A Sweetheart For The Single Dad (The Camdens Of Colorado Book 8) (11 page)

At least he’d said he would call on Thursday night.

And that left her with far more consolation than it should have.

Chapter Seven

“I
really am sorry, Officer. I didn’t realize I was going that fast. It won’t happen again,” Lindie said to the police officer who had pulled her over for speeding.

As in most things, the Camden name could influence a situation—for better or for worse. Today, when the seasoned cop had seen it on her driver’s license it had worked to her advantage and resulted in a warning rather than a ticket. Apparently his son managed a department in one of the Camden Superstores.

She honestly hadn’t realized she’d been going so fast. But it didn’t come as a surprise. It was Saturday and she was excited to get to Wheatley to help paint over graffiti on the fence that blocked the community center’s playground from a major thoroughfare.

Alongside Sawyer.

Whom she hadn’t seen since the previous Sunday night.

“You, too. And thank you so much,” she said when the older man told her to have a nice day. Then she got back on the road, being more conscientious about her driving.

And giving herself a stern talking-to about the realities of things between her and Sawyer Huffman. The only reason she was seeing him at all was to try to get him to take Camden Incorporated on as a client. That way, his business could boom as compensation for what had been done to his father years ago, and Huffman Consulting would stop campaigning against the opening of every Camden Superstore.

Cut-and-dried.

And no reason she should have spent this past week missing him.

No reason for her to have shopped for new jeans that didn’t look new, a new tank top and a new sheer shirt to wear over it today.

No reason that she should have had her phone in her hand nearly every minute all day and evening Thursday in case he called. And then no reason to have been so thrilled when he did. Or to have spent a full hour talking to him.

Well, talking and flirting.

Certainly no reason to have taken off work on Friday afternoon to shop for something new to wear tonight.

Tonight, when he took her to the business dinner he’d suggested during Thursday’s phone call.

The business dinner that would allow him to tell her what problems he already saw coming in Idaho if his campaign to keep out a new superstore failed.

The business dinner that Lindie swore to herself she was only looking forward to because it would give her another chance to persuade him that working together could be to everyone’s advantage.

The business dinner that she also swore would not end with kissing. Regardless of how many times she’d relived Sunday night’s kisses or how much she was itching to have them repeated.

Okay, she was driving too fast again.

She eased up on the pedal and tried to counteract her eagerness to get to the community center by doing what she’d also been doing all week—replaying what had happened on Sunday
before
the kissing. When she’d watched Carter and Sam competing over Sawyer.

He’s a dad, she must have told herself a million times this past week.

And that put him on her personal no-fly list.

It did. It really did. Firmly, in bold print, on her no-fly list.

The problem was thinking about Sunday before the kissing somehow always led her back to the kisses.

Those powerhouse kisses.

It would have been so helpful if she’d hated the way he kissed.

But, no. He kissed better than any man she’d
ever
kissed.

So much better it was a little overwhelming. She’d completely forgotten herself, forgotten about everything else until he’d ended it both times.

And
he
always had had to be the one to end it because if it had been left to her she might still be kissing him.

She had to contain whatever was happening between them. She had to look at the big picture. The future. The future in which she didn’t want kids of her own to compete for their father’s love and attention. The future in which—if she ended up with a man who already had kids—that man would be split between those two family groups.

“So stop it or you’re going to regret it down the road,” she told herself out loud, believing it wholeheartedly.

Yet when she pulled into the community center’s parking lot she drove around until she spotted Sawyer’s SUV and parked as near to it as she could get.

And when she hurried into the center she wasn’t thinking about anything but laying eyes on him again.

* * *

Jeans, sweatshirt, tennis shoes—that’s what Sawyer was wearing—nothing spectacular.

But still the minute Lindie caught sight of him in the group of people preparing for graffiti cleanup her heart raced and she went like a heat-seeking missile to join him.

Him and Tyler and Eric, who, it seemed, would be part of their team again this weekend.

