Book Boyfriends Wanted 17: His Curvy Distraction

Omar

I straightened my tie as I walked into the kitchen, the coffee just finishing brewing. I grabbed a mug, then retrieved eggs and butter from the fridge and a loaf of sourdough bread from the pantry. It was going to be a good day.

I sipped my coffee while I cooked eggs. The sourdough went into the toaster, coming out a perfectly light golden color at the same time the eggs were done. I sat at the table and read the local newspaper on my phone.

Dirty dishes went into the dishwasher, which I made a mental note to run after dinner; then I headed to the garage.

“Hello, beautiful,” I said to my pride and joy. The electric blue Camaro was new-to-me and still something that made me smile whenever I walked into the garage. I hesitated to drive her to work, but I made sure I walked by her every day. If my day went as planned, I hoped to take her out for a drive since I only had one meeting.

I passed my baby and went to the black SUV I drove every day. It was still a good vehicle, but it was more utility than anything else.

Town hall was still quiet when I arrived, so I was able to go through emails and get my mind organized for the day ahead. It shouldn’t require that, but when Natalie Edwards was going to be in my office again, I needed it. The woman dominated my thoughts, and I could not let her do it again. I had to be clear-headed when she arrived. Rational.

Open-minded.

Just because she walked in last time with a bunch of overpriced ideas that she didn’t have the budget for and then tried to get me to agree just because it’s for the kids didn’t mean she would do it again.

But if she did, she’d get the same answer as last time.

I drew a breath and let it out slowly. The woman either made me angry or made me horny. I couldn’t let her have either emotion.

My morning was uneventful, which was a good thing. When Jane knocked on my door at two minutes to ten, I expected her to bring Natalie and Amelia in, but instead, she was alone.

“I just spoke to Natalie Edwards, and they’re not coming.”

“What do you mean, they’re not coming?” I barked.

Jane flinched.

“I apologize. I did not mean to direct my anger toward you.”

“It’s okay.” Jane twisted her ring around her finger. “I don’t know what happened. Natalie just called and said something came up and Amelia wasn’t available.”

“So where is Ms. Edwards?”

Jane shook her head. “I don’t know.”

I locked my computer and closed the file I was working on. “We agreed to this time, did we not?”

“Yes, sir.”

“And she calls at the last minute to say she can’t be here? What could she be doing that’s more important than this? She’s the one who said this is for the kids. All her big dreams need to happen because of the kids. And now she can’t be bothered to show up? Does she think she’s going to get any money from this office if she doesn’t have a plan for it?”

“I… I don’t know.”

I sighed heavily and shook my head, letting out my breath slowly. “Will you please call Ms. Edwards back?”

“Um, okay. What do you want me to tell her?”

“Tell her I’m on my way to the community center to see her. That I expected an update today, and that if she expects the town to support her cause, she will be there to see me.” I stomped to the door, then paused. “Actually, don’t call her. I’ll just show up.”

I left a fumbling Jane standing in the middle of my office as I stormed out.

What was wrong with this woman? Did she not remember the meeting we had a week ago? Where I told her no when she made all her demands? Now she wanted to cancel our meeting instead of showing up and asking for what she needed.

Not happening. Her budget could be zero, and her job could be gone if she was going to be that disrespectful.

I slammed the door on my SUV and stalked into the community center ten minutes later. The place was quiet, like a school after hours. I was ashamed to admit I had never been inside the building, so I had no idea where anyone was.

“Hello?” I called out, hoping someone would appear and direct me to Ms. Edwards. Preferably in a public setting where we would not be alone.

“Hello?” a woman replied. The woman I was looking for.

And dammit, going there was a bad idea.

Natalie had her brown hair pulled up high on her head, loose tendrils falling around her shoulders like she’d been messing with her hair and tugged pieces out without realizing it. Her hazel eyes were wide— even wider when she saw me.

“Mr. Mayor,” she blurted. She looked back into the room she came from, like she was going to go back into it and ignore me.

I walked toward her, not giving her the chance to hide. “We had a meeting.”

“Yes, and I called to cancel it. Did you not get my message?”

“I got your message. But I had this time blocked off on my calendar to meet with you. So we’re going to meet.”

“Now?” she squeaked.

“Yes, now. Is that your office?”

She looked back at the room again, and my gaze followed hers.

The room was barely a closet, and definitely not an office, but there was a tiny desk shoved in with a chair wedged into the corner. A file cabinet took up the majority of the space, with a whiteboard above it on the wall with a drawing of the campground.

