Dating for Two (Matchmaking Mamas) Read online

  Sitting at a table for one over in the corner that was bathed in shadow, Steve nursed a beer for the better part of two hours until, apparently out of money and out of friends, the man he was observing decided to boisterously call it a night.

  Steve walked behind the man for the two and a half blocks that existed between the bar and Baker’s third-floor walk-up.

  Just before the man got his keys out to unlock the main door that led into the tiny foyer and the stairs to his studio apartment, Steve tapped him on the shoulder.

  Taking no chances, Baker turned around prepared to swing. Ready for him, Steve instantly pushed the other man back, slamming Baker’s torso up against the wall.

  Trapped between the wall and the hold Steve had on him, his face pressed against the building’s aged brick exterior, Baker frantically protested, “Hey, buddy, if you’re looking to mug me, it’s your unlucky day. I’m tapped out. The bar’s got all my money.”

  Steve was in no hurry to release him. Keeping him like this against the wall was also a way to keep his own anger in check. Because for two cents, he’d turn the man around and make him pay for intimidating Erin.

  “I’m not looking to mug you, you sorry piece of wasted flesh. I’m looking to give you a warning. Just one,” Steve told him, his voice coldly menacing. “Stay away from Erin O’Brien. Don’t call her, don’t see her. Don’t text, Tweet, email or even so much as think about her. Because if you do, if you try to have any contact with her whatsoever, I’ll have you thrown in jail on blackmail charges so fast you’ll get whiplash.”

  Furious as well as frustrated, Baker snarled, “You can’t prove anything!”

  Steve spun Baker around to face him, making sure he kept a tight hold on his shirt collar. The man’s complexion grew considerably redder.

  “Oh, but I can, and I will. Especially since this isn’t your first go-round with blackmail charges.” Steve’s eyes narrowed. “You’re not nearly as clever as you think you are.”

  “Who the hell are you?” Baker demanded.

  Steve took his time answering, continuing to grasp Baker’s collar, keeping him in place. “I’m the guy who’s got a whole file of sworn statements signed by people willing to testify that Erin created all those dinosaur characters her company manufactures long before she ever knew you. So if you know what’s good for you and you value your health, you will forget you ever knew Erin O’Brien. As of now,” Steve emphasized.

  There was a line of perspiration along the man’s forehead, but he didn’t go down easily. “Or what?” he challenged.

  Steve had always been good at reading people, at detecting their small tells that allowed him to see beneath the facades they tried to maintain. It wasn’t difficult for him to ascertain that Wade Baker was a coward. The other man got his way only by intimidating people who were weaker and smaller than he was. Any sort of threat from someone his own size or slightly bigger—which, fortunately, he was, Steve noted—had him backing off. It was only a matter of time—and not much time, at that.

  Now, Steve was willing to bet, was no exception.

  “Or I’ll make you regret the day you were born,” he told Baker evenly. “I’m serious about getting you tossed in jail on blackmail charges—if there’s anything left of you after we have our little one-on-one ‘discussion.’” He allowed his words to sink in before continuing. “Now, first thing tomorrow morning, you’re calling your cousin, that shyster lawyer, and you’re telling him that you’ve decided to change your mind. You’re dropping the suit against Erin O’Brien and her company, Imagine That. Do I make myself clear?” he asked. When Baker didn’t respond instantly, Steve got in his face. “Well, do I?”

  “Yeah, yeah,” Baker managed to croak out. “Perfectly clear.”

  With a look of sheer disgust, Steve released his grip on the other man’s collar. Baker stumbled to the side, then darted into the foyer and ran up the stairs, presumably all the way up to his apartment.

  Steve smiled to himself as he walked back the two and a half blocks to where he’d left his vehicle parked right outside the bar.

  Sometimes, he thought, it felt good to get physical and get his hands a little dirty. He hadn’t fully appreciated that until just now.

  * * *

  This time, as she stepped off the elevator on the floor where Steve’s law firm was located, she didn’t feel like an impostor. Didn’t feel in the least bit nervous. She felt as if she were floating on air.

  It hadn’t even occurred to her that Steve might not be in his office until just now. Oh, she knew she could have just picked up her phone and called him about this new, unexpected turn of events, but she wanted to surprise him—and tell him in person.

  Still, not finding him in would have been a bigger surprise, one she had definitely not counted on.

  Luckily, she didn’t have to. The receptionist, Ruby, smiled at her broadly when she asked if Steve was in.

  “Yes, he is.”

  The woman was about to pick up her phone to notify Steve that he had someone waiting for him in the hall, but Erin stopped her.

  “I want to surprise him,” she said with such enthusiasm that Ruby allowed her to break the rules and waved her on in.

  “You’re not going to believe this,” Erin declared once she let herself into the office and shut the door, leaning against it as she made her announcement. Her heart was hammering wildly in her chest. She’d rushed over here the moment she’d gotten the news.

  “Believe what?” Steve asked innocently as he allowed himself a minute just to appreciate the very sight of her. Her cheeks were glowing and her hair was just the tiniest bit windblown. His mind started weaving fantasies and he found that he had to really struggle to keep his thoughts in check.

