piled on her head in a haphazard bun and her T-shirt looked liked it’d seen better days—probably in the nineties. But she looked ten times sexier than she had in that boring work outfit. Now he could see the details of the tempting curves beneath the thin shirt and yoga pants—all woman. All the way down to the bright pink polish on her toes.
“I didn’t realize I was supposed to dress for a slumber party,” he said, allowing himself another head to toenail perusal. “I would’ve brought my footed pajamas.”
“You come to my house after seven. This is what you get.”
“Well, lucky, lucky me.”
She shook her head. “I swear, you could flirt with a tree stump.”
He handed her the pizzas. “Why do that when I can have fun annoying you?”
With a sigh, she opened the door wider and let him come inside. He shut it behind him while Oakley handed Reagan the pizza boxes. “Baby, you remember Mr. Ryland?”
Reagan nodded and shifted her weight to the other foot. “Hi, Mr. Ryland.”
Her gaze was so serious, so … adult. Those old soul eyes made him forget how uncomfortable he was around kids. “If it’s okay with your mom, you can call me Pike.”
Reagan looked up at her mother and Oakley nodded. “That’s fine.”
“Why are you bringing us pizza, Mr. Pike?” Reagan asked. All bluntness.
He didn’t bother correcting her that he’d meant she could drop the mister. “To get on you and your mom’s good side.”
Reagan’s lips twitched into a little smile. “You’d have to bring dessert for that.”
He laughed. “I’ll remember that for next time.”
“Can I eat another dinner, Mom?” Reagan asked, clutching the pizzas like she was afraid she’d have to give them back.
“Sure. Why don’t you bring them in the kitchen and get out some paper plates? We’ll be there in a minute.”
Reagan hurried off, and Oakley grabbed her guitar to slip it into the case.
The living room was small and lived in, the furniture and carpet worn but not in disrepair. Nothing fancy, but Oakley’s place had a cozy, welcoming feel to it.
“I heard you playing when I walked up. Great song.”
She latched the case. “Thanks.”
“Who’s it by? I haven’t heard that one before.”
She glanced over at him, wariness putting lines around her mouth. “No one. It’s just a thing I tinkered with a long time ago. Reagan found the lyrics and wanted me to play it.”
“Wait, you wrote that?” He moved closer without realizing he was doing it. That was her song? “What’s it called?”
“‘Dandelion.’ It was just a stupid teenage thing I scribbled down.” She gave him a dismissive wave of her hand. “Reagan wanted to change some of it around and maybe use it as a starting point for one of the songs for the group.”
“Oh, hell no.”
She set down the guitar case next to the TV and peered back over her shoulder. “What?”
His mind was already working, grabbing onto thoughts and running with them. “I only heard a little bit of it, but that’s not a kid’s song. Too much yearning in it for that. And that’s a one-voice song. Besides adding in some drums and a bass track, it didn’t sound like it needed to be messed around with. Maybe you could play the whole thing for me?”
She crossed her arms. “We’re here to work, not to waste time serenading you with my teenage ballads. Plus, I don’t play my own stuff for other people. I only did it because Reagan asked.”
“Hold up. You have more stuff?”
A smile finally broke through at that. She tilted her head. “What’s with you? You look like a beagle who just got offered a rack of ribs.”
What was with him was that he had been trying his hand at producing for the last year, and he hadn’t had a song hit him with that kind of gut-level force since he’d heard Keats. He was still new to this producing thing, but his instincts on what was good hadn’t let him down yet. “Fine. We’ll eat pizza and work. But before I leave, you’re going to play that song for me.”
“I will n—”
He raised a finger. “Remember, I am selflessly donating this Thursday night for the good of children, Oakley. I provided dinner. And I am mostly keeping my eyes to myself even though you are parading around in that enticing ensemble. All I’m asking in return is a song.”
She snorted and looked down at her shirt. “Mickey Mouse does it for you, huh?”
“His ears are very strategically placed. Not that I’ve noticed.”
She narrowed her eyes in playful warning. “Okay. I’ll think about it. One song. But only if we get this plan hammered out before ten.”
“I will accept this deal.” But there she went with the time limit again, which had his mind chasing that bunny trail from last night.
After their dinner the night before, he’d gone home and had tried to talk himself out of his crazy theories about the phone calls. He’d ruled out the most ridiculous one first. No way was Oakley a call girl or escort. She had a kid and wouldn’t be able to get away that much. Plus, during their conversations about the bathroom, she’d blushed. A hooker doesn’t blush.
So there were only a few other possibilities he could think of. One was that she was seeing a guy who liked to role-play. Pike liked those kinds of games himself, so he’d been down that road of false names and such. But Oakley had said she wasn’t seeing anyone and he believed her. Then he’d thought it could be an online relationship thing—pretending to be someone else and hooking up via the Internet. But really, why would Oakley need to catfish anyone? The woman was hot.
So then he’d landed on the last theory. That she was some kind of phone-sex operator. That would explain the guy mentioning minutes.
But maybe he’d heard it all wrong and was chasing crazy ideas. First, did people still call those old-school lines when every porntastic thing imaginable could be found on the Internet? And secondly, after replaying the scene, he wasn’t one hundred percent sure that she’d said Sasha to the caller when she’d walked away. Maybe he’d heard wrong. The music had been loud in the restaurant.
And as he followed Oakley into the kitchen to share a pizza with her kid, he couldn’t wrap his head around the idea that this doting mother who worked at a non-profit could flip the switch and play filthy phone-sex girl at night. He’d called those lines when he was a teenager. He’d lift credit card numbers from his mom’s boyfriend and charge the calls that way. And he’d gotten quite an education when he’d found there was no limit to what those women would talk about. He had a hard time picturing Oakley saying “fuck” much less describing sex acts in explicit detail.
However,
