Try - The Complete Romance Series (15 page)

You’re
pretty hot too,
I wrote back.
Maybe with the right place and the right situation, we’d be able to
melt some snow.
I licked my lips, picturing it in my mind. It would be
horrifically impractical…no amount of shared body heat would keep us from
getting frostbite if we got naked in the snow together. But in my mind I
pictured us having sex out in a field somewhere, far away from everyone,
touching each other everywhere. The snow would be cold against us—even with a
blanket it would be freezing—but maybe if we had a few blankets, some of them
wrapped around us and a couple underneath us, it would be fun. I shook my head;
that was a crazy idea.

That’s
a great picture!
I grinned to myself at Patrick’s message.
As long as we could keep moving, I think
we’d be okay. Sweaty, even.
My throat was dry, my mouth was watering—for a
second I wanted nothing more than a thermos of soup, a bunch of blankets, and
some fun in the snow with Patrick without having to worry about him needing to
pick up Landon. I pressed my lips together and squirmed in my seat; just
thinking about having sex with Patrick again—in my apartment, his place, or
even out in the snow somewhere—was enough to turn me on so much I couldn’t
quite get comfortable.

I
don’t know if it would work out in real life,
I pointed out.
But I do want to see you again. I’ve been
missing you and Landon this afternoon.
I took a deep breath and exhaled
slowly.

Well
maybe if we can’t make it out to a nice, secluded field somewhere, we could
just spend the whole day inside,
Patrick sent back to me.
I swallowed against the tight feeling in my throat, looking up in time to see
Harriet coming back through the office to check on something at the front desk.
I put my phone aside, suppressing the urge to grab it when I felt it vibrate in
my lap again, pretending to be oh-so focused on the file up on my computer. As
soon as Harriet was through, I checked my phone again.

It’d
be much easier to keep you warm if I could keep you in bed. Get a fire going in
the fireplace, maybe make some hot chocolate for you…and keep our skin pressed
together as much as possible.
That picture was even
better than the first one; I could imagine just how nice it would be to spend a
whole day in bed with Patrick. But a nagging voice in my head pointed out that
we hadn’t really been dating long enough for that yet—exciting as it sounded to
me.

“Ooh, look at this girl blushing,” Blair
said, coming to a stop at my desk. Her patient and the little girl’s parent
went on into the waiting room to leave the office. I rolled my eyes at Blair,
putting the phone aside face down. “You chatting up your boyfriend?”

I shrugged, moving my phone away from
where Blair could grab for it. “Yes, I’m texting Patrick,” I said, glancing to
make sure that Harriet wasn’t about to come down on us for hanging out and
socializing instead of working. “He’s not my boyfriend though. Not really.”

“Are you sure about that?” Blair threw herself
into the chair next to my desk with her long legs out in front of her. “I mean,
how many dates have you gone on?”

“Just three,” I said, shrugging again. “We
got coffee, went to dinner and a movie, and went ice-skating. It’s nothing
serious.”

“Well, if you went on three dates with the
guy, it’s not like it’s not serious,” Blair countered. “At three dates you at
least know that you get along together a little bit. You’re maybe two dates at
most from actually being boyfriend and girlfriend.” I rolled my eyes, shaking
my head.

“He’s a single father,” I pointed out.
“Things go a lot slower with someone who’s got a kid. He’s got to make sure
that he feels comfortable with me as an influence on Landon before we can
really be serious.”

“He seems like a decent dad,” Blair
agreed. “I’ve seen him in the office a few times. He’s pretty hot.”

“He’s even hotter outside of the office,”
I said quietly, giving her a little grin.

“I’ll just bet he is!” Blair looked around
to make sure we weren’t being eavesdropped on. “Isn’t it weird to see him in
the office after you’ve had a date with him, though?” I shook my head slowly.

“Not really,” I said, thinking. “I mean,
he’s always professional when he comes in here. He did ask me out on the second
date after a session, but he wasn’t like, leering at me or anything.”

