I checked myself in the mirror for what felt like the thousandth time since I had put on my suit that evening. I felt as though my brain was going to come leaking out of my ears, it was running so fast to try to make sense of what was going on.

“You look fine, Dad.” My son appeared at the door, and I stopped and smiled at him in the mirror.

“Thanks.” I turned to him and sighed heavily. “I just haven’t done this in so long.”

“Are you nearly ready to go?” Hunter pointed to the clock next to the mirror. “I think we need to leave soon.”

“Yeah, we do,” I agreed. “Thanks for reminding me.”

With that, I hustled Hunter into the car and started to drive him over to Raymond’s house. He had agreed to look after Hunter for the evening while I went out on my date. I had tried to talk him out of it, tried to tell him I needed a little more time to get used to the idea of dating once more, but he had told me cheerfully that if I had too much time to overthink this, I would only find a way to talk myself out of it and he wasn’t going to let that happen. I mean, he was right, but I didn’t like him pointing it out that way.

So I had left work early on Friday evening and returned home to shower and change into a nice suit. They had at least let me pick the restaurant, and I had chosen somewhere that was familiar to me and that I liked well enough but not so much that it would be ruined if this date wound up taking a turn for the worse. Which I assumed at some point it was going to.

“Are you excited?” Hunter asked curiously as he sat in the passenger seat next to me. I shrugged.

“Not really,” I admitted. I wanted to be excited. I really did, and it was sweet that my son wanted me to feel the same way, but I was more nervous than anything else. What the fuck was I supposed to do on a date, after all? How long had it been since I had gone out with a woman? I had done a damn good job hiding out in my business all this time, and I liked it there, frankly. I didn’t do dating, didn’t do stuff like this.

But Hunter was excited for me. That much was obvious. That was what had kept me from calling up Raymond and telling him to forget about the date once and for all. I could tell my son was excited at the thought of having a woman around the house, even if he seemed to have some misconceptions about how quickly things would happen after the date tonight. All those movies he’d watched over the years had convinced him that we were going to get married on the spot if we liked each other, and nothing I was saying seemed to dissuade him of that fact. He had asked tons of questions about her, not entirely grasping the notion of what a blind date actually was, and I knew that he wanted nothing more than to come along with me and meet her for himself. Which was sweet, in its own way, but also the last thing I needed right now.

I dropped him off with Raymond, and he gave me a quick hug before he sent me on my way.

“Have a good time, Dad,” he told me, and my heart melted a little. I nearly called this whole thing off to spend the night with Hunter instead. Then I saw the look Raymond was giving me over the top of his head, and I knew if I didn’t go, Raymond was going to drag me there himself. So I turned and made my way to the restaurant and tried to ignore how much my palms were sweating and how deeply I was hoping I would get the call that she had canceled and that, oh well, we would just have to forget all this for tonight.

What had my last date actually been? I cast my mind back and tried to dredge up something and came up with a dead nothing. Before Hunter had been born, it wasn’t like I went on anything as serious as a date. You just met up with someone at some party or a bar or a bowling alley, and if you liked each other, you started dating. You didn’t whisk people out on full-blown dinners out. Nobody had the money for that, least of all me.

I fidgeted in my seat. Could the people around me tell how out of place I was here? A few other couples surrounded us, and I noticed for the first time that this place was seriously romantic, dim lighting, white tables, glimmering gold accents on the walls. Maybe she would get in here and think I was about to propose to her.

I leaned back and looked around, trying to imagine the kind of woman Raymond and Olivia might have picked out for me. Kind, probably—that would be the first port of call. Back when I was younger, around the time I’d done this last, I likely would have put hot at the top of the list of things I needed from a potential partner. Now with my son in the picture, I needed someone with the patience and kindness to handle a kid who could sometimes retreat into himself.

