Downstairs, we each summoned an Uber and after another hug, we drove our separate ways. My eyes got teary, but I didn’t cry like I usually did when we parted. I’d see her again in a month for Christmas, and I had a date with Dylan to distract me from how much I’d miss her.
Because I didn’t have to deal with Sabrina at the train station like I’d thought I’d have to, I ended up at Dylan’s building earlier than I’d planned to. I bustled into the lobby, humming “Carol of the Bells” and pulling my suitcase behind me with one hand while I wrestled with my phone’s screen lock with the other. I’d just send him a text, let him know I was there already.
Obviously, I was preoccupied, which was why I wasn’t paying attention and smacked right into an older guy who was coming off of the elevator. He had a solid body. Toned muscles were definitely hidden under the brick-red pullover sweater. His smelled of cinnamon and aftershave, and my belly began fluttering with butterflies before I even looked up and confirmed that the body belonged to Dylan.
His hands came up to steady me, grasping my elbows firmly. Sparks shot through my veins, and though we were about to go upstairs and get busy touching in so many other ways, I didn’t want him to let me go long enough to move at all.
“Hi.” I sounded shy and awkward. Not my usual self at all, which I blamed mostly on the collision, but the way he was looking at me with those liquid brown eyes didn’t help.
“Hi.” He gave the slightest of smiles.
Then quickly it disappeared. “Pardon me. I wasn’t watching where I was going. Are you okay now? Steady enough? You aren’t hurt?”
“Dad, she’s fine,” a thin voice grumbled.
My eyes flew to Dylan’s side and collided with a teenage boy who could only be Aaron Locke. Even if he hadn’t just referred to him as Dad, it was apparent the two were related. The boy had his father’s height, his dimpled chin, his puppy dog eyes, his floppy brown hair.
Immediately, I stepped back, not sure how to act or what to say. I stammered through some version of, “I’m fine, thank you.” Then stood, jaw slack, as I tried to figure out what to do next. Should I zoom away without another word? Pretend we’d never met before?
Yes. That was exactly what I should do.
Instead, I stood there frozen.
Dylan wore the same panicked expression, but fortunately he seemed able to string together coherent thoughts. “Audrey, this is my son, Aaron. Aaron, this is Audrey, my…my…”
Okay, so maybe he was just as flustered as I was.
I pulled myself together and stepped in. “Your dad is my sister’s boss,” I explained directly to Aaron. “We somehow all ended up at dinner together the other night, and we met then.”
“Weston was there as well,” Dylan hurried to add, as though that might legitimize the innocence of it all.
“Right. And Donovan too,” I said. Just because Donovan had shown up after the meal didn’t make it a lie.
Of course, none of that explained what I was doing in Dylan’s apartment building at the moment. I pasted on a grin and prayed silently that the kid didn’t ask.
He didn’t. All he said was, “Oh,” barely glancing at me before throwing his gaze to the top of his shoes.
“I was just walking Aaron home,” Dylan said.
His son looked up and rolled his eyes. “For the seventy-billioneth time, you don’t need to. It’s two blocks. I walk this street alone all the time.”
Dylan’s jaw tensed. “Well. We’re still negotiating the walking, I suppose.”
“I see,” I said with a chuckle. It was the perfect opportunity to say goodbye, let them go on their way while I slipped upstairs to the apartment. I still had a key. I didn’t need to be let in.
But I felt caught. Not like I’d been found out doing something I shouldn’t be—though, that too—but like caught in the moment. Engaged. Drawn in.
I’d known Dylan was a father from pretty much the moment I met him. We’d talked about his son. I’d understood completely that he was a parent.
But it was totally different actually seeing him in the role.
It was the kind of thing that was hard to look away from. It felt private, but I was nosy. Like, I would see this man naked later today—if everything went as it should—and seeing him with his son seemed even more personal. Even more intimate.
I wasn’t ready to walk away from it. I wanted to look a little longer. Watching the man I knew from my fantasies in his real life, as a father, was the sweetest thing I could imagine.
“I’m glad to see you made it back safely from your adventure the other night,” I said, knowing I was walking a tightrope.