Page 2 of Playboy Husband

MAISIE

When the final bell rang for the day, my classroom cleared out fast, the teenagers leaving behind only a mess and clouds of Axe body spray strong enough to choke a horse.

In their wake, my usually neat space looked like it had been hit by a hurricane made entirely of teenage angst, with chairs at odd angles, pencil shavings on the floor, and a few of the desks suspiciously close to others.

I’d been mid-sentence when they’d received their stay of execution, which meant I got to give them their graded pop quizzes back first thing in the morning instead of last thing in the afternoon.

Boy, some of them are in for a crappy start to the day. That’s for sure.

Shaking my head, I dropped into the chair behind my desk and picked up my red pen, ready to start working my way through a stack of homework assignments that would inevitably range from barely coherent to shockingly inventive.

Some of them turned out to be decent, but one kid had written math sucks as the answer to every problem.

While not mathematically correct, I supposed it was emotionally valid.

I just couldn’t give him any marks for it.

Another kid had—presumably accidentally—swapped their pluses and minuses around and had ended up with an answer number big enough to fund NASA for the rest of the eternity.

I sighed but kept going. About halfway through the stack of assignments, I genuinely found myself wondering why I’d bothered getting a degree in mathematics when these days, it seemed more like creative writing.

The door suddenly creaked open and Debbie’s head popped in first. She looked around, obviously checking to make sure the room was empty before she stepped inside.

“All the hostages have been released?” she asked. “I had a lingerer today. It turns out he desperately needed to ask why we had to cover the discoveries of ancient civilizations in history.”

I grimaced. “Don’t worry, you’re safe here. They went up in a puff of smoke before the bell had even finished ringing.”

She chuckled, shutting the door and moving over to perch herself on the edge of the desk nearest to mine.

As the middle-school history teacher at the local STEM charter school where we both worked, she didn’t seem too put out by having to explain why we covered ancient civilizations in our history curriculum.

If anything, she seemed pretty excited about something. Leaning forward slightly, her glittering brown eyes met mine and she grinned, arching an eyebrow as steep as it could go. “So?”

“So what?” I asked, already dreading the answer when it suddenly occurred to me that I knew what she was so curious about.

“How did it go with Kevin?” she whisper-yelled like me going on a date was supposed to be a state secret. “He’s nice, right?”

“If by nice, you mean that he’s a disaster, then yes, he’s perfectly nice.” I looked back down at the paper I’d been grading, feeling too guilty to keep looking into her eyes.

Debbie had set me up on a date with the Kevin in question. She knew him from spin class and she’d sworn up and down that he and I would be good together. I appreciated her effort. God knows, she was much more invested in the search for a man for me than I was, but the date had been awful.

I felt so bad about wasting all the work she’d put into setting us up, but seriously, I’d rather walk down the aisle in a public ceremony with my trusty, battery-operated boyfriend before I got into a relationship with that guy.

“Oh, come on. It couldn’t have been that bad.” The desk squeaked softly across the tile floor as she made herself comfortable, pushing it back just a little in the process. “At least he’s hot.”

“Not hot enough to spend twenty minutes explaining why pineapple on a pizza should be considered a war crime,” I said dryly, wishing I was joking. “Definitely not hot enough to call his mother at the table, put her on speakerphone, and ask her to back up his argument.”

She winced. “Did that really happen?”

“Yes.”

“Maybe he was just nervous,” she said, her voice soft and kind.

I groaned. Debbie was a hopeless romantic. I could’ve been trapped in a burning building with my date, and she still would have found a silver lining, probably getting all excited about how we’d have such a great story to tell at the wedding.

Looking up at her, I shook my head, seeing the sincere sorrow that sparked to life in her clear brown eyes.

With her bohemian style, patterned maxi-dress, and forearms full of bangles, she could’ve passed for anything from a psychic to an art gallery owner.

She was gorgeous, with a heart-shaped face, smooth, pale skin, and raven-dark hair.

She also happened to be one of the most genuine people I’d ever met. Debbie would place others’ happiness over her own any day of the week and she cared deeply about pretty much everyone she’d ever met.

I desperately didn’t want to hurt her feelings, but I’d rather chew off my own arm before I went on another date with Kevin.

“He wasn’t just nervous, babe, but maybe you should go out with him.

