Page 12 of Single Dad’s Fake Bride (Billionaire Baby Daddies #7)

HARRISON

I had never been good at dinner parties.

The realization hit me as I stood in my kitchen, staring at the table I'd set three times already.

The plates looked wrong—too formal for a Tuesday night—but my normal stuff was too casual for what I was trying to accomplish.

I moved the wine glasses again, then stepped back and wondered what the heck I was doing.

Sadie would arrive in twenty minutes.

Eloise was at her sitter's house for the evening, giving me the first real privacy I'd had in months.

The chicken was in the oven, the salad was tossed, and I'd somehow managed to find a playlist on my phone that didn't sound completely ridiculous.

But standing there in my own dining room, I felt more nervous than I had during any board meeting or client presentation.

I hadn't done this in years.

Not since before Eloise was born, when the idea of bringing someone home still felt natural instead of impossible.

After she came along, dating became a series of careful calculations—when, where, how much to reveal, how to protect her from the inevitable disappointment when things ended.

It was easier to focus on work, on raising her, on building the quiet life we'd created together, and inevitably, I gave up.

But Sadie was different.

She already knew Eloise.

Already cared about her.

It made it easier in some ways and raised the stakes in other ways.

Still, all of that and the emotional turmoil in my chest took a back burner to the fact that I had a relatively short time to attempt to find and wed a woman just to save a school my daughter called home.

The doorbell rang, and I wiped my hands on a dish towel before opening it.

Sadie stood on my front step wearing a simple blue dress and a cardigan, her hair down for once instead of pulled back in the neat bun she wore at school.

She looked beautiful and nervous and completely out of place on my doorstep.

"Hi," she said, holding up a plate of brownies. "I wasn't sure what you were making, so I brought something safe."

"Thanks." I took the plate and stepped aside to let her in. "Dinner's almost ready."

It was thoughtful of her to bring something, but it only made me more nervous.

I shut the door and awkwardly started for the kitchen and realized after several strides that I hadn't invited her to follow.

But she followed me into the kitchen anyway, her eyes taking in the space.

"This is nice. Very… you."

"Clean and boring?"

"Organized. Thoughtful."

She ran her fingers along the edge of the counter.

"Eloise's artwork is everywhere."

She was right.

Eloise's drawings covered the refrigerator, her school projects lined the windowsill, and her library books were stacked on the kitchen table.

The house might have looked sterile to some people, but every surface held evidence of my daughter's presence.

"She's the center of everything here," I told her as I walked to the counter and opened the drawer, pulling out the wine bottle opener.

"I can see that." Sadie's voice was soft. "It's lovely."

I poured her a glass of wine—the expensive bottle I'd bought specifically for tonight—and watched her take a sip.

Her eyebrows went up slightly.

"This is really good," she said. "And probably costs more than I spend on groceries in a week."

"It was a mistake. I should have bought something normal."

I felt foolish immediately and my cheeks burned.

I didn't make a lot, enough to live comfortably, but since my father passed, I felt my purse strings loosen slightly.

Even without the marriage locked up, I was supposed to begin taking over his role at Hawthorne, phasing out of my role as a project manager and into the headmaster's position.

My company wasn't thrilled with it, but I knew I had to do it for my daughter.

That change meant a larger salary—much larger than I knew what to do with, and Sadie was right.

The wine cost more than any decent human should spend on a bottle of something to drink.

I just had no clue how to romance a woman and I had very little time to make it happen.

"No, it's perfect. Very fancy dinner party." She smiled. "I feel underdressed."

"You look beautiful," I said, making the heat in my cheeks worse.

The words came out before I could stop them.

Sadie's cheeks flushed, and she took another sip of wine to cover her reaction.

I turned to check on the chicken, buying myself a moment to recover.

"Can I help with anything?" she asked.

"No, it's under control. Why don't you sit down?"

"So," I said, cutting into my chicken. "How do you find the long-term sub position? Different from regular teaching?"

Juices poured out of the meat and it fell apart under my touch. It was ready, and my stomach was growling.

"It's strange being dropped into someone else's classroom," Sadie said as she sat down. "The kids keep asking when Mrs. Kaup is coming back, and I keep having to say I don't know."

