“Are you ready?” Adam asks, grinning with triumph as he stands by my front door.

Unlike the other day when he showed up in his business suit, today he’s wearing something more casual, which is good—and not just because he looks good enough to eat right now; he’d just look out of place wearing an expensive suit at a pumpkin patch.

Of course, it doesn’t hurt that his Henley shows off his hard muscles better than his usual button-down shirts. I can see hints of his sculpted physique, and it reminds me that I never actually saw him naked, even though he’s seen me.

With those jeans and the leather jacket, this outfit would probably withstand food stains pretty well, too.

“I’m ready, but William’s not. You’re early,” I say as I let out a big sigh. What has my life turned into that I regularly estimate the stain-resistance level of people’s outfits?

I swing the door open wider and turn around to the living room. William’s waiting for me to come back and finish putting his little Velcro shoes on for him.

I never used to care about how well my past dates’ clothes would stand up to stains, although there was always a good possibility of my date and me getting drunk as skunks and acquiring some puke on our clothes.

That’s not going to happen during this date, though. Not that this is a date.

I glance over my shoulder to see Adam following down the hall behind me. His lips curl up into a smile when our eyes meet. My heart starts pounding, and I twist back around.

I can feel his hot gaze searing into the back of my skinny jeans, reminding me how intoxicating it can be to be desired by a strong, gorgeous, dominant man like Adam.

Don't do anything stupid, I remind myself.

I’m a responsible adult now, in charge of a two-year-old. No alcohol will be involved today, although that doesn’t change the probability of stains happening.

And as long as we’re assigning probabilities to things that may or may not happen today, let’s go ahead and put sex at zero, as well. Oh, and there’s zero chance of romance, too.

I may have made some questionable decisions in the past, but I have William now. I can’t be the same reckless girl I used to be.

When I enter the living room, I see William's kicked off the one shoe I’d put on him and is now giggling at the way it's rolling on the floor.

“William, why did you take off your shoe? Now Mommy has to put it back on again.”

“I do it self,” William says. He’s learning to say more and more words. It’s almost scary how quickly he grows sometimes.

“No, William. We need to go now. Mommy will put it on for you now, and then maybe I can teach you to put it on yourself another day, okay?”

I wonder how much longer it’s going to be until he actually learns to do that on his own. That would be so nice. I’d save a few minutes a day, although by then, he’ll probably have found new ways to make my life harder.

Before I can let out another tired sigh, Adam strides across the room with his long legs and picks up the blue shoe.

“You like kicking things, William?” Adam’s mouth forms a boyish grin. He holds the shoe up with one hand as he walks toward the couch William’s sitting on.

William looks alarmed. His eyes have widened, and he keeps glancing at me for reassurance. He doesn’t meet strangers often. Aside from Sawyer, me, and the people at the daycare, he really doesn’t see anyone else.

Sorry, William. I can’t rescue you from this guy.

Adam continues, “I know it's fun to kick your shoes off. But you'll have to put them on and keep them on because we're going out to get some pumpkins.”

Turning to me, Adam asks, “May I put on his shoes?”

I nod, quickly. I’ve put on William’s shoes, like, a million times, and I'll probably have to do it a million more times before he can do it himself. If Adam wants to do the job for me this one time, he can go crazy for all I care.

“Thank you,” Adam says graciously with a charming smile. For a moment, I forget all about what a horrible human being he is.

I can hear William giggling, but my eyes are firmly on Adam. Specifically, the strip of skin that shows up when he lifts up his hands a certain way. I can see a little trail of dark fuzz disappearing under the waistband of his jeans. I bite down on my bottom lip as my mind automatically imagines the way he looks underneath the denim.

I’d have to be blind to not find Adam attractive. Even when I was blindfolded, I found him attractive.

But Adam’s off-limits. I can’t date William’s dad; that would be too confusing for William.

And what kind of a relationship would it be anyway? There’s no chance of anything healthy when we started out as a whore and a john.

Even if I wasn’t even aware the sex was transactional when it happened, he was. That means he’s not good dad material for William. He can’t be.

That said, he’s pretty good at pretending to be a good dad. He’s actually managed to calm William down enough to put on the shoes.

Unfortunately, there's nothing I can do about Adam being the father of my son. I can’t stop him from coming here to see William either—not unless I want to risk a lawsuit.

But I can, at least, limit the damage by not letting him deeper into our home than necessary.

That's right. I’m not socializing with him. I’m just trying to appease him enough so he doesn't lawyer up and sue me.

* * *

William toddles around the bright-orange pumpkins, touching the hard outer shells and laughing hysterically.

I watch by the fence, allowing myself some distance from William and Adam.

William being two, I normally have to watch him like a hawk. He's nowhere near as bad as some of the other “terrible twos” I’ve met, but he acts like a drunk adult who just never sobers up for some reason.

I’ve probably said “no” more times in the past few months than I ever did my entire life. I’ve also combined the words with various other things I didn't think I’d ever have to utter.

Like, for example, “No, don't pick up a cigarette butt from the sidewalk and put it in your mouth.” After that one, I had to wash his hands in the sink while he wept and lamented like an over-dramatic mourner.

With Adam watching William closely, I don’t have to worry about him putting things in his mouth, at least. He’s all bundled up in a thick jacket and a scarf, so he should be comfortable. And even if he takes a tumble, the ground is soft enough to cushion his fall.

I take out my phone and open the Camera app. I try to fit the scene in front of me in my screen—orange pumpkins littering the brown soil, and William’s laughing face as he runs around the patch.

While most parents obsessively document their kids’ days in pictures, I normally have both my hands full when William’s awake, which means that he’s asleep in most photos I take of him. This opportunity doesn’t come often.

Adam approaches behind William, holding him by his little toddler arms before he falls on his butt. I didn’t mean to include Adam in the frame but he’s not leaving William’s side.

When William laughs, I snap the picture anyway. I stare at my phone screen as William squeals happily. Even though Adam’s in it, this is a pretty good photo.

It looks like fall, of course. With a pumpkin patch as the background, there’s no way to avoid that. Orange dominates the picture, except William’s and Adam’s green eyes steal the attention away from the stupid pumpkins.

It strikes me how much they resemble each other. If William were about twenty years older, they’d probably look like carbon copies of each other. Adam wouldn’t need to conduct a stealthy paternity test to know William’s his son.

The thought of Adam stealing William’s biological samples behind my back reminds me not to get carried away.

No matter how much I’m attracted to Adam, and no matter how good he seems to be with William, I can’t let my guard down. After all, the only reason I agreed to come out with him today was because he’d basically threatened me with legal action.

Transactional sex and blackmail. Hmm . . . Yeah, as much as naïve dreamers like Daisy want to believe this is the beginning of a fairy-tale ending, there’s no way this is going to work out.