I stared at his hand and maybe smiled.
"That's your cue to shake my hand."
I brought my hand up slowly and clasped his.
His hand enveloped mine and held firm. "And your name is?"
I took a breath and remembered my new name, my old name. "I'm Samantha Decker, Cody's mom."
He still kept my hand in his. "Do you like to be called Sam?"
"By my friends."
"Okay, Samantha, you tell me when I can call you Sam."
"You've always called me Sam."
"We've never met before, remember?"
I felt so foolish, standing there shaking his hand in the middle of the busy restaurant while people maneuvered around us to get straws and lids for their cups, but I also felt something else. Light. Was that a weird feeling?
"Okay. What should I call you?"
"Well, Samantha," he emphasized my name, "since we just met and I'm your son's coach and possibly teacher, we should probably go the formal route upfront. What do you think of Mr. Cassidy?"
My eyebrows raised. "I think you should try again."
He chuckled. "How does Reed sound?"
"Much better." I pulled my hand away. I swore I felt a tug, like he hesitated letting go. I must have been imagining things.
He went back to filling the cups of ice with soda. I noticed he got Cody's favorite. And he kept looking at me from the corner of his eye. "Since we just met, I think you are obligated to forget anything you think you may know or remember about me from twenty years ago until the present day."
I narrowed my eyes at him, not sure where all this was coming from. "I'm not sure that's possible. I still flinch every time I open a door, thinking a firecracker might go off."
"Hmm. That's odd." He placed lids on the cups. "I can't imagine why you have that condition."
"Yeah. It's almost as if someone-or someones-booby trapped my room on a regular basis."
"I'm sure whoever it was or wasn't only did or didn't do it to show how much they cared."
"Right." I took my drink and headed for an empty table toward the outskirts of the main area of the restaurant.
Reed followed. "Or maybe they did it because you got them grounded and they weren't allowed to watch their favorite TV show for a month."
"The Simpsons is so juvenile." I took a seat at a window table.
Reed sat down across from me. His face was a tad red. "I'm not saying that was the show or how I know this, but I think the perpetrators in question were juveniles at the time, so maybe you could forget it ever happened and that one of them had a Bart Simpson pillowcase."
I grinned. "I forgot about how much you loved him. Your impersonation of him was spot on."
Reed cleared his throat. "I don't know who you are talking about. And I hate to remind you of this again, but we just met."
"Yes, sorry." I took a sip of my water. "I have a question for you."
"Shoot."
"Do you frequently have dinner with random strangers?"
A smile played on his face. "This is a special circumstance."
"Uh-huh."
His grin grew.
"Thank you for dinner." I leaned forward. "And especially for making Cody laugh."
"I'm pretty sure he was laughing at you."
I sighed and sat back. "I'm sorry again about what I said. I'm not myself lately."
"You don't need to apologize. I know this has been a tough time for you and Cody."
"And how would you know that, stranger?"
"I mean, I'm guessing. But I should mention I know your brother, Peter, and he's concerned about you and Cody."
That piece of news shocked me. "Peter's discussing my family with you?"
"Did I say that?" He took a long drink of his soda and avoided my gaze.
"Peter has a good heart." I tried to put Reed at ease. Even though I would probably give Peter a hard time about it.
"He always has. He kept me out of a lot of trouble."
"And let me guess, you did your best to get him into some."
He smirked. "I'm going to plead the Fifth."
"That's probably a good idea, Reed Cassidy."
Chapter Eleven
What a very odd night it had turned out to be. Cody confirmed my suspicions, and maybe one of my worst fears. There was a girl or two or three that liked him, and he reciprocated. Those girls stole my baby away during dinner, leaving me to converse with Reed. After the initial weirdness, it turned out to be pleasant. Not one trace came out of the annoying kid I used to know. My mouth behaved and didn't emasculate him again. And I may have taken Avery's advice and checked out his butt when he took the trash from the table to dispose of it. I could report that Avery, and apparently James, were right about it. It still felt somewhat wrong looking at him like that. The fact he was Cody's coach only added to the uneasiness of it. I had never checked out Cody's teachers before. But I had never been a single mom before either.
On that depressing note, I pulled out my laptop while propped up with pillows on my four-poster bed. I had been anxious to read more comments and that sneak peek. When I logged into my laptop, I was inundated with emails informing me I had new subscribers to my blog. There were so many, I couldn't count them. I was tempted to head to my blog first, but Hunter Black was calling to me. It was sad how in love I was with a fictional character.
I did make a note of how many more comments there were on the post about me on Autumn Moone's page before I dug into the sneak peek. It was mind boggling. So surreal. But not enough to deter me from getting my Hunter fix. I read and savored each morsel of heart-pounding goodness from the two-page excerpt. I couldn't believe it; Hunter and his best friend, Laine, were stranded at his family's mountain cabin, and it looked like things were going to finally come to a head with them. He was holding her near the fireplace to keep her warm. It was their only source of heat, well, that and each other. His lips hovered above hers, teasing them, but they never touched. She relaxed in his arms as if begging him to finally do what they both wanted. His mouth was ready to consume hers, I could feel it, and then that's where it ended.
"No!" I groaned. I'd been waiting for that kiss for two years.
Weird side note I would never admit to, but Reed reminded me of Hunter. They both had dark hair, stunning blue eyes, and a nice backside. I needed to get that out of my head. How was I going to picture myself now as Laine-or any of Hunter's other women-if I was picturing Reed as Hunter? That could get awkward. It'd be a whole other type of book, like Naughty Babysitters or The Cougar and the Teacher.
Reed had asked me tonight what I would think of him if this was the first time we had met. It wasn't an easy question, but I tried to be objective-and then I kept my answer to myself. Honestly, if it was our first meeting, I would have thought the school made a mistake hiring him. Not because he wasn't a good coach or teacher, which I really didn't know one way or the other for sure, but because he was quite pretty. With how the girls who stole my son away had snuck a peek at Reed, I had a feeling he would be the fantasy of many teenage girls, and probably a lot of the teachers at the high school.
When Reed pressed for an answer, all I offered was that he seemed capable and Cody liked him, so that was a plus in my book. I'm not sure that answer satisfied him, but at least he didn't look demoralized like he had yesterday and earlier in the evening.
The burning question on my mind tonight wasn't what I would have thought of Reed if we had just met, but did I know someone who knew the elusive Autumn Moone? Who gave her my blog? Was it a friend of a friend of a friend sort of thing? Did Autumn Moone live in the Chicagoland area? If she did, she should be best friends with Avery and me. We obviously had a lot in common. Or at least we all loved Hunter Black. Who knows, I could have walked by her in the market today when I took Gelaire shopping. Or maybe at the fancy boutique Gelaire took me to. Surely Autumn Moone could afford those kind of price tags. She sold millions of books. How I ever got on her radar was amazing to me.
But not as amazing as all the new followers on my blog and the comments.
After twenty-five years of marriage and three kids, my husband left us to pursue his dreams. I thought we were his dream. Now, while he's off exploring the world with his girlfriend, I'm working two jobs to make ends meet. He even missed our son's college graduation. We were high school sweethearts. I saw him through cancer treatments and job losses, only to be tossed to the side. Thanks for writing so eloquently how I'm feeling and for giving me courage to make it one more day.