Snoops in the City (A Romantic Comedy) (13 page)

Wade didn't know why she’d latched onto him but they were clearly at different stages of their lives.

He had responsibilities, as he’d started to explain when she stopped by his office. Because she was an uncommonly determined young woman, he’d decided it would be best to show her exactly how daunting those responsibilities were.

“Want pizza, Daddy,” Mary Kate said.

“We’ll have pizza in a little while, honey. We have to wait for Lorelei.”

“Is she a mommy?”

Wade tried hard not to sigh. If they were lucky, the twins saw their mother twice a month. Obviously that wasn’t enough.

“No. Lorelei is not a mommy.”

Lorelei was a fantasy. A fantasy that wouldn’t last the night after she saw the twins. A fantasy he never should have had in the first place.

“She’s. . . a friend.”

“Like Kristen?” Ashley asked.

Kristen was the latest in a long line of teenagers who babysat for the twins when Wade had an after-hours event he couldn’t get out of, like the mayor’s party. The twins spent their days at a church-run preschool and day-care center near their home. The overwhelming majority of their nights, they spent with Wade.

“Yes. Like Kristen," Wade said, hoping they hadn't gotten attached to her. Like the other babysitters before her, she'd told him she wouldn't babysit again.

“Need to pee, Daddy,” Ashley said, standing up in the booth and squeezing her short legs together.

The moment Wade had feared most was here. Taking one little girl into the men’s room was bad enough but he had to do double duty. Mary Kate was too young to be left alone.

“I told you to go before we left home,” he said. “You did go, didn’t you?”

“Need to pee,” Ashley repeated.

Mary Kate busily colored on the paper placemat the waitress had provided. She reached across the table for a fat blue crayon, bumping his water glass in the process.

He grabbed for it but wasn’t fast enough. The glass tipped and water spilled over the table.

“Oops.” Mary Kate covered her mouth with both hands.

“Need to pee,” Ashley said.

“Wade?” asked another feminine voice.

Wade looked up, and there she was. Lorelei Palmer. Her sleeveless dress was short and tight, leaving little to the imagination. Her eyes, which were so pretty under the heavy mascara, were round and surprised.

“Hi, Lorelei,” he said while he ineffectually wiped at the spill with a napkin that was already soaked. “Meet Mary Kate and Ashley. My daughters.”

She stared transfixed at the twins, speechless for the first time since he’d met her.

Mary Kate patted her hands in the spilled water on the table, laughing as she splashed.

“Need to pee,” Ashley said.

Wade expected Lorelei to suddenly remember she had another engagement and flee. Instead she flagged down a passing waitress.

“We’ve had a spill,” she told her.

The waitress bustled off, presumably to get something with which to wipe up the water. Wade waited for Lorelei to sprint after her on her way out the door.

“Hi, Ash. Hi, M.K.,” she said. "I'm Lorelei."

Mary Kate splashed.

“Need to pee,” Ashley told her.

Lorelei’s face creased into a smile.

“Then, by all means, let’s go pee.” She reached for his daughter’s hand. The little girl gladly gave it to her, and they hurried off to the bathroom.

“I need to pee, too,” Mary Kate said, crawling over Wade's lap and running to catch up.

Wade stared after them. Lorelei Palmer was made of sterner stuff than he’d thought. Or maybe she was merely more polite than he’d given her credit for.

She hadn’t run scared at the sight of Ashley and Mary Kate, but she would. He knew her type.

He’d not only dated it, he’d married it.

Lorelei Palmer surprised Wade by making it through dinner with her mega-watt smile intact.

“I never knew little kids could be so much fun,” she said.

Wade wiped a piece of mozzarella cheese from Ashley’s chin and tossed the soiled napkin onto the growing pile to his left.

The other side of the table didn’t have a discard pile. Mary Kate, seated next to Lorelei, wore so much tomato sauce she was nearly as red as the rest of the restaurant.

“I never babysat growing up," Lorelei continued. "Nobody ever asked me for some strange reason so I haven't been around kids much."

No big surprise there
, Wade thought.

“Your two are absolute dolls. Maybe they’d like to go shopping with me sometime. It would be fun. We could try on some clothes, do lunch.”

“They’re a little young for that,” Wade said.

“Get out of here. All females love to shop. It’s a biological fact.” She bent her pretty face close to Mary Kate’s. “You like shopping, right, M.K.?”

“Like to chop.” Mary Kate brought her hand down on the edge of the table. She’d been chopping since Wade had watched an old Jackie Chan movie on television a few nights before.

“Chop, chop,” Ashley said, imitating her sister.

“See? I told you,” Lorelei said brightly.
She really was beautiful
, Wade thought. He didn't usually gravitate toward bottle blondes, but Lorelei would be stunning no matter what her hair color. She had a great face, with eyes that would have looked big even without eye liner and cheekbones so defined they didn’t need all that blush.

Her natural effervescence shone through the makeup. She winked, telling him she knew he was staring. “Where should we go now?”

Half afraid she’d suggest a department store, Wade quickly replied, “Home. It’s getting late.”

“Seven o’clock’s not late,” she said like a woman who’d never had kids. “Let's do something while the night’s still young.”

Wade needed to get the girls home and to bed. That wouldn’t solve his Lorelei problem. And that’s what she presented: A problem.

If she had been a different woman, he might have gotten past their nine-year age difference.

However, he’d figured out fairly quickly that she was a free-wheeling party girl. Despite the way she cooed at his daughters, she clearly hadn’t yet figured out what dating a man with three-year-old twins entailed.

“What do you suggest we do?” he asked.

She leaned forward slightly, and he had a clear view of the tops of her breasts peeking above the snug-fitting bodice of her dress. If the twins hadn't been along, he wondered if she’d suggest they go back to her place.

