Playboy Prince, Single Dad (Love Is Priceless Book 4)
Holly Rayner
Playboy Prince, Single Dad
Holly Rayner
Contents
Playboy Prince, Single Dad
1. Emma
2. Emma
3. Emma
4. Emma
5. Emma
6. Emma
7. Emma
8. Emma
9. Emma
10. Emma
11. Emma
12. Emma
13. Emma
14. Tomas
15. Tomas
16. Emma
17. Emma
18. Emma
19. Emma
20. Emma
21. Emma
22. Emma
The Deal With Triplets
1. Zoe
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Playboy Prince, Single Dad
Copyright 2019 by Holly Rayner
All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part by any means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying and recording, or in any information storage or retrieval system, is forbidden without the explicit written permission of the author.
All characters depicted in this fictional work are consenting adults, of at least eighteen years of age. Any resemblance to persons living or deceased, particular businesses, events, or exact locations are entirely coincidental.
Chapter 1
Emma
March
I carefully pour a handful of fruit-flavored candies from their bag into my palm and hold them out to the nine-year-old Chinese girl sitting across the table from me. Zhen peruses the offering, then looks up at me.
“Banana,” she says decisively.
“Which one?”
She points, and I nod, smiling.
“Very good.”
Zhen picks up the banana-shaped candy from my hand and pops it in her mouth. I always end our tutoring sessions this way, even though it’s been months since Zhen has forgotten the names of any of the fruits. I consider it a reward for a job well done, a day of good, hard work. Besides, it reinforces the vocabulary lesson.
“Grape,” Zhen says, pointing.
“Good job,” I confirm, and she eats the grape candy.
I’ve been tutoring Zhen for almost six months now, ever since the girl arrived in New York with her diplomat father. She was shy and hesitant at first, and the two of us communicated mostly in Mandarin. But Zhen is also shockingly bright and has proved to be an adept pupil. She now has a fairly good grasp on English, and I hardly use my Mandarin at all anymore.
I hand my student the rest of the candy and begin to pack up my tutoring supplies.
“Homework?” Zhen asks, her tone hopeful.
I have to laugh. I’ve never met a child so eager to be given homework assignments. I pull a DVD out of my bag and hand it to her. It’s a copy of a children’s movie that was popular when I was growing up, one that Zhen probably hasn’t seen yet.
“Watch this,” I tell her. “It’s in English, so you’ll have to pay attention. Next time I come, you can tell me what it was about.”
Zhen nods happily and clutches the movie to her chest. I give her a quick hug and put the rest of my things in my shoulder bag. Tutoring is an enjoyable business, even at the worst of times—I love seeing a student’s eyes light up with understanding, and I’ve always related well to children—but if all of my students could have been like Zhen, I wouldn’t complain at all. It isn’t even the fact that she’s so quick and clever, although that is nice. But her eagerness to learn makes working with her a joy. I always feel a kind of surprise when payday comes. I still can’t believe it’s possible to make a living doing something I enjoy so thoroughly.
Zhen’s diplomat father isn’t here today; he’s usually out working, and I’ve only met him a couple of times. So I say goodbye to the nanny and show myself out.
I left my apartment wearing a sweater on the way over, fearing that the weather would turn, but it seems that spring is finally here to stay. I toss the sweater into my shoulder bag as I step out of the apartment building and into the bright Manhattan sunshine.
With no clients left to see for the rest of the day, I’m facing the blissful prospect of an afternoon to spend however I want. The idea of going home, making a pot of tea, and finishing the mystery novel I’ve been reading is tantalizing—I had to put it down at an exciting part last night, and I have a feeling the identity of the killer is mere pages from being revealed—but it is the first really beautiful day of spring. Somehow, it seems wrong to go back to my tiny walk-up apartment when I could be outside enjoying the day.
It occurs to me, suddenly, that I have my camera with me. I put it in my shoulder bag a few days ago, hoping to ask a friend to take a new headshot of me to post on the tutoring agency’s website. Now I pull the camera out and ponder it for a moment, thinking, then change direction. It would be a perfect day to spend a few hours in the park. The sky is clear and the light is absolutely perfect, and I feel confident that any shots I take today are going to turn out well.
It’s early enough in the day that the park isn’t too crowded. I wander somewhat aimlessly, not sure of where I’m going or what I’m looking for, until I find a quiet, secluded spot undisturbed by parents and nannies with toddlers and begin exploring the treetops through my lens. I’ve walked through this park dozens of times, of course—what New Yorker hasn’t—but it always looks different, more alive, when I had my camera with me.
I spot a pair of finches standing over a nest and take a few snaps, zooming in to see if I can detect any signs of the eggs—or babies—that must be there with them. There’s no movement, but suddenly I’m distracted by the shaking of a branch. Following it with my eyes, I see a squirrel racing along, an acorn in its teeth.