“How long is the kid in treatment for?” I
shrugged.

“He’s making good progress—another good
sign: Patrick works with Landon in between sessions to make sure he’s getting
up to speed.” Blair nodded her approval. I missed Amie—and no one in the office
could replace her—but if I were going to confide in anyone else while Amie was
away on medical leave, it would be Blair. At least with her I could count on a
little privacy.

“A good parent is a decent date,” Blair
agreed. “Do you think it’s going anywhere?” I shrugged.

“I don’t really know,” I admitted. “I like
spending time with him, he likes spending time with me…but everything is still
pretty up in the air.” I thought about it for a moment or two longer and smiled
to myself slowly. “I don’t know if he’s serious about me, but I think—if things
keep going the way that they have been—that it could get more serious. I think
I’d like it if it did.”

“That’s all you need to know,” Blair said,
nodding. “If it tips the scales at all, I think you two look absolutely
adorable together.”

I laughed.

“That’s all I’m interested in,” I said
jokingly. I might not have been interested in how cute I looked with Patrick,
but it definitely helped to have someone in the office tell me she liked the
idea of me dating Patrick.

Chapter Ten - Patrick

I had hated to cancel Landon’s PT
appointment ,
but it had given me an even bigger urge to see
Mackenzie again. I hadn’t even been able to stay away long enough to wait for
another date; I’d stopped by at her apartment after Landon’s school award
ceremony ended, with some takeout and a bottle of wine, and we’d spent a few
hours together just talking and cuddling on the couch, watching a movie while
my sister took Landon Christmas shopping. But even with that little bit of
heaven for a few hours, I wanted more.
 
I’d racked my mind for different date options
that would be fun and interesting and not cliché. We’d settled on a
make-your-own pottery date at a little shop at the outskirts of the city that
served beer and wine.

I’d picked her up from her apartment and
we’d talked about Amie’s recovery and Landon’s progress. I could tell that the
attack had shaken her up a lot more than Mack wanted to admit. “Something like
this should at least be fun,” I’d said when we walked up to the shop entrance
from the parking spot I finally managed to find after circling the block a few
times. “But I have to warn you, I am terrible at pottery.”

“I’m not that much better,” Mackenzie had
admitted with a laugh. “So let’s focus on enjoying some decent wine and having
fun.”

The pottery had gone better than I would
have expected. I made a silly little pot while Mackenzie worked on a vase. “You
know what we could do sometime? I mean—if this keeps going as well as it has
been?” I had almost bent the rim on my pot when I looked up to meet Mackenzie’s
gaze.

“What’s that?” I asked.

“We could go to a concert, maybe,”
Mackenzie suggested. “I haven’t gone to one in a while.”

“Who would you want to see?” She shrugged
in answer to my question.

“Anyone, really. I like a lot of different
kinds of music. And anyway, going to a concert—a good concert—is a good time
even if you’ve never heard of the band onstage before.”

We finished off our wine and our pottery
and turned it into one of the clerks that ran the shop to fire it in the kiln.
I told Mackenzie that I’d come back the next day—the shop was closer to my
place than it was to hers—to pick up our pieces, assuming they didn’t crack or
break in the kiln.

Afterward, we grabbed some hot sandwiches
and some coffee and wandered towards a park, lit up for the holidays with
different symbols of the season. It was cold enough out that there weren’t very
many other people using the paths through the park, and even while we ate our
sandwiches, Mackenzie stuck close to me. I remembered what we’d joked about
having sex in the snow; I knew as well as she did that it wasn’t a very good
idea, but it had been a hot mental image to think about, and it had stuck with
me ever since.

“Do you think we could make sex in the
snow work?”

Mackenzie laughed. “You’re really hooked
on that idea, aren’t you?”

I grinned at her in the gloomy light. “Well
it seems so awesome,” I explained. “I’m sure someone’s been able to do it
successfully, right?”

