my beard. She just reached up and ran her fingers through it like we were alone. “Shh. It was not.”

Speaking of confidence. Hers had no bounds.

It’s not that I had expected Leah to be shy or demure. But I had thought she would just be cheerful, pleasant, compliant. I hadn’t anticipated she would have this whole narrative laid out to present to my parents. In which she both managed to do the job I had hired her for and teased me mercilessly at the same time.

As I stared into her brown eyes, on the sofa at my parents’ house in the Hamptons, and let her stroke my beard with total familiarity, I knew I was in trouble.

I was falling for Leah. For real.

And I didn’t hate it.

I took her hand and kissed her fingers. One by one. While her eyes darkened.

Falling? That was a fucking lie. Fallen.