Date with a Single Dad. Ally Blake

and tossed her a cosy, red-checked, woollen blanket. It was too soft to be freshly washed, too fluffy to be new. It was the kind of thing a man might keep at the end of his bed, or the back of his couch. She imagined it covering his long bare legs as he lay back—

      She cleared her throat. ‘What exactly am I meant to do with this?’

      ‘Slide it beneath your backside or you’ll get splinters,’ he ordered. ‘That or that dress of yours will be shredded.’

      Of course. So what if it carried a faint lingering scent of him—he hadn’t given it to her as some sort of come-on. It was near forty degrees out! She lifted her backside and planted it back on the folded blanket.

      ‘This too,’ he demanded, throwing her a soft khaki fisherman’s hat, which was frayed to the point of falling apart.

      She gripped the hat between tightly coiled fists. All that commanding was beginning to get on her nerves. Her voice was sugary sweet as she asked, ‘And where, pray tell, am I supposed to put this?’

      His hands stilled. He glanced up. The smile hovered; the glint loomed.

      And it hit her as if the lake had suddenly thrown up a tidal wave over the boat. Zach Jones might prefer her to be far, far away, but a certain part of him took a purely masculine pleasure in having her close by.

      She licked her suddenly dry lips and blinked up at him. The smile faded and the glint disappeared without a trace.

      ‘Just stick the thing on your head, will you?’ he growled.

      ‘Aye aye, Captain,’ she muttered.

      The hat smelled like the sea and fitted over her head like velvet. Atop her sateen cocktail dress it must have looked a treat.

      He slapped an old cap atop his curls, shoved a foot against the jetty, pushing them off before easing down onto his own bench.

      She tucked her knees tight together and pretended to pay attention to the ripples fanning out through the flat silver water, and not how close his knees were to hers, as he picked up the oars and pushed them effortlessly out into the lake.

      Within seconds the wilting reeds shielded them from the rest of the world and they were alone.

      The sun beat down upon Meg’s back, making her glad of the hat. The soft swish of the displaced water created a slow, even rhythm. And as Zach built up a sweat every breath in gave her a fresh taste of his clean cotton clothes and some indefinable heat that was purely him.

      Like this, all easy silence, all effortless masculinity, it was hard not to imagine he might be exactly the kind of guy she could happily spend oodles of time with. A beautiful sailor who slept in late, didn’t believe in making plans, and just went with the flow.

      It was hard to believe he owned and ran a huge multinational business that no doubt took long hours away from home. That took the kind of relentless ambition that meant everything else in life came a distant second. Family included.

      Her brother Brendan was trying to do the single father thing. Running the Kelly Investment Group and raising two young daughters. And though she’d never tell him so to his face she knew in her heart the half of his life he was letting slip from his grasp was his girls.

      Zach’s eyes slid from some point over her shoulder to find hers. His dark, deep, unfathomable eyes. Their gazes held a beat longer than polite. Two beats. She held on, trying to sense regret, bereavement, concern for his little girl. All she got for her trouble was the sense that she was getting more entangled by the second.

      She breathed in slow and deep through her nose. Could she ask him about Ruby now? Should she? Would she be doing it to be helpful? Or did she know he’d react badly, so she could use Ruby to save herself from feeling the way she did when he looked at her like that?

      In the end she lost her nerve and said, ‘So you’ve been on two runs today and now rowing. I feel tired just thinking about it.’

      He went back to staring at the water. ‘I like to be on the move. Eyes forward, nothing but the wind and the sun to keep me company. It clears the head. If you don’t run or do yoga, what do you do?’

      Mmm. She had proven that day that exercise made her hurt, and wobble and crave sugar.

      ‘To clear my head?’ she said. ‘Disco music.’

      One dark eyebrow rose and his hot, dark gaze slid back to hers. ‘Disco?’

      ‘Blaring from my iPod directly into my ears. Ten seconds into any Donna Summer or Leo Sayer song and the rest of the world fades away.’

      They said music soothed the savage breast, and so it had done for her, many a time in her teens when she might have otherwise given in to mounting frustration with her life and done something she’d later regret. Ultimately disco could only soothe so much hurt.

      ‘Even if you’re lying on the couch your feet can’t help but bop. Your head clears of everything but the music. It’s kind of like exercise only more relaxed.’

      When he merely blinked at her she gave him her ‘greeting line’ smile, with a full showing of teeth, twinkling eyes and dimples. ‘You’re going to give it a go the moment you go home, I can tell.’

      And while most people, even members of her own family, could no longer tell when she was ‘on’ and when she was just being herself, the slow rise of the corner of his mouth told her she hadn’t fooled him for a nanosecond.

      How did he do that? How was he able to see straight through her? Again she felt exposed, as if she’d walked into a ballroom with her dress tucked into the back of her undies.

      He stopped rowing and the boat’s sleek glide slowed so that she rocked forward on her seat.

      ‘I’m game. I’ll give disco a go,’ he said. ‘But only if you take the oars right now.’

      She imagined splinters. She imagined aches in even more as yet undiscovered muscles. She imagined her hands brushing against his as she took him up on his offer.

      ‘I’ll pass.’

      Zach laughed. The column of his throat moved sexily beneath the sound. It faded all too soon in the wide-open space, and his eyes once again grew so dark they drew her in while they pushed her away.

      She wondered if he could see the same impulse in hers.

      She wondered what might happen if they both pulled at the exact same time.

      His large hands curled back around the worn old wooden sticks and he slid the oars back into the water, pushing off with such grace and power Meg was sent to the back of her seat. Smart move. Pushing was much more sensible.

      A cooling wind fluttered past her warm face. Streaks of gold dappled the rippling silver water where the sun burst through fluffy white clouds. The edges of the lake were completely obscured by the thick, green rainforest spilling into water.

      Time stretched and contracted. She realised she had no idea how long she’d been gone. Or why he’d taken her out there onto the lake alone in the first place.

      ‘I don’t mean to say this isn’t entirely pleasant, and so generous for the owner to give me such a personal tour of the blue bit on the bottom of the map,’ she said, ‘but how long were you planning for this outing to be?’

      ‘We can turn back now if you’re getting too hot.’

      Only then did she even consider that, while he looked like a sun god, she must have looked an utter treat—in his floppy hat, her hair plastered to her face after her hike to the end of the resort and back, her Irish skin pink as a rose.

      She wasn’t used to feeling so discomposed; her voice was rather sharper than she intended when she said, ‘I’m only thinking of you.’

      He raised a solitary eyebrow. ‘You’re thinking of me?’

      More than you know. ‘Many a poor fellow has ended up