Free Daddy 101 (American Romance) by Jo Leigh Page B

to see that she wasn’t condemning him for his desires. Wanting him to see her own regret.
    “Dani?”
    “Yes?”
    “The only thing I’d ever want to do with you is make love.”
    He looked so earnest. If she hadn’t known better, if she hadn’t already learned this lesson the hard way, she would have believed him. “I’m not the kind of woman you’re used to,” she said. “I can’t love someone for one night, and forget about it the next day.”
    “I know that.”
    “Then you know why I can’t...” She couldn’t finish the sentence. Not with him looking at her that way. So hurt. So hungry.
    He leaned forward quickly and brushed her lips with his. It was a quick kiss, almost not a kiss at all, yet she felt that spark between them. The pull to go into his arms was like a force of nature.
    “Hey,” he said. “It’s all right.” He took her hand in his and started walking again, heading toward her house at a leisurely pace. “But for the record, I’m not the playboy of the Western world. I do know the difference between having sex and making love.”
    “I’m sure you do.”
    “Uh-uh. There’s that cynical tone again. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, Dani.”
    “You’re telling me you’ve never had sex for sex’s sake?”
    “No.”
    “That you’ve never had a one-night stand?”
    “ No.”
    “Then what?”
    He pulled her to a stop. They were just a few feet from her house. As she turned to look at him, she saw that her neighbor’s window was open. She could hear the soft strains of classical music. Then she looked into Alex’s eyes, and the rest of the world disappeared.
    “What I’m telling you is that I know the difference,” he said. “I know what it is to make love. To want to be close with your heart as well as your body. I know what it’s like to have a lover in my arms. To care more about her than I care about breathing. You’re not the only one with memories, kiddo.”
    “Who was she?”
    “Someone a lot like you. Feisty. Beautiful. Soft.”
    “What happened?”
    He smiled with such melancholy that it made her sorry she’d asked. “I sent her away.”
    “Why?”
    His eyes closed. The creases in his forehead deepened with a long remembered pain. “Because she didn’t fit in to the plan,” he said. “Loving her broke all the rules.”
    “Rules?”
    He opened his eyes, and looked at her once more. “Honey, you have no idea.”
    “So tell me.”
    “Maybe sometime. Now, I need to get you home. I think Chloe might be upset that I’ve kept you out so late.”
    “If Chloe is up, she’s not the one who’s going to be upset.”
    He smiled. “Come on, Doc. Let’s call it a night.”
    Dani let him lead her to the door. She wondered what he’d meant when he talked about the rules. What kind of rules could a man like him have to live by? The world was his oyster. She couldn’t imagine him bending to anyone’s standards but his own.
    She entered the house, and the first thing she noticed was that too many lights were on. If all was well, the hall would be the only space lit, with the possible exception of the living room, if Mimi had decided to read instead of watch TV.
    Dani looked quickly at Alex, then hurried toward Chloe’s room. She never got there. Instead she stopped dead in her tracks at the entrance to the dining room. Mimi stood by the table. She was staring hard at a very large, very green iguana, who was looking right back at her from the vantage point of the center of the dining room table. The iguana had a leash, and Terry Redmond, a single mother of two who lived on the other side of town, was holding on to the other end. Dani happened to know the iguana. Better, in fact, than she knew Terry. The iguana’s name was Filbert and he belonged to Terry’s fifteen-year-old son.
    But that wasn’t all. Sitting next to Terry was Maureen Westbury. Maureen was also single. She ran the aerobics studio on Fourth Street, and normally dressed in