Grandpa would have loved this, I think as I capture a picture of the squirrel. My grandfather was a nature photographer for a respected magazine, and after he retired, he kept up the hobby, taking me with him on more than one occasion.
“The best things in life are seen through the lens of a camera, Emma,” he often told me, lining up a shot and holding the camera steady so I could peek in and see what he’d found. “The lens makes you notice the world in a way you never would without it.”
The older I get, the more I think he was right about that. No one else walking through the park is even looking up. No one else has noticed the squirrels running around or the birds guarding their family homes. If I’d been passing through here on my way home without my camera, I know my mind would have been far away from the beauty all around me.
Thank God Grandpa taught me how to take pictures, I think as I snap another one. It’s because of him that I really see the world around me.
And speaking of noticing things…
There’s a man standing off in the distance, several yards away from me. Until now, I thought I was alone in this part of the park, but he must have come up behind me while I was photographing squirrels. Now he stands with his back to me, his chin tilted up so the sun shines on his face. I can make out a bit of his profile—clear skin, strong jaw, clean shaven. A soft wind ripples his sandy colored hair.
I realize suddenly that I’m staring at him.
But how can I help but stare! Living in New York, I see plenty of handsome, well-dressed men. I had thought I’d become desensitized to them. But the man standing before me now seems to put every other man I’ve ever seen to shame. He’s tall and trim, but with muscles that make themselves clearly known even through the collared button-down shirt he wears. He must have flaws—
every human being does, I know that—but from this distance, he looks like perfection in the form of a man.
He turns toward me, and I’m was filled with excitement at the realization that I’m going to get a good look at his face. I thumb the zoom button on my camera, hoping to get a better look—and then something connects, suddenly and horribly, in my brain. The fact that I can see his face means that now he can see me.
And he has seen me. He’s noticed me, I’m sure of it, and my heart begins to pound like a rock and roll drumbeat. He sees that I’m standing here, looking at him, pointing a camera at him like some kind of stalker. And now…great. Now he’s walking over here.
I’m frozen, my mind racing, trying to think what to do. How can I justify to this man the fact that I was so obviously using my camera to check him out? What is he going to think of me? He’s probably totally creeped out by the whole thing. He’s going to want to know why I was taking photos of him. Of course, I wasn’t taking photos of him—but does that make things better or worse? It will make me seem less like a stalker, probably, but it’ll also look pathetic.
Because it is pathetic. I saw an attractive man in the park, and instead of going over and introducing myself like a normal human, I stared at him like a schoolgirl with a crush who’s too afraid to talk to the boy she likes.
It occurs to me that none of my friends are going to be surprised when I tell them what happened. Not one of them would have expected me to know how to handle myself around an attractive man. I suppose they’ll all have a good laugh later. I just hope that when that time comes, I’m ready to join in the laugh at my own expense.
The man stops before me. He angles his body slightly, tilting his chin over his shoulder, and says, “How’s my light?”
“What?”
He laughs. “You were taking a picture of me, so I thought I’d give you a pose.”
He speaks with a subtle accent I don’t recognize, and I can tell he isn’t American by birth. If anything, the accent makes him even more attractive.
Whatever I expected, it wasn’t this.
“I wasn’t taking your picture,” I say and immediately could kick myself. He was clearly prepared to take it in his stride if I had been photographing him, so why am I making a point of letting him know I wasn’t?
But he just laughs again. “I always feel like early spring light is the best for my features. What do you think?” He turns and hits another pose.
Still unsure if he’s joking or not, I bite my lip and nod agreement. He does look captivating in the sunlight. I suppose a man as handsome as he is can’t help but recognize his own good looks.
I had thought, when he was yards away from me, that the distance must be contributing to his overpowering good looks. But now I see that I was wrong. Now that I see him up close, he looks even better. His hair is thick but fine, and I bet it would be soft to the touch. His eyes are bright green and sparkle in the sunlight. Even his teeth are perfect—white and even, glistening when he smiles. He looks like a movie star.
“So what have you been taking pictures of, then?” he asks. “If not me?”
It takes a moment for me to jerk my thoughts back to the conversation. “Oh. Um, nothing much.”
I suddenly feel vaguely embarrassed about my hobby. My grandfather was a real photographer, but I’m nothing more than a girl with a camera. I was taking pictures of treetops, for God’s sake. He would think I was silly if he knew.
“It must have been something,” he insists. “Nobody takes pictures of nothing. And the park is pretty at this time of year.” He pauses. “Is it private?” he asks. “Are you shooting for a publication or something, and you’re not allowed to reveal it to me?”
If only it were that.
“No, really, I was just looking at birds and squirrels.” I shrug. “I was on my way home and felt like detouring through the park, and it was such a nice day, I just thought I’d take a few pictures. It isn’t anything special.”
Embarrassment floods in the moment I stop speaking. He didn’t ask for such a detailed answer, and I can feel my cheeks growing hot. But he only holds out his hand for the camera.
“Can I see?”
I can’t think of a way to turn him down that doesn’t sound crazy. A part of me doesn’t even want to turn him down. The longer I keep him here, keep him talking, the greater the chance that—
That what? He’s unbelievably handsome, yes, but what do I realistically think is going to happen here? What am I hoping for? He isn’t going to ask me on a date. He’s just humoring the weird girl who was staring at him in the park.
“Come on,” he says, crooking a finger. “Let’s see the pictures. I bet they’re better than you think.”
“No, they aren’t.” But I pull up the first picture and hand the camera to him.
He regards it for a moment, and I wring my hands anxiously, not sure what to think. I badly want his approval, but wanting it makes me feel silly and childish. Why should I care what a stranger in the park thinks of my photos? Is it just because he’s handsome? I’m smarter than that, surely.
He thumbs forward through my camera roll, moving on from the picture I’d pulled up for him to the next, and then the next. I open my mouth to object—it’s presumptuous, isn’t it, to start looking through the roll when I’d only shown him one picture—but I find I don’t have it in me to say anything.
Finally, he looks up.
“You’re an artist.”
“I’m what?” I must have misunderstood him.
“These pictures are exquisite. You have a real talent for framing a shot. And this one of the squirrel—you could probably sell this. It’s very good.”
I can feel myself blushing again. “It’s just a hobby,” I say. “I picked it up from my grandfather. He was the photographer in the family, not me.”
The man shakes his head. “It looks like your family has two photographers. You must have inherited your talent from him.”
“I’ve just been doing it a long time.”
The man nods sagely. “You can tell a lot about a person by their hobbies.”
“You think so?”
“My mother used to say that hobbies were windows to the soul.”
“I thought photographs were supposed to be windows to the soul,” I say, smiling for the first time since he came over. He doesn’t hate my photos, and he doesn’t seem to think I’m a crazy stalker. I feel myself beginning to relax.
He laughs. “That’s true. I guess I have two windows into your soul now, then.”
“And I don’t have any into yours. That’s hardly fair.” Am I actually flirting with this knockout of a man?
“As it happens, I’m a photographer too.” He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a small digital camera. “It’s a hobby for me as well. I don’t have your talent, I’m sorry to say, but I find it relaxing. I imagine you can relate.”
I look through his shots, figuring that since he looked through mine, it’s only fair. I can’t say I agree with his assessment of his own talent. He has a way of capturing light and shadow that makes for some very dynamic images.
“These are good,” I tell him. “I’m not sure I believe you’re just a hobbyist.”
“Let’s say I’m a devoted hobbyist,” he says with a grin. “I spend a lot of time with my camera. Some friends say I’m too detached, but I think having a lens between you and the world can give you some perspective sometimes.”
I look up at him, amazed. “That’s what my grandfather used to say.” I almost can’t believe how similar the sentiment is.
“Sounds like a pretty smart guy,” the man says.
I nod and hold out his camera. As he reaches to take it back, I notice a glint of gold on his hand. He’s wearing a massive signet ring, so big I can’t believe I didn’t see it before. It features what looks like a coat of arms, with laurels spread over the top.
“Wow,” I say. “That’s some ring.”
He glances at it. “Yeah. It’s n
ot just photographic talent that moves in families. This was my father’s.”
“Is your father the king or something?” I joke. “I’ve never seen a ring like that before.”
He chuckles. “No, he’s not. I’ve been called a prince before, but it’s a long and not very interesting story. You can call me Tomas.” He extends his hand.
I take it. “I’m Emma. Emma Clark.”
“It’s nice to meet you, Emma Clark.” His eyes are warm, and his smile is sincere.
For the first time, I think that maybe he isn’t talking to me to humor me or to make sure I’m not a crazy stalker. Maybe he actually thought it would be nice to get to know me.
No, my negative self-talk speaks up, firmly shutting down that line of thought. You know what happens when you let yourself think men are interested in you as a person. How many times do you have to make that mistake?
I know the self-talk is right. I’m not going to make the same mistakes I made in my youth again.
Too many times, I’ve allowed myself to believe that men I’ve had feelings for were interested in me. Too many times I’ve let myself trust that I was in a relationship with a future. And every time I’ve believed in that, I’ve been disappointed. Men, it seems, only want one thing. At least, they only want one thing from me. And I’m tired of being used.
But he is so attractive. Even as I remind myself of these facts, my body is protesting, willing me to stay close to him. My heart is pounding. And I can’t deny the flare of curiosity and excitement that’s igniting within me.
“Would you like to come with me to the coffee shop across the street?” Tomas asks, pointing. “I’m in the mood for a hot drink and some good conversation.”
I should say no. I should definitely say no.
“I’d like that,” I hear myself say instead.
Chapter 2