They hadn’t told me much about her, just that she would be wearing a brown jacket and that I would know her when I saw her, which wasn’t exactly helping to stem the wild anxiety running through my system at that moment. What if she walked in and I was looking at my phone, and she rolled her eyes and turned heel to walk out of there? What if her main criterion was “hot,” and she looked at me and decided I wasn’t up to her standards? I wasn’t sure my ego could take that. What if she had chickened out and was right now sitting at home with a tub of ice cream on her lap, thanking her lucky stars that she didn’t go out on that stupid blind date her friends had set her up on…?

And like that, my nerves went. I had spent the last ten years making risky business decisions to keep my work afloat, but this, somehow, was far too much for me. I reached for my coat and ignored the waiter heading in my direction to take my drink order. I just wanted to be left alone and to retreat from this place in peace.

That, of course, was when I saw her.

Not the woman I was due to go on the date with, of course. No, that would have been far too easy. No, I laid eyes on someone I recognized—and about the last person on Earth I wanted to see at that moment.

I sank back into my seat when I saw Autumn, my son’s teacher, for the first time. My pride wouldn’t allow me to have her catch me booking it out of there. She might think I’d been stood up, and for some reason, the notion of that made me bristle with annoyance. I could get a date. I would prove it to her. She could watch me on a date with some smart, sophisticated, beautiful woman that my friends had picked out for me. See how she liked that.

I had to admit she looked good as she paused just through the door and scanned the restaurant, looking for someone—was she on a blind date too? If she was, whoever was here for her was going to be pleased with what they got. She was dressed in a deep green dress that hit above the knee, showing off her shapely legs and giving her a generous cleavage to boot. Her red hair was pulled up into a messy bun, but a few artful tendrils had escaped and were framing her face. Her lips were dark, a berry red, and I wanted to sink my teeth into them. I swiftly looked away from her, reminding myself that she wasn’t who I was here to see. She was just in the same restaurant at the same time, and it was nothing more than a coincidence—

Then it hit me like ice-cold water dumped over my head. I slowly turned back to look at her and noticed the hue of the jacket she was handing off to the cloakroom guy. Brown. A deep, unmistakable chocolate brown. And she had been looking around the restaurant when she’d come in, as though she’d been searching for someone. It had struck me then that she looked as though she were on a blind date. But there was no way in hell she could be on a blind date with me, could there?

I sat there, frozen at the table, as she looked around the room once more, narrowing her eyes as though trying to pick someone out. Then she saw me, sitting at the table by myself, and I saw the same look of horror, shock, and the desperate urge to race out the door and not look back pass across her face. I got to my feet as she came toward me, and she planted her hands on her hips and stared at me from the other side of the table.

“Please don’t tell me that you’re here on a blind date,” she groaned, and I nodded slowly.

“Afraid so,” I replied. “Our stupid friends, huh?”

“Our stupid friends,” she agreed and shook her head. We both stood there for a long moment. What in the name of holy hell were we supposed to do now? I wanted to leave, to call the night a bust and chew Raymond out for it later, and to tell him I would need the full name, job title, and preferably social security details of anyone he wanted to set me up with in the future. Not that I was going to exactly be leaping at the chance to take on another blind date after this one had exploded in my face within the first five minutes. I should have gotten up to leave as soon as I had felt the inclination the first time around. Sure, I would have seemed like an ass for standing her up, but at least it would have been better than sitting across the table from a woman I knew didn’t like me, from a woman who had dared question my parenting skills to my face a few days before.

“Well, I’m going to get out of here.” I went to grab my phone where I had left it on the table. “Sorry to have wasted your time—”

“No, don’t go.” She cut me off before I could go any further, and I looked up at her, curious to find sincerity in her voice.

“You don’t want to do this date, do you?” I asked, raising my eyebrows. I would have been stunned if she’d wanted anything other than to see the back of me.

“Sit down for a minute, will you?” She pointed to the chair opposite hers. “There’s something I need to talk to you about.”

I eyed her for a moment longer and then carefully sat down on my seat, right at the edge, as though I could leap up and run off at any moment if things took a turn for the worse. But, as I sat there and looked at this woman sitting opposite me and remembered how beautiful she looked when she walked in, I wavered. Maybe our friends hadn’t done such a terrible job after all.