Page 59 of Dissonance

“Well, what?”

“Don’t play coy with me, lady.” She follows me in, dropping into the chair opposite. “I want all the details about your date last night.”

I sigh, setting my bag down. “It wasn’t a date.”

Not one I knew was a date anyway.

“Oh, please. He was wearing a dress shirt and looked freaking edible.” She grabs the nearest thing off my desk, a prenatal leaflet, because of course it would be, and fans herself, completely unabashed. “It was a date.”

“It was just dinner.”

“With your baby daddy.”

I freeze for half a second before I look up, glaring at her. The girl only grins wider.

“So…how was it?”

I exhale slowly, lowering to my seat. “It was…nice, actually.”

“Nice?” She grimaces. “The hottest man I’ve ever personally seen in real life—excluding my Jackson, obviously—took you to dinner, and your review is nice? Are you seeing him again?”

I shrug, hoping it looks more casual than I actually feel about the whole thing. “Maybe? I think so. I mean… I kind of have to, right? For the… For the baby.”

Mae goes still, the leaflet dropping to her lap. “If you weren’t pregnant and he asked you out, would you still go?”

The question is too loaded for this early in the morning. I open my mouth, then close it again, frowning. My hands drift toward the edge of the desk, fingers settling on the wood.

“That’s what I thought,” she says, crossing her arms.

“It isn’t a big deal,” I say, because I need to, even if neither of us believes it.

“It’s a massive deal. You never date, and now you have a second one.”

“I date,” I argue, annoyance prickling at the back of my neck.

“No. You go on one pity date every eighteen months because someone guilt-trips you into it.”

That’s…not entirely inaccurate.

She starts counting on her fingers. “There was Josh, my cousin, because I wouldn’t stop bugging you until you said yes. Then that guy from finance. The one with the hair.”

“Brian, and he was perfectly…fine,” I say, which is true, and also all I felt about poor Brian.

“Right. Him. But you never saw either of them again.”

“I’m busy,” I say, shifting to cross one leg over the other.

“You’re avoidant,” she corrects, smiling when I huff. “When was the last time you did something truly impulsive? Something that wasn’t scheduled weeks in advance and color-coded in your calendar?”

Giving her a pointed look, I gesture toward my stomach. She tilts her head, deadpan, waiting for my answer. But nothing comes out because she’s not entirely wrong. I plan everything to a fault. Work, meetings, travel, my entire life runs on structure and control. Impulsive decisions are messy. And I hate mess.

Except…there’s one very obvious, very persistent exception to that rule. A man with dark eyes and a Scottish accent who has somehow always managed to slip past every defense I have.

Lockie James is my impulse.

“You’re smiling,” Mae sing-songs, beaming when my head jerks up.

“I’m not.”