What's Life Without the Sprinkles - By Misty Simon Page 0,62

like his father’s. What a shame. Just one more thing he didn’t get from her.

She shook her head to clear it and focused on what she remembered about remainders and carrying numbers.

But before they got started, Justin turned to her with shining eyes. “So what did Nate say? Will he take me? Does he want to be my dad for the night?”

He was practically bouncing, and she was so happy she didn’t have to disappoint him. “Turns out I was wrong about what days he’s out of town. He’s thrilled to take you. He said he can’t wait.” Yeah, in between laughing at her heavy breathing routine and the way she’d totally embarrassed herself with her lame excuse about being distracted by Justin’s shower.

“Oh, yeah! I can’t wait. This is going to be so much cooler than the last couple of years. Did he say he was going to dress up? Do you think we should be, like, coordinated or anything?” He clasped his hands in front of his chest and had the biggest grin on his face she’d seen in a long time.

Inside, she picked up the pieces of her cracked heart and tried to overlook the comment about the other years where she was his date. On the outside, she smiled, ruffled his hair, and told him, “We can decide all that later. We have a few days, but right now we have enough long division to make me feel like my eyes are going to bleed.” Another feeling erupted inside her to override the hurt—happiness for how he responded to Nate. If, and it was a big if, she ever managed to get Nate to see her as an actual woman instead of reminding him she was the one who’d been his friend forever, at least she knew she’d have her son’s complete approval of the man she wanted.

An hour later, as she listened to Justin preparing for bed, she leaned back on the sofa, glad she had survived this interminable day. The water running as he brushed his teeth, the thud of his feet as he went to his room, and the soft thump of music drifting down the hall soothed her. These were normal things. Things she was used to and that fit into her regular day. Nothing like the rest of the day had been, with one upheaval after another. Perhaps she should just forget today ever happened and start anew tomorrow. It wasn’t a bad idea, as far as she was concerned.

Chapter Nine

Claudia could have laughed at her naiveté, a mere handful of days after long division, if she didn’t want so badly to howl at the moon. She’d moped around for days, trying to get hold of Nate, but he wasn’t answering his phone. He never had answered her cake question, and now she didn’t think she wanted to bring it up again, in case she wasn’t getting his subtle hint to drop the whole thing.

She’d tried to talk Zoe into calling him earlier. They still had to go over the build-out plans Nate had left at the apartment on Saturday. But Zoe was absolutely refusing, in retaliation for Claudia making her deal with Dex, the lawyer, and May wasn’t in a position to make any final decisions, since her partnership was still up in the air.

Which left Claudia with a phone call to make. She had even briefly thought of letting her mom handle things, but she was afraid of what might come out of her mother’s mouth.

She sighed, thinking that he hadn’t even taken them out to dinner on Monday as he had promised. She had really screwed things up with those kisses and letting him give her an orgasm. Though she really couldn’t regret that last one. It far out ranked anything her trusty vibrator could provide.

Grabbing up the phone, she punched out his number before she could lose her nerve.

He picked up on the third ring. “I was just going to call you.”

“I doubt that, since you’ve been avoiding me the last several days.” She certainly hadn’t meant to sound so sharp, had in fact meant to be nice and forget anything had happened this last week at all, from Zoe’s very first mention of cake onward, but something inside her was playing the devil.

“I haven’t been avoiding you.”

“Yeah, right.”

There was a long pause, and she thought he’d hung up on her until he cleared his throat. “Look, I wasn’t avoiding you completely. Grandma Stelle had a doctor’s