  “Wade’s lawyer just came by our office to tell me that Wade has decided to drop the suit,” she told him, still stunned that the threat was really over.

  “Oh?”

  “Yes. According to the lawyer, Wade said some crazy man made him see the error of his ways and he wanted me to know that he wasn’t going to be bothering me anymore. That he’d made a mistake about Tex and the other dinosaurs, that they weren’t anything like the characters he’d been thinking of putting out.”

  Steve saw a mixture of elation and confusion in her eyes. “So I guess that’s it,” he concluded. “You won’t be needing my services anymore.”

  That hadn’t been the first thing she’d thought of. Actually, she hadn’t thought of that consequence at all. Now that he’d mentioned it, though, she had to.

  “I guess not.” Erin paused, wondering if he was subtly telling her that he wasn’t going to be seeing her any longer. But right now she had another question to clear up. “Would you know anything about this?”

  “About what?” he asked as innocently as he could.

  The look on his face almost clinched it for her. This was his doing—she’d bet on it.

  “About the crazy person who made Wade see the error of his ways?”

  It was growing more and more difficult for him not to laugh. “Why would I?”

  “Well, for one thing,” she told him, “I don’t see Wade as the type to suddenly have an epiphany in the middle of the street.”

  Steve shrugged. “Maybe it wasn’t in the middle of the street. Maybe he had the epiphany in the bar. Or in the foyer of his apartment building.”

  The last detail had her eyeing Steve even more suspiciously. “How would you know he had a foyer?”

  This time the shrug didn’t look quite so innocent to Erin. “Just a guess. Does he?”

  She wasn’t buying this innocent act anymore. “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  “Was me what?” Steve bit back a grin.

  She saw right through him. “You made him drop the suit.”

  Steve grew serious now. What Bake
r had tried to do was nothing more than a crime. “It wasn’t a suit—it was blackmail disguised as a suit.”

  She smiled warmly at him. He’d made a difference in her life and no matter what lay ahead, she was always going to be grateful to him for that. “Did I tell you that I’m going ahead with that lawyer dinosaur? I’m thinking of calling him Steve.”

  “What happened to Clarence Darrow-Dinosaur?” he asked.

  “I like Steve better,” she answered.

  He nodded. “Kind of partial to that myself,” he commented. “Listen, since I’m not your lawyer anymore, what do you say to going out and celebrating your victory?”

  “I’d love it,” she said enthusiastically. Her next question completely caught him off guard—and further convinced him that he was so right about this woman. “You’re bringing Jason with you, right?”

  “Just clear up something for me first,” he requested. “Is my seven-year-old son going to give me some competition?”

  Steve Kendall was a man who had no competition. “Not a chance.” She laughed.

  “Then yes, I’ll bring him along with me. With us,” he corrected because the pronoun sounded so good out loud. “Where would you like to go to celebrate?” he asked, then named several high-class restaurants that were in the area.

  “Well,” she said, “to be honest, I was actually thinking more along the lines of going to the Orange Country Fair.”

  “You like deep-fried food?” he questioned in disbelief. In his experience, that was practically all there was to eat at the fair.

  “I wasn’t thinking of food,” she told him. “I was thinking about the various rides. I think Jason would have a lot of fun going on some of them.”

  He smiled into her eyes. “I think Jason would have fun being anywhere as long as you were there, too.”

  Erin looked at him, touched as well as surprised. “What a sweet thing to say.”

  “I have a lot of good qualities I’d like to show you,” he told her.

  They hadn’t reached the end of their relationship, she thought in relief. She intended to remain in this for the long haul, however long—or short—that actually was. “Sounds good to me.”

  “And,” Steve went on, never taking his eyes off her, “I’d like to spend the rest of my life showing you what they are.”

  Stunned, she stared at him. “Just what are you saying?” Erin asked.

  For once in her life she was afraid to let her imagination take off without any restraints on it. Afraid that because she wanted something so very much, failing to get it would be too devastating. So she waited for an answer, refusing to provide it herself, no matter how tempting.

  He paused for a moment, picking up the phone receiver and calling the receptionist out front.

  “Ruby, hold my calls until further notice.” He didn’t wait for the receptionist to acknowledge the instruction, hanging up instead.

  He looked at the woman sitting before him. At times, he was still convinced he had dreamed her up. She fit that perfectly into his world.

  When Steve finally spoke, he chose his words carefully.

  “I was one of those guys who was certain that love came just once in a lifetime—if it came at all. I’d had my once. But because I had a son who needed a mother, I made myself start looking for someone who would be able to fill that position.

  “What I found instead were a lot of women—beautiful, intelligent women—who had no desire to share their lives on a long-term basis with a man who had a child. They were far too interested in their careers and themselves to venture beyond that. After a few months of trying to get back into the swing of things, I decided I didn’t want to swing. That I’d had my one true love and I was just out of luck.

  “And then you happened by when I least expected it. You with your boundless imagination and your empathy and that heart of yours that seemed as big as the great outdoors. You made me rethink my planned exodus into a hermitage.”

  “Hermitage?” she echoed, doing her best not to laugh out loud—and failing.