"How long has she been out?"

"Three months now for maternity leave. I guess she wants extra time with her newborn."

She took a sip of wine.

"I'm grateful for the work, though. Steady paycheck is rare in my world."

"You've been substitute teaching for a while?" I worked at plating food while we chatted, and I couldn’t keep my hands from shaking.

"Two years. Before that I was waitressing, putting myself through college, and trying to write." She smiled ruefully. "Turns out being a novelist doesn't pay the bills."

I could see that about her—the creative and intuitive spark in her. It made my chest warm. "What kind of writing?"

"Fiction. Young adult, mostly. I had this idea that I could write the books I wished I'd had when I was fifteen." She shrugged. "Rejection letters taught me otherwise."

I set the plates down and leaned a little too close to her, getting a whiff of her perfume, which went straight to my head. She was intoxicating, and I wished I had met her under entirely different circumstances. "What would those books have been about?"

"Girls who take care of their parents instead of the other way around. Families that don't look anything like the ones in picture books." Her voice caught slightly. "Kids who learn early that adults aren't always the ones with answers."

She set down her fork and reached for her wine glass, her hand trembling just enough for me to notice something was off.

"I should call and check on my mom," she said quietly. "She gets anxious when I'm out…" Her chin dropped, and I felt like a fool. I knew more about her life than she'd told me so it wasn’t like I could just tell her I understood.

"She lives with you?”

"She's uh… sick." Sadie cleared her throat and pulled her phone out, typing into it quickly. It looked like she was avoiding eye contact, and I knew why. It must've been a hard subject for her. "And my dad left us a long time ago, so I'm her caregiver now."

"How old were you when he left?" I asked, relieved she was opening up so I could put the awkwardness behind me.

"Eight. One day, he was there making pancakes and complaining about the newspaper, and the next morning, there was a note on the kitchen table.

" She took a larger sip of wine. "Mom used to tell me he'd come back once he figured things out.

She stopped saying that when I turned sixteen.

" Sadie jammed her phone into her purse and set it on the chair next to her and then looked up at me.

"She never remarried?"

"Never even dated. She started drinking after he left, and it got worse every year. By the time I was in high school, I was the one making sure she got to work, making sure there was food in the house." Sadie's laugh held no humor. "I used to think every kid helped their parent through hangovers."

"When did you realize they didn't?"

"Senior year. I went to a friend's house for dinner, and her parents asked me about my day and actually listened to the answer. They had rules that made sense, consequences that weren't about their moods." She took a shaky breath. "I realized what I'd been missing all those years…. I'm so sorry…"

Her voice broke on the last word, and suddenly, she was crying—not the careful, controlled tears I might have expected, but real sobs that shook her shoulders.

She put her hands over her face, trying to hide from me, and I felt responsible for her.

She needed someone to hold her together, and I'd been so selfish to lay my burden on her already tired shoulders.

"I'm sorry," she said through her fingers. "I don't know why I'm falling apart. This is so embarrassing."

I was moving before I'd made the decision to move. I pulled my chair closer to hers and gathered her into my arms, letting her cry against my chest. She stiffened for a moment, surprised, then melted into me with a sound that was half relief, half surrender.

"It's okay," I said into her hair. "You don't have to apologize."

She smelled like vanilla and something floral and her body was warm and soft against mine, and I found myself pressing my face into her hair, holding her tighter than the situation required. When was the last time I'd held someone this way? When was the last time someone had let me?

"I'm not usually a crier," she said, her voice muffled against my shirt.

"I don't mind. I'm here, and it sounds like you're going through a lot." My chest constricted at the idea that her weights might already be too heavy to have to shoulder up under mine too. I just wasn’t the sort of man to push my own agenda when someone was hurting so much.

She pulled back to look at me, her eyes red but no longer overflowing. "Why do you care so much?"

I could have given her a dozen reasonable answers—comforting her, being a friend, offering support. But as I looked down at her face, flushed from crying and wine, I found I didn't want to lie.

"I don’t even know," I said. "But I do know I don't want to let go of you. You were sad and if the only thing I can do is give you a hug… Well…" My thumb brushed over her cheekbone, swiping at moisture lingering there.