“You won’t fit in there,” she said.

“It looks like you barely fit in there.”

She jerked back like I offended her, then rolled her lips in. “I’m aware of my size, Mr. Mayor.”

“Your size?”

“I assure you, my weight has nothing to do with my ability to run this summer camp.”

“Why the hell would it?”

“You…”

“I what?”

“Nothing. We can go up on the stage. There’s space up there.” She nodded toward the elevated platform at the far end of the gym.

I moved toward it, but she went into the office. “Are you coming?”

“If you insist on meeting now, then I need to get my things—if that’s okay.”

I nodded and stared after her as she stepped into her office. She turned sideways to make it between the desk and the file cabinet, then sat down in the chair. She swiveled her seat until she was facing the other wall, then opened a drawer hidden beneath the desk and pulled out a file. She reversed the steps and caught me watching her when she walked into the gym.

“I thought you were going to go to the stage.”

“You also thought I was making a comment about your weight. When I said you barely fit in your office, it was a comment about the size of the office, not you. That’s not a place anyone could work comfortably.”

“Forgive me, Mr. Mayor, but we don’t have space here like you have at town hall. Our time is better spent with the kids, and every office is small to make sure the common areas are as big as possible.”

I nodded, seeing that same spark she had when she spoke about the kids before. The spark that said she was as passionate as Amelia about the kids she worked with, and not just trying to manipulate me to get what she wanted by pretending she cared. She meant what she said.

She gestured toward the stage, then followed me. I sat at one of the tables and tried not to breathe in her scent when she sat across from me.

I failed.

She smelled like markers and strawberries. A strange combination, but one I didn’t hate. Oddly.

“Amelia had an appointment this morning she’d forgotten about and wasn’t available for the meeting. She’s the one who, um, puts things together and makes it sound right.”

“I thought this was your project.”

“It is. But Amelia is better with people than I am.”

“Okay, well, I’m not here to judge your speaking skills. I need to know what you’re planning to do with the budget for the campground.”

She drew a breath, her chest rising with the move. She bit her bottom lip, and dammit, I had to shift in my seat.

“The campground needs work. A lot of work. The bare minimum we need to do is remove the wiring and connections for all the old campsites. Unfortunately, that could mean a lot of landscaping afterward. There is a tree down on the basketball court, and the volleyball court has more weeds than sand, but the bigger concern for me is the pool.”

I opened my mouth to argue with her about it, but she rolled right on as though she didn’t notice me.

“It’ll take a lot to get the pool functional, I’m guessing, but whether we do that now or later, the pool needs a fence. As it is now, the Department of Health is not going to give us an operating permit. It’s unsafe to leave it open like it is.”

I nodded slowly. I hadn’t been to the location, but she was right. Any pool had to have a way of stopping people from wandering into it. And a camp full of kids was going to have even tighter rules than anywhere else. “Do you think all of that will fit into the budget?”

She shook her head. “No. I know it won’t. We’ve been talking to contractors about what it would take to get everything done. We don’t have official quotes—more ideas—but I have a plan. It’s not simple.”

“Okay, let me hear it.”

She looked up at me as if she was seeing me for the first time. The light in her eyes made me wonder what she expected from our meeting.

Was I really that big of an asshole?

“Everything I mentioned is phase one. It’s the bare minimum for a functional space. Ideally, we would also have a structure for the kids to get out of the sun and weather—if there’s rain during the day—but that’s more of a nice-to-have thing.”

“Is it, though? What happens if there’s a thunderstorm?”

“There is a small camper on the site. It wouldn’t hold a lot of people, so we would be limited to the number of kids we can safely have inside the camper.”

“I thought the whole point was to expand the programs.”

“It is, but if we don’t have the budget to make these things happen, I can’t pull it out of my ass.”

I snorted at her vehement response.

She clapped a hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry, Mr. Mayor. Please don’t fire me for that.”

“Fire you? Why am I going to fire you?”

“Because you don’t like me. And I… grabbed…” She glanced down. “You. And Amelia isn’t here to make sure I don’t say things like that to you, so I’m sure you’re just going to fire me and I’ll have to go back to teaching, which I hated, but I’ll do it because I love this town and I love the kids here and—”

“Natalie! Stop. Please. I’m not going to fire you. Just take a minute.”

