Odd Mom Out

“No?”

Kathleen’s briskly stamping the lap cards while Luke and I pass out bags of cotton candy to the next rush of kids.

As the last little boy tears off, I step around the table to face Luke squarely. “What can I do for you?”

He stares down at me, his expression so intense that it’s almost intimidating. “I’m asking you out.”

“Out?”

“Dinner.”

“Dinner?”

“I feel like I’m doing the Texas two-step right now,” he answers.

I laugh. I can’t help it. “I can’t do dinner.”

“Why not?”

“It’s . . .” I look at him, make a face. “Too much like a date.”

“It is a date.”

“Exactly.” I tuck long hair behind my ear, slide my hands into the back pockets of my jeans. “I can do coffee, though. Starbucks. Tully’s. Jet City.”

“You’ve only mentioned the chains.”

“That’s because they’re the ones that come to me for business.”

“So you are a hard woman.”

“Fair but tough,” I reply, suppressing a shiver as my gaze locks with his. There’s something in his eyes, something strong—male and unnervingly primal—that makes my pulse race. “What’s wrong with coffee? There are coffeehouses on every corner, and it’s cheap. You could treat, and I wouldn’t feel guilty.”

A corner of his mouth curls. “And you’d feel guilty if I paid for your dinner?”

“Yes.”

His gaze holds mine. “Chicken,” he says softly, so softly that tiny shivers race up and down my back.

In a dim part of my brain, I think I’ve met my match. Someone who might just possibly know my game, and it’s thrilling and yet also terrifying. I’ve gotten to where I am today—a single, successful thirty-six-year-old mother—by insisting I don’t need anyone or anything when actually the opposite just might be true.

“Why are you so stubborn?” I ask uncomfortably.

“Because you’re intriguing.” He pauses. “And cagey as an alley cat.”

“And that’s flattering how? . . .”

His smile heats his eyes, all blue fire. “I think, Ms. Zinsser, you enjoy being challenged.”

“You get all that from what?”

He just laughs quietly and shakes his head. “Dinner. Tomorrow. I’ll pick you up at six-thirty.”

My head’s spinning. The guy is way too confident. “You’re way too aggressive.”

“Assertive, not aggressive, and I wouldn’t have to be so assertive if you wouldn’t be such a chicken.”

My mouth nearly falls open. He’s so not what I thought he was, so not what I imagined. “I don’t think I like you.”

Luke’s expression says otherwise. “So six-thirty. And dress casual. Just in case we have to eat at Starbucks.”

Now he is walking away, walking from the building’s shadow and into the late autumn sunshine.

“Don’t you need my address?” I call after him.

He stops, faces me. “No. I already know it.”

“How?”

He’s walking again, and looking back at me over his shoulder, he mouths, “The parent directory.”

The parent directory?

I’d always wondered what that was for.

I make arrangements for Eva to stay at my parents’ tomorrow night, as I’m not comfortable with her knowing I’m going out. She’d be fine with me having a date, though. In fact, she’d be thrilled.

I’m the one with the problem. I’m the one who swore off men. Not that that was the most rational decision.

The plan was for me to drop Eva at my parents’ late in the afternoon, but I’d totally forgotten that the Huskies were playing at home, so traffic was nightmarish.

After taking an hour to travel five miles, I spend another half hour making small talk before Dad walks me to the door.

“Could you take your mom to the doctor for me on October sixteenth?” he asks as we stand on the front steps of the house. “I’ve got something I can’t get out of and don’t want to reschedule Mom’s appointment.”

I’ve never taken her to her doctor and am happy to help but also a bit wary. “Is there anything special I need to do?”

“I keep a notebook so I can keep track of symptoms, and I’ll send that with you.”

“Okay.” I look at him a long moment. He seems unusually tense. But then he’s been quite tense for the past month or so. “Dad, is everything all right?”

“Everything’s fine,” he answers briskly. “The appointment’s at three. Don’t be late.”