“I wouldn’t be surprised.” Mackenzie
thought for a moment. “You know, if you had enough blankets, maybe one or two
of those heating pad things, you could probably make it work.”

“But we’d be risking getting frostbite in
interesting places, probably.”

Mackenzie nodded. “And we’d also be
risking arrest for indecent exposure.”

I laughed. “There is that, too,” I agreed.
“So I guess we’ll be keeping all our sex indoors for now.”

“If we’re still dating in the summer, I
wouldn’t mind finding a place to try it out,” she said, blushing a bright
pink-red.

“Oooh, we haven’t really had the
conversation about sex, have we?” I wrapped my arm around Mackenzie’s waist and
pulled her closer to me.

“We haven’t, that’s a good point,” she
said. “What do you like?” I chuckled.

“Well, I mean… I’m probably kind of
boring,” I told her. “I like things…kind of straightforward.” It had been years
since I’d done any sexual experimenting—and at that, Joanne had always been
interested in pretty straightforward things. For a second I worried that maybe
Mackenzie wanted something a little more exciting. “I’m not against trying
things, though,” I added.

“Me either,” Mackenzie said. “It’s
just…it’s been a while since I’ve been with anyone at all, and even before
that—when I was dating—I never really had much chance to…explore.” She blushed
an even deeper red as we made our way through the park slowly. “But I wouldn’t
mind trying like…sex in the outdoors, as long as it wasn’t somewhere people
would definitely see us. Or something like that.”

“Maybe sex in the shower?” I remembered
the bathroom in Mackenzie’s apartment; it would be just big enough in the
shower stall to hold her up against the wall, to get in a little fun. The
bathtub at my place was bigger. Looking at Mackenzie, I thought that we could
probably both fit in the tub pretty easily. “I have a really nice, big bath at
my place. That could be fun.”

“Sort of like hot tub sex?” Mackenzie
grinned up at me. “You’re right, that does sound nice.” She licked her lips and
took a sip of her coffee. “Have—have you ever used like…whipped cream in bed?”
I raised an eyebrow.

“Once or twice,” I said, looking away.
With Joanne.
“It tends to get pretty
messy.”

“So whipped cream in certain places, and
then maybe sex in the shower afterward?”

I laughed. “That’s as good a plan as I
could think of,” I said. I tightened my grip on her. Just thinking about
getting her alone—about the different ways we could have sex together—was
enough to make me warm in a way that all the jackets and sweaters I was wearing
couldn’t do on their own. I leaned in and kissed her on the cheek, giving her
shoulder a squeeze. “Start thinking about the different things you want to
try,” I suggested. “If we can make it back out of the park, maybe we can start
working on them.”

We started talking about other things—like
books and movies and music again—while I tried to cool down a bit. The
conversation drifted back onto the subject of Landon, and I remembered that
before I’d left the house to take him to his grandparents’ house, he’d asked me
if I thought that Mackenzie might want to spend Christmas with us. It was
something that had come absolutely out of the blue, and I’d pushed it out of my
mind as soon as I’d told him I would think about inviting her.
Things are going really well. What’s the worst
that could happen? Four and a half good dates, that’s enough to justify asking
someone to come over for the holiday, isn’t it?

“Hey—I just remembered, when I was talking
to Landon earlier, getting ready to drop him off and come get you, he suggested
that maybe you could spend Christmas with us. He’s really into it this year;
he’s even been making presents for all his friends in the school.”

 
“I
think he told me about that the other day,” she said, looking up thoughtfully.
“Isn’t it a picture or something that he’s doing?”

“Yep,” I confirmed. “He’s making each one
of his friends a painting that is all about them. Jessica is getting a picture
of cookies, Alex is apparently going to get a painting of dinosaurs.” I shook
my head, remembering the sight of all the different pictures my son had been
working on with a combination of paints, colored pencils, and markers. “His
grandparents are helping him pick out actual presents for members of the
family, with money I set aside for him to do his shopping.”