Lizzie Blake's Best Mistake (A Brush with Love, #2)(29)

He’d lay out the pros and cons of different arrangements, stick with the big picture instead of the details, and likely have an agreed-upon decision with designated action items within an hour.

If he could keep his head on straight, that is, which he seemed incapable of around Lizzie.

After one more deep breath, he dialed her number.

“Hello?” Lizzie’s voice was like roughened honey, and his heart gave a small kick at the sound of it. Which was bizarre.

“Hi, it’s Rake. I made it to Philadelphia. Can we meet somewhere and talk?”

There was silence for a long moment. “Am I being punked?” she asked at last.

“I don’t know what that means.”

Lizzie sighed. “You’re really here?”

“Yes. I’m at the same hotel as last time. Is there a restaurant or coffee shop you like that we can meet at?”

More silence.

More of his heart doing that weird kicking thing.

“I’ll meet you at La Colombe on Nineteenth and Walnut. It’s a coffee shop. Is an hour enough time?” Lizzie said all of this with another resigned sigh.

“That’s perfect. I’ll see you soon.”

Lizzie hung up the call.

Rake finished getting ready, paying extra attention to his shave, making sure his clothes looked crisp and clean, no matter how rumpled he felt inside.

He was oddly … nervous? Which, on one hand, wasn’t all that strange. He was about to have one of the most important conversations of his life, of course he was nervous. But the nerves came more from seeing Lizzie and less from the topic. Which was a very confusing reaction and one he chalked up to jet lag.

Fifty-five minutes later, he stood outside the coffee shop waiting for Lizzie. He checked his watch every few minutes, the jangle of nerves growing the longer he waited.

Half an hour later, Lizzie rounded the corner in a walk-jog, her red hair blazing about her as she maneuvered through the crowds.

“I’m sorry I’m late,” she said, stopping in front of him, her honey-colored eyes with their touch of wildness threatening to swallow Rake whole. “I was busy puking,” she added, using the collar of her tank top to dab at the sweat on her red cheeks and forehead.

“Are you, uh … are you okay?”

She looked at him, her eyes dancing across his face, and her body seemed to sag under the weight of his question.

After a moment, she smiled. A soft, sad smile that for some odd reason created a tiny, devastating effect along his body.

“Let’s go in,” she said, pulling open the door and leading the way into the cool café.

After ordering, they grabbed a table in the back corner.

Lizzie’s knees started bouncing under the table as she looked around, her eyes darting around the space.

“So,” Lizzie said, taking a sip of her iced tea. “You took the world’s longest flight to talk? Did you have a topic in mind?” She let out an awkward bubble of laughter that made his heart squeeze a bit.

Rake cleared his throat, ready to get down to business. But all his carefully planned speeches seemed to have evaporated straight from his brain, leaving a tangle in its place. He cleared his throat again. “I’d like to be involved,” he said at last. Because this was the one constant he didn’t want to compromise on.

Lizzie pursed her lips. “Sending a kid across the world every other weekend for visits isn’t particularly ideal,” she said, tracing the mosaic pieces of the table with her fingers.

“I—I’d like a bit more than every other weekend. I’d like to be involved on a daily basis or as close to that if we can arrange it.”

Lizzie gaped at him, then narrowed her eyes. “I’m not just giving you the baby, you weirdo.”

“No. No. That’s not what I mean. Obviously, I don’t want that. I … I mean—”

Lizzie stared at him, her eyebrows arching. Rake blew out a breath.

“I’d like for us to develop an agreed-upon plan of coparenting here in Philadelphia that offers us equal time with the child.”

Lizzie gaped at him again. “So, you’ll … what? Move here? Like it’s that easy? What about a job? What about, I don’t know, citizenship? I don’t—” She stopped, her shoulders slumping, and she buried her head in her hands.

“Don’t what?” Rake asked.

“I don’t even know what you do. What your job is,” she said with a humorless laugh, lifting her head to look at him.

“I’m in marketing,” he said. “I work on the creative team for a brand called Onism Swimwear. And I’ll figure the job thing out. That’s for me to worry about.”

Lizzie made a scoffing noise. “Well, isn’t that just wonderfully cavalier. You don’t want to share how you’ll figure it out. And, again, isn’t there that tiny little thing of you living across the globe?”

“Are the details that important right now? Don’t we have bigger things to worry about?”

Something in Lizzie snapped, a small fire blazing in her eyes, as she propped her elbow on the table, jutting her finger at his chest. “The details matter the most,” she said, her brows puckering and eyes turning glossy in her anger. “You come here, tell me you want to be this idyllic father figure, but don’t care to share how you’ll do it? I’m just supposed to have this blind … faith in you to magically make everything work?”