But whether or not the boys spent time with them didn’t matter to her. Because the minute Sawyer saw her and smiled as if she was the only person he was really aware of, Lindie had the oddest sense that all was right with the world again.

A sense that remained with her throughout the day of work.

* * *

The fence painting was finished a little after five and again Eric and Tyler lingered around Lindie until Sawyer told them to go home. That amused Lindie.

But mostly she was thinking about dinner so she didn’t mind when the boys finally left and she and Sawyer could head for their separate cars with plans for him to pick her up at her house at eight.

She again pushed the speed limit a little to get home as quickly as possible because she wanted to shower and wash her hair. Once she had, she dressed for the evening in the lacy, form-fitting black dress she’d bought the day before. Black hose and four-inch heels completed the outfit that was only subtly sexy while still being acceptable for what she continued to insist to herself was a business dinner.

For her second application of makeup today, she used a slightly darker and more dramatic eye shadow, a touch more blush and a new lipstick that promised it was kissable.

Not that that mattered, because the whole time she was getting ready she was also reminding herself that there would be no kissing!

After blow-drying her hair she pulled it back on one side into a rose-shaped clip and let the other side fall into its natural waves along her face and in front of her shoulder.

She’d barely finished when her doorbell rang and she hurried to answer it, trying to ignore that she was as excited as a teenager embarking on a date with a rock star.

“Oh,
very
nice...” was Sawyer’s greeting after giving her an initial once-over when she opened the door.

“Thank you,” she said, flattered, before she returned the compliment. Because he
did
look fantastic.

He was wearing a gray suit that couldn’t have showed off his broad shoulders to better effect. And the shirt and matching tie that went with it were almost the color of his eyes, making her all the more aware of how gorgeous they were. Plus he was clean-shaved and smelled divine. Altogether Lindie was a little sorry to go out into the world and share him when she sort of just wanted to get him inside and keep him all to herself.

In an effort to thwart that inclination, she didn’t invite him in at all and just took her evening bag from the table near the doorway and said, “Shall we go?”

He pivoted on the heels of polished shoes and swept an arm in the direction of her driveway.

Sawyer had chosen the restaurant and given her general advice to dress up without letting her know where they were going. Not until they were nearly there did he tell her he’d made reservations at a place called the Woodbine Inn.

Lindie knew it. It was a fancy restaurant designed to look like a chalet plucked from the Swiss Alps. Set in a secluded cove of evergreens at the base of Denver’s foothills, it was very elegant and known for its four-course meals.

“Ah, the Woodbine Inn—out of the way enough to make it unlikely that any of your clients will spot you with a Camden,” she chided when he told her.

He grinned but didn’t deny it.

Lindie couldn’t fault the practicality of his choice, though, when it was also one of the most beautiful and romantic restaurants Denver had to offer.

Not that romance was a part of the equation for dinner tonight, she told herself firmly as they went inside.

Despite the lush, dimly lit ambience of the old-world European-style restaurant, and the glasses of wine that began the meal, Lindie did manage to keep conversation about business.

Idaho was the topic and Sawyer didn’t hold back when it came to his criticisms of putting a new Camden Superstore there. He even rattled off staggering statistics on the projection of small businesses failing, revenues and job loss, and property value declines that Lindie tried to counter with the positives that a superstore provided.

They had a healthy debate that lasted through the appetite tray of foie gras, salmon butter, shrimp, olive tapenade, port wine cheddar and spinach mousseline. It lasted through salads. Through two rare filets with fingerling potatoes and sautéed chard. And even through the dessert tray replete with an assortment of fresh fruit, petits fours and pastries.

It wasn’t until the drive back to Lindie’s house that she steered him toward giving her his thoughts on some kind of compromise—such as how to build and open the superstore with a minimum of damage. That lasted until they were inside her house and taking two glasses of a brandy she’d been given as a gift into her living room.

By then it seemed to her that she’d safely kept their dinner strictly business and could finally relax. And change the subject.

