Page 42 of Single Dad's Fake Bride
"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.
