Cowboy Baby Daddy

“It’s okay,” I tell her. “You don’t owe me anything. I should have said something sooner and I didn’t. That’s the way it goes sometimes.”

I turn the knob on my door.

“Are you going to be all right?”

That has just become my least favorite question ever.

“Yeah,” I answer. “I’ll be fine. I shouldn’t have said anything.”

I’m half-expecting her to say something else, but she’s silent. So I push my door open and can’t get it closed behind me fast enough.

Well, at least I have something to tell Wrigley, although I can’t imagine this is going to be the best first day of a relationship she’s ever had.

Chapter Fifteen

Coming Down

Leila

Mrs. Weinstock didn’t fire me after everything that happened yesterday, so I guess I’m here until I give them some kind of notice. That’s not really what’s on my mind, though.

Work is a blurry mass of emotion, none of which stays in one place long enough to really sink in. I wanted to tell Dane that I felt the same way about him, and I guess I kind of did, but that doesn’t change anything.

On the bright side, I’m so distracted that I barely notice it when Kidman asks me if I’d like to grease up his paper tray, and before I know it, I’m done for the day.

I don’t want to go home, but I can’t stay here. Knowing Dane, little though I do, I can only imagine that if he is home, he’s probably got company.

I’m just going to have to get over that, though.

I would call Mike, but I can see that only making things even less comfortable with Dane.

Why would he wait until the last possible minute to tell me that he has feelings for me?

By the time I get home, I’m too emotionally drained to worry about whether Dane’s in there or not.

I get into the apartment, and if he’s home, he’s in his room.

That’s fine by me.

Drained though I am, there’s no doubt that seeing him right now would be enough to send me off some kind of edge.

I can’t think about that right now, though. I only have a couple of weeks before I start at my new job, and I need to find somewhere to live.

If worse comes to worse, I can commute for a while, but that’s going to be a long drive. Like most people in Manhattan, I don’t have my own car, so I’d have to rent one; it’ll be so much easier if I can find somewhere before then.

I pull out my phone. If there’s one thing Mike knows, it’s how to annoy the crap out of me. If there are two things he knows, they’re how to annoy the crap out of me and how to find a killer deal on an apartment.

“Hello?”

“I got the job.”

I go on to tell him the finer details, and before I can even ask, he’s already installed himself as head of the apartment-finding committee.

Now Mike: Mike has a car. It’s a beat down hunk of junk, but it runs. Tomorrow is Saturday, so the planning section of the conversation goes by quickly enough.

It’s when he asks what I’m going to do about Dane that things start to unravel, or rather, that I start to unravel.

I make a quick excuse and hang up, but just hearing the name has me in a tailspin. I don’t know why I’m crying so hard.