She closed her mouth. Her face was red, her eyes wild and bouncing all over the place, except at me. She ran her hands through her hair, stopping when she reached the ponytail that contained most of her hair. She removed her hands, then yanked the band from her hair and let the strands fall loose down her back.

Fuck me, the woman was a temptress. And she didn’t even know it. She wasn’t doing it to tease me; she was just flustered.

She fluffed her hair, then wrapped it in her hand, spearing her fingers through it until she contained all of it in one hand. She wrapped the band around the ponytail and tied all her hair back up into a sexy knot on top of her head once more.

A knot I desperately wanted to untie. A knot I wanted to loosen with my fingers.

I cleared my throat to eliminate the tightness that took over my whole body.

“I’m sorry,” she said, still looking away from me. “I did not mean to make this so uncomfortable. I seem to do that all the time, which is why I canceled the meeting. Amelia is better than I am.”

“You’re fine,” I grunted. Could she hear the desire in my voice? Dammit. I needed to get a handle on myself. “What is phase two?”

“Phase two would be the structure. Amelia suggested using it for weddings, and I thought we could use the property for a winter wonderland kind of thing. We’re trying to come up with other ways the property could bring in money for the town so it’s not a drain.”

“Those are good ideas,” I said.

Her gaze snapped to mine again. “Thank you.”

“Do you have other ideas? Other phases?”

She nodded. “I… There’s a lot of space at the property. Almost too much for summer camp. It would be easy to have the kids get lost out there, so I would consider multiple structures to hold different types of camps. Maybe a science camp, a camp that focuses on sports, one for theater, and a general one that does all of it. We could build a bigger pool. Possibly even move the entire community center out there. But all of that is way long term. Phase three would be fencing in the property.”

As she spoke, and her excitement grew, I hesitated to agree, but I loved to watch her talk. She loved the whole thing. She lit up as she spoke about the options and ideas she had. It was infectious and drew me in.

By the time she finished her thoughts, I was leaning toward her, the distance between us shrinking. My gaze dropped to her lips.

They parted, a tiny inhale making me freeze.

Dammit. I forgot where I was. What I was doing. I had to get the hell out of there. “Maybe we should finish this another time.”

“I thought… Yeah, that’s a good idea,” she agreed slowly.

I stood, turning away from her so she didn’t see the effect she had on me. “I’ll have Jane reach out to reschedule our meeting for another day.”

“Okay.” Natalie’s voice was soft, timid.

I made my way down the stairs onto the gym floor, giving me space from her, and turned to look up at her. The jeans she wore were loose around her legs but hugged her hips. Her top was a simple tee—an old band tee that was well worn and soft looking. She was in her element, ready for anything the kids threw at her when they showed up in a few hours.

“Is Amelia going to be here later, or are you on your own with the kids?”

She startled at my question and shook her head. “I won’t be alone. We have staff that comes in for the afternoon.”

I nodded, unsure why I asked the question. “Good.” I took a few steps away, then stopped again. “We will have another meeting, Ms. Edwards. You have some great ideas. I think some fundraising options will be good, too. As far as what you told me today, I agree with your current assessment and what has to happen before you can open.”

A smile tempted her lips, but she stifled it with her teeth. “Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”

“I do expect that you’ll keep me informed of what you’re doing, though. And no more canceling meetings. It’s not a good look, Ms. Edwards.”

Her throat worked as she swallowed. Her nod was one of a reprimanded child instead of an adult taking responsibility for her actions.

I didn’t want her to feel like either.

“This project is important. I know that. But that means I need to know everything that’s going on. I need to be kept informed every step of the way. I can help get things done, but only if I know what needs to be done.”

“Thank you.”

I nodded. She hadn’t moved off the stage with me, which meant every step I took carried me farther from her. That was a good thing. I needed space from her.

But I didn’t want space from her. I wanted to sit at that table and learn everything there was to know about her.

I wouldn’t, though. Once burned and all that. I wasn’t meant to share my life with someone, and getting close meant sharing things. Casual dates and even more casual sex were better for me.

And neither of those applied to a woman like Natalie Edwards.

It was best for me to go.

“Thank you for your time today, Ms. Edwards.”

“Thank you, Mr. Mayor.”

I nodded once more, then turned and left the building.

When I made it outside, I drew a full breath of cold air, letting it sink in and fill me up. It wasn’t a cold shower, but it would have to do until I finished my day and could go for a drive and put all thoughts of Natalie Edwards far behind me.

Where they needed to stay.