Page 52 of Second Chance for the Single Mom

I had really been looking forward to lunch with Lucas. We neverdidget to catch up at his place—we’d jumped into bed too quickly for that. I was excited to get to know the boy I’d dated in high school, and to discover the kind of man he had become.

The fact that he was Bran’s biological father had a lot to do with that, too.

I wasn’t under any delusions. I didn’t expect Lucas to suddenly step into a fatherly role. Heck, I still didn’t want to tell him any time soon—I’d made the decision to raise Bran on my own, and it wouldn’t be fair to suddenly drop that bomb on Lucas the moment he was back in Vancouver. I wasn’t sure if Ieverwanted to tell him, honestly. I was terrified of how he would react.

But I was getting way ahead of myself. Today’s lunch was supposed to be casual. Two old acquaintances hanging out.

In a public place.

Where it wouldn’t suddenly turn into sex.

My phone rang a few minutes later. It was Lucas. “Hey. I got a table already. Walk inside, turn right, and I’m in the back corner by the window.”

Lucas groaned. “You’re going to hate me. But I have to cancel.”

My stomach sank. “Oh no!”

“I’m stuck in a meeting,” he explained. “It was supposed to end before lunch, but now they want to work through it. I probably won’t get out of here for an hour. Can we reschedule?”

“Yeah, sure,” I said. “Let’s text about it later.”

“Sorry, Hales,” he said. “Gotta go. Bye.”

I felt defeated after hanging up. It was more than just disappointment—this was a stronger emotion, one that I’d felt a lot back in high school. He pulled this crap all the time back then: canceling plans last minute, making up excuses. That was part of the reason we’d broken up: I couldn’t trust anything he said. By the time we split, I didn’t believe a word that came out of his mouth.

This was the old Lucas that I remembered.

The old me would have just taken it. I was so passive back then, terrified of confrontation even when I was being lied to. But even though Lucas hadn’t grown up, I had.

I was going to call Lucas out on his bullshit.

I ordered a BLT sandwich to go, then walked outside. Lucas had pointed at the building on the other side of the parking lot when describing where he worked, and a quick Google search confirmed that Nissan had offices in the building. Although at this point, I was wondering if he had lied about working there at all.

The front door was operated by keycard, but I slipped inside when a cluster of women walked out for lunch. The directory next to the elevator said that Nissan had offices on the fourth floor, so that’s where I went.

By the time I exited the elevator, I had a head of steam and some angry momentum in my heels.

There was a reception desk on the fourth floor, but it was empty. Probably because of lunch. Since nobody was there to stop me, I decided to walk around. I could always pretend I was lost. Or make an excuse about looking at commercial real estate.

The entire floor seemed deserted. That made me more confident that I was right, that Lucas had lied to me. There wasn’t some big meeting going on. Nobody was evenhere.

Then I rounded a corner, and came face-to-face with a large conference room. The wall facing me was floor-to-ceiling glass, giving me a Last Supper-like view of the long table inside. A dozen men and women sat there, their heads turned to face a projector screen at one end of the room.

And standing in front of the screen was Lucas Hollister.

He was wearing a shirt and tie today, not just a polo. And it made him lookgood,accentuating all of his hard features and making him seem more confident rather than just stubborn. I couldn’t hear what he was saying through the glass, but he was gesturing at the screen and calmly arguing to the room. He looked like he was in charge.

He looked like aman.

A strange sensation came over me as I stared at the father of my child. I could see my son in him in that frozen moment—the way he pursed his lips like he stubbornly wanted to argue, and the way he put one hand on his hip while gesturing with the other. Even Lucas’s hair was combed like Bran’s today. For that crazy split-second, it was like I was seeing my boy’s future.

One of the women at the table pointed at him and began to say something, but then her eyes suddenly locked onto me. She frowned, mouth moving.

Every pair of eyes in the room looked at me.

Lucas’s gaze collided with mine last, and it was the most devastating. All my righteous anger disappeared, and was quickly replaced by a deep sense of regret.

He hadn’t been lying.

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