“dream dates.”
Liam chuckled. What a bunch of dogs. It was a classic example of Pavlov’s theory: the minute anyone said women, these guys started drooling.
Charlie’s date was nicknamed The 007.
“You will dress to the nines in a gown you purchase on a predate shopping trip paid by Benton, Charles Benton. I will pick you up in an Aston Martin DB5 just like James Bond used to drive, and whisk you away to a supersecret location where we’ll enjoy martinis—shaken, not stirred—as we watch the sunset.”
He went on to describe dinner and dancing laced with a little bit of imagined danger, something about seduction and a whole lot of corny.
What the hell was Benton talking about?
Danger and seduction. Were they allowed to sell seduction as part of a prize package? Maybe that’s where the danger came in—Benton pretending to be James Bond. The woman might crack a rib laughing.
Liam took another bite of meat loaf and read the other descriptions.
Vogler’s entry was entitled A Red-Carpet Evening and featured a limousine, champagne, dinner and a movie.
It sounded like a nice evening, except for the fact that Vogler had to come along on the date.
A date with Lennox came with a promise in its headline: We’ll Always Have Paris.
I’ll be damned. Liam paused, fork midair. Jake was flying the winner to France for a night at the Ritz and dinner at Le Jules Verne, the restaurant atop the Eiffel Tower.
Show-off.
Liam snickered and shook his head. He wished there was a place to comment so that he could give unsuspecting ladies the heads-up on these guys. His snark was all in good fun. In fairness, he had to admit that his colleagues were good guys. Even if they did spend too much time at the hospital and on the golf course, and too little time on what really mattered in life.
And what was that? What really mattered? One size did not necessarily fit all when it came to answering those questions.
For Liam, it was family. His girls. Protecting them from more of life’s hurts.
Okay, so six of his seven colleagues were unencumbered. Vogler was the only other one who had a child. That’s probably why he was staying in town for the date and trying so hard to disguise a night out to the movies as some gala affair.
Liam tried to ignore the little voice that nagged him. At least these guys know how to have fun. At least they are willing to donate their time in the name of something good.
But Liam couldn’t help but wonder why they just didn’t donate the money they were going to spend on the flights to Paris and the shopping sprees and limousines.
As Liam was making a mental note to ask Kate that very question, his daughters raced into the dining room.
Liam stabbed at the tablet’s off button, but only managed to switch pages rather than power down.
“Daddy!” squealed Calee. She threw her arms around his neck. Amanda hung back a little. As he hugged exuberant Calee, he could see Amanda over her sister’s shoulder. The girl looked as if she’d grown again. She had a good four inches on tiny Calee, who had inherited her mother’s petite stature. Amanda had gotten his height and bigger frame. The girl wasn’t overweight by any means; she was just stockier and larger-boned than her sister.
They were starting to really look like the fraternal twins they were.
After Calee stepped back, Amanda hugged him.
He loved the way that each of his daughters was her own person, especially since they were twins. Vastly different, yet fiercely protective of each other.
Both girls wore their pajamas and had wet hair from their showers. They smelled of the fruity shampoo and bath products they’d conned him into buying them when they’d dragged him to the mall a couple weekends ago. He breathed in deeply, savoring the scent of his little girls, just about the only fragrance in the world that soothed his weary soul. Mingling with Rosie’s cooking, it was the smell of home.
The girls had been at school until two-thirty, and then, after Amanda’s club meeting, they’d gone to the dance studio and were in classes until Rosalinda had picked them up at seven-fifteen. Despite the long day, they seemed to have more energy than he did after a good night’s rest. A case in point that youth was wasted on the young. Well, maybe not wasted, but there was definitely an unfair distribution.
“Oh-em-gee,” Calee said. Lately, she’d taken to speaking in what Liam called “alphabet soup”—acronyms rather than words. It seemed to be the trend among today’s youth. “Are you going to be in that bachelor auction? Everyone’s talking about it.”
“What?” Ugh. Had she seen the website on the tablet before he’d exited the page?
“What auction?” he asked, borrowing a sly play from her book, one that he liked to call the “don’t offer any more than is absolutely necessary” tactic.
Calee reached out and, with a couple confident taps, she pulled up the page he’d tried to hide as she and her sister had burst into the room.
“Duh. This auction. You were just looking at it. Oh-em-gee. Why are you pretending you weren’t?”
She put her hands on her slim hips and affected a disapproving look. That was the thing about teenage girls: nothing got by them. That’s why he was so careful not to do anything that might embarrass them or undermine the strict house rules under which he was raising them. Honesty was at the top of the list, and since he led by example, this was the perfect time to be truthful, a good teaching moment.
“I was looking at the website because I went to a meeting today, and they were talking about it. Some of my colleagues are going to be in it to help raise money for the pediatric surgical wing.”
Did partial truth count? His colleagues were going to help. He’d just omitted the part about him declining to take part, too.
“I left to do rounds before the meeting was over. So I was checking the webpage to see what it was all about.”
Amanda moved closer to stand beside her sister. She watched as Calee held up her hands. “Wait. Wait. Wait. You said your colleagues are doing it? Why aren’t you?”
Liam was about to reassure her that he wasn’t doing it because he didn’t want to embarrass her and Amanda, but he was relieved when she didn’t wait for him to answer.
“Oh-em-gee. You totally have to do it. You. Have. To. Do. It. Tonight at dance class Lacy Vogler was bragging about how her dad got invited to do it because she said he’s the hottest dad in Celebration.”
Lacy Vogler? She had to be Quinn’s daughter.
“But I told her that he wasn’t the hottest dad, that you were. Because you’re his boss, right? Right?”
She was talking a mile a minute, and Liam was doing his best to follow what she was saying. Did this mean she wanted him to do the auction? He had a sinking feeling she might.
“Well, no. I’m not exactly
