Date the Alphabet: A Fake Dating, He Falls First, Single Dad Sweet Romance (Love Tucson Book 2) by Laura Langa

Author:Laura Langa [Langa, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: West East Publishing
Published: 2023-07-23T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 17

Zane drummed his fingers on the steering wheel in time to the Blues Traveler song streaming through his speakers. Though it was only mid-morning, the day had already warmed to a toasty eighty-five degrees. He was running the air conditioning inside of his car, partly to counteract how he felt even warmer with Ann sitting beside him.

When he’d picked her up a little over fifteen minutes ago, Zane had stood at her door with his friendliest grin in lieu of the bouquet of flowers he wanted to give her. Ann had returned his smile with a shy one and asked if she could finish up some work while he drove. Since then, she’d been grading.

Which was adorable.

There was no other way to describe it.

Ann had curled herself into a hunched ball in his passenger seat, shuffling through papers. She murmured words of praise while reading over her students’ sentences. When she wasn’t using her red pen, it sat between her teeth. Halfway through, she grew impatient with her hair and efficiently knotted it into a ball, secured with a second pen.

Tapping the steady bass rhythm of “Hook” was the only thing keeping Zane from tucking away the wispy strand at her temple.

He didn’t have to wonder what would happen if he reached out. Ann had kept something physical between them since he’d picked her up—her luggage, her work satchel, her papers. Though Zane had felt something shift between them, Ann still had her guard up.

That should’ve pushed a barbed thorn into his ribs, but Zane had been waiting since August, had been prepared to wait until the school year had ended. Time was almost irrelevant at this point. When Ann was ready, he’d be here.

“Oh, no.”

A quick glance was all Zane needed to recognize that it was his daughter’s loopy cursive atop Ann’s legs.

“What is it?”

“Caroline’s essay used to be about banning personal lawns to promote water conservation.” Zane nodded. He’d read her most recent draft Tuesday afternoon. “But she’s changed topics.”

“To what?” Zane returned his gaze to the dusty, flat landscape on either side of the six-lane road as a souped-up truck zoomed past.

“Divorce should be illegal.”

It was as if that truck had pulled in front of them and stopped, smashing the steering wheel into his chest. When Zane had met Tessa this morning before he kept driving east to pick up Ann, Caroline had been less than enthused to leave his side. Tessa had spent the last week, while Caroline had been with him, moving her things out of her parents’ house and into Isaac’s. Zane feebly hoped that Caroline’s surly attitude had been due to the fact that they’d met Tessa an hour earlier than usual, not the change in her part-time residence.

The ragged sigh that left his mouth carried the weight of the last fifteen months with it.

“Can I ask what happened?”

Zane kept his eyes on the road. “We weren’t working. We hadn’t been working for some time.”

That was what outsiders didn’t understand. Why they looked at him and couldn’t comprehend why he wasn’t livid.

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