Page 7 of The Single Dad Project

Hopefully, that translated to...other things.

Sex.

Other thingswere sex and the universe owed her a selfless, generous lover after her hellish past two weeks.

“Ready?” he asked, rising from the stool and holding out his hand to her.

For a moment, she stared at the wide palm and long, elegant fingers. And the urge to tell him this wasn’t a hand-holding situation crowded into the back of her throat. But instead of letting it fly off her tongue, she swallowed it back down. Something told her this man didn’t care about typical one-night stands or what was customary for everyone else—including her. A niggling intuition warned her nothing about this night would be usual. Starting with the man she’d chosen.

“You want my arm to fall off?” Humor laced the question, but she barely heard it.

A jolt of icy shock blasted through her, and she froze midclimb down from the bar stool. She blinked at him, a disorienting sense of...familiarity rippling through her. There was no way this man could know that Billy Dee Williams’s quote from the classic movieLady Sings the Blueswas one of her favorites. Just as he couldn’t know that the movie starring Billy Dee and Diana Ross had been her mother’s favorite.

Not Lucille “Moe” Dennison, her adoptive mother who was probably just locking Kinsale Inn’s doors and heading up to bed.

No, her biological mother. The one Flo barely remembered. The one she’d known only from old pictures, diaries and her parents’ memories.

No, he couldn’t possibly know that the only way she felt close to the mother whose memory was like a smudged fingerprint—tangible but with blurred details—was to become familiar with and love the things she’d loved.

But it didn’t stop her from feeling like he in some waydidknow...

She shook her head, as if the abrupt motion could rid her of the fanciful thought. This was a one-night stand. A fuck-and-flee. There was nothing sentimental about this other than the tender feelings she would have toward her orgasms.

Another reason not to hold his hand—

She slid her palm across his.

Dammit.She must’ve left her sense of self-preservation at the Grand Palace and the Temple of the Emerald Buddha.

She smothered a sigh.

“Ready.”

CHAPTER TWO

“THISISYOURS?”

Flo closed and locked the front door to the apartment behind her and turned to study the man whose tall frame seemed to shrink the living space to Lilliputian dimensions. Slipping her keys in the back pocket of her jeans, she surveyed the place, attempting to view it through his eyes.

A large living room/dining room with nearly floor-to-ceiling, front-facing windows. An eclectic hodgepodge of furniture filled the open space—the couches from the previous owners, tables donated by her parents from the inn, dining room set from the thrift store, armchairs a gift from her sister Leo. The only things not previously owned or gifted by someone were the photographs on the wall. Hers.

A small kitchen with a bar separating the rooms. A short hall leading to the bedroom and bathroom. The small apartment over her photography studio had come as part of the purchase, and though she spent half her time at the inn with her family—still had her room there—this place was her hideaway away from the...noise.

She said none of this to him; she’d confessed far too much personal information tonight. Even though he didn’t know her name.

And she didn’t know his. Still...

“I can’t keep calling you Big, Bearded and Sinful. Want to give me a name?”

He turned, dark eyebrow arched.

“Mine or will any do?”

“Any will do.”

No real names. She had no intention of sharing hers. It might seem silly that she planned to get naked with this man and allow him access to all of her body parts, but exchanging names? Too intimate. Whatever. Those were her rules. At least withhim.

“You can call me Adam.”

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