If you guys hit it off so well before, maybe it didn’t pan out for us because you’re the one who’s meant to be with him. ”

Her head cocked, a thoughtful glaze in her eyes for a beat before she gave her head a brief shake. “No, I definitely got you-vibes from him. Besides, I don’t need a man. I’m happy to keep waiting for my perfect match to come along. Maybe you’ll meet someone at the Halloween party?”

“What Halloween party?”

She sighed. “The one at the community center down the block from your house? You have to have seen the ads for it. It’s an annual thing and it draws a pretty awesome crowd. There are bound to be lots of single men for you to meet.”

I swiped my tongue across my lips, drawing a blank, but if she said it was happening, it was happening. She’d been living in our neighborhood a lot longer than I had.

“Pass,” I said, capping my pen and leaning back in my chair. “I’m swearing off dating for a while.”

“Maisie.” She grimaced like I’d just announced I was giving up on oxygen for a few months. “Don’t. You can’t just give up.”

“It probably won’t be forever, but right now, it’s just not working for me,” I said honestly. “I’m tired of all the fluff. The forced small talk. Pretending I care about someone’s fantasy football team.”

“You’re insane,” she said. “All that stuff is exciting. Every time could be the last time you have to find out something new about someone for the very first time. It’s crazy not to love the sense of possibility that comes with the small talk.”

Maybe I was insane. Maybe it was crazy not to feel all heart-eyed because of the possibility.

I used to believe in love. I believed in it with everything I had until life threw me the biggest curveball of all.

A curveball with a never-ending supply of energy, dark hair, green eyes, and a knack for turning my house into a Lego-built warzone.

For the last seven years, I’d poured every ounce of myself into that curveball and it was exhausting to have to start thinking about things like dating again just because he was getting older and a little more independent.

For a few more minutes, Debbie kept trying to talk me into keeping an open mind, but then the elementary school was dismissed and I made my way across campus to collect Brody.

My beloved curveball came barreling toward me with his backpack bouncing against his spine and a much too grown-up smirk on his lips.

“Hey, Mom,” he said casually, barely looking at me as he made a beeline for our car. Somewhere deep inside, I felt a pang of longing for the toddler days, when I’d gotten more hugs and kisses than I could count and I hadn’t just been a flat Mom but an excitedly squealed Mommy!

“It’s golf today, right?” I asked, shaking off the nostalgia as he climbed into the car and I dropped in behind the steering wheel. “Are you really still enjoying that?”

“Yep.” He grinned, already digging a snack out of his bag. “I’m going to crush it. Coach Daniel said I’ve got a natural talent for the game.”

I smiled, but inside, my stomach dropped. Of course, he’s got a natural talent for the game.

Brody had a natural talent for every sport known to man, and I was a single mom math geek who’d only learned how to catch a ball when I’d been teaching him. Sure, in my younger years, I’d been good at diving, but that was the only sport that had ever made sense to me.

As it was, the back seat was a mess of Brody’s hockey gear and, as of a few weeks ago, a set of golf clubs had been added to the mix. The kid cycled through hobbies faster than I could keep up. Hockey was still his main obsession, but apparently, golf was the in thing now.

The only consolation was that the driving range was only a few minutes away from the school. Once I dropped him off with his coach, I found a nice picnic table in the shade and pulled up my favorite weekly news outlet on my phone.

It was mostly local development updates and business news, but I loved it. It made me feel like I had my finger on the pulse of the stuff that mattered in our community—development, the preservation of green spaces, and small businesses in the area I could support.

Watching Brody from the corner of my eye, I scanned through the articles, absently flipping through the publication until something in the classifieds section drew my attention.

Local Businessman Seeking Wife. I snorted and rolled my eyes. What kind of lunatic would put an ad like that in the paper? I intended to move on, but for some reason, I kept reading.

The man claimed to be in his late twenties and well off. Apparently, he wanted to “skip the flings and situationships and get down to business.”

It was vague. Weird. Oddly smart.

I knew better than to romanticize things, but the truth was that I kept reading because I related to this guy.

I was also tired of the endless song and dance of dating, of wondering whether someone would stick around or if they were just passing through.

Since I had Brody to think about, even just the possibility of introducing him to someone who would hurt him when they left made me feel sick to my stomach.

This, however, seemed straightforward to me. Practical. Definitely the easiest way I’d come across so far to find Brody the dad he so desperately needed—and to make sure I didn’t die alone one day, surrounded by regret and cats.

Acting on instinct and before I could talk myself out of it, I clicked into my emails and typed out a quick message, sending it to the address listed on the ad. I was either going to get kidnapped and murdered, or married.

What could possibly go wrong?