Falling for the Single Dad

PROLOGUE

TYLER | THREE YEARS AGO

If he thinks I’m paying that much, he’s out of his damn mind.

Silas Denton shoots back a smug smile. He runs his hand along the dark stubble on his chin, and the grating sound against his palm makes me want to scream. “Sure, but you seem awfully desperate to get it.”

“Because it’s my old car!”

My jaw twitches and my hand tightens around my daughter’s infant car seat. She’s sleeping soundly through this whole interaction, her lips in one of those squishy baby pouts. I thought having her with me might help my case, but that was a lapse in judgment on my part. Dentons don’t have souls.

“That you sold,” Silas points out. “And I bought.”

“Look, I know it’s in exactly the same condition I sold it in. You haven’t done shit to it.”

He shrugs. “Does it matter? I have it. You want it. There’s a price for that.”

I mentally thumb through all the ways I could blackmail him, but I know he has way more power than I do.

Even if I went to the police with some of the things I have on him, it would be a non-starter.

He and his brothers do something to keep the police off their backs all the time, and it would be in my best interest not to stir that pot.

Hasn’t he done enough to ruin my life? Why can’t I have this one tiny piece of joy?

My life is in shambles, and if it weren’t for the little girl beside me, I might have let everything slip away by now.

This car is my last scrap of happiness in a vast expanse of numbness. I wander to the passenger door and peek through the window. My stomach squeezes when I find it just as I left it. The burn mark is still there.

The burn mark she left there on that one night she trusted me. Our little secret.

Not that it matters anymore. She’s part of why my life is miserable, but my mind continually drifts back to when everything was less complicated. When I didn’t have a reason to be mad at her. When I couldn’t point the finger squarely at her for how I ended up here.

I wish I didn’t still have affection for those simpler times, but in truth, I’ll take any reminder that life didn’t always suck. And if I get this car, I’ll have a bastion of hope. Even if I don’t hope for the same things I used to, I need to be reminded that I can hope.

“Tell you what,” Silas drawls. “I’ll give you a deal.”

I lift a brow at him, waiting.

“Twenty-nine hundred.”

I don’t have much of anything, but I’m only feeding one adult now. I can afford formula and diapers, but this will deplete my savings account.

It’s irresponsible, but I’m tired of being responsible all the time.

Fuck it. I deserve this one good thing, something that is just mine to enjoy.

I pull out my phone to make the transfer, scowling at Silas.

“You’re a fucking vulture.”