  He pretended to be affronted by her laughter. “What’s so funny?”

  Her eyes danced with humor as she said, “You’re probably just about the last person I would peg to be a hermit.”

  He didn’t know about that. There were times, when he wasn’t reviewing legal maneuvers, when he felt completely alone and adrift. Especially when he couldn’t even connect with his own son. But Erin had changed all that for him.

  “Well, my heart certainly felt as if it had gone into isolation—before I met you.”

  “Your heart,” she echoed. He sounded so serious just now it made her wonder if he was trying to tell her something that she was missing.

  “Yes, my heart.” He blew out a frustrated breath. He could argue legal terms for hours, but this, apparently, he wasn’t very good at. “Woman, I’m trying to tell you that I love you.”

  Stunned, she felt her jaw slacken and drop open for a second. Closing it again, Erin stared at him, not sure if she should laugh or cry.

  Finally she said, “You’re a lawyer, all right. Using a hundred words when all you needed to use were three.”

  “Three,” he repeated, closely watching her, waiting for illumination.

  She nodded. “Three. The only three words any woman wants to hear.”

  He rose and came around his desk to her side. “‘Here’s my money’?” Steve pretended to guess, biting his tongue.

  She rose to her feet, as well, not content to remain seated with him looming over her like this. Getting up, she was aware that there was very little space between them.

  “Not even close, you idiot. The three words are I love you, too. Maybe four words.”

  “And do you?” he asked, his words all but caressing her skin as he waited for her answer.

  The smile began in her eyes and worked its way down to her lips. “What do you think?”

  This felt good, he told himself. It felt right. Any hesitation that might have been died before it ever had a chance to flourish. “I think if you turn this into a quiz, I’m going to explode.”

  “Can’t have that,” she said, then continued, “Yes, I love you. I think I fell in love with you in that classroom that first day when I saw that you looked so nervous talking to a classroom full of kids. It showed me that it was important to you to do a good job. Since your audience was comprised of seven-and eight-year-olds, I thought that was particularly endearing.”

  He shrugged off the compliment even though it warmed him to the nth degree. “I just didn’t want to embarrass Jason.”

  “Which was all part of the ‘endearing’ concept I was talking about,” she told him. “It meant you regard him—and them—as people. Little people, but people just the same. That’s a very good quality to have.”

  “Speaking of Jason, which of us should tell him about this?”

  He noticed her eyes were dancing again. In a moment, he found out why.

  “By ‘us’ do you mean you, me or Tex?”

  He had to be honest with her. “I really didn’t figure the dinosaur into this.” He grinned and shook his head. The woman was definitely different, he mused. He was looking forward to a lifetime with her. “I guess that I should start the discussion, huh?”

  “At least the first sentence or two,” she encouraged. “But to answer your question, my suggestion would be that both of us should tell him that he’s getting a stepmom. Tex can just hang out in the background, you know, speak only when he’s spoken to.”

  He laughed and shook his head in wonder at the way her mind worked.

  “This is definitely going to take some getting used to,” he told her. “It never occurred to me that I might be welcoming a dinosaur as part of the family.”

  “Which is why it pays to be open to new things,�
�� she said, weaving her arms around his neck.

  He smiled down at her. “Well, I’m all for that,” he said with feeling.

  “Good.” There was an impish smile on her face. “Because more than likely, there’ll be a lot of ‘that’ in our life together.”

  “I can hardly wait,” he told her, uttering exactly one word in between each kiss that he grazed across her lips.

  “Me, neither,” she murmured before she just lost herself in the sweet taste of his lips.

  * * * * *

  Keep reading for an excerpt from THE BACHELOR’S BRIGHTON VALLEY BRIDE by Judy Duarte.

  We hope you enjoyed this Harlequin Special Edition story.

  You know that romance is for life. Harlequin Special Edition stories show that every chapter in a relationship has its challenges and delights and that love can be renewed with each turn of the page.

  Enjoy six new stories from Harlequin Special Edition every month!

  Visit Harlequin.com to find your next great read.

  Connect with us on Harlequin.com for info on our new releases, access to exclusive offers, free online reads and much more!

  Other ways to keep in touch:

  Harlequin.com/newsletters

  Facebook.com/HarlequinBooks

  Twitter.com/HarlequinBooks

  HarlequinBlog.com

  Chapter One

  For most people, returning to their roots brought on a warm sense of nostalgia—but that wasn’t the case for Clay Jenkins.

  As he sat in a nondescript SUV on the tree-shaded main drag of Brighton Valley, just three buildings down from the old computer repair shop where he’d first gone to work nine years ago, he was reminded of the life he’d eagerly left behind and had tried so hard to forget.

  He could have hired someone else to come in and fix his flagship store, but this was where his new life had actually started.

  Hank Lazaro, his friend and mentor, had gotten him his first job there. As a result, the time he’d spent here on the weekends and after school had kept him out of trouble—and it had taught him a lot about business and honesty and hard work. It was here that he’d met the financial backer who’d helped him market the computer software program that had made him a multimillionaire before he hit the ripe old age of twenty.