Play Dates. Maggie Wells

how she felt. He experienced the same profound relief each time he thought too hard about how close he’d come to never knowing his son. He was grateful for the doctors who jumped in to save a helpless infant and the friends who stood by his side while he groped his way through those mind-boggling months of fresh grief, terrifying responsibility, and heart-stopping betrayals.

      He’d been holed up for too long. Both Mike and James had been after him to start dating, but who had the energy for all that crap? But the woman beside him? This stranger with her impossibly direct gaze and self-admitted gambling problem? She tempted him into thinking he might want to try again. At least a dinner. After all, everyone had to eat, right?

      “Listen, my folks have been keeping Aiden for a while on Saturday nights,” he began without taking a minute to think too hard about what he was doing. “It’s new and hasn’t always worked out.” Okay, so he’d only had to pick his boy up once, but he didn’t have to give her an accounting. She also didn’t need to know the lack of success was because he pined for his son more than his kid did for him. “But if you can get free tonight, maybe get a sitter—”

      “Oh!” Her eyes widened as she caught on to where he was heading. “Oh, Emma isn’t—”

      “Yo, Colm!” James approached, a twin tucked under each arm. He was herding the boys with nudges of his bony knees and looking more like a nutty professor than a smooth salesman at the moment. “Dude, pancake time. Gather the sprout and let’s hit it. One of them’s gonna gnaw my arm off.”

      Colm noted his friend spared only the barest of nods for Monica. Typical. If ever there was a man unnaturally attracted to the crazy, that man was Jimbo. And Monica Rayburn, with her sharp blue eyes and smudge-free but delightfully form-fitting blue jeans, was sanity incarnate.

      “Pancake time?” she asked, blinking at the man approaching them.

      “We go to the park and eat pancakes for lunch.” He twisted his lips into a self-deprecating smile. “This is what us Saturdaddies do, you know…screw with routine.” Turning to James, he nodded toward the swings. “If you can pry him loose, we’ll go.”

      Monica laughed as James lumbered away. “Good for you. Routines are for sissies.”

      “So let’s break ours. Have dinner with me tonight,” he insisted. “Do you think you can find someone to watch Emma?”

      “Oh, not a problem. My sister—”

      “Monnie! Monnie!”

      She yelped and staggered when the little girl rammed into her legs full-force. “Ah! Emma!” Catching her balance, Monica gently disentangled herself from her little girl’s grasp. “I swear, we’re going to get you a job busting kneecaps for the mob when you grow up.”

      “Aiden’s gonna eat pancakes! Can we eat pancakes?”

      Colm saw a spark light Monica’s eyes, but she shook her head. “No, sweets. We have a reservation at Girlie Girls for curls and crumpets, remember?” She pulled her phone from her pocket and dragged her thumb across the screen to wake it. “Almost time for us to go, anyway.”

      The photo on the screen gave him hope. A picture of him filled the background. She’d zoomed in and caught him in a close-up as he leaned against the tree. And the best part was, she must have snapped the picture long before Princess Clarissa waved her matchmaking wand and brought them together. She was every bit as interested in him as he was in her. “Nice shot.”

      A peachy-pink blush colored her cheeks. She kept her head down, hiding behind a curtain of glossy hair as she quickly switched to the home screen. “Must have been an accident. I was taking pictures of Emma.”

      “Wow. You’re good. Perfectly in frame. Most of my pictures come out in a blur.” Emboldened by the photographic evidence, he plucked the phone from her hand. “Maybe you should give up the pork rinds and think about going pro.”

      “Pork bellies,” she muttered. Lifting her head, she shook her hair out and squared her shoulders. “And if you must know, the picture was no accident. I’m sure you’ll be a big hit on my friend’s blog.”

      “Blog?”

      “She posts pictures of hot guys spotted around town.”

      He couldn’t repress the twitch of his lips. “You think I’m a hot guy?”

      Monica huffed and he chuckled, more than happy to let her off the hook once he had an advantage.

      Opening the contacts list, he typed in his name and number. “Listen, see what you can do about the crumpet here, and let me know. Okay?”

      “Colm, I’m not—”

      “Daddy, I’m soooooooo hungry,” Aiden whispered, holding his belly for emphasis.

      Swooping his boy up, he settled Aiden squarely on his shoulders. “Call if yes. Text if you’re rejecting me,” he said, backing away. “I’m sure you don’t wanna hear a grown man cry.”

      “Would you?”

      “Yes.”

      “Are you an ugly crier? I bet he is,” she confided to the little girl at her side. “I bet he gets all snotty and gross. Boys are, you know.”

      He grinned, barely minding when Aiden sank his fingers into his hair and yanked. Hard. “Call me, and you won’t have to worry about things getting ugly.”

      Chapter 2

      “Seriously? So you didn’t tell him? You let him believe Emma was your kid?”

      Monica thought she’d prepared herself for confession and interrogation, but Mel was in rare form. She was also incandescent. Monica chose not to dwell on what caused her sister to glow as if lit by a candle. If only she could bleach the memory of her brother-in-law Jeremy’s too-wide smile from her brain.

      “I tried, but we kept getting interrupted, and the next thing I knew, he was gone,” Monica explained, trying to control the exasperation in her tone.

      “Like, poof! Presto! A big puff of smoke and nothing left but a scorch mark on the grass?”

      Raking her hand through her hair, Monica dropped onto the sofa. “Not quite, but close.” She hefted her overstuffed Marc Jacobs tote to the coffee table and started extracting all evidence of her day with her niece. “Well, you know…His friends were there, and the kids were whining, I wasn’t going to stand there and scream, ‘Hey, hot guy! I’m not this kid’s mom!’ in the middle of the park.” She turned to glance at her niece, who was kneeling at the side of the table inspecting every juice box, hair band, and baggie Monica dropped to its surface. “No offense, kiddo.”

      Unperturbed, Emma held up a bag of cheese crackers shaped like bunny rabbits. “Can I have these?”

      Monica blinked, visions of the overpriced sandwiches and petit fours the little girl had left uneaten thirty minutes ago dancing in her head. “I thought you said you weren’t hungry.”

      Emma shrugged and hopped to her feet. “I am now.”

      Luckily, Mel’s husband was adept at avoiding sisterly conversations. He scooped up Emma, his I-got-some smile stretching into a grin as the little girl squealed and squirmed with delight. “C’mon. We’ll rustle up a PB&J to go with those.”

      The kitchen door barely swung closed. Mel was on her again, her flyaway blond hair even more flighty than usual. “So are you going to call him?”

      Shifting her tablet a little to the left to make room for her paper planner, she tucked the tiny spiral notebook she kept on hand at all times into the side pocket of the tote. Sparing her sister a glance from under the curtain of her hair, she mumbled, “I want to.”

      “You’re going to have to tell him,” Melody said, fixing her with a disconcerting stare.

      Somehow, Monica always managed to underestimate the amount of steel in her free-spirited