Her breasts were lovely, large enough to fill a man’s hand and. . . Splat! A wet spot on his glasses suddenly distorted his view of her cleavage.

Mary Kate took a striped plastic straw from her mouth. “Bill’s-eye!” she cried.

“Bull’s-eye,” he corrected, taking off his glasses and wiping them on the edge of his shirt. “We’ve gone over this before. My glasses are not a target.”

He reached across the table and took the straw from her resisting hand. He didn’t have to wonder how he’d missed her lining up the shot. He knew.

He put his glasses back on, and then Lorelei distracted him again. Appearing to be deep in thought, she absently licked a lower lip she’d slathered with pink gloss right there at the table after finishing her pizza.

Wade shouldn’t wonder what her lips would taste like, shouldn’t be willing to find out even if he had to endure the pink gloss to do it.

But he did wonder. God help him, he did.

“Why don’t we all go. . . bowling?” Lorelei seemed absurdly pleased by her very bad suggestion.

Intending to let her down gently, Wade said, “Mary Kate and Ashley don’t bowl.”

“Maybe not yet, but I bet they want to learn. What do you say, M.K. and Ash? What’ll it be? Go bowling or go home?”

“No go home,” Mary Kate said. Her blond hair shook as her head swiveled.

“No, no,” Ashley added.

“See,” Lorelei said smugly. “They want to go bowling.”

“Do you realize how old they are?”

“How old are you and M.K., hon?” she asked Ashley. “Four? Five?”

Ashley giggled and held up three fingers.

“One, two, three,” Lorelei counted. To Wade, she said, “They’re three.”

She’d completely missed the point that three-year-olds didn’t belong in bowling alleys.

Wade thought about explaining to her the realities of life with small children. He doubted it would do any good. A more hardheaded woman he’d yet to meet.

What Lorelei needed was a demonstration.

That would make her stop thinking of the twins as pretty, miniature dolls. That would make her stop slanting him those flirtatious smiles of which nothing could ever come.

“So what do you say?” she asked Wade. “Are we on?”

Wade shrugged. “Sure. Why not? Let’s go bowling.”

***

M.K. AND ASH WERE MONSTERS
, Lorelei thought.

No, scratch that. The twins weren't big enough to be monsters. Gnomes, maybe. Gnomes were tiny, except nowhere near as attractive as the diminutive blond girls.

What was itty bitty, cute and monstrous to boot? Gremlins?

Yes. M.K. and Ash were gremlins.

“No, Ashley,” Wade said with infinite patience as he plucked his daughter off the circular ball-return tray. “That’s dangerous.”

The little girl kicked her legs and waved her arms.

“Let go, Daddy,” Ash cried. “Let go.”

Lorelei sat at the scorekeeper’s table, waiting her turn at the lanes. M.K. was up. Except the little girl was no longer lining up her shot.

She was halfway down the lane, merrily chasing her hot-pink bowling ball. It bounced crazily off the fat blue bumpers in the gutters before slowing down to a near stop. She bent down to give it another shove.

“Oh, hell." Lorelei jumped to her feet and rushed toward the lane. “Wade, M.K.’s loose.”

“Darn,” he said, which Lorelei figured was a G-rated version of what he really wanted to say.

He cut off Lorelei at the head of the lane, shoving a still-squirming Ash at her before taking off in pursuit of his other daughter.

“Watch out,” Lorelei called over a bobbing blond head. “The lane’s oiled.”

The thundering sound of bowling balls in the adjacent lanes plus a booming voice over the loudspeaker drowned out her warning.

“Evacuate lane five immediately,” the loudspeaker voice said. “Only bowling balls are allowed on the lanes.”

Didn’t he think Wade knew that, for cripe’s sake?

He was surprisingly fleet for a geeky man, as though he could have been an athlete had he chosen. He most definitely would have caught the little gremlin without incident if the slick soles of his rented red-white-and-blue shoes hadn’t failed him.

His feet slipped out from under him and his perfect ass hit the lane with a painful-looking bang.

Lorelei winced.

“Ouch,” Ash said from the circle of her arms.

M.K. had finished knocking over the bowling pins. She turned around, spotted her father and ran toward him, somehow keeping her balance. When she reached him, she patted him on the head in sympathy.

In Lorelei’s arms, Ash stopped squirming.

“Daddy needs ice cream,” she told Lorelei solemnly.

Ten minutes later, Lorelei sat with Wade, Ash and M.K. at a cheap Formica table for four in the snack bar adjacent to the lanes.

Considering the lecture the manager of the bowling alley had given them after Wade and M.K. returned from their wild trip, Lorelei supposed they were lucky they hadn’t been kicked out of the place.

Although that would have been okay. The whole bowling scene had worn thin. Personally, she could use a drink. And she wasn’t talking lemonade or, so help her, Kool-Aid.

Wade needed something at least as strong as a beer. Lines of strain etched his forehead and he kept glancing at the gremlins, as though he expected them to dump the contents of their ice cream cups on their heads or some similar horror.

“I didn’t figure you for a family man,” she said while she dug her spoon into a mound of double-chocolate fudge ice cream.

He stopped in the process of bringing his French vanilla cone to his mouth. Of the snack bar’s twelve flavors of ice cream, it hadn’t surprised her that he’d chosen vanilla.

“I didn’t think you did. That’s why I wanted you to meet the girls.”

She watched them happily shoveling ice cream into their miniature mouths, oblivious to anything except the cool, sweet treat. They looked precious and angelic, which they probably were. Most of the time.

“I like your girls,” she said. “So how often do you have them? A couple nights a week? Every other weekend?”

“All the time,” Wade said. “I have primary custody.”

“But what about their. . .” she lowered her voice to a whisper in case the girls were listening. “. . .mother? When does she see them?”