He kisses me good-bye, and I’m back in my car. By the time I reach my house on Yarrow Point, I have only thirty minutes before Luke arrives, and I’m suddenly so nervous that I sit at the foot of my bed and take deep, calming breaths.

After a minute, I stand. I don’t feel much calmer. If anything, I’m in even more of a panic.

I’d like to cancel the date. And I’d do it if I had his number, but I don’t. He’s just beautiful Luke with the big biceps, thick chest, tight butt, and long, muscular legs.

Since I can’t cancel the date, I’ve got to at least get dressed.

The thing to do, I tell myself, is to just be myself, and that includes wearing what I like to wear. Wearing what makes me comfortable.

Jeans, combat boots, and a big billowy white shirt.

I look in the mirror and sigh. Eva would kill me if she thought I was going out with a man dressed like this. Eva would just about die.

She’d tell me I’m not Lara Croft from Tomb Raider and that only lesbians wear combat boots for evening wear. I look down at my boots. From this angle, they do look rather . . . butch. . . .

Oh, shit.

Impatiently, I plop back on the foot of my bed, unlace the boots, and trade them for my painterly clogs. Eva hates these, too, but I like them, and they don’t scream different sexual orientation. They just scream . . . different.

For all of two seconds, I consider changing the entire outfit. But then what do I wear? Something clingy? Something silky? Something that shouts, Hey, I have breasts and a vagina?

No. That’s just too pathetic.

But some jewelry would help, something funky like my carved pendant from New Zealand and the delicate bangles from India. I top my white shirt with a car-length red suede coat I picked up on a business trip to Milan a few years ago and comb my long hair smooth.

A little mascara and a cinnabar-hued lipstick topped with a golden lip gloss and I’m done. This is as girlie as I’m going to get. And you know, Lara Croft from Tomb Raider is kind of my style.

The doorbell rings.

I gulp air. Tough girl disappears with the realization that Luke’s here.

“You look beautiful,” he says as I open the door.

Luke must have called my stylist. He’s dressed like me. Jeans, white shirt, no red suede coat, thank God, but he’s got on heavy leather shoes, the kind that look as though they’d work

beautifully on a hiking trail.

His hair is still damp and he’s freshly shaven, and he smells unreal.

“Thanks,” I answer, breathing in his scent, very shower clean with a hint of a subtle spicy cologne I don’t know but like very much. “You look nice, too.”

“Nice?”

“Beautiful?” I say, throwing his compliment back at him.

He has a quiet laugh, and the sound is a sexy deep rumble from inside his chest. He holds the door for me. “Do you have everything?”

“Yes.”

His Land Rover is nearly as worn on the inside as it is on the outside, but otherwise it’s spotless. The brown leather seats have a wonderful aged patina, the dash has been polished, and the floorboard’s vacuumed clean.

“It’s a great truck,” I compliment as he holds the door open for me.

“I’ve had it forever.”

“And before that it did safaris in Kenya?”

Sliding behind the wheel, he flashes me a curious look. “You have a problem with old?”

“Hardly. My car’s a ’57 Ford truck.”

He looks at me even longer. “A gift?”

“A gift to myself. I bought it years ago, love it, couldn’t imagine driving anything else.”

His blue gaze drifts slowly across my face, studying, analyzing. “So you’re not just easy on the eyes,” he eventually drawls, starting the Land Rover. He backs out of the driveway and then turns onto the road.

Easy on the eyes. An interesting expression, I think, watching his broad, tanned hands as he expertly shifts gears that I know have to be a bit creaky; yet he knows his truck, loves his truck, and with each shift of his wrist I feel that hot, fizzy sensation in me grow.

I like him, and I don’t even know how or why, but once he looked at me, I saw something in his eyes and I wanted that, too.

I saw a mind working. I saw a flicker of heat in a cool blue gaze. I saw curiosity and a desire to be intrigued, entertained. I liked that he made me feel like a sexy outlaw or chopper, something that one doesn’t see all the time on the street.

Watching his hands, I think, I want those hands on me.

I want his mouth on mine.