“Not dating. No dating. Sometimes I think your vintage lifestyle has seeped into your brain.” Glo laughed at her own joke and elbowed Kimber good-naturedly. “Anyway, I’m not talking about dating or having a boyfriend. I’m talking about an affair. A clandestine one.”
“Oh, I see. You’re insane.” Kimber sent her a wry smile.
“He kissed you. You kissed him. You’re practically lovers already.”
Kimber laughed but it sounded strange. And strained. And she was a little sweaty now that a visual of her sexing up Landon Downey had flashed onto the frontal lobe of her brain. She chewed on the inside of her lip while she stirred her iced cappuccino with the straw. Glo was right. He had kissed her. Heck, he’d made the first move. Well, if she didn’t count stroking his temple with her fingernails. And the moonlit night had been romantic…
“You’re thinking about it,” Gloria sang.
“Yeah, I am. I’ve sort of been wandering in the desert since Mick and I split. I’m on a diet of no sex and arguing with my ex. And, you know… he’s Mick.” She gave Gloria a meaningful look. They’d dished about their sex lives before. Glo knew how unsatisfied she’d been.
Glo grunted. “Yeah, well Cameron was my last and that was over a month ago.” She wrinkled her nose. “No good.”
“Why do you insist on finding guys at the club if it never works out?”
“Because one day it might.” Sad thing was, she knew Glo really believed that. That she’d find her Prince Charming in the midst of absinthe and Jäger bombs. “Too bad I don’t like kids. Or my client might be a good option.” She sent a meaningful glance over at Lyon.
“You don’t mean…”
“Hey, Evan is hot. Hot with two Ts.”
She couldn’t argue. “He is. And he’s a good dad.”
Gloria sighed. Kimber said nothing. Gloria’s home life hadn’t been a pretty one. Compared to her druggie mother and various foster homes, Kimber’s adolescence resembled The Brady Bunch. Glo probably thought she’d make a terrible mother. But what woman didn’t worry about what kind of parent she’d be?
By comparison, Kimber couldn’t fault her own parents. After she’d grown up, she realized they were disturbingly normal. Human. Accidentally pregnant with Kimber, her mother had married her father. The marriage lasted sixteen years before ending in divorce. It was the not-earth-shattering story of how two people who were once in love grew apart. Kimber planned on getting married one time, and one time only. But at this rate, even that was looking un-doable. She’d developed a bad pattern. A pattern of searching for longevity where there was none. Why she expected every next relationship to stand the test of time was easily deciphered: She wanted forever.
“Hey.” Glo snapped her fingers. “Jack Handey. Having some Deep Thoughts over there?” She smiled at her own joke. “So what do you think of a fling?”
“A fling?”
“Do you prefer millionaire affair?”
“Gloria,” she reprimanded, appalled.
“Okay, okay,” her friend said around a laugh. Fun-night stand.”
“Mick was a one-night stand and that didn’t work out.” Or, at least, that had been the idea. It’d been Glo who’d suggested Kimber pick up Mick. He was supposed to help her get over an ex-boyfriend. It worked. A little too well.
“Not a one-night stand.” Glo fell silent as a woman walked by with her toddler daughter in tow. When the mother was out of earshot, she continued. “A fun-night stand.”
“And that is?”
She shrugged. “A fling that lasts until it stops being fun. Yours is pre-packaged to be just that. Landon doesn’t do connection, obviously, if he was so willing to have an ‘arrangement’ with that supermodel.”
Kimber wrinkled her nose. That arrangement didn’t make sense. Not really. Landon was from a beautiful, giving, lovely family. He genuinely loved and cared for his siblings and nephew. She’d seen him around Lyon. He was great with him. And Angel told her how he hadn’t wanted Lyon to stay at his business’s day care. He’d hired Kimber so that Evan could take his art immersion classes. So that Lyon could have round-the-clock care. And Landon wasn’t the Tin Man.
And now that she thought about Lyon… “It won’t be easy. We sort of have a child in the house.”
“A big house. Parents find a way. You”—Glo poked her arm—“will find a way.”