The Knocked Up Plan

He snaps his gaze to me and raises his eyebrows approvingly. “Excellent trash talk. I had no idea you had it in you.”

I suppose that’s the point of dating—to learn these things. Or, in our case, let’s call it practical dating. He parks himself in his seat, and I plop down next to him as the game resumes with an ear-splitting whistle.

“That was highway robbery,” he says over the stomping of feet in the stands as the Knicks run up the court.

“It was a bald-faced crime.”

“Theft, I tell you.” He holds up a hand and we high-five. “By the way, when you said something on my list, I thought you meant the list of dates for the dating guide. But this is way better.”

I point at him. “Your list of ideal dates. The ones you told me about when you asked for mine.”

“And you remembered.”

I’d sensed he’d had a shitty day at work. Even if he doesn’t want to talk about it, I don’t need to be a rocket scientist to know. Our boss is tough as nails, and while I’m Cal’s golden child right now, it’s because of my show’s ratings and the column’s popularity. If Cal’s riding someone hard, it means he needs more from them to please the sponsors. That’s not a fun position to be in, so I called in a favor. Delaney’s boyfriend is a big-deal entertainment lawyer with contacts all over the city, and he snagged last-minute tickets for tonight.

Since Ryder’s whisking me around Manhattan on my most favorite dates, I can try to do the same for him. Now, I’ve a happy man by my side, which is exactly how you want the man tasked with knocking you up to feel.

After the Knicks score again, we stand and cheer. Ryder wraps his arms around me and plants a PDA kiss on my lips. “What if the kiss cam caught us?” he whispers.

“How scandalous,” I joke.

“If the kiss cam was on, I’d give you one of those kisses where I bend you back and you have to rope your arms around me and hold on tight so you don’t fall.”

I lick my lips, inviting him.

His eyebrows rise, and he pretends to talk to himself. “And then I said to myself, why am I not doing that now, anyway?”

He loops a hand around my back, dips me as far as he can without bumping the people next to us, and kisses the hell out of me. We’re in the midst of thousands of raucous fans, and he kisses me like he knows my body. Like he knows how I like it.

Slow and tender at first. A teasing slide of lips—just enough so I can taste his spearmint breath. Once I’m under his kissing spell, he parts my lips, opens my mouth, and tangles his tongue with mine. Softly, I moan into his mouth. A shudder runs through my body, and everything goes hazy. My brain sends the message to swoon, just swoon.

That’s how he kisses me.

But he doesn’t stop there. For the second act, he kisses deeper, harder, with a hint of what he’ll do to me later. A little rough. A little greedy.

All manly.

My knees go weak.

It’s the strangest thing, because I’m in public and the roar of the crowd and the sound of the buzzer should be a turnoff. But he’s such a turn-on that all I want is to grab his hand, tug him out of the stands, and yank him into the bathroom next to the nacho stand.

And, honestly, I think bathroom sex is way overrated.

Sure, sometimes it works out with Os for everyone. But that’s mostly in fiction. In the pages of a book, you never hear about the smells in the restroom. Who wants to screw when it stinks like urine? Not this girl.

That’s why I break the kiss—so I don’t yank him into a public restroom. I breathe out hard, finger the collar of his soft T-shirt, and whisper, “If you kept doing that I was going to tackle you and hump you right here.”

He laughs, the sound mingling with the noise of the crowd, the thump of shoes, the jeers and cheers. As we sit, he says, “I probably wouldn’t object.”

I run my hand up his arm, feeling his bicep. “What the hell do you do to get these guns?”

“Weights.”

“No.” I pretend to be shocked. “Don’t tell me that. You’re naturally perfect. You’re naturally toned.”

“Ha. If only.”

I lift my chin haughtily. “I refuse to believe you’re anything but a perfect specimen of DNA.”

His smile disappears. When it registers what I said, I wince. Have I insulted him by making him think all I want is his perfect DNA?

Well, that kind of is all I want.

Why, then, does it feel as if I’ve said the wrong thing?



The Knicks win, and we cheer outrageously for their victory, but something feels off. I know it’s what I said earlier about his DNA, except the hustle and bustle of Madison Square Garden is not the time or place to make it right. Even though Ryder isn’t a man to hold grudges, I want to clear the air, to let him know I don’t just view him in this one-track way. Even though I suppose it would seem like I do.

We reach his building after a short ride, and we head up the steps to his small one-bedroom. As soon as the door shuts, Romeo leaps up and slathers his master in kisses.

“Hey, boy, were you good while I was gone?” The dog answers with a wag and a long sloppy kiss. The master responds with a chin-scratching. There’s such affection between them, and I wonder if Ryder was always this sweet with his pup, or if he poured more love into the dog after his marriage ended. Do we have a finite amount of love inside us that we allocate to the people and animals we fall madly for? And if someone breaks our heart, can we simply siphon off that love toward another creature? As the dog rubs his white and brown snout against Ryder’s leg, I suspect this creature helped his best friend through heartbreak. I’d like to give the dog a biscuit. I’d like to give him a whole pack as a thank-you.

As Ryder leashes his beast, he looks me up and down, heat in his dark blue eyes. “Do me a favor while I take him around the block.” His voice is rough.

“Sure.”

“Get in my favorite outfit. Wait in my bedroom. I want you naked and ready when I return.”

That sounds damn good to me, too, but even when I strip down to nothing in his bedroom, I can’t shrug off the comment from earlier.

Ten minutes later, the door creaks open. There’s a clank of the metal end of the leash hitting the hook. The dog slurps water loudly in his bowl. Ryder tells him to go to the couch, then praises him.

And I am the naked redhead waiting on his navy-blue bed.

The naked redhead who should be a cat in heat. But I feel too much weirdness to just flip the switch to sex. When Ryder enters the bedroom, he does that sexy thing men do. He raises his arm over his head and reaches behind him, tugging off his black Henley in one quick move.

His gorgeous chest is on display, and my fingers itch to touch it. But my mind is in charge. Or maybe my heart. I sit up, even as he stalks closer, ready to eat me up.

“You’re more than your DNA,” I blurt out, meeting his eyes.