So off went her shoes while Sawyer removed his suit coat and stuffed his tie in the jacket pocket. Then he loosened his collar button, and they settled in the center of her sofa.

“Do you have Sam tomorrow?” she asked, sitting sideways and tucking her feet under her to face him.

Sawyer angled toward her with an elbow braced on top of the back couch cushions and took a sip of the brandy. “I do,” he said. “But only for a few hours in the afternoon.”

“Are you supposed to have him longer than that?” she asked, interpreting the cause of the edge in his voice.

“I’m supposed to have him more all the way around. But lately Candy and
Harm
keep coming up with reasons to cut me short.”

“Harm?”

“Candy’s husband. Harmon. He’s a dentist in Wheatley. For now.”

For now.

The same words Sawyer had said that first day they’d met. And he’d said them in the same tone, again giving her the sense that something was going on behind the scenes.

This time Lindie decided not to just let it pass the way she had before.

“
Harm
isn’t long for Wheatley?” she asked.

“That’s the rumor,” he said, going on to tell her about more fallout from a Camden Superstore—even medical and dental practices suffered when losses of jobs and livelihoods meant losses of health insurance, leaving them either with fewer patients or with patients who couldn’t pay their bills.

“Vermont,” she repeated when he told her there was the possibility that his former girlfriend and her husband could be moving.

“That’s what Harm and I were...
discussing
when we dropped Sam off last Sunday night.”

“Discussing heatedly,” Lindie said.

He didn’t deny it, merely saying, “Candy, being Candy, won’t be the one to tell me anything she knows is going to be aggravating and potentially start a fight. She leaves it to Harm, who, as far as I’m concerned, is
not
who I should be dealing with when it comes to my son. But that’s how it is and last Sunday he told me he’s putting out feelers to sell his practice here. If there’s interest he’s going to take the next step.”

“Meaning he’ll actually sell the practice and move your son to Vermont.”

“I’m not losing Sam if I can help it,” Sawyer said darkly, going on to talk about his willingness to mount a custody battle for his son. But he also admitted that he could very likely lose. And Lindie could see how much that jarred him.

“I’m so sorry,” she said. “Is there anything I can do? We have legions of lawyers and contacts everywhere. I don’t know if this Harm person is on Camden Superstores’ dental insurance, but if it would drum up some business for him I can see if we can add him. Or... I don’t know...
anything
?”

But even as she said it—and meant it—she also knew that she was doing what she always did; what she was supposed to be tempering. She was butting in in an attempt to fix someone else’s problems.

Still, though, she felt so bad for Sawyer. And for Sam. And she
was
on a quest to make up for wrongs done in the past. Besides, she knew how important it was to Sawyer to be a good dad, to be there for Sam. And he
was
a good dad. A good dad who could potentially lose his son.

“I have a lawyer,” he said in a way that told her to slow down again. “A good custody lawyer who I never talk to without my brother, Sean. Sean is also an attorney and does Huffman Consulting’s legal work. But he’s helping me wade through the custody issues, too, so I can be sure no base is left uncovered and anything that can be done is being done. But it would still be better if Candy would speak up. I know her and I know she doesn’t want to move out of Colorado herself. She never has.”

“If she doesn’t want to move why wouldn’t she say that?”

“I tend to have a pattern when it comes to women,” he admitted reluctantly. “They seem like my mom and then they aren’t.”

“They seem like your mother?”

He laughed. “It isn’t the way you make that sound. I don’t have some kind of weird mommy complex,” he assured her after taking a healthy swig of his brandy. “The thing is, my parents have a great marriage. A genuinely happy relationship.”

Lindie was glad to hear that, especially after what had happened with her uncle.

“With all my girlfriends through high school,” he went on, “there was a lot of drama and demands and stuff that made me miserable and got our house egged and the air let out of my tires and things that none of my family appreciated. One day when I was a senior my dad was helping me clean wet toilet paper off the trees in the front yard and I was griping about it. My dad suggested that I take a look at my mom and find someone like her instead of the high-maintenance girls